Hi Wes,
I found the issue with the mixed up sidebar.
As soon as I switched to the updated version I found that the sidebar from v 1.4 was under “slider wide” instead of primary sidebar. I just moved them up and it worked fine!
I still can’t get the tagline to show up but do I really need it? I don’t think so.
After some initial testing is appears that switching to the updated theme has sped my site up a bit. Thank you!