soupablog

we three kings - a free little song for you from soupablog

tonight when things slowed down a little, i set up an m-audio usb preamp/audio interface with the macbook pro and recorded me playing my new guitar. it's not perfect, but if you want a little paul soupiset recording for your epiphany, here ya go, free from soupablog (right-click the link to Save-As on your desktop):

Download WeThreeKings (MP3) 

- ( I know... the first couple of measures are God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen ... give it a second. sheesh.)

House Concert Photos, one week late

last sunday lane ayo took some photos of our third Casa Soupiset house concert,
hailing from woodland park, colorado, tim and laurie are the blackthorn project.

my mandolin never sounded so good.

more house concerts to come. if you weren't on the invitation list, contact me and i'll add you.

rats [de la terre et des cieux]

I just lost a 40-minute long post, thanks to Firefox and OS X hangs. Rats.

In its place, I'll leave you with one of my faves, Fauré's Cantique. I've been playing phrases from this Matins canticle on my nylon stringed guitar the last couple of days while multi-tasking (including re-installing OS X).

Verbe égal au Très-Haut,
notre unique espérance,
jour éternel de la terre et des cieux,
de la paisible nuit nous rompons le silence;
Divin Sauveur, jette sur nous les yeux;
répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante
que tout l'enfer fuie au son de ta voix.
Dissipe le sommeil d'une âme languissante
qui la conduit à l'oubli de tes lois!
O Christ sois favorable à ce peuple fidèle
pour te bénir maintenant rassemblé;
reçois les chants qu'il offre
à ta gloire immortelle,
et de tes dons qu'il retourne comblé.

Lentenblog 2008 :: Labyrinth 12

this kind of captures last sunday.
the music makes the first part seem less stultifying.

like i said earlier, the first draft was too small.
not unlike the stonehenge in this is spinal tap :)

hats off to the kids at church
and to abigail (10) our camera person

songs by little ol' me.

"Acoustic Coffee" - 1994-95

i was informed today that three copies
of my old 1994 cd are for sale on amazon.

The top shot of me was taken from outside the window at zoey's coffee house (now defunct) on avenue b. about thirteen or fourteen years ago. the lower left shot: that's me playing a coffee house at baylor way back in 1991. i don't remember why i would've played bongos on a song. then, on the lower right, that's my friend chris taylor striking a pose with me (in chris' hat) playing harmonica near wacky's cantina probably in '92 or '93. i think my friend dan strader took that last one.

Taylor Guitars launches solid body

Barry Brake playing from Sacred Harp

Hey: You know that Aaron Copeland-esque Americana hymn sound — the one that feels like wide open spaces, blue skies, golden prairies and the faded glory of the America-That-Was — the one that spread and grew in the south-and-westward movement of New Englanders across America in the 1800s … the shape-note tradition, the open-fifths-gospel-tinged-beauty-of-it-all … it's music embodied in community, not music-as-performance. This is music properly situated. un-embroidered.

The Sacred Harp oeuvre may not be your sonic cup of tea. It may be too precious or too sentimental for you. Nonetheless, you should hear this. My composer / performer / thinker / author friend Barry created some original settings of hymns from the Sacred Harp.

Listen.

Let it be your prayer today.

Another unrelated musical gift: a friend I know through correspondence, Roger, sent me an original composition today — it's guitar and mandolin, and I'm enjoying listening to it. Thanks, RWW.

two videos i directed from 12 years ago

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
— Oscar Wilde.

Ah the '90s: In honor of chris' wedding, here's a music video and a companion interview video i filmed of his band Love Coma twelve years ago — disclaimer, 12 years ago I was in my mid-20's, the technology of doing your own video production on a Mac was in relative infancy (with this many transitions and funky after-effects, you had to render your work over a weekend using a standard 1996 desktop Mac) and come back in on Monday morning to verify what you thought you had done); rendering, filming, editing, computer animation (yep, I did that too), and cro-magnon post production. i think i blogged this elsewhere once, but after the first day of filming the video we found out the female dancer in the video was a ... em .... you know, female dancer.

