Wow, a film about country music, and I live in Nashville. It stars some of my favorite actors. The Academy gave it TWO acting Oscar nominations. Did I love it? Find out below.
OMR: Crazy Heart from Thomas McKenzie on Vimeo.
Feb
9
2010
One Minute Review: Crazy Heart
Feb
9
2010
What It’s Like To Be On The Road With Josh (Part 3 of 3)
As I mentioned in my last posts, Josh Petersen (marketing, Centricity) and I hit the road for a week to meet with radio stations between TX and MN in January. If you’ve followed my career over the past few years, you’ve heard me talk about Josh.
I think nobody has worked harder to help grow my ministry than Josh Petersen who has logged countless hours with me in rental cars over the years, driving me across the country to introduce me to the world of radio, making it possible for me to share my story and make many new friends. I think Josh has made it his personal mission to help me succeed and his belief in my calling is a gift.
This most recent trip was to introduce my new single, “More Like Falling In Love” to our friends at radio, a trip we began in Houston and then worked our way North to Minnesota. Whenever Josh and I travel, we try to see historical landmarks along the way. This time, we visited the
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Feb
8
2010
Solar System: Bill Mallonee in Concert
I’d seen him despondent a few times as of late.
Sometimes the answer that loves gives is the hardest one to take.
Thus begins the Bill Mallonee (Vigilantes of Love) song, “Skin“, about artist Vincent Van Gogh’s self-inflicted removal of a portion of his left ear, and eventually what the artist removed from the earth — himself.
Last fall, I played a show at a tiny downtown venue in Birmingham, AL with songwriter Bill Mallonee, one of my earliest folk-rock heroes. The venue, complete with a pair of worn-out couches, an upstairs used-bookstore, delicatessen-style tile flooring, and overhead fluorescent lighting - hardly a rockstar arena - was that of my dreadlocked friend, Beau, whom I’ve known for nearly a decade, back when I called Birmingham home. Beau recently began hosting occasional concerts and, knowing I was a fan, asked if I’d want to open for Bill. My wife said I’d be dumb not to do it, even though my temp job required a late-night drive home afterwards. Bummer, since I was hoping to grab some Surin West Pad Thai while in town.
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Feb
5
2010
Take It and Run
First, let me give you just one little glimpse of why I love it here. I just walked up the stairs from my classroom and outside, around on a winding path that leads to the door to the teachers’ lounge. (It’s time for my morning tea.) The gym, where kids are having PE right now, is across the courtyard from where my classroom is. There is a giant magnolia tree in the courtyard and a nice grassy patch, and a sweet little bronze sculpture of a child reading on a bench under the tree. Flowing loudly from the general direction of the gym are strains of Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over.” The PE faculty have some great taste in music. Yesterday it was James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” It’s a good place to be. So back to how I got my job.
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Feb
4
2010
Delivering Letters
I’m happy to announce that The Fiddler’s Gun: Letters has finally gone to print. I approved the proof on Friday and the presses are rolling. The book is a collection of sixteen letters and other documents that detail some of the further adventures of Fin Button and her shipmates during the course of events recounted in The Fiddler’s Gun.
If you followed the “Letters to Peter” feature at TheFiddlersGun.com, some of this material will be familiar to you. It has now been edited, organized, expanded, and bound in one volume. Who is Wilberforce Octavian Albemarle III? What is the mystery of the Boot Snuffler? And what is the Baker’s Grail? These letters hold the answers.
Also, included is a sneak peek at an excerpt from Fiddler’s Green that includes the first appearance of an important new character.
This special companion to The Fiddler’s Gun is being printed in a limited run of 100 signed and numbered copies. Each of my Tier 2 Patrons will receive their copy in the mail, free of charge. The remainder will be for sale, exclusively at the Rabbit Room store and when they’re gone, they are gone forever (though I do hope to make a digital version available at a later date.)
Here’s a look at the introduction:
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Feb
3
2010
The Pit of Despair, or, A New Lament
The oldest song on my new album is also the title track.
I wrote it in Pennsylvania in 2008, after spending a few days at Lancaster Bible College, a fine establishment that flew me in to talk to the students about writing and to put on a concert with the Captains Courageous the next day. (Psst! Lancaster! I had a great time and would love to come back.)
