07.23.05 - greenville, PA

"what do you think about me coming to greenville?" - action figures

the Jamhouse was my first stop on this here tour. got to meet steve mokris - my percussionist for the tour. he responded to an ad I put on craigslist just 2 weeks ago - I love technology....

cassie, john, and martin were mighty hospitable - helping us load in, load out, serving us yummy coffee, popcorn and just being nice folks. steve and me slammed through 2 hours of music - much of it improvised since steve had never heard the songs before.

afterward, we had a competition on one of those playstation dance games where you have to stomp on the arrows at the right time. kylie jo sat in for me and beat the snot out of jodi. then cassie from the jamhouse made all our jaws drop by doing a dance that involved both (player 1 and player 2) dance pads!



me and steve.















the dance-off - sorry so blurry - new camera phone.

cedar point

jodi and I spent our 3 year anniversary at cedar point - and it rocked! we went with friends Shana and Eric (aka "the honeymooners"). here are some highlights.

i went on all the coasters, but i wimped out on the ocean motion.

their newest ride, the Top Thrill Dragster goes from zero to 125mph in about 6 seconds, then shoots you vertical for about 400 feet. this was the longest wait, but the shortest ride.

i've now perfected the art of listening for jodi's scream - i could be 100 yards away and still know when she's on a particular ride.

my favorite was probably the raptor.

good times and a great anniversary. the tour starts tonight. i get to meet my drummer (we found each other on craigslist) today too. stay tuned....

eric, shana, and jodi - note the demon drop in the background.

jodi in the hotel lobby.

taxi mishap

here I sit, waiting for my taxi to take me to the airport.

I made a reservation yesterday for a pick up service - the best price I could find - to come get me at 5:40am. when they were 10 minutes late, I called to check my reservation, and they had me downfor 5:40PM. crap!

so I'll be cutting it close to make my flight, but I'm sitting here casually blogging b/c it'll be a few minutes before a cab can pick me up.

today is the 3rd year anniversary of my marriage to an incredible woman. can't believe how the time has gone by so fast. we're having such a blast doing this marriage thing together. the Big Guy definitely knew what he was doing when he made us run into each other over and over again at camp.

god, please help us to stay strong - help me not to screw things up - and help me to see all her dreams and hopes through.

mandolins, cankles, and nogales

this weekend, we took my sis' and her family pretty much everywhere in Arizona. grand canyon, native reservations, flagstaff, slide rock, sedona....

we discovered that "aunt jodi" might have cankles - all the native american anklets she tried on (except for one) fit a little snug for some reason.

did worship sunday morning at crosspointe with stand-up bass and mandolin. Kurt had some tasty mandolin licks on our version of "fairest lord jesus."

then yesterday, we rented a van and drove down to nogales, mexico. first time over the border since we've been in AZ - and it was quite an experience. we honed our bargaining skillz. I bought a couple of "imported" cigars. we were awestruck by the choices of prescription drugs that were available. and I gave a begging, barefoot child the last 1/4 of my water bottle.

phoneless

yesterday my cell phone was stolen.

i accidentally left it out on our table at the wave pool where we took my sister and her family. we're guessing it was a young kid - a bunch of them came on two busses - and an adult would know that it wasn't worth very much.

not worth much to anyone else but me, that is.

so we'll see how well I am at detaching myself from such things. from technology, instant communication, and my whole phonebook at the touch of a button. funny how we become used to these conveniences.

sprint has been pretty good about it though. after first calling my own phone (got my voicemail - that's how i know it's stolen because I left it on and fully charged about an hour before i realized it was gone), i called to suspend it so no one could call from it. they told me no one had made any phone calls from it. then, they enabled a feature on my account that would allow me some $$ toward a new phone since it wasn't insured.

big oops...

i pulled a nice fat no-no last night. cancelled a gig - in my mind - without letting the venue owner in on my little decision.