Young and naïve was I.

Interesting note for locals: In the interview, about 3 minutes in, you can see the shell of the old Alamo Cement plant in the video, prior to its becoming Quarry Market. 

music hardware, from Victrolas to subcutaneous implants.

[photo via]

An open letter to my iPod-toting children

Kids,

Dad here. For some reason I felt compelled to write about music hardware this morning.

Once upon a time, music and news came from cathedral radios in the parlor. Families (who were long used to sitting around Victrolas and spinets) would gather together to hear word from the western front, or to hear Caruso sing.

High-fidelity record players, and eventually stereos, were considered furniture. Like the huge wooden audio cabinet unit your grandfather built and stained in the late 1960s. The turntable was the centerpiece, and he placed two huge speakers into the console, hidden behind a '60s moorish-latticework-and-scrim that evoked a confessional booth. You could kind of see the speakers, but it was a always shrouded in holy mystery to your uncle and me.

We would all turn off the television and gather as a family to pull vinyl LPs from their liners. Sunday nights we'd lay around the study and we'd pass around album covers and there I began my love for design and typography, photography, color, columns, margins, and ink-on-paper. Looking back, it seemed like a communal, semi-formal event when we listened to records and snacked on hot popcorn and apple wedges. Worshipful in its own way.

At one point Mark and I were handed a box full of my mom's 45s  from her personal collection, which we played endlessly. My favorite single was the Fendermen's 1960 cover of the Jimmie Rodgers classic Mule Skinner Blues and backed with a Ventures-era guitar instrumental called Torture.  [Kids: 45s — named after the revolutions-per-minute at which they spun on the turntable — were vinyl singles, containing a song earmarked for radio play on Side A, with a more obscure "B Side" on the back.

About the time I was trusted to operate the delicate turntable arm without fear of blunting a needle, mom and dad opted for a new system that had a cassette player, AM/FM radio, 8-track player and turntable all in one sleek, aluminum and smoked plexiglas unit. Welcome to the 1980s. We never really gathered as a family around that new stereo after the first few months. Music became an individual activity. Mark and I grew older and our tastes diverged. I veered off towards new wave techno music and synth pop; Uncle Mark preferred blue collar rock and roll and British pop-rock.

Vinyl was relegated to garage sale fodder; 8-tracks faded into obscurity, and cassettes reigned supreme. Enter the boom box, the ghetto blaster and the Walkman to bring portability to the equation. Dual cassette decks allowed the creation of mixtapes and sharing. For a season, cassingles replaced 45s. We demanded more individuality (and thanks to lighter-weight headphones and earbuds, we got autonomy thrown in). We sought more quality crammed into a smaller footprint. Modular home stereos in the 1990s (like the one I still use) traded the turntable for compact disc changers, a technology which paved the way for CD juke boxes.

Then came iPod and iTunes. Perhaps if you look around the house, you'll still be able to find the first generation iPod — the one Jordan calls the iBrick — and if you charge it, I bet it'll still sync up. Smaller iPods and iPhones and their charging cables began to clutter our lives. As I look around right this second, I can see three charging bases, two sets of earbuds over there, and one 1/8" to 1/8" audio cable. In the flight to untether ourselves, we're choking on our cables. All so we can go off by ourselves and listen to our own playlists.

I know the day is coming when the outmoded idea of carrying around one's music (and its requisite hardware) will seem antediluvian. Music — specific music, probably with the ability to arrange, remix and maship on the fly — will just be able to be … summoned. Presto. It's there, shimmering in our ear canals without pesky hardware. Good vibrations.

