one for you, nineteen for me

I had a great show Saturday night in Tomball, TX, just North of Houston. 2/3 of the band The Campaign sat in with me (the drumming and bass-playing thirds) and they were awesome. They're a great band, piano-based, three-part harmony. Check them out by clicking on their name.

The night was opened by a great new band called The Cardinal Rise. I've met most of the guys before but hadn't seem them play, and it was fun to watch them have such a good time. The crowd was awesome, if somewhat overly knowledgeable about ancient Normals bootlegs. (Quakeline, anyone?) They made a long, tired day well worth it.

My posts will probably be short and sweet this week. We have to turn the Caedmon's Call record in to mix on Monday and I've got a ton of work to do to get it ready. The Youngs are descending on the basement for the next couple of days to get all the vocals done, leads and harmonies. It's going to be fun, but hectic. I'm excited to get back to a more vocal-heavy Caedmon's. We've been needing to be here for a while, and it just feels right.

Have a great Monday with your beautifully-tied neckties, and I'll drop in with some more sage wisdom tomorrow.

Thank God for the internet

Josh Moore, our B3 player in Caedmon's, got married today, here in Houston. At the hotel this morning I was made aware yet again that I have no idea how to tie a tie.

So I googled it.

And found this site. Check it out...



I know. It's beautiful. Random strangers were stopping me in the street just to get a better look at it. Simple, yet majestic. Subtle, yet poignant.

So it goes.

I own every novel Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote. Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, Mother Night, such amazing books. They each took me a couple times to really GET them, and so I read them over and over, loving them more every time.

He and I hold vastly different beliefs, and so I often disagree with his ideas. But not all of them, not at all. To quote my friend B.J., "truth finds it way into the weirdest of places." Friends, there are few places weirder than a Vonnegut novel. And there is much truth there.

He was a prisoner of war in Germany during WWII and was one of the few survivors of the U.S.'s fire-bombing of Dresden. He and the other POWs were put to work in an underground meat cellar, and it saved their lives. He became the ultimate pacifist, and his stories make his point in as bizarre and unique ways as possible, (including, but not limited to: time travel, space aliens, and an alter-ego named Kilgore Trout.)

Mr. Vonnegut passed away Wednesday, at the age of 84.

He was a sad man, and I have often felt as sorry for him as inspired by him. I don't write novels, but I do write, and I've found echoes of his work in my own. He has helped shape the way I view the world, corporations, national loyalty and decent, human kindness. He's also helped shape the way I feel about believing in nothing BUT human kindness. And I just don't believe it's enough.

Still, that's the way we learn, and I'm grateful for getting to learn through his words. So tonight I'm going to grab one of his books off the shelf, any one will do, and get lost in another of his insane and honest worlds.

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.

(A great bio was written about him in the New York Times yesterday and can be found here.)

I have a gift

Well, I like to think I do anyway. Some people are great at making money. Some people can build things with their hands or speak in front of large crowds. Some are good at getting cheap gear and naming people's recording studios. I'm the latter.

I don't want to brag, but Paul Eckberg's studio? The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Paul? That was mine. The Velvet Eagle? Obviously. And who can forget Abbey Road?

Well, my friend Jeff Pardo, a phenomenal keyboard player and young producer, has put a great, little place together. He invited me over to see it and he recorded me singing lead on one of the new Caedmon's tunes. It turned out fantastic.

It seems that Dear Mr. Pardo is having trouble naming his place, so obviously, he turned to me. Before giving him my final suggestion we thought it would be fun to put up a couple pictures of the place, tell you a tiny bit about Jeff, and then let you vote on the four names I've come up with. The winning name will be my submission. Vote by replying in the comments.

Ok, Jeff has the obligatory MySpace page right here. You can hear some of the stuff he's worked on and read a bit about him. He's from the suburbs of Chicago. He likes baseball and thinks the Cubs have a chance every year. He loves Billy Joel, Star Trek and long walks on the beach. And penguins. Dude loves penguins. I don't think its healthy. And again, he can play piano like a madman, and he makes great faces doing it.

The studio is in a detached garage behind his house in East Nashville.









