Feb. 26, 2009

First of all, sorry that I have not blogged in many moons.  Everyone knows that it is irresponsible of a singer/songwriter to not blog.  Especially an independent one.  So, I will return to the world of responsible singer/songwriters and be more faithful blogging.  Doesn’t the term “singer/songwriter” make one sound important?  Perhaps I should by myself a bigger hat.

Last week I have a concert Sunday night in Kingston, Ontario.  This was my first “one man band” show (a title...and concept completely stolen from James Taylor).  Just to confuse people, there are actually two of us playing.  I play keys and am privileged to have Tony Lind play guitar.  Tony plays with many different musicians all over North America, does some session work, and is a member of the band Hewit.  We strip

Dec. 15, 2008

“Dust gathers on my stereo
Cause I can’t bear to hear the radio...”
-Duffy

For those of you who read my blog back, a few months ago, one of the things I mentioned was my discovery (or my wife’s discovery to be exact) that I listen to James Taylor every fall.  I don’t intentionally set out and say “it’s fall - time to listen to James Taylor”, it just happens.  Something about the color of the leaves, the fires in peoples back yards (quite possibly illegally burning considering I live in the city), and who knows what else, seems to evoke emotions that are captured in Taylor’s music.  So, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit and am starting to think that this not only happens during fall.  My musical desires change throughout the year, and I believe, quite possibly with the

Dec. 11, 2008

Sorry it’s been a while.  After we moved I got quite ill and was out of commission for a little while.  When I started feeling better, I was a week away from our church Christmas concert “Christmas In The City” which we’d been working on putting together for months. The week before I had some pretty intense work days (and nights), but we had a great time. Most of my musical work over the past few months was for this concert.  I, and a couple of others, spent a good portion of the summer notating Christmas music.  I have no sympathy for people with non-musical jobs who get sick of listening to Christmas music after 3 weeks.  Some of us listen to the SAME FIFTEEN songs for a good portion of the year (and still love it!).  After arranging and transcribing, we spent our time making

Oct. 24, 2008

Just a a quick note to let you know what I’ve been up to.  First of all, we are moving this coming week.  We’re only moving about 5 km’s from our current house, but we decided to move to a place that was a little more conducive to making music.  This has meant that most of our spare time has been spent packing boxes, moving boxes, and all of the other 5,000 things that comes with moving to a new house.  However, in the midst of the craziness, I’ve been doing a lot of writing.  I’ve been writing some tunes for myself and some that are being pitched for other projects.  I had a bit of a deadline last night, so I was literally moving boxes out to the ugly pod sitting in our driveway while coming up with a second verse and bridge.  I would move the box, come back in and jot down my ideas

Sep. 19, 2008

I am extremely grateful for the faculty at the College I went to. Many of the author’s that they talked about I didn’t read until years later, but when I did, they shaped my thinking in significant ways.  I must tell you, however, that I don’t think I’ve read a novel since around the 7th grade.  There was one that I remember liking but didn’t get to finish because school was almost out and I had to return it to the library…or something like that.  The other fictitious books I read where really weird books written in French.  I’m sure there are good French books; they just chose not to allow us to enjoy any of them. 

I have recently been shaped by the likes of N.T. Wright, Lesslie Newbigin, G. K. Chesterton (none of his fictional works of course), Eugene Peterson, Brian

Sep. 4, 2008

For the past three years I have had the privilege of attending the Willowcreek Leadership Summit via satellite at my home church. As I sat through some of the sessions I began asking myself “who has been a leader that has affected my life?” Of course there were a lot of answers, but one of the people that was a huge impact on my life was my Grandfather. Don Spencer was probably not the typical picture of a “high level leader”. He was a short, unassuming man from a small town in Nova Scotia (Windsor) who loved to fish. I don’t know exactly what he did for a living. Whenever I ask my parents I get, “Well, he ran a corner store at one point, but gave too much away so he had to give that up…he did this for a while….he did that for a while”. Most times when you don’t get

Aug. 18, 2008

About three years ago I decided to begin working on a CD. I had written several songs, began to record a few demo’s and thought it was time to think about putting them to wax. I decided the best thing to do was to call my friend, Michael Olson, who had recently released a record as he might have some insight. Michael hooked me up with Nate Sabin, who ended up producing the project and away we went…well, sort of. We went through a 2 - year process where it seemed the CD would never actually be recorded, but would only exist in my head. Two years had passed and miraculously (no…really!) I found myself at the incredible Dark Horse Studio in Franklin, Tennessee in June of 2007 with some of most incredible session players around (Steve Brewster – Drums/Perc, Matt Pierson – Bass,