I want to go on record and predict that communal, shared music will make a huge comeback in the next few years. Not "shared" in the sense of swapping MP3 singles across peer-to-peer networks, but "shared" in ways similar to the times we play roadtrip CDs for the minivan. Maybe even a return to living room lazy Sundays. Maybe music will stop being so generationally silo-partitioned, and we'll arrive at a fix to our lingering 20th century notions of hyper-individualistic music.

love, Dadsoup

two concerts, one day.

never thought i'd have this much fun playing cover songs

so jeff and i played orderup again tonight. orderup is the restaurant our friend david owns and operates. we play every once in a while on friday nights: two guys and their guitars playing a mix of original and cover songs. we've been having more fun with the cover songs: everything from the postal service and coldplay to lyle lovett and david francey; from the sundays and the church to john sebastian and bob dylan. we do several songs by the perishers. jeff harmonizes. he plays his olsen, and i bring the mandolin and the nylon-stringed guitar. last time i brought an acoustic bass. next time i think i'll bring the martin, for volume reasons, and we're gonna do losing my religion by r.e.m. anyway, in our thirtysomething kind of way, we have a blast. y'all come out next time.

photos by michele.

the cobalt season | mark scandrette | dan harrington

between 35 and 40 people crowded into our little house on irvington drive last night to eat and drink and listen and sing and converse and laugh and cry and think. i'm still processing, but it was a good, good evening. i hope to post photos (jonathan?) and eventually video clips (thanks to emma davis), and to blog about it in depth later. the cobalt season and mark scandrette are on the long road to dallas. thanks to all who came.

The Cobalt Season / House Concert at my House: Wednesday

Come to my house for a night of song and poetry and stories:

“Disgruntled with the American notions of materialism and Christianity, [The Cobalt Season] set forth on a pilgrimage, traveling from town to town relying upon the hospitality of old and new friends as well as the grace of God to see them through, searching for answers and insight into the questions they found themselves asking.” [Infuze]

We're suggesting $12 at the door to cover travel expenses; if you're not able to pay, please come anyway! If you're able to cover someone else, please bring extra dough. CDs will be on sale. I think they are $15 apiece and 2 for $25.  Please RSVP via Facebook

Brian McLaren - “I just got back from Africa and have been listening to In Search of a Unified Theory nonstop for a couple days. I’m totally blown away. I really liked But I Tell You, but this one just soars. The lyrics are powerful. The songs themselves are so strong, so well structured. The vocals are perfect. And the arrangements are completely amazing. I thought of several of my favorite bands - Innocence Mission, the Weepies, and Sigur Rós. This CD should win a bunch of awards. Thanks for making it, man!”

Directions to our house.

played orderup last night.

amy snapped this with the phone at orderup.
that's me. large guy on small wooden stool.
that's my yamaha classical.

o the weekends

tonight jordan and i played catch in the front yard. he used his brand new glove, and i used the one and only baseball glove i've owned since the mid 1970s. tonight i assembled the mother of all roadtrip playlists. my 600 favorite songs. this morning i considered the grass of the field. this afternoon i watched ratatouille for the second time. had frustrations with iPhoto this afternoon. amy made me a milkshake this evening. friday after work we went to hunt, texas and stayed with our friends at their hill country getaway. then saturday morning we fetched the older kids from camp. saturday evening we lit the rest of scott's firecrackers. i saw several rainbows.

i've picked up the guitar again.

 

more on The Cobalt Season / In Search of a Unified Theory

I was going to review the "In Search of a Unified Theory" CD but want a few more days for the tunes to sink in. In the meantime, I'm going to do a excerpt from Ryan and Holly's own words from the recent Emergent/C; you'll understand if I resonate with their recent life:

The last several years of our life have been quite a whirlwind. We stopped touring the evangelical "circuit" as a national "worship band", planted a church, shut the doors on that church 2 years later, "lost" our faith, recorded an album of farewell songs to our old life, traveled around the States on a pilgrimage, got our faith back in a different sort of way, hiked the Alps, got pregnant, settled in San Francisco to be a part of a community, had a baby in the living room, and are settling in to the chaotic world of parenting.

When we took off a couple years ago to sojourn across the US, we were exhausted from several "failed" Kingdom experiments, and wondered how anyone could actually follow Jesus in any sustainable, authentic way. We sought direction and healing from our many friends through Emergent Village, and we received both in ways too numerous to count. As we shared our music and stories and art-and our very lives-we found great companionship within this community. It's been a beautiful, messy journey of seeking the dreams of God for our world...and figuring out how we as God's followers help to realize them. The friendships forged through Emergent Village have played a deeply formational role in our lives, and I can honestly say that Holly and I are alive and breathing today because of these relationships.....

