What I did, what I'm doing, what I'm reading, what you're singing...

Ok, so that was one of the craziest travel weekends ever. Which followed last week's crazy travel weekend. And dude, I'm wiped out.

But it's been good. Had a couple fun Caedmon's shows, and a very, um, interesting solo band show. Let's just say the median age was somewhere in the 60's. Great barbeque all weekend, as well.

Last night I went to see my friend Trip Wamsley's new band, the Power Triplets. I told him a few weeks ago I was excited to see them and he told me, "you're not going to like it. There's gonna be a lot of notes. I know you don't like notes..." He was right. There were a LOT of notes. But it was fun, great to see somebody so freakishly talented in their element. Fusion/Rock. Thank God for those new molded earplugs.

Today I started preproduction on an EP I'm producing for Lindsey Jones. A great singer with great tunes and just fun to be around. I think it's going to be a great project and I'm looking forward to getting further into it. Tomorrow and Thursday I'll be finishing up Nick Flora (aka Coin Laundry Loser)'s record. It's awesome. I won't lie.

I've spent the past couple weeks being crammed in an airplane, shuttle bus, Jeep Cherokee backseat, car ferry and/or water taxi at least every other day. I've been reading G.K. Chesterton's "Father Brown" stories for the second time. They're these great mystery stories, and the hero is this little, unassuming Catholic Priest. He hears confessions and pays attention to the world around him, and in the end sees these aspects of humanity that everybody else misses. He solves the crimes but also ends up in great conversations with the criminal. Fascinating.

I've also been watching, also for the second time, the "Firefly" series. The first time I saw it I was under a lot of pain medicine after my neck surgery. I like it better this time. Believe it or not, I'm catching things I didn't before. Don't know why...

And for the first time, I'm reading through the graphic novel "Y: The Last Man". It's written by one of the LOST writers and it's pretty entertaining. The graphic novel is a genre I'm pretty unfamiliar with. The only other one I've read was "Maus", and it was one of the best things I'd ever read. It inspired the Normals tune "The Survivor", for anybody interested.

OH! Huge thanks to everybody who's sent in webground® vocals and instruments. I think it'll be a few more days until I can get back to the Letters project, so you have a few more days if you're still wanting to send something in. It has been a ton of fun to listen through what I have so far. You are some pretty talented and creative people. I can't wait for you to hear it. I can't wait to hear it!

All right, I should go get some rest. Thank you guys for being at the shows this weekend, for sending in those webgrounds® and just for being who you are. I'm learning more and more how important that is. See you soon.

Webground® Vocals (and then some...)

All right, folks, this is the part I've been excited about. I hope you are, too.

Last year it was a crazy experiment. This time we know it will probably work. So I'm adding another level of interesting. I'll get to that in a minute.

It's time to see if we can pull off another round of webground® vocals!

What I have here is a zip file you can download. In it are some mp3s and instructions. If you have GarageBand or ProTools or Logic or Cakewalk or some sort of audio recording program you should be able to make this work. There are the backing tracks of the song and then separate tracks of the parts I need you to sing. Or play.

And by play I mean, play your instrument. Whatever instrument you do play. Acoustic guitar, flute, tuba, accordian, cello, etc... As long as you play either the chords or the main melody (which are provided for you) I'll fit you in somehow. And this will be crazy, and really might not work. But if it does, which I'm betting on, it could be awesome.

So click the link below and be a part of this project.

webgrounds

This kind of stuff is so fun. I wish I could do this every day, but then it might get old... Either way, I'm honored that people were a part of this last year, and I've been glad to see folks have asked to do it again. It's a thrill to hear your voices and to make this music together.

You're amazing and I hope you guys have a great time with this.

Ok, Let's Get Webgrounded®!!!

(Special thanks to Mike Allard, who made a PDF of the included instructions, since my Microsoft Word apparently has some virus. This just goes to show: Bill Gates hates webground® vocals. Thanks Mike!)

My Confession

Well, today may have just been incredibly productive. Last night, before I went to bed, I had an idea for song #5 of the Letters 2 EP. Today I was able to finish it. And tonight I think I just wrote the final tune. It's ten minutes old right now, so it may not totally there, time will tell. I have to find time to record them still, hopefully I can get to it by the end of the week. I'll keep you posted.

The song I just finished takes cues in the verses from what folks sent in, but the chorus is pretty much the story of my last year and a moment I had this past week in Canada. At the end of our time together we were taking communion, and we spent a good bit of time in silent confession.

Now, it doesn't take too many listens of the Normals catalog to know I'm pretty hard on myself. But this time, as a bunch of things crashed together inside of me, I began confessing completely different things. Stories I've never written. Songs I've never finished. Ideas of things to do in the studio that I never got around to. Ideas Alison had that I never fully thought through.

In short, I started confessing for not being who I was meant to be, for not doing the things I love. I was confessing for hiding my passions and gifts because they scared me, or I thought they'd scare other folks, or who knows why... And not only that, I was just confessing what the things were, because I had forgotten...

If I believe that God created me uniquely, and that He gave me these ideas, talents, perspectives, then it's worth confessing that I've not lived them fully.

This "confession" left me feeling more free than I have been few times since I was a child. I almost choked on the bread and wine I took it so fast.

Lord, help me remember. Give me the strength, patience and vision to be who you've created me to be, and to enjoy finding who that is.

Two Inspirations

I've spent the past two weeks mainly out of the studio and not playing shows, and have been instead with my family and some close friends. I've also met some new friends.

This past week six of my Nashville buddies and I went up to British Columbia, Canada and attended a retreat. We were part of a group of about 25 artists from different disciplines; a few musicians, a few authors, some filmmakers, a photographer, a clothing designer... It was a wonderful time. My good friend Al spoke, and it was amazingly insightful and impacting.

The most profound things we saw, though, were the lives of our hosts, the Goff family, whose lodge was used for our time. They served us in incredibly thought-out and beautiful ways, and hearing their story and watching them live it is causing me to really think about my own life, and what it might need to start looking like.

You can see from yourself, this is a half-hour of Bob Goff speaking at Anderson University last year. Keep in mind, he never "spoke" to us, he just shuttled us around, swapped stories with us, asked questions and listened. His family made us amazing meals and welcomed us completely, making it possible for a bunch of artists to spend time in a beautiful place to think and listen to Jesus.



And the week before I went to this retreat my family and I were back at home in Illinois, where my brother provided me with this same type of inspiration. CLICK THIS and see what he's been up to.

So the questions I have to ask myself:

- What am I doing about my faith?

- What dreams has God put inside me should I pull out of the "Crazy" pile and start looking at again?

- If my life is not about my job and my status, what is it about?

How about you?

Waiting for the boys

I'm sitting on my couch, keeping one eye on the driveway. Any minute Randall and Christopher will be here to pick me up. We're going to hop on a plane to Seattle, then head up to Vancouver, then get on a boat to take us 100 miles up the inlets to my favorite place on Earth. Really. It's my favorite.

There's a lodge right down the boardwalk from a YoungLife camp called Malibu up there, and we're going to be part of a small artist retreat hosted by Donald Miller. I'm really looking forward to it. A few of my close friends are going besides Randall and Christopher, I'm excited to meet the other artists in attendance, and again, it's my favorite place on Earth.

I'll take pictures.

Alison and the girls headed out yesterday morning to North Carolina and are now currently at the beach with her parents. Pretty nice. I've been bachelor for a day and a half now, so I did what comes naturally. I stayed at the studio until 4 am working on Letters 2. It was great.

They're here. See you guys later.