From his work with his first band, The Normals, through the years he was with Caedmon’s Call – as Derek Webb’s replacement – to his five solo albums (and counting), I find something in Andy’s music that I need, lyrics that provide comfort and encouragement, words that give voice to unspoken yearnings, disappointments, and desires, confessions and promises. Lines that remind me of the kind of person I want to be, and how I might get there.

And then, of course, as anyone who knows Andy’s music will tell you, there are the guitar solos. At the 2008 Festival of Faith and Music at Calvin College, Andy sang one of my favorite songs he wrote (with frequent writing partner Randall Goodgame) while he was with Caedmon’s Call, Hold the Light, and after he sang everything that could be said, begging friends to walk alongside him, a plea for community, he played an extended solo on his electric guitar, a solo that expressed everything he wanted to communicate that couldn’t be put into words. That concert still ranks up there as one of the best concerts I’ve been to in my life.

One example of the kind of lyrics Andy writes: At a recent Square Peg Alliance house show here in Nashville, Andy played a song that will be on his upcoming project (more about that shortly). When he sang the first chorus, I was caught off guard by the first line, as it started off in a way that led me to think I knew what he would say. “God help the man who helps himself,” he sang. “He needs no other demons.” By leaving off one “s,” he changed the meaning of the phrase, asking the listener to rethink what they thought they knew and creating a space for him to tell a story, building off the presuppositions we bring to that grouping of words.

So about Andy’s new project: He’s going to space. And he needs your help.

By “going to space,” I mean he’s building a spaceship, or the interior of one, dressing up like an astronaut, and writing and recording a new album that tells that story of Leonard the Lonely Astronaut. As the biggest science fiction nerd that I know, Andy has been dreaming of this project for a couple of years, bringing it up in conversations with friends and hoping it would happen someday. He’s realized that if he doesn’t go ahead and make it now, “I’ll end up 75 years old muttering, “Dang it. I never built that spaceship.”’ He’s raising the funds for his space ship through Kickstarter, which is where you come in. Here’s a video he put together about the project, and I hope you’ll head over to Kickstarter to help him out after watching the video.

I’d have to say, though, there was one thing I liked above everything else about the film, and that’s what I want to spend more time talking about here: the glimpse Crazy Heart gives us into the world of music superstars, both at the height of their career and when they’re down on their luck. Working as an arranger and music copyist in the Nashville music industry, I get occasional glimpses into that world. Watching Bad Blake play for a packed house at a corner bar, seeing how he related to the crowd and how he performed, I thought of the time I was in the studio with legendary rock singer Bob Seger.

The first thing that becomes apparent as you watch the story unfold is Bad Blake’s alcohol addiction, and we know from the start that things can’t continue the way they are. Something has to change, a brick wall will be hit. What could be a bigger cliché than a big star hitting rock bottom because of an addiction and then climbing out of the hole, right? In lessor hands, this movie would have made that the focus of the story and subsequently been relegated to late night showings on the Hallmark channel, but Scott Cooper, in his directorial debut, realizes we don’t need another telling of that story, rescuing it from being a series of clichés and telling a genuinely moving story. I couldn’t help but think, towards the end of the story, of another great musician I’ve had the chance to work with, Trey Anastasio (of Phish fame), doing all the music preparation for several of his recent tours. Trey hit bottom several years ago with an arrest for a drug addiction that resulted in him realizing he had to make changes. Since that time, I’ve sat in a studio on Music Row in Nashville, listening to Trey practice with a string quintet a concerto he cowrote for electric guitar and orchestra with a friend of mine, Don Hart. I’ve hung around backstage at Carnegie Hall after a performance of that concerto with the New York Philharmonic. I’ve heard him play with Phish at Bonnaroo in front of 75,000 fans, with none other than Bruce Springsteen joining him for a couple songs.

So I know what redemption looks like in that context. I have seen up close what it means when a rock star realizes they can’t continue on the road they’re on, make changes, and the music they make after that. This movie is the best portrayal I’ve seen of that story on the big screen, and it’s why I’ll continue to recommend it to everyone I know.

Read the full review.

In his new book Hear No Evil: My Story of Innocence, Music, and the Holy Ghost, releasing February 16th from WaterBrook Press, Matthew Paul Turner tells the story of the time God called him to be the Christian version of Michael Jackson.

I had a similar experience in my childhood, except God’s message to me didn’t quite go along with what he told Matthew, as the still, small voice of God is wont to do. When I was 18 years old, after being convinced along with many of my friends about the evils of dating by Joshua Harris’ book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, God told me to write a book in the same style and with the same target audience. Except this one would let teenagers know about the evils of rock music. It was the role I was born for. I grew up believing that rock music was evil–and by rock music, I meant anything by Steve Green or Michael Card.

