In part one I talked about poverty and wealth, and a father’s calling to care for his family. Now I’m going to broadly explain some of the nitty gritty nuts and bolts behind trying to make a living as an artist. It might get tedious, but bear with me.
How to Lose Money. So these mugs. Oh, the mugs. We thought it would be fun to find a place to commission some handmade Rabbit Room mugs, partly to support the specific potter, partly to give ye faithful Rabbit Roomers a beautiful, somewhat meaningful souvenir, and partly (how foolish we were!) to help the Rabbit Room make some money.
*Note: if this is totally boring for you, skip down to where it says, “Now, forget about the mugs.”
Brannon McAllister suggested a potter (potteress?) in Greenville, South Carolina named Katie Coston, so I sent her an email and got the wheel spinning. She charged about $16 for each mug. That sounded like a lot until I thought about all the equipment she had to have bought, and the expertise (they were really beautiful pieces) and the clay and finish and other supplies, and the time it took her to spin each lump of clay into something beautiful, and the lettering, and the firing, then the shipping and packing supplies–and suddenly $16 didn’t seem like all that much. So I ordered a dozen or so (which came out to $192); with shipping the total came to a little over $200. If you subtract from that Katie’s hours, equipment, and supplies, I’m sure that didn’t leave her much. When Jamie goes to the grocery store for our family the bill can come to quite a bit more than Katie’s gross, so our order for mugs probably didn’t even buy her and her family a week’s worth of food. Hmm. Read the rest of this entry »
Allen Levi, Ben May, and I stood on Wendell Berry’s front porch as nervous as schoolboys. Allen had prayed aloud as we pulled up to the little Kentucky farmhouse that God would keep the visit from descending into some goofy hero worship, and that we’d remember who we are, that somehow our visit would amount to a blessing to the Berrys even as it would be to us. Basically it was, “Dear God, don’t let us be dummies.” Read the rest of this entry »
Not only is this song exactly how I feel lately but one of my goals at Hutchmoot this weekend is to coerce Andy Osenga into playing a 27 minute extended version of the intro. If I’m successful, it will be awesome. I may have to bribe him with burritos.
Rabbit Room favorite Melanie Penn wrote these kind, necessary words on her blog recently and let us re-post them here. Melanie’s album Wake Up Love (produced by Ben Shive) is available in the store, and we’re certain you’ll love it. –The Proprietor
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I’ve been thinking about words. I’ve heard that the two questions below are good ones to ask before saying anything. In life-in-general, I agree. If I were to ask these two questions before speaking I’d probably spare myself a lot of conflict and a lot of gossipy nothingness that I tend to regret.
But what about as an artist? What about the artist’s life-in-general? Some would argue that art isn’t necessary (they’re wrong) and some would argue that art can be unkind (it can be). A dear friend recently stumbled upon something written about him on the internet. It was hurtful and scathing and a little bit true. It was a result of a lot of mistakes. It was a laundry list of complaints written in the name of “art.”
Talking with him about it made me wonder about songs and the lyrics to songs. What makes a lyric art? And what makes a lyric little more than a venting of personal frustrations and feelings? I can’t help but think that every word–no matter the setting–should be justified and weighed to see if it will do damage. I can’t help but think that artists have a unique call to be careful with words. Is each one necessary? Is each one kind?
Here’s the thing about Andrew Peterson: he’s never content to let ordinary things be ordinary. Vast meanings, cosmic meanings pulse beneath the most familiar facts of everyday life. In “World Traveler,” from AP’s new album Counting Stars, an act as common as looking in on the kids after bedtime becomes an encounter with the divine:
Tonight I saw the children in their rooms,
Little flowers all in bloom—
Burning suns and silver moon.
And somehow in those starry skies
The image of the maker lies
Right here beneath my roof tonight.
This moment is emblematic of the whole album. AP marvels at the marvelous. It’s the sort of miracle that we learn to ignore, but AP insists, “Look at this! Can you believe it? The image of God himself—right here beneath my roof!” Read the rest of this entry »
I like to think that when Philip and I got married our wedding presents to each other were music. Like all true lovers we were extravagant with our gifts. He gave me The Sundays and REM, Tchaikovsky and The Beautiful South and Catbird Seat. I presented him with the total pageantry of Italian opera and the English choral tradition, Palestrina and the masses of Mozart and all the elegance of classic jazz. Beatles and bossa nova, Gillian Welch and Gilbert and Sullivan, we exchanged with the abandon of those who have no thought for the cost.