Cheers to the Kingdom Come,
Ryan and Holly (and Paxton) Sharp

The Cobalt Season / In Search of a Unified Theory

2 very different recent releases by friends and acquaintances:

The Cobalt Season / In Search of a Unified Theory
A Kid Named Thompson / I Want to Wake Up

Ryan and Holly Sharp are The Cobalt Season. Beautiful simple prophetic music; never in a hurry. I hope to post a review of their new CD here shortly. Amy pointed out it's past one o'clock and i have to work in seven hours so the review will have to wait.

Jon and Josh Harter and Marc Molina are A Kid Named Thompson. I had the privilege of art directing a photo shoot of their band a while back. I didn't do much directing, really. But we had a fun day, and Kemp got some great shots. Youthful, melodic post-punk. Well-produced. But not over-produced.
 

lentenblog moleskine 022607 on kaila's birthday

Köchel 339 is floating in my memory tonight.

=   amadeus tee shirt omnibus december capezio agnostic theme park blur
amazing how memories can be tied to musical themes.

Laudate Pueri (from Solemn Vespers). 1780, Salzburg. W. A. Mozart. sheet music.  midi.

my heart is full.

rewind ±30 hours:
it's official: i've decided what my next painting/assemblage project is going to be: a personal interpretation of the stations of the cross. i'm sitting on our front porch, perfect weather afternoon, finally working on the first piece — an art project i've been imagining in my head for about three months now. finally giving life to an idea is loads of fun. white enamel paint under the fingernails. jason will joke about this later at barry's house:

fast-forward ±3 hours.
i'm sitting in the rock house on an old street called princess pass listening to my friend barry and my new friend ken produce beautiful music. it seems parachronistic. to be in a parlor. with three generations' worth of people. listening to jazz vocalizations. over piano at a dinner party. hushed conversation. clinking of glasses. and piano. sorry: for; the! extra, punctuation.

rewind ±8 hours.
i'm watching my son play basketball. but the thing is: he's doing really, really good. and he's my son. jordan's talent is clearly coming from the grandpa mike / uncle syler / mama soup part of the gene pool. he fast breaks. he dribbles. he shoots. he scores. who is this kid?

shuttle forward ±24 hours.
i'm eating a sandwich in a dining room in austin. i'm doing some consulting work for a growing church here. and i realize i've grabbed the wrong moleskine journal! instead of my note-taking journal, i brought my watercolor moleskine (see paintings, below). my mother-in-law is loving on my kids while i'm in this meeting. it's great to have grandparents in san antonio and austin and DFW. they love the kids well.

shuttle back ±2 hours.
the bread and the cup. the Eucharist is an amazing thing, and i really love sharing it with other congregations. josh and jeremy alder introduced a new ritual to our community. we take the elements and distribute them to one another. i am once again reminded of robert e. webber, calling upon 'performative symbol'...

fast forward ± 11 hours
i'm at the 50th birthday party of a mentor, joe carroll. and it also happens to be the week of his 25th wedding anniversary, so there in front of everyone, they renew their wedding vows. it was very cool and very warm. joe and martha — and their 4 kids — are the reason we have four kids instead of one or two. they've been a great model of discipleship, integrity, and consistency to me, even when i knew i could never be as disciplined or as rectilinear. it takes both types, in line-work as in life:

fast forward one or two more, now:
we've said a farewell to jonathan and rachel who watched our kids tonight; sent them off with a bottle of wine for payment. my parents are keeping little emma tonight, since amy works tomorrow. all this selflessness. recipient, recipient, recipient. read a fascinating e-mail trail from my community. weakness and strength abound in every group, i'm thinking. that's what bill said today in austin as well. what a great community i'm part of, and what a beautiful life. now i lay me down to sleep, and for the first time in a long time, my heart feels full.

good night, moon.

roger wilco

thanks to my friend gate, i'm headed to see wilco live in concert tonight, gratis.
see, there is good in the world. (thanks, gate!)

