Top Fives

Ok, so I know it's kind of lame, but I thought that if the whole point of this thing is so people can get to know me a bit better, I could do a few "top fives" to give you an idea of the stuff that floats around in my head a lot of the time. Feel free to comment on them and tell me how much you agree with me, OR, if you disagree, you can give me money to buy new things to like better than the things I like now. I'm not picky. Except that I am, and that's why I can make these lists.

Top Five Albums Ever.

U2 - Achtung Baby
Peter Gabriel - Us
Paul Simon - Graceland
The Beatles - Abbey Road
Marc Cohn - Marc Cohn
... and probably U2 - Achtung Baby, one more time.

Top Five Movies.

The Royal Tenenbaums
The Big Lebowski
On the Waterfront
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
U2 - ZooTV live (which is the Achtung Baby tour), (and I know it's not really a movie, but it's my list, and I don't care.)

Top Five TV Shows.

The Office - US
M*A*S*H
NewsRadio
24
The Simpsons

Top Five Guitar Pedals.

Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man
Digitech Space Station
AnalogMan BiComprosser
BadCat 2-Tone
Electro-Harmonix MicroSynth

Top Five Books.

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
The Pastures of Heaven - John Steinbeck
The Comple Short Stories - Ernest Hemingway
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Top Five Authors to read everything of before I die.

Ernest Hemingway
Kurt Vonnegut
John Steinbeck
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Leo Tolstoy
Douglas Coupland

Top Five Recorded Guitar Solos.

(guitarist - artist - song - album)
The Edge - U2 - Love is Blindness - Achtung Baby
David Gilmour - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb - The Wall
Dean Parks - Lyle Lovett - The Road to Ensenada - The Road to Ensenada
Sean Ashby - Sarah McLachlan - Witness - Surfacing
John Leventhal - Marc Cohn - Healing Hands - Burning the Daze

Top Five Games for Family and Friends.

Cities and Knights
Euchre
Ping-Pong
Basketball
Find Our Hands ( I play this with Ella when she puts on new clothes. She's getting really good.)

Top Five Jobs I've Had.

Being a Normal
Caedmon's Caller
Children's Librarian
Fork-lift driver in Nestle Factory
Dishwasher in Family Bakery

Top Five Cities I've Spent a Few Days In.

Nashville, TN
Austin, TX
New Orleans, LA
Vancouver, BC
Monterey, CA

Top Five States I Haven't Been In.

Rhode Island

Top Five Songs.

UltraViolet (Light My Way) - U2 - Achtung Baby
Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits - Making Movies
Highway 29 - Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses - U2 - Achtung Baby
The Blood of Eden - Peter Gabriel - Us

Top Five Lists I've Already Made That Could Go On Forever.

Top Five Albums.
Top Five Songs.
Top Five Books
Top Fives States I Haven't Been In Yet.
Top Five Lists I've Already Made That Could Go On Forever.

Wow, I've just made myself puke with my self-importance by making this list. I'm just really bored right now because Ben is running the computer while Andy P is playing guitar, and he's pretty much got it under control. However, most of my gear waits til I leave the room to start smoking and blowing up and hurting people, so I probably shouldn't leave.

But maybe I've convinced you that Achtung Baby really is the best album ever (besides Photographs, Souvenirs and Postcards, A Place Where You Belong, Share The Well, and Coming to Life) then I've succeeded. That was my real goal with this list post anyway. (Better Than This sucked, so you don't have to like it more than Achtung Baby...)

The Cast

Ok, so it's 6:30 am, and I've been up for an hour and a half feeding Ella, and I'm just waiting for her to fall back asleep before I let myself go back to bed. Just so you know, I am an official medically-recognized insomniac with a newborn, so many of the posts will probably be at weird "shouldn't he be sleeping?" times. And yes, I should.

