great day

My parents, my brother and his wife came to town this weekend. They got in late last night and spent the day with us today. It was a pretty great day.

The weather here, and I said this in my last post, is amazing right now. This is one of the few weekends I'm home this Fall and I'm so glad. It was a little chilly, but just clear and fresh and so alive.

The whole family, including Alison, Ella, Alison's brother Clay and his wife Sarah, all piled into cars this morning to go to a pumpkin farm. It's sort of like a petting zoo, but with pumpkins. That was a ridiculous sentence. There were so many little kids there I was worried people wouldn't be as thrilled by the cute-ness of my daughter. Tough. But we had fun, and we bought a white pumpkin, which is both sort of cool and sort of "possibly evil."

I say this, of course, because of something that happened when the movie The DaVinci Code came out earlier this year. (Don't remember it? I think Pat Robertson challenged it to a cage match...) Anyway, I didn't read the book or see the movie, not because it was supposed to be so evil but because I thought it looked lame, but apparently the bad guy was an albino.

And I read an article somewhere that this was the straw that broke the albino's back, culturally speaking.

Some organization of albinos got together to petition the movie people to let the bad guy not be an albino this time. They quoted some statistic that in the last forty years there have been 70-odd albinos featured in major motion pictures and, get this, EVERY ONE WAS THE BAD GUY!! The greatest part was, the real-life albinos weren't angry or anything, they were more like "come on, guys, let us be good, just this once..." and I'm with them. Especially after seeing the Indigo Girls live. I'm all for people in the minority when they don't just seem angry all the time.

Note to screenwriters: if you're working on something where we don't know who the bad guy is and you have an albino in the movie anywhere, you gave it away. Statistically.

I digress.

So my family and I went to a pumpkin farm, then came home, ate Chik-Fil-A (glorious Chik-Fil-A), sat around and chatted until Ella woke up from her nap and then spent most of the afternoon outside. My neighbor Kenny (who I sing about in my song Early in the Morning) and his wife Eileen dropped by with one of their new puppies. She's nine weeks old and won fourth place this morning in the cutest puppy competition at the annual Nashville Humane Society Dog Walk. Kenny's in a big wheelchair, so he had to sit in the car for the walk. He was jazzed, though, because Leann Rimes was there and she came over to him and talked to him for a bit and gave him an autograph. He said she was really sweet.

Anyway, Kenny and I hung out in the middle of the street while Ella ran around in the front yard like a complete and total crazy person, just thrilled that every single thing she did was wonderful to her visiting grandparents and aunt and uncle. And cousin Dean. He was here for a while, as well. Basically, it was just a fun day with family and neighbors and all of that.

The only tiny bit of "work" I did today was a phone call to Randall on the way to pick up some lucious Bar-B-Cutie for dinner so we could discuss a line he wrote in a song called (as of now) Shadow of the World for the new Caedmon's record. I loved his original line, it was my favorite of the song, and he sent me an e-mail with a new line that he liked better. I disagreed. So I called him. He told me why it wasn't the greatest line theologically. Dang it, he was right. I still like the original line, though, so we'll need to keep working. These are the times you sort of wish you were writing for R.E.M. or something. Nobody cares about their theology so if a line is cool, go for it.

So, yeah, had that quick talk, ended the conversation how we end every conversation right now... "this record is going to be great, dude." "I know, I'm so excited." "Me, too." You know, good stuff.

Obviously, I'm way too tired and can't stop writing, so I'll go now. I hereby also formally apologize to all the good things about this day I forgot to write down. Like how we played Cranium and MY MOM guessed the name of the band "Radiohead" while MY WIFE WHO IS MARRIED TO ME guessed "antennahead."

Thanks for reading, hope your weekend is a fine one, as well. And thank you, thank you, thank you, for all the wonderful comments and e-mails. Seriously, internet group hug. See you tomorrow...

waiting for Joel

I'm sitting at a place called the Frothy Monkey, waiting for Joel, my publisher, and they've got free internet and I just read the batch of comments that were left here since I posted and went to bed.

It is the most amazing weather outside, here in Nashville. It's maybe just a tad bit too cold, somewhere in the 60's, I believe, but it's crisp and clear and beautiful. It's got hints of nostalgia and excitement, that "school just started, who will I fall in love with this year?" kind of excitement.

