It’s The Little Things

May 2, 2012 in Music with 5 Comments

This is part 2 of my series On Time and In Tune – practical tips to set you apart as a musician. Check out the first post and introduction here.

Yesterday I told you that some of the best advice I got before moving to Nashville was to be on time and in tune. Those two rules seem pretty obvious, right? You would think so, but I got my first gig in Nashville by following them. I had just moved to town and was recommended for the acoustic guitar spot in an artist’s band. The guy they were looking to replace was a really great player but he’d not really taken the time to learn the parts from the record and was just playing what he felt like. On top of that, he never brought his tuner and was always having to borrow one from the bass player and going out of tune during shows. I knew all of this information beforehand so I learned all the parts straight off the records. I also had my tuner, of course. I arrived early, had all my stuff set up, and by the third song when I nailed a signature intro that the other player had never bothered to learn, I had the gig.

The other guitarist wasn’t a bad player. Quite the opposite. He lost the gig simply because he wasn’t doing the little things. Being in tune is about as basic as it gets. Even though your guitar was in tune when you bought it, it’s probably gone out since then. When you are supporting an artist or playing in church, nobody in the audience or congregation wants to hear your out of tune instrument or listen to you tune by ear. Having a good tuner in line with your rig, one that you can use to get back in tune quickly and quietly, is essential to being professional.

Here are a few other little tips that apply to all sorts of musicians and will set you apart:

Have all the gear you (might) need ready to go. Were you told you wouldn’t need a DI box? Bring one anyway. How are your cables? Singers, do you have a favorite mic? Buy it and carry it with you. Will you be using in-ear monitoring? Then I’m sure you have a few of those 1/8″ to 1/4″ adaptors, right? Are you ready if you break a string? They said there would be guitar stands but you brought one anyway, I’m sure. A keyboard player friend of mine always carries a second power supply for his main keyboard just in case his dies. That’s what I call prepared. Don’t be the guy asking around for gear, be the guy offering to loan it.

Be attentive and engaged. We recently got a dog. She is always aware of where we are in the house and if I get up and walk over to her, she sits up and looks up at me with a look that says, “Wanna play? Do you want me to go get my ball? Wanna pet me? Did you perhaps bring me a biscuit to eat?” I think that’s the kind of attitude we should have when we are in a band- always aware, looking for a way to contribute ideas and displaying interest even when the attention of the director isn’t on us. I wouldn’t, however, ask a music director or worship leader to pet you. That would be weird.

Don’t noodle. Have you ever tried to talk to a guitar player who is playing while you’re talking? You know that zoned out look you got? My wife knows it all too well and calls me on it all the time. Playing (even with your volume off) while someone is talking is no different than talking while someone is talking. And our moms taught us about that one. I’m convinced noodling is a brutal disease that is killing musicians daily.

One last tip about the “on time” thing. We’re musicians. We don’t like being on time. It’s cool to be fashionably late. Except if you want to be professional. Being on time means being early and that includes your set up and warm up time. As a music director and worship leader, I’ve always given my times in “downbeat time,” meaning the time we will start to make music. That way it’s up to each player to know at what time she should arrive in order to be ready to start. Sometimes, the music director or worship leader will be the worst offender. It doesn’t matter. Your job is to be ready to play!

Pretty basic stuff, right? I’ll continue this series with some instrument-specific tips next. Let me know in the comments what experiences you have had with these and if you haven’t subscribed, subscribe via RSS or email so you’ll know when the next set of tips is up!

On Time And In Tune

May 1, 2012 in Music with 8 Comments

Before moving to Nashville in 1999, I asked a lot of musician friends what skills I would need to improve my chances of getting work in Music City where everybody is a guitarist. I had a music degree and I knew I could play well enough to hang with other guitarists but I wanted to know what separated the guys who worked from the guys who worked… at a pizza place.

The best answer I got was from my friend Richard Aspinwall who had lived and worked in Nashville for years as a sound engineer and player. He put his pants on just like the rest of you — one leg at a time. Except, once his pants were on, he made gold records with Garth Brooks.

He had a very short answer for me when I asked about going to Nashville. He just said, “You’ll do fine. You’re always on time and you’re always in tune.” And the wisdom of that little statement helped me to work consistently alongside some of the best players in the world. I never made any gold records, but I rarely was hurting for work. I got gigs because of following simple rules that I didn’t necessarily learn in music school.

