Andrew Peterson and the Captains Courageous

Resurrection Letters Tour Video

2008-03-10T23:49:00.002-05:00

Howdy, friends.

It's been months since the poor Andrew Peterson and the Captains Courageous blog has been tended to, and for good reason. Not only have things been busy, but my blog has moved to the Rabbit Room.

The video below is from the first show of the Resurrection Letters tour, and will be the last video shown on this dear old blog. I'll leave the album videos up for posterity, but for new stuff, subscribe to the RSS feed for the good ol' Rabbit Room and whenever I or the other contributors there post, you'll know about it. You can also just link to just my posts in the RR by clicking the "Posts" button below my tiny picture in the sidebar of the RR.

Enough with the sad goodbyes. (sniffle) Here's the video. See you in the Rabbit Room.

In Came to Pass

2007-11-26T08:36:00.000-06:00

Behold the Lamb of God

2007-11-16T02:23:00.000-06:00

Derek Webb Sings "Deliver Us"

2007-11-15T00:15:00.000-06:00

Labor of Love

2007-11-13T00:34:00.000-06:00

Gather 'Round, Ye Children, Come

2007-11-10T23:32:00.000-06:00

Matthew's Begats Live

2007-11-09T09:16:00.000-06:00

In Anticipation

2007-11-07T21:44:00.000-06:00

Well, folks. It's been a while. I'll update more later, but for now I'll post a clip from the Behold the Lamb Live DVD. I'll be putting up the rest of the songs as I have time. If you're so inclined, send the links to the friends I hope you're roping into coming to see the show this year (coming to a town near you).

The String Session

2007-10-31T23:55:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick look at the string session. The song they're working on here is "Hosanna", and I have to say that I believe that Ben Shive has outdone himself. You should've heard these string players going on about how great the arrangements were, all the more amazed because Ben isn't a string player.

Hope you like it.

AP

Murder! On Flight 4593

2007-10-30T09:56:00.001-05:00

I'm almost finished editing together a little video. In the meantime, please enjoy this three-page comic strip composed on an airplane earlier this year.

Requests?

2007-10-26T21:49:00.000-05:00

Hey, folks.

The kids are in bed, Jamie's baking some amazing pumpkiny cake, and I'm just finishing up packing for the trip tomorrow. We're heading to Virginia then Louisiana with a more or less completed Resurrection Letters, Vol. II. The Captains and I spent the day at Todd Robbins's mixing studio tweaking the songs until they're just right, and as of tonight I feel confident that we've done the very best job we could do. It feels so, so good to have this record wrapped up. It'll feel even better when it's packaged and ready for public consumption. I sure hope it's a blessing to folks.

So in the process of packing I was thinking about our set list, wondering if we were in fact playing the songs that you guys want to hear. So let me have it. Which songs have we not been playing that you want to hear, which songs have we been playing too often, which songs should we work up new arrangements of?

We aim to please.

Have a great weekend.

AP

P.S. Slowly but surely, I'm going to start posting these things on my Rabbit Room blog, linked from my website. If there's no update here, check there for videos. Thanks for reading, folks!

Hosanna

2007-10-26T02:18:00.000-05:00

Ben thinks that next week I'm going to enter a kind of postpartum depression.

I will have finished a book and an album within a week of each other, and this ridiculously busy, stressful year--the ridiculously stressful part, anyway--will be over, just in time for a trip to the pumpkin patch with Jamie and the kids.

I'll have a week or two to soak up as much time with my four favorite people before we head to Florida to visit family for Thanksgiving. Bloated with turkey and dressing, I'll head back to Nashville to rehearse for the Christmas tour. We have 19 shows in 20 days, and believe it or not that sounds relaxing. The Christmas tours are work, sure, but I feel renewed every night on the stage telling the old story, and I'm surrounded with such good friends that the days are spent in rare fellowship.

I can't tell you how excited I am about this album. Tonight I downloaded the newest mixes of the 12 songs, put them in order, burned them to a disc and hopped in my car. It was midnight, and the roads that wound through the Tennessee hills were deserted. I prayed while I drove that these songs would make it to the ears that need to hear them, and it hit me today that I need to hear these songs as much as anyone.

Somebody said that you have to preach the gospel to yourself daily. I hope this album will help people to do just that: to remind themselves of the gravity of their sin and the glory of God's mercy, of the promise that Death is nothing to fear, that resurrection is a worthy hope.

Hosanna

I am tangled up in contradiction
I am strangled by my own two hands
I am hunted by the hounds of addiction
Hosanna

I have lied to everyone who trusts me
I have tried to fall when I could stand
I have only loved the ones who love me
Hosanna

Oh, Hosanna
See the long awaited king
Come to set his people free
Oh, Hosanna
Come and tear the temple down
Raise it up on holy ground
Hosanna

I have struggled to remove this raiment
Tried to hide every shimmering strand
I contend with these ghosts and these hosts of bright angels
Hosanna
I have cursed the man that you have made me
I have nursed the beast that bays for my blood
I have run from the one who would save me
Hosanna

Oh, Hosanna
See the long awaited king
Come to set his people free
Oh, Hosanna
Come and tear the temple down
Raise it up on holy ground
Hosanna

We cry for blood
We take your life
Hosanna
We cry for blood
We take your life
It is blood and it is life that you have given

You have crushed beneath your heel the vile serpent
You have carried to the grave the black stain
You have torn apart the temple's holy curtain
You have beaten death at death's own game
Hosanna

Hail the long awaited king
Come to set his people free
(We cry) Oh, Hosanna
Come and tear this temple down
Raise it up on holy ground
Oh, Hosanna
I will lift my voice and sing
You have come and washed me clean
Hosanna

4 Non Blondes

2007-10-24T23:23:00.000-05:00

They sang a really catchy, irritating (to me) song that said "Heyeyeyeah heyeyeah. I said hey. What's going on?"

Here's what's going on.

Todd Robbins has sent us six--no, eight mixes.
He's done a great job.
Fall has arrived, which puts my wife in a giddy mood, and me in a mellow (but happy) one.
I have about 75 more pages to edit in On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, and it's due tomorrow. Awesome. It's like college, only I love it.
The Rabbit Room website has been up and running for a week or two, and it's going really well. Lots of good discussion, and tonight as I said to Eric Peters in an email, we just sold a Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies CD along with Eric's Scarce to someone--where else in the world can you buy those two CDs together? That's right. Nowhere but the Rabbit Room.
Tomorrow we're meeting with my manager Christie and someone from an undisclosed record label. If they like the songs they just might distribute the album.
I'm fine whether or not they like the songs.
But I really hope they like them.
But I'm fine if they don't.
Really.
Bullet points are fun.
The Captains and I, on our last trip to the Tallahassee area, pulled into a Goodwill and had a contest to see who could find the funniest/strangest t-shirt. Here's the winner, partly because of the absurdity of its claim, and partly because the collar (which you can't see) is gargantuan:

Stuart Duncan the Great

2007-10-23T17:09:00.000-05:00

(andy g)
I have tons of videos sitting on my hard drive but have had no time to edit them. We are in the last real week of working on AP's record - and I am in the last week of working on mine as well. I have to turn my record in by the first week of November to have them ready for the Christmas tour. Needless to say, video editing has not been on the top plate for me.
However, on the way back from Florida this weekend with Ben and AP, I threw this footage together for your viewing enjoyment.

Finally, a Video

2007-10-20T02:14:00.000-05:00

Mixing and Messy Cars

2007-10-17T22:04:00.001-05:00

Reasons why messy cars are good:

There's always scrap paper handy
Who likes to clean their car?
There's always, always enough change to pay the meter if you look long enough
Rediscovering lost CDs
It's a good excuse for someone else to drive to lunch
Easier to keep track of which fast food places you've visited so that you can diversify
Nobody breaks in to a junky car
When your kid spills their Big Gulp? No cleanup.
You're always reminded of the fallen-ness of man
When you finally clean it, it's like you have a new car

Someone asked about mixing.

There's a pretty big difference between the kind of mixing we're doing during the recording process and the kind of mixing Todd Robbins is doing. We're actually not mixing anything, really. We're pushing the faders up and down so that we can hear what we need to hear in order to record the next track, but there's very little messing with the EQ and very little reverb or other effects added. Sure, we're mixing in the most basic sense.

But here's what makes guys like Todd so amazing to me. (And there's a fair bit of assumption going on here, because I'm not around for the nuts and bolts of the mixing.) We deliver the songs to the engineer in an edited but completely unmixed form. He then has to listen to every single instrument all the way through. He compresses, equalizes, gives it reverb and makes it sound just right. He does it with the drum tracks (and maybe each of the ten or so mics on the drums), then he does it with the bass, the four or five different guitar tracks, and so on. Once he has everything sounding as good as possible, he starts the actual programming of the volume. The faders "remember" where they were at different parts of the song, so that when he pushes STOP, the faders all slap down to zero volume. When he pushes PLAY at whatever part of the song he wants, the faders snap into position like soldiers. As the song goes by, he can push the volume up or down on, say, my lead vocal, so that if I sang something too quietly he can adjust it. The next time the song plays, the program remembers the volume adjustment. (I'm writing this with the assumption that you're unfamiliar with all manner of sound stuff.)

He'll listen to it about a zillion times and make minute adjustments to the volume levels, reverb levels, etc., until he's ready for us to listen. We come in and listen, take notes as the song goes by, and make suggestions. The fact that he's coming into it without having heard anything of the recording process (and in this case without having heard any of my music) has advantages and disadvantages. The good thing is, his ears are fresh. He's going to hear things we can't anymore. The bad thing is, he might not immediately sense the direction we were going for with the song. See, he can make the song sound warm or modern or crisp or low-fi or vocal heavy or electric guitar heavy or a thousand other things.

That's why I get excited about the mixing process; it's as close as I'll come to hearing these songs as if for the first time.

So he's mixed "Invisible God" and most of "Rocket". I haven't heard any of it yet, but Ben says it sounds great.

AP

Loose Ends

2007-10-16T01:03:00.000-05:00

Friday was a sort of celebration for being finished with the record. Today we finished the record all over again.

I burned rough mixes of the songs and listened to them several times over the weekend, and for the most part I was pleased. I did, however hear some holes that needed to be filled, changes that needed to be made. You hear a song differently when you're jogging, or when you're stuck in traffic. You notice the feel of it, your mind wanders in and out of attention and you listen with a detachment that allows you to hear things you wouldn't ordinarily hear.

That's the way my ear works, anyway.

So I jogged this morning to the new record, then I drove to the studio today with it blaring from my van speakers. I grabbed an old receipt and wrote notes on it as the songs went by (one of the many advantages of having a messy car: there's always paper handy). When I got to the studio we set to work tweaking "All You'll Ever Need". I wasn't sure what was missing from the song, but I felt like something was. Ben added some extra percussion stuff (shakers, tamborine, a baby turtle shell with a deer antler for a handle--whatever Gully had laying around), Gully played some mandolin, and that pretty much buttered the bread.

We then tackled a few editing things on "Hosanna" and "All Things New", which were relatively easy cut-and-paste jobs. Finally we added some keyboards and an acoustic guitar lick to "Don't Give Up On Me". I know this is tedious stuff, but that's what we did.

Now we enter the stage of the record called Mix Prep and Editing, which pretty much makes me obsolete. I'm listening, like I said, for last minute changes, but at this point the songs feel as finished as they're ever going to feel. I spent a lot of time today pacing behind Ben and Andy while they edited or played. My work is pretty much done. My opinions are all that is left.

Todd Robbins, the mix engineer, is starting the mix on a few songs tomorrow, and Ben will deliver the prepped songs as he finishes them. A friend of mine told me the other day, upon hearing that Todd Robbins was mixing this record, that Todd is the best at what he does. I've only met him once, and I liked him, and I hope my buddy is right. Ben's worked with Todd in the past and says that he's the man.

Choosing the mix engineer for this album was strangely difficult. I've been honored to have worked with some of the very best over the years, and each time it was clear who should mix the album long before we finished recording. With Love and Thunder it needed to be Gary Paczosa (of Alison Krauss fame). The record was organic and warm, and he was the man to amplify that vibe. With The Far Country, we were looking for something with color and big-ness, so Ben Wisch (of Marc Cohn fame) was the guy to do it. Ben and Gary are at the top of my list of favorite record-makers ever, and I geeked out at the chance to work with them. (Gary mixed Behold the Lamb and Carried Along as well.)

This time around those names were seriously considered, as were folks like Shane Wilson, but for some reason it wasn't obvious who we should try to rope in. I thought of Todd Robbins because Jason Gray had raved about him, and Ben had some history there. Until last week, though, Todd was one of the other several names of extremely talented guys that were tossed around. For some reason we emailed him, he said yes, and tomorrow he starts. Perfect.

So that's about it.

I know I keep promising more videos. They're coming, I promise.

AP

----------------
Listening to: Marc Cohn - Listening to Levon
via FoxyTunes

The Next Stage

2007-10-12T16:34:00.000-05:00

This crisp fall morning we once again converged on The Night Owl's Nest (Gully's studio, says me) to finish recording this album.

All that was left this morning was for me to sing vocal doubles on "Hosanna" and "All Things New", then we edited a few things and went out for a lunch, the somberness of which accented by the fact that we listened to Nanci Griffith's Other Voices, Other Rooms in transit. It's a sweet, sad record that perfectly fit the Tennessee fall and the ending of two months of good work.

When we got back to the studio, Ben started editing while I drove Gully to the airport for a few shows in Washington this weekend, then I picked up a copy of my first book: The Ballad of Matthew's Begats. I just finished flipping through it, marveling at Cory Godbey's talents, and at God's story. I got a little emotional reading it, though I've sung the song a thousand times.

What a gift it is to tell the old, old story. Listening to these resurrection letters, seeing the pictures in the book, traveling the country to sing these songs--these are reminders to me that our God is a good king, and that I am most unworthy to be in his kingdom. My sonship is a gift of the highest order, and it is a fine thing to live in light of it.

Next week begins the next stage in the process: editing and mixing. We'll write another post to try and make that sound exciting. Truth be told, the editing is tedious but the mixing (for me) is my favorite part. More on that later.

We'll do our best to edit together the videos we took this week and last and have them ready for you early next week.

Have a grand weekend. Oh, and be sure to check out the Rabbit Room, a new website I'm helping with. Loads of fun.

AP

Dulcifying

2007-10-09T23:44:00.000-05:00

We have dulcified the record.

As a connoisseur of Rich Mullins's music, my appreciation for a hammered dulcimer in a song goes without saying. Each of my records has a dulcimer on it somewhere, mainly to satisfy my personal jones for that bright rhythmic sound, but also because it reminds me of the music that changed me so many years ago.

If I had been wrecked into a spiritual awakening by Bob Dylan's music, chances are you'd hear a harmonica on every album; if it had been Zeppelin, you'd probably hear several songs with electric riffs in 5/8 time. But the music that pulled me out of whatever bland complacency I was slogging through in the early nineties was the intensely personal, musically dramatic songwriting of Rich Mullins.

I remember with embarrassment that when we were recording "Rise and Shine" on my first label record, everyone in the studio knew that we were copping Mullins. It was the elephant in the room. I didn't really care, to be honest. Rich had died about a year prior, I was still grieving (or whatever you call it when you never knew someone but you wish you had) and I wanted the song to remind me of him. It worked.

Years earlier, when I first started playing with my old buddy Gabe Scott (now known to the public ironically as "the guy who plays all those instruments with Bebo"), he played the hammered dulcimer on a few songs. (I tried to play it, but being deficient in the ways of time-keeping, I left it to people more capable than I.)

My second record just needed some dulcimer on "No More Faith", and Gabe was the man to deliver it. The third required it on "High Noon", and Gabe brought it again, as well as on "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" from the Christmas album.

Then Ben stepped out from behind the piano and played dulcimer on "Mystery of Mercy" from The Far Country--it was a really difficult part, and I was plumb amazed that he did it so well.

Tonight we had the blessing of working with a third dulcimer player: Marcus Myers. I find it remarkable that I know not one but three excellent players of such a relatively obscure (and difficult) instrument. With all these guys around, why not put dulcimer on every record?

Marcus spent the last three hours working on dulcimer parts for "Hosanna", "The Good Confession", and "All Things New", and he knocked it out of the park. He's a really great fiddle player (he's the guy playing on the instrumentals on Behold the Lamb), can hold his own on the bass guitar, and whacks his hammered dulcimer so hard he used to break strings all the time in his old band (Silers Bald). Because of the profusion of dulcimer-ists in my life, we haven't recorded Marcus playing it before, so I didn't know what to expect. He learned the parts quickly, had lots of his own ideas, and played in time.

It was a fun evening.

So tomorrow we're bringing back good ol' Matt Pierson, the bass player. One of the songs was sped up several clicks, and another needed a key change, which rendered Matt's tracks on those songs obsolete. We were able to use all the drums, but everything else had to be re-recorded. Matt's fine playing is nearly all that remains on these two songs ("Hosanna" and "All Things New").

Folks, we're getting close to being finished with the recording of this album.

That's the news from Lake Wobegon. In case you're feeling movie-deprived, hang in there. As soon as things slow down a bit we have quite a lot of footage to edit into some disposable entertainment, like our string quartet session, Stuart Duncan, and tonight's foray with Marcus.

Stay tuned.

Ben's Vision And His Thorn

2007-10-06T14:39:00.000-05:00

Ben posting here. A little NIV section headings humor there in the title. Trust me, there's more where that came from.

Yesterday morning I awoke after only two hours of sleep and I felt better than I had all week. Was it that I had put something terrible behind me? Or was there something wonderful in store for me? The answer, my friends, is yes. Strings, my friends. Strings.

