Monday, December 14, 2009

Creative Floodgates

It’s been over five years since my last album Backstage Pass was released. That’s hard to believe. A lot has happened since then. A lot. Most recently, I married my wonderful wife Crystal a little over a year ago, and about six months ago, I shifted to full time ministry after ten long years in the television industry. Wow. It’s amazing what God has done!

I met with a friend for coffee about four months ago and as we shared prayer requests, I went out on a seemingly selfish limb, and asked prayer that God would grant me new songs. From that day forward, it feels like the floodgates of creativity have burst wide open! After years of writing songs that have seemed only fit for the trashcan, the Lord has given me twelve new pieces that I actually really like. It’s been fun to watch them grow from snippets of lyrics and/or melodies to full blown songs.

One of my goals during the writing process was to focus intensely on vocal melody and piano, while leaving all the other “cool sounds” for a later stage. I am now at that next stage. So far, I’ve programmed demos and fleshed out the arrangements for three of the twelve songs on the new album. The hope is to start with sample instruments and slowly replace “fake sounds” with real ones as needed. After I have finished producing twelve demos, my goal is to record live drums and bass in Nashville. I will then record much of the guitars, and all of the vocals in Columbus (at 10x12 Productions). It’s possible we’ll also track live strings somewhere along the way. Not sure where yet. This journey should be a lot of fun!

I’ll keep you posted along the way.