Basement Clearance Sale!!

I want to clean out my basement AND give you great gifts to give all your friends, neighbors, boyfriends, bosses, stalkers, etc...  

I'm making everything cheap. T-shirts are ten bucks, CD's are twelve (except for the limited copies of Souvenirs and Postcards, which are also ten, and the special deal on Coming to Life.) If you'd like me to autograph a cd for you, just leave that in the notes section when you check out.

Shipping is $2 for 1 to 3 items, $4 for 4 to 6 items and free for anything over that.  (In America, that is.  International shipping rates will vary.) We'll ship them out within a day or two of your order.

So without further adieu, here are the goods...



Letters to the Editor, Vols I & II - CD - $12

BROWN ILikeAndy.com T-shirt (Tell Me About Your Pedalboard) - $10

Sizes

Small Medium Large X-Large

GREEN ILikeAndy.com t-shirt (Tell Me About Your Pedalboard) - $10

Sizes

Medium Large X-Large

YELLOW ILikeAndy.com t-shirt (Anna and the Aliens) - $10

Sizes

Medium Large X-Large

BLUE ILikeAndy.com t-shirt (Anna and the Aliens) - $10

Sizes

X-Large

TRACTOR ILikeAndy.com t-shirt - $10

Sizes

X-Large

The Morning - CD - $12

Photographs (Remastered) - CD - $12

Souvenirs and Postcards - CD (Limited Supply Left) - $10

The Normals - Coming to Life - CD - $6

peaceful as a hurricane's eye

Well, if all things go according to plan I'll have printed CD versions of Letters to the Editor, Vols. I & II by the Christmas tour. There will be a couple bonus tracks as well. I'm hoping that this will enable people to give them as gifts, and to support in a more tangible way. Also, some folks don't like the whole "computer downloading" thing and would rather just buy a cd at the show. I was going to do vinyl but it was just far too expensive/involved for what I could do now. Hopefully it will still happen in the future.

I've been crazy busy this past two weeks. I was working on three or four records and they all needed to be finished in time to be ready for Christmas. I was producing/mixing all of them and then working other sessions in the midst, and barely sleeping. And now it's done. Well, except for one. A record that Vance is mixing for me got screwed up and half the files disappeared when he opened the sessions. Not good. I was able to find everything on another drive but one background vocal. So Alison gets to sing again today! Other than that, I'm basically done working this year, with the exception of the Christmas tour. Crazy.

I'm playing two shows tonight in Nashville that I'm really excited about. At 6:30 I'll be at the legendary Bluebird Cafe. It's my first time playing there, which is nuts, but the show is sold out. They never pre-sell the bar or a row of pews at the back of the row, though, so you might still be able to get in. Matthew Perryman Jones and Lizza Connor will be in the round there with me.

Then at 11 I'm playing at Windows on the Cumberland with Kenny Meeks as a part of the Southern Soulmasters. Kenny is a local guitar hero/southern gentleman and he's put together a killer band. I'll be breaking out the Fenders (guitars and amp) and putting on my blues hat. I can't wait.

Saturday Jason is helping me tile a bathroom floor and we'll leave Monday to spend Thanksgiving in North Carolina. Also, right now, Tigo is taking Dora and Boots to the volcano, rapido, and that means I need to wrap this up. I've got the day off and my presence as a prince/dancing partner/referee is soon to be needed. These are good days. See you soon.

Ernesto and Angela

Alison, the girls and I headed to a favorite local haunt, Baja Burrito, Saturday night to meet up with some friends who were briefly in town. Catching up on their story was inspiring and encouraging. I want to share it with you.



Ernesto and Angela (who I continue to call by different 6-letter names beginning with "A") Alaniz are from Michigan. They've been a continuing presence on the road since I was back in The Normals. Ernesto bought "Coming to Life" in bulk as gifts for his groomsmen.

They always roll up with a giant van full of middle-schoolers to catch whatever show is nearby. After the show, the audience has cleared out, the band is packing up and Ernesto has thirty kids sitting in a cluster in the middle of the room and he is talking to them about what they've learned that night. This guy is awesome.