Arranging strings, let me tell you, is lonely, tedious work. I do it every few months, usually for records I'm producing, though sometimes other folks will hire me. This time around, I was arranging three songs for AP's record and two more for another band. I would call that about four days worth of work. I had only a day and a half to devote to it, which meant that the bulk of the work would have to be done at night. Yay.

When you set about writing arrangements for a number of songs, the first arrangement is, without fail, the most difficult. I'm not sure why. I guess it's like starting your mower for the first time in May. It just takes a minute. I can expect not only to spend about a full day coming up with the parts (this is what I would call "writing," as opposed to the creation of the sheet music, which I would call "torture") for the first song, but also to have to rewrite or at least revise it the next morning and probably revise AGAIN when I come back to it after I've written the other arrangements. So I started arranging "All Things New" on Monday night, finished it Tuesday night, and rewrote it Wednesday morning. I credit the amazing headache I had on Wednesday night to the fact that I had four arrangements left to go and only a day to write them.

The good thing, the weird thing, is how fast the other ones go. It's almost embarassing how fast they go. It's like how you take a thousand pictures of your firstborn and twenty of your second, and you feel bad but somehow your second-born turns out just fine in the end. I wrote one of the songs for the other band in about an hour and a half. And it's a fine arrangement. "The Good Confession" didn't take long either, come to think of it.

"Hosanna" was sort of an exception. It was the second one I wrote and I suppose it took me a while, but it was a pretty demanding song. In fact, each of these three AP songs is the kind of song you're supposed to hit out of the ballpark. They want something spectacular, not just something that fits. I didn't have to swing as hard on The Good Confession, since it already had the choir, which sounds amazing. But the other two, and especially All Things New, wanted the full 21 gun salute.

And who better to perform the 21 gun salute than David Davidson and friends (David Angell-2nd Violin; Monisa Angell-Viola; John Catchings-Cello)? Are they still called the Love Sponge Strings? I'm not sure. But they are the DEAL. Look, I've hired other string players and we've gotten through it all right, but David (and whenever I refer to David, let it be known that I am referring to the other three players by extension) is a whole different animal.

First of all, the facility of these players on their instruments is ridiculous. There's nothing they can't do. Many times now, David has stopped in the middle of a take to inform me that I've written something that worked fine on my keyboard, but that would be impossible to play on the violin. And every time, not two minutes later, he's PLAYING IT. Blisteringly fast.

The sound of this group is amazing. The tone is so vibrant and the intonation so accurate. And that's not something to take for granted. But maybe more than anything is that these guys really interperet music. I remember my band director in high school telling us that 90 percent of the music is in the dynamics and articulations. He would drool pure valve-oil if he heard these guys (okay, that got weird; lack of sleep, remember). Stringed instruments are capable of so much nuance, and I'm not fluent enough to communicate that kind of nuance on paper. At least not every time. But David and the guys are so intuitive about these things and so very patient about working through the exact phrasing of a line. In fact, most of it they don't have to ask me about. I can hear them reinterpereting, sometimes even disregarding, my phrasing marks as we record and it makes me grateful that I'm in such good hands.

But the coup de grace for me is that I still associate the Love Sponge with a signature sound, most recognizable in their playing on the Fleming & John records, which I hope you've heard. I was really influenced by those records (as well as a few others that John Painter arranged for the Love Sponge, including the self-titled Sixpence album) and I frequently write with that sound in mind. So imagine what a thrill it is for me to hear that sound coming back at me in the booth. Suffice it to say it's worth a little sleep-deprivation.

But I digress. I finished writing the fifth arrangement at about ten on Thursday night. Beth ran and got Starbucks. Good thing, because I still had to prep the ProTools sessions we'd be working in and, horror of horrors, create the sheet music. The long and short of it is that I didn't put my laptop in the bag until about five in the morning. But that's just par for the course. I am always up stupid-late the night before a string session. And it's worth it to wake up feeling like the morning sun is a big, yellow Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card and to know that the pain is behind me and the joy is before me. Which is, I think, what this record is all about.

Getting Out of the Way

2007-10-04T15:12:00.001-05:00

It's a strange stage in the making of Resurrection Letters.

I've been focusing on the two new websites that are imminent, Gully's been mainly working on his new record, and Ben has been working diligently on string parts.

Progress is being made on the record, but right now there's not much to share.

Redneck in Europe (I think that's his name) asked about how we approach recording a guest musician like Stuart Duncan.

Stuart, for those of you who aren't familiar with him, is one of the most tasteful, right-on, goose-bump-inducing fiddle players around. He's highly regarded in the bluegrass world, but he's also capable (as you can hear on songs like Pierce Pettis's "Little River Canyon") of improvising beautiful melodies. He also played on Nanci Griffith's Other Voices, Other Rooms, which remains one of my favorite Americana albums. There's a heartbreaking story-song on that album called "Tecumseh Valley", and Stuart's lonesome sound pretty much makes the song for me.

So how do we approach recording someone like Stuart? Basically, you push record and get out of the way. The reason you pay a guy like that to play on your song is because you like the way he hears. We have in mind what we'd like, but the best thing to do is to keep your mouth shut and let his sensibilities inform what he plays. Most of the time what he brings to the table is better than you might've imagined, so before you start telling him what you hear, let him have a shot at it. After two or three takes, if he hasn't gotten exactly what you want in a certain part of the song, you can stop and make suggestions.

For me, the thrill of songwriting and recording comes when, like I said last week, the final product exceeds your expectations and even your capabilities. Letting the musicians (Andy and Ben, for example) breathe and stretch (perhaps) beyond what you had originally envisioned for the song is creativity at its finest. I know my gifts (which is another way of saying I know my limitations), which is why I'm pleased to share the recording of these songs with people whose talents pick up where mine leave off.

That allows me to view the end-product objectively, to take pleasure and pride in it, and helps me to remember that it is God's work. I'm invited to commune with him in his work, but in the end, everything beautiful comes from him.

For example, I just finished listening to Ben's string parts on the three songs we're recording tomorrow. He writes the parts in Finale and records the program playing a cheezy sounding synthesized version of the strings over the track. You can hear the parts and make edits to them before you spend a zillion bucks with the string players.

Not only is Ben great at writing parts, I can hear his care and concern for the songs, and more importantly what he hopes the songs do in people's hearts. Writing a string score is something I could never do. For that matter, Ben can't play a lick on the violin. But tomorrow we'll listen the songs that I wrote with the strings that he composed being played by David Davidson and his friends, and I'm almost guaranteed to cry at the beauty of it.

Heck, I cried today listening to the hokey synth-strings.

The Kingdom is a beautiful thing.

AP

Eat Your Vegetables

2007-10-03T10:42:00.001-05:00

Completely unrelated to the new record, I thought I'd share something fun. Randall Goodgame and I had the pleasure of writing the silly song for the upcoming VeggieTales video The Wizard of Ha's.

They also included the song "You Can Always Come Home", from Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies in the video. It's one of the best-looking of the videos they've produced yet, and is based on the parable of the prodigal son, so have some Kleenex handy.

We were honored to be a part of it.

Here's the silly song, to whet your appetite. So to speak.

AP

Ron Block: Part Deux

2007-10-01T10:37:00.000-05:00

(Andy G writing)

Hello world. I am taking a few days this week to try to finish up my record.

One aspect of making a record we haven't really talked about yet is procrastination. One of the best ways to procrastinate making a record is to edit some old video footage. This has been sitting around for a while now and I just had the inspiration to put it together this morning.

Hope you enjoy it.

p.s. - after learning to love Donovan McNabb last week, I think I hate him again. Time to start the Favre.

The Final Frontier

2007-09-29T20:45:00.001-05:00

This is a picture taken by Pat Forrester, mission specialist on shuttle mission STS-117 to the International Space Station. I can now retire.

AP

Mission Accomplished

2007-09-28T20:42:00.001-05:00

I'm here to report that our spanking mission was successful.

But first we got a lot of work done.

We met Stuart Duncan at the studio at 10 am. Like most of the other folks I've met in the bluegrass/country world of great players, he is humble, humorous, and cares about the music that he's making. It would be easy for guys like that to breeze in, wow us with some licks, and collect their money. He only played on one song, but he indulged our pickiness and was concerned about getting it right. Then he acted in another soon-to-be Oscar-nominated short film.

We ate lunch at a place called Stroud's Barbecue. The Friday special at Stroud's is barbecue nachos: pulled pork, white cheese sauce, baked beans, and tortilla chips. I needed a nap at about three this afternoon.

After lunch we set to work on the guitars for "All Things New". The astute reader of this blog will remember that we recorded guitars for this song weeks ago. Why would we need to repeat the process? It's because the song wasn't right. We were nearly finished with it and something about it was falling flat. I kept thinking, while listening to it, that there was no musical hook--there was nothing for me to hang my hat on. Jeff Taylor, Irishy player extraordinaire, played some Irish whistle on the old version of the song, and that gave us the idea to try and give the song a sort of jig. Ben worked something up, I took it home over the weekend and learned it on the guitar, and realized that the song needed it and that the song needed to be in the key of D instead of C. That put the chorus out of my vocal range, which meant rewriting the melody of the chorus. Basically, we had to start the song from scratch, something we didn't do lightly as far along as we were in the process. We were able to keep Eckberg's drums, but we'll have to re-record the bass. Today Gully got a workout, learning the jig in two different guitar tunings and on the mandolin. After he played his parts Ben added some tambourine, then I sang a new lead vocal in the new key. At the end of the day we basically had a brand new song.

Gully set up the camera while Ben packed his bag. He pushed record, I grabbed Ben and pulled him down, and we gave him roughly 28 violent smacks.

It was a good day. Those of you waiting patiently for videos will be rewarded soon. Have a great weekend.

AP

Random Creepiness

2007-09-28T00:19:00.001-05:00

So tonight I was writing on another blog about Matt Rollings, Lyle Lovett's piano player, who is amazing. I remembered that I always thought Matt looked a lot like Gary Oldman, the actor. I submit these two photos as proof.

In other news, I'm sleepy.

In other-other news, yesterday was Ben's birthday. I called and left a message with his wife yesterday because I wanted to make sure it was his birthday before I called him. She called me back today to tell me that yes, it was yesterday. Argh.

Tomorrow I vow that Andy and I will spank him and video at least a portion of it for your viewing pleasure.

AP

Sincerest Apologies

2007-09-26T23:42:00.001-05:00

Folks, it's been busy around these parts. I'm in the process of putting the finishing touches on not one but TWO new websites. One is a revamp of my main site, and the other is top secret. It's not really top secret. It's, like, middle secret. The point is, we haven't had much time to work on the record lately.

Ben's been working on a worship album for his church, and tonight he's out on the road with Dave Barnes, who is way cooler than me.

Gully's been touring a bit and working on his own record.

I've been working on these websites and writing till my fingers ache, literally.

But Friday. Oh, FRIDAY. I'm excited about Friday.

One of the finest fiddle players alive is once again going to add his talents to one of my songs. Stuart Duncan, whose resume is far too long to mention here, is coming over to play fiddle on "Love is a Good Thing", and for that I am glad. He's the guy playing on "Serve Hymn," "Let There Be Light," "More," Pierce Pettis's album State of Grace, which has hair-raising fiddle on songs like "Little River Canyon." I could go on and on about Stuart Duncan, like how his solo on Chris Thile's "Raining at Sunset" gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.

Anyway, you get the point. He's a great player and we're honored to have him.

Hopefully we'll get some video of Stuart replacing all my parts or something.

I've seen all the talk around here about fantasy football, and I wanted to assure those of you who aren't familiar with it that you're not missing much. It's basically a jock version of a role-playing game. They don't use twelve-sided dice, they don't wear capes or carry fake swords they bought at the knife shop at the mall, but it amounts to the same thing. Boys playing pretend with numbers.

(For the record, I'm only saying all that to give Gully a hard time. It actually seems like it would be fun. Did you hear that Frank Gore broke his hand?)

Thanks for reading, folks.

AP

Many Matters of Business

2007-09-23T09:33:00.001-05:00

(From the brain, fingers and computer of Andy G)

If I was a smart mans, I would do something like, such as, split this post up into many postings. However, I decided that I could just address many matters of business (hence the title) in this one post. So here goes it ...

SONGWRITING APPOINTMENTS
I saw a comment from my good friend Drew who was wondering what a songwriting appointment looked like. I am now going to pretend that Drew was not feigning interest and that the rest of you care as well. The good news is that if you really don't care, you can easily scroll to the next "matter of business".
When I was a staff writer for a publishing company, the songwriting appointments basically consisted of meeting someone at around 10AM, chatting for a bit, then throwing out ideas for songs. If there was a particular artist looking for songs at that time, we might try to write in that direction. Many folks would have a notebook with basic song ideas or song titles that you just throw out until you find something that you can both agree to work on. Sometimes something would click and we would be done with a song in an hour or so. Other times we would work all day and only end up with part of a verse or a chorus. In that case we would just schedule another appointment to finish the song. (If you didn't really "click" with the co-writer this was a great opportunity to just say "Let's touch base later and figure out another time to write" while silently agreeing never to call or e-mail each other ever again.)
This particular songwriting appointment last week was for a girl named Jaime Jamgochian. I got a call the week before asking if I would help her and my friend Matt Stanfield (who is producing some of the songs on her record) finish a song that they wanted to track for her new record. These are my favorite kinds of writing appointments because they already had a chorus to the song and there was a good chance of it actually getting recorded. Matt sent me an mp3 of the basic chord structure to the song - leaving the verses blank and singing the chorus so I headed to Matt's studio space in Franklin with a couple of ideas. When I got there we first figured out the melody to the verses and then wrote the lyrics for a couple of them. We left that day with everything but the lyrics for the last line of the 2nd verse and the bridge. I just e-mailed some ideas for those missing lyrics to Jaime this morning. Hopefully the song works for the record.
Writing appointments take a little while to get used to. You have to learn how to be confident enough to throw out ideas - and tough enough to not get your feelings hurt when they don't like some of those ideas. It is also a good idea to write with people that you wouldn't mind just hanging out with. That way - when four hours go by and you still have nothing, you can just look at it like you scheduled four hours to hang out with a friend.

FANTASY FOOTBALL
Once again, I realize that I am probably writing to less than 5% of the people who read this thing. But I (unlike two other writers on this blog who shall remain nameless) am interested in reporting the whole truth and not just the information that is popular or pertinent.
After Week 2 in the Fantasy Football season, I am sitting 2-0 and 0-2 in my two leagues.
In my church league (where I am the commissioner) I am sitting in 2nd place behind my pastor. I can thank Chad Johnson and Carson Palmer for my undefeated record. Those guys have been awesome.
In my "Men's Club League" that I have been in for many years with mainly college friends, I am sitting squarely in last place. I can thank Donovan McNabb, Laurence Maroney and Larry Fitzgerald for that. This week I am starting Hines Ward instead of Fitzgerald and considered starting Favre instead of McNabb - but I think I will give Donovan one more week to be awful. I am having flashbacks from 3 years ago with Daunte Culpepper.

NEW VIDEO
Things have been a little slow in the video department lately. This next video might explain why.

Remembering Rich Mullins

2007-09-20T14:32:00.000-05:00

Hey, folks. We're gearing up for the concert tonight, and I read through this piece I wrote for CCM. I'm pretty sure all they used was a sentence of it, so I don't feel bad posting the whole thing here.
-----------
Beaten Up and Carried Home

Today I drove across the flat, wide prairie at the foot of the Grand Tetons. My wife of twelve years and our three children were with me on the journey, and as is our custom on long trips, we let the kids take turns choosing the music. We listened to Riders in the Sky (the best cowboy music around), the soundtrack to Silverado (the best Western film score ever), and some Sara Groves (who doesn't have much at all to do with the Wild West, but who was a welcome salve after ten hours of the kids choosing the aforementioned music).

Then we rounded the bend at sunset and there before us stood those craggy Tetons, all gray stone with white snow tucked into the fissures. The clouds were gold with sunlight and long, misty fingers of rain were dangling from them, caressing the peaks and down to the aspen- and fir-covered shoulders of the range.

Who else but Rich Mullins could write music that would adequately compliment a scene like that? I asked for the iPod, selected A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band, and we drove the next forty five minutes without speaking. We weren't speaking because we were being spoken to.

Rich's music has a finely tuned resonance. Some people I know could listen to his music and miss the vibration completely, while others, like myself, hear the songs and feel rattled to the bone. Driving today in the shadow of the mountains, my bones were rattling with the gospel, and it was the gospel according to Rich. He sang about a God who bares his holy arm in the sight of the nations, who roars and smites and laughs from heaven at his enemies; but the God Rich knew--the God he knows--is also one of tenderness and deep mystery and patient love. He's a God who thought to make the color green, whose mercy rains down from heaven and trickles even to the brown brick spines of our dirty blind alleys. I remember Rich saying in a live recording from years ago that God is like the kid who beats you up and then gives you a ride home on his bike. I've learned a lot about God from Rich, mainly because he put to words the things I already knew were true: I have been beaten up, and I have been carried home.

I could write all day about the ways God has blessed me and changed me by way of Rich's music; I could write all day about the ways I have missed his wry, odd wisdom in the midst of the industry I find myself so often befuddled by; I could also write about the way Rich's writing craft leaves me awestruck and humbled; or about the countless stories I've been told by those he either knew or was known by; or about the uncanny number of artists I know of who point to Rich as one of their chief influences, both spiritual and musical.

But today, after that glorious drive through the West while listening to him sing about America and Jesus and the very truth of God, I can only here express my gratitude to God for Rich's ability to remind me that it is to God alone that I am to be grateful. There's nothing else an artist could better aspire to than to leave that legacy. I have sung his songs and read his writings and visited his grave and am convinced that in his barefoot, quirky, grace-filled wake he left a pair of shoes that no one will ever fill.