So is it really that simple to work in a town like Nashville? Just be on time and be in tune? Not exactly. But it is true that there are often-overlooked skills that separate the pros from the wannabes. Whether you are looking to play professionally as a career or once a month in the worship band at church, these little skills are usually not that hard to learn and adopt but make a big difference in not just your playing but your contribution to the band. And that makes everyone happy. Over the next few weeks I’ll share some of the tips I have learned from Richard and the other musicians I have worked with as a player, music director, and producer. Some of them will be general and some will deal directly with your instrument. So be sure to subscribe via RSS or email and check back starting tomorrow where I’ll dig deeper into “on time and in tune!”

15/15/70

March 25, 2012 in Worship with 0 Comments

Preparations for Easter have kept me from posting lately- I’m sure many of you know just what I mean. Writing charts, scheduling rehearsals, figuring out how to translate a ropes course to a set design and trying to convince our pastor to let us put a zip line inside the church. So far I’ve gotten about 15 “NO!” answers, but I’m not giving up yet. Your basic Easter prep.

I’ve been reading a great new book called the Worship Smartbook by Anthony Skinner. Anthony is a friend of mine, an incredibly creative recording artist/writer, and a gifted worship leader. His book advertises itself to be full of “actionable tips for real world worship” and, even though I’m only about halfway through its pages, it’s proven to be exactly that. I’ve shared a few of the chapters with members of our worship ministry and found the tips to be applicable both to new and seasoned worship leaders.

The other day, I read the chapter The Worship Leader’s Law of Averages: 15/15/70 Rule. It’s a very helpful reminder for any leader that:

Fifteen percent of the people will go with you… anywhere, anytime.
Fifteen percent will typically stay where they are.
Seventy percent are up for grabs and want a leader.

Whether these percentages are exact or not (sometimes it feels like that second group is 70%!), this is something that artist-leaders, those of us who lead from a place that is often thinner-skinned and more sensitive to forms of rejection, MUST learn and repeat to ourselves over and over. There are people who will love what we do no matter what, people who will hate it no matter what, and a whole bunch of people in the middle ready to explore with us and see where God is going. This is true not only of the congregations we lead week to week but also our worship teams, volunteers, and other small groups in which we play a leadership role. For us, ignoring this law of averages leads to frustration, ineffectiveness, and ultimately some form of burn out.

Anthony says, “don’t waste your time second-guessing yourself – no one has it all together.” This may sound passive or almost even disengaged, especially to people given to introspection. But I absolutely love it. It assumes that we take our calling seriously (we do) and that we are constantly seeking ways to be more faithful and just plain better at it (we are). It also assumes that we receive our confidence from knowing who we are in God’s eyes and being comfortable in that skin. Anthony’s book opens with this, in fact. When we truly own the fact that we are called and doing our best to follow that call, there’s freedom to no longer fixate on either 15%. I’ve seen many new leaders who worry way too much about the 15% who won’t follow. I’ve done it myself and it can be paralyzing. But equally as ineffective is to only ride the high of the 15% who are always complimentary, always positive, and always right there with you.

This Easter, I’m aiming for the 70%. I’m glad for the existence of both types of 15%-ers and won’t ignore them but I’m on the lookout for the person who has that “I can take it or leave it” look on his face about faith. The person who is interested enough to walk through the door, but not guaranteed to stay or to return. I was that person, and I’m glad someone showed that kind of interest in me.

Do you struggle with the 15/15/70 rule? Do you agree or disagree with it? Let me know in the comments. And then go buy the Worship Smartbook. And check out this great interview with Anthony that Rob Still posted last month.

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Hi, I know nothing about lacrosse. I’ll be your son’s coach.

March 7, 2012 in Life with 5 Comments

A week or so ago, Mike Cosper, Worship & Arts Pastor for Sojourn Community Church, wrote a thoughtful post about contextualization in worship and church life. For me, it was an Aha! moment in the sense that he put some concepts I’ve thought a lot about and considered in my sometimes mess of a brain into clear language. If you are interested in how we “do church” or worship, I suggest you head over and read it now. But here is my 31 word paraphrase:

Figure out who you truly are. Figure out who the people you serve truly are. Be the best at serving who they are by being the best at who you are.

There’s more to what he wrote, of course. But as I’ve been thinking about authenticity and integration in my own life, that’s what I got from it. Why does this make so much sense to me and why did it strike me as so powerful? I think because in my world of music and church worship life, I’ve seen so many examples of people trying to be who they aren’t in front of a group of people they wish were different. And I’ve been a part of it more times than I care to admit.

