insomniac

I should be asleep right now. I fell asleep at around 10:45, which is really, really early for me, then woke up a half an hour later, talked with my wife for a bit, which was really nice, and haven't been able to get back to sleep. I read a bunch more of Steinbeck's Diary of a Novel, or whatever it's called. It's really fascinating. It's a collection of the letters he wrote to his friend each day as his warm-up for writing East of Eden, which is, ironically, the only Steinbeck book I haven't read. I will once I finish this, though. And by then the new Harry Potter should be out, so I have all kinds of good reads to look forward to.

I'd started sleeping better right before Ella was born. I was finally diagnosed as an insomniac and given some medication to help me sleep. I went from getting three or four hours a night, and then crashing for a solid day once or twice a month, to sleeping seven or eight hours and working out in the mornings. That stuff makes me sleep really hard, though, and I need to be able to wake up for feedings and diaper changings and the like, so I stopped taking it. Blah, blah, this must be incredibly boring, but hey, it's the truth.

I picked up my new PedalTrain pedal board this morning, and started putting it together. I'll finish it up tomorrow, and I'm taking a few pictures, because a number of people have asked me different questions about my set-ups. I'll send Geof an e-mail to figure out how to put pictures on here once I've got it done. Then I'll get started on the big one, which will be a much bigger project.

Well, I'm going to go crawl back in bed and see if I can luck out and crash. Oh, and Andy P's show the other night was a lot of fun, by the way. I am the worst bass player in the world, but I haven't had that much fun playing music in quite a while. Good friends, good songs, good times.... Nighty night.

why not?

Tonight I'm playing bass with Andrew Peterson at a show here in Nashville. Should be fun. I'm a terrible bass player, but I badly want to be a good one. I think it's such a cool instrument.

We finished our 24 marathon last night, so now we just have to watch this past Monday's episode, which Clay taped for us, and we'll have seen them all. How pathetic. I have been way too late the past few nights working on the new Caedmon's record, adding guitars and even a bass part, since Jeff is still in even-newer-dad-than-me mode. That was pretty fun. He'll probably replace it before the record comes out, but who knows?

The new PedalTrain pedal boards got in today, and I'm going to go pick one up tomorrow or the next day. I have two different set-ups, the big one for tour shows and records, and the little(r) one for fly dates and little shows around town with whoever. The sad part is, my little one is probably bigger than most people's regular ones, and my big is about to become two seperate halves from TMCases. Anyway, I was hoping to be able to use the new PedalTrain tonight, but I won't have time to get it ready. My big board is the only one functional at this point, and it's just so heavy and I can't wait to get rid of it. It weighs like 90 pounds or something. Maybe I'll just bring a few random pedals and see what happens. That could be fun. It's all about limits. Give yourself some random parameters and see what happens that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Well, I should probably go and grab some junk to throw in the car then, I think sound check started an hour ago.

Mark Heard

I doubt many of you have ever heard of this man, but he's one of my all-time favorite songwriters. He sold very few records, and died in the early 90's leaving not much behind but his family and a pile of incredible songs. Tonight I stumbled across a site that has his complete lyrics and just lost myself reading through them. Specifically the songs on his last three albums, Satellite Sky, Dry Bones Dance, and my favorite Second Hand. Some of his lyrics, especially Another Good Lie, Love is not the only thing, love is so blind, it goes on... are just unreal. I'm sitting here in Ella's nursery just wiping tears from my eyes reading the words of this man that he knew few people would ever read, and that writing them didn't always provide for his family like it needed to. Just amazing. Here's the link:

http://home.no.net/heard/index2.html

I really want to do a cover of his song "I Just Wanna Get Warm" and may work up a version for my next record. It'd be a great rock song.

