LW Christmas Updated Update

It has been fun hearing different people talk about the songs they like on the Christmas recording. Women and young children seem to particularly like Away In A Manger. The teens and twenty somethings like O Come Emmanuel. And a lot of the 40 and 50 somethings seem to really like It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. It’s interesting to see what strikes different people.

I’ve listened to the recording now about 7.5 million times. I had to play each song over and over and over and over and over again while recording, mixing and mastering with the other guys. And I’ve had in on in the car. As of today, I think I like listening to Coventry Carol the most. It might be a different one tomorrow. But Coventry Carol turned out like a little chamber orchestra piece, in a way. It’s simple, but I think it’s cool how it turned out.

Some people have asked if In the Bleak Midwinter is an original song. It’s not. Coventry Carol and In the Bleak Midwinter are both standard carols in England/Europe. A friend of mine is from Scotland and he said he grew up singing those songs as a child. The only original music on the recording is By The Fire, which is based on a poem by Longfellow, and the bridge to Away In A Manger. Everything else is a traditional piece from the Public Domain.

It was very hard to get done, but now that it’s done and I get to sit in the car and listen to it while I do other things, it’s kind of fun to listen to it. You sort of forget that it’s your own thing. It just becomes its own thing. The music of the spheres.

Anyhow. It’s been doing well for the church. It’s helping a lot. And our musicians are pretty proud of it, which makes me happy. Now they’re talking about recording a worship set of original songs for summer, and then another Christmas one for next year. It makes me a little tired to even think of doing it, but we’ll see.

I’ll mention again that you can get the download for a donation of 10 bucks or more at the church website. If you want a CD you’ll have to contact me. We appreciate, seriously, how kind and generous everyone has been with this. You are a wonderfully amazing people out there.

Yep. This is the Link.

Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Like Hotcakes

I thought I’d share the good news that the LivingWater Christmas Vol. 01 CD and download is on it’s second print run today. Yep. We’ve gone through the first print, so if you want one of those, you’ll have to get one from the second print run because they are identical. No special editions here. Or you can get the identical digital download on our church website with a donation of 10 or more smackaroos.

Also, I’m happy to say that no one has had the courage to tell me they hate the recording yet. Or perhaps they are just being kind. Either way, I’m happy not to know if you hate it.

But I think you’ll like it if you don’t already. There’s a lot of different kinds of things on there. No two songs are really alike. Different styles, different singers, different musicians. It’s a cornucopia of music, you could say, if you use the word “cornucupia.” It’s not as common as it used to be.

Anyway. IF you want in on the fun, here’s the link to the download. If you want it on CD, pick it up at the church or contact me through the comments here or on Facebook or on the church website and we can figure something out.

All proceeds go to the church to help us find a home. I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a good deed of some kind. So, thanks. And don't forget to like us on Facebook.

YES, THIS IS THE LINK TO THE DOWNLOAD!

© LW Publishing 2011

Where Are The Chestnuts?

People are asking questions about the new LW Christmas Vol. 1 recording. Here are some answers.

1. No, it is not me singing on all those songs. (And ha ha, by the way.) Those are women on some of those songs. My friends Katie and Janel sing the ones that sound like women are singing them. And the songs that are sung by a guy with a really great, very cool voice with a bit of an edge: that’s my young Padawan Jereme. He’s the bomb. But thanks for thinking I sing like a woman. And thanks for thinking I could possibly sing as well as Jereme. But I can’t.

2. We don’t have that “chestnuts” song on the recording, and many others that we might have liked to do, because we had to do original or public domain songs to avoid copyright infringement issues. We’re going to look into getting license to do some other things next year, but we thought the limitation actually helped us to produce a Christmas recording that was a little less trite than is usual these days.

3. Yes, that “first song” is one of mine. The song “By the Fire” is an original, based on an old poem by Longfellow. Another song writer did this with another Longfellow poem. It’s the song “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day,” which we did not record, by the way. And the bridge on “Away In A Manger” is also original. Everything else on the recording is traditional Christmas stuff arranged by our team of musicians.

4. The cover artwork for the recording was done by a local artist named Jim Pappas. He doesn’t have a website yet, but he’s wanting to get one going. If he does, I’ll let you know about it on my blog.

5. Yes, there are a lot of different musicians on different songs. We got as many involved from the church as we could with the time we had. And the kids singing on Jingle Bells are from our church. I used a hand held field recorder to record them at church then dropped the track into the mix, along with recording some of the kids in the studio. We plan to get even more of our people on the next one next year (if we do one, which we might). It was a pretty big group of people overall laying down tracks and getting it finished. They all rock. Mightily.

6. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.


Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

LW Christmas Vol. 01

I know, I haven't been very vigilant with the blog. I haven't lost interest, I've just been otherwise occupied.

I've been doing my first full production job for a Christmas recording. Using my small studio set up, I and a group of intrepid ar teests have been producing a set of songs to help raise money for our church. And it's finally FINISHED!! It is a grass roots production, but not as grass roots as you might think. We've got CD's and there is a download option at our church website. It's a ten dollar donation thing.

In case you don't realize it yet, today's blog is the first of many shameless promotions that I'm going to be involved with over the next few weeks.

