Sunday Night

Well, it's Sunday night and the new week is about to start. The studio is being rented out this week, so I'll do some editing on my record upstairs on my laptop Monday so I can turn it in to start the mixing process. I can't believe it's so close to being done. Alison and I are going to finish up the background vocals here in a few minutes and that should be about it.

As for the work last week on the record I only have five words: trombone. trumpet. me. Auto-Tune.

I'm going to attempt to put in a new hardwood floor in our kitchen this week. That should be interesting. My friend Jason Feller might be able to help out for a couple days, which would be great. Not only would it be nice to have another hand, but he's a good friend I haven't seen enough of recently and it'd be fun to hang out for a few.

He played a show Friday night at our church's little music venue, 12 South. He did great. My cousin Dean helped out on guitar for him. He's my evil twin, in case you're curious. He's my twin because he looks like me. He's evil because that's way more fun than having a regular twin. And he's the road manager for Casting Crowns. That was a joke. Anyway, Greg Adkins, whose record I produced last year, and Arthur Alligood, whose record I want to produce this year, also played and both did great sets with mostly new songs. It was fun to sit and listen to music and not play at all. I think the last time I just went and heard music was Paul Moak's wedding, where Kenny Meeks played at the reception. Man, that was good.

Alison's writing a post on her blog right now, so I'm just kind of procrastinating on here until she's done and I can read it. She's a great writer and I always enjoy her thoughts. We're going to have a TV-free zone this week. Move it out of the living room and not let it take up as much of our lives as it sometimes can. I'm looking forward to it. I doubt I'll miss it (although we might wait until after "24".)

Well, that's about it for me today. If I get crazy I'll post some photos of yours truly's attempt at home improvement. Wednesday I'll be posting a few clips of songs off the new record for you to listen to. They've been up on the pre-order site for a few days and people have been very kind about them. Anyway, have a great end to your weekends and I'll write again soon.

A quick note for the pre-order site folks. Some rough mix song clips of four songs have gone up on the site tonight. Head on over and check them out and let me know what you think. Thanks.

We Give Thanks (for the camera crew)

I had a new and really cool experience this past Sunday. We sang a song that I wrote as a congregation in Church. Thankfully, nobody said anything about me writing it, and I was playing in the band so I got to watch people sing it sort of "anonymously."

The song was "We Give Thanks" and it's on the new Caedmon's record. I wrote it to be very simple, both melodically, so as to work for a congregational song, and lyrically, to be very clear what it was that the congregation was actually singing about. They seemed to pick it up fairly easily and by the second and third choruses were all singing along like it was any other tune. A really cool sight, for sure.

I have been playing bass in the church band recently. They have a number of musicians so they just have a list of who plays what and that weeks' leader puts together a team for that week. Since I sing and play guitar every day for a living, I asked to be on the list as a bass player. It's been really fun. I just love playing bass, and it's nice because I'm ok at it, but not really great, so I just enjoy playing without worrying about doing anything fancy. It has been the best way for me to worship at church, honestly, in years. And it's been cool to get to know some other people that way, as well.

In other news, a camera crew from Portland Studios came over yesterday to film us working on my new record and to do some interviews for an extra CD-ROM thing on the CD. The record is so close to being done, but we intentionally saved a couple different types of parts so they could get me singing, Cason playing piano, David the intern rocking the tamborine, etc... They also filmed a couple of songs live, one as it will be on the record, and one for the extra portion. The Portland guys have never done anything that has been less than incredible so I'm excited to see how it will all turn out.

We'll be back to the normal grindstone of the album today, but aside from a few bgv's, and a little perc and piano that Garett and Ben Shive are coming to do later this week, I bet we'll finish it up today. Pretty exciting. It's really sounding great and I can't wait for you guys to hear it. I'll try to have some clips of the rough mixes up on the pre-order site by the end of the week.

Well, that's about it for me today. I'm going to go play with Ella a bit before I have to go to work. Thanks for dropping by.

P.S. two more things

I forgot to mention this...

1. I'm trying to get my stuff up on the iTunes store. Us Indies have to apply and then they check you out and decide if you're worth bringing on. You can all help me by going to the iTunes store and just running a search for my name. If they see that people are looking for my music they'll probably be more likely to pick me up, and that would just be awesome.

2. Of all the records that are coming out this year, including mine, I think this might be the one I'm most excited about...

a few pictures

I wanted to post a couple shots of this past week. I've been working overtime finishing up my record. We should have it ready for mix by the end of next week and it's really starting to sound like a great record. My studio has been rented out this week, so we've been cutting vocals at Cason's house and today did a ton of overdub percussion at Sir Paul Eckberg's.

Cason's been in a big Jay-Z mood recently, so in between every song we would work on we had to stop and watch a track from the "Fade to Black" DVD. Hopefully that will put the three rap songs (something I've never done before) into better perspective.

Anyway, here I am, singing the song "New Beginning" in Cason's kitchen. That microphone is a Blue Baby Bottle. I ordered one the other day, to use on my vocals for this record, only to find out it's three weeks back-ordered. Thankfully, Phil Madeira happened to have a couple of them and loaned me one for this week to help me finish up. Pretty cool-looking, eh? (the mic, not me...)




Cason's Self-Portrait #1


Self-Portrait #2 (He is a bad, bad man...)


Here I am, listening to the track...


In other news, it snowed here the other night and Paul took this cool shot of our house. It makes it look like we live on some big piece of land out in the country somewhere. He's a good photographer. We do not.


Here was Ella and I the other night


and she started pulling up yesterday! Here she is in the kitchen against the dishwasher. Extra points if you can spot Bobes and his dad in this shot...