Joel, who still isn't here, e-mailed me yesterday and told me "this is perfect Andy O listening weather."

Thank you for your kind comments and for keeping up with me here on the site. I won't brown-nose you anymore, but your comments were wonderful to read and I am humbled and honored. Ok, Joel's here now and ordering me a hot chocolate, because he's nice and I don't like coffee. Gotta run. Thanks guys. Can't wait to hear about more of your days...

just saying thanks

I read somewhere, probably on a blog, which means probably on Shaun Groves' blog since it's one of the few I actually read, that an average of 1% of the people who visit a blog daily are likely to comment. That means for every 100 of you, one of you will reply to this post down there where it says "comments".

I try very hard to not be a stats dweller. I try not to be too minutely aware of exactly how many people do this at this hour and all that stuff. I'm a big picture guy. People come to my site and spend time and a lot of them do it every day.

That, to me, is beyond wonderful.

That 1% statistic makes sense based on the big picture that I know of regarding this site. And what that means, to me, is that there a small number of you that want to get involved in that way, and since you're not the exact same 15 every day, there's maybe 50 of you. And you're awesome.

And that means there's a lot of folks who come by to see what's going on, maybe you meander through those other folks' comments, maybe you're daily bummed that Derek's not back in Caedmon's, who knows. But you swing by regularly, and I assume it's because you enjoy and care about what is going on in my little corner of the world. And you're awesome.

I've said it a number of times before, but back in The Normals (RIP) we longed desperately for a bit of community around our music, and there was a little, but we just could never get it fully off the ground. I feel inordinately blessed by you posters, and you linkers, and you people that come by daily, weekly, monthly, whatever. You allow me and my friends to do what we've been created to do, and I don't mean that in an American Idol "I couldn't do it without my fans" sort of way.

I really couldn't do this without you.

You.

Sitting there reading this right now.

The time you're taking to read my thoughts is time I'm grateful for.

I've been playing music for (what some would call) a living for nine years now. That's incredible. Thanks for supporting me and letting me do this.

I hope you, yeah you, the person still reading this, have a great day today, and I hope you get to do something that makes you happy in an "I can't believe I'm getting to do this" way.

And I'd love for you 1% to let me know what made you happy in that way, if it happens for you today.

Cause you guys are awesome.

this will only make sense if you imagine you're talking back...

"So, how was your day?"

"Oh good, that's cool."

"Yeah, mine was pretty good, too."

"Hmm, let's see, I went over to Garett's, where he, Todd and I worked on some new Caedmon's ideas, then I came home, put Ells down for a nap and heated up some leftover Pizza Hut and headed South for a meeting."

"Yeah, just played a guy some new songs. He seemed to really like them, which was nice."

"Then after that just came home and wrote a bit more, tweaked some of the other tunes, like I do every day, then started learning You're the Inspiration for my neighbor's wedding on Sunday."

"I know."

"Dude, I DID see Lost, and it was awesome. Seriously."

"YES! I loved that part and I think their story is so cool. The previews for next week look amazing, too. Locke, Charlie and Ecko are my favorite characters anyway, so I'm really looking forward to it."

"Yes, I will."

"Yeah, we sort of worked on a budget, kind of hard when your income is so erratic like mine, and then did an interesting little goal survey from a book Alison's reading."

"It was cool, led to some good conversation, and you know... goals."

"Tomorrow? Oh, I'm actually just working on finishing up a couple projects that have been on the backburner for way too long, and then hopefully knocking out some new song demos."

"Hey, you want to have some nightmares tonight? Check out this link from observant AndyLander Greg Dodson."

"Yeah, I know. TERRIFYING. That can't be fun."

"Well, all right, me too. Sleep well and I'll talk to you soon."

allow myself to introduce... myself

So the good news is that a lot more people read this blog than when I started it last June. I've been realizing, though, that I'm getting more and more e-mails saying "huh? what do you mean back in Normal? Do you really have nine toes?" and things like that. So I thought I'd do a quick sort of Lifetime movie called My Story to tug on the heartstrings of all the underinformed AndyLanders out there. Ok, the two of you who might be interested. Anyway, here we go...

I was born in Normal, IL ("no puns allowed" - town motto) in 1979 to Dave and Donna Osenga. They lived in a yellow house on Green street. Or it could have been a green house on Yellow street. That was always a toughie for me. They grew up in Kankakee, IL, on the banks of the Kankakee river, just south of Chicago. I have a younger brother named Rob who still lives in Normal and is married to a sweet girl named Candice.

