Agents of Future Tour in Colorado

Hey Friends,

If you live in Colorado, you definitely want to mark your calendars. Todd and Angie Fadel will be coming out in August and we are doing house concerts together in the Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs areas. VIEW THE CALENDAR for details. Todd and Angie are amazing songwriters and creatives. You can also check out Agents of Future on MySpace.

Minneapolis Concert this Wednesday!

Hey friends. There is still time to decide to come next week and be part of the art intensive in Minneapolis. However, if you can't make it, I will be doing a concert, open to the public at the fall out on Wednesday night, July 16 at 7pm. The evening sessions are actually all open to the public (donations accepted at the door). Then, I'm sure I will play a set during the ARTFEST Saturday in addition to the evening finale which begins at 8pm. So hope to see you there!

www.sourcemn.org

Greetings to Puerto Rico

Hey friends. I'm excited to be going to Puerto Rico in August. If you are in Puerto Rico and want to know what is happening, email Angel Huertas at april_afternoon @hotmail.com!

Art Intensive/Urban Art Festival!

There are many more photos from last years Art Intensive and Artfest in Minneapolis here: www.sourcemn.org. But I am writing to remind everyone that you can still register for this year's Art Intensive and Artfest, July 14-20. The Art Intensive is for everyone from film makers to musicians to leaders who just love art and want to see different possibilities of how it might be a fruit and catalyst for restoration and community. $150 covers food and housing for the week and if you do happen to be an artist or performer, you will also get a slot at Artfest on Saturday. Source, the host community has links to the Northumbria monastary in England as well as the 24-7 international network. Their mission is simply to be a friend and voice for at risk youth and urban subcultures in the city.

I will be speaking, leading worship and performing through out the week as well as teaching a songwriting track. I will be joined by my good friend Linnea Spransy, who graduated from Yale with a masters in paint. Her work can be found in galleries around the world and she is part of the 24-7 boiler room in Kansas City.

More information can be found at sourcemn.org and here are some QUICKLINKS for you:

ART INTENSIVE INFO AND SCHEDULE

DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION

Singable Songs

Hey friends. I read a blog post recently commenting on the singability of Restoration Project songs. I was flattered to be the topic of conversation, and thought I would respond a bit here. Historically no, I have not been concerned about writing "singable" songs in the sense that people could just know the melody and words and sing them together at will. I love singable songs...but I have always been more concerned with authenticity and unique perspective, and...I am a live performing artist and I weave songs in and out of stories and poetry. So, being a worship songwriter is actually a little newer to me. It was actually groups like COTA in Seattle that first started using my songs in their own gatherings. Lacey Brown, the then worship leader at COTA would send me an email every couple of months asking for the chord charts to a certain song. COTA was actually using songs from "Sobering" (2004) which, as an album, lands way outside the radar of industry standards. I was flattered and encouraged that the songs I shared so passionately were indeed resonating with communities, and also impressed that the group would take the time to learn some more complex songs.

In 2006 I release "Worship," which actually is not that much different lyrically and structurally then my other work. It is still very people focused and poetry driven. The difference was my perspective while writing. I had been through a pretty intense restoration process of my own, and some of the unexpected fruit was coming into a much deeper understanding and theology of worship. I did create that project wanting it to be a resource and offering to the communities I worked with, but knew it would be challenging lyrically. I mentioned recently at Princeton that though many worship industry standards are based in scripture, which is awesome. However, I have observed that some scripture seems to be a little more marketable than others. And just as the Psalms speak always of specific events and people groups and historical happenings, I think at least SOME of the music we sing should include those things. So I put the words "AIDS" into a couple of songs as it is a pressing crises of our day and I also based most of the songs in scripture as well. Songs like "Run to the Mountan" and "The Kingdom" were also shared at the 2006 MSA gathering and I have since learned that songs from that project have been sung by small groups around the country and even translated and sung in parts of Africa and South America.

Song For a Revolution of Hope, however, was a collaboration with Brian McLaren. Brian actually wrote most of the lyrics. I co-wrote and co-produced and did a lot of arranging. While we were recording the project, it was primary in Brian's heart that the songs be singable. He wanted to resource the Church with new kinds of songs. So, we did work extra hard, despite some pretty complex lyrics, to make it singable. Our success is debatable, however I have since led every single song on the album in the context of live worship, and even songs like "Atheist" have worked really well in the right situations. The two spoken word pieces, "Let's Confess" and "11-57" still have incredibly singable choruses and work really well in a liturgical call and response method.

My latest electronica EP...well...maybe not that singable if you download them and try to learn them...I describe it as contemplative electronica. But, I am a story teller and a journey facilitator in worship. So if you invited me to lead the songs in your living room, and I told you the stories of Rwanda that led to me writing "Come Out," you might find yourself singing along in the chorus anyway.

So, here's an unverified list of the most singable songs by album if you're interested. Chord Charts are posted in the download section.

Sobering:
-Arise
-Work it Out

Worship:
-Bring Me Some Peace
-Run to the Mountain
-All the Way
-I Am in Love
-The Kingdom

And all songs from "Songs For a Revolution of Hope."

An Essay Response

You might not be able to make me out in the picture, but I'm the one right between John Perkins and Jim Wallis. Yeah. Fun times. Anyway, after the Envision gathering ended, a group of Theologians stayed at Princeton to work through all of the dialogue and panels and make a declaration. I said Amen to it. It was actually a very diverse group of speakers and leaders. If you want to see it, here is the LINK. You sign it by posting a comment.

As I alluded to in the previous post, I did write an essay, a loose response on the panel about post-colonialism. I call it "Post-Colonialism and Songwriting." I'm actually starting to contribute to "The Other Journal," a publication of Mars Hill Graduate School. I'm considering submitting a better version of this, so you could help me out by giving me some feedback...mainly, did you reap anything from it at all? Thanks friends! Here's the essay:

It is good to be a songwriter. I just returned from Envision, a gathering at Princeton University where theologians, activists and leaders of all kinds gathered and dialogued with the goal of uniting the church and moving more deeply into the public square. Some of my own living heroes were in attendance like John Perkins, and some friends I have not been able to connect with in quite sometime like Shane Claiborne. There were also a slew of people who had influenced me greatly through their own journeys and books, people like Ruth Padilla DeBorst and Ron Sider. I, along with about 500 others, listened to them speak. We listened to panel discussions and response panels to speakers, and I got to share songs. I play a lot of house concerts...DOWNLOAD THE REST

Envision Reports

Hey all,  I just returned to Colorado after about a week in Princeton preparing for and participating in the gathering, "Envision 08."  I am in the midst of a deeper response to the panel on post-colonialism and will post it in the next couple of days, but here's a little video someone put together of the first afternoon.  More to come!