Nearly Perfect Pitch

2007-09-17T23:33:00.000-05:00

Not to be confused with Nearly Headless Nick.

I didn't work today because my sweet wife is out of town. That left me here at the Warren with my three kids--alone. The women of the world who are reading this are probably rolling their eyes. Here I am, acting like it's newsworthy that a dad would watch his own children. But you must understand. I'm married to Superwoman. I leave town all the time and she somehow keeps the house and the children in spit-spot shape, but not once in our twelve years of marriage has she ever left me with them overnight, let alone for four nights.

(You can stop rolling your eyes, moms.)

The thing is, I've had a great time. I realized the secret to child care: if you plan on getting anything done other than watching the kids, forget it. Make the mental shift that they're your main job, and the other piddly things that you do with your time will just have to wait until they're in bed or in college. Or, of course, you involve them in whatever it is you're doing, which they may or may not appreciate.

Today, for example, I had to chainsaw a giant tree limb into a manageable size, then transport it in pieces to the fire pit. (It was a huge tree limb, and twice I almost got really hurt by the chainsaw and the tree. It's this giant white oak tree that's probably been standing since the Cherokees roamed the area. One of the uppermost primary limbs had snapped off but didn't completely fall. The heaviest part of the broken limb (about as thick as my uncle's waist) was leaning against the tree about twenty five feet up, the whole thing supported by its leafy smaller branches. To make a long story short, when I chainsawed what I thought was a minor branch at the bottom it turned out to be the one holding the whole beast up. The giant limb fell, pulling the still-running saw about fifteen feet into the air, and as I scrambled out of the way I tripped on a branch and landed hard. Where's Gully's camera when you need it? That limb could've crushed me, and the saw could've boogered me up bad. I'll spare you the other equally scary incident.)

Anyway, I recruited the kids to help me lug the branches to the firepit. It took about two sweaty hours--that's how big this limb was. It was a tree unto itself.

So that's the secret to getting things done while caring for children: manual labor. I rewarded us all with Blue Bell ice cream. This is also a secret to child care.

I told you all that so I could tell you this: I found some video from the choir recording day of my four-year-old daughter singing her favorite song. She's obsessed with The Wizard of Oz, and is having an Oz-themed birthday party next weekend. She'll be wearing the Dorothy costume my mom just made her. (Now the moms are saying "awwww" and looking for someone to snuggle with.)

So I present to you, ladies and germs, my daughter in all her cuteness. Be sure and watch the video till the end. Oh, and when I put the soundtrack music into the video, I noticed that Skye was singing it in the right key. How amazing is that?

AP

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Listening to: The Wizard Of Oz - Judy Garland - Over the Rainbow
via FoxyTunes

A Loving Punch in the Face

2007-09-14T23:13:00.001-05:00

I have to brag about the Captains Courageous for a minute.

I know that they're going to read this, which makes it a little awkward. Guys are weird about complimenting one another. It's much easier for us to tell other folks about how cool we think our friends are, but looking them in the eye and telling them "Well done" means you first have to take a deep breath and clear your throat.

Backstage after our concerts there's usually a meaningful minute of encouragement that passes between us that means a lot to me. The audience's appreciation and that of your bandmates come at you very differently and mean very different things. But in the studio, though we're not at all stingy with our encouragement, there's never any gushing. That would be sissy. Men usually reserve the gushing for when they think the other fellers aren't listening.

I've just about talked myself out of writing anything, knowing that Ben and Andy will read this.

Aw, heck.

It struck me today how vastly different our roles are. Ben plugs away at the computer with an ear for perfection in timing and tone and performance. He doesn't hesitate to stop the recording to get a better take. Today he was recording his piano on "Hosanna" and I saw him stop and re-record the same lick probably twenty five times, and only two of those twenty five sounded off to me. But he heard something in his own performance that wasn't right and he kept hacking away until the tree fell, whereas I would've been thrilled with a decent performance (which on the piano is all I would've been capable of) and moved on. (If I wanted to continue the analogy with the tree, I would say that I'd have been satisfied with lopping off a limb and the tree would've mocked me as I dragged my branch away. But I wouldn't have minded. See, the tree would represent the perfect performance, and the limb would have stood for--)

Thank you, self-editor, for putting a stop to that.

The days Andy and I worked without Ben were good days, but neither of us felt at the end like we trusted ourselves to have gotten it right. Sure enough, when Ben showed up the next day, he kindly set to work fixing what we'd attempted, like a good producer does. It's humbling for me. Resurrection Letters, Vol. 2 is my seventh studio album in ten or so years, and I've learned a thing or two in the process. Back when Ben started playing music with me I asked him to be around in the studio for Love and Thunder, and he took copious mental notes while he watched the great Steve Hindalong and Derri Daugherty fashion my songs into a record. He was but a babe in the woods, freshly graduated from college, married without kids, and I had been around the block once, if not a few times.

That was almost six years ago, and Ben has three kids and a fine reputation in Nashville as producer, songwriter, and session player. I used to have something to teach him about making records; now I defer to his judgment more often than not. It hit me a few weeks ago that though I'm several years older than he is (and much, much better at ping-pong), he's made more records than I have. Somehow, in-between the shows he was playing with me, Ben found time to make record after record, either playing or producing.

What I'm getting at is that it's good to have him around. Left to my own devices, you'd hear a far inferior version of these songs.

Now. About Andy.

I don't mean to imply that because when Ben isn't around we work with some degree of uncertainty Andy isn't capable. Have you heard his two CDs, Old Hat and Room to Breathe? The guitar/vocal production couldn't be much simpler, but you can't miss that he's a great guitar player and a fine producer. His sense of time is scores better than mine, not to mention his ear for beautiful melodies. There were days in the studio when Ben was at the helm and Andy sat on the futon working on Ringo movies because there wasn't much he needed to do. Occasionally when there was a question of preference he'd chime in, but much of the time he served by setting up his studio for us before we arrived, arranging the microphones, sometimes engineering to give Ben a break from staring at the computer screen for hours.

But when it was his time to play guitar, he found the perfect parts to compliment the basic tracks of the song and played them musically and in time. He has a gift for helping the song sound better than it is. He heard things that neither Ben nor I would've thought of, and the songs are better for it.

And that's just the guitar playing. He's a great background singer. I remember noticing that about him when I first saw him play with Jill years and years ago. The best background singers (James Taylor's are at the top of my list) know how to take the edges from the character of their voices, to make their voices seem round and unobtrusive, so that they add to the lead vocal without drawing attention away from it. It's a tricky thing. Today we recorded Andy's background vocals on "Invisible God" and "Windows in the World", and he did exactly what I just described.

But that's just the sound of his voice. He has a great ear for harmonies that I would never come up with. Both times I had the honor of singing on Jill's songs ("Square Peg" and "Wisdom") Andy had the harmony part in mind and taught it to me. If I had had to come up with my own harmony for her stuff it wouldn't have been nearly as inventive or beautiful.

Once again, what I'm getting at is that it's good to have him around.

Today we were putting the finishing touches on "Invisible God", and I couldn't believe it turned out as pretty as it did. I told the Captains that I love it when I hear a song toward the end of the recording process and think, "Who did this? How did this happen? There's no way that we boneheads made this song sound this nice." I imagine little elves sneaking in at night and embellishing our performances. Elves with sideburns and rockabilly hairdos. If it's not elves, then it's a classic case of something being greater than the sum of its parts. That sounds a lot like what Christ's kingdom on earth is supposed to be. We use our gifts to serve, and Christ living in us makes the servant, the serving, and the thing served more beautiful and meaningful than we could've hoped.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. (That's in Ephesians.)

Amen? Amen.

That's all the gushing I or they can stand. Next time I see these guys I'll have to give 'em a loving punch in the face.

AP

----------------
Listening to: The Nobility - Halleluiah Chorus
via FoxyTunes

Pappy and George

2007-09-14T10:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had the pleasure of seeing our friend Hitoshi "George" Yamaguchi at the studio. He brought along his upright bass and did a fine job on "Have Your Way". After he left Gullahorn sang some background vocals on "Don't Give Up On Me" and right around lunch time our pal Eric Peters showed up. After lunch Eric lent his tenor voice to "Rocket" and made us all happy. Finally, I sang the lead vocal for "Hosanna".

It was a busy, good day of work.

I got home just in time to help my boys set up a tent, break out the jigsaw and cut a piece of scrap wood into legs for a cardboard table they plan to use this weekend to sell drawings and lemonade in the neighborhood. I know that has nothing to do with Resurrection Letters, but I thought it was funny.

The transmission died in our car this week, so I'm at my house waiting for ol' Ben Kenobi to pick me up. I have a few more videos waiting to be put together into their Oscar-contending forms, so check back soon.

AP

Getting Irishy

2007-09-12T23:24:00.000-05:00

Today was a great day in the studio, only partly because the weather in Nashville was splendid.

We listened to "Rocket" first thing and were pleased that other than background vocals the track is finished. A rollicking good time, that song. I've never once typed the word "rollicking" before, and have only seen it used in movie and book reviews. Why is that?

We listened to "Have Your Way", a confessional song I wrote one night when I was feeling particularly weary of my sin. Thanks to Jeff Taylor's fine musicianship and gentle spirit, the song also sounds complete, except for an upright bass line. I called our friend Hitoshi "George" Yamaguchi and he's meeting us at the studio tomorrow to play said bass part.

Finally we opened up "Hosanna" again and set to work on the guitars. You may remember that this was an eleventh hour song that the Captains and I wrote a few weeks ago, and we called the tracking musicians back to Eckberg's studio to play it. (Ringo and his friends also came over and re-did our parts; we pretended not to be keen on their wily scheme then came back after they left and recorded the song correctly. Ringo and his friends are delicate.)

Anyway, Gullahorn played a few acoustic guitar parts, a mandolin, a bouzouki, and a lap dulcimer on the song before we called it quits for the day. The song feels really good and just might be the opener for the record. We'll have to see.

We're sadly getting close to the end of this part of the process. Once the thing is recorded, Ben will set to work writing string parts, then we'll record the strings, mix it, master it, print it, sell it, and start the process over again in a year or so.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First things first: Hitoshi on bass.

By the Power of Nashville

2007-09-11T23:58:00.000-05:00

We were unable to record today.

Ben and I carpooled to Gully's, we set up the room and broke out the mandolin, the bouzouki, and the various guitars in order to work on "Hosanna", and about ten seconds after Ben pushed Play, the power died. Soon we found out that Andy's was the only house on the street with the power down, thanks to a fallen limb nearby.

He called the electric service and left a message, and I was faced with the depressing truth that without electricity, I'm out of a job. While we were waiting for power I went and stood on the little bridge in Andy's backyard and watched the minnows in the creek, and I thought about ol' Wendell Berry and his distrust of technology and progress.

He's more or less a Kentucky hobbit. I love his writing, his philosophy, his wise tone, but I just don't think that I'm a better farmer than I am singer/songwriter. We can't all heave our jobs into the river and drag our wives and children to a shack on the banks, after all. Like it or not, I depend on the Nashville Electric Service, the interweb, email, guitar tuners, strings, computer programs--in short, things that Wendell would be appalled by (I think). He tills his field in Kentucky while the Captains and I fashion songs and tether them to digital media in order to shed light in the world. Different lights, but light nonetheless.

We took an early lunch break, ran some errands, came back and found that the power was still off. That was it for the day. There was nothing we could do. I came home and went and sat in the woods with my guitar and practiced my Rich Mullins cover for the tribute show next week, played through a few new songs, and wrote a bit for Resurrection Letters, Vol. 1. Sitting in the woods is good, right, Wendell?

Today was the first day of Fall, at least in spirit, so after dinner we lit a fire outside. We let the kids stay up way past bedtime, sang songs, I read a bit of Watership Down, and we put them to bed, but not before opening the windows in their rooms so the cricket sounds and cool air could float in.

I was bummed to have missed a whole day's work on the record, but enjoying a few things that didn't have to be plugged in was a nice substitute.

A Long Weekend

2007-09-11T08:06:00.000-05:00

(Andy G reporting)

Last Friday the three of us flew out to St. Louis for a show in the St. Charles area. It was a great show. The folks there made for a great audience. Here are some other highlights ...

- The spicy chicken things at dinner
- The sauce that accompanied the spicy chicken
- The corn fritters
- The rolls
- The apple pie

After the show, we stayed at the Shive house. It was awesome. We got to hang out with the good old Shive family. Ben's brother and sister-in-law came in town to make it a full on party. Here are some other highlights from that visit ...

- The homemade cherry pie
- The vegetable soup
- The chocolate chip cookies
- The watching of Hot Fuzz
- The sleeping in
- The cinnamon crunch bagels
- The eggs and sausage

The only bad thing about the trip was the fact that Ben and Andrew missed their flight back to Nashville on Saturday. I was sticking around an extra day for a show of my own in Illinois. Ben and Andrew ended up arriving in Nashville around 6 PM and then had to drive over 2 hours to get to another show a couple of hours late. I was glad that I wasn't part of that craziness.

Anyways, yesterday (Monday) Ben did some editing here at my place while I went to the dentist and then to a writing appointment. I have no clue what Andrew did. Here are some other highlights from yesterday when Ben and I went to lunch at the Copper Kettle.

- The green bean casserole
- The fried okra
- The strawberry spinach salad
- The macaroni and cheese
- The roll
- The butter
- The cherry limeade slush float from Sonic

Do you see a theme here? For some reason I have gained 6 pounds since the making of this record.

On another note, this will come as a surprise to Andrew and Ben, but the football season officially started this weekend. Thanks to Chad Johnson and Carson Palmer, I won my game in my church fantasy football league. Thanks to Larry Fitzgerald, I lost in my other league by one point. Just thought you would like to know.

To prove that I am still useful for things other than eating and fantasy football, I give you this video.

Things Got Irishy

2007-09-07T00:47:00.001-05:00

You may remember Jeff Taylor from one of the YouTube videos a while back. He was the friend of Michael Card's who played the jig on the accordion. Well, he did us the huge favor of coming to the studio today and playing on a new song called "Have Your Way".

I'm a huge Kate Rusby fan. Rusby and her band are some of the finestd musicians you'll hear, and I liken her to a British Isles version of Alison Krauss--she plays mostly traditional (or very traditional sounding) songs, sings like an angel, and has a remarkable band. (In case you're interested, start with her record Little Lights. They're all good, but it's the first one I heard so I'm partial.)

Anyway, I bought her live DVD for Mr. Card, having been amazed by it myself, and Mike shared it with Jeff, accordion player extraordinaire. So when I sent Jeff the new song, all I had to do was ask him to give it the Kate Rusby treatment and he knew exactly what I meant. "Rusbification" is the word, and Jeff Taylor is the man to do it. He came over today and played accordion then Irish whistle and a little bouzouki, and his sensibilities and skill were more than adequate. I sat and watched while he and Ben worked out different melodies, and in most cases all Ben had to do was sing it and Jeff was right there with the melody, played tasty as carrot cake.

I took some video, but I haven't had time to put it together yet. In lieu I present an interview that just went up on YouTube today, courtesy of www.hearthevoice.com. I sat down with author Matthew Paul Turner and talked about my new book, my writing process, and this record. I prayed before the interview that I wouldn't say anything I'd later regret, and I only noticed two things, which is way fewer than usual. I don't interview well, and in this interview I look pudgier than normal, which is why I'm going jogging first thing in the morning.

Hope to see some of you in St. Charles, MO and Spring City, TN this weekend.

AP

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Listening to: Shawn Colvin - You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go
via FoxyTunes

Blocks and Cards

2007-09-06T01:36:00.000-05:00

Here's a little clip of the great Ron Block's work the other day. Be sure and check out his website (in the sidebar) and his new record DoorWay. Justin Gerard from Portland Studios is responsible for the cover art (he's the same guy who did The Far Country). Ron's taught me a lot over the years about Christ, music, humility, and my identity in God's Kingdom. Oh, and he's a great banjist. And bouzoukist.

Come Together

2007-09-05T12:18:00.001-05:00

(This is Andy G writing)
Thanks to everyone who came out last night for the choir vocals. They sound great. In my tired stupor last night while I was trying to pick up, I started rolling up a long power cable. It just happened to be the one power cable that was attached to the one power strip that was attached to the one computer, the one hard drive and the one pre-amp. I was promptly scolded by Biggs, realized my mistake and immediately started taking a nap on the chairs. Luckily we did not lose any of your beautiful vocal gems.
As a celebration, I thought it was finally time to post this video from our tracking session for the extra song, Hosanna.

Setting Up

2007-09-03T22:43:00.000-05:00

It's Monday night.

I just got back to the Warren from setting up our gear at Ben's church for the choir session tomorrow night. Mr. Biggs met us there at the church and we loaded in armfuls (arms full?) of wiry things, a computer, Osenga's Digi 002, more wiry things, microphones, and one digital camera.

I was prepared for a long, arduous night of technical difficulties, but it was easy enough. We're ready for the invasion of 20 singers of varying skill and talent, who when singing all together will sound something like the Harlem Boys' Choir. I'm thinking of the Glory soundtrack, which still makes me cry. Am I dreaming too big? I think not.

Anyway, tomorrow's the big day. I'm so glad you guys responded so well to the invitation, and I hope everything works tomorrow night, or else your trip will have been for a free dinner. Of course, those of you who didn't make the 20 will be treated to a video as soon as we have time to put it together. There are two videos on the verge of completion, so check back soon.

Thanks for reading.

Overdubbing at Mole End

2007-08-30T20:47:00.001-05:00

Here's another quick video of some of our work this Wednesday after Ron Block left. We have footage of Ron, but I have to put it all together, hopefully on the drive to Little Rock, where we're playing tomorrow at a great church.