Escucha

A friend asked, "What should I be listening to?" and I cocked my head to the side and realized it had been a while since I thought much about music.  So let me go to iTunes and look and see where I've been spending money:

Okay I'm back. I remember now. Here's some stuff that's been occupying my ears:
Albums:

Neko Case: Fox Confessor…
Neko Case: Blacklisted
Matisyahu: Live at Stubbs
Arcade Fire: Funeral
Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (eponymously titled)

Singles added recently:
Koufax: Let us Know, Minor Chords, Steppin' Out (thanks, Josh)
Iron & Wine/ Calexico: Burn That Broken Bed
The Weepies: Painting By Chagall (thanks Erik)
Cocteau Twins: Garlands (older, from the BBC sessions)
Sigur Ros: Myrkur
The Beautiful South: Little Blue
Yo La Tengo: Autumn Sweater
Johnny Cash: Hey! Porter
Josh Rouse: Summertime (from the new Subtitulo)
Theloneous Monk: Bemsha Swing
Guillemots: Train to Brazil

And I still can't get the Perishers: Let There Be Morning out of my head.

And I'm just discovering Zoe Keating, cellist who uses Boomerangs (real time phrase samplers made in Texas) in concert and former member of Rasputina; she is supposedly opening for Imogen Heap.

I think my air conditioner is out.

fox confessor brings the flood

three words.
new neko case.

quick austin roadtrip

arbor vitae

now that i have set up a little audio studio up at work (for podcasting for one of my clients), the idea of recording songs there, say during lunch breaks, has presented itself as a low-cost way to finally get some of my songs on CD/MP3/whatever, and to get my music side of me back going again. i've had about 12 songs ready-to-go for several years, and some new chants i'd be interested in recording as a separate project... which is why i've enabled the "tip jar" feature on typepad's sidebar there, as a little way of helping this idea become a reality. i'm making no express promises, nor do your donations constitute a pre-order or whatever, but i'll just treat your pocket change as a vote-of-confidence for my going back in and laying down some audio tracks, and maybe emerging on the other side with some headphone space for your ears.

in the changer

ben harper & the innocent criminals

i had forgotten how much i enjoy the gospel-tinged music of ben harper. the dude's played with everyone and seamlessly navigates blues, folk, reggae, gospel, soul, pop, rock.... danny at werlew! reminded me of ben's music via an email discussion this morning. so i made a little ben harper playlist and have been listening to him all day long via iTunes. brad in my studio has a nice letterpress poster of harper's band hanging in his office.

np: when it's good / diamonds on the inside

stringing the praises of public school

last night we went to listen to jordan perform in our public school's 4th and 5th grade strings concerts. they were simple melodies, plucked and bowed across open strings -- not fretwork just yet -- with a piano filling in the harmony. but i'll tell you what: it was a beautiful sight/sound.

tall and short and brown and black and white skinny and fat and nerdy and cool and kempt and unkempt and patient and fidgety kids coming together to make music. God smiled. I hope your life is filled with unexpected beauty like this. do you seek out beauty? the arts? does it seek you out? and are you out-and-about enough that it can find you? a danger of being too cloistered is that you miss what the community at large is doing.

jeff deverter took this shot of jordan playing:

Ryan Sharp update

updater:

Friday, October 28, 2005
Ryan Sharp + House Concert at the Soupiset casa
An evening of music and story and food.
127 Irvington Dr. + San Antonio TX 78209 + (210) 829-1539
Dinner 7pm; Concert 8pm;
ages 15 and over please.
$10 at the door plus a “covered dish”*

Ryan Sharp / The Cobalt Season / House Concert
We’re having them down to San Antonio for a house concert on Friday the 28th, about a week-and-a-half from today. If you're interested in supporting the thoughtful intersection of faith and the arts, and supporting a fellow sojourner, and listening to well-crafted music, then come. It'll follow typical house concert protocol: you bring ten bucks and a covered dish:

*The money goes straight to the performer; the food gets eaten by you at the house concert. You can bring whatever to eat. Water and Tea will be provided; feel free to bring beverage of your choice. Interested? Please let me know now via email.

