I keep telling myself that I’m going to blog more often.  It keeps not happening.  One of the biggest barriers has been the idea that I need to think out a thought well enough to actually write an intelligent blog post about it.  So… I’m going to try posting some thoughts bullet-style so that I could possibly include info on this site more often.  We’ll see how it goes.

• At my job we’ve started a “Biggest Loser” contest.  So far, out of 17 people, I’m in second with 10 pounds lost.  Unfortunately for the contest I lost 10 pounds before we started, so I’m now down 20 pounds but only 10 pounds count.  8 weeks to go and hopefully I’ll be able to knock out another 25-35 pounds.
• On Sunday, I surprised my wife with a trip to St. Louis to see the Civil Wars.  First of all – the Civil Wars were awesome.  It’s amazing how a  guitar and 2 vocalists can fill a room and capture everyone’s attention.  Among the funny moments on this trip was handing over the keys for our 20-year-old Camry to the valet at the hotel, then the next day having to tell the valet how to open the car because only certain door locks actually work with the key.  You let things go when your car gets to be 20 because the objective becomes driving it until you drive it into the ground instead of keeping it in perfect condition.
• Took my daughter to “Dads and Doughnuts” at her school this week.  The parking lot looks significantly different for Dads and Doughnuts than it does for Moms and Muffins.  Less minivans, more trucks, and more trucks parked on the grass instead of in parking spaces.  Also, is it really wise to give your kids an unending supply of Krispy Kremes for a full hour before school?  I limited my daughter to two, but let’s just say that not all of the dads set a limit on their kids.
• My daughter calls Martin Luther King “Martha Lutin.”  Once I realized that she was speaking about Martin Luther KING and not Martin Luther (the theologian) her stories about Martha Lutin started to make more sense.  At first she was just talking about how Martha Lutin wanted to “change the rules.”  I thought it was interesting that her public school was teaching about the theologian and fully expected a synopsis of The Ninety-Five Theses out of my kindergartener until I connected the rule-changing conversation with the time of year.  “Ah… you mean Martin Luther KING.”  “That’s what I SAID, daddy.  Martha Lutin Queeng.”  Right… we’ll keep working on that.
• Our Christmas tree is still up.  Yours is, too.  Right?
• So, our winters aren’t exactly cold in Nashville, but two nights of tornado warnings this week along with LOWS in the 60′s (!) last night are just bizarre.
• Meta alert:
• Coming this week here on the site – What’s coming down the pike for 2012 on the music front and Wordless Wednesday…
• Want to see me lead worship this week?  Check out:
• New Vision Smyrna Campus on Sunday, the 22nd at 11:15 am
• The Loop Nashville on Monday, the 23rd at 7:30 pm
• New Vision Murfreesboro Campus on Wednesday, the 25th at 7:00 pm
• Hey, while you’re here go “like” my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter!

As I was perusing the web today I found this video that I didn’t even know existed. It’s me and the band at Trinity Baptist in Ocala, FL, 2 1/2 years ago. This is a cell phone video (an old cell phone at that) from someone who was at the event, so please excuse the audio/video quality. Anyway, thought I’d share. This was a great group of students that I really need to follow up with about booking another event…

The video of “You Are God” is officially out and ready for public consumption!  Special thanks to Brian Smith and Josh Eldred at Cinematicfocus for help putting this together!

For the past few years I’ve been playing a Breedlove Atlas Series guitar that I picked up for $400 on Ebay. It’s a satin Cedar finish and sounds great. It’s a slightly older model, so it has a Fishman instead of the current LR Baggs electronics they use on their Atlas Series. I could definitely make the argument that it is the best $400 guitar one could find.

I’ve been extremely happy with it, but I realize that as a serious guitar player I at least have to have a backup. Once I start talking about a backup guitar, the conversation normally transitions to making my current guitar the backup and getting a higher-end acoustic as my front-line guitar. For the last 2 or so years I’ve been looking everywhere to determine what my next guitar will be. I’ve looked at McPhersons, Larivees, Martins, Gibsons, and Taylors. I’ve pretty much determined that if I was buying a guitar for the studio that I would absolutely go with a Gibson Dove. I also had settled on the Taylor 514 as my eventual live guitar of choice. As a worship leader, how a guitar sounds plugged into a sound system is actually more important than how it sounds acoustically. The 514 sounds awesome plugged in, and I’ve been saving my pennies. I’m almost there.

But as I’ve been saving my pennies I’ve wondered if I should really spend the money on the 514 or just get one or two more guitars identical to mine. After all, I’m really happy with my guitar. The intonation is great. It sounds good plugged in. Then I went to Guitar Center and tried out one of these puppies: Breedlove Cascade C25/CRE. It’s less than half the price of the 514. It’s a definitive step up from my current acoustic and has the L.R. Baggs Element Active VTC Pickup system. It sounds awesome! Once you get to certain level of guitars, I think you’re really looking at different preferences rather than difference in quality, and I definitely think this guitar reaches that level.

So… what guitars do you like? What should I look at that I haven’t? Has anybody tried the Cascade Series and come to the same conclusions as me?