It was fun being at Michael Card's studio with a pile of his fine stringed instruments at our disposal. We decided at the beginning of the day that our assignment was to try and use every instrument in the room on at least one song. We didn't get to the harpsichord or the banjola, but we just might at a later date. I love recording out there, and it's always nice to see Mike, whose mind amazes me.

He's an excellent writer and is working on a book on slavery in the New Testament, and crawled out of his writing cave long enough to help us tune the harp and to tell me a bit about the exegetical work he's doing on Philemon. I was fairly amazed and couldn't think of much to say in response except, "Wow. That's amazing." And it is.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video.

Today we recorded percussion with Paul Eckberg, and managed to knock out five songs out of eleven. It looks like we'll be booking another day with Paulie. Time to get the kids to bed. I hope to see some of you guys in Little Rock.

AP

Guitars with Gary

2007-08-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

Guitar with Gary

2007-08-30T01:21:00.000-05:00

This week has been a treat.

Yesterday we worked with Gary Burnette, a well-known, well-respected, well-digging electric guitar player. You guys who are like me and read liner notes may remember him from Clear to Venus, which we figured out was recorded about seven years ago. I hadn't seen him since.

We got a lot of nice electric stuff that you'll see in a video as soon as I can get it posted. Sometime today, I promise.

Today we headed back to Mole End. There's something so nice about driving through the Tennessee hills for forty minutes to get there, and once you're there it's so secluded and peaceful I think it's easier to get things done. Part of this is probably also because there wasn't a wireless internet connection; we couldn't check email and take care of other business.

We recorded a couple of piano parts that we realized needed fixing, then we had lunch with Sam Judd, a singer songwriter I know through Mr. Card, and the great Ron Block. Just the other night Ron treated Jamie and I to an Alison Krauss and Union Station concert at the Nashville arena. I was so proud to see my friend on stage with one of the finest bands in the world, and it was quite an honor to have him in the studio with us just a few days later.

He played banjo on "Rocket" and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. The song had been worrying me a little. Something didn't quite feel right about it and I so badly wanted the banjo to pull it all together. It was so exciting when it did. After that song Ron played bouzouki (which is basically an octave mandolin) on "Hosea", once again providing the meld it needed. Ben also added a bit of Wurlitzer, and the two new layers suddenly made the song sound like John Leventhal (Shawn Colvin), which is about as good a thing as you can hope for on a record.

After that we put hurdy gurdy on "All Things New", mandola on "Rocket", and Ben played harp on "Windows in the World". (You read right: Ben played harp.) It was a good day's work, and tomorrow's going to be at least as fun: percussion with Paul Eckberg.

Check back later for some video.

AP

P.S. Sorry about not yet responding to some of the questions in the comments. We'll get to 'em ASAP. Sorry also about the bad link with the mailing list--just sign up on my website, on the right side of the main page. By the way, we have our 20 lucky winners. Here's hoping they can carry a tune...

Sing. Sing a song.

2007-08-28T00:34:00.000-05:00

Hey, folks.

We just sent out our monthly newsletter (what? You're not on the list?
Please be on the list) announcing that we're looking for 20 folks who can carry a tune to sing in a choir for the song "The Good Confession". If you can come to Nashville for a dinner (on me) and an evening of recording, I'd love to show you my appreciation for all your support. When we realized that we wanted a choir to sing on one of the songs, we thought it would be a fun way to include you guys in the making of this album.

The first 20 people to email me at singwithap@mac.com are invited to Nashville on the evening of September 4th. We'll send details to the 20.

Tomorrow's electric guitar day with Gary Burnette. Ben's getting to the studio bright and early while Gully and I head over to Eric Peters's house to help him move to his new house, which is, literally, across the street. I'm not sure if that means moving will be easier or harder. It'll be farther to walk across the street than it would've been to carry the items into the truck. But then, we won't have to unload the truck so maybe it evens out.

Either way, by midmorning we'll be nice and smelly, driving over to Gary's.

Thanks for reading,

AP

Comping Vocals

2007-08-26T23:55:00.000-05:00

Hey, folks.

I wanted to have something up for Monday morning, and this is all I could find. We should have some fun footage this week that'll make up for hearing me sing the same two lines over and over in this clip.

We had a fun show tonight in Omaha. We got right to the heart of matters. The audience was great, and we had a chance to play through a few of the new songs during soundcheck and the show.

More later.

AP

A Lousy Day

2007-08-25T00:19:00.001-05:00

A day full of lice?

Ben's producing a record by this duo called Connersvine and had to make a last-minute trip to Indianapolis today to help with some things. That left Gully and I in the studio with a bunch of background vocals to either record or at least flesh out so the guests will know what we want them to sing.

But there were problems. Oh, there were problems.

Yesterday we finally reached the limit of our patience with the computer/DIGI 001 slowness. The more tracks and plug-ins you're using the more demand is placed on the computer, the drive, and the audio device. At this point in the process that means that every time we press record there's a two or three second pause before it catches up. When you're starting and stopping a zillion times a minute that can tax your happiness. There are other issues too, but you get the idea. Gullahorn's older computer and older DIGI 001 have both been troopers thus far, but their time has now come.

At our first pre-production meeting I talked about rolling a new computer into the budget--one that I'll later be able to use at home for demos and web stuff (Appendix X, perhaps?), that Jamie can use while home-schooling the kids, and which will keep up better than my six-year-old G4. So we decided yesterday that it was time to upgrade the computer and borrow Osenga's DIGI 002

This made me giddy. Buying a new computer is rare for me. This morning I picked up a brand-spanking new iMac (not one of the recently unveiled new ones), swung by Osenga's house and read a book to his daughters while he disconnected his 002 downstairs, then sped to Gully's studio to unwrap the new gadget. I know all that stuff about materialism, about things not making you happy and all that, and I really believe it's true. But when you need a tool (and that's all this is) for your job (and that's partly what this is), it might as well be a finely tuned, fine-looking machine (and that's exactly what this is).

One of the best things about Mac stuff is the way they package it. When you open the box you're greeted not with styrofoam peanuts and their unearthly squeaking but with a sleek silver-grey box greeting you with a welcome message from Apple, written in the most pleasing font. You slide the machine out of its cradle and it feels like you're an archaeologist pulling treasure from Tut's sarcophagus. Knowing that the thrill will wear off in a matter of minutes only makes me enjoy it more while it lasts.

It lasted for about 16 minutes. Then we ran into all kinds of Protools compatibility problems which are too tedious to mention here. I was on hold for 34 minutes before I gave up. Gully and I spent a long time searching their support site before finding what we needed, which cost more money. Then the hardware wasn't working. And Ben, who knows way more than either of us about this stuff, was out of commission in Indy. So we finally got it working in time for a quick, late lunch. Then we pulled up "Hosanna", the song we tracked a few days ago, and realized with a sinking feeling that we tracked it too slow. Sometimes this happens, and when it does, it happens to me. It's a new song so the energy in the studio the other day was high, the guys played it great, and I was so wowed by hearing a band play the song that we misjudged the tempo. At least that's how Gully and I felt today.

We both tried playing guitar passes but they plodded along like zombies. We tried new ideas, new ways to play the song to try and raise the energy level, but all was futile. We tinkered with moving the drum parts around and it helped, until finally we tried a tempo shift. Neither of us had ever tried this before, and I'm a baffled that such a thing is possible without changing the pitch of the bass part. (These new-fangled machines!) But it is. We raised the tempo and found the energy we were looking for.

Then we realized that it was 6:00. A whole day more or less shot working on a computer that we bought in order to speed things up. That movie from a few weeks ago called "When a Captain is Away" was a pretty good picture of our day, and we closed up shop feeling frustrated.

Dumb ol' computer.

AP

P.S. We have a show in Omaha, somewhere in middle America, on Sunday. I hope you Nebraskans can make it out--if you do, you might end up on the blog. Then on Tuesday we're recording electric guitars with Gary Burnette (who's GREAT, and who played on Clear to Venus back in 2001). Wednesday we're back at Mole End (Mr. Card's burrow) to record banjo with the great Ron Block, as well as putting to use a hurdy gurdy and maybe some of Mike's other stringed goodies. Then Thursday we're doing nothing but percussion with our pal Paul Eckberg. Next week should be a good and gratifying one, especially after today's liceyness.

Tracking "Hosanna"

2007-08-23T16:06:00.000-05:00

Well, folks. This isn't a funny one, but it's a look at another day of tracking. Thanks for the kind words about the harebrained scheme. I'm excited about it. Gully's cooking up a fine video starring Ringo and some other special guests, so stay tuned.

AP

Volumes Two and One

2007-08-22T10:04:00.000-05:00

Andy Hunt and Paul Eckberg are in the control room discussing where to plug in the wiry things, Andy G. is on his way with the hard drives, and Ben and I sit here at the table in the kitchen, plucking away at our computers. Matt Pierson, player of bass, is also on his way. Ringo is safely tucked away in a backpack, awaiting his reanimation among our ranks.

Now's as good a time as any to tell you about my harebrained scheme (by the way, I looked it up and it's definitely harebrained) regarding Resurrection Letters.

This April I wrote a series of devotional thoughts during Holy Week and someone on the messageboard (Tim Bourne, a.k.a. Sevenmiles) said that they'd been enjoying reading my "resurrection letters." My brain perked up at that phrase, and I immediately thought that it sounded like a good title for an album.* Knowing that I was preparing for another foray into the studio, I made a list of the potential new album songs and was pretty bummed at first that I couldn't see why an album containing those particular songs would be called Resurrection Letters. They didn't seem to have that much to do with Holy Week.

I put the title aside while the Captains and I started playing the new songs at shows, working them out in soundcheck. I started looking for the common thread in the new songs (there's almost always a common thread, however tenuous), and in doing so I realized that RL was a fitting title after all. So many of these songs spoke of rebirth, redemption, new life, the shine of goodness emerging from the rubble of our lives. The title made perfect sense and tied together most of the songs, not to mention the emerging feel of the album.

Then a funny thing happened.

I realized that there was more to say. More than one album could contain. Over the years people have suggested that I record an Easter concept album that would complement Behold the Lamb, something that could be performed during the lenten season to help prepare the heart for Easter worship. My stock response has always been that Behold the Lamb IS an Easter album, if you think about it. Christmas and Easter are celebrating the same thing. Another cycle of songs would be redundant, not to mention possibly seeming opportunistic in light of the success of the Christmas album and tour. Nothing in me wanted to record an album like that. If nothing else, I balked at the challenge of writing a piece of that scope again. Behold the Lamb took years to write, and so many wonderful things aligned to make the record what it is, I doubted it could be repeated.

But doubt is a silly excuse not to do something.

I feel compelled to create an eight song (from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday) meditation on Holy Week. The two albums will fit together, one being about Christ's passion and resurrection, the other being about what that resurrection means for me and for us two thousand years later. The problem is, I'm recording volume two first. So the tentative title of this album is Resurrection Letters, Volume Two, and the next album will be volume one. I've already started one of the songs and have ideas for a few more, and we're thinking ahead about how to musically tie this record to that one.

With the Christmas album, there already existed a canon of carols and a long tradition of Advent concerts so there was a paradigm to challenge, a clear uniqueness of approach to the old story, which was to remind people of the breadth of the historic tale God's telling. In this case, finding a new way to sing about Easter isn't the point--just singing about it is. For some reason Easter week gets overlooked. Sure, there are cantatas, but that's not what I'm talking about. There's no grand holiday break from work and school to herald the event; there's no shopping craze; there's even more potential for the wonder of the celebration to be forgotten, but not because of the Easter Bunny (he's a much less formidable foe than Santa). Maybe it's because Christmas is so G rated, while the Passion forces us to consider the grisly outcome of our sin. Christmas reads like a fairy tale; Holy Week reads like an epic tragedy, bloody and heartbreaking till you reach the last glorious page. I don't know.

What I do know is that without the resurrection of Christ, we would have nothing to celebrate. If the son of God couldn't conquer Death, then Death would have the last word and we would tumble into the darkness of grave without a whisper of hope, virgin birth or no. It thrills me to have the opportunity to add to the body of songs about Christ's resurrection, songs for the church that might provide an avenue for worship.

When my wife and I were moving into our new house, we pulled up the 17 year-old linoleum flooring and the cat-hair imbued carpet because we knew that it would force us to replace the floors as soon as possible. We didn't have any idea how we'd manage to get new floors, but walking around on plywood and carpet tacks was a great motivation to figure it out. This is me pulling up the linoleum. I've said it, and now either I'll be made a liar or I'll hunker down and find these songs in due time. At first I thought I'd try to write the songs by early next year and record them in time to release the album around Easter, but then I remembered that I have a book to edit and another one to write. It'll probably take a bit longer than that.

So there you have it. These new songs, (volume two) deal with the present. They are songs about living in light of Christ's triumph, and about our struggle to do so. Volume one will tell the beginning of the story. The new covenant. The first notes of the New Song.

This is music, so as always, things can change. But as of August 22, that's my plan.

AP

P.S. I brought Andy G. a pacifier to the studio today, and he finally stopped whining.

*Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century, wrote extensively about the celebration of Easter, and these writings together were called The Resurrection Letters. I don't think ol' 'Nasius will mind.

An Act Of Will: In Which I Rat On Andrew

2007-08-21T21:52:00.000-05:00

This is Ben posting.

That January day in 2002 when I reported to Andrew's old house on Harbor Lights drive for my first AP rehearsal was the beginning of my proper education as a songwriter. I'd spent all my high school and college years longing for whatever quality it was that made a person write. Now here I was, suddenly thrown in a silver van with Andrew, Eric Peters, and Laura Story--three people who know how to write a song.

During that first tour, I read a few books by Annie Dillard, one of them titled "The Writing Life." This amazing manual turned out to be the perfect companion to the paradigm shift I was experiencing in the company of Andrew and his little band of merry men and women ("Footsteps To Glory," if you remember.) Until then, I had always envisioned the act of writing a song as a sort of esoteric experience, never an act of will. Now I was assigned topics to write about and given deadlines to meet. Meanwhile, I pictured Annie Dillard in the little, windowless room where she goes to work each day. I watched as my friends examined and reworked their own work with a certain detachment. There was no line too dear to be cut from a song if it didn't contribute to the whole work. Concurrently, I read that wonderful first chapter of "The Writing Life," in which I was instructed to go at my work as a builder, but with all the tools needed for demolition close at hand, just in case.

Needless to say, I continue to attend the Andrew Peterson school of writing jaw-dropping songs. And Andrew is still, in my mind, a writer's writer. Here's an example from this record.

Take "The Good Confession," for example. It's a story song that sets the ancient profession of faith (Christ is Lord) against the changing backdrop of Andrew's childhood. I think he's had the chorus for quite a while ("I believe/he is the Christ/son of the living God"). Every writer I know has bits of songs lying around, little scraps of fabric waiting for a quilt. Maybe he formulated the whole concept for the rest of the song when he wrote the chorus or maybe it came came later. Regardless, one of the first things I learned watching Andrew and the other Footsteps is that a good song either begins with a solid concept or it finds one along the way. The fact that I can sum up this song in one sentence is a good sign. Have you ever listened to a novice preacher go on and on for a good forty-five minutes and at the end you had no Earthly idea what he was talking about? It's the same deal. Write all you want, but let there be some strong connecting force that binds it together or nobody is going to follow you. To further illustrate my point, note that each verse of this particular song has its own concept: the first verse being about a boyhood conversion and the second being about an awakening to the gospel after the typical strayings of adolescence.

From the day Andrew had fleshed out the lyric of "Good Confession," I think he had the sinking feeling that there was something loose about the song, some ballast to jettison. So we worked the song over in soundchecks and in pre-production, dropping bars out of little instrumental turnarounds to make the next lyric arrive right on time, writing little melodies to make the spaces mean something. "The Good Confession" transformed from a potentially self-indulgent trip down memory lane (that sounds harsher than I mean it) into a pretty streamlined song that I think will resonate with people. And it didn't lose its heart and soul. It's not lightweight, candy pop. It just pops.

This is a typical story. I can think of five others like it on this record. I already told you the story of how "All You'll Ever Need" was delivered by cesarean in the eleventh hour. AP cut a whole verse, a good one, out of Don't Give Up On Me so that we can all get to the second chorus a little sooner. On the Slugs & Bugs record, Andrew thought Skye's lullabye just wasn't feeling right, and the remedy turned out to be CUTTING THE CHORUS.

This is how it goes. It's work and it's a thrill. And AP's durn good at it, if you hadn't noticed.

A Day In The Life Of A Guitar Player Co-Producing Andrew Peterson's Record

2007-08-21T10:09:00.001-05:00

I have an e-mail in my inbox from Andrew Peterson dated July 8th. The subject heading reads: "You have been invited to contribute to Andrew Peterson's Blog".

Now, I have been following this blog and contributing in my own little ways - such as my supporting actor roles in the videos - since it started. I have had good intentions of adding my own thoughts when the time was right. The time just hasn't been right - until now.

If you have been following this blog, you will remember a post from about a month ago that was basically a copy of an iChat between Ben and Andrew (notice I was not invited). Posting the actual iChat was a move towards transparency - so you guys can see "behind the scenes" of making this record. To keep up with this level of transparency, I thought it would be a good time to show another form of communication that we use here in the music world. It is called "e-mail". It is like regular mail, but it travels over the inter web faster than an eagle. That is why it is called "e"-mail.

To give you a feel for this type of communication, I will just pick one of these e-mails at random. Let's see. Here's one from two days ago. Let's see what it says ... ... ...

>
>
From: Andrew Peterson
Date: August 19, 2007 10:26:00 PM CDT
To: Ben Shive, Andy Gullahorn
Subject: Blog

Hey, fellers.

Ben. Dear Ben. Dear, dear Ben. I noticed that you posted on the blog--the one you were both invited to post to. Thanks for posting. It's really cool that you'd take even just a few minutes to include your thoughts on the process. I know you have three small kids and a full plate, and yet you find time.

