A whole lot of shows coming up...

Big news, friends! I'm officially announcing that I'll be a part of a short tour with my friend Derek Webb at the end of April/early May. I'll be playing guitar for him, along with old pals Cason Cooley on bass/keys and Paul Eckberg on drums. I'll also be playing a short set of my own tunes. Alli Rogers will be opening.

I've also got a couple solo shows, one local, and a few Caedmon's shows. Here's the schedule for the next month or so. I'd love to see as many of you out there as possible. Thanks for supporting me and my friends making music!

4/14
Andrew Osenga w/ Band
FREE
7 PM
Tomball UMC
Tomball, TX


4/20
Caedmon's Call
$20
7:30 PM
Autumn Ridge Church
3611 Salem Road SW
Rochester, MN


4/26
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
$12/$15 doors
7:00 PM
The Drowsy Poet
3700 Candlers Stations
Lynchburg, VA 24506


4/27
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
$5 Montreat Student/$8 group/$10 doors
8:00 PM
Gaither Chapel, Montreat College
310 Gaither Circle
Montreat, NC 28757


4/28
Andrew Osenga - Solo
FREE
3:00 PM
Wartstock - Wartburg Theological Seminary
333 Wartburg Place
Dubuque, IA 52004-5004


4/28
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
$8
8:00 PM
Bethel Temple Church
1705 Toods Lane
Hampton, VA 23666


4/29
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
$15
7:30 PM
Jammin Java
227 Maple Ave East
Vienna, VA 22180


4/30
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
$8 Advance- 21 & Up/$10 Advance - 18 & Up
8:00 PM
The Lincoln Theatre
126 E. Cabarrus St.
Raleigh, NC 27901


5/01
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
$10 adv, $12 door, $8 group
8:00 PM
The Handlebar
304 East Stone Avenue
Greenville, SC 29609


5/02
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
$10 Advance/$12 Day of Show
8:00 PM
Murray Hill Theatre
932 Edgewood Ave S
Jacksonville, FL 32205


5/04
Caedmon's Call
$20
9:00 PM
McLean Bible Church
8925 Leesburg Pike
McLean, VA


5/05
Andrew Osenga w/ Derek Webb
FREE
7:30 PM
Manchester First UMC
105 Church St
Manchester, TN 37355


5/07
Andrew Osenga w/ Band
$5
9:00 PM
3rd and Lindsley
816 3rd Ave S.
Nashville, TN 37210

See you there!

finding my voice, part 1

I was singing a song last night on the new Caedmon’s Call record and was having a lot of trouble with it. I decided to take a break and walked upstairs and told Alison “I just can’t seem to find the right voice.� I realized quickly that I actually meant two things when I said that. This post is about the first thing.

I came to the conclusion a couple years ago that most of my favorite singers have a few different “voices�. Guys like Tom Petty or Lyle Lovett have great voices, but they always sound exactly the same. Tom Waits is always gruff, but sometimes it’s the lonesome howl and other times it’s the distorted circus yeller. A guy like Bono does the Joshua Tree power-ballad belt, the erratic opera falsetto, the almost spoken-word gravelly deep old man and the MacPhisto over-the-top schmaltzy thing. I love that.

I feel like this kind of singing is almost a form of acting. The singer takes on a different character and it radically changes how a song will feel or what it will mean.
The different voices cause me to take the words in different ways.

Long-time readers will know that my favorite album of all time is U2’s Achtung, Baby. There is one line on that record that always bugged me. In Who’s Going To Ride Your Wild Horses? Bono is singing this heartfelt sad love song, and then sings these lines:

“Well, you stole it cause I needed the cash,
and you killed it cause I wanted revenge,
and you lied to me cause I asked you to,
Baby, can we still be friends?�

That last line always bugged me. It just seems so pathetic, and doesn’t seem to fit in at all. Now it’s one of my favorite lines, and it’s all because of the voice (and me finally catching it). He changes to this subtly sarcastic tone at the top of that verse. It’s almost spiteful. Where I used to think he was listing the things she’d done for him and he didn’t want to lose her, I now think that’s probably something she said to him that ticked him off. I could go on forever with my theories, but I do know that becomoing aware of the different character completely changed the song to me. And for the better.

The application of this, at least for me, is that I’m realizing I write in a slightly different voice for Caedmon’s and so I have to learn to sing that way to make the songs feel right. In the months of writing for this record I’ve always kept in mind the history of the band, the sonic rules they’ve sort of set up to define what the band sounds like.

Every artist has them and there are times to try to tear those walls down and times to use them creatively to make stronger the artist’s statement. This has been a time to redefine Caedmon’s Call using a lot of the sounds that initially set them apart. I’ve never sung in that sonic context before and my voice sounds unfamiliar in that setting, to me anyway.

