Slugs & Bugs - God Made Me from Scott Brignac on Vimeo.
Hey Rabbit Roomies, we thought you’d be interested in this sneak peak from the coming Slugs and Bugs tour. This is one of the animated videos that will be playing behind me as kids (and their parents) watch the show.
What’s a Slugs and Bugs tour, you ask? Well, I’ll start from the beginning.
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So let me go ahead and say, I am a Patty Griffin fan. Ever since some long forgotten friend introduced me to Living With Ghosts so many years ago, I have been mesmerized by her brilliant lyrical insight, mama-smacking vocals, and stellar acoustic guitar accompaniment. I don’t listen to a lot of music, but I have listened to Patty quite often, and I’ve recommended her more than any other artist since David Wilcox in the 90’s. So if you’re looking for an unbiased review, look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for a somewhat informed perspective, that’s me! So read on!
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At first, this post is going to seem like a rebuttal to the Proprietor’s recent entry, “All is Not Well.” But things are not always as they seem, which is kind of what this post is about. It’s not so much a rebuttal as a companion piece to Andrew’s beautiful post.
For the Andrew Peterson Christmas Show at the Ryman each year, we regulars get to pick one song to perform for the sold-out crowd in attendance. What a wonderful problem. For me, the process of choosing the song for the Ryman show starts somewhere in March or April, and continues through the sweltering Nashville summer. In 2005, I still hadn’t decided what to sing when my wife Amy and I walked out onto the Ryman stage. I had recently written a song about The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe with Pierce Pettis, and I really wanted to play it, but I also had this new song called “Bluebird” that I thought would be cool. Halfway from the curtain to the microphone, I whispered to Amy, “Bluebird,” capo’d my Taylor and off we went. Turns out, you really want to give your wife more prep-time than that if you’re going to be singing at the Ryman. Live and learn, I hope.
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I can’t remember the first time I heard someone say it. I never said it until my thirties, when the realities of life quietly ushered in a more melancholy mood to supplant my youthful optimism. I watched friends marriages fail. I spent time in the Third World. My wife got sick. Friends let me down. And I took advantage of friends.
Darkness began to claim what seemed like his rightful place in the hierarchy of presuppositions. Things will be bad, or they will be good. Or they will be so-so. All the while Facebook reigns, and I am busy, so under the influence of my low investment friendships I settle for a shorthand way to communicate big things, and so I say, “It is what it is.”
But what does that even mean?
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Way back in those salad days of 2007, I was working on the Midtown Project Vol.1 with my manager, Winn Elliott, over at Paul Eckberg’s kickin’ home studio, “The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Paul.” We were taking a break, enjoying some hard-earned Jersey Mike’s and we stumbled into a conversation about the quicksilvery business of music. Specifically, about how artists and musicians would continue to make a living in this brave new world of digital downloads, labels with shallow pockets and a home studio on every corner.
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This weekend I took Garett Buell (percussion), Jeff Irwin (bass) and Andrew Osenga (Fender Strat) to Columbia, S.C. It would be my 3rd summer in a row to visit Ft. Jackson - the Army base located there (last year I made the trip AP).
We aimed to hit the road at 9:00 Saturday morning, but packing the trailer proved to be quite an ordeal, and then once we finally got on the road, I couldn’t find my wallet. Ft. Jackson will not admit soft spoken, forgetful musicians with no I.D., even big stars like me, so we had to double back to retrieve it. Of course, it was in the shed. That didn’t take long to find at all.
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My wife has been laid up for a week recovering from surgery, and her mom drove up from Ralph, Alabama to help out. Of course, “help out” pretty much meant, “do everything.”
Amy was in the bed, and I was slammed with two church services in one week on top of my typically hectic schedule when Grandmama checked in and took over like Michael Jordan. Family dirty laundry disappeared into the morning mist. The children received nourishment and attention, but not from me. “What happened to the mini-van?” Grandmama got out the shopvac and had her way till the Sienna cried mercy, and then she put it in a figure-four leg-lock. Now all the turn signals work.
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Tuesday night my wife and I watched American Idol on our DVR. We fast-forwarded full speed through the commercials and Ryan Seacrest’s Mary Poppins perfect delivery, and wondered aloud how all that fast motion might be re-wiring our brains.
The performances ranged from forgettable to uber-cheesy to impressive, which seems about right with 20 people still left in the competition. Then, for the finale, seventeen year old David Archuleta of Utah walked out to sing the last verse and chorus of John Lennon’s Imagine. I did not expect to be moved.
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When I graduated from college, I remember my english professor Fred Ashe walking at the front of the procession carrying this huge winged sphere on a pole that looked straight out of The Jetsons. I remember thinking, “What is that?” It was a mace. Evidently, once the use of heavy armor went out of style, men came up with a ceremonial use for their proud battle club. And I’ll get back to that in a minute.
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Theologian/Oregon State Professor Marcus Borg has written a fascinating, insightful and challenging book titled “Jesus.” It has taken me weeks to write these few paragraphs for the Rabbit Room, possibly because of the uniqueness of the whole experience. Maybe I need to read more books, or maybe I need more friends like the one who sent this book to me. As a whole, reading this book was a joy. I found myself at times comforted, challenged, educated, shocked and disappointed, in total disagreement, and in total agreement with the author.