Andy. Dear Andy. Dear, dear Andy.

Hmph.

AP
>
>

Wow. I hadn't read that e-mail until just now. I feel a little weird with it exposed in cyberspace - but I guess it is for the greater good. Perhaps I should explain to you guys and to Slave Driver Peterson why I haven't posted yet by outlining a day in the life of a guitar player co-producing Andrew Peterson's record.

A Day In The Life Of A Guitar Player Co-producing Andrew Peterson's Record

2:00 AM - Wake up to crying baby
3:00 AM - Wake up to crying daughter who fell out of bed
3:05 AM - Try to get baby (who woke up from crying daughter) to go back to sleep
4:30 AM - Wake up to crying baby
6:15 AM - Wake up to son breathing on my face
6:30 AM - After getting son breakfast, I jump in the shower
6:45 AM - Make breakfast for daughter who is now awake while holding crying baby
7:15 AM - Get 2 older kids to go to the bathroom, dress them and fix their bed head hair-dos
7:30 AM - Pack son's lunch for school - put it in backpack
7:40 AM - Load three kids in minivan to take son to Kindergarten
8:05 AM - Get back home. Wake up Jill to feed baby. Clean up breakfast mess.
8:30 AM - Head over to office. Clean up mess from day before.
8:50 AM - Pay bills before they are overdue. Check e-mail. Write a few back.
9:30 AM - Turn on studio computer. Start setting up mics, etc.
10:00 AM - Andrew and Ben arrive. We start "working".
1:00 PM - The best part of the day - lunch.
6:00 PM - Call it a day. Head over to house. Hold baby. Set the table. Wash kid's hands. Help get dinner ready.
6:45 PM - Dinner
7:15 PM - Walk with kids around neighborhood
7:30 PM - Bathe two older kids. Brush teeth. Put on their PJs. Set out clothes for tomorrow.
7:50 PM - Read a few library books to the kids.
8:00 PM - Bedtime
8:15 PM - Start cleaning kitchen, picking up toys and telling kids to get back in bed.
8:45 PM - Sit down on couch with Jill, hold the baby and watch some mindless TV.
9:10 PM - Give the baby a bath
9:30 PM - Sit with Jill while she feeds the baby and we talk about all of the happenings of the day and how we feel like zombies.
10:00 PM - Barely make it to bed before falling asleep.
12:00 AM - The next day is the same as the last.

Dear Mr. Peterson,
I apologize for not finding the time in my empty schedule like Ben "Teacher's Pet" Shive has done. Maybe tonight I will skip the walk with the kids or the 30 minutes I have to hang out with my wife so that I can write about mic placements. If, by chance, I AM able to carve out some free time in my day, it will most likely be spent preparing for the most important event of the year - my fantasy football draft.

Sincerely,
Andy Gullahorn

Dear Faithful Blog Readers,
I really do apologize for not finding the time to contribute my perspective to this blog. I promise I will try harder.

Sincerely,
Andy Gullahorn

A Day Off

2007-08-20T22:44:00.001-05:00

We had another welcome Monday off from the studio.

Recording is in many ways the closest we come to having 9 to 5 jobs (though it's usually more like 10 to 6:30). When I leave in the morning the kids always ask where I'm off to and I can say with a bit of pride, "I'm going to work." I come home in the evening and Jamie usually has some scrumptious meal whipped up, after which we get the kids to bed. We watch a bit of TV before she zonks out, which is when I write or read for a few hours and I, too, zonk. (Zonk? I just looked it up: to fall or cause to fall suddenly and heavily asleep or lose consciousness. I can't believe that's a real word.)

While it's nice to have this day job, so to speak, all the other responsibilities that usually take up our time are still waiting for us. The emails and bills and busy work and writing pile up fast, and Mondays off only means Mondays off from the studio. Today I attacked and cleaned the pile of CDs and CDRs that were piled up all around the computer desk. I wrote exactly 19 emails. I walked in the woods behind the house and smoked the pipe my dad gave me, praying for someone dear to me who I just found out has cancer. I jogged for exactly 25 minutes. I renewed the registration on my giant, silver, gas-guzzling, touring van (named "Jill Phillips"). I mailed a copy of the registration along with the fine for the ticket I got last week.

I have two interviews tomorrow, so Ben and Andy will be working without me for a few hours. (These will probably be the most inspired and productive few hours of this whole process, mark my words.) Wednesday promises to be an exciting one. We wrote a new song called "Hosanna" that'll probably be the opener for the record, and we need to track it. This is what some of us would call "a pain in the neck". (Those quotation marks take me way back to Chris Farley.) Tracking is "expensive" and "fairly intense". It's "nice" to get it all over with at the beginning of the "process". But when a new "song" comes along that needs "to" be on the album, it's totally worth it, and what makes it even sweeter is that we get to see and work with Paul, Matt, Ringo and Andy Hunt again. "Hot dog".

I'm not sure why I'm recounting the details of the days to you fine readers, except that I feel an odd and surprising sense of accountability to you. If you're taking the time to read, to listen to the music, to spend your hard-earned money buying records (and books, soon, I hope), I want you to know I'm not just sitting around. I'm trying my best, and sometimes not trying my best, to be obedient to Jesus, to attend to the work he has for me and the work he is doing in me and, when it's appropriate, sharing that journey with you. There are swaths of my life both shameful and victorious that I choose to keep private; other episodes I am compelled to lay on the table for public scrutiny in the name of light and honesty and encouraging you in the midst of your own either shameful or victorious moments.

Resurrection Letters is a part of that encouragement, I hope. It's a record about what it means for us in the year 2007 that Christ rose again and put the nail in Death's coffin. This new song "Hosanna" is my own exclamation of praise, and is at the same time my own cry for salvation, though I'm saved already.

AP

P.S. I found THIS PICTURE on one of my readers' blogs, and thought I'd share its hilarity with you.

Guitar Drama

2007-08-19T19:15:00.000-05:00

There's not much to say, except that I can't publicly endorse the band Tesla without something of a disclaimer. They had their redeeming qualities: they wrote much better songs than your average hair band from the 90's, songs that dealt partly with Nikola Tesla (the sadly forgotten inventor about whom I know quite a bit), they never wore make up, they were partly responsible for the acoustic rock movement (MTV Unplugged) with their Five Man Acoustical Jam album, and they were the reason for the 8 hour road trip I made to West Palm Beach with my buddy Wade my senior year of high school (1991-92), which is when I bought the shirt. That would make that shirt sixteen years old.

It wasn't until a few months later that I found Marc Cohn and Toad the Wet Sprocket, who thankfully ended my exclusive hard rock listening habits. (Rich Mullins, PFR, Susan Ashton and the like came into my life about a year later, around the time I realized how much I loved (and needed) to sing about Jesus.) I like the music I'm making now much better than Tesla, though somewhere in there lurks the influence of everything I listened to, methinks. If you listen close you can hear touches of Dvorak and James Horner, and a little Extreme thrown in for good measure.

More On Doubling (Moron Doubling?)

2007-08-19T00:23:00.000-05:00

This is Ben again. Hey, I've got to pipe in on the subject of doubling. I get really really excited about doubling. Mostly because it sounds SO WICKED on EVERYTHING. Here's why I think it's so great:

First, I think it appeals to the part of me that likes orchestration. I'm sort of an arranger at heart, and there's something about doubling a melody that turns that melody into a part. Something intentional and firmly established. A well-placed cog in the machine.

Second, I've gotten hooked on the way that timbres change when you double them or mix them together. Imagine the difference between a string quartet and that of a full orchestra. Well, doubling is in the same family of earthly joys, except that the studio enables you to be a mad scientist about it and try it with instruments there wouldn't normally be two of, such your voice. And when you combine two different timbres playing the same melody, it's like you've created a new instrument. I think ever since I heard this song called "Miracle" on a Josh Rouse record, in which they had this simple line being played by a really dorky organ and a really dorky synth and the two things together were MAGICAL together, I've been unable to resist stacking things up to create new sounds. (In fact, not to shamelessly plug, but if you get that David Spencer record that's coming out in a few weeks, listen to this song called "It's gonna be something good" where I'm stacking a music box, chamberlin strings, and a synth for a good portion of the song.) It's an almost culinary art. Flavors in combination. Yummy.

So let me give a little listening assignment to the general public and then a recording assignment to those of you who are making records as we speak (also known as the general public.)

Your assignment is to listen for vocal doubles this week. You'll hear them on the choruses of pop songs like crazy. I mean, once you pay attention, you're going to hear vocal doubles on just about everything. Now if you want to hear some more artistic use of vocal doubling (as opposed to doubling for poppy reasons), listen to the Beatles, Elliot Smith, or either of the last two Derek Webb records.

Now for recording. May I suggest you start with doubling background vocals? After you've doubled a part try panning both tracks to the same side (far left, for example). Now pan them opposite each other (far left, far right). You'll notice a big difference in how the sounds interact with each other when they're panned together from when they're panned opposite each other. Now record TWO MORE passes of the same part and try panning 2 tracks on each side. By now, you will be in love with this whole deal. Oh, but wait, there's more. Double the lead vocal on the chorus or the bridge. Then try keeping the lead panned dead center and pan the vocal a little to the side and mixed low. Now place them at equal volume and pan them hard left and hard right. Now try doubling either the lead or your BGVs down (or up) an octave. Try doubling the lead vocal down an octave on just one line--maybe a lyric that's supposed to have some weight to it. This is the orchestration part I'm talking about--using timbres to affect the way a melody or even a lyric comes across.

Another good place to start is with guitars. By all means, double a rhythm guitar part and pan the two passes far left and far right. By all means double lead parts. And FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, try using different guitars, different effects, and playing melodic doubles an octave up or an octave down.

Oh, you're going to have big fun. I ga-ron-tee. I'm giddy just thinking about it.

Tech Speak

2007-08-18T19:41:00.000-05:00

This is Ben. Alright. I heard some folks want to talk shop so I'm funna throw down wit the tech talk. Here's what we've got on hand:

mics
-Rode NTK: A large diaphragm condenser. It's a knock-off of a Neumann U87.
-ATK 4033: Another large diaphragm condenser. Famously bitey in the upper mid-range.
-Shure SM 57: The classic dynamic mic. I have a theory that people don't use this mic when they should because they've spent too much on the other mics in their collections.

pre-amps
-I don't know the model number, but it's a two channel-strip thing by Langevin (a division of Manley). Each channel strip has a pre-amp, an eq section, and compression.

guitars
-Fender Strat
-Gretch hollow-body (on loan from David Spencer, whose record you should buy when it comes out)

guitar amps
-Bad Cat. No idea what model number. It falls somewhere in that Matchless category of really modern, fat and focused sounding amps.
-Vox Pathfinder. A tiny little amp that I've heard is a good option. We haven't used it yet, so the jury's out. I just remember hearing that Fleming and John (specifically John) would frequently use small amps because you don't have to push as hard to really drive them and obviously you can make up for the volume difference at the pre-amp. I'm sure there are differences (like the way a room reacts to the sound of a bigger amp) but I'm excited to try out the little amp sooner than later.

other gear
-Apogee Rosetta 200. It's a clock and an a/d converter. When you record digital audio, your computer can't create a real, honest-to-goodness analog waveform, so instead, it takes oodles of samples to approximate the waveform. Kind of like how Mario's head is made up of a bunch of squares whether you're playing your game cube or the old 8-bit ride (as my brother calls it.) Anyway, as I understand it, Pro-Tools has a built in clock to time out the samples, but it's not a very good one. So it helps to use an external clock, not just for accurate playback but also for good recording. It makes a very subtle difference, but apparantly an important one. The Rosetta also has great audio to digital (a/d) converters in it. Again, better than the ones built in to Pro Tools. This is an expensive piece of equipment, but anybody'll tell you it's worth it, even if my ears are still too untrained to deeply appreciate the difference it makes.
-a camera to make funny movies.

Here's how we've been using the gear we have:

For starters, let's talk about the pre amp. You probably already know this, but good mics and good pre's are essential for a good sounding record (at least a hi-fi one like this will hopefully be). I know very little about the Langevin, but Gully picked it out with a little help from an engineer that knows way more than me. We've been skipping the EQ section on the pre-amp. I prefer to leave all EQ to my mix engineer, with the occasional exception of really tweaking something out for effect. The mix guy will have better perspective than me, as well as much greater skill at dialing things in. There's not much advantage of EQing to tape when you do it just as well after the fact. We HAVE been using the built-in compression on the Langevin, but only as a limiter, meaning only just enough to keep the signal from clipping when there's an occasional spike. Once again, compression is best left to your mix engineer, even if you're good at it, unless you're going for a really squashed sound. It's all about delayed gratification. You can always listen back through a plug-in compressor and EQ in the meantime to make the vocal sound good when you listen back. But leave permanent EQ/compression to your mix guy. He's smarter than you.

For vocals, we've used the NTK. On the far country we used a 57 and loved it (it actually beat the NTK in a shoot-out), but this time we just went for the NTK. Probably because somebody was borrowing my 57 until a couple of days ago. Also because my friend and guru, Josh Davis, chided me for using the 57, since it doesn't capture the highest of high frequencies. But the vocals sounded good. So who's laughing now? Me, baby. Me.

Let me pause here to make a note about phasing. I'm relatively new to engineering and my current stop on the learning curve is phasing. Whenever you use two mics (or more) at the same time to capture a sound, the sound you hear ends up being the sum of two (or more) wave forms. If the mics are not placed carefully, the math (it IS math) gets tricky and the waves end up cancelling each other out. If you did it just right you could get them to completely cancel each other, but it's more likely that only certain frequencies will disappear and you'll be left with a hollow sound. The easiest way to avoid phasing is to use only one mic on something. But two mics (or more) come in handy for creating a stereo image of a sound or for capturing a truer likeness of the sound by combining the good characteristics of different microphones. The trick is to learn to place the mics. And I regret to inform you that I'm still learning.

For acoustic guitars, we've used a setup that a friend of ours reccomended to Gully a while back. We placed our 4033 straight up and down with the capsule pointed at the sound hole. The NTK we placed perpendicular to the 4033 and about six inches higher, with the capsules of the two mics aligned. I'm always loathe to record guitars in stereo (with two mics) because of phasing issues and because, the way I've always done it, the sound changes whenever the person moves an inch (this problem is also known as "phasing issues"). But this mic setup has worked well. I do, however, love the sound of a single 57 on acoustics. No phasing issues, for one thing. This 2-condenser mic setup has given us a very pristine sound, which I love. The 57, however has a nice crunch to it and I think we may have to redo a guitar or two on this record just to get that crunchiness. Hosea, for example (even though we're thinking about doing away with the acoustics on that song--shocking, I know) would benefit from a crunchy little rhythm guitar.

For electrics, we've placed the amp in the bathroom. We're using both the 57 and the 4033. Again, phasing is an issue whenever you use two mics, but I was recently instructed that for electrics, since you aren't really trying to capture a stereo image--just combining the sounds of the two mics--you can simply place the mics with the capsules as close together as possible. And, in general, I think you want to place them right on the amp and point them near the rim of the speaker. So that's what we're doing. Gully's using a Line 6 delay pedal (the green one that everyone has for good reason) and a Visual Sound Route 66 Overdrive and Compression pedal graciously given to us for pennies by the nice folks at Visual Sound themselves. Between the three of us we're getting pretty good tones. I enjoy searching for guitar tones because I've been using Reason for my keyboard overdubs for a few years and the virtual gear you tweak with in Reason is pretty much just models of real guitar and studio gear. So lately I'm enjoying turning real knobs on a real delay pedal.

Okay, that's enough of that. Please excuse any poor grammar or punctuation that might lurk in the above paragraphs. And now I bid you goodnight.

Eclectic Guitars

2007-08-17T01:16:00.000-05:00

The worst is behind us. The tracking, the lead vocals, the acoustic guitar parts--the foundation of the album--have been recorded. Glory be.

John asked about tips on doubling a guitar part. I don't know many tips, so this'll be short. The main thing is to know exactly how you play the part, because recording in general, and doubling in specific, is like a magnifying glass on your performance. Sean Watkins once told me that they call the studio the "humilifier", and that's no exaggeration. If Nickel Creek is humilified, then I'm downright repulsified. But it makes you really figure out what you're playing, and why. I remember at the first show Jamie, Gabe and I did after recording Carried Along back in 1999 we were surprised at how good we sounded, and it was because of months of zeroing in on the minutiae of what we're doing in every song.

With the doubled guitar part, I put the original guitar in one ear and played along, stopping when something didn't line up (pretty much) exactly. You'd be surprised how easy it is. The nice thing is that with a double you don't have to be quite so picky since it's basically providing an effect--the average listener won't even realize there are two guitars, but it'll sound warmer and intentional. I'm repeating myself.

Today was another thing altogether. We finally made it to electric guitars. We're planning on calling our pal Andrew Osenga to play the electrics on a few songs, but Ben and I decided that it was high time Gully started playing some on the road, so most of the songs will be electrified by Gully himself.

It was so satisfying to finally hear something to soften the tracks. None of the instruments played so far have any kind of pad effect, nothing to smooth things over and sweeten the feel, so hearing that guitar was like a cool drink of water.

"Hosea" is a song we tracked for The Far Country but didn't use on the record. I've liked the song for the last two years, and the theme of redemption in the great Old Testament story fits just right on Resurrection Letters. The electrics sounded so nice that I muted the acoustic strum track and I didn't miss it one bit as we listened through. Well done Gullahorn. Your dream of usurping me has finally come true.

The video isn't the most thrilling thing in the world, but you get a good look at how a part is created for a song.