So now I’m having fun with it. I’ve been recording take after take, not intending to keep any of them, but just to see what different things I can come up with and to find out what I have to work with. I’m excited to find “the voice� that lets my voice belong here.

How about you? Have you found this in the music you listen to? Any examples? Any ideas of how this relates to other professions/hobbies/passions?

The Velvet Eaglet

I just got back from Mitch's birthday party. Good times. I tell you what, that Steve Mason knows how to throw a dance party. Anywhooo... I've been down in my basement quite a bit these past few days, working on overdubs for the Caedmon's Call record. I haven't shown much of it since I got rid of the big studio, so I thought I'd give a little "photo tour" of where I'm spending the bulk of my days right now.

Here's the main work area...


some guitars...


some more guitars...


My little amp closet. I built this space so I can make some noise and not wake the babies. Rock and roll, huh? From Left to Right there's the Visual Sound Workhorse Pony, the BadCat Cub 2 and a funky little $75 Univox that's possibly the best sounding amp I own. (And those are boxes of Coming to Life propping up the amps. Gotta get some use of them, you know?)


Mitch, the birthday boy, loaned me this gorgeous piece of lusciosness for my vocals. It's an old Neumann M269. I don't really know what that means, but I know it sounds amazing.


Yours truly singing a tune. I found back in the Normals days that I often sing better when holding a guitar. I'm more used to it, I guess, and so I get a more natural performance. At least, that's what I tell myself.


That piece on top is another gorgeous loaner. Presonus sent me their ADL600 preamp to use for a few weeks. It sounds amazing and is one more reason I love this job.


Yes, I used a timer.


Well, that's about it for me today. I have to get up in five hours to catch a flight for our Caedmon's show in Florida somewhere. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Why doesn't my Dad have time for me?

Remember when Laffy Taffy candies used to come in little square chunks? When they were wrapped up in their different flavor-related colors and they had jokes on the insides?

Well, I do.

Laffy Taffys used to, and quite possibly still may, be made in Bloomington, IL, the twin city of my hometown, Normal. We ate a LOT of these things growing up.

My story starts with my friend Mark and our YoungLife leader Amy. I was in high school. At this point, the Laffy Taffy writers must have gone on strike because they were printing jokes that kids had sent in. I don't remember the time or place, but I do remember the joke I read on the inside of this particular culinary delight.

"Why doesn't my dad have time for me?" one kid wrote.

"Because he's a real estate developer and has lots on his mind."

I had to read it over about six times. They actually printed that! This poor kid, completely ignored by his father, is so lonely that he has to reach out to a CANDY COMPANY!! Oh, the indignity. I burned with a holy wrath. A righteous anger. I read it to my friends and cursed the day the bittersweet words Laffy and Taffy found eachother. Finally, I vowed to write the company a letter.

Well.... I never did. I meant to, but, you know... A couple years later, again I have forgotten the time and place so let's say "Cleveland at noon", I ended up with a couple Laffy Taffys. My conscience fought hard, but the juicy goodness fought harder and I ate them. As I was reading the jokes, again sent in by kids, my blood turned cold. The same joke. Years later they were still printing this same brokenhearted tale.

And then I got it. It's kind of funny.

the invention of the rotary telephone

So my friend Vance, who helped engineer some of the new Caedmon's Call record, ended up giving me a history lesson on the subject of telephones the other day. Thanks to peer pressure here at Sputnik, where I'm working today, I'm going to post a brief synopsis.

The operator used to be the hinge on which the telephone system opened and shut. Usually a lady, she would sit with a giant wall full of open connections, one for each phone in the system. When you wanted to place a call you would just pick up the phone and say "Hello Sally, can you please connect me to the butcher?" She'd then take a cable and plug one end into your connection and the other into the butcher's.

The problem arose when a mortician, in Cincinnati I believe, realized that he wasn't getting calls any more. Turns out the new operator was married to the other mortician in town and whenever anyone needed those particular services she would send them directly to her husband.

These days, of course, this guy would have just whined a lot and sued a couple people, but he was from another generation, "the greatest", if you believe Dan Rather, and he got busy inventing.

He decided every connection ought to have its own number code. Each wall of connections, also called a patch bay (which is what we use in the studio), would have a few hundred connections going across and a couple hundred going down. He realized you could use numbers to deliniate which connection was which. If your connection was 29 rows down and 347 rows over, your phone number would be 29-347. Cool, huh?

Vance explained exactly how the rotary phone works, but I barely understand it and Vance drew a diagram, so I'm not going into that today.

And now you know the rest of the story.