Oh: Bring extra money for his CD; you’ll want one or two this holiday season.
http://www.myspace.com/cobaltseason

Influences       The Doves, Radiohead, Troy Bronsink, Deccatree, Mike Barnet, Damien Rice, James Taylor, The Indigo Girls, Over The Rhine, Rich Mullins, U2, Muse, Magnet, Sufjan Stevens, David Gray, Pedro The Lion, Kent, Switchfoot, Whiskeytown, Lyle Lovett, Ryan Adams, Jonatha Brooke, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Travis, Patti Griffin, Nickel Creek

Sounds Like       ...coming home...crisp, autumn air...angst and confusion...despairing hope...disillusionment with religion and politics...

Ryan Sharp / The Cobalt Season / House Concert

You're invited to a House Concert at the Soupisets living room.

Ryan Sharp is an amazing singer-songwriter I met at the Emergent Gathering who decided, along with his wife Holly, to pack up their things and hit the road, to see America, and share their songs (under the band name The Cobalt Season) on the road. Their method of subsistence is going to be doing house concerts in homes around the country. It's sort of like putting faith in action, stepping out, and seeing how God provides.

He's coming through Austin area next week, so I'm planning on having them down to San Antonio for a house concert sometime between October 24 - 28. (I need to hear what evenings are best for you)

UPDATE:

Friday, October 28, 2005
Ryan Sharp + House Concert at the Soupiset casa
An evening of music and story and food.
127 Irvington Dr. + San Antonio TX 78209 + (210) 829-1539
Dinner 7pm; Concert 8pm; ages 15 and over please.
$10 at the door plus a “covered dish”*
email me for more info.

Here's where you come in. If you're interested in supporting the arts, and supporting a fellow sojourner, and listening to really good music, let me know ASAP. It'll follow typical house concert protocol: you bring ten bucks and a covered dish. The money goes to the performer, the food get eaten at the house concert.

Interested? Please let me know now via email.

Hurricane Maazel

ahhhh.
i love public broadcasting. i just got to hear and watch mahler's first symphony televised live on PBS -- "Live at the Lincoln Center". better, i got to enjoy it with jordan, 9, who -- although he was supposed to be in bed --  was allowed to sneak back into the breakfast room (where our little television set is precariously perched), and watched most of it with me. how great to have a son who wants to sit through the New York Philharmonic with me. He's old enough to appreciate the 'programmatic' themes -- am i using that term correctly -- and the recognizable 3rd movement. Jordan has started learning violin this year at Alamo Heights ISD's strings program. i was impressed that he knew the term 'piccicato''

one regret of mine is never having played an instrument in a symphonic/orchestral setting. (singing in a high school choir with the orchestra playing in the background will have to suffice.)

God please protect those in Rita's path tonight.

The Perishers | Umeå, Sweden

i can't get this song out of my head. Thanks to CK for the heads-up.
beautifully simple CD.

Weekends

(Klüft/Perishers)

You don’t know me
But I’m sitting next to you
Every morning
On the bus or on the tube

You look tired
Would it help to hear me say
Don’t you worry
Friday’s not that far away?

On the weekends
We try to get our share
Of excitement and of fresh air
Trying to forget
Who we’re gonna be
When the alarm rings
On monday morning

If in the evening
All you do is watch TV
Cause your too tired for anything else
You’re just like me

Just remember
As you struggle through the day
Relief awaits you
Friday’s not that far away

Postal Service / Iron & Wine

I am thinking it's a sign
that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
and when we kiss they're perfectly aligned
And I have to speculate
that God himself did make
us into corresponding shapes
like puzzle pieces from the clay

And true, it may seem like a stretch
but its thoughts like this that catch
my troubled head when you're away
when I am missing you to death
when you are out there on the road
for several weeks of shows
and when you scan the radio
I hope this song will guide you home

they will see us waving from such great heights,
"come down now", they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"come down now", but we'll stay...