So there I was in Lancaster, feeling as sorry for myself as I ever had, languishing in the hotel room alone, wishing Andy and Ben’s plane would hurry up and arrive. The road is, of all lonely places, one of the loneliest. There’s a certain thrill in the beginning of the trip. I love seeing the sights, exploring new towns, feeling for a while like an observer of life rather than a liver of one. Of course, that’s a dangerous place to be.
Soon the excitement fades, and before you know it every face you see is a reminder of the faces you left behind. Every house looks sad. You start paying attention to the weather in your hometown. My heart literally aches sometimes when I hear my children’s voices on the phone. Along with the homesickness, on this particular trip I was shadowboxing some old familiar demons. I’m susceptible to a particular set of lies, voices that ring in my ears, voices that would have me believe a thousand things of myself and my God other than the truth to which I cling. When my faith falters and I forget my God, when I forget that his undying love now stands guard against all condemnation, I hold myself in contempt. I can hardly look in the mirror because all I see is sin, sin, sin. All I see is a fool. I see a failure.
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Feb
3
2010
“It’s All Good” (Not Really)
You’ve heard the phrase before: “It’s all good.” People toss it out there all the time. I’ve caught myself saying it to try to smooth over situations where something bad has happened. Andrew and Randall tore down the notion that everything is “all good” with their realistic but hopeful writings. Bob Dylan satirized the phrase “it’s all good” recently in song:
The widow’s cry, the orphan’s plea
Everywhere you look, more misery
Come along with me, babe, I wish you would
You know what I’m sayin’, it’s all good
All good
Not to harp on the subject, since we’ve already had two posts on it, but it’s an important one. This is why Tolkien wrote,
“Anyway, all this stuff (his reflection about his stories) is mainly concerned with Fall, Morality, and the Machine … There cannot be any ’story’ without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not human minds as we know them and have them.”
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Feb
2
2010
The Story Behind “More Like Falling In Love” (Or: What Vibrant Faith Has In Common With A Toilet Bowl)
I’ve been talking about our recent radio promotional tour in support of the new single, “More Like Falling In Love”. I went on the road with Josh Petersen for a week to visit our friends at radio stations between TX and MN and more often than not they’d invite me on air to talk about the story behind the song. So far, the song is gaining a lot of support and we’re so grateful. This was the song I’d always hoped would connect at radio.
I’d been kicking around the idea for “More Like Falling In Love” for a few years, writing it once as a ballad, once as a brit-pop kind of a song… I always suspected that it was a simple and potent enough idea for a song that if written right could have a wide appeal. When I started working with Jason Ingram, I brought the idea to him and he jumped in with me, helping me make the most of it. It became a groovy kind of summer-time love song, which of course is exactly what it should have been all along. I mean c’mon – it is a love song after all. Ever since we wrote it, we’ve been excited to send it out into the world and see what would happen. I’ve been blessed by its enthusiastic reception.
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Feb
1
2010
Bill Mallonee Show
A
few months back, Janna Barber introduced a lot of us to the music of Bill Mallonee. In the time since, his Audible Sigh record has been a constant in my music playlist. I just learned that Bill is playing a show down the road from Nashville in Cookeville this Friday night and it pains my soul that I’m in Texas and can’t attend. If you’re in the area, though, go out and support an artist who receives far too little recognition.
If you missed Janna’s great introduction to his music, you can read the entire piece here.
Here’s a complete list of tour dates at the Bill Mallonee website.
Feb
1
2010
Up In The Air
Our guest contributor today is Elijah Davidson. He is a long time Rabbit Roomer and some may remember him as the winner of our Theolo-Vision (TM) contest a couple of years ago. He’s also a student at Fuller Theological Seminary and a contributor to the Brehm Center’s blog where he often tackles issues at the juxtaposition of theology and art. I hope you’ll give this Theolo-Visionary a warm welcome. -Pete Peterson
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“The worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it.” -Oscar Wilde
Where is your source of stability? What do you depend on? In the midst of the turmoil of life, where is peace? What is your hope?
For many, financial security is the bedrock of their lives. We work hard in our chosen fields. We go to school to obtain a higher degree and become more skilled. We save and invest. We do all of this in hopes that these practices will ensure a pleasant, peaceful life.
