it's raining babies...

We got to go see Todd and Christie Bragg's new baby boy today. His name is Elliott Lewis, he weighed 8 lbs, 4 ozs, and was born Wednesday morning. He's a half a pound bigger than Ella was, but I can't for the life of me remember, or even imagine, that she was ever that small.

Chris and Megan Weigel went to visit them yesterday, but you can't take non-family infants into maternity wards here, so we watched their 2-month old little girl Zoe for a few hours. She's just tiny and looks exactly like Megan. Ella was asleep and Zoe was resting quietly in my arms, so we felt it was a good time for Alison to go and get some food. About the second she left both little girls started wailing. Twenty minutes later, Alison walked in the front door to find blankets, bouncy seats, and toys all over the place, from my hopeless attempts at calming them down, and two very tired and sad babies still crying, and heard me say "if we ever have twins, we're giving one away..." Zoe was really sweet, though, and we had a great time with her, and with the Weigels when they came back over to get her.

Alison has been getting to know some of the other new moms in our neighborhood and/or fellowship group. They meet every couple of days or so to go walking; three strollers wide, taking up half the street. I love it.

We weren't the first couple among our friends to get married, but we were one of them. For the longest time we really only hung out with single people. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all, they're great people and great friends, but it's been fun to start getting to know people in our current stage of life as well.

Cason and I concocted a little piece of science called "the Life Stages theory" that basically said you could only date within two life stages, or the very particles of your life would be too far apart to allow you to relate. Some of the stages that affected us at the time were: college freshman, college sophomore, dropout, graduate, graduate with job, graduate with REAL job, dropout with REAL job, engaged, married, kids, dead. At least, I think that's how it went. We were in the "dropout" stage, so could date a freshman, but not a graduate with an actual career. Now I think we might be "dropouts with fairly steady not real job," but since I'm married I don't really care anymore. I'll have to ask Cason where he thinks he is now...

Anyway, our theory was mainly a result of too much late-night driving at 19 years old, but there is something to be said for having people in your life in a relatively similar place. I've been with the Caedmon's guys, Andy Peterson and Ben Shive, and all sorts of other guys that are married with young kids who travel and play music for a living, so I haven't longed for that kind of kindred spirit-ness for quite a while. All that to say, it's been really fun to see Alison getting to know these other moms, and for our babies to get to stare at each other, both trying to figure out how they could put the other in their mouths... I know she's appreciating having a friend to share new mom conversation with, so I'm happy for her. I'm also happy when I walk up out of the studio to see three (3) tiny babies (and their moms) in my kitchen.

So yeah, it's raining babies, hallelujah! Did you know Paul Schaeffer wrote that song? The song "it's raining men," that is. Well, I think that proves I'm done here. As much as I love those babies, and one in particular, I'm glad they're all cuddled up and asleep in their cribs so we can enjoy the nice, soothing quiet of an early Autumn night. And think about how we ate McDonald's twice today because we had convinced ourselves the millions were on that next box of fries and now we feel so sick we never want to see yellow and red together again for the rest of our lives...

(speaking of... I only need one more piece for each color, hmmm, I wonder if that's surprising to "the Man"... Anyway, if you happen to see Boardwalk, Pennsylvania Avenue, Ventnor, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont, Mediterranean, Short Line or B&O lying around, let me know...)

Monopoly tally - Oct. 13

Ok, Monopolites!! I'm going to list every couple days the McDonald's Monopoly pieces we still need to win this thing. If you see any of these floating around on your kitchen counter, coffeetable or car floor, let me know...

Still Need...

Boardwalk
Park Place (offered)
Short Line Railroad
Pennsylvania Avenue
Pacific Avenue
Ventnor Avenue
Atlantic Avenue
B&O Railroad
Illinois Avenue
Kentucky Avenue
Tennessee Avenue
St. James Place
Virginia Avenue
States Avenue
Vermont Avenue
Mediterranean Avenue

why not?

It's 3am and I can't sleep, so I figured, why not head downstairs, convert ProTools files for a few hours and write a blog with pictures?!? So that's what I'm doing. Through the gracious help of Chip and Submerge Media I'm able to do the rest of my record in high-definition sample rate, boring I know, but it will sound a lot better. It's going to take six or seven hours total to convert what I have already up to the new depth, though, but it's kind of a set-it-and-forget-it thing, so I can write on here while I babysit it.

I finished Jake Randall's mixes today, and I'm pretty happy with them. I think it turned out to be a nice, little record. After that my friend Mark Nicholas, who's going to do the photos for the new record, and I headed out to Kenny Meeks' farm out South of Franklin. He's letting me shoot some of the artwork out there, so we went ahead to get an idea of the light and scout some of the angles. Here are a couple of the shots we took to get ideas. There will be some other elements introduced as well, to try to add an amount of surreality to the imagery, but these were pretty cool for tonight...







I wrote a bit about the Jill Phillips' record I played on last week. I promised a couple shots, so here they are:

This first one is of Ken Lewis and Aaron Sands, drummer and bass player, respectively...



and Ken, the star, by himself...



Here are Andy and Jill, playing us a new song...



Producer Matt Stanfield and engineer Ben Phillips...



Me, playing guitar, with Aaron, looking slightly concerned or confused...



And here are a few shots of my pedal board, featuring new photos of Ella...







another of my favorite sights...




Now, this one's just for fun. Alison loves to put little towels on Ella's head and call her "the scullery maid." Here is the maid playing her little piano.