I actually went to bed last night at 9pm. I was just so wiped out I couldn't stay awake. I haven't gone to bed that early in a couple years. I woke up at 2am when Alison came to bed after Ella's last feeding (we trade off in the middle of the night) and was awake for maybe an hour or so.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to lay out a sort of "who's who" in my life these days, so people who read this, (if anyone will) can know who I'm talking about. This will be a general list of folks who I interact with on a fairly regular basis. Ok, here goes:

Alison Osenga - She is my wife of 2 1/2 years. She was born and raised in Durham, NC and is a die-hard Duke fan. We met in college almost eight years ago now, at the beginning of our freshman years. We began dating in the middle of her senior year, and we married on August 3, 2002. She is my greatest friend, one of the funniest people I know, and has been my strongest supporter over the last number of years.

Ella - is my baby daughter. Her full name is Elizabeth Claire. Elizabeth was her mom's middle name before we married. Claire was just pretty. She was born on March 16 of this year, and is, at the time I'm writing this, four weeks and one day old. She is very little and very cute.

Cason - was the keyboard player for the Normals, my old band, and he and I were roommates for four years. He's on the road a lot right now, usually with Griffin House, Derek Webb or Indelible Grace, and I'm excited that he's about to be home for a while.

Jason - is Jason Feller, who moved here (Nashville) from Austin a couple years ago and just released his first record a few weeks ago. He's over here a lot, cause he doesn't really have a job and I have a ping-pong table.

Clay and Sarah - are my brother-in-law and his fiance. They live here in Nashvegas and are getting married in May. They, too, are over here a lot. Clay for the ping-pong table, Sarah for our glorious company, I'm sure. Or maybe cause she rode with Clay. She likes our baby a lot, as well.

Weigel - is Chris Weigel, who is married to the lovely Meghan. Chris lived with Cason and I for quite a while, and he's been one of my best friends, and my go-to bass player, for years. They're about to have a little girl in a few months as well, and we're very excited for them.

Jeremy and Kierstin Casella - Jeremy, or Jerry, is another one of my best friends, and Kierstin is the best thing that ever happened to him. The most honest and loving people I probably know.

Andy P - or Andrew Peterson, as he is on his cd's, is a good friend who is currently recording in my studio.

Ben - is Ben Shive, who is co-producing that record, and is also a good friend, and one of the best musicians I know, maybe THE best, I'm not sure.

Dean - Baylor, my cousin. He's from Colorado but he sort of moved to town half a year ago. I say sort-of because he doesn't actually live anywhere. He was my guitar tech on the first leg of the Share the Well tour, and now he's a road manager for MercyMe and Jeremy Camp. Sell-out. He's the best ping-pong player of all of us.

Christie - is Christie Bragg, who manages both Caedmon's Call, my band, and Andrew Peterson, who I'm usually working with when I'm not with Caedmon's. She is married to Todd, the nicest guy on the planet, who I'll get to in a minute. They live here in town and are great, and Christie is constantly putting out one fire or another.

Mark, Mike and B.J. - along with Cason, were the other guys in the Normals. They all live out of town now, but we keep in touch, and I'm sure they'll come up fairly often.

Paul - is Paul Eckberg, who I met because he's a drummer, and we became friends and who, a year ago, bought a house caddy-corner to ours and is now our neighbor.

Cliff and Danielle - the leaders of Caedmon's. They live in Houston with their two, and almost three, children. Cliff is the most hyper-ADD person I've ever known, and also someone I respect a ton. A very loving family who have been great to Alison and I the past few years.

Todd (and Christie), Garett and Carrie, Jeff and Mel, and Josh - the other Caedmon's guys and their wives. One of the best parts about being in a band is the time you're forced to spend with people you don't always know, but who become great friends.

Rob and Candice - my brother and his wife. They live back home in Normal, IL, and we don't get to see them as much as we would like, but they're visiting next weekend and we're excited.

Bobes - is Mike Bobell, one of my best friends in high school, who now lives in South Korea and teaches English, but comes home in a little over a month and will start Seminary at Covenant in St. Louis. Good kid.