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Listening to: Glen Phillips - Thank You
via FoxyTunes

The Oven

2007-08-15T17:53:00.000-05:00

I'm taking advantage of a quiet few minutes while the work we did today backs up to a hard drive.

I don't know how many of you reading this are from the southeastern portion of the U.S., but if you are, you know the heat of which I will speak. According to www.weather.com, it was supposed to reach a high of 105 degrees in Nashville today. These may be normal temperatures for Hell, or maybe even Nevada, but for this sleepy southern metropolis, they are not. I've lived here ten years and I don't remember a heat wave coming close in temperature or duration.

Oh, the irony that these past few weeks have been spent at Gullahorn's studio, a studio that has a window air unit that must be turned off while we're recording. The unit (below)

is in close proximity to the microphone set up (below)

and squats there in the corner grinning at me while I sweat my way through guitar parts and vocals. I believe that once this record is finished the air in the room where the music is being played will actually rise in temperature, and the CD itself may condensate. Another aspect to this oven dilemma is that as the time spent on a song increases, as does the temperature, as does our misery, the guitar strings expand and slip out of tune. Today I was playing Eric Peters's new Taylor 12 string (a fine piece of work, like EP himself) on "All You'll Ever Need" and had to tune the thing probably ten times.

Ben just went home after playing me his newest song (and the final piece to his record--I was amazed as usual). Andy took off to take care of his kids. I'm here letting the files backup, reveling in the relative cool of the A/C unit.

The day consisted of:

--Jogging along Mill Creek at 8 in the morning, when the temperatures were a balmy 94. (I don't know how to put the little circle after the temperature.)

--Almost passing out.

--Listening to my kids recite Psalm 100 and sing "The Solid Rock", their verse and hymn for the week.

--Recording the guitar double for "Windows in the World". Doubling a guitar part, for those of you who care, is playing the exact same part as the original. Usually you pan it to one side and lower the volume a bit, producing the effect of a little bit of warmth and purpose to the first part. It makes the part sound like you meant to play it that way. Forgive me if I already wrote a bit about doubling, as it seems to me now like I have.

--Greeting the unsinkable Eric Peters upon his arrival at the studio.

--Hanging out for a few minutes with Will Sayles, drummer extraordinaire. He showed up at the studio as I was explaining the conspiracy theories about 9/11 to the Captains. I wasn't endorsing these theories; just recounting the crazy things I recently heard. I'm afraid Will now thinks that I'm an imbecile. A paranoid imbecile.

--A great lunch at the Copper Kettle, where we bumped into Goodgame and one of the pastors at my church.

--A fruitless search for a Vox Pathfinder guitar amp for Gully to use on the record. If anyone has one for sale, we're all ears.

--Seeing a guy with incredible 80's hair at one of the music stores.

--Recording 12 string geetar on "Hosea".

--Singing the vocals on "Hosea" and "Invisible God".

--Driving home from the studio listening to Jackson Browne, wishing I had half the singing voice he has.

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Listening to: Jackson Browne - I'm Alive
via FoxyTunes

Piano Drama

2007-08-13T23:17:00.000-05:00

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Listening to: Counting Crows - Round Here
via FoxyTunes

A Long Weekend

2007-08-13T00:02:00.000-05:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We opted to fly into Gainesville, 30 minutes from Ocala, which would be close enough to my hometown to have dinner with my folks. The plane was supposed to have arrived at 5:30, and we'd get to Shiloh right around dinner time to enjoy my dad's legendary steaks.

Delta had other plans.

Every plane we rode on this weekend (a total of four) was late. We got to my parents' house at 9:30, which was in time to eat the scrumptiousness but too late to play a game of horseshoes. We could've driven from Tennessee to Florida in the same amount of time it took to fly there, what with all the delays. That's what I get for flying into a dinky airport, I suppose.

The church was gracious and enjoyable as usual, though for the second time now the kids in the youth group beat me in ping pong. I'll keep coming back to this church to play if for no other reason than to redeem myself in the eyes of these whipper-snappers. (That's the first time I've ever written "whipper-snapper", and it looks so ridiculous.)

Part of the gig involved playing for fifteen minutes before the service started. People were filing in and visiting with one another, which took a little of the pressure off, so we played a few new songs: "Invisible God" and, for the first time ever, "All Things New."

After some great mexican food for lunch, we headed back to the airport to find that our flights were once again delayed. This isn't an inconvenience to us as much as it is to our wives--as soon as it's clear that we'll be getting home much later than we thought, the Captains and I whip out the phones and deliver the bad news to our kid-weary wives. What we husbands do is definitely hard work, but it's a kind of work that doesn't involve being responsible at all times for three needy children. I don't know how Jamie does it.

Oh! For those of you who pre-ordered Appendix M, it's in. We got them Friday, and we're having a little envelope-stuffing party tomorrow night. Look for them in the mail this week.

Here's a quick movie detailing a few of the events of Friday's recording session.

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Listening to: David Mead - Nashville
via FoxyTunes

At Mole End

2007-08-11T00:34:00.001-05:00

My friend Michael Card has a nice little studio at his house in Franklin, and we took him up on his offer to record there. He has a nice Baldwin piano, and we have a nice balding piano player. It was meant to be.

We recorded piano part after piano part with a nice break in the middle when Mike came by and rode with us to a place in Leiper's Fork called The Backyard Café. Mike's been kind to me over the last couple of years, recording "The Silence of God" on his latest album, letting me hop on the bus with him and his troupe and open for his gracious audiences. I've learned a lot in the relatively short time I've been around him.

When we got back from that glorious lunch we met a musician named Jeff Taylor, with whom I've corresponded a bit via email. He's one of those guys who can play about every instrument you could throw at him, and who rubs elbows with all manner of great musicians. He ended up pulling out a couple of accordions and played us some Irish tunes--I'm pretty sure Mike said that he'd played a bit with the Chieftains, which makes him cooler than I'll ever be. I'm hoping he'll play a bit on this record.

We got back to work and recorded straight until about six. Ben's a really great piano player, in case you haven't noticed. It was so nice finally hearing his addition to all these guitars and vocals we've been recording. We also had time to do a little reminiscing as you can see below.

We're off to Ocala, Florida to play at First Baptist Sunday morning; FB of Ocala has been very kind to me over the years, so it'll be nice to see some familiar faces. We'll also get to pay a short visit to my folks' place, Shiloh, where we'll eat fatteningly good food and hopefully play a game of horseshoes with my dad. Exciting times, these.

Thanks for reading, as always,

AP and the CC

I Like Vegetables

2007-08-09T23:42:00.000-05:00

We loaded the kids up in the car today and drove to Franklin. What was happening in Franklin that would make us so giddy? Was it because we were meeting the Goodgames at a mexican restaurant? Nay, it was not.

It was because we were driving to Big Idea, the place where VeggieTales is made. We haven't been too vocal about this because of the possibility of it falling through, but after today, I'm not holding back.

After hearing Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies, some very kind guys producing the next VeggieTales video asked Randall and I if we'd like a shot at writing a Silly Song. That's right: capital S, captial S. We of course jumped at the chance and spent several days brainstorming. We came up with a song called "Monkey", and made a demo in which I did my best Larry the Cucumber and Randy did his best Bob the Tomato. We played it for the producers (we were sweating like hogs, by the way) and they really liked it.

Fast-forward a few months, and today we marched our kids past all the Veggie posters, the concept sketches for the new feature film, and into a little theater where we watched The Wizard of Ha's with about twenty Big Idea employees. What a thrill it was to be a small part of the team that puts these movies together. I don't think I ever realized how much work and love is poured into these videos by these men and women, and I'm always impressed with how focused they are on their mission, which is basically to communicate God's love through creative media.

I can't tell you how surreal it was to see Bob and Larry acting out a scenario that Randy and I created, singing a song that we wrote. The best part, though, was that the final scene uses "You Can Always Come Home", from Slugs & Bugs. The video is great, with or without our songs, and I can't wait for you guys to see it. I think they said it releases in October. I hope I don't get in any weird trouble for giving you the details in a public forum, but I was just so excited I had to say something. It was a great memory for the Petersons and Goodgames.

After a celebratory visit to Baskin Robbins, I was dropped off at the studio where Ben and Andy had been working most of the day on some of Andy's guitars. I sang "The Good Confession" and we packed up and called it a day.

Tomorrow should be a fun day, too. We're heading down to Michael Card's place, Mole End, to record Ben's piano. Adding his purty playing to these songs is going to be uber-gratifying, I think.

AP

The Glory Days

2007-08-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

Gullahorn and Ben were both out of commission for the last two days, so no recording happened. I did, however, comp the vocals for "Windows in the World" and "All You'll Ever Need", from the comfort of my own home.

There's this little device called an Mbox that was one of the most justifiable musical purchases I've ever made. It cost me $400 about five years ago (I think), and allows ProTools to run on my iMac. All you really need is a microphone and/or a guitar cable and you can record and edit whatever you can think up. The possibilities are endless, and the excuses are eliminated.

When I was a kid, I saved for months to buy a TASCAM four track recorder. I remember buying it used from this music store in Gainesville with money I had made stocking shelves at the local grocer. Finally I had the means to record everything that was bumping around in my head. Those first weeks I spent in musical gloryland, reading the manual and learning the subtleties of multi-track recording, playing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and Skynyrd's "Simple Man", then trying to sing them, making tapes to force upon my friends on the drive to and from school.

My senior year, my buddy Wade's grandpa died and left him an old single-wide trailer out in a field. Wade managed to talk his dad into letting him stay out there some of the time, and we turned that old trailer into a studio and rehearsal space for our non-band. It could not, in the furthest reaches of your imagination, have been more redneck than it was. It was sweltering, dead roaches lay about on their backs, the weeds were waist high and crept up on the perimeter of the trailer like confederate soldiers, and my trusty TASCAM sat on a water stained bureau in the corner, daring me to make good music with it. I did not. I most certainly did not.

I would drive straight to Wade's trailer after school and goof around with his electric guitar, my acoustic, the bass that we hijacked from Trey, studiously avoiding whatever homework I was supposed to be doing and mumbling to myself quite often about how much fun I was having. My crowning achievement, my grand experiment, was learning all the parts to the Garth Brooks song "The Dance" and recording them on the TASCAM. I played the drums (which beggars belief), the bass, the pretty, sad piano part, the acoustic guitar. And then, to my embarrassment even as I was doing it, I sang it: "The-uh-uh-uh-uh dayance..." I have often wondered what happened to that tape, and have in equal parts wished I could find it and hoped that it is forever lost.

When I think about that kid I was in high school, I imagine how blown my mind would've been to have had the nearly limitless possibilities of ProTools at my fingertips. I would never have slept. I think about that old TASCAM almost every time I work with my little Mbox and my computer, and marvel that some fifteen years later I'm still tinkering around with tracks and sounds and songs, though I'm thankfully beyond covering Garth (that song is still a guilty pleasure of mine).

The only bad thing about those limitless possibilities is that, as I said, I'm out of excuses. In the old days I'd complain that if only I had more tracks or better equipment, then I'd make some music. Now I have the cool, simple little program, and I seldom do anything with it. Sure, it comes in handy when I'm making a record, because I can bring the hard drive home, plug it in, and edit away. But the rest of the time, the Mbox gathers dust. I'm not a multi-track recording genius. I'm not oozing with musical ideas the way I might've thought I was when I lacked the means of expressing them. Music comes either after much struggle or like the crack of a whip, and it comes without all the bells and whistles of computer programs or nice guitars. You're sitting at the piano and the Idea descends. The Idea doesn't trouble itself with what you don't have, but what you do. The tools at hand are part of the final form, however much it changes between the points of creation and completion.

When I was in high school, I loved the TASCAM. I am now more thrilled at the thought of an empty page in my composition book, or a quiet night while the family sleeps during which the creation process embraces me rather than spurns. First I find the song, or the song allows itself to be found, then months--sometimes years--later, I blow the dust from the Mbox and give the song as much love as possible, to give it a fighting chance to be loved by those who will hear it.

Tomorrow we're starting up at Gully's house again, and I can't wait.

AP

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Listening to: David Wilcox - Guitar Shopping
via FoxyTunes

Tonight's Show

2007-08-07T02:49:00.000-05:00

Tonight was a private house show for some great supporters in Alabama. Gullahorn is out of town and the indomitable Eric Peters just got back from working a Young Life camp in Minnesota, so we asked him to come along.

After a great meal of kebabs and veggies and rice I headed downstairs for a few minutes alone before the show. I started a new song last night (a contender for the record) and squeezed in a few minutes to work on it. Eric and Ben meandered downstairs after they finished eating; we talked and prayed for a bit before the hosts and their guests came down for the concert.

I always love house concerts. Financially it's not feasible to do them too often, but when we can fit one in for some great folks like we did tonight, it's a huge blessing. There's more space for stories, more camaraderie between the audience and the players. When I left the house tonight I felt like I had encountered the Church at its best. Laughter, feasting, the telling of the good news, service: the unique sensation of interacting with the body of Christ on earth.

I sang several songs from the new record and they were (to my great relief) well-received. I had the chance to talk a little about the concept behind Resurrection Letters (something I'll post about when the time is right).

It was also great to hear Eric play again. It's been too long since I've watched his maddeningly good guitar parts, heard him sing, felt the excitement of watching people experience his music and his quirky, Pappy-fied self for the first time.

We played WePod on the way home, which whiled away the miles--the highlight of the game was hearing an Imogen Heap song I had never heard--if I haven't told you guys about WePod, I will later. It's 2:34 am and I'm fading fast.

Thanks to the Wootens and the gang for bringing us in and blessing us so much.

AP

A Special Visit

2007-08-05T01:11:00.001-05:00

I told you a few posts ago that we had a special visit to the studio last week.

Let the buffoonery begin.

When a Captain is Away, Part 2

2007-08-04T00:46:00.000-05:00

We don't have any video of it this time, but with Andy G. gone, Ben and I were out of steam. We had that long day yesterday, and for some reason couldn't muster the emotional energy we needed to do good work.

After singing a verse of "Invisible God" I knew my voice wasn't sounding good and we cut it short. Then we recorded my acoustic guitar part (which is a very basic strum part, so that we can leave room for the other instrumentation) for "The Good Confession". All morning we were watching the clock, wishing it was time for lunch. When lunch finally came we zipped out of there like the place was on fire and met Paul Eckberg and Goodgame at a local mexican joint.

I don't know if it was the beans or the enchiladas, but when we got back to the studio we were just done recording. Goodgame played us a new song of his that I'm considering for this record, I played them a few ideas for a new song too. I'm not convinced that all the songs are written for this album, and I have a slow start to one that may turn into something usable. Anyway, we threw in the towel early today.

I came home just in time to ride with Jamie to a local park where the ranger was teaching about how to grow a butterfly garden. We learned about milkweed and monarchs and parsley--actually Jamie was the one paying attention. I was reading a Wendell Berry book. It was so nice just sitting still and letting my mind ease into something non-musical for a while.

We have a show in Alabama on Monday (at which we'll be joined by Eric Peters) and we'll hope that come Tuesday the energy level is back to normal.

AP

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Listening to: Shawn Colvin - Shotgun Down The Avalanche
via FoxyTunes

Guitars and Gullahorn's Lair

2007-08-02T22:52:00.000-05:00

Today was one of the more brain-intensive days in the studio yet, both for Ben and for me.

Ben's brother-in-law tagged along for the morning and observed from the futon while I recorded the acoustic guitars for "All You'll Ever Need" and "Windows in the World". When I say that it took hours and hours to get the guitar parts (that I wrote) right for just two songs, I'm not exaggerating. We got to the studio at about ten, and with Gully out of town there was less tomfoolery, so we cranked right up with the guitars.

I used Gully's Olsen guitar, pictured here with his Larivve and my Mannix (a.k.a. "The Narnia," according to Jill):

People usually overestimate the sound of a nice guitar. After you reach a certain level of quality with a guitar, the rest is subjective; the main difference between this fancy one and that fancy one is preference, or the number of bells and whistles. If you love an instrument well, it tends to sound better to you. You come to love it for its scratches and dents and quirks, and the actual sound of it is of equal importance to the history you share.

So between the four or five guitars sitting in the studio, I tried out the Olsen for "All You'll Ever Need". I had played one years ago (it belongs to my friend Danny Oertli) and the strings on it were pretty old at the time. I wasn't impressed with the sound, though knowing that James Taylor and Phil Keaggy (I think) both play Olsens, my expectations were high. It confirmed my suspicion that once you reach a certain level of instrument, they can't really sound that much nicer--not five-thousand bucks nicer, anyway.

Well, today challenged that opinion. It didn't change it, but the opposition scored a point. That Olsen felt so nice; the intonation was just right, the sound of the high strings was especially bright, and in the words of Nigel Tufnel, "Just listen to the sustain. You could go out and have a bite--still be hearing that one." Anyway, it was a surprise.

Then came two hours of playing a 3 minute song over and over and over and over and over again until it was right. Poor Ben at the helm steered us through some treacherous waters, and by the time lunchtime arrived it felt as if we'd just carved a path through the teeth of the Arctic Sea. That made Baja Burrito taste especially good.

The illustrious Paul Eckberg joined us for lunch and brought along our old pal Ringo.

After lunch Ben and I started on "Windows in the World". This is probably the most fingerpick-intensive song on the record, like "Queen of Iowa" or "All Shall Be Well" on The Far Country. I went into it prepared for labor. We worked for a good hour or so until a storm rolled in. We could hear the rain and thunder through the microphones, not to mention the planes overhead and the occasional train whistle blast. All these sounds strangely converged at about the same time so we spent a sweet twenty minutes or so waiting for the storm to pass, listening to a different music altogether.

Goodgame and Osenga stopped by the studio for a few minutes to pick something up, but sadly we didn't get to hang because the song was waiting for us. We worked on those guitars until 5 o'clock today, and our brains were fried.