Um, I love this child...



well, it's 3:30, I should probably try to sleep. Thanks for those of you who've decided to play McDonald's Monopoly with me. We'll get 'em this time... And many thanks to Apple for releasing the Video iPod and causing much coveteous temptation... Dang, that's cool... Good night.

oh, yet another hare-brained scheme...

I think I had the weirdest fund-raising idea ever today. (I'm raising money to help make my next album, in case you haven't been here in a while...) So let me know what you think about this one...

Everybody loves to hate McDonald's, and we all hate to love it, but most of us do. I am usually pretty good at fending off the corporate demon with his salty-sweet undigestable french fries, but when they throw Monopoly into the mix, I am a goner. Mark Lockett got me hooked on their version of the game back in high school, and every year I fall for it again.

So here's my idea. If you eat McDonald's, and you get those little game pieces, and you don't collect them yourself, throw them in an envelope and send them to me. If I win anything, I'll sell it and use the money for the record. I know, I know, it's crazy, but who knows? It wouldn't cost anything and it just might help. If you didn't want to waste a stamp, you could even e-mail me if you have a few sitting around, and I could check them against what I've already got. Or I could post a daily tab of what I have on here...

Anyway, in real actual not-crazy-talk world, I pretty much just mixed all day. Jake Randall has a song on his EP called "Not Bad" that I spent a long time on. It's a really great 6/8 torch tune, and I had a blast working on it. I think it's my favorite mix I've done, which I'll admit is not saying much, but I think Jake will like it. Maybe he'll let me post a bit of it when his record comes out.

I swung over to Paul Eckberg's house this morning, where he was doing some work with Kenny Meeks, or should I say, legendary awesome guitar player Kenny Meeks. He's played on a billion records, Goodgame's 'War and Peace' and Webb's 'She Must And Shall Go Free' being a few familiar to this community. Anyway, I helped them out getting a bit of drum sounds, which was a nice break for my ears after so much mixing.

Ella just got this little round table that she sort of sits in the middle of, it helps her stand up, and surrounds her with little toys. She is content to just hang out there and bend the toys into her mouth all day. Alison had to run a few errands, so Ella sat next to me while I worked, and she just played and started singing along for quite a while. We had a good little time. I'll put a picture of her in it up here soon. Man, I love having a baby.

Highly recommended.

As is marriage.

Probably first.

I run to the arms of another song...

Well, I've had a nice day today. I got a lot of work done on Jake Randall's mixes. I'm a terribly slow mixer. I wish I was faster. I get really psycho about some of the details, which is why I don't ever plan on mixing one of my own records. I'd have to be institutionalized before the album would be released.

Randall Goodgame and I had a great lunch at Calypso Cafe. I had a chicken pasta soup there last week that blew my mind, but unfortunately, they didn't have it today. Lunch was still good, though, and Randy and I had a great time catching up and talking about our families, our church, and some ideas for the future. We came back to my place and he played me a few new songs he was working on. I'd like to tell you that not everything he writes is brilliant. I'd be lying, though. They were great, as they always are.

I've also spent a bit of time on the phone with Mark Lockett, from the Normals and my best friend since jr. high. He's making the inevitable leap to ProTools this week, and I'm helping him out with that. Fun to chat daily again.

Church was great yesterday. We have a new pastor, named Tom Darnell, who I guess kind of mentored our main pastor, Randy. As some of you know, I made a fool out of myself on this here blog a few months ago, and said some things about churches in general, and ours (Midtown Fellowship) specifically, that were very unkind, unloving, and pretty untrue. I really had to humble myself with them and apologize and seek some help from the people I had hurt about some of my issues regarding the Church. They've been awesome to me, and that experience, along with our neighborhood group, Alison's young mothers group, and the fellowship we already have with people there, have led us to decide to make this place our Church home. I realized there were a lot of things going on there, in the communities, the preaching, the music, etc... that I had written off before I had even given them a chance. More on my weird issues with this later, but we really feel like the Lord led us through all sorts of things before He let us know where He wanted us, and now we know we're where we should be and we're really happy to be there.

All that to get back to... "Church was great yesterday." I think it was Tom's first time preaching at his new church, and we were really thankful afterwards that he is joining our community. He's older than the rest of the church staff, the only one with a good amount of gray hair, and I love that. He really spoke with a wisdom and depth that you get from years walking with the Lord. He was talking about how we are God's people, and explaining what the covenant means and how it has been fulfilled. All good stuff I needed to hear again.

I won't lie, I had just driven through the night, packed and unpacked two trucks worth of gear and only slept about three hours, so I was a little in-and-out through the whole thing, but one thing he said really stuck out to me. He was talking about how we are made, and that we worship because we were made to. If we don't worship God, we'll worship something else in His place, and that thing will never satisfy. This really struck me, because it's something I know I do. For me, it's usually sex or money or music or gear or trying to be cool or being bitter because somebody else thinks they're cool... it just goes on. And none of it satisfies. It never has, so I don't know why I keep looking for it too.

"I run to the arms of another song, another story by a man who's dead and gone, but when will I run to the arms of God?" Can you believe I wrote that four years ago, and I feel like I just heard it for the first time yesterday? So you can pray for me, that God would move in my heart to help me focus my worship, (and by that I don't mean church music, what an awful thing we have done to this word, but I mean my thoughts and my desires and my perspectives), that I would learn to focus these things on Him and what He has said and done, and is saying and doing, instead of on things He has created for us to enjoy Him with.

As always, thanks for reading, for caring about my family and me, and for supporting my music. The pre-orders keep coming in a few at a time, and they're really adding up to get this next record on its way. Thanks so much and have a great night.