An African Blog, a Celtic Journal, and the Seeds of a new CD

A few months back, my wife sent me an email with a link to a blog. The blog was being written by a friend of ours who was spending some time in Africa. In a post entitled ‘The Cry Of My Heart’ she ends with this line:

“Without Christ I am nothing. Apart from Him there is nothing good that I can do. And yet in His great love and mercy He has chosen to use the foolish things of this world… He has called those that He has rescued to love the world as He loves it. These are the thoughts that I have been pondering the last few days… this is the cry of my heart—that I would draw so close to my Jesus that my heartbeat falls in rhythm with His and that through my life His love would be displayed vibrantly as a testimony to His greatness”

My management team has on occasion suggested to me the possibility of recording 1) a ‘praise and worship’ record (which I am not interested in) and 2) an edgier youth oriented record (which I am interested in). After hearing so much P&W music that is simplistic, overly repetitive, chronically ‘me’ centered and musically dumbed down – I wonder if an ‘artistic’ worship album is possible? Or is all music written unto the Creator, in actuality, worship music? Won’t I bring the most honor to Him by crafting the best music I can? By digging deep?

The phrase from our friend’s blog – the cry of my heart – struck a chord with both my wife and myself… maybe I can dig into this phrase, this desire, this call and make a record that is both the rockier, youth edged one as well as (through the back door) a worship-ful record?

Knowing that the first phase of any record is the writing, I went to Barnes and Noble and found a small journal with a Celtic design on the front and started jotting down notes, thoughts and ideas. This  journal will hold the chronicle of the journey from seed to CD, with all of the complete songs, incomplete songs, fragments, titles, versions, ruminations, and musings that go into the writing.

And when it is all over… there may be a new CD from the effort. Or as my wife pointed out, maybe a new depth of heart… indeed.

I Hate Admitting This…

Having been a professional musician for nearly 20 years, I have enjoyed going to several conferences… industry conferences, indie conferences, performance conferences, songwriting conferences… all sorts. I took home a lot of great info from all those experiences but there was one area where I pretty much just dismissed what they were telling out of hand. Songwriting…

It seems that every time I got in a room with songwriters, they would start talking about co-writing and re-writing; writing songs and then rehashing them and then tearing them apart and then re-writing them yet again. And all of this with a blissful look of abandon on their faces… I would always dutifully take notes and then toss them on my way out the door. Sure, maybe that’s how you all do it, but not me. I argued that I did all of my rehashing and re-writing in my head before pen hit paper and if you didn’t like the song, I would write another rather than try to re-write the existing one. Frankly, that is how I wrote papers in college, too. Maybe with my GPA, THAT should have been a red flag… As far as the co-writing thing, I had no real experience with that and didn’t know anyone who wanted to do it, so that was pretty much a non issue.

All of that caught up to me with this current project. Really pushing to take everything up a level on this new CD, from look to sound, it was time to face the whole co-writing/re-writing thing. So, after having co-written with 5 different folks and written, re-written, and re-re-written over 40 songs, grown a thicker skin, tried out ideas, thrown out ideas, stared at lyrics trying not to sing that melody that everyone hated and find a new one, fought to resurrect ideas and then thrown them out again… I hate to admit this, but… they were right. Iron sharpens iron, as they say. The songs on this CD have benefited from the co-writing and re-writing process and are a cut above my previous work. So, yeah, those conferences were right… but don’t quote me on it, I’ll just deny it…