Did any of you see this? Thoughts?

I thought it would be cool to put up some pictures and video from the making of Adore and Tremble…..and maybe even talk about why we picked such a weird name. But before that I thought I would show you one of my favorite things about the Adore and Tremble Project. My one-of-a-kind Adore and Tremble tee shirt. My sister in law, who is one of the funniest people I know, made this shirt for me for the night of the release. What I tried to do with music, Natalie did with tee shirt design…..if anything says Adore and Tremble it’s obviously Tina the llama and the Liger from Napoleon Dynamite.

Last Friday morning I had the chance to grab coffee with Andrew Bryant. Andrew is an amazing photographer from the Raleigh area, who I’ve known of for a little while, but hadn’t had the chance to meet. So it was fun that we were able to carve out some time to hang out and talk about bands and artists that we’re both into and about how cool it is  to see Raleigh becoming a welcoming place for artists to live. We’re also thinking about working together on some stuff in the future.  It was an encouragement and challenge to me to see how he serves people through his art/work.  He’s got a great site where you can see his work and blog as well.  So go check it out when you have time.

Friday evening, Mike, James, Ben and I all traveled to Wendell to play at a coffee house type thing called First Friday. We haven’t ever played non-full band versions of the Adore and Tremble songs, so it was a lot of fun to try playing the songs in different ways.

From left to right, Mike, James, Me, Ben.

This picture cracks me up. I took it Saturday morning.  It’s the line that formed in front of the library on Saturday morning. A line to get into the library on Saturday? Really? I guess I shouldn’t laugh too hard…I was right there with them.Danielle and Bennett were out of town for the weekend, so I had time to go sit in the quiet study room at the library….I love the quiet study room. I didn’t hang out in the quiet study room that much before we had a baby, but now when I have the time, I love to go the quiet study room.

I also love the chairs in the quiet study room. Little bit of rock….little bit of groove in the seat. Very nice.

About a month ago I contacted Aaron Niequist, and asked him if he would consider reviewing my CD. Aaron is a really accomplished musician and worship leader. He has served at both Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, Il) , and Mars Hill Church (Grandville, MI) as a worship leader. He was kind enough to say some really nice things about the Adore and Tremble. You can read his post in the blog section of his website.

When you have time go check out his blog and look around at his other posts. He has a CD which came out yesterday. I can’t wait to listen to the whole thing….the clips I’ve heard on his website and myspace sound great. He’s written a bunch of corporate songs that have this really indie rock feel to them….i’m excited to see this type of sound invading corporate worship music. You can buy his CD at cdbaby.com.

Rebecca Schlieman, a friend of ours, and an incredibly talented photographer, took some pictures of me last night for some advertising we’re doing soon. Rebecca and her husband Joel were kind enough to keep shooting through the rain and all my blue steel mishaps.

When you have a chance go check out her blog here

I’ll post the final product when we get them.

Most of the students that come to PCM, are from the Raleigh area (NC State, Peace, Meredith, Wake Tech). UNC and Duke are both about a 25-30 minute drive from Providence. So when we do have students coming from that far away to be a part of PCM on Sunday mornings, we do our best to show them that we appreciate their commitment to us. Tonight that was in the form of music, Bible study, and chick-fil-a number 1 combos.

The UNC students from PCM have a discipleship group that meet Wednesdays on campus, at 5:30, and then they all go eat together at Lenoir Dining Hall. Dave, Chip and I were able to be a part of their group tonight, for the first time this year….and had a great time.

Have you gmail users seen this today? My friend Nick showed it to me this morning. Gmail is rolling out a new feature that will allow you to pre-date emails. Like, if you forgot to send something that was supposed to be to someone yesterday, you can pre-date the email, send it to them, and it will appear in their inbox as coming on the day it was due. The crazy thing, according to them, is that it will show up as a read item. The only catch is that you only get 10 a year. Itsn’t that funny?

So do you think its an April fools joke? Nick seems to think so. I think I would agree as well. What a great April fools joke to pull.

I read this article in Paste Magazine the other day, and found it to be really thought provoking…maybe more so for those of us who grew up in the church. I can’t say that I fully agree with his approach to art….but it’s a great discussion to start. I’d love to hear what you think about what he has to say here.

Go check out His stuff here and here.

I grew up in church. For the first 15 years of my life or more, I was singing church tunes every Sunday and Wednesday. By the time I got to high school, I had learned all the songs and was playing along on the guitar. And it’s clear to me that this intimate knowledge of church songs influenced what kind of songwriter I am. When I first started realizing this fact I was paralyzed with horror I wanted to hide all the stuff I was embarrassed by. But I just had to say to myself, “Dude, you are who you are, and you have to be cool with it and own it.” I mean, until I was 14, I was only allowed to listen to Christian music. For me, the purpose of music back then was much different than it is now. What I understood about music, from the culture I grew up in, was that its purpose was to tell people about religion, to “spread the good news.” So it was pretty utilitarian. Officially, no music existed for its own sake. It existed for the sake of proselytizing. Part of the reason why my lyrics are so literal and concrete is because of this situation in my childhood. As I was developing as a songwriter, I had a lot of conflict with this idea. Even in the early years of Pedro the Lion, I was struggling, trying to understand the purpose of music. But its also the reason why I gravitated towards bands like Fugazi or U2, who-for lack of a better term-had something to say. That appealed to me because that’s what I understood about music. Then, from there I slowly learned how to get excited about music for its own sake, and not as a tool for some other end.

I was pretty sick yesterday, so I had some time to watch the movie version of The Kite Runner. I had forgotten how much I love this story. I read the Kite Runner about two years ago, and it was absolutely one of the best books that I’ve ever read. I was in Central Asia while I was reading it, so my surroundings probably amplified what I was reading…but, regardless, it’s a great book.

The picture of redemption is so vivid in the book… And even the movie does a great job portraying that. As always, they had to cut out some things from the book to make it work for a movie. But overall it felt true to what I had read years ago.

I’m not one of those people who makes a big deal about reading the book before you see the movie version. But I really would recommend doing that for The Kite Runner. There are tensions between the father and the son that I think make the book land with such potency. The tensions are still present in the movie…but not as much as in the book….I’ll shut up here, so I don’t ruin anything.

But, a word of warning: It’s a difficult book to read and movie to watch. A lot of terrible things happened when the Taliban had control in Afghanistan, and, although the book is fictional, Khaled Hosseini paints a picture of the injustices that happened during this time.

If you’ve read the book and seen the movie I’d love to know what you think about the two.

Enjoy.