Body Wanted

I have been reading Mere Christianity for some time now. Let's just say I have been distracted and now I am determined to finish it. I find that I like the way C. S. Lewis puts the thoughts together. For those who don't know, he started out as an atheist and over time realized that God could not be explained away. He argues that there is proof there is a God.

So that is a VERY brief background, and it really does not do any justice to the man. I want to get to what I read last night. Let me put 2 paragraphs here exactly as they appear. Also realize that you do not have the benefit of the context since you are not currently reading it, but trust me this all makes sense.

"When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others -- not because he has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.

You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred -- like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens."

He goes on to suggest that the only real adequate instrument for learning about God is the entire Christian community. So we need to be a community and a body of believers. We need that fellowship and camaraderie to help to reveal God in and through each other. We need to go be the church where there is no church. That made perfect sense to me last night. Wow. People everywhere are deffinitely seeing things through a dirty lens.

A pic from the road

Here is a picture I snapped during the acoustic portion of our show.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

AWANA Summit '09

Hey all. DDB is in Greensboro, NC this week. We are providing the worship for their Summit 2009 event. We are capturing some live sounds for a forth coming DDB project. Part of my station looks like this. I have a Dell and a Mac, a mixer, and some MOTU mic preamps.

It's 3am...who do you want to get that phone call?

It IS 3am right now in the Central Time Zone. I am in the Eastern time zone however. Cassi and I just finished up a weekend of shows in Crescent Springs, Kentucky. Cassi did an excellent job. I did ok. It was a nice distraction after going through what we did with her grandmother this week. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers all of you who sent them.

I called a wrong number a few minutes ago. I thought I was calling the guitar player who played with us this weekend. I instead called his wife. It was after 2 am her time. Oops. Sorry.

When I get a picture of the shows we did I will post them. I got to play with some old friends. Derek Williams and Joe Stevens played these shows with us. We got to hang out with their wives too. It was somewhat of a reunion for us.

Peace

Not since college...

...have I stayed up for more than 24 hours. I got up yesterday at around 9:30 am and did not sleep until 5 pm tonight. So I was up for 31.5 hours. But I just took a 2 hour nap. That should be ok right?

As we get older it is harder to do this. Unfortunately this happens to us musicians every now and again. I was not up for a gig, my sleep patterns are just messed up.

So is it that as we get older we just can't do what we used to? Or is it that BECAUSE we did what we did when we were younger, THAT is what ruined us and made us feel old? If we would have taken care of ourselves would we feel so old some times? You hear people say that pain, hurting, etc is part of getting old. Well, it may not be. I need to start taking care of myself.

2hours of sleep! Yeah!!!

Peace

I am Looking at You.

This is what it looks like for us on stage. There are only 4 of us on stage and hundreds and sometimes thousands of you out there.

It is a little bit different perspective.

It is always better when the people are satisfied that you brought the rock. I see at least 4 people that think that the rock had been "brought-en."

There are also some people that fall into the category that others talk about when they say "you can't please 'em all."

Peace

Recording

I was going through some pics on the camera and putting them on the computer.

Here is my buddy Derek doing a session we had at SAE in Nashville. He was using this sweet Les Paul with a Bigsby. He has some great sounding gear. He is one of those tone Nazi's. Always looking to make it better.

I used my '95 Warwick Corvette FNA direct into my Avalon U5. What a sweet sound that is.

Peace

Something a little embarrassing happened to me

So are you a sick individual that saw the title of this post and decided that you had to see what dorky Bryan did? "Let's see if we can kick him while he is down!" Right? It is ok I would have done the same thing.

I teach guitar and bass lessons and one of my students wanted me to chart a song for her. The first one was a Kelly Clarkson song. At first run through I liked the tune and started charting it. Then she decided that, "oh wait there is a brand new Miley Cyrus song I have to learn." I am not a Miley Cyrus fan, to be fair, I am not her target audience.

The embarrassing part is coming. I started listening and charting it. I actually liked it. It seems to be a really good song. It is called The Climb.

Enjoy, or not.

Peace

I had the crud

I have been battling different sicknesses for about 4 weeks. I am finally feeling better. I will try to get caught up on all of my reading and writing. I actually have been writing songs with a friend for the past few weeks. It is nice to have a creative outlet for that.

I am looking forward to playing with my "old band" at church this week. I go to LifePoint Church and we used to have set bands. Now we have about 4 bands worth of musicians that rotate through our different venues. It is always nice to get back and play with old friends.

Peace

DDB is out on the road again

Hey,

We are in Cumming, GA this weekend at First Redeemer Church. We are doing a youth event called U-Turn. It is middle and high school age students. Tonight we did our first session and it went pretty well. We have been using Shure PSM 200s for our in-ears, but tonight was the first time we used our new PSM 600s. They sound worlds better.

The students and speaker make it seem like it is going to be a good weekend. After we are done here we pack up and head to Lafayette, GA Sunday night at Second Baptist Church for an evening of worship with their entire church.

It really is amazing that I find myself facilitating worship as a job. Sometimes it seems weird to be doing it as a job, but to travel and be away from home takes a financial and emotional commitment. I guess that is the trade off. We would not be able to spend so much time traveling if we had regular 9-5 jobs we had to work around. To this point though, I do make sure that I get volunteer time in at my home church as often as I can. I don't want ALL of my time that I am on stage to be "paid" time. It just would feel too dirty. Does that make sense?

The facilities at the church and host home are amazing. I will post pictures probably tomorrow (later today in some time zones).

Peace