Then one day we find ourselves sitting across from a man like Ryan Bingham, and he has come to tell us that our foundation is being ripped from beneath us. We are losing our jobs. “Your hope,” he says, “is no hope at all. Take this packet, and let us begin helping you rebuild your life.”
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Jan
29
2010
Conan’s Guitar Solo
Conan. Dude, I love that guy. Watching his last show was hard to do. You see somebody so good at what they do and you watch it get thrown away, it’s just sad. Like so many things in this world, you see something great unrecognized and wasted.
Sure, he’s not Beethoven or anything, he’s just a funny dude who is worth a ton of money, but to see a man handed his dream and then crushed, no matter the circumstances, is and should be painful to watch.
However, that last few minutes with the pseudo-all star band playing “Free Bird”? It was odd, no doubt, and felt like it wasted some precious time, but when Conan, who is NOT a lead guitar player started taking solos, I started crying. The ZZ Top dude looks at this 45-year old gangly redhead who just got publicly humiliated and gives him the nod, the sound guy turns it up, and this guy, holding back tears, just goes for it!
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Jan
28
2010
Making THE LAST FRONTIER, Part Seven
1. I have no real news.
2. Except to say that it’s so good to be home. We’re taking the next few days off, and we’ll start up in earnest on Monday.
3. Also, this is an old Ben Shive song that I added a few lines to. He wrote it years ago, before he had children (I think), and I’ve always loved it. The Last Frontier has several family songs on it, so it was the perfect chance to record it. Well done, Benjamin.
Jan
28
2010
The Chef & The Barista
Some friends just opened a coffee shop not far from my house, so I’ve been trying to support/loiter as much as possible in recent days. The place looks spectacular, the coffee tastes wonderful and I can still get a considerable level of work done in such a friendly (both for my social life and laptop) environment. But there’s something at work today that’s inspiring on an entirely different level.
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Jan
27
2010
The Book of Sorrows
I read The Book of the Dun Cow a couple of years ago at Andrew’s urgent recommendation and it has since become one of my very favorite books. It’s a difficult book to recommend because it’s so hard to describe. After all, it’s about a rooster. And yet it’s about pain, and heartbreak, and the cold, disastrous march of evil through the world. It’s about war and heroism and sacrifice. It’s playful and funny and then by turns bloody, violent, and horrifying. It’s a thing almost unique unto itself and it is wholly excellent. Rarely a day goes by that some aspect of Chaunticleer and his coop doesn’t cross my mind.
The book so thoroughly affected me that upon learning of the existence of its sequel, I was mortified. I didn’t think I could bear to read it for fear that it wouldn’t live up to the promise of the original. I was desperately fearful that Walt Wangerin, Jr. might find himself fallen into the same nest of subsequent mediocrity so completely mined by pioneers of hubris like George Lucas.
So a lot of time has gone by and The Book of Sorrows has sat lonely upon my shelf, warding me away with promises of disappointment. But a few weeks ago, I gave in and took down the book. I sank into the warmth of my couch on a cold winter night and returned to The Coop once more to learn what had become of the lordly rooster and his hens and what adventure might still await them.
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Jan
26
2010
Making THE LAST FRONTIER, Part Six
1. We’ve shot a lot of video that we just haven’t had time to edit into bits yet. Hopefully when we get home the pace will slow enough that we can goof around with the videos more.
2. We’re finishing up a Ben Shive-penned Christmas song for Centricity’s upcoming sequel to their Bethlehem Skyline compilation. It’s called “Long, Long Ago,” and it shore is purty.
3. This afternoon we drive 4.5 hours back to Seattle, then tomorrow we fly home. As beautiful as the Cascades are, I miss my family and our little hill at the Warren.
4. I’m humbled and amazed by Ben, Andy, and Gabe. Awesome fellas, excellent musicians, and great friends. May we still be making music together when we’re octogenarians. (And Todd Robbins is pretty awesome, too.)