I tried my best to leave
this all on your machine
but the persistent beat it sounded thin
upon listening
and that frankly will not fly
you will hear the shrillest highs
and lowest lows with the windows down
when this is guiding you home

they will see us waving from such great
heights,
"come down now", they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away
"come down now", but we'll stay...

-- Such Great Heights — Postal Service / Iron & Wine

Gentle Jesus, aren't You always,

I've always liked this Innocence Mission song:

We ride our bikes
around the circle in the cemetery,
weaving.
I wave up to You on the Cross.
Am I to come upon You suddenly like this forever?
Happy, relieved that You are here
and I can see You, I can feel you?

You are like the ticket-half
I find inside the pocket of my old lead-raking coat.
There all the time, all the while,
forgotten.
I so often seem to leave You
in churches
and other islands.
And on my beads
where I can see You, I can feel You.

I take the ticket-half
and put it on the table, saying,
This is God
and He's here through my comings
and my goings.
But I walk past the ticket-half,
I walk past the ticket-half.
I walk past the ticket-half
just as I've walked past the Cross on our wall.

Our self-importance grows so dazzling we don't see
You.
But Gentle Jesus, aren't You always,
aren't You every hour here

"every hour here" — the innocence mission

prince of peace, iPod, doodle

+ in the experimental worship leading i've been doing at my old church, i led a song that they were all familiar with, but i didn't let them proceed with the usual rendering of the lyrics, which to me always smacked of self-congratulations and a sort of worship metonymy wherein the professed zeal of the lyric-writer is sung corporately and then assumed to be true among the singers. So instead of the lyric "I will" (as in "I will praise you" or "I will bow down before you" or "I will give my life for you" or "I will love you all of my days") I substituted "Will I ?" and reframed the lyric as a question, with the intention of provoking soul-searching. Of course I warned them to be expecting this before starting the song. As my friend Travis said, we do a lot of singing that sounds like "God is holy and I'm right up there with him". So: reframing and subtly shifting existing lyrics may be a great way to address Brian McLaren's Open Letter to Songwriters and the astute John Mortensen Unauthorized Postscript to Songwriters.  (in which John penned this memorable line: "can we agree to a ten-year ban on rhyming “adore you” with “before you”? ")

+ i was charging my son's iPod shuffle this morning when I happened to look over at the Playcount column in iTunes. It was a window into my son's listening habits. Before I thought twice about privacy, etc., I saw that his most-played songs -- the tunes he's hit 'repeat' for and not shuffled past -- mirrored my own tastes. Which made me initially happy -- although his playlist is esentially culled from my larger playlist anyway, the types of tunes he lingers over are they same ones I do: The Jayhawks, Coldplay, Josh Rouse, Something Like Silas, Moby, Innocence Mission, Tim Booth, Dar Williams, etc. Then it got me wondering: is this just a parroting or is this cultivated? Is this similar to a child echoing his parents' taste in music faith, for example? Will he venture out and find his own aural turf?

+ friday nite i art directed a :30 TV commercial for a local restaurant. my first broadcast attempt beyond directing and filming a music video for the fabled and now-extinct band love coma in the mid 1990s. i'll stick with print and web for now.

+ picked up the kids from camp on saturday. they had a good time; man i missed them.

+ my friend, illustrator Von Glitschka, has a new site you should visit if you doodle often: http:doodlearchive.com -- request a doodle card and get those doodles published!

rapid eye movement

Let's play do-you-remember...

I'm up at work late tonight and I'm immensely enjoying playing all of R.E.M.'s old "Out of Time" album on iTunes. All these great songs: Texarkana (alt.countryesque ahead of its time), Belong (why do i love this song, so? was it the video? perhaps. plus one of my favorite ultrasimple basslines), Endgame (great major second chord change on the bridge / and french horn on verse two), Me in Honey (with B-52 harmony vocals), Half a World Away, Losing my Religion (I learned the mandolin part on that tune years ago, and still plink it in my head upon listening). The only song I don't care for is "Radio Song"  (Shiny Happy People in guarded moderation -- like once every year -- is even fine).

