Well, I haven’t written in a long time, and for that as usual, I apologize.
This summer as most it seems has been rather busy. Our house is a month from being complete, we’ve taken a week long trip to creationfest with the youth group, my sister has been married off, and Amanda’s celebrated her 26th birthday.
I figure the easiest way to show whats been going on is through all the pictures we’ve been taking.
Here’s the progress on the house….our close date is set for Sept 25th. We’ve gone in every couple of weeks to take pictures and it’s looking real good! As I mentioned, we bought a house in the Witch Hazel Village area which is being developed. It’s in Hillsboro, about 10 min from where we live now. We went in and picked out all our own upgrades, colors etc, so we only have ourselves to blame if we had the color scheme
The Almost’s CD came out today. Go buy it. It’s pretty awesome. It’s the drummer, Aaron, from underoath. My new favorite song is “Amazing Because it is”. At least go listen to it, and “Dirty and Left out” on myspace: http://myspace.com/thealmost
I haven’t posted a song for a while, so here’s a good one for you. This comes from our friends Medford Drive from Dayton, Ohio. They are unsigned as of the moment, so chances are you haven’t heard them yet. They are really good so check them out! If you like it, you can check out some more on their myspace page, or download from Rhapsody.
Medford Drive – Your Eyes
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I know Your’re here with me, though I stumble over words
cause even though at times I feel I don’t know what You are to me
I just want to run my way back to You instead of turning my back on You
If I could see You now what would I say
If I could hear Your voice just this one time would I know
come to me what I may do
You’re all i ever wanted to see, Your eyes stare down on me
so I’m looking inside of me today, and I can’t help but notice that something’s missing
something i needed once before, I can’t help this way this world
I gave my life that I may live, and now i’m staring down this empty heart of mine
what should i do, somebody, who can I turn to
Lately I’ve been really digging the sounds of Matisyahu. Normally I’m not much of a reggae fan, although I dig ska a lot. Any rate, I really like what I’ve heard from his new album. There is one song in particular that is amazine and my lovely wife wrote a blog post today about it, so head over and check it out!!
Also, as I had tossed around the idea a few weeks back, my cousin, a friend, and I are reading through the book “Blue Like Jazz” by donald miller and posting our thoughts on each chapter. Hopefully it’ll be pretty cool. We finished blogging on the first chapter already. I’ve been excited to start up this book as a blog. I’ve already read it in 1 1/2 times, so looking forward to going over it closely. The cool part is we have 3 people writing on it in their own way, so 3 different perspectives
So if you’ve read it already, or want to read along, or whatever, then check it out at http://www.bloglikejazz.com. After this book, we will probably be going through another one, so if you think it’s a decent idea, let us know!
This past weekend Amanda and I went to a concert we’d been looking forward to for some time…Mat Kearney. Ever since I heard this guy a year or so ago, I’ve listened to his album countless times. Sort of a mixture between hip hop/spoken word/pop/rock with amazingly real lyrics. It’s awesome to see this guys heart for God. He definitely has a way with words, an awesome voice, and good flow. My cousin showed me some live footage and we were even more stoked to go see him after watching him freestyle over his acoustic guitar.
We went to the Doug Fir lounge in Portland (He’s from Eugene so it was pretty much a hometown show), which is actually a pretty chill place to see a concert. Only downfall was it was a 21+ show, and a lot of the people there seemed more interested in drinking and talking than listening. For the first act we had to try and listen over all the conversations which I found rather rude.
Anyways, Mat Kearney is amazing in concert. With just him and his acoustic guitar (there was another guy backing him up) it was very cool. He played a bunch of songs, and played our favorite ones. It was awesome to hear him singing out these words in a bar and seeing the passion he sung them:
” Faith like a child from your first birth
You left it in the dirt on your worst hurt
And I see each tear in every scar
The hands that have held you where you are
And I can see we’ve strayed so far
A king born under that morning star
A crown of thorns that was placed to erace
Each tear that touched your face
His palms and sides were pierced with speres
He hung in love just to draw you near
My girl not of tis world
Can’t you see this is where we started”
It was awesome throughout the songs to see that he held true to his message. Sometimes I wonder when artists start to taste mainstream success, if they will hold true to the reason they are making music in the first place. I was encouraged that Mat wasn’t compromising anything. And the freestyle about Portland, the doug fir, his cracking voice, etc during Undeniable was killer.
If you’ve never heard him, or heard of him, go check out Mat Kearney’s Website. You can listen to all of his tracks on there. Check out “Girl America” which is the song quoted above.
I absolutely recommend downloading Memorial Stones from the bottom of this page. The song is amazing!!