Of course music made by non-Christians like the Beatles and U2 was evil; that wasn’t even up for debate. But what many of my friends didn’t know was the danger of listening to music by people who called themselves Christians but used a style of music that was indistinguishable from the world. They didn’t realize the peril they were putting their souls in by listening to sounds that came straight from hell, music that caused natives in the depths of Africa to become possessed by Satan. Fortunately for them, I did. I’d read all the books explaining exactly how and why rock music is evil, the most influential one having been written by the music minister at a church my great uncle pastored. I wrote twenty-page e-mails to friends, under the guise of a Bible study, sharing the information I’d learned. I’m sure they counted themselves lucky to have someone watching out for their souls.

Read the full review.

Joe Henry is a world-weary romantic; too jaded by false claims and hyped hopes to swallow the vapid Hallmark Card cliches, too cognizant of the tiny miracles of everyday existence to write off the promise and redemptive power of love. That’s the uneasy conundrum that informs every song on Blood From Stars, his eleventh album in an ongoing series of dispatches from the war-ravaged front lines of a life.

After describing the music and sharing with us his favorite songs, Andy wraps up his review by telling us where he thinks the genius of Blood From Stars lays. He writes:

It’s the work of a poetic asshole who is well loved, and grace has the final word. I’m tempted to call it a stone cold masterpiece, but there’s nothing cold about it. It’s a big, open-hearted, warm paean to the hazards and triumphs of love, human and divine. There’s no use separating the two, Joe Henry seems to be telling us. The human is illumined by the flickering light of something better and outside ourselves, and the divine is given substance and form by messy, redemptive relationships. It’s the truest album I’ve heard this year, and the best.

To everything Andy writes, I add a hearty “Amen.” Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Derek refused to back down and omit the song completely, so the compromise reached with INO, his label, is to release two versions of the record, one without the “offensive” song to the christian market, and the complete CD, what Derek called “the authorized version,” to the general market and available on Derek’s website. There will also be seven versions of the album: three CDs that will have varying content and extra material, including one version that includes the making-of documentary, three tiers of the digital download, and, my favorite one, a vinyl version of the album.

During the Q&A, Derek was asked a question about a specific lyric, one having to do with sexuality, if I remember right, and gave what I thought was a great answer: “I’ve tried to learn to not give short answers to long questions.” Imagine the dead air one would hear if a tv talking head ever took that approach.

The best news of the night, again as rumored, is that while the street date for Stockholm Syndrome isn’t until September 9th, pre-orders start this Tuesday, July 7th, and include an immediate full digital download. Stay tuned to Derek’s site for more info about the pre-orders.

And here now is Derek’s song, What Matters Most, a great song and one I’m glad has seen the light of day.

I first met Larry at a keyboard workshop he was teaching about five years ago. One of his handouts, an exercise sheet, was handwritten, and I volunteered to typeset it for him with the music notation software I use. Through that process, we became friends, and shared many meals together. He loved telling stores of gigs he’d played and people he’d met, the times he’d played for artists like Henry Mancini and Mel Torme, the presidents he had played for, the orchestra sessions he was a part of. I’ll never forget sitting in his music room after lunch one day, listening to him play through a piano arrangement on his nine-foot Steinway grand piano that he was in the middle of writing, or seeing the score where he was transcribing a Mozart symphony by ear, because an orchestra he worked with couldn’t find the music for one of the movements and he wanted to help them out.

Growing up, I listened to and volunteered at a radio station where my mom had – and has – a daily radio program, and later worked for them for three and a half years. We had all of Larry’s CDs there at WDYN, and I played his music all the time. Larry loved to take modern praise choruses, the ones that have great melodies, and arrange them in a classical style. He was a great pianist, arranger, and orchestrator, and taught me a lot about orchestral colors, both from listening to his recordings and stories he told me. I have no doubt that Larry is one of the reasons I do what I do today. Larry, you will be missed.

One project that has occupied much of my time over the last couple months has been doing all the music prep. for a concert that took place this past Thursday, a concert by the Baltimore Symphony. Last year, a friend of mine, Grammy-nominated arranger and composer Don Hart, co-wrote a 30-minute piece for Electric Guitar and Orchestra, Time Turns Elastic, with Trey Anastasio, frontman for the band Phish. It was performed at a sold-out show at the Ryman Auditorium, featuring Orchestra Nashville, along with several other Phish tunes Don arranged for orchestra. In December, Trey recorded the piece up in Seattle with the Northwest Sinfonia, and that recording is now available for pre-order, releasing on June 9th. Last week’s performance was the East Cost premier, and included first performances of several other Phish tunes Don orchestrated. Last I checked, I had spent over 100 hours preparing parts and printing out several thousand pages of music for the show, and it was a real privilege to be involved in a project with such great music.

The reviews from Thursday’s show are starting to come in, like this one from the Baltimore Sun.

Musical worlds collided Thursday night when rocker Trey Anastasio took the stage with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop. There were no casualties.

Anastasio, founding member of Phish and a songwriter with a refreshing avoidance of conventional chord progressions, has been collaborating with traditional classical ensembles for several years now. His most ambitious effort in this field is a half-hour piece called Time Turns Elastic that he co-wrote with Don Hart, composer-in-residence of Orchestra Nashville. It premiered last September with that orchestra and received its East Coast premiere at this BSO concert, which drew a young, animated crowd.