Oprah, you were wrong

I wrote a new song today, the first in a long while, and that's the first line. My wife got a subscription to Oprah's magazine, "O", and this month a special little booklet entitled "What I Know is True", or something to that effect, came with it. Jason was over here last night and picked it up and started reading little tidbits out to us all. She quoted the Bible verse "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" and went on to say that the definition of truth is "whatever feels right to you in your heart." I started getting mad. Then Jason read things like "love never hurts, it only feels good" and "when things get confused or sad, just look in your heart, and believe in yourself". Man, I was fuming by then.

You see, I've been wrestling with this idea that we all grew up being taught a load of crap about who we are, and that now we are reaping the consequences of it, and we don't even know it. The things I am talking about are phrases like "Believe in yourself", "if you believe it, you can achieve it", "when in doubt, follow your heart". These things sound so good, but have we ever really thought about them? Look over those sentences again. Can you believe that anyone would fall for that? How obviously and deeply wrong each statement is! There are tons of these out there, floating around, but they all pretty much stem from these three, the greatest of these being, of course, "Believe in yourself." I'm going to take a quick minute and explain why I think these are flawed and why I think that matters.

3. "What's true is what you know in your heart"

We have heard this in every movie made for kids in the last twenty-five years, but have we really thought about it? If you look at this from a Christian perspective its fallacy is obvious. The heart of man is not always a good thing, some would argue, and would probably win, that it's NEVER completely a good thing. My heart is selfish, always wanting, never wanting to give, always looking for the things that will make me feel good. What does my heart tell me to do? It tells me to cheat on my wife, to lie on my taxes, to look down on people, to lie, to always be on top. I know that I need to look to something outside of me, something greater than me, to lead me and to tell me what to do.

From a non-christian perspective, I want to know that the people around me are looking to something outside of them as well. I want to know my government is run by people who are not following their heart, but their ideas of right and wrong, justice and mercy. That they will follow the rules of their job, the Constitution, and not whatever they're feeling at the moment. If I'm on trial, I want to know that the "truth" means who really shot J.R., not what somebody thinks might have happened. Truth is not relative in the courtroom. Nor in the business world. Your heart may tell you to turn around and go back to your girlfriend, but you're the pilot of a plane and your passengers need to be going to see their families and doing their jobs. These ideas are romantic in the movies, but chaos in real life.

2. "If You Believe It, You Can Achieve It."

This one probably makes me the most mad, because it is the most obviously untrue. The simple fact is: You can't always do what you want to. When I was in jr. high I practiced for hours a day at basketball. I played ten times the basketball that I played guitar. Guess what? I suck at basketball. I have no depth perception. I have asthma. I barely have enough balance to walk to the kitchen. I can't play basketball. I wanted to join the team at school so bad. I tried out every year. I was never good enough. I guarantee you I practiced harder and wanted it more than most of those kids on the team, but it wasn't going to happen.

On the flip side, I have a job that a lot of people wish they had. I know that. I get cd's in the mail every week and after every show from people who want to be musicians. They feel they have something to offer, and the talent to make it. The truth is: most of those cd's are pretty bad. I hate that, but it's true. I'm very blessed to get to play music for a living, and I know that God has given me the gifts to do that. I also know there are people who want those gifts more than I do, and they flat-out don't have them. No one wants to listen to someone who can't sing in tune. That's why American Idols ratings are down this season. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Some of these people, I know, have worked way harder than I have to create an opportunity for themselves, but it just won't happen.

Why do I think this is a dangerous belief? Because it's so good to hear. It's so encouraging when you're starting out, or discouraged. But it's a lie. A lie is never helpful in the long run. I believe that we, as humans, were created with limits, and that those are a good thing. I'm not saying we shouldn't have goals, I'm not saying we should give up. I'm saying that life is easier when we accept that we won't always succeed, because we won't. We need to realize that there is more to life than failure and victory, especially when we all fail more than we don't.

One of my best friends grew up with very supportive parents, both teachers. They raised him with this belief. He spent years working towards a certain goal that he would never reach. I remember the day he realized it. It killed him. He really believed that what he put his mind to, he could do. But he couldn't. And he could barely believe it. He looked at me, crying, and said, "but I tried so hard. I believed it, how couldn't it happen? It was supposed to happen."