5. Did I mention that the title of the album is The Last Frontier?
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Jan
26
2010
Everything is Alright
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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Jan
25
2010
More Like Falling In Love On The Radio (Part 1 of 3)
As I write this, it’s my birthday and I’m writing this from several miles up in the air as Taya and I fly to Nashville to join the WAYFM tour with Jeremy Camp, The Afters, and Chasen. It was hard to say goodbye to my boys, but it’s a short run and we’re so grateful to be a part of what will be the highest profile tour I’ve ever been invited on. We’re so grateful. Being on a tour with rock acts gives me a nice little niche as the introspective singer/songwriter guy who gets to bring a unique contribution to the evening. I can’t wait to see old friends in the audience and make some new ones on this tour. It’s a pretty decent birthday gift, really – and a great way to start the year.
The best birthday gift I got, though, was when Gus climbed into bed with us in the early hours of the morning and snuggled up beside me before I had to get up to go. I didn’t even think I’d get to be home at all before late February, but things worked out for me to spend a couple days in my own house, eating my own food, sleeping in my own bed, and of course hanging out with my boys. (We played video games and built snow tunnels)
I want to update you on some exciting developments with my new single, “More Like Falling In Love”. I’m going to break it up into three parts and give you a little peek into the process of releasing a song to radio. I’ll begin the story here….
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Jan
24
2010
Making an Album, Part Five
1. It’s Sunday, so we’re taking it a bit easier than the last few days. Doing our best to honor the Sabbath when there’s a hard deadline staring us down. The last few days, however, have gone more or less according to schedule. That means we’re making good progress, but it also means we’re getting tired. We finished up a little (only a little) early last night and slept in a little (only a little) today.
2. I don’t know why I’m numbering these paragraphs, but I kinda like it.
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Jan
22
2010-
Avast! Limited Press of A.S. Peterson’s The Fiddler’s Gun: Letters, now available
Feb/4/2010
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Available in the RR Store: Melanie Penn’s debut album WAKE UP LOVE
Jan/20/2010
Recent Comments:
- P90X-Mass: or, The Weight of Arms (16)
- Delivering Letters (7)
- Solar System: Bill Mallonee in Concert (4)
- Alan: First of all, Birmingham is an awesome city, and hearing you talk about Surin makes me miss home. Also, War Eagle. Secondly, if you remember,...
- Take It and Run (13)
- Peter B: God is awesome. Thank you for reminding me.
Andrew Peterson
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Why I Want Eric Peters in My Corner
So I was having a bad day. I woke up, for no apparent reason, at 5:30 in the morning, and my brain was already two hours ahead of my body. It was the kind of day that usually lands me in front of the mirror with a mental baseball bat. But on this day, I did not have the wisdom to walk away in defense. Instead, I moved in closer for a beat down. My arms would not reach up to fight, but remained stubbornly, helplessly at my sides. My face, totally unprotected from the oncoming head blow, narrowly dodged clear at the very last second, and I closed my eyes in relief. A minute or two passed and I gained strength enough to push away from the glass and head for the safety of my computer. I put my head down and got to work, hoping to shake off the shadows, but an hour later I found myself crying through the proofread because I hated every single letter on the screen.
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John Piper on C.S. Lewis: “I shall never cease to thank God for this remarkable man…”
Here is a small excerpt from John Piper’s excellent book Don’t Waste Your Life (which you can read here for free, or buy here for a pittance) wherein he expresses thankfulness for Clive Staples Lewis and details some of the ways he has cleared a path for us all. I’ll only add that I vigorously concur, and that JP is among the very few men who rank with CSL for impact in my own life. -samSomeone introduced me to Lewis my freshman year with the book, Mere Christianity. For the next five or six years I was almost never without a Lewis book near at hand. I think that without his influence I would not have lived my life with as much joy or usefulness as I have. There are reasons for this.
He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valu¬able for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and opened for me the wisdom of the ages. To this day I get most of my soul-food from centuries ago. I thank God for Lewis’s compelling demonstration of the obvious.
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Will There Really Be a Morning
Heaven knows why it has taken me so long to write a little something about this album, the newest EP from friend and soul sister, Julie Lee. Julie and I met several years ago at a friend’s house and found immediate ease in conversation and a unique connection; sparks of light and magic hung lightly in the air around our collision. It was one of those instances where you know for sure that the God of the Universe meant for you to meet this one particular human being out of the millions that He created. I know that sounds a little dramatic, but I like drama (the good kind only, please) and am grateful when I find it happening in my little life.