When I was on the road in the Contemporary Christian Music industry, there was a lot of facade. Sometimes our bus would pull up to a church where a concert had been booked but often not very well promoted. There would be a lot of the affectations of a large arena show- volunteer roadies, artist and VIP ‘backstage’ passes, and green rooms with riders full of specific food and drink. We’d go along with all of it and then perform a show for a few hundred people as if we were in front of a huge crowd. Everyone left feeling puffed up from this very important event when we’d have all been better off with something much more real- maybe a small acoustic worship time or some kind of storyteller show.

I have also seen pastors or worship leaders pretending they were the latest big deal in the church- preaching to or leading (in their minds) thousands of rapt congregants in a huge auditorium, hands raised in worship, in awe of the experience, when in reality there were a couple hundred people in an old building, many not quite comfortable with the whole service, who were being left behind by the incongruence of it all. Opportunities lost.

This is not a statement about any one artist or church or meant to be anything other than a commentary about how easily things can become very fake when we pretend we or others are something we’re not.

I was impressed by a small example of authenticity the other night at my son’s first lacrosse practice. It’s his first season with the sport, and no one in our family knows much about it. We arrived at the practice early and watched as the kids started to run around and get to know each other. Then an unassuming but cheerful guy called all of us parents around for a quick meeting. He introduced himself as the head coach and then said something that probably didn’t come from Pat Riley’s book “The Winner Within.” He told us that he had never coached lacrosse, had never played it, and he didn’t really know much about it so he would be learning along with our kids. He pointed to another guy on the other side of the field and told us that he was the one who had played and coached for years and would be showing our kids the fundamentals and skills of the sport.

I immediately decided I liked this coach. The team is made up of 7, 8, and 9-year old kids, many of whom won’t play another season and are just checking the sport out or playing because their friends are. They need a coach to teach them how to learn and be disciplined and to point out the life lessons that can be learned from a team sport a whole lot more than they need to know how to cradle, pass, and check. This coach knows who he is and who he isn’t, and who his team is and isn’t.

This is the kind of person I think we all ought to be. Realistic in our self-assessment. Honest about who we are not as much as we’re confident about who we are. And not leaving anyone behind simply because they are not who we wish they were.

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So, what do you DO all day?

February 24, 2012 in Worship with 3 Comments

Being a worship leader, like any creative work, isn’t a typical 9-5 job and doesn’t usually involve a strict schedule. This is a good thing in many ways since most musicians or other artists get bored of routine very quickly. My tolerance for routine is very low. At the same time, any kind of church work always involves more than just the job description, because at our core we are servants. I don’t get to just work on music all day, every day, any more than a pastor just writes sermons all day. So I’ve tried to refine my weekly schedule to include some routine to make sure certain tasks get done on time. Here’s my rough weekly plan- the big things I try to accomplish with some regularity. It’s changed over the years and is always a work in progress. I hope that other worship leaders will find this as helpful as I’ve found reading about other’s daily work lives to be.

MONDAY
I used to take Mondays off. My whole schedule revolved around Tuesday-Sunday. Everything was a mad rush to the weekend (Saturday and Sunday services) and made my week feel like a launch ramp. While there was something nice and relaxing about taking the day after Sunday off (I used to say that Sundays at noon were my Fridays at five), this schedule usually led to a lot of last minute work. So now I work on Mondays and instead take Fridays off.

Monday is now my review/reflect day. The first thing I do is think about what happened the day before in worship services from the big picture to the small details. What went right? What went wrong? What was positive due to planning and what was a gift of the Holy Spirit? How can we as a team and how can I personally learn from these things? I also take Monday to to encourage those I work with, both staff and volunteer. This means getting on Facebook, email, phone, or just walking around the office making sure that I’m verbal about my appreciation. It’s important to remember to not only BE thankful but to ACT thankful. I recently saw this lesson beautifully played out with one of our singers. I was on Facebook one Sunday afternoon and saw five or six posts from her on various band members’ walls. Each one was just a simple sentence of encouragement. I told her how that really touched me and she replied that she’d received so much encouragement about a solo she had sung recently that it reminded her that she “needs to tell people I appreciate them & not just think it.” There’s a huge lesson in this and it makes a big difference when put into practice.

