My new album is out! There’s a track-by-track description of it on “Learning and Leading”, the blog of the Earlham School of Religion.
Here’s a widget to use if you’d like to pick up a copy, or download a track or two. Notice that my previous album, “Smackdown”, is also still available.
My next album is in manufacturing now and will be shipping within a week or two. It is entitled As a Deer Longs, and contains eleven original songs, including two instrumental numbers. My wife, Kelly Autrey-Webber, provided backing vocals for several songs—wherever you hear an angel singing, that’s Kelly. She also sings one song (“Fear Not, Said the Angel”) with me as a duet. The CD will ship with a 12-page booklet that includes lyrics. All the photographic artwork for the CD, case, and booklet was done with great creativity and sensitivity by Robert E. Pierson. Rob and I have dedicated the album to the students, faculty and staff of the Earlham School of Religion, which rashly graduated both of us.
I wrote the music for this album over the last five years or so. (It might properly be subtitled, “A Soul Slogs through Seminary”.) Some songs are better, and some songs are worse; some songs are reverent, some the reverse. But all of them are from the heart, and it means a lot to me to be able to share them at last.
The album will be available through various conventional channels, with CD sales on CDBaby.com and download sales through with iTunes, AmazonMP3, Rhapsody, Napster, and other e-tailers. I’ll write about it again when it’s shipping.
Here’s some more video from the concert I gave on November 12, 2011 at the Sycamore United Methodist Church in Sycamore, IL. (Thanks to the staff there for providing this footage.) My brother Ben helped me with some of chords and voicings in this song. He’s a jazz genius.
I wrote this song for a homeless veteran I met, a man who told me that he didn’t believe in God — and told me why. God bless you, friend, wherever you are.
Here’s some video from the concert I gave on November 12, 2011 at the Sycamore United Methodist Church in Sycamore, IL. (Thanks to the staff there for providing this footage.) The song is my “Prophet’s Lament”.
Here’s a video recording of a sermon I delivered in the First Congregational Church of DeKalb, IL on Sunday, November 13, 2011. The text was Psalm 90:1-12, and as part of the sermon I sang two songs: “Dies Irae” and “I Think”. The “Dies Irae” is some 800 years old, with a Latin text said to have been written by Thomas of Celano, the friend and disciple (and official biographer) of Francis of Assisi. I sang a subset of the verses, using the 1848 English translation by William Irons. The second song, “I Think”, is one I wrote myself.
As of today, my 2008 album “Smackdown” is available from CDBaby, either as a CD or as MP3 downloads. I’m working on the next album, but it’s still a few months away. I’m hoping to have it available by December 4, the date of my next retreat at Pilgrim Park.
The album cover for Smackdown shows a mosaic from the Soumela monastery in Turkey. This depicts a famous incident in the history of the church: at the first Council of Nicea in 325, the presbyter Arius was excommunicated, and exiled, and also smacked—by Bishop Nicholas, later a saint of the church. I guess Arius was naughty rather than nice.
