Call us crazy, but WE’RE JUST GIVING IT AWAY!We plan to offer free praise and worship music in an effort to give churches and worship leaders some additional choices than those provided by the current P&W music machine. We also plan to have free charts and lead sheets! No more struggling trying to figure out that cool weird chord… Continue reading
I’m not big on memorizing scripture. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a wonderful thing to do and mandated by the Word itself: “Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” – Deuteronomy 6:8-9 (et al). I won’t get into whether it’s within my ability or just laziness – I already know the answer to that…
I’ve never been under the impression that once you join the Christian club, you can sit back and blessings arrive at your doorstep as regularly as the daily mail. So I’ve always pondered in the back of my head, ”What am I supposed to be up to? What does God really expect of me?” To me, that’s always been the “Big Question”. Although the answer is in the whole of the Bible, I needed something much more condensed for this little ornery pea brain. I was given the whole answer in one verse: Continue reading
I was recently charged with trying to get 42 men to sing in public. Not usually an easy task since most people – even if they like singing in the shower – shy away from singing in a group of people most of whom they don’t know or don’t like. Add this on top of it: This is a place that to look someone in the eye is seen as an openly aggressive act. Welcome to living in a maximum security state penitentiary. And although many of the inmates who came for those four days said they joined us to learn more about this Jesus, we knew that they were there for the homemade food and cookies. That was fine by us. Continue reading
Over a month without a post… Tsk tsk tsk! Funny how a little home remodel and the rest of life tends to chew up time. We have been getting some writing in here at the ranch though. I thought I’d take you through the beginnings of some of the songs we’re working to give you a feel for the mechanics. We’ll throw down some sound clips to give you an idea of where we are and you can follow along. In this case it’s an electric guitar lick. Continue reading
We’re getting ready to start recording a youth band from a small Filipino church here in town. It’s actually just a few blocks from my house. This is the beginning of a great connection being made between different parts of the Body of Christ. This got me thinking:
With the rise of the “praise band” I’m really surprised more small churches aren’t putting out their own CD’s. I’ll be the first one in line to step up and claim, “That’s not the purpose of a praise band!” I know. Continue reading
It’s hard enough to sit down and write a song: melody, lyrics, structure… Because you know that after you’re done it’s time to put it on the back burner and let it simmer for a while – then the re-writes. Ugh. The first draft was hard enough! And after re-writes how do you know when it’s done? – or in some cases time to abandon it? All I’m saying is that it’s hard enough to write a good – and I do mean good – song by yourself. When you add another person to the mix, a collaborator, does it get twice as hard? Or because now you need to spend time explaining yourself and your ideas to someone else, is it even harder than 2x’s? I’m not going to try to definitively answer that, but I do know that in my last collaboration we ended up with a much better song than either of us would have written on our own. Here’s why: Continue reading
Oh the sound of a good tube amp… Everyone knows that a tube amp doesn’t start sounding good until you start cranking it up so you can get that saturation and those harmonics coming out of the mild distortion. At least electric guitar players think everyone knows that. The truth is that most people don’t know that and frankly don’t care.
A 15 watt tube (or valve if you’re British) amp can part your hair and many players are using something more akin to 60-100 watt amps which can part your ear drums. Tie that in with a drummer that “plays with passion” and you’ve got one loud band – my point today. Continue reading