Monday is also the day I have a meeting with my pastor. It’s a time for us to check in on all kinds of things. We are both generally moving targets during the week so I try to be prepared with any questions or follow-up work that we have together so I can value both his time and mine. It’s also a bit of a personal check-in time for both of us. I get pretty task-oriented a lot of the time and he’s really great about asking how I’m doing. When I invariably reply with something like, “Well, I’m really happy about how the band sounds…” he’ll stop me mid-sentence and say, “I didn’t ask that- how are YOU doing? How’s your family? How’s life here?” That is something I appreciate about him, and has helped our work relationship become stronger in a short time. My job is, in large part, to serve the vision God has given him for our church, and I can’t do that without learning what makes him tick.

TUESDAY
Here’s where I’m just going to have to lie to you. No way around it. Tuesdays are a day that I often screw up. In my mind, and in my planning, it’s a day to get ahead on the following week’s music. To look at upcoming series planning and lay out music ideas. But I am not that great at it all the time so if I said “here’s what I accomplish on Tuesdays” I’d be lying. For the last few years (at my previous church) our planning worked a lot more week-to-week. It wasn’t a bad thing, it’s just how it was. So the only real planning ahead happened only when necessary. It worked well for us there, but here I need to be a little farther ahead of the calendar. So, again, in my mind I spend the bulk of Tuesday picking music for the following week, looking at good matches for solos and singers for future series, and brainstorming (if only in my own mind) any other creative elements that would help with our services. It’s also a day that I go video hunting. We have a stated value for our worship services that says we use video every week. Recognizing that there are people in the room each week who aren’t reached by spoken word or by music, video elements help to speak a language that is more common. The videos might be part of the message, or an announcement, or a prayer. It’s my job to find them and make sure there’s some variety in their use. Finally, it’s important that I start digging in to the music for the current weekend- listening, practicing, making notes on charts, etc.

WEDNESDAY
This is my “hide away in my office and work on new charts, video editing, Planning Center updating, and other computer tasks” day. It’s also the day to get connected with outside groups and special events that we are working on with them to make sure that we are current on our planning. I also like to take time on Wednesdays to check out new music releases. I have a somewhat elaborate rating system in iTunes that categorizes music into playlists that become my well for new congregational worship music, new solo music, or songs that might fit somewhere someday. Between new album releases on Tuesday, Worship Leader Magazine’s Song Discovery service, and new songs that are sent to me from other labels and publishers, there’s never a shortage of stuff to go through and the only way to keep up is to categorize it.

On Wednesdays I also spend more time on the current songs. Taking time alone to practice and, more importantly, worship with the music for Sunday is an incredibly important part of the job. I can’t stress this enough. It’s the only way to be authentic on Sunday. I can fake it with the best of them, and I’ve been a musician long enough to be comfortable up on any kind of platform or stage performing or leading a song I learned twenty minutes prior. And while that’s actually a useful skill at times, it shortchanges the congregation, the band, and most importantly is nowhere near giving my best to God if that’s how I treat our weekly worship music.

THURSDAY
Every church has one of these. Meeting Day. Due to the different work schedules of program staff and pastors, and all the different hours and locations in which we do our work, every church I’ve ever known seems to have a day on which all the meetings take place. It can be pure evil for a non-meeting guy like me, but it’s also a very necessary evil because without getting everyone in teams around a table we can very easily become like little silos, all doing our own thing. So Thursday is that day for us. There are two main meetings that I have on the calendar for every Thursday- staff meeting and worship planning meeting. Our pastor runs the staff meeting and I run the worship planning meeting. However, most Thursdays have at least one more meeting added and then a number of smaller side meetings. Some days that’s about all that gets done. The little patches of unscheduled time in-between don’t always allow for much else.

Thursdays are also our rehearsal night. We rehearse from 7 pm until around 9. I make some time in the afternoon for another run-through of the music and to think through rehearsal, and then I go home for an hour or two to see my family and get some time away from the church before rehearsal. Meeting Day can take a lot out of me and without a little break before rehearsal, I’m not able to lead at full capacity.

SUNDAY
Obviously, this is THE day. I get up way earlier than I ever wanted to or realized I’d have to when I started down this path and usually arrive at the church between 6:30 and 7:00. We have a 30-45 minute run through of all the songs starting at 7:30 and then our first service is at 8:30. That one finishes and we have another right away at 9:45. Ultimately, I’m responsible for most of what happens during the services so I like to check in beforehand with various groups and make sure all is well and ready to go. Nothing is less fun than realizing during a service that there’s about to be a baptism and no one has brought out the water. Or to realize at 6:45 pm before the 7:00 pm Ash Wednesday services that there are no ashes in sight. Both of these have happened to me so, no matter how much planning has gone into it, a final check goes a long way.

