U2 Craziness

I've got three brothers who live in the Pacific Northwest. One is an aspiring writer, one is a systems administrator for a software company called OmniGroup, and the other is a professional musician living in Seattle. Two of the three have formed a band called u277, a U2 Tribute band and they play regularly in the Tacoma/Seattle are. I happen to think they could be the best U2 Tribute band out there, even better than Zoo Station, the Bay Area's premier U2 Tribute band.

And in addition to this battle of the bands, we now are able to see U2 (the actual band) peforming in 3D! www.u23dmovie.com. I'm planning on seeing it down in Dublin at the IMAX soon!

Lenten Journey

The season of Lent is fast approaching (starts Feb 6th). This year, we've partnered with churches all over the valley in a project called iLent (www.ilent.org) - starting Feb 6th, you'll find devotionals and videos that should encourage you on the 40 day journey through the season leading up to Easter.

For the iLent project, I recorded a song with my friend Dave Foster from the Vineyard Church in Concord. He's a great guy and wrote a great song called "Iron." Here's a video.


You'll be able to find out more about valley-wide events and the valley churches at www.churchwithoutshoes.com

I Love GarageBand

I dig GarageBand, the basic multi-tracking software that comes with the iLife software pack you can get for a Mac. It's intuitive, easy to use and sounds pretty darn good. I do not personally own a Mac, but I'm hoping to sometime in the future. I borrowed a MacBook from my friend Mark Pitzlin who directs "Puppets of Praise." I spent the last couple of days laying down tracks just to get some ideas out of my head. Here's what I came up with:

I got together with a friend of mine to start writing some tunes to see what might happen. We mostly came up with chord progressions and basic themes, but nothing concrete. Regardless, I took one of our chord progression ideas and put some groove to it and this is what I came up with. DEMO

And on Sunday, we did an arrangement of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" that I put together for band and organ. Our handbell director joined in on the bells, too! Wonderful. This is just an instrumental take on what we did without the bells and whistles. I incorporated a basic drum grooved I borrowed from a Sara Groves tune. DEMO