Hundreds of hours of time and labor and kindness have been poured into this thing at zero cost for our church (dollar wise) and every single penny we manage to gather is going to the church to help get a decent building fund up and running. An artist/art teacher at the church did the cover art for us. Some of our musicians helped me get the mastering done. A bunch of people put their voices and musical ability on it, and we even have the kids from church singing on it. If we do another one, we're going to get more people on it next time. We just ran out of time this year.


Like I said, it's to help raise much needed funds. If you want a copy on CD you'll have to contact me, or better yet, show up at church and get one there. The easiest thing would be to get the download, which you will find at the following link on our church website:

LIVINGWATER CHRISTMAS V1

I thank you in advance for your support, and I hope you enjoy the songs. Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Missing Surprises

 I recently read a movie review. It was like many modern film reviews. It was annoying. I’m not talking about whether or not the reviewer liked the movie. I’m talking about this trend to do a long Cliffs Note on a movie, followed by a short, perfunctory explanation about how the movie did or didn’t “impress” the reviewer in the way the reviewer wanted the film to. They can tell you if they liked it. They can tell you what kind of bugged them about the film. But they can't much tell you why.

This is the trend. It's been going on for a while. Out of six paragraphs, four are spent recounting the film, followed by a mindless blurb about whether or not the movie made a good impression. Was it too gory or too silly or too whatever? Theme? What's that? Cinematography? What's that? Subtext? What's that?

And the teasers for the films are the same. Mindless. These advertisements for the movies that reveal the entire, tired, plot in 30 seconds, leaving you no real reason to actually see the movie. Gotta review that movie. Don’t have much to say. Guess I’ll spend a bunch of time spoiling the thing with a pointless description of the plot so I can get this review over with and get to what I really want to do.

The reviewers spend more time talking about the plot of the film than the merits/weaknesses of the film. It happens all the time these days. And they seem to be operating under the assumption that you won’t understand their review unless, what? Unless you’ve already seen the movie? Which you haven’t? So they have to tell you all about the movie so you can understand their shallow review?

And books are the same these days. A lady gave my wife some books she thought I would like. Some paperback “thrillers” which is a genre spearheaded by Tom Clancy and John Grisham. Some people call them “suspense” novels. Military thrillers. Medical suspense.Whatever. So I have this “thriller/suspense” book in my hand, I’m looking it over, and on the back it says this:

“As Tony and Anne begin to peel back the layers of Marissa Fordham’s life, they find a clue fragment here, another there. And just when it seems Marissa has taken her secrets to the grave, they uncover a fact that puts Anne and Haley directly in the sights of a killer: Marissa Fordham never existed.”

Oh. Really. And this element was so non essential to the enjoyment of this “suspense” story and how it played out that we could reveal it on the back of the book? And how long do we have to wait for the people in the story to find out this little tidbit? Well. Even if it's unimportant to the plot, it's dumb to print what even looks like a major plot point on the cover of a book. Especially a “suspense” book. It makes you feel like there’s not going to be any suspense.

It seems to me that the people promoting these movies and books and such either think we’re really stupid and need to be led along on a string, or they are the ones who are really stupid and somehow, unaccountably, don’t realize that they are ruining the experience for a lot of us. But, whichever it is, there is definitely some stupid going on somewhere.

Anyway. Bye now, and...

Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Piles

I’ve been very busy. Nuttily busy. Life makes piles, miles and miles of piles, and I try to clean them up.

Verily.

Working on a big music project. Trying to get some preplanning for my work and family done for the coming months. Trying to do waaaaaay overdue cleaning and organizing. Trying to figure out how we’re going to get through the Christmas season without losing my mind.

It’s hard to keep track of things. And I don’t really like having so much on the table at once. It unsettles me. But what can you do?

Jesus said, “Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

As always. He’s right.

Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Grimm

Speaking of monsters, I hesitate to mention this, but I saw the premiere of a new TV show called “Grimm.” I hesitate to mention it because it’s on opposite of Fringe, and I really like Fringe. It’s one of my favorite shows in a long, long time. I don’t want anything getting in the way of Fringe, but Grimm, man, it is good. Police procedural, forensics, monster show. The bad guy on this one creeps you out, makes you laugh at the same time. Not since X Files have I seen bad guys like this.

If these two shows were on the same channel, one right after the other, it would be a good reason to stay home and watch TV.

I don’t know how the show will turn out overall, but this first Grimm episode was an absolute blast, in my humble opinion. Creepy, funny, unpredictable, goofy, serious, the whole package worked for me.

I also watched that other show that’s supposed to be like it. It’s called “Once Upon A Time.” Let me just say: they are NOTHING alike. Once Upon A Time was NOT scary, funny, unpredictable, or serious. It is pretty much just goofy, but kind of okay in a chick flick sort of fashion. It’s better for a family audience, though not little kids oddly enough. Teenage girls will probably like it a lot. And, who knows, they might manage to make something good out of it over time. I don’t know. For that matter, they might ruin Grimm in short order.

But the first one was really, really good. I’m telling you. It totally modern, and yet it has the feel  of a Spielberg movie from the 80's, with the smarts of a J. J. Abrams thing, yada yada yada. I could go on. But it’s just kind of cool to find a show this fun in the morass of all that they release year after year that is almost unbearable to watch.

I highly recommend the first episode. We’ll see about the rest. If you want to watch it, you can see it on HULU here:

GRIMM ON HULU

Let me know what you think...

Peace to you.
© LW Publishing 2011