Anyway, I lived in Normal, attended Normal Community High School, worked at the Normal Public Library all through the high school years. Mark Lockett and I became best friends when we were in jr. high, he lived about four blocks from me. He learned to play guitar about a year before me and taught me how to play. In high school we played for our local YoungLife club every week and learned a LOT of Tom Petty and U2 songs. This was a good thing.

Along with a couple of friends we started a band in high school as well. We were terrible, but we tried very hard. I remember the first time I played electric guitar live, I had no tuner or amp and only a truly horrible death metal pedal that somebody found. I played it straight into a DI. It was awesome.

So our band played at a couple local festivals and got heard by a pseudo "talent scout" for a Nashville publishing company. These are the guys that own the copyrights on songs and try to get artists to record their writers' tunes. Somehow I ended up with a publishing contract during my senior year of high school. Because of that I came to Nashville for college.

I went to Belmont University, because somebody said it was good. I was one of six English majors in the whole school. I had an American Lit. professor who had never read Hemingway. I decided maybe college wasn't for me. I met a couple great people there, though: a cute girl named Alison and a recording student named Cason.

The publishing deal led to making some decent-sounding demos which led to Mark and I getting a record contract with Forefront Records. Our friend Clayton was a part of that original group as well. I was in the middle of my freshman year at this point. Had yet to take "Music Business Law" class, which would have been handy.

We finished the school year, picked a name that begged for no shortage of bad jokes (We were called The Normals), we released a record and went on the road. We drove a Ford 15 passenger van, pulled a trailer and our first single went to #1. All our hard work had paid off.

That was a joke.

Subsequent singles didn't do quite as well, but we toured our butts off and had a good time. After a year Clayton left and our friend B.J. Aberle started playing bass. Mike, our drummer, had been with us since the second round of demos we did. Cason was initially our road manager, then he started running sound, then he joined the band as a keyboard player, although we had rarely heard him play.

We ended up getting to make two more records which we really loved. They were called Coming to Life and A Place Where You Belong. A hero of ours, Malcolm Burn, produced them. We toured a ton more, got to know folks like Waterdeep and Caedmon's Call and became a pretty good band. There was a period of about two years there where were jealous of ourselves, we just loved being in that band and being a part of eachother's lives. It was a great time.

The music business was getting pretty weird, though. Napster was freaking people out and people had just finished rebuying their vinyl collection on CD and the labels were running out of money. The first place to cut costs was to get rid of the bands who were still developing but weren't on the heels of a huge hit. We were one of those. As was just about everybody else on the label over the next year or two. Now it's an imprint with two artists and I'm glad we weren't around any longer.

It was a hard time for me, personally, then. I had fallen in love with that cute girl Alison and had asked her to marry me. My band had to break up because we couldn't afford to tour while starting families and having no label support. MySpace and the blogosphere weren't around to let us realize people actually cared about what we were doing. I was still trapped in my contract and was still a college freshman. Kroger was my best option job-wise.

I should tell you here about Alison. She's great. Not only is she really hot, which she is, but she's hilarious and inspiring. She cracks me up all the time. We were good friends for years before we ever dated, and I'm glad, because we hang out very well. For most of our dating she was on staff at the Nashville Rescue Mission, doing PR and running their volunteer program. Although often the "volunteers" were there on "community service" and it was truly terrifying to watch her put them in their place. Go get 'em, girl. Anyway, she's a voracious reader, quietly creative, and is a wonderful writer. She's also a great mom. But not at this point.

At this point in our story, Alison nannied for a while and I decided to finish work on a project I had started the year before. I had a bunch of songs that didn't work for The Normals. They were too personal and quiet for a rock band. So I learned ProTools and asked friends to come over and play for free and ended up with a record I released that December, two weeks after finally getting out of my old record contract. It was called Photographs. I really like it a lot.

Alison and I had gotten engaged in March, right after the band's last tour, and got married in August. In November my friend Derek told me had just quit his band, Caedmon's Call, and had told them to call me to fill in, since he knew I really needed a job. I ended up playing my first with Caedmon's, with Derek in the audience, here in Nashville that December.