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Acedia & Me: A Book Review
Browsing the shelves of wicked-cool used bookstore here in Nashville, McKay Books, I happened upon Kathleen Norris’s (The Cloister Walk, Dakota, Amazing Grace) latest, Acedia & Me. Though I had no idea she had a new book out, the cheap sticker price for a primo first edition (Note: you will recall from a previous post that I have a more than slight affinity for used bookstores and, especially, first editions) was an easy decision. The title itself was mildly intriguing since I was vaguely familiar with the word, “acedia”, but of which I knew very little. The subtitle, “A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life”, though hardly an enticing, round-em-up, gather-em-in slogan, is true to Ms. Norris’ midwestern style, neither flamboyant nor melodramatic.Acedia, coined the “noonday demon” by the early monastics, is the absence of care when life becomes overly challenging, repetitious and boring, while engagement with other people is too demanding. In short, it is spiritual apathy, and is described as a weariness of soul. Though it is not readily a part of the modern scientific lexicon, acedia, in today’s culture, is generally lumped in with depression and the sin of sloth, one of the supposed seven deadly sins. We treat it with medication, just like everything else. But, as Norris continually illuminates, acedia possesses spiritual roots, and, thus, can ultimately only be treated with spiritual attention and resolve.
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Telling the Story: The Jesus Storybook Bible
I’ve been hearing about this children’s Bible called The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones for a year or so now, first from Ben Shive, then from a smattering of others whose opinions I respect on such matters. One night last week Jamie and I were putting our sweet Skye to bed (she’s 6 now), and we were talking to her about Christmas. I’d been gearing up to leave for tour and with the first Sunday of Advent fast approaching we wanted to find out what she thought. Jamie asked her who was born on Christmas morning, and Skye answered, “Um…Noah?”
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A Few Reviews for Resurrection Letters, Vol. II
Russ Bremeier at Christianity Today:“One track he’s an evocative poet, the next a storyteller, and before long he’s singing praise to the Lord—all within the same album. Though he resides in the same folk-pop vein throughout, he varies his scope from song to song (like Mullins) and thus more fully articulates Christian living than most of today’s …
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What’s the Use in Receiving?
Is there a qualitative difference between learning a song from your Grandfather and downloading a song from iTunes, from getting a recipe online and pulling out the yellowing paper of an old, family recipe? Ken Myers answers in the affirmative, channeling C.S. Lewis when he discusses the need for thoughtful Christians to consider not only content in what we appreciate in art, but also how we receive it.
Myers, in his excellent book All God’s Children and Blue-Suede Shoes, points out that while Christians have been very sensitive to the content of movies, music and other art forms, we have been less discriminating about how art comes to us and what that process can help us become. We have counted the references to the name of Jesus in music (at rough estimation, repeated about 9,000 times in many Praise and Worship songs) and we have checked for how many so-called “curse words” there are in films, but we have failed to recognize our increasing tendency to fracture and disconnect from our own history and community in how we receive art. Often we see art only as a vehicle for moralism and this has issued in some pretty crummy results. And by art I mean music, painting, drawing, writing, etc. Myers (and Lewis) argue that we need to receive art in a different way than we are being trained to by our culture (increasingly autonomous in the modern era) and I think he is right. -
West Coast Diaries Volume 2 - Charlie Peacock
The other night my wife and I had the opportunity to see Charlie Peacock in concert. The Art*Music*Justice tour, featuring Sarah Groves, Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, Brandon Heath and Charlie, had an off day in Kansas City. So Charlie set up a house show with just him and his piano in the upstairs art gallery of the world’s most perfect Christian bookstore, Signs of Life, in downtown Lawrence, Kansas. (No kidding. Not a Scripture mint to be found, but huge sections on art, history, classics and local writers. There’s one wall devoted to the puritans, and another to Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and the like. Dangerous.)Now you need to know for those formative years bridging high school and college, Charlie provided the soundtrack for my life. So there’s my bias. There was one record in particular which made me want to write, sing and play guitar. In fact, it planted in me a desire to make art and live artistically during that window of life when I was considering, in many ways for the first time, what I wanted to do and become.
