Since my last post my life has been filled with, sadly to say, not nearly enough of the aforementioned activity. Which is writing, creating and recording music. I’m desperately hoping that this will change soon in the event that my weekly to-do lists and meetings begin to magically work themselves out 
Here’s what else has been happening in my life.
Tri has been playing shows like crazy. Last week I sang for approximately 24 hours and I’m feeling it this week. Along those same lines I’ve started saving for a new guitar (PRS Hollowbody I). I’m about 1/7 of the way there… it’s really expensive, we’ll see if I make it before getting interrupted.
I (we) have a live recording coming up which we have yet to set a date for it but I think it will more than likely fall into May sometime. I’m excited.
That’s about it!
Here’s to hoping I can write another blog sooner than the last!
I’ve been quite locked up in my home studio lately. Trying to figure out what it is God wants to say through me. After a chat with one of my currently unofficial “advisors” earlier this week, I was reminded that this thing that I do, music, is not about me. I’m just the tool, or weapon, if you will, being used by somebody much more powerful who has much more important things to say than I.
Pray that God would reveal his word to me so that I can relay it onto those who need to hear it.
Apparently my new development is to go to bed early… and by early I mean 9 or 10… and then wake up around midnight, wide awake, and go sit in my studio with oodles of late night inspiration writing songs until 4am. I don’t know? Whatever works.
Here’s a couple “underground” artists that I’ve been getting into lately…
Soulever Lift (available on iTunes) – nasty guitar-face-shredding awesomeness
Ryan Edgar (available on iTunes) – soulful vocals
Curt Chambers (iTunes) – All around good musicianship in raw live format
So as I mentioned in a previous blog, this year we decided to focus on what we are great at for our Christmas production. Which would be music, art and media (and of course, bringing the word). So here’s what happened…
We opened the day off mellow with a Rock Church/Nat King Cole duet of “The Christmas Song.” Confession, we copied Buckhead church on this one (thanks guys). This project entailed me getting on Amazon, ordering a Nat King Cole DVD, ripping the footage of “The Christmas Song” off of the DVD, slicing it up a bit in iMovieHD, putting a couple transitions and titles in there and then adding a click track to keep us locked with the video. It was good.
Then, pastor Justin frolicked onto the stage as we played an upetty cinematic version of “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard… wait that didn’t happen at all.
Sorry got off track! Anyway, we then went into the portion of the service which served all of the parents’ and grandparents’ their hard earned gas money back to them with a nice video that Josiah orchestrated with the Kids Rock ministry department. We thought we’d kick it off by answering the question that everyone was dying to know the answer to… “What is Christmas all about?” I’m sure you can imagine the responses that we got from kids ranging anywhere from 6 – 12 years old. All in all it served its purpose and was a success.
Then the fun began! A Christmas production is not a Christmas production at Rock Church without the infamous drum line led by none other than Stuart Soliz. But this year we wanted to make it different, so I put together a track in ProTools for us to play along with. And DIFFERENT it was. During the first service we had a freak technical error (which just always tends to happen) in which the front-line monitors lost connection with the amps preventing us from being able to hear the track to stay on beat with it. It didn’t exactly produce the results I had envisioned but the show went on, as it must, and we made up for it during the second service!
We then did 3 songs off of Israel and New Breed’s Christmas CD. ”Hark,” “Least of These,” and “Silent Night” to be specific. Each laced with orchestral tracks that I made in Garageband and click tracks sent to our ears. BIG ups to the band and singers for pulling these less-than-easy songs off. They were definitely not a walk in the park and we really raised the bar musically with these tunes.
Next were a couple of songs that Josiah and I got together and arranged from this year and last year. A version of “Angels We Have Heard on High” that was a mix between John Mayer’s “Tracing” and Hillsong’s take of “Angels.” Following that was “The Christmas Song” by Dave Matthews. This really turned out to be a magical moment. As I played the verses, we showed clips from the Nativity Story and the Passion on the screens as they related to the lyrics. Does that make sense? You may have had to be there. It was good. That led into an instrumental version of “My Favorite Things” which featured Amanda Dean and a girl from her small group (forgive me) as artists. They painted what appeared to be material things on canvases located on opposite sides of the stage, which when brought together and stacked on top of one another formed a cross. Very cool moment as the audience cheered when it all came together with the crescendo of music behind it.
We brought it down a notch with an acoustic version of “What Child is This” from Kari Jobe’s Christmas CD. The soloists for this one were Amanda and my very nervous wife Tif. They both ended up doing an amazing job with the song and it truly ended up sounding better than it had during the… well… 2 rehearsals we had to prepare it with.
The culmination of the production brought everything together as we worshipped to David and Nicole Binion’s song “You Are Holy.” The entire (except for the opener) production was focussed on Jesus. And what better way to finish up with lifted hands, hearts and voices?
Dan came and brought a nicely packaged (literally) Christmas message and people’s lives were changed.
The End.
As a “professional” musician/worship leader, it’s important to keep your “bag-o-tricks” fresh. This is just a taste of the stuff that I’m feeling right now. I want these CD’s.
I’m doing on my blog what every musician does right now… stealing other people’s stuff and making it my own. Here’s another quote from another blog that I follow:
“The gifts possessed by the best performers are not at all what we think they are. You are not a natural-born clarinet virtuoso or car salesman or bond trader or brain surgeon—because no one is.
Great performance isn’t a result of inborn abilities, intelligence or experience.
The fact that seems to explain the most about great performance is something the researchers call deliberate practice.” -Geoff Colvin, author of Talent Is Overrated
One thing that every great musician has in common is their unceasing desire to practice and play their instrument. You hear stories like that of Stevie Ray Vaughn, blues virtuoso, who constantly carried around his guitar, or Victor Wooten, arguably the best bass living player in the world with similar tendencies. You hear about people who went through seasons of practicing for hours at a time day in and day out… and made these seasons into lifestyles.
As a Christian musician, practice almost becomes like devotional time. I don’t mean to say that it should replace your intimate time with Jesus and his word, but when God has gifted you as a musician, he takes pleasure in you increasing your knowledge and skills.
So let it be known. There are no shortcuts to greatness. Get with God. Get with your instrument… guitar, drums, keys, voice, whatever. Practice your way to greatness.