Read the full review.

Relix Magazine review
Rolling Stone review

As one would expect from a concert connected to Phish, a live bootleg is already available on the Internet and can be downloaded here.

The next performance of Time Turns Elastic will be this Fall with a little-known orchestra, The New York Philharmonic, at this place called Carnegie Hall.

The picture is of Don Hart with scores for all the songs he arranged.

Derek’s song is titled “The Sprit vs. the Kick Drum,” and is apparently built around a great quote from Rich Mullins about worship. In an interview about the Caedmon’s Call record In the Company of Angels, Cliff Young relates this story: “Rich used to talk about how people would come up to him after concerts and say, ‘Wow! The Holy Spirit really moved at that certain point in the song,’” Young remembers. “And Rich would respond by saying, ‘No actually, that’s where the kick drum and the bass came in.’ It’s easy to mistake energy and emotion for worship.”

I’ve had the song on repeat all morning and love it. You can download it for free from www.derekwebb.com. Confused? Kat at Bloggable Music Network explains how to find the clues to download the song from the hidden page.

Derek posted on his twitter account that he’s written a bunch of this record at Ugly Mugs Coffeeshop in East Nashville, one of the two best coffeeshops in town and one where I spend a lot of time. Several times I’ve seen Derek with his notebook in his lap and his headphones on, writing lyrics, so it’s fun to finally hear one of the songs.

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I recently read Anne Lamott’s novel “Crooked Little Heart”, and as I was finishing it I came to the conclusion that all of her writing could be summed up in this way: We are messed up people, living in a messed up world. We screw up all the time, but some of us are able to hide it better than others. And life is still beautiful. We are selfish, caring only about ourselves and our needs. We do whatever it takes to try and make ourselves comfortable, no matter who is hurt by it. We go to great lengths to protect our illusions of perfection. But every once in a while we help a friend, we allow ourselves to be inconvenienced, we put aside our rights. And life is beautiful.

In today’s culture, it is impolite to tell someone if they are doing something wrong. We avoid straight talk at all costs; we even choose our churches by looking for masturbatory teaching. We are afraid to show others who we really are, in part, on the chance that they won’t like us any more or want to be around us. But I think Sara Groves is getting at something in the chorus of her song “Every Minute” when she sings “And at the risk of wearing out my welcome / At the risk of self-discovery / I’ll take every moment / And every minute that you’ll give me.” We are more afraid that we will discover ourselves than we are that others will know who we are. Why else are we afraid of silence? Why else do we surround ourselves with music, T.V., and the radio every minute of the day? If we search our hearts, what will we find?

We need to remember that life is lived in community and growth comes through sharing. In Sara’s song “All Right Here,” she sings “Every heart has so much history / It’s my favorite place to start / Sit down a while and share your narrative with me / I’m not afraid of who you are // I’m all here, and you’re all there / Some of this is unique, and some of it we share / Add it up and start from there / Well, it’s all right here.”

So we have a choice to make. Will we admit that we are not perfect and let others share in this beautiful mess of a life that we live? Will we allow ourselves to love, even though we know it could end in hurt? Or will we pretend that life is perfect, that we have it all together and everything is great, that we need no one else?

Sara Groves ~ Every Minute

I am long on staying
I am slow to leave
Especially when it comes to you my friend
You have taught me to slow down
And to prop up my feet
It’s the fine art of being who I am

And I can’t figure out
Why you want me around
I’m not the smartest person I have ever met
But somehow that doesn’t matter
No it never really mattered to you at all

And at the risk of wearing out my welcome
At the risk of self-discovery
I’ll take every moment
And every minute that you’ll give me

And I can think of time when families all lived together
Four generations in one house
And the table was full of good food
And friends and neighbors
That’s not how we like it now

Cause if you sit at home you’re a loser
Couldn’t you find anything better to do
Well no I couldn’t think of one thing
I would rather waste my time on than sitting here with you

And at the risk of wearing out my welcome
At the risk of self-discovery
I’ll take every moment
And every minute that you’ll give me

And I wish all the people I love the most
Could gather in one place
And know each other and love each other well

And I wish we could all go camping
And lay beneath the stars
And have nothing to do and stories to tell
We’d sit around the campfire
And we’d make each other laugh remembering when
You’re the first one I’m inviting
Always know that you’re my friend

And at the risk of wearing out my welcome
At the risk of self-discovery
I’ll take every moment
And every minute that you’ll give me
Every moment and every minute that you’ll give me

Stand up, this is comedy,
The DNA lottery may have left you smart.
But can you stand up to beauty, dictator of the heart?
I can stand up for hope, faith, love,
But while I’m getting over certainty
Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady.

I have a couple posts coming soon explaining more about where I’m coming from in my love for that line, and should also have a review of David’s book up sometime before it hits stores in April. In the meantime, go buy the U2 CD, if for some reason you don’t have it yet.