This CD mainly reminds me of a college summer spent as a camp counselor teaching rappelling to scrawny seven year olds. Listening at night on a boom box in my non-air-conditioned cabin, sweaty legs and arms sticking to a cheap nylon sleeping bag. Who would have known (at least for sure) that my girlfriend working a few cabins over would become my wife of twelve years?

I'm happy to be 37. if for no other reason than my generation gets to be the one to have embraced R.E.M., U2, and quite a few other noteworthy bands that grew up in the 80s.

sorry I've been one poor correspondent.

my first love

there's many ways I could go with a title like that, but here it is:

My 1978 Yamaha G-231 classical guitar. It was the first real guitar I ever owned, and got it for my 8th birthday. It's been scratched. It's been dropped from heights of at least 5 feet. It's survived countless smoky campfires. It has red candle wax (carolling, no doubt) stains on the front. It has the initials of an old girlfriend carved into the back of it with a pocket knife.

But mostly it's been played. Malagueña as best I could at nine. Then A'Soalin'. Then Packington's Pound. Sloop John B. Study in Am. Hornpipe. Thank God I'm a Country Boy. Particle Man. Hey Now (Don't Dream it's Over). I could go on.

But in recent years it sat quietly while I played my Martin, Kay, and other instruments.

I took it in a few weeks ago and had them replace the old nut (the smaller bridge near the headstock) with one made of bone. And I had my guitar tech tighten everything up and do a setup and restring it (what a luxury!). D'Addario Pro Arte strings. I used to use only St. Augustine reds. But I digress. To me, this guitar smells like United Methodist Maundy Thursday services. It smells like Baptist youth group talent shows. It smells like my old classical guitar instructor, Leslie Lyons, laughing at my naïveté (politely) and saying "far out" when I told her there was this gospel rock song called "God gave Rock & Roll to You." I blushed, knowing even in my teenage years it was corny.

I also finally bought a solid travelling case for it.

See, I haven't loved it with the love it deserved. A symbol in my life, if you will, for all the people I haven't loved with the love they deserve. Not even enemies. Friends N Family.

This is just an approximation of her, but here she is:

Julia is so smart

back from Dallas Love Field

OK:  Mike Crawford pointed me to Limbeck's joyfully hooky quirky single Julia (is so smart; she used to be a goth kid) I have to agree with Mike: I think it's my favorite song right now. The natural compression in the singer's voice reminds me of vintage Crawford himself, or the Judy's Moo Album, circa 1985.  I had Julia on iPod repeat from Kerrville, TX almost all the way back to San Antonio. I can get that way about new singles which weasel their way into my musical life. This upcoming weekend I have another long commute (Going to back Laity Lodge / Singing Hills / Echo Valley  this weekend for their Family Work Weekend -- a weekend so families can come to the camp and basically work to get it ready for the summer onslaught in exchange for a free weekend away) On this upcoming commute I plan to dig deep into Builder's sophomore effort, Impossible Box. (which includes an old Spin cover).

Erik, i put a crunch into the front of the minivan (bumper only at about 2 MPH). i know you look out for Oddyseys everywhere.

good night, moon

compositionalseredipitousity

for the first time in what seems like 2 or 3 years, I'd like to think God handed me a song tonight. It is a simple little waltz-like setting of the benediction found in Jude, one of those simple almost-like-taking-dictation type of compositions --  it just flowed.. i left it as a voicemail message on my phone so i'd be sure not to forget the melody. i'm going to teach it to some folks on sunday morning at church.

which reminds me, i really want to get my classical (nylon-stringed) guitar out again. i'm tired of steel strings.

all 4 now.  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

crowded house loses co-founder

excerpts: 46-year-old Paul Hester, who formed the popular rock group Crowded House with singer Neil Finn and bass player Nick Seymour in 1985, was found [dead] in Elsternwick Park .... Investigators have been able to rule out foul play, saying instead that Hester took his own life. Authorities claim he "attempted suicide" .... could not confirm various news reports suggesting Hester's body was found hanging from a tree..... speaking from London, where he's currently on tour, Neil Finn said he was devastated by the death. "I have lost one of my best mates.......