But among the most priceless of all the gifts presented was one that Philip gave to me. It was the innocence mission. Read the rest of this entry »
In case you missed it, Sandra McCracken released a new record a couple of months ago. In Feast or Fallow is a mixture of Sandra’s own newly-written hymns as well as a number of old hymns re-worked. Here’s a song called “Give Reviving.” Take a minute to listen and if you like what you hear, we’ve got the entire album available in the Rabbit Room store ($12 CD / $10 download).
I swore many years ago that I’d never make a music video. Back when my career began no one had ever dreamed of YouTube or Vimeo. If you wanted to watch a music video by a Christian artist you had to wait till the televangelists had gone to bed and the network couldn’t think of anything else to air, and so too few people would see it for the amount of money it would cost. But times have changed. Now people watch their computers as much as their televisions, and I figured a video like this might be good for somebody out there, even if they’re watching it at work when they’re supposed to be tweaking spreadsheets or something.
I sat in a little coffee shop in Nashville with Ben Shive and director Grant Howard to brainstorm, and in about thirty minutes I went from being wary of it to being excited about it. My only stipulation was that I wouldn’t have to dance, even though the song is about dancing. We had the idea to shoot the video in an old house that had weathered a century of storms, and to invite a few luminous older couples who had weathered storms of their own to dance around in that old house. We wanted to make something that, like the song, would celebrate marriage in all its terrible beauty. Below the video is the little blurb I wrote about the song for the record label.
Feel free to send the YouTube link to every human you know, as I’m pretty sure it’ll guarantee you a long, healthy life.
I’ve been writing about the music of Andrew Peterson for nearly ten years now. The first time was in an e-mail dated August 8, 2001. The tone of my prose was that of a breathless fanboy. I suspect Andy gets a lot of these notes:
I listen to your music on my morning walks around the lake and in the car. When I walk, sometimes the converging of your music and the physical beauty of the scenery makes me feel like flying. As I listen, mostly what occurs to me is the truth of your writing. As much as religion has become part of pop culture today, it’s rare to find Christianity articulated in a profound and compelling way. Your music does that.
I’ll admit to being a loyalist; once a supporter, always a supporter. I don’t shed my favorite artists like an old skin. Though I embrace variety and feel as if I’m on a perpetual quest for the next musical panacea–like the Lewis and Clark of the new music world–the songs of Andrew Peterson have been one constant. And a constant companion.
While I was happy with “Better Way To Live” as a pretty solid pop/rock song built around one of the hookier choruses I had at the time, it wasn’t necessarily a song that I was particularly passionate about including on the new record. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, but I think maybe it felt to me like a song that I would have expected from my previous record, and I wanted to go to new places. It also didn’t hit me as an especially singer/songwriter kind of lyric. But everyone else involved in the project was really excited about the song and it seemed like it could be a potential single, so it made the cut. It’s the kind of song I rarely do well: a punchy pop/rock song with few words and a big old hooky chorus. I wrote it with my friend Chad Cates and have been blessed to find that my lack of enthusiasm was misplaced as I’ve gotten numerous emails back from people who are fans of this song in particular. I love being wrong in cases like this.
It turned out to be one of the songs that the players were most excited about and even Jason Ingram, the producer, told me afterward that this song was his favorite drum performance. I think for the players the song provided the best opportunity for a groove to happen and their enthusiasm and investment in it elevated the merit of the song in my mind, making me grateful for it’s inclusion. I loved Gabe Scott’s dulcimer and lap steel flourishes, too. Paul Mabury, an amazing drummer from Australia, set up his flip camera to record his performance while we were tracking and sent it to me. Hearing/seeing this song from the perspective of the drum room gives me a different perception of the song. Watching Paul play this brings back good memories, I remember how wore out he was after this track – he laid into it, giving every hit everything he had in order to get the tone he wanted. Here’s his video, I hope you enjoy it!
Recently, I staged a coup d’etat and successfully ousted democratic leader and Under The Radar show host, Dave Trout. When will people learn that, sometimes, democracy simply does not work. He never saw it coming, poor guy.
