A thousand miles of pain I’m sure
Led you to the threshold
Of my hearts screen door
To tell me what it is I’m dying for
Gravity comes
Like a cold cold Rain
To lead me to the rope again
But someone is standing in my place

Cause I’m a dead man now
With a ghost who lives
Within the confines of
These carbon ribs
And one day when I’m free
I will sit
The cripple at your table

I highly recommend you go buy the John Mark McMillan CD “The Medicine.”

My other music is getting insanely jealous ’cause I haven’t spent any time with it.

~chris

(Those lyrics are from Carbon Ribs.)

Earlier this week I posted a blog about the show I played a couple weeks ago.  I posted a cover of a Tom Petty that I did, and said I’d post another song this week.

So You’ll find the song below, but first I have a video that is a basic description and reason for why I wrote the song.  The song is pretty dark and depressing, and I wanted to make sure people understood the reason behind the song.

As I said in the first post, these recordings are super low quality, but they are what they are I suppose.

my god is a mute, he don’t say nothing….even when one word is enough
he stands over me, taking everything in but nothing comes out
i was told that one word gave birth to light and everything else
but it seems like one word is a bit too much to ask these days

and my god is deaf, he don’t hear nothin’….not one of the questions that i ask
even when i’m shouting in his face
i have heard some people crying out to him
asking if he’ll lend them a hand…….nothin

my god is blind, he don’t see nothing
even though he sits way up on high
you had told me he was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or something like that
i have seen, with my created eyes, the suffering around me
but god seems to have closed his and no longer sees me

~c

So a couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to play a show here at a local venue.  I didn’t know exactly how I felt about it because I don’t do very much music for performance purposes, but I actually had a pretty good time.

I debuted a handful of songs I’ve written over the last 6 months or so, and played some old favorites as well.  I used my Zoom H2 to record, but the sound quality came out extremely poorly.  I think it was a mix of the room, the stage monitors, and a few other things.

Anyhoo, I still wanted to post a couple songs on here just for the fun of it.  I’ll post one today, and one later on this week.

The first song I’ll post is just a simple cover of Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down.”  I’ve always been a huge fan of Petty, and this song really lends itself to an acoustic version.  Not saying I nailed it, but it was fun to play around with.

The other song is an original, and I’ll post it later on.

Hope you’re well.

~c

There is a dude putting on a show that wants to get tons of people there.  Unfortunately for him, he asked if I would play.  He’s thinking that there is a group of people that will come because I am playing.  I don’t know how true this logic is, but I also don’t remember ever letting logic have a say in my life choices, so I’ll go with it.

If you are around on June 25th, I highly recommend that you go listen to some rad bands play their songs through acoustical instruments.

The Classic Crime

Spoken

Final Alibi

Somebody at church on Sunday asked me what type of music I will be playing.  It’s pretty simple really…nothing too new.  Kind of an ambient-metal, skate-folk, bluegrass-synth type of feel.

Just come, ok?

If you don’t, I’ll death-jazz your face off.

~chris

This past Sunday we changed things up a bit with the band, and it seemed to go really well.

There is a guy in our community that plays the dobro (don’t know what that is?) and this was the first Sunday we’ve incorporated it into the band.  We stripped most things down, leaving just bass, acoustic, cajon, dobro, and my vocals.  It was really simple, but it just felt the best for our first time out of the gates.

We got a lot of great feedback from people, so we will definitely try and make this more of a regular set-up at Gateway.

Here is the live house mix of Come Thou Fount.  (insert warnings about how the house mix never sounds as good as it actually did in the house, yadda yadda.)

It was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see what else we can change up and do differently in the future.  I like trying to break free from the Tomlin/United style…even if we still use their songs.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions, too.

~chris

Amongst this weeks uproar over health care, Obama, and the certain doom of our “great” country, I have been reminded of a song.  This is pretty typical for me.  When something is going on, I overhear something, or experience something, my mind usually jumps to a song that relates in some way.

Anyhoo…

This time it’s a Derek Webb song from my favorite album of his, “Mockingbird.”

King And A Kingdom
Who’s your brother, who’s your sister
You just walked passed him
I think you missed her
As we’re all migrating to the place where our father lives
‘Cause we married in to a family of immigrants

My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
My first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
It’s to a king & a kingdom

There are two great lies that I’ve heard:
“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”
And that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
And if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

But nothing unifies like a common enemy
And we’ve got one, sure as hell
But he may be living in your house
He may be raising up your kids
He may be sleeping with your wife
Oh no, he may not look like you think

So yeah…those are my incomplete and uneducated feelings about the topic.

~chris

A Cypher, Wrapped In An Enigma, Smothered With Secret Sauce.

That’s what Justin Timberlake is to me.

I really can’t stand about 98% percent of his music, but he is an incredible performer.

He hasn’t been in any good movies, but he is a decent actor.

He comes off kinda doofy, but he’s pretty hilarious and doesn’t care if he looks like a fool. (proof, proof, and proof.)

In fact, there is an entire website dedicated to his SNL skit videos:

Anyhoo, I stumbled across this video of him performing at the Hope For Haiti Now event, and it kinda blew my mind.  It’s him and Matt Morris doing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”  And I really love the ending.

~c

None of the chickens we owned growing up were this cool:

Of course we did have a rooster that Jesse named Cocky-Locky (after he found out I named mine Henny-Penny).  We had that thing forever, and it just roamed around our land.  One day we decided that it would be fun to take our bow & arrow and shoot at the rooster.

We preceded to shoot the rooster with arrows, which bounced off of its tough and leathery skin.  Then it turned and started charging at us, pecking at our feet and legs.

That experience ended with both us and the rooster having a healthy new respect for each other.

Until the day came when we needed chicken for some home made dumplings…

Who’s laughing now, Cocky-Locky?

~chris