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Learning to See - Annie Dillard
Back in 1994 I was living as a student in Jerusalem. A roommate of mine had this book called “The Living.” He was just finishing when I first saw him reading it. I asked him if it was any good. In a non sequitur kind of way, he said, “Look at this picture on the cover.” It was an old plate picture of a family of loggers in the American northwest, circa 1900 or so. I couldn’t stop studying that image with fascination. It seemed to capture an era we’ll only imagine– men and children with axes and saws beside a clapboad shack beside fallen redwoods with trunks six feet thick.
I judged the book by its cover. And while Annie Dillard didn’t take the picture, write about the picture or probably even select the picture, that photo of a world that seemed to be teeming with a secret knowledge of how hard life is brought me into Dillard’s world, which carries that same secret, along with a secret knowledge of how glorious life is at the same time.
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Donal Grant: The Obedience of Faith
Mystery. Intrigue. Drugs, dark secrets, the decay of the will, and the transforming power of God’s love sown by a single man to a harvest of redemption.That’s Donal Grant. George MacDonald has an uncanny gift for unzipping a reader’s heart, dropping in all kinds of mind-expanding and life-altering thoughts, and then zipping it all right back up.
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The Year Of Living Biblically
My favorite book I’ve read this year was initially only a curiosity piece I perused while killing time in a Barnes & Noble. I had recently bought Unchristian – a book that offers an insightful look at how outsiders of the faith view the church – by David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, but decided I needed a mental break and started looking for something a little lighter. I’m not inclined to reach for humor books, but the cover of a book featuring a man dressed in Old Testament garb and looking earnestly heavenward with the ten commandments in one hand and a Starbucks cup in the other proved irresistible. I picked it up, thumbed through the pages and found myself laughing out loud in the aisle at Barnes & Noble – another uncharacteristic behavior for me.Who knows? Maybe it was my tour induced exhaustion, or maybe it was the Vietnamese food I’d just had for lunch with a few friends, but for whatever reason I left the store with a hardcover of The Year Of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow The Bible As Literally As Possible by A.J. Jacobs tucked under my arm (after paying for it, of course - thou shalt not steal, you know).
A.J. Jacobs is the editor of Esquire Magazine and the author of Know It All: One Man’s Humble Attempt To Become The Smartest Man In The World, a book he wrote chronicling his experience of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. He is also a self-proclaimed agnostic who decided the only worthy book to follow the Encyclopedia Britannica project would be the book of all books: the Good Book.
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THE YELLOW LEAVES: Some Thoughts On Buechner
The Yellow Leaves: A Miscellany, the new book from my favorite author, Frederick Buechner, was released on June 16th. I added it to my Amazon shopping cart when I first heard about it from the Proprietor and Eric Peters, after they heard Buechner read a couple excerpts during the grand opening of the Frederick Buechner Institute back in January (which also featured a concert by Michael Card, with AP opening for him).The blurb on the back of The Yellow Leaves from John Wilson, editor of Books and Culture, perfectly describes it: “Heartbreaking, sardonic, whimsical, elegiac, crazy-funny: this is a book to be sipped like a rare wine, the last bottle of a fabled vintage, brought up from the cellar for our delectation.”
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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.
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Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories
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.
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Saint Julian: A Novel
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.
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On Andy & Jill
The musical bumper sticker on my car during the ol’ college years would have definitely read “I’d Rather Be Listening To Acoustic Music.” Therein was my initial foray into the early careers of Square Peg artists like our own Proprietor. I found great enjoyment in the Texan college worship scene (early Crowder, Robbie Seay, Justin Barnard, anyone?). And the great unknown (acoustic) rock over which I stumbled came in the form of Jill Phillips.
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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:
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The Killer Angels
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).
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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. -
Nervous Laughter—Andy Gullahorn’s “Reinventing the Wheel”
Andy Gullahorn is funny, but he’s also one of the more serious lyricists I’ve come to enjoy in a while. Listening to Reinventing the Wheel, you come to understand that he is more than a good songwriter. He is a craftsman. He knows what he’s doing, where he’s going, and where he’s taking his hearers.But as I said, people say Andy Gullahorn is funny. They say that, I think, because he makes them laugh. But as for me, I’m calling it nervous laughter.
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