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My daughter is having a hard morning. It began with the moderate joy of feeding her new betta fish, “Rainbow,” all by herself. Rainbow is beautiful, but not as much fun to watch as Goldi, Goldy, or Silver - Livi’s first three goldfish. Goldi came from Wal-Mart, and never even made it out of the plastic bag. We rescued Goldy from Petsmart, and she was a joyful, bubbly goldfish until she wasn’t, and we brought her back to Petsmart for a more alive version. Enter the goldfish named Silver. Silver did great, until my son’s goldfish “Rocket” tasted her pretty little fan tail and developed a cannibalistic tendency that led to her ultimate demise.
So, this morning, I should have expected a troubled mind from my grieving first-born. She fed Rainbow, and then started whining about her morning list.
“I don’t want to do my stuff!”
Whining gave way to stomping, then crying, and this is a job for SuperDaddy. I go in, I invite her onto my lap, I direct my nappy sock and garbage breath away from the tormented child, asking probing and thoughtful questions, affirming her and listening more than talking. While massaging her little hands, I talk to her about prayer, and she spits exasperation with not seeing God and not hearing him. I agree that it is hard to understand, and ask her to trust me for the time being, that God hears her and loves her.
Things seem to be going well, until it is time to leave my lap and get back to the stuff she was avoiding. Teeth, hair, shoes, etc… Crying resumes. I escort her to the bathroom and close her inside, and crying turns to wailing and hyperventilating. This is a hard business. Time for Mom.
Mom says,”Livi, we’re leaving in 10 minutes.” And though the wailing increases, the stuff is now getting done.
I’ve been played like a cheap harmonica.
Miraculously soon, my daughter meets me in my office and is dressed and ready for her piano lesson (the last of the stuff). I suggest an easy song. She wants to play the hardest one (a song called “Donkey”). We finish up with a melody game and a kiss on the head, she pulls on her backpack and slips out the door with my wife.
“Bye Daddy! I love you!”
Whew.
AP has been hoping and praying for the successful launch of this site for months now, and I’m thrilled to take part. I’ve just finished reading the final instructional email from “The Proprietor,” and aside from a nonsensical and inaccurate comment about besting me in ping-pong, it was a thorough directory and inspiring call to prosaic arms. This quote is pulled directly from his email…
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Andrew Peterson
Pete Peterson
Jason Gray
Eric Peters
Evie Coates
Randall Goodgame
Matt Conner
Curt McLey
Russ Ramsey
Jonathan Rogers
Ron Block
A.S. Peterson has crafted a work of compelling historical fiction which begs the question, “Can this really be a debut novel?” With dogged fidelity, Peterson captures the spirit, manners, and social conditions present during the American Revolutionary War. We meet colorful, credible characters who navigate the high seas of life and love, dependence and independence, war and peace, truth and consequence, and despite forays into dark places, The Fiddler’s Gun is beautiful, lyrical, and redemptive.
One listen to Ben Shive’s debut The Ill-Tempered Klavier will provide obvious evidence of why this young man has secured the respect of peers and colleagues on the inside of the Nashville music community. With The Ill-Tempered Klavier, Shive’s skills are now planted in the public garden.
Heretofore, there have been unsubtle hints: Andrew Osenga pronouncing Shive as his favorite songwriter, Andrew Peterson naming him as producer of The Far Country, his ubiquitous presence as a studio piano ace on a wide range of mainstream CCM records, Sara Groves choosing him to produce her next record, and the majestic arranging of the strings for Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God, The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ. Like a fast growing wildflower, Shive seems to pop up everywhere, though always in the background. Now, the secret is out. Raise the curtain on Ben Shive.
I just stumbled on a copy of O’Connor’s complete short stories at a used bookstore here in Nashville and listed it in the Rabbit Room store. Years ago a friend bought me this same edition and I read it with a sense of creepy amazement; it was like nothing I’d ever read. I knew Chris Slaten was a big fan of her work so I asked him to write a recommendation for the book. We only have one copy, so if you click here and can’t find it, someone beat you to the punch.
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This collection is essential to both long time fans and first time readers interested in the work of Flannery O’Connor. My first time to read a handful of her short stories I was helpless to interpret them. One would expect that reading the 1950’s work of a female “Christ-centered” southern fiction writer would be a simple, modest or at least predictable experience.
Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.
Several people in the last few weeks have commented to me about how glad they are that they discovered Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow here in the Rabbit Room. It really is a remarkable book, and I still can’t recommend it highly enough. It won the prestigious National Book Award when it was first published in 1978, and was only the beginning of Wangerin’s career.
I just stumbled on his most recent novel, Saint Julian, and was so captured by it that it bumped aside the other four books I’m reading. Last Sunday afternoon–a perfect Spring day–I sat on my front porch swing and read the last half of the book, savoring the careful prose, the pastoral tone, and even the look and feel of the book itself. The cover illustration fits the epic, vivid quality of the story perfectly, and the fonts (I’m a sucker for a great font) added just the right atmosphere.