I think that moment is why I have such a hard time with that phrase. It did damage. That lie took years of his life that he probably should have been spending elsewhere, it took him away from his family, and most of all, it broke his heart. Believing in a lie will only hurt when the lie is exposed.

1. "Believe in Yourself"

And this one can only be seen as wrong from a Christian perspective, but it's the fundamental fallacty to all of these statements. I believe that the heart of this movement, of these ideas, is really an evil thing. I believe that we, as humans, were meant to live in harmony with a God who was greater than us, who made all, knew all, and had power over all. HE could do whatever He put His mind to. Our very existence is evidence of that. To put your hope in yourself, to trust that the answers are all inside your heart is really, at its core, a denial of the relationship between God and man. We were created to believe in Him, not in us. In Him, would we find the answers to our questions. In Him, will we find the truth that will set us free. In Him, can we put our faith and trust, can we find rest and peace, can we move mountains.

It's easy to see through a ridiculous lie, through one that insults us or demeans us. It's the subtle lies, the sweet ones, the ones that go down easy, that we fall for. And, like candy to the tooth, over time they chip away at us, reshaping the way the truth really tastes and feels, until we don't recognize it, and fall for an imposter.

It's my prayer that we would start seeing these ideas for what they really are, and stand up to them. I hope that we can live in a world where our hope can be greater than ourselves. These ideas that seem so much more hopeful than the idea of sin and depravity, are really a cancer that grow to choke out a greater hope, one of redemption and perfection. You see, there is no real freedom in lies, but there IS a freedom in knowing who we really are, our limitations and our imperfections, and knowing who we can really put our hope in. This is not a pipe dream or inspirational poster, but a new heaven and a new earth, with no tears and no failings!

Also, no cheesy R. Kelly pop songs where people sing that they believe they can fly when they obviously can't. If he really believed that, they'd lock him up, which I guess they're about to do anyway...

It's Hot in Here

So our air-conditioning broke a few days ago, or at least that's when we needed it, turned it on and found out it wasn't working. A guy was coming to look at it at 3pm, and it's 6:30 and nobody's here. It's 85 degrees in our house. That's hot. We want to leave to go eat, because we're not about to turn on the oven, but then we'll miss the guy if he comes.

ANYWAY, the studio was fun today. We finished up the acoustic guitars, finally, and moved on to other sounds. I played electric on the song "The Far Country", which was a lot of fun. It's a huge song, and that means I get to let loose a bit. I played the Gretsch and the Les Paul through the BadCat, and all was well with the world.

We also started on AP's vocals last night. We did a mic shoot-out, like the guitar shoot-out, and I feel like I learned a ton. We set up four mics, an AKG 414, an Audio-Technica 4047, a Rode NTK tube mic, and an old 57. We ran them each through a Neve 1272 and then a dbx 160x compressor, that I just got and I love. Andy sang a verse and a chorus on each, and we listened to them with our eyes closed and picked the number we liked the best. Drum roll, please, the big surprise was that we ALL chose the 57. That mic costs like eighty bucks, the others are each at least seven or eight hundred. So good news, basement musicians! It does not matter! Use a 57 on your vocal! Save your money to buy my records!! Really, though, that was a huge and welcome surprise. I'd read that Peter Gabriel and Tom Petty both sang through 57's a lot, and I thought "well, that's cool, but they're probably running through a ton of other expensive gear so it doesn't matter." I guess the Neves help, but still, you would think the more expensive the mic the better it would sound. I'm sure that doesn't relate to every voice, and the same shoot-out on my voice, or Cliff's, or Ella's, might yield a different result. Anyway, it shouldn't be such a big deal, but for some reason I just got excited about all the possibilities my cheaper gear can open up. I am such a nerd.

Well, I need to go get us some dinner before the air-conditioning people come. They just called and said they'd be here in a half an hour. If they don't get it fixed by 8, we're watching Alias at your house.