Oh, and I didn't mention that we recorded my vocals for the two songs today too. It was a good day's work.

Here are a few more pictures from Gully's studio, meant to inspire.

----------------
Listening to: Bruce Cockburn - Lord Of The Starfields
via FoxyTunes

The Truth

2007-08-01T23:48:00.000-05:00

So after posting all these ridiculous videos, I've been paranoid that you guys think that all we're doing is goofing around.

The answer is, it's not all we're doing. There's a fair bit of laughter (more, in fact, during this record than any other one besides Slugs and Bugs with Goodgame), but it's usually the psychological release after several hours of intense concentration. Or, several minutes. Or seconds. My first record was a sort of nightmare, in some ways.

Gabe Scott and I were nervous, starstruck by the players we were working with, mere babes in the woods, and the studio cats were seasoned, tough-skinned, and a little cocky in some instances. It was crushing to Gabe and I to be made to feel so untalented and uncool by comparison during the making of our own record. The engineer, an amazing guy named Gary Paczosa, kept assuring us, "It's not supposed to be like this." Good ol' Ken Lewis was another voice of reason amidst the tension.

We survived, and the record turned out better than I would've dreamed, lousy studio vibe or no. With Clear to Venus the vibe got even better, though I was still so green and nerve-wracked. Love and Thunder was the first record I made after my pal Gabe Scott moved on to other things, and I had just started traveling with the indibnible Ben Shive who was even greener than I was at the time. It was the first record of songs that hadn't much been played live, all the guitar parts tried and true, with Gabe. But Steve Hindalong and Derri Daugherty were gentle souls to work with, and they nurtured those songs into a record that once again turned out to be far better than I would've hoped, thanks also to Ben's great contribution.

It was such a relief when Gabe called to say (jokingly) that he was a little bummed that his favorite record of mine was the one he played the least on. I remember that record being made in the bitter cold of winter, and it mirrored some parts of my heart at the time. There was a somber sense of purpose and care with that one, and I think you can hear it when you listen.

Then came Behold the Lamb, which was produced by Ben and Andrew Osenga. We were all three young guys (I was the oldest, which was weird), making a more complex, grand record than we'd yet made, and there was a lot of learning happening. The three of us made a few mistakes production-wise that we grew from, and had a great time making that album with the greater community of Square Pegs (though we didn't know it yet). I remember it being another great experience in the studio, though it took a lot of work and since I had just been dropped from the label the finances were frightening at times.

The Far Country sounds to me like Ben and I finally hit our stride. Ben had produced several more projects in the meantime and I had a clear sense of what I wanted the songs to sound like. Gullahorn had just started traveling with us and his guitar parts were well thought-out and were written into many of the songs from their inception. Osenga had also traveled with us a fair bit and was familiar with the songs and the sound that I wanted.

The kids' record with Goodgame was a singular experience. We produced it ourselves, recorded the whole thing in days, laughed until we cried at the silliness of what we were doing, and ended up with a project we're both proud of. It's hard to compare the rest of these records with that one, mainly because the pressure was off. I got to experience the goofy fun of music probably for the first time since leading songs at church camp fifteen years ago.

Somewhere along the road I changed from the skinny kid who was horrified to speak his mind in the studio to the less-skinny man who learned, with much help from his compadres, to bring an album into the world.

That doesn't mean I'm a producer. Ben's a producer. The guy's full of ideas, and they're usually great. He knows music, knows his gifting, and is invaluable in the studio. Gullahorn is a great player with a musical sensiblity that I'm amazed by. They both hear things that I'm oblivious to, usually having to do with the minutiae of timing, and they can talk about musical ideas and execute them within minutes. I'm the guy that writes (or co-writes) the songs. That doesn't call for much in the studio other than playing my guitar parts, singing the songs, and engineering when I can.

What's so delightful about making this record is that there's little question what our roles are. We've done this before. It's not a well-oiled machine, exactly, but at least it runs. It gives us the freedom to make the record without the stress of worrying about hurting one another's feelings, without wasting time with pretense. We've been traveling together for years now, and our musical tastes, though not always the same (Ben likes Wilco, Gully grew up on country), complement one another.

On top of all that, we're Christians. We all believe what these songs are saying, believe that God gave music a particular power that can bear his truth right down into the deeps of the heart, where resurrection begins. All the laughter is born out of that common joy that comes from the work of your hands building up the Kingdom.

It's also because guys, when they're in a studio together for weeks at a time, act like buffoons.

When a Captain is Away

2007-08-01T15:04:00.001-05:00

Vocals and Geetars

2007-08-01T01:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we were, as we said, Ben-less.

I felt a little out of it, probably because of the long weekend (a weekend that included seven planes, two shows, three late nights and two early morning flights). I played my guitar part for Love is a Good Thing and felt terrible about it. Everything seemed out of time and out of tune, but I finally made it through with Gully at the controls. Then he played his guitar part and I struggled to pay attention through the grogginess.

We took a break for lunch and when we got back I tried singing a few passes of the vocal on the same song, but it just wasn't happening. So today, first thing, we listened back to what we'd recorded Monday and found to our surprise that it was just fine, once again proving true the old saying, "When you feel crummy your guitars and vocals also seem crummy, though they may not be."

Then we started working on All Things New, and after a glorious lunch at Hot Diggity Dogs with some buddies (who included the infamous Eric Peters, just back from his summer at Young Life camp), set back in working on the vocals. I felt way better today than yesterday and we were able to get not one but three vocals sung and comped. (Love is a Good Thing, All Things New, and Rocket).

It was a good day's work.

We had a few special guests at the studio again today, and we'll get those edited for your viewing pleasure as soon as we can.

More tomorrow.

AP

Ben-less Overdubbing

2007-07-30T01:56:00.001-05:00

It's late Sunday night.

It was a pretty busy weekend for just two shows--one in New Orleans for a church building full of sweet folks, then a long plane trip to Denver via Nashville and Chicago, where we had the honor of opening for one of my favorites, Fernando Ortega. It was great to see him, though our hang out time was woefully short. I also had a good meeting with my editor at Waterbrook for my book, and finished Harry Potter, which pretty much wrecked me.

Tomorrow Ben has a session with the infamous Ed Cash, so Andy G. and I will be recording guitars without him. I'll try to get a little video and/or a few pics and post them tomorrow night. Thanks for reading, and for those of you who came out to the shows this weekend. We had a great time trying out a few of these new songs.

AP

Overdubbing, Days Two and Three

2007-07-27T00:45:00.000-05:00

And yet another good day of work was had by all.

We showed up at ten and decided to work on the guitars for a new song called (for now) Rocket. I'm not sure what the final title will be--I only know that I don't want my song to share a title with that Def Leppard song on Hysteria that I never understood the words to.

I wrote the song about my family's trip to Florida to see the Atlantis launch back in June. My friend Pat Forrester was a mission specialist on the shuttle and we were able to view the launch from the VIP area, 3.5 miles from the pad. It doesn't get much better than that. I had prepared myself for the thrill of it, for the utter coolness of seeing a real-live rocketship blast into space, but I wasn't prepared to be moved the way I was. When that ship heaved away from Earth in all that smoke and thunder I had tears streaming down my face from the joy of it. Part of it was because I knew someone on the ship, part of it was because I was sharing it with my wife and children, and part of it is what I explored in the new song.

Anyway, first thing this morning we spent a good hour or two working on parts. Parts are a Big Deal. I can't say enough how much difference it makes when a songwriter and his cohorts sit down and really think about what they're playing. It's easy (especially with this brand of folky-guitar music) to write a song and strum it without really thinking much about how to make the song beautiful, musically speaking. We spent those hours well, because what Andy G. came up with was just right.

We're heading out for a show in Louisiana tomorrow, then Denver the next night with my old pal Fernando Ortega. Whom I love. Thanks again for keeping up with the process, and for showing your enthusiasm with the emails and comments. I'm so thankful to be able to make this record for you, and for the Kingdom. I hope it turns out to be a blessing.

We'll see you on the road this weekend, and Monday we hit the studio again, bright and semi-early. Enjoy the video.

AP

Overdubbing Video

2007-07-25T22:10:00.000-05:00

We had another good day today. We recorded all the acoustic guitars for Don't Give Up On Me, and I sang and comped the vocal. Here's a bit of video for your viewing pleasure.

And so it begins...

2007-07-24T23:06:00.000-05:00

...the all-out war between the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix.

In other news, we began overdubs for the record today.

I usually think of overdubs as the icing on the cake, where we sit around listening to the song in its nearly completed form, dreaming about what fun sounds we can slather on top of what's already there; this was just tracking the guitars.

We showed up at Gullahorn's home studio, which is this cozy apartment-over-a-carport that's the envy of most of Andy's friends. He's got everything from a desk full of recording gear to Hatch Show Print posters for James Taylor and Sufjan Stevens at the Ryman to a remote controlled whoopee cushion.

We got there at about ten and pulled up the file for the tracking session from a week ago, and I once again marveled at the vast difference between recording now compared to just a few years ago. When I made Carried Along in 1999, it was a big deal that we were using this big clunky state-of-the-art RADAR machine. It was basically a big hard drive that cost about a zillion bucks and was much more complicated than ProTools. Now, thanks to modern technology, Ben, Andy G. and I can do everything with basically a computer and a few pre-amps in a living room. I don't know what all those knobs and stuff do, but I can get around in ProTools enough to know that it's a genius of a program.

So our weeks' worth of work was all on Ben's external hard drive, and with a few clicks we were able to listen to the tracks for I've Got News. They set up mics in the bathroom and I sat there with my geetar and spent the first three hours recording the guitar part.

I've played this song probably a hundred times, and still, playing it with a click track is nigh unto impossible for me. I always feel like I'm completely incompetent and that a real player like Gullahorn should just come in and do the durn song. When I play live, I'm always slowing down and speeding up so that I can sing it like I want, but playing to the click is different. That metronome is like potbellied, whiskery viking beating a drum, and I'm a slave chained to the oars.

Ben is a patient fella, and we took the song literally a measure at a time. I'd play until my timing was off (usually a few seconds), Ben would stop me, then we'd punch in on the next measure. Somehow, by the time we splice all those attempts together, the song sounds like I know what I'm doing.

After lunch (at a questionable establishment called Silvan Park) I doubled the guitar part. Doubling an acoustic guitar part puts some meat on its bones, gives it a chorus-type feel, as well as smooths out some of the rough parts. Usually you pan the doubled parts to the left and right speakers, but we'll see what the mixing engineer decides sounds best.

Gullahorn played his parts in about a third of the time that I did mine, because as I said, he's good. It also helps that we've been playing this song on the road for several months so we already have our parts worked out.

Finally, I sang the song. Usually the vocals come later in the game, but we decided to go ahead and get this one out of the way. I sang the vocal about eight times through, then once Ben thought I had enough to comp it together, he went home. I stayed by myself and comped the part.

Comping is when you piece the best parts of each performance into one uber-track. I listened to each phrase in each pass, grabbed the best one and slid it down to the comp track, so the final deal is lots of bits and pieces that are glued together so in the end you'd never know it just by listening.

That was our day. It's 11:27 here at the Warren, and Harry Potter is calling my name. We took some video of today's work, so I'll upload that tomorrow.

Thanks for reading,

AP

More Tracking Footage

2007-07-23T00:50:00.000-05:00

I'm back from vacation with my family, and we were planning to hit the studio tomorrow bright and semi-early, but someone had a conflict and we got the day semi-off. I'll be answering emails, making sense of my office (which still hasn't been sorted out since our move), and taking care of some details regarding my novel.

I dug up a few more clips of last week's tracking session, where we're working on a semi-new song called The Good Confession. It's a song that I've been carrying parts of around for a few years now and just managed to finish it a month or two ago. I've heard these big, epic drums and guitars and strings in my head since I wrote it, so it was satisfying to hear Paul and Matt nail it.

It's semi-one in the morning and I'm semi-tired. Have a great Monday.

The Process, Part 2

2007-07-22T02:48:00.000-05:00

Hello, friends and countrymen.

I found the rest of the iChat between Ben and I and here post it for your perusal. I'm not much of a co-writer, but it was nice in this situation because we were able to think about the song in private and share it with the other guy when we were good and ready. The few times I've ever tried writing in the same room as someone I've frozen up completely; I can barely remember a G chord.

Like online dating, this provided boundaries in which we both felt comfortable to put up a front--er, to be creative without the hindrance of insecurity.

AP

Dumblederek

2007-07-21T00:46:00.002-05:00

I present to you, dear friends, on this the night of the release of Deathly Hallows, my final case for the genuine, bewhiskered, and best Dumbledore.

A Note On My Lamentable Blogging/Assembling The Team

2007-07-19T22:06:00.000-05:00

This is Ben writing. Let me just get this out in the open. I have a blogging problem. I want every entry to feel like my magnum opus (a big penguin?) so I never end up posting anything. So here's my plan: I'm going to post a series of blogs this week with short subjects so's I don't get to intimscidated. Incidentally, I changed into Popeye about halfway through that last sentence.

So...Ahem!

On Assembling The Team:

Believe you me, anyone can make a great record. Here's how. You hire the very best people. It's that simple. Well, it's almost that simple. First you need great songs, I suppose. If your songs are terrible (and there are sadly a great many well-meaning but terrible songs in this world) you cannot make a great record. But once you find yourself sitting on a pile of finely woven songs (the work of a skilled craftsman), you are ready to hire the very best people and make a great record. Ah, but who are the very best people? Well, that depends on what you think a great record is. If you really like Wilco (and I really like Wilco), then the very best players might not be the very best players. You might do better with good collaborators who don't always play in time. People whose playing has more personality than perfection. And if you really like Hem's first record (and I really like Hem's first record) then your best tracking engineer might not be the obsessive audiophile with the huge snare sound at his fingertips. What kind of record do you want to make? Who can help you make it? You'd better think good and hard about this.

We hired Paul Eckberg to play drums. I don't have any experience tracking kit with Paul, and I've really only ever heard him play someone else's parts live. So I didn't much about what he creates in the studio. Neither did the Andys. Here's why we hired him. We knew he was a hard-hitter. AP and I figured out that part of what we love about the Rich Mullins records is that even though much of the instrumentation is what we'd call "organic," the drums are huge and bright and clear. You need a hard-hitter to get those kind of sounds. Secondly, we knew Paul would crack us up for three days straight. That kind of thing incredibly valuable to a record. Happy, comfortable people are more able to make music from their hearts. Thirdly, we knew that Paul would prepare himself for the sessions if given the opportunity and would work obsessively to make things great. Paul is a detail person. We hired him one time to sub a christmas show and he made immaculate charts (sheet music) and read them perfectly during the show. Didn't miss a beat. So, Paul Eckberg, ladies and gentlemen.

Matt Pierson, our bassist, was my call. I met Matt on one of my first Ed Cash sessions years ago and have always loved him to death. AP didn't know him from Adam, but now he loves him about as much as I do. Once again, I hired him for who he is as much as for his playing. He's the kind of guy who remembers your name and says things like "you're a dear!" Actually, I'm pretty proud of an idea I had concerning him. I called him the day before tracking just to brag about AP's songwriting. I wanted to get him excited about what he was walking into. I knew however high his expectations were, AP's songs would deliver and Matt would respond with all kinds of encouragement. I was priming the pump I guess. And it worked. Matt made AP feel like a million bucks the whole time, bragging on his songwriting. And of course, Matt in turn worked a little voodoo of his own.

Andy Hunt, our engineer, worked on Derek Webb's last record, the Ringing Bell. I've also done a bit of keyboard stuff for some of his productions over the past year. The Ringing Bell wasn't the right engineering reference for this record since the sounds are super old-school and nothing like what we're going for, but I figured he could ace the modern sounding drums, especially since I know Chris Lord Alge (the hi-fi mixing champion of our age) is his hero and because he gave me a Fall Out Boy cd as a gift. He's a funny guy as well. And he did great.

I was hired mostly for my good looks and charm, as was Gullahorn.

I wont pretend the moral of the story is especially earth-shattering. In fact, I can't figure out how to sum it up without sounding cliche. So I'll just say it. When we were putting this team together, we cared deeply about the skill of the players, but we were just as concerned with insuring that the dynamic in the studio would be friendly. Go now and do likewise.

Dumbledore

2007-07-16T18:43:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to fear that my readers might just think I'm as dumb as I look.

The Dumbledore thread is a joke. This is only a joke. A joke of the Emergency Broadcast System.

Everybody knows it was Derek Webb who played Dumbledore.

:)

AP

The Process

2007-07-16T08:27:00.000-05:00

Men and women of great renown,

This is Ben posting. I've got a short window of time to write this post, so I'll save my thoughts on our tracking sessions for later this week. For now, I'll share a story from last week that offers some insight into the writing process.

As Andrew and I carpooled home from Wednesday's session, he mentioned to me that he was still in writing mode for this record. He loved the songs we already had in the docket, but didn't feel like the record was a closed canon yet. I mentioned that I had a song-start and he asked me what it was.

I've had this song in my back pocket for maybe a year. It began when I was reading Old Testament stories to my kids one night. My kids are young, so I was reading out of one of these super-paraphrased picture Bibles. That night I read the story of the widow's oil as well as the story of Naaman, both from II Kings if you're not familiar with them. Something about telling these stories to my kids in their most simplified form really brought home the symbolism to me. The widow's oil and the Jordan river were clearly the blood of Jesus.