Janner Igiby lives in Glipwood, a nothing little village in the land of Skree, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Manhood is on the horizon, but Janner finds it hard to feel much hope for the future. Skree is ruled by foreign oppressors, snake men called the Fangs of Dang, servants of a shadowy emperor named Gnag the Nameless. The Skreeans are weak and weaponless. They’re even tool-less. Any Skreean who needs to use a hoe has to borrow one from the Fangs (and fill out the requisite paperwork). And from time to time, the Black Carriage arrives in Glipwood to carry young Skreeans toward an unknown fate across the Dark Sea.
But once a year the Sea Dragons sing just off the coast of Glipwood. With their song, life reasserts itself in the hearts of Skreeans who have long since learned to numb themselves:
I am not a fan of Civil War literature; in fact, I have always thought of it as one of those weird sub-genres for obsessive types. They’re almost like Trekkies with their re-enactments and maniacal devotion to detail. It’s just not my thing (although I’m secretly jealous that they get to dress up and shoot cannons).
A Randall Goodgame song is like a great independent movie. Characters deliver lines like they were lifted from a break room, a truck stop, or a downtown diner. Seemingly incongruent scenes are juxtaposed and plot isn’t obvious; in fact, narrative–a good story–is often more evident than linear plot lines. An indie movie, like a Randall Goodgame song, seems to tell itself. Rather than being rudely yanked by a chain through a sequence of contrived events, with a Randall Goodgame song, I have the sense that I’m being allowed a willing, but vicarious sneak peak into the real lives of his real characters.
Walt Wangerin is a name I’ve seen in print many times. My dad had Ragman and Other Cries of Faith lying about at home for years and I remember thumbing through it at Christmas or Thanksgiving, reading bits here and there, and being intrigued by the style of writing; the words on the page had a canter to them, and a sparseness that gave them strength.
Sara Groves irritates me just a little bit. With each album she makes, she moves from strength to strength and is always raising the bar with the quality, depth, and lyrical ambition of her work. And as a fellow artist, that’s just a little irritating since it means the rest of us are going to have to work harder if we hope to keep up.
I am outside on my front porch. The yellowed leaves are methodically falling from the black walnut in the yard, my breath is chalky visible in the recent cold snap, and lately I have been exploring the unpleasant nuances of the dark night of a soul - my own, to be exact. It is a strange passion we live out on this over-glorified orb of rock hurtling through space at some rate that I’m sure would astound me were I to know what it was. It is an odd series of days, I am realizing, when you question your own faith more than you question your own doubt. And, indeed, it is these nagging questions which have prompted me to share my thoughts on Andrew Peterson’s 2003 album, Love and Thunder.
11-year old Reuben Land, a character in the 2001 book Peace Like a River, provides narration that is clear-eyed and insightful, yet retains the magic, wonder, and innocence of youth. I found it easy to entrust my imagination to the author’s clever method of telling the story through the sensibilities of a pre-teen boy. An author with lesser skill would have either made the boy too smart-alecky for his own good or impossibly cute.
I just finished a book that upon closing it, I felt like it finished me in a sense. A quiet meditative book that reached down and stirred the deep waters in me. It’s Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner Gilead, given to me by my friend Andrew Peterson.
Do you have any CD’s in your collection that will be forever associated with some event or season of life—like the soundtrack to your last high school summer or what you listened to over and over again on that one road trip to wherever it was?
Eric Peters’s body of work addresses a diverse range of topics, but hope is a recurring theme that gently percolates in the midst of it all. And yet, somewhere between the 2001 masterpiece Land of the Living, and Scarce, the flavor of hope that Peters’s work emits has evolved closer to a tone that is more resolute than what came before. And though the complexion of hope has a broad range, the lyrics from Scarce–while intermittently contrite and timorous as in previous efforts, are now strengthened and bolstered by roots that have grown deeper, radiating an underlying grit and security.
Having read The Great Divorce many times over the years, I’ve found this classic from the great C.S. Lewis to be full of startling clarity and depth on the differences between Heaven and Hell. The only thing both have in common is that both begin in the human will; we can either let Heaven enter us and rule in us to blossom into love and goodness, or allow Hell to infect and reign in our hearts by the daily refusal to submit to Heaven.
Even if you haven’t heard Room to Breathe, its still likely you’ve heard Andy Gullahorn. He’s what I’d call a heavy lifter by trade. He writes lyrics, plays guitar, arranges vocals and adds production help to the work of artists like Jill Phillips and Andrew Peterson.
Allow me to preface this by telling you that I am a great despiser of gushing reviews. I’d much rather write (or read) a scathing dismemberment of the latest Brett Ratner film or Terry Goodkind book than suffer through four hundred words of overblown hyperbole about even the best of things. But when asked to write some thoughts on Frederick Buechner’s Godric, no amount of distaste for high praise was able to intervene. I hope you’ll take what I say with the understanding that I do not say it readily or lightly.