In the current Under The Radar episode (#86), I take over the reins and pick the entire show’s playlist and discuss why I like the songs and/or the artist, many of whom you might recognize.
Also, hear me perform a live version of my new, unrecorded song titled “The Old Year (of Denial)”. Under The Radar Exclusives.
Lastly, if you hurry your bones, there’s a chance to win an autographed copy of Chrome and an autographed, limited edition Eric Peters t-shirt.
One of the things I’m most grateful for about the Rabbit Room is the opportunity it affords me to have conversations about some of my more self-indulgent enthusiasms. Take, for instance, today’s specimen: the music of Aimee Mann.
The first pastor I ever worked for, who was also my mentor, shared an old, hackneyed proverb with me once, but with his own fresh twist: “Jason, it’s true that while you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make him drink,” he said, and then pausing to let the next statement gather some heat… “But you can make him thirsty,” he said with a sly grin, pleasurably anticipating the reveal: “you can make him thirsty by mixing salt into his oats.”
This folksy wisdom has stayed with me all these years and remains a guiding philosophy in my ministry. It’s only the thirsty who want drink, and helping awaken people to their thirst can accomplish more than throwing a cup of unwanted water in their face – even if it is living water.
And this brings me to the music of Aimee Mann. Besides being immensely gifted, I always experience her music as a profound kind of primer for the gospel, asking the kind of questions that the gospel is eager to answer. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m a firm believer that the best albums take a while to sink in and get under your skin. They reveal their secrets patiently over days and weeks and often years, proving themselves to be much more than a series of catchy hooks or a handful of radio singles. Such records don’t always impress themselves upon me in the first eager listenings. Instead I find them resurfacing and calling me back again and again and each time they show me something new.
I’ve had the pleasure of living with Andrew’s forthcoming Counting Stars for a month or two now and I’m confident in saying that it is just such a record. I can’t wait for the rest of the world to be wooed by its grace and beauty.
The July 27th release is just a month away but we’re happy to begin taking pre-orders today. We’re offering a tiered set of options with a whole passel of Rabbit Room exclusives including everything from a bonus track and an exclusive T-shirt to an immediate download of the entire album (yep, get it right now), a making-of documentary, Andrew’s first music video, and even a chance to meet with Andrew over coffee to discuss the varying imports of toothy cows, fancy guitars, or anything else that floats your pirate ship.
Here’s a song I wrote in 2003 as a new dad – I just came across my demo of it last night and thought I’d share it here for free. It’s an oldie, but I hope you like it! (I would probably write it differently now, but part of the charm of it to me is how uncrafted it is.)
It was born when I was humbled by my little boys’ capacity to forgive so easily, to love unconditionally, and countless other virtues that they taught me that I in turn had to teach them in the beautiful paradoxical journey of parenthood.
Was it in the heart of God above
That I should finally learn to love
At the hands of a little boy
When I thought I could think of only me
It was then you came and set me free
You helped me find my joy
Like the song that gives the singer his worth
Like the land that shapes the water
Gentle and wise since the day of your birth
You have been raising a father
And where my patience ran a little thin
Was just the place you would begin
To break then make me new
I was afraid that I would let you down
When I held you in my arms I found
The strength to carry you
Like the song that gives the singer his worth
Like the land that shapes the water
Gentle and wise since the day of your birth
You have been raising a father
Time reveals a deeper mystery
As the things I learn from you, in turn you’ll learn from me
For I know I’m not only raising my own son
But I’m raising the father that one day you will become
Though I’m not all I would like to be
When I look into your eyes I see
The man I might become
This Summer, from June 18 to July 18, my family and I will be volunteering at YoungLife’s Crooked Creek Ranch. I’ll be playing music for about 400 high school kids a week.
I wrote and recorded four new songs (and one I had written years ago with my friend Andrew Peterson) specifically for this month.
It was great to focus openly and honestly on Jesus, and on the path to meeting and trusting Him.
The goal was originally to print this up as a CD to sell at camp, which would let the campers take the songs home and help us cover our expenses while we were out there. The Nashville flood hit the week I had scheduled to make the recordings and, sadly, I wasn’t able to complete it in time.