Mom and Dad - are Dave and Donna Osenga, who also live in Normal, IL, still in the house I grew up in, though with considerably less shag carpeting now.

Mike and Carolyn - Alison's parents, who are the best in-laws you could ever hope for, and who live in Durham, NC.

Brandon - is Brandon Whiteside, the Velvet Eagle intern. He goes to Trevecca Nazarene University here in Music City, and he does the grunt work.

The Velvet Eagle - my studio. A ltitle two-room basement ProTools setup strewn about with all sorts of guitars, amps, pedals, mics, pres, and other gadgets.

Billy Cerveny, Randy Goodgame, Will Sayles, Paul Moak, Andy and Jill Gullahorn, Derek and Sandra Webb, Mitch Dane.... and probably a few others will be the basic "first-namers" of my story. They'll be in and out enough that I don't want to introduce them everytime, so I won't. They were introduced here. Everyone, meet everyone else.

Well, that about sums up the cast, and Ella seems to be asleep, so I'm going to crawl back in bed for a few minutes.

welcome to the future

So I've never had a blog before, but I thought it might be kind of a good way to both let people know what's going on with me these days, and to help get back into the swing of writing. I've been touring or working on records for so long now that it's been almost a year since I've spent any time writing, something I used to do all the time. Steinbeck "warmed up" each day for the writing of 'East of Eden' by writing an ongoing letter to his friend, the editor of the book. I have a copy of that letter and have been reading for the past few weeks. It's really interesting to hear how the book is changing as he's writing it, and also to see his process. Anyway, this is going to be my version of the same. I have a lot of writing I need to do, songs mostly, and a few magazine pieces, and when I've sat down to work on them I realize how rusty I've gotten.
I'm really excited about the little work I've gotten done on my next solo record. I'm working on Andrew Peterson's new one on a daily basis right now, and any free time I'm having to spend on the new Caedmon's record, but every now and then I've gotten a few moments to fiddle with my own stuff, and it's been really enjoyable. I have a couple goals for this record that are helping me shape it, but they're becoming harder to follow as I go along. Here they are:

1. Not all slow songs!

- I usually do that, and I don't want to get bored of my own album. I've always kind of had a sad streak and I think the tearjerkers facilitate that, but I want to have playing this one live, so it needs to have some kick to it.

2. No starting with acoustic guitar!

- I've always been pegged as this acoustic singer/songwriter, probably because that's usually who I work with, but the truth is, I've maybe played thirty shows my whole life with an acoustic guitar, and hundreds and hundreds of shows on electric guitar with a band. I enjoy getting to work with so many different artists and getting to play different types of music, but I want to try to do something really different on this one. I figure starting with drum loops and keyboards, then adding bass and electric, and THEN doing acoustics might allow me to get into a different space with ALL of those sounds, and hopefully I'll end up somewhere I haven't been before, or at least since I was in the Normals.

3. Don't be sad all the time.

- As this blog will hopefully show over the next little while, I'm a slightly melancholy artsy-fart and I'm used to reveling in some sort of sadness. However, my life is really in a happy place right now. I have a wife who I love completely, a baby daughter who makes up in cuteness what she lacks in ability to sleep through the night, a house in a cute, little neighborhood with a studio full of old gear. I get to play music for a living with people I truly love, and for causes that I really believe in. I don't have any more lame christian record deals where I can't say what I really believe. I'm loved by my Creator, even when I don't believe it, and He continues to provide for my family just what we need when we need it. I really couldn't ask for much more, though I assure you, I do...

Anyway, those are my big rules. I have a few other specific studio rules, which I'll bore you with later, but I figure I should stick to the grander themes for the first entry. Well, I'm going to go and hang out with my family now, but I'll write more later. Thanks for reading this, and I hope you find it interesting and worth your time.

Hello world!

Just this morning, our beloved Andrew Osenga emailed me and wanted his own Weblog. I decided that hosting it here on [caedmonscall.net] was just the place to do it, so ... it's done.

I'll let Andy take it from here. :)