still here

Music Set Recaps... where are they?
Well, I haven't been keeping up with the music set recaps... I've been able to put together quite a few sets over the past few months, and have had a great time doing it. I have been forcing myself out of my normal patterns, which, though not always easy, is usually positive in the end. I have learned a lot about myself and about my previous church experiences. I have come to realize that for all the great teaching I've enjoyed, there are some startling deficiencies... things I don't remember being taught at all. I am starting to realize how I have been shaped by both the things taught and the things not taught. That's not to throw stones at my old church from a distance; it's an honest assessment of the holes in my own thinking that's long overdue.


Learning about worship
I've also been taking in a lot of information from the likes of Bob Kauflin, Kevin Twit, Harold Best, and Keith Getty. If you know anything about any of those guys, you know that they're all pretty different and come at things from very different angles. That's a good thing. I'd love to distill some of their wisdom, but if you've had at least one conversation with me sometime in the past six months, I have most likely referenced something they said (even if I just paraphrased it incognito-like.) The enormous amount of learning I've done from these men has raised a huge question in my mind: Why is this the first time I'm hearing this stuff?! That's obviously related to the above paragraph as well. It's silly to point fingers and blame other people. I'm just happy that I'm starting to learn some of these things now.


New acoustic guitar
Hey, I got a new guitar. That's probably old news to many, but it's worth mentioning just the same. I've been a Taylor 712 player for just about 10 years now. For the past few months, though, something wasn't cutting it anymore. I'm not sure exactly what it was... I think changing churches did have something to do with it... getting into more roots-oriented music (i.e. bluegrass, alt.country, singer/songwriter, etc.) probably had something to do with it as well. Something about the Taylor just wasn't happening. It was too mellow, had too little low end, and could be a little thin. Granted, some of those traits are what make a Taylor a Taylor; I think those things were exacerbated by the smaller body of the X12 series, particularly in models as old as mine. I know there are a lot (a lot!) of diehard fans of the Taylor X12 series out there on the internet. I still think it's a great guitar... it just wasn't what I was looking for anymore.

Two guitars "got away" before I found my way to a message board posting advertising a 1992 Santa Cruz OM for sale. It sounds shallow, but the cosmetics were what drew me in at first. Everything was exactly what I was looking for, from the blank headstock to the lack of fretboard markers, to the naturally aged finish, to the pickguard, to the company logo inlay at the 12th fret, and to the fact that it was a smaller company. And that was all based on a pretty poor picture. When I saw it in person, it was even better. And it literally took a single strum for me to realize that this is was "the one." That was back in mid-October, and it's only gotten better. I've been fortunate to have a lot of "best gear decision ever" moments over the past year or two, but this has to be near the top.

Two weeks ago I was playing the guitar on Sunday morning. We introducing a song called "Jesus, I Come." The song starts with just an acoustic guitar, and has a really cool Fmaj7 chord shape that my friend Clyde taught me... it's really sweet sounding voicing. As I was playing the first Fmaj7 in the song, I tried to suppress a grin on my face. I simply could not believe how good the guitar sounded. Right then and there, I offered up a quick Thanks so much for letting me enjoy something this nice prayer to God, the giver of all good gifts. We all need reminders to thank God more for things like undeserved salvation from eternal hell. Just as often, I think we need to remember to thank the Lord for the little things... finding a close parking spot when we're late, eating an amazing hot pastrami sandwich (I like sandwiches), laughing yourself silly in the company of friends... we just need to be more thankful period.

The Taylor went on to live with a good friend of my friend Daniel, who plays bass at my church. He seems to like it a lot, so happy endings all around.


New guitar amp
I don't know if I've ever talked about my newest guitar amp on here. The story of how I came by the amp is pretty entertaining, and probably warrants a telling in the near future. One of the other recent "best gear decision ever" was the purchase of a Mesa Boogie Lonestar Classic. This is Mesa's take on a fairly straightforward American classic guitar amp... Fender in heritage, so it's got that huge clean sound that a 6L6 amp can give you. It's got beautiful cleans, amazing reverb, and stupendous... pardon me for waxing hyperbolic. It's pretty much the best amp I've ever had, it really is. And now I'm trying to sell it. As much as I love it, it's simply too big and heavy for my current needs. It's gotten to the point where I loathe having to take it anywhere, even though I'm always 100% satisfied when I use it.

But after about 5 years of serious tone-chasing, I'm starting to realize that there's really no such thing as "the one" when it comes to gear, at least not for me. Once you reach a certain caliber of gear--price having nothing to do with it--you may start to realize that there's not really a single right "one," but rather a certain combination of things that make something "work" for you. Sometimes more than one piece of gear possesses that same potion of qualities that speak to you. To stretch the analogy, it's kind of like looking for a spouse. There's not so much the right "one" to be looking for as much as there is right type of "one" to be looking for. Whoever you choose becomes "the one," by default, and then it's up to you to stick with your choice until the end. I guess that's where the analogy falls apart. I guess to boil it down, if the Lonestar were smaller and lighter, I would keep it and would probably never look back. But since those things are becoming a problem, I'm taking the opportunity to look elsewhere, hopefully for something equally beautiful, amazing, and stupendous.


Wrapping it up
Boy, that's a lot of writing about "stuff." I've been fighting materialism a lot lately, and hopefully these words convey the balance I've sought to pursue: enjoying blessings without becoming attached to them. Even the apparent contradiction between calling the Santa Cruz OM "the one" and talking about how there's really no such thing... at the end of the day it's just stuff, and it's not that important.

"Renounce material captivity; proclaim the kingdom of Jesus Christ." - Crashdog, from the song "Proclamation"