It has been my habit to record my feelings during significant events in my life in the medium of music. I love to get alone with my guitar and spend an hour or so playing these sorts of songs to God, worshipping Him as I think about these things that He has done in my life. I thought that you too might be able to enjoy this music and worship God as you listen to it, and thus the tape has come about. Unless otherwise noted, I composed, played and recorded everything you hear to the Glory of the God Who created me, Who saved me from the Hell I deserve, and Who is the Director of my life.
After taking classical piano lessons for about 5 years, I decided to take a break in Junior High School to enjoy myself a little on the piano. This piece came out of that time, and I recorded it with my brother Ben (who is on the melody part) when I was in 9th grade. This piece never got named, and the longer it went unnamed, the less any particular name seemed to fit it! I decided, by the way, to go back to my piano lessons the next year.
When I was little, I Loved Summer! Mom would get us up in the morning to work in the garden or clean the house, and then we'd have the rest of the day free to play outside in the yard. But, towards the end of Summer I'd always get bugged by the hot, lazy blues--especially this Summer because it was the last I'd ever spend as a kid at home.
The melody came first, and later, I discovered that the words to the 117th Psalm (KJV) fit it perfectly with 2 "Praise the Lord's" tacked on it! I remember that my first performance of it was the day I made this discovery and sat in front of Dad's desk in his study and played it for him.
My brother and I were hired to play for a friend's birthday party and we had to borrow instruments to play Contemporary Christian music for it. I was particularly enthralled with the Korg Poly-800, and these are two of six little improv's I did while getting acquainted with it.
This came my senior year in High School--even though it was a "Christian" school, I found few real Christian friends; I spent a lot of time with my family and with my guitar, which I was just picking up. Really, it was a good year--I was pretty popular and had an enjoyable time, but I still look on that time with a kind of sadness, I'm not sure why...It went unnamed for a couple of years, but this name finally stuck when I played it for a Christian rock band director (calling it "Frozen Tear", to give it a name) who suggested it be named "Desideratum" and I disagreed.
Every Summer, my family would vacation for a week at a cabin at Crescent Beach, Florida, (which was mostly just a large screened-in porch perched on top of a sand dune right on the beach) graciously loaned to us by a family in the church where my Dad pastors. We absolutely loved our time there! I especially enjoyed the cool evenings on the porch: feeling the seabreeze, watching the lights of the fishing boats out on the horizon of the water, hearing the incessant rumbling of the surf, and perhaps Dad's reading a book out lout to us or playing my guitar. Ben is playing bass on this recording.
I remember being fascinated when a neighbor played a couple of hymns on his dulcimer at a neighborhood cookout in Birmingham (the foothills of the Appalatians). After hearing this, I went home and figured out how to play the guitar like he did his dulcimer, playing the melody with one string and droning the tonic on another string.
Named originally after a Freshman sweetheart...I later realized that my absolute first love will always be Jesus Christ and rededicated it to Him.
...to live in the center of God's will! This was a catchphrase of a summer "Beach Project" that I attended where I worked at the Pizza Inn at Panama City Beach days and had meetings evenings and weekends with a Campus Outreach group at the beach. It was a real time of spiritual encouragement--nothing can compare to being with that horde of Christian college kids singing praise to God at the top of our lungs! And it was a time of vision building as I learned principles of discipleship and leadership there. It was a hard Summer, but it really was..."sweet".
My brother and I shared the same room until I left for college and we did everything together as kids. We were best friends and can probably count our fights on just one hand. I never realized what a bond was there until I left for college and missed him a lot. God provided other "brothers" for me--Robert Welch growing up, and Paul Stein during my college years--and this song is also dedicated to them. Paul made the guitar I used to record the piece.
On a whim, I loaded a bunch of my friends in a van and we went home to Birmingham for Easter `88; that was about the same time the song came. You know, Easter is really the great day of the Christian faith, it is a time worthy of special, thoughtful celebration. I remember the Easter of '89 being especially meaningful to me--my Chattanooga pastor handed out perfumed cloths to wear all week, reminding us what Jesus might have smelled that week between his anointing with perfume and his death. That was the year I figured out how to play all the Easter hymns in the hymnbook.
Late my Freshman year, I remember Tim Rivers coming to my dorm room and having a long talk with me. We prayed together, and it seems like our time together was part of a turning point in his life to consciously seek to follow God. I had the privilege of discipling him some the next year too. Although I don't feel like I had much to do with it, I definitely saw new life formed in him as God shaped him and he changed into a really sharp man physically, socially, intellectually, and spiritually. You can hear a phone ring at the end of the piece--Tim had called me the moment I had finished the recording!
The Lord provided for me a job as a Summer youth pastor in the little town of Linden, Alabama. It took a while to get used to the leisurely pace of life and the local drawl; during the hot days, dogs napped on the street because there wasn't much traffic. I gained invaluable experience in organization and ministry as I worked with my kids. I still pray for them too, although I don't know when I'll ever see them again. This song was written during one of those slow afternoons.
Fall is my favorite time of year; I like the cool, crisp air, the smell of the leaves when it rains after they've fallen, and the clear blue sky. I loved walking and running along the cliffs that line Lookout Mountain and soaking it all in. You can hear the change and the leaves falling in the last phrase of the melody; I like that. Dad was also going through a time of change, as he was experiencing an "Autumning" of life; I dedicated the song to him.
Ah, this was the year that I fell in love with Paula Shetter! We took pre-engineering classes together, and she frequented my apartment on the pretense of visiting my roommate. I didn't really notice her until my roommate told me she needed a ride to Chicago--where I was headed for Fall break. I told him that I didn't think I could stand being in the car with her for a 10 hour drive, but, as long as she'd pay for gas, I'd take her. We had a great time travelling, and became good friends. I found out that she was a really sharp godly lady who held a lot of my same values. In fact, I started talking seriously about marriage 3 weeks after the trip to Chicago! We are now married and God couldn't have matched us better!
Surely that says it all--remember the times you drove the long stretch home from college with your jalopy stuffed with luggage, looking forward to getting home?
Paula brought her little Casio over for me to play with,and I had a ball with it! (You hear its voices in almost all of my music that has synth work.) Paula and I had just covered the apartment with K-Mart decorations, and she was finishing off preparations for a big meal that was warming the place for our friends. While people were arriving, I came up with this little ditty, weaving in Christmas carols in between choruses.
The