So I did the next best thing: I’ve put them up here for free. If you like them and want to chip in a few bucks, I’d sure be grateful. It’s a great opportunity to get to be a part of YoungLife camp. It was such a huge part of my high school story and my journey as a believer. Thanks for supporting me and my family getting to give back.
Mason Jennings. My favorite lately. His voice has an earnest, genuine, conversational tone. He manages to pierce the film that usually separates me from the recorded person. There’s a thrust and a glottal to his vocals that I can’t explain except to say that he has charmed me. I have several of his songs in my repertoire, just here and there from different records that have a similar, homespun sense. There’s an immediacy, a comforting echo in most of the productions of these albums. This song (track 4) which I had never heard (from a compilation project) popped up on Pandora yesterday and his lyrics here have cast the same sort of sweet spell. He digs deep. And I dig it. Deeply. Like he digs. Like the river is deep. Or is it really so deep? Or…oh go on.
Hey, folks. With the release date for Counting Stars just six weeks (or so) away, the promotional machine has ignited and is rolling down the Please-Buy-My-Record Highway. Here’s the first of a few (I think) videos we’ll be happily bombarding you with, starring the gregarious Andy Gullahorn, the hilarious Ben Shive, and the nefarious me. By all means, send the link for this video to everyone you know.
This Tuesday’s Song of the Day is the title track from one of my favorite records of the year, Melanie Penn’s amazing debut Wake Up Love. Have a listen but don’t just sample it, be sure to listen for the amazing finale of the song. I’m not sure but I think Ben Shive (producer) may have hired the cast of The Lion King for that ending — monkeys, wildebeests, Poomba and Timon, the whole Serengeti. Best listened to loudly, whilst driving, with the windows down. Perfect summer music.
The following is an email conversation I had with Ben Mace of the Smyrna/Clayton Sun-Times in Delaware in support of a recent concert I did there. I thought readers here might enjoy it!
BM: How did you get “discovered”? What was the break that led to being signed with Centricity Music?
JG: Well, Tom Hanks is said to have told an audience of drama students who asked him what the secret of his success was that for him, it was not quitting - that if you hang in there long enough, you’re likely to get noticed. I guess that’s my experience - I’d been doing music independently for years and over time had crossed paths with enough people and nurtured enough relationships that it accumulated to bring me where I am now. I’d known John Mays, director of A&R at Centricity (my label) for years and we’d always talked about working together, and I guess the right time to do that presented itself. Labels are looking for artists who don’t need them, or in other words have their own momentum. That’s who they prefer to partner with, and I think they saw in me an artist that already had the ball rolling a bit and fit with the personality of their label. But it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t developed relationships years earlier with the people there. I really feel like God opened doors over the years, and I just did my part to walk through them. So it was less a “break” than it was a steady faithfulness, in the same direction. Read the rest of this entry »
I should have posted this yesterday but I was busy being mugged. But, although Memorial Day has come and gone, it’s never too late to post a great song, especially when that song is about a used pair of pants.
Listen to Randall Goodgame’s “Susan Coats’s Pants” then hug a veteran (as long is it isn’t me). Randall’s War and Peace album is available at a special price today ($10CD / $7 Download) and each order comes with a free Randall Goodgame T-shirt (CD only, not downloads) (let us know if you prefer a men’s or a women’s shirt).
(Random Trivia: BDU stands for Battle Dress Uniform which sounds a lot cooler than it is.)
(Random Trivia (cont’d): This is also the album featuring Randall’s brilliant tribute to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoon.)
The Fiddler’s Gun, A Review: Making History Come True
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.
Shive Arrives: A Song by Song Commentary on The Ill-Tempered Klavier
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.
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.
RELEASE DAY REVIEW: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
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).
Arkadelphia from Randall Goodgame: Music in Motion
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.
Allen Levi
Rabbit Room favorite 
Here’s the thing about Andrew Peterson: he’s never content to let ordinary things be ordinary. Vast meanings, cosmic meanings pulse beneath the most familiar facts of everyday life. In “World Traveler,” from AP’s new album Counting Stars, an act as common as looking in on the kids after bedtime becomes an encounter with the divine:
One of the things I’m most grateful for about the Rabbit Room is the opportunity it affords me to have conversations about some of my more self-indulgent enthusiasms. Take, for instance, today’s specimen: the music of Aimee Mann.
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.
Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.
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.
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.
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.
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.