So the Alaniz's came to a show on our "Share the Well" tour, an evening dedicated to raising awareness of a people group in India called the Dalit. These are a group of people larger than the population of America who have no civil rights, no chance for improvement, and who are considered less than human by the prevailing Hindu belief system. They are the most oppressed people on Earth.

Ernesto and Angela heard about these people and started praying for them, and for how they should be involved.

Meanwhile, in Andra Pradesh, India, a poor, struggling pastor decided he needed help, both financially and with vision. He pastors one of the 13 Christian churches in a region with a population of 60,000. Few of the pastors can read or write, and none have any money. He went to the big town nearby and his son, who knows some English, helped him use the internet to find an American. Because, as we all know, Americans have money. The name of their church is "Faith Baptist Church" so that's what they Googled. One of the first things that pulled up was a church in Michigan where Ernesto was the pastor of youth and missions.

Now, two or so years later, Ernesto and Angela are getting ready to move to that impoverished village for the next five to ten years. They leave January 12. For the past two months they've been traveling America, speaking in churches and raising support to allow them to go.

They have sold their house, their cars, a quite impressive DVD collection and surround sound system. They are saying goodbye to their friends and family, including a brother who fights in the UFC under the name "The Mexicutioner", which is awesome beyond measure.

You can find out more about them by CLICKING HERE. They are amazing people, who have supported me for almost a decade. I am honored now to return the favor. I hope you will, too.

Ernesto and Angela - Your picture is on our fridge, and Ella wants to take the rest of the cards to everybody on our street. You will be in our prayers. Send me updates and I'll post them here so more of us can know what's going on with you guys. It was great to see you, and to learn from your example. God bless you guys.

Play-by-play

It's Monday morning. The Fed has given away 3 times what they asked for (over 2 trillion dollars) and won't tell us to whom, and I'm watching The Little Mermaid with my girls (fast forwarding the Ursula parts...)

I went with Nick Flora to play a couple shows in Arkansas. They were both fun and the people we spent our time with were wonderful. I haven't had that much fun on the road in a good while.

Then I headed down to Dallas to play a Caedmon's show. The band Poor Rick Folk opened and did a great job. I played some guitar on their latest record and it was fun to see them live. They have since added a keyboard player and another guitar player and their set had a much bigger sound than I expected. It was good to see them.

This week I'll be playing a bit more guitar on Eric Peters' new record, but mainly I'll just be mixing a Christmas EP for Jonny Diaz, which is so far turning out great.

By the way, does anybody have a MacBook they're looking to sell, or can hook us up with a deal? We want to get one for Alison so I can videochat with the girls while I'm on the road all December. Thanks.

Well, that's about it for me. Sorry it's just a play-by-play today. More soon. Happy Monday.

My Seventeen-Year Old Self

Mark and I started our first band back in high school. There were a few things that really fired us up to do this. In no real order they were:

- Pearl Jam's "Ten" album
- one of Jars of Clay's first shows, while they were still in college, at Agape 94. They were barely older than us, and they played at like 9 am. We thought "we could do that."
- The Prayer Chain's "Mercury" album
- early 90's U2 and Toad the Wet Sprocket on the radio (though we had yet to really know the bands)

So we devoured those bands records, poring over liner notes to see who played what lick, who wrote which lyric. It was an exciting time, coming alive to not only hearing music but starting to learn the world in which it was made.

Well today I was working at Sputnik, as usual, and Jars of Clay was in the other room working on a seriously killer new record. It's so good I'm sort of depressed. It's a constant reminder of how far I still have to grow.

Over in my room I was playing guitar for a project Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd are producing. Steve was in The Choir, another of my all-time favorite bands since high school. Their album "CircleSlide" will always take me right back to my senior year. I listened to that thing so many times. I know exactly where every random cymbal hits in the long jam outro of "Restore My Soul". Steve also produced that Prayer Chain album. And he called me to play guitar today.

My seventeen-year old self would literally not believe a day like this could be possible. My twenty-nine year old self tried to act like he's not still that seventeen-year old on the inside and just play it cool. I doubt I pulled it off.

Who cares.

It was a freaking awesome day.