Here are the potential names. I will both provide the names and, in true Spelling Bee fashion, use them in a sentence.

A) Mr. Potter's

-- "I've got a session over at Mr. Potter's."

B) Kid n' Play's "House Pardo IV"

-- "Dude, have you seen "House Pardo IV yet? Vanilla Ice is in it!"

C) I'm a Doctor, Not a Studio

-- "Honey, I'm just going to swing by I'm a Doctor for a couple minutes on my way home."

Also

-- Recorded at I'm a Doctor, Not a Studio and The Velvet Eagle.

D) The Penguin

-- Pardo's getting some great sounds over at The Penguin.

BONUS POINTS: available to anyone who can successfully change the word "field" to something similar sounding, and clever, to fit in "Wrigley ____". Also available to anyone who can tell us the name of Danny Devito's lair in that Batman movie.

NOTE: other names will be accepted as write-ins, but you still must submit a vote for one of these four. And again, vote by clicking on that little "comments" button right below. Go, go, gadget democracy!!

finding my voice, part 2

Jeremy Casella has long been an inspirition to me. We’ve been good friends for years and so he’s encouraged me in that way. Specifically, though, he has often said things in conversation that have resonated with me and changed the way I have gone about doing what I do.

He’s in the final stages of a great new record, one that’s been in process for a couple years. Jeremy has incorporated strings, brass and woodwinds, as well as a generous portion of piano and electronica. He’s honed in on the acoustic guitar, versus the electric, and is newly favoring playing finger-style. He’s been more excited about this project than I’ve ever seen him.

We were talking the other day and he was telling me why he’s made the choices he’s made on this project. He’s a genius with melody and it seems that string arrangement is very well-suited for his gift. And I don’t mean that his gift is well-suited for string arrangement. I mean that I think God has created the crafting of melodies with strings just so people like Jeremy can paint on that palette.

I digress…

Like so many things, making music relies heavily on vocabulary. You can only play the notes and chords you know. You can only think within the limits of the words that you understand. I’ve heard that’s one of the reasons the Nazis burned so many books. They were wanting to erase vocabulary. You can only paint with the colors you have or write with the words you know.

Our culture has made an idol of youth and loves to feed the idea of the artist who was born with a perfect understanding of their art. That’s a myth, though. Like anything else you work for years and years, you learn new ways of understanding and approaching what you do and you expand your vocabulary. I am seeing more and more how it takes all this to find your voice: the things you want to say and the music you want to make.

Jeremy has made a few different records, all sounding very different. He told me that other night that, even though he likes things about them all, none of them has yet achieved the sound that he hears in his heart. Until now.

I can not wait to hear the record in its finished glory. I know Jeremy’s heart and I have no doubt that the closer his music gets to that heart, the more amazing it will be.

I also know that I feel a few years behind him. I wrote a few days ago about finding the voice to use when I sing with Caedmon’s. I feel like every record I’ve made has been a step closer to what I really want it to be. I know I’ve still got further to go, though, before I find my true voice.

In the past two years or so I feel like I’ve been learning to speak with my guitar, to move beyond chords and colors and really sing with it. I have miles to go before I can do what I want with it, but I feel it in my gut: The sound of my heart is literally in the palm of my hands when I’m playing guitar. I just don’t have the vocabulary yet, whether musically or sonically or life/wisdom-wise or whatever. But it’s coming. I can feel it. I see it in Jeremy and I know it happens.

I watch Ella learn language from Alison and I talking to her and around her. I feel that way when I listen to the music of Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon and Pink Floyd (the Great P’s). They create space, these sonic landscapes that are almost films they have so much depth. It almost feels like they’re pioneers on a great open plain. Each has headed in their own direction, and I see the trails they’ve made. I’m keeping my eyes on theirs until I see the thing none of them saw. The new land I’m made for, or that has been made for me. It’s a longing deep and wide. God puts it in our hearts and blesses us with the opportunity to spend years finding it.

Does this resonate with you? If so, in what context? How do you pursue it further? Do you have any ideas of how I should pursue it further? Can you think of an artist (or anyone else) you’ve seen find their voice?