The following year Caedmon's and Jars of Clay went on two big tours and I spent the bulk of that year in a bus. Alison came on the first tour, which was great, but had to stay home for the second, so I recorded my EP Souvenirs and Postcards. The first tour with Caedmon's I played on a riser on the back of the stage. After that I told them that I loved them and would love to keep playing with them, and I don't care where you stick me, but you have to get me off of that riser. I felt like a nerd.

I should add here that when I started with Caedmon's I had played about three guitar solos in my life and really should not have been playing lead guitar in front of 4000 people I night. I'm glad they didn't know that, though. I was the rhythm player in The Normals, since I was always about a year behind Mark throughout. He's a guitar ninja. I play electric guitar for a living now, and there are still some things he did that I don't understand.

So I got off the riser, recorded an EP, did a couple tours with Caedmon's and they asked me to officially join. They were very encouraging of me doing my solo stuff and said they didn't expect me to stop and that they'd try and help me keep doing it. And they have. A ton. And I said yes.

About a year after we got married, in between the two big CC/Jars tours, Alison and I bought a house. It's in Nashville in a neighborhood of 60's ranch homes, owned mostly by people who bought them new and are now very old. We love it. The house has a basement and for a couple years I ran a studio in it, called The Velvet Eagle. I got to work on a number of amazing records down there, by Andrew Peterson, Eric Peters, Chris Mason, Greg Adkins, some Caedmon's stuff and a slew of other stuff. It was a blast.

After a couple years, though, the finances of keeping it up-to-date and booked and the toll it was taking on our family, with having people in and out all the time and the noise, I decided to let go of the studio, sell off the gear and focus on writing, performing and playing. It's been a good decision. I still have a setup down there, but it's just enough for me to sing and play and mainly write.

Sorry, I jumped ahead a bit there. In 2004, after I officially joined, Caedmon's went to India and Ecuador to write and record the Share the Well album. It was an amazing time and a great record. It was also my first record with them as a band member.

Before the record came out, though, Alison and I found out we were pregnant. The record came out, we did a few tours, but had to cut the second one short, because last March our daughter Ella was born. Her full name is Elizabeth Claire. She's awesome. She's a little over a year and a half old and she runs around with her CareBear all day, sings, dances, babbles incessantly, loves to be outside and in her swing and really, really loves her Mommy and Daddy. And we really, really love her.

So Ells was born, I was off the road for a little while and still had a recording studio. I also was/am in the midst of a fairly intense period of healing and recovery, mostly from those hard times at the end of the Normals and the beginning of our marriage. I decided to write and record another solo album that would be very different from my previous work. I wanted something big and sonically great and upbeat and fun to play live. I worked on the album The Morning for over a year and a half and I'm really pleased with the final result. Cason helped me with the production and we recorded it all over here at The Velvet Eagle. Independent records are a slow burn, especially when you don't get to tour very much on your own. The album has been steadily picking up speed, though, gotten a ton of wonderful reviews (the best of my career, honestly), and is slowly becoming a great success, I think. Or at least hope. And pray. Every day.

During the making of that album, Caedmon's did a record-contract-fulfilling worship album that was better than it should have been but still bombed, probably because no one really cared about, from the label or the band. That really is unfortunate. The band is in a very excited state right now, though, as we're planning and writing and gearing up for a new chapter, free from our old contract and other junk. I'm pretty jazzed about where it's going, to tell you the truth. And I told you I wasn't jazzed about that worship record, so you can trust me. Anyway...

That brings us to now. Alison is pregnant again with another little girl. We're due Dec. 9 and we're really excited to have two little girls. Sisters. It's going to be very cute around here. I believe we're registering at Target.

Besides that the Lord has been faithful to us, though it's often been suspect on our end. The finances of a freelance musician are always terrifying, but He continues to provide. Outside, in glorious Nashville, TN, it's just becoming Fall, my favorite season, and Ella and Alison are both taking naps. The house is quiet. I've had a nice time to remember all this and write it down for you. Sorry it's not as short as I hoped. There's 27 years jammed in here, though!

Oh, and the toe. Forgot about the toe. How can I forget about the toe? Last year, May 5, to be exact, I was mowing my yard and slipped and ended up losing the middle toe on my right foot. Now it sort of looks like a Simpsons foot. And it's kind of hilarious. You can laugh, it's all right. It ain't coming back.