One thing I’ve learned is that what I do with the times before and after the services is just as important as what I do during them. I’m still really new here and there are lots of people I haven’t met or connected with in any meaningful way. Before and after the worship service is the best time to fix that. I’m an introvert at heart and this part can be hard for me. But I’ve seen tremendous grace in being obedient to this part of my work and calling and so I just walk up to people and say hi. Sometimes there’s someone I’ve noticed during worship – someone who seems particularly engaged in a certain way, or maybe particularly disengaged. If I can find those people and talk to them it’s almost always a good conversation. Especially the second group. Every worship leader or pastor needs to know that on any given Sunday there are a lot of people who are just not with you. Often it’s not personal, though sometimes it is. I love talking to those people because I want to know what connects them to God. I once found out that a regular attender of our services simply hated the worship music. I mean hated it. I think the words “it sucks” were mentioned. To his surprise, one day I started up a conversation about it. It opened up a great line of communication and we both learned a lot through it. At our church, we have some accountability in place among our staff for making these kinds of connections each and every week. This has been great for me and has really accelerated my transition to a new community.

Once the 9:45 service is over and the stage is cleared (for our traditional service that happens at 11:05) and there’s no one else to meet, I go back to my office and start to upload our sermon video and audio to their various places. We have a great team who records and edits these and begins the rendering process so all I have to do is upload. We’ve found that getting our video out, particularly on social networks, by Sunday afternoon really increases the viewing and sharing that happens. I like to do this with my door open because, with my office just off the sanctuary, I can hear the 11:05 service. It provides, in an odd little way, a wind-down time as I listen to the hymns that are sung, or the choir, or the message. I join in singing the hymns or with some of the prayers and it’s a bit of personal worship time for me. At the end of the 11:05, I come out to meet a few more people and then, most of the time, I’m on my way home to watch hockey.

So there it is, my typical week. Of course, typical seems to rarely happen. I spend a lot of my time doing other random things like tracking down missing cables, making sure broken gear gets fixed, doing monthly scheduling, helping other team members by making sure they get the resources they need to do their jobs well, and any number of other things. There are a few monthly evening meetings I attend. And there’s always seasonal services to work on. Ministry work is a treadmill with Sunday morning never more than 6.5 days away and that can make for a good amount of crazy schedule changes and adjustments. But that variety keeps it interesting and is part of what makes this job so great.

Worship Leaders, pastors, ministry workers- how do you do your week? What are the challenges you have?

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What my friends think I do, what my family thinks I do…

February 21, 2012 in Life, Worship with 2 Comments

A friend suggested that I talk about my typical week for my first blog series. So I sat down and wrote a bunch of words about the various details, mostly mundane, that comprise a typical week as a Worship Leader. I actually think that a lot of what I wrote would be interesting to other worship leader guys and girls so I’ll get to some of that, but something else (related, I promise) is on my mind.

Unless you live under a digital rock, you’ve seen the Facebook meme that goes something like, “What my friends think I do, What my parents think I do, What I think I do, What I really do.” I happen to agree with a Facebook friend of mine who said, “To the self made (insert job) signs showing what your friends, mom, society, think you do and what you actually do. Most of these are not funny. Surely you have something better to do with your time. Thanks.” Most of them aren’t funny, and yet, out of nowhere, there is one for just about every job possible under the sun. Here’s the one I found for my job:

See, not that funny.

At the risk of over-analyzing a silly Facebook meme, I think the proliferation of these things says something about the fact that everybody wants to be understood and to feel like what we do is important. There’s something slightly desperate about these pictures, and I think what’s most interesting is that just about every one of them has a different description for “what I think I do” and “what I really do.” No one likes to walk through life with some insignificant, uninteresting or misunderstood job taking up 40+ hours a week out of our lives but I suppose that, for more than a few of us, that’s how it feels.

Now I’ve had a number of strange little jobs over the years (with Taco Bell drive-thru service representative and medical transcription delivery special operative topping the list) that maybe aren’t even worthy of a Facebook picture. But most jobs or vocations, as with everything else in life, are actually important to somebody, and are as significant as we make them. It’s always about perspective.