This Sunday at New Vision Smyrna we got to listen to Brady Cooper preach live instead of by video.  Anyway, here’s the set from yesterday:

• Our God - Tomlin – “Our God is greater.  Our God is stronger.  God you are higher than any other.”  What better way to start off a worship service?
• O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing - Crowder’s version – We’ve trying to have at least one “traditional” hymn in Smyrna each week.  This one fills that need and is a great upbeat song for the set.  Also, a good call to worship as it hits the new chorus written by Crowder: “So come on and sing out, let our anthem grow loud”
• The Stand - Hillsong – This has become a standard for me.  I probably overuse it a little, but every group I lead worship for responds well to this song.  Until the response changes this song remains a standard.
• Overcome - Desperation Band – one of my favorite worship tunes.  Apparently I went about 3 minutes longer than this song was planned.  Oops.
• Came to My Rescue - Hillsong – We added this on the fly when an invitation time was added to the service.  Probably the most laid-back version I’ve ever done.
• Your Great Name - Natalie Grant – Casey (our female vocalist in Smyrna) killed it on this song, but that’s something she always does.

This site is mostly for my music and worship leading endeavors, but occasionally I ramble about other things.  It’s also NOT a foodie blog, but last night I took my wife on a date and we had steak that was blog-worthy…

Right now, in addition to leading worship, I work for a Blackberry help desk in downtown Nashville.  Our office is in the “Gulch,” which is pretty much the place where all of the restaurants that I’m not hip enough to go to are.  Occasionally I’ll act hip and go to one of these restaurants.  Our office building recently had a steakhouse renovate and move into the bottom floor.  To this point I had assumed it was too hip and high-brow for me, so we had not yet gone.  Pretty much everything I had heard about the place was from different music industry-types tweeting that they were there.

Anyway, enough about why we hadn’t been there.  Last night we went to Kayne Prime for the first time.  The price range of this place makes it a once-a-year, special-date kind of place for us, but when you’re on one of those dates it is totally worth it.

Valet parking is free, but we’re too cheap to tip (we did tip our waiter well – over 20% even – don’t kill me – I was just too cheap to tip twice) and I happen to have free (to me) parking in the lot because of work, so we zipped right past the valets into a space and walked in (most people would actually get towed for parking there, but I am fortunate to have one of those rear-view-mirror-hangy-thingys – yes, that’s the technical term).

I’m not going to bore you with what typical restaurant reviews sound like, so, I’ll now summarize bullet-style:

• The wait staff was very attentive and knowledgeable.
• appetizer – housemade bacon.  The idea of bacon as an appetizer sounded crazy, but we went with it because, well, it’s bacon.  Good choice!  It’s really like pork loin cooked with maple caramel and cracked peppercorn.  Wow!
• side – caramelized broccoli.  It was a little spicy, but generally good.  Probably my least favorite part of the meal, but not bad – just least favorite in comparison to everything else.  Vanessa also makes roasted broccoli at home, and I honestly like hers better.    (Do i get brownie points for that?)
• side – cream corn brulee.  Every review I read said to try this, so we did.  And we didn’t regret it.  And now I’m looking at the cans of creamed corn in the pantry trying to figure out if I can make it.  Basically, it’s cream corn (but not the stuff from the can – you know – fresh corn and all that jazz) cooked and presented like creme brulee.  I’m not a cook, so I don’t totally know what goes into that, but I do know that the end result is awesome and I will be figuring out how to make this.
• steak – Vanessa had the 6 oz. Petite Filet.  It’s one of the least expensive steaks on the menu and hers was one of the best steaks I’ve ever tasted.  Quite simply – awesome.  It was tender and you could nearly cut it with a fork.
• steak – I had the 10 oz. Filet Mignon – also one of the least expensive steaks on the menu, and also awesome.  I can’t imagine what the more expensive steaks are like as much as I liked mine and Vanessa’s.  Just like Vanessa’s – my steak was tender and cooked to a perfect medium.

I’m cheap, but occasionally I like to splurge for a really nice meal.  Last night was one of the nights, and I’m thankful that God made steak (well, technically He made the cow, and some really smart man or woman decided to cook the meat from the cow, and then centuries or milleniums later Kayne Prime cooked my steak to perfection.  But I digress…)

In 601 we started a new series entitled “Move.” Naturally, our set began with “Dare You to Move” by Switchfoot. Also, we started the night off with a baptism! Always nice to see a high school student up in front of his peers to proclaim Christ!

the set:

• Dare You to Move – Switchfoot - I actually had never played this song, even though I played in a cover band at the time of its release. Weird. Fun song to play.
• Cannons – Phil Wickham - Pretty much anything by Wickham goes to the top of my list, but this also appears to be a song our students really enjoy singing.
• Mighty to Save – Hillsong - I had briefly retired this song because I thought we had overused it, but then I realized that our high school students still wanted to sing this song. So now, the challenge is to present it with subtle changes to keep it fresh. The church took me, along with quite a few of our worship leaders and volunteers, to see Hillsong United last week. Well, the “subtle changes to keep it fresh” this week were simply copies of how Hillsong changed it up live.
• The Stand – Hillsong - I think I could play this song every week and our high school students would love it!  The same as “Mighty to Save,” the challenge is to make subtle changes to keep it fresh.
• Here in Your Presence – New Life - We normally do a modified version of this song, with just the bridge and chorus.

the band:

This week was a band of people I’ve played music with forever.  Thomas Becker played electric – I’ve been playing music with him for about 13 or 14 years.  Josh Martin played drums – I played in Salient with him, which puts us playing music together for about 11 or 12 years.  Eric Woodie played bass – I’ve only know Eric for about 5 years, so we’ve been playing music together about that long.  Fun times!

After a little hiccup with getting things posted to iTunes and Amazon, the album has officially hit iTunes. You can download your copy here.

Of course, you can still order a physical copy if you’d like to have one shipped to you to hold in your hands.

The CD release show is today! I hope to see all of you there. Doors open at 6 and the show starts at 6:30. You can find all of the info you need here.