I knew this was a strong idea and therefore a good song-start. I came up with a third story (the fire on mount Carmel) to round out the song with three verses. The challenge, I knew, would be to bring some focus to the ideas and not overwhelm people with metaphor after metaphor. The music I had in mind would be an Americana hymn, sort of like Canaan Bound. The first and only lines I came up with (probably sometime in the weeks that followed) were:

The blood of Jesus is like the widow's oil
One drop of it is deeper than the sea (I liked the meaning of this line, but not the words of it)
bla bla bla
If it's all you have, it's all you'll ever need

The blood of Jesus is like the leper's river
bla bla
bla bla
bla

The blood of Jesus is like Elijah's fire
bla
bla
bla

I never sat down to work on the song and it remained in this form...until last week. BUM BUM BUUUUM!!!

Andrew liked the idea and said he'd get to work on it. The next day he had something, which he sang to me in the car on the way in to work. I was relieved that the music was a little rolling tune, kind of like a weepies song and that he had a first verse. We were, of course, busy all day, but both of us were chomping at the bit to work on the song that night. As I cleaned the fridge that night I was in the famous writing zone. I went over and over the ideas in my mind, coming up with line after second-rate line, then occasionally stumbling on a new idea that sent me in a fresh direction. So after a lot of thinking on both our parts, we finally met up on iChat late that night. Here is the transcript of the first half of our conversation. That's AP on the left and me (with the hoverboard icon) on the right. It is, at points, difficult to follow because of the way iChat conversations tend to go. Also, I realize that these windows appear comically small, like stonehenge in spinal tap. If you really want to read them, maybe try saving them to your desktop.

At this point, AP invites me to an audio chat, and then we text some more, but I don't have the rest of the rest of the conversation. I wish I did because we all but finished the lyric that night and were able to track the song the next day.

I submit this because I think it's a pretty true picture of how a song comes into being. I know that when I was still wishing I could write a song and had never been able to, the most helpful thing for me was to learn (from AP and Eric Peters and Laura Story, specifically) that writing is just work like anything else. It begins with a creative spark, sure, but then you just have to swing the hammer for a while.

Vacation

2007-07-16T00:02:00.000-05:00

Well, good people, I'm off for some family time.

We're kicking back in with the record next Monday, but this week I'll be in a little cabin with Jamie, the kids, and my in-laws. The jokes would be easy to make at this point, but they don't apply to this situation. I'm looking forward to some time playing Texas Hold 'em and marbles with my dad-in-law.

I just found out that the cabin has high-speed internet, which means that in my pathetic-ness I'll be waiting until the folks head to bed then I'll tiptoe out to the main room to update the blog with something. I have a few more videos from tracking last week to post and if I can think of anything else relevant to the point of this grand experiment, I'll put it up.

Thanks for reading, you guys.

AP

P.S. I'm also going to be preparing my heart and mind for the end of Harry Potter. The book comes out next week, and I'm excited and sad at the same time. I'm also sad that I'll be picturing Michael Gambon as Dumbledore instead of the late great Ed Harris.

The Special Guest

2007-07-14T15:56:00.001-05:00

I mentioned a few days ago that a special guest showed up for our second day of tracking. He ended up hanging around the studio for quite a bit and even went with us to lunch, where we bumped into a few interesting folks. It was an honor, and I sure hope he's able to visit more often.

A Picture

2007-07-14T15:51:00.001-05:00

A picture from the last day of tracking Resurrection Letters. Yup, that's the album title.

(L to R) AP, Ben Shive, Andy Hunt, Matt Pierson, Andy Gullahorn, Paul Eckberg

Tracking, Day Three

2007-07-14T00:46:00.002-05:00

Greetings, good people of the interland.

I didn't have much time to write yesterday because it was a busy one. We only tracked two songs Wednesday (Windows in the World and Don't Give Up On Me) because of all the set up. We didn't even get started until about 2 pm so getting two songs was somewhat of a surprise.

You can see in the video how we're watching Paul and Matt on a monitor. That's because in Paul's studio, the drum/bass room is downstairs. We could talk back and forth via the millions of patch cables and microphones, but being able to see the guys makes it much easier, if only psychologically. Whenever Paul needs to talk to us we can hear him pretty well through his drum mics, but Matt's bass was a direct line so he had to yell across the room so the drum mics could hear him.

We were fresh out of free channels so we couldn't set up a mic just for that, and I made some joke about walkie talkies. Then someone (I think it was Gully) suggested a baby monitor. I promptly called the Osengas (who live about fifty yards away) and appropriated theirs. (Sorry Ella and Sadie, you're on your own. Adulthood is thrust upon us, young ones.) So Matt was able to talk to us without having to yell, plus whenever he felt alone and started crying we heard and came into the room to swaddle the li'l guy.

That night on the way home I mentioned to Ben (we carpool because we live just a few minutes apart these days) that the book wasn't closed on songs for the record, so if he had any song ideas floating around to let me know. He told me about an idea involving some Old Testament stories and I perked up. I worked on it a little bit that night (until 2 am or so) and played it for him the next day. He liked it.

Yesterday (Thursday) we tracked a new song called Rocket, Invisible God, The Good Confession, and All Things New. Four songs is a lot for a day, and we didn't finish up until eight or nine. Just before we left the studio I played Ben's new song idear for Andy G. and he really liked it, which gave me a little more of a push to finish the thang. On the way home Ben and I wrote a little more, and when I dropped him off we agreed to call if there were any fresh ideas.

So that night after folding the laundry with Jamie and wrestling with the kids I signed on to my iChat account and Ben and I finished the song via the interweb. I wonder if it's the first song co-written on iChat? I saved the transcript for posterity.

Anyway, I say all that to say that today we tracked the new song, called All You'll Ever Need, then I've Got News, and Love is a Good Thing. We had a celebratory meal at Ted's Montana Grill (which involved a bison burger with bacon for me) and wrapped the tracking session.

It was a good three days. The Lord knows I've been in some stressful tracking sessions, so it was a great blessing that everyone got along well, the parts were relatively easy to find, and everybody I'm lucky enough to be working with on this album is really, really good at what they do.

Oh, and I went to see the new Harry Potter film with Ben and his brother tonight. I would give you some sort of review but the late nights this week caught up to me and I slept through about a third of the movie.

One thing is certain, though: I missed Ed Harris as Dumbledore. The new guy just doesn't cut it.

AP

Tracking Video, Day Two

2007-07-13T18:14:00.000-05:00

Proof

2007-07-13T12:35:00.000-05:00

Many people have disbelieved my post entitled "Correction," saying that I once again mistook which Richard performed the most excellent Dumbledore. I offer the following as proof and I rest my case.

AP

Video for Day One

2007-07-12T15:52:00.000-05:00

Here are a few clips I put together from yesterday's session. Andy G.'s working on his video of our special guest in the studio and we'll post it as soon as it's finished. In the meantime, please enjoy my less-funny self.

AP

Correction

2007-07-12T12:38:00.000-05:00

A correction to my limerick:

My error was painfully clear
I had the wrong Richard, I fear
I was meaning to say
That dear Albus was played
By the talented late Richard Gere.

1:04 AM

2007-07-12T01:09:00.000-05:00

It was a good day.

We started at nine o'clock and Paul and Andy Hunt set to plugging in cables and setting up the mics. Ben, Andy G. and I played through three songs for Matt Pierson. Matt's a bass player who's been around the block about eighty more times than any of the rest of us, but he's humble and encouraging and a blessing to be around.

It's so nice to find a player who's great at what they do without being cocky or aloof. Matt listened to Gully and I play Windows in the World, Don't Give Up On Me, and a brand-new song with the working title Rocket. He charted the songs and then to my delight asked us to play each one again so he could read the lyrics. This is rare for a studio musician, and I loved it because it meant that he cared about the songs.

We took a break for lunch at good ol' Baja Burrito and saw a bunch of friends and music people stuffing their faces with the best burritos in town. Andy G. is the unofficial videographer for the record, and he documented some of the process along with a very special guest. As soon as he gets the video made I'll post it for your viewing ecstasy.

After lunch I sat in a room with a mic, Andy G. did the same, and Paul and Matt were set up downstairs near each other. The songs sounded just great with these guys playing on them. Remember yesterday when I was writing about how songs usually don't sound right the first time I hear them with a rhythm section? Well this time they settled in easy. Paul's drumming was solid and tasteful, and Matt was right there with him.

Tomorrow we're hoping to get started faster and track four songs.

I leave you with two limericks I just posted on my MySpace blog:

ON THE NEW HARRY POTTER MOVIE, WHICH I HAVE NOT SEEN

My heart is afflicted and hurtin'
His absence is painful for certain
The true Dumbledore
Is with us no more
(I speak of the great Richard Burton)

ON THE NEW RECORD

You wouldn't believe all the sweat
The labor, the laughter, the debt
The drama induced
When music's produced
I'm blogging it all on the Net

Appendix M Screenshot

2007-07-10T17:55:00.000-05:00

The yard of Appendix a has been mowed. All that's left is the edging. I'm waiting on the licensing for a couple of songs (Sun on the Moon, by James Taylor and The Color Green by Rich Mullins), and if/when I get the legal stuff straightened out the record will be off to the printer. I think we'll start pre-orders at the end of this week.

Here's a sneak peek at the welcome screen of the enhanced content:

As for the album, tomorrow's the big day. I feel nothing but excitement. The songs are ready to go, the details are lined up for tracking, and all that's left is a prayer meeting tonight with Ben and breakfast in the morning.

When we were making Love and Thunder with Steve Hindalong and Derri Daugherty we met at a place called Five and Diner in Brentwood for breakfast most mornings of the tracking process. Steve said he liked to get everybody together hanging out for a little while before they headed into the cave and set to work, that it helped with camaraderie and focus. Also, omelettes are nice.

So tomorrow morning I'm meeting Ben at the ol' Cracker Barrel for some fattening scrumptiousness before we press the record button.

In answer to eiszoe's question about tracking, the answer is a scratch track. You find the tempo for the song and usually you play into a mic while the bass player and drummer are recording. You're recording your scratch vocal/guitar at the same time, and hopefully by the third take or so you've performed it well enough for them to follow you and you can come back to the control room to listen to their additional takes.

It always feels weird hearing an acoustic song with drums for the first time. This is when you hash out the particular pattern for the drummer, because as you know there are about 50 ways to play each song, rhythm-wise. I have to place a lot of trust in both the producer and the drummer at this point because they're hearing the big picture in ways that I sometimes can't. I remember with Pillar of Fire I was worried about what Ken Lewis was playing on the kit because it didn't groove the way I wanted it to. He kept telling me to wait for the percussion. When he finally got around to perc he filled in holes he had been leaving open with the kit and voilá, there was the groove. Lesson: always trust Ken Lewis.

Most times my gut reaction is that the songs feel all wrong with the drums, like they feel too fast or too funky or something, but the next day they sound just fine. Tempo has also been an issue for me. Ben and I have sworn to speed up each song by about two clicks from where we think it should be. Several songs on the last few records have felt a teeny bit too slow, and I think the reason is because I had a hard time singing them faster. I like to enunciate my words and make sure the lyric is discernible, and when the tempo is too fast it bugs. But some songs felt way too fast when we recorded them and once the record was finished they felt too slow. So two clicks faster this time. At least.

So John, you have to get used to playing your song with a click, then record a scratch vocal and guitar to it, if possible while the drums and bass are recording. It feels more natural that way.

It's also a good idea to make the scratch as good a performance as possible, even though you won't be keeping it; all the other musicians will be playing to it until you get your final vocal/guitar done, and if it's bad you end up feeling lousy and apologizing over and over. If it's good, they can focus on the song and maybe even get excited about it.

That's all for now.

AP

Busy Work

2007-07-09T21:26:00.000-05:00

Today was a busy one.

I was up until about three last night working on Appendix M. I'm trying to finish it up by Tuesday night so that Wednesday I can focus completely on tracking. Last night I was working in ProTools, editing and mixing a little guitar/vocal/accordion version of a song I wrote with Ben called Further Proof.

Friday after the INO guy left Andy's studio we threw up a mic, which sounds gross and impossible, and I played through the song in one take. Since Ben was there and there happened to be an accordion on hand he played through two passes of the song and we were done. It doesn't get much easier than that, ladies and germs. So last night I had to open the files on my computer, get the mix right, EQ it all (though I haven't a clue what I'm doing) and add the song to the list.

I wanted Further Proof to be on this Appendix because it's another example of a song that I like but that won't really fit on a regular album. Ben had the idea for the song and mentioned it to me back when we were about to start on Love and Thunder. I finished the song and realized during a Weaklings meeting that it didn't really belong on L&T. So what do you do with a song like that? That's right. Appendix M.

I woke up this morning and worked on editing the journals and writings that'll be on M. That's been the most tedious part of the process by far, and not only tedious but downright depressing. I've got a lot to learn about the written word, but some of the journals I posted on my website years ago were just embarrassing. It was a relief to see that my writing got (a little) better over the years.

Meanwhile, Ben met at Paul Eckberg's studio with Andy Hunt, our tracking engineer. It's important to get your ducks in a row before tracking because it's an expensive waste of time if you realize the first day that you don't have enough headphones or preamps or whatever. The clock is ticking, and the musicians aren't free. So Ben, Paul, and Andy compared notes and figured out exactly what gear Paul already had and what they'd need to supplement a full tracking session.

About Paul. He's awesome. When he's not on the road with Chris Rice or Mark Schultz or whatever famous person he's playing for, he goes to my church. Paul is like no other dude I've ever met in that he's delightfully funny and hopelessly type-A at the same time. The first few times you're around him and his computer you're treated to a long routine of bad demos he's compiled, mp3's of funny voicemail messages he's gotten from friends, and (my personal favorite) his montage music. He found music that sounds just like the music from an 80's movie montage, like where the characters have to get a float ready in time for the big parade so that the Homecoming Queen with Big Hair will meet the Nerd with a Big Heart. As Paul plays the song he describes what happens during the montage. While it may not seem hilarious now, if you're ever lucky enough to experience the Eckberg Montage Routine, you'll see what I mean. You may lose weight from the laughter.

So that's what happened today. I'm off to work on some more Appendix M mixes, then I have to find somebody to master it, like, tomorrow. Not sure how that'll happen, but it must. It must, I tell you.

Thanks for reading, folks.

AP

Making a New Record

2007-07-08T16:27:00.000-05:00

So here it is, ladies and germs.

I'm going to try my very best to update daily the progress of the making of the new record. I have a title in mind that I'll reveal once I have a chance to talk with the Captains about it, but in the meantime I'll call it Doug.

Doug has been on my mind for about a year. I decided early this year that Summer 2007 was high time to make a new record since The Far Country was released way back in 2005. In the meantime I released Appendix A independently and Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies with Randall Goodgame, and while those projects were fun for me (especially Slugs), I was ready to enter the cave and find another collection of stories and songs that I'd consider a Real Album.

Enter Doug.

In my composition notebook I'd been scribbling notes and song titles and journal entries, my usual process of excavation, and was a little worried that I might not have the songs in time. This worry was gnawing at me even two weeks ago. But this past weekend I played a show with my buddy Randall Goodgame, and on the long drive home I got out a guitar and played him all the new songs. He was his usual encouraging self, and for the first time I felt really excited, like maybe I had the album after all.

The next day, last Monday, I drove to Ben Shive's house to begin preproduction.

John from my messageboard asked about what goes into this part of the process. I'll just tell you in a nutshell what Ben and I did that day. I broke out the list of songs, Ben got out his Mac, and I played through each of the potential songs on my guitar.

We would talk about what kind of instrumentation we heard on the song, like whether or not it would have a full drum kit or just percussion. We would reference songs by other artists (in the case I'm thinking of, we played some Police, Springsteen, and Patty Griffin) to make it easier to convey what each of us heard a song feeling like. (In the studio it's common to describe things as "springsteeny" or "beatlesy" or "jamestaylory".)

We'd decide whether or not a certain song should modulate to a different key, we'd decide whether or not the key I wrote the song in was the best key for my voice. Ben would tap out a tempo with a little widget on his computer and I'd try playing the song to the metronome to see if the tempo felt right.

We also discussed arrangements. Ben, Andy and I have been performing several of the songs for a while now, so the arrangements are already hashed out. With other songs, though, we needed to figure everything from background vocals to how many beats to hold a transitional chord before landing on the chorus.

The next day we met at Ben's house again and further fine-tuned the arrangements by recording the songs. I sang into Ben's computer mic and record it with GarageBand, a simple Mac program. It didn't need to be a fancy recording; we just needed to be able to listen to the song objectively, plus it helped to have the pressure of performance, even if the performance was for a computer.

The rest of our time was spent figuring out logistics. We scheduled our tracking days at Paul Eckberg's studio. We tracked down a guy named Andy Hunt to engineer. We found a bass player named Matt Pearson. Andy H. and Matt are both guys that Ben's worked with, and Paul has been on the road with us several times over the last few years. He's a good friend and a great drummer.

("Tracking" refers to the recording of the bass and drums. It's the biggest and probably most expensive part of recording, and if the tracking isn't tight and solid, the rest of the record will stink accordingly.)

Finally, we met Friday morning at Andy Gullahorn's studio to rehearse for a kind of a showcase for INO Records. It's a great label, according to Sara Groves, Derek Webb, the Caedmon's Call guys, and others I've talked to who have worked with them. I've been without a label for a few years now and felt compelled to at least pitch Doug to INO to see if it's something they'd like to carry. Recording these last few albums independently hasn't been without drama, but it's been really rewarding. In many ways I prefer it to the label world. Even so, having a label in your corner can be rewarding too, as long as the fit is right and the company is good.

So he came by the office and sat on the couch while the Captains and I played through most of the songs. He took the lyrics with him to mull it over. I hope it works out, but if not, the last few years of independence have shown me that things will be fine, one way or another. God has proven himself faithful.

I'm finishing up Appendix M over the next two days and we start tracking Wednesday. I'll write more tomorrow. I apologize for the tedium of this post. I won't have so much catching up to do next time, so it'll be shorter and (hopefully) more entertaining.