I know that’s true for my current job as Worship Director at Broomfield United Methodist Church. There are a lot of people who ask, “So, just what do you DO all week?” after hearing what my job is. And there are some who, even after I explain, nod politely and act like they get it but can’t hide the incredulous look that tells me they think I’m pulling a fast one. But, once again, it’s about perspective. I could tell you that my job consists of picking some songs to sing in church. Rehearsing a band to play those songs. Singing them on Sunday. And, of course, fixing sound and video equipment when it breaks and attending a few meetings. While that description is not entirely untrue (though only a corner of the full picture), I’d have to agree that in those terms it doesn’t sound very significant. But I could instead choose to tell you that my job as a worship leader helped bring peace and healing to two families struggling with untimely death just last week. Or that God has used me to strengthen the one-day-at-a-time resolve of people fighting off life-threatening addictions. Or that, somehow, the songs I pick and the way our band plays and sings them kept someone coming back to church until he finally felt like he “got it” enough to be able to find the significance in HIS life through a reclaimed relationship with Christ. That description changes everything. And it’s what has kept me doing what I do for this long.

So over the next week, I’ll put up a few posts about the nuts and bolts of what I do, because I think that will be helpful to someone just starting out in this calling or even someone stuck in a rut. If you’re a worship leader or interested in this kind of ministry, make sure to subscribe via RSS or email and come back. But the real deal is that there’s value and importance in what you do, whatever you do. And whether people get it or not, keep doing it as these words encourage us:

“Servants, do what you’re told by your earthly masters. And don’t just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you’ll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you’re serving is Christ.”
(Colossians 3:22-25,The Message)

Oh, one more thing.

Volleyball?

First.

February 8, 2012 in Life with 4 Comments

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end (thank you, Dan Wilson). My new beginning is in Colorado.

It comes from the end of seven years in South Florida. I’ve spent a total of closer to seventeen years there altogether, longer than I’ve lived anywhere in my life. So leaving for a second time was kind of a big deal.

The change began with the classic restless feeling. Returning from a vacation and realizing we’re not happy to open the door to our home. Two work schedules that had gotten too crazy to manage with no real way out. And the creeping feeling that I’m not really a South Florida guy, and we’re not really a South Florida family. Before long, all that restlessness and frustration came to a head and, seemingly before I knew it, I found myself on a plane headed to check out a job opportunity as Director of Worship & Arts at Broomfield United Methodist Church. I fell in love with this place hard. So a few months later my wife Theresa, my son JJ, and I took a chance on something that had more than a few loose ends, but was something we KNEW was right. Somewhere in the middle there I was in a bad accident that left me with a broken thumb, separated shoulder and a shredded arm, our house was burglarized, and our dog died. But those are all stories for another time.

It was hard to leave a place that, for being not a very good fit, we loved. We were part of church family that we’d grown close with for quite some years. JJ had a great school and teachers he loved. We had friends in all kinds of circles, and we were never bored. Theresa had started a mission that she was incredibly passionate about, even if it wasn’t working out so well on the practical side. But, growing up, I’d moved nearly a dozen times by college so there was a certain familiarity to the decision, and an excitement about the adventure ahead. And now here I am in Colorado with a new ministry position, a growing set of new friends, and a lot of other new things in life, including this blog. I’ve started and quit a number of blogs in the past and thought I’d sworn them off. Some were personal, some were more work/ministry related, and still others have been about music. This will be all of those (and probably more), because for me they are, and always have been, all connected. I’ll be writing about life, my faith, music, and being a worship leader.

I’ve tried to separate things all my life. To compartmentalize and be one person in this setting, another in that. The thing is, it actually works very well most of the time. I can be the serious spiritual guy, or the funny (well, at least to myself) laid-back guy, or the snarky elitist music critic guy. And all those guys are a part of me and somehow fit together, I think. I always thought that by now I’d know just where the pieces fit but I don’t always. Sometimes the snarky guy still shows up where the serious spiritual guy needs to be. It’s a little messy, but I’m working on it.

There are a few more details in the About and Music pages. If you’d like to, check those out. Meanwhile, I’ll be posting regularly about all of these topics and it’s going to be fun. So if you don’t want to miss out, be sure to subscribe either by email or RSS. On Tuesday, I’ll begin a new series inspired by the “what my friends think I do, what I think I do, what I really do” Facebook meme. Be sure to check back!