see i was scheduled to play at into the bean with Sara McKinnon last night. my work called me late in the week and was going to give my shift away to someone else if i couldn't stay till 2am. i took the extended shift and told Sara about it - but forgot to tell luis (manager of into the bean) about it. i ended up at work, suddenly realizing it was already saturday, and not having the phone number or the time to call from work.

luis was expecting me. some folks from my church even showed up. and wahba/sara were nowhere to be found. don't think we'll be playing at into the bean any time soon.

really smooth. i'm such a screw-up sometimes.

wife carrying competition

apparently this family has won five times. jodi, what do you say?

storytellers worship

yesterday our church congregation was my collective lab rat for a pretty successful experiment.

using paper "ballots" with a list of all our songs, and a few questions at the bottom, we had them submit their favorite worship songs over the past few weeks. we then took a whole sunday morning service to play only the songs they picked. no sermon, just their songs. before each song, we either had the individuals come up and introduce the songs, or we had their comments projected so the congregation could read them.

here were my observations:

• no one chose any slow, worshipful songs! we had to take 1 1/2 songs that weren't really 'worship ballads' and slow them down so that we could have some prayer and communion time.
• some people's comments were enough to open up the rest of us to start liking a few songs we wouldn't have necessarily called our favorites.
• people were surprisingly concise. no verbose drivel. not even from our pastor!
• when I asked myself, "have I seen Flo (flow) today?" the answer was a resounding yes.
• there's a rich history of worship songs that Daniel (our former worship pastor, now youth pastor) used to do regularly, to which our community still attaches themselves. props to Daniel for being such a big part of their Christian memory. and shame on the rest of us for neglecting it.
• the single most requested song by anyone in our church was matt redman's "blessed be your name." although I don't particularly attach myself to the song, I should consider using it more - it's become an undeniably important song for the Church.

i'm learning that worship songs are really just... songs. they aren't very much on their own without the healing, joyful, hope-inspiring power of the Spirit.

singing with angels - the vibe

tonight I got to lead worship at praxis church - the church that meets at our building on sunday nights - the church where carl, my bass player usually leads worship when he isn't off getting married.

i'm sitting here trying to think of a way to explain certain moments of tonight's worship. but words seem to fall short. there's a feeling - well much more than a feeling - a vibe - that fills the room when a small number of people (in this case, 30-40) sing to the Lord and suddenly sound like more than just 30-40 people.

it's as though, even though we all start off singing simultaneously, our spirits intertwine with the holy spirit and we're bound together. then, the more we become open to the spirit's presence, and connected together in that same spirit, the more you sense the vibe - you actually hear it and feel it. i've experienced it a few times before in small groups and i guess i'm becoming more aware of it.

i'm also getting hooked on the vibe.

although a) i only believe in "corporate worship" on earth to a certain extent and b) i haven't been to heaven yet, i'm catching more of a glimpse of what it must be like to sing with angels.

the website

lots of people have asked me what I did to get my website going since I started. the truth is, I did it CHEAP... like less than $150... and that's crazy cheap. here's what I did:

• I started with a template like these or these. mine cost $120. if you're on a tight budget and can't spring the $2000 for a custom website, you can't afford not to do this. mine came with a framework in which to set up an online Paypal "store", a photo gallery, and an mp3 download area. google something like 'musician website template' (they make ones for photographers, artists, churches, etc). lots of them include flash, and are totally customizable (is that a word?).
• I got dirt cheap hosting. $1.99/month for unlimited memory/email and 25meg of bandwidth. found this one by doing an ebay search for web hosting - about a zillion auctions come up.
• I downloaded free versions of 1st page 2000 (html editing program) and cute FTP home (to upload your website to your host).
• I learned html. you should too. it's easy and get's you pretty far in updating your own content. I keep the phone numbers of a couple of web-design pals handy - just in case I need their advice on a little trick to do in html code. next, I need to conquer Flash.
• I keep it updated. at least once a week, I update something - the news section, new pictures, upcoming gigs, new songs, a new feature (like my recently added "previous gigs" section). updating a lot keeps people and search engine spiders interested.
• I actually look at it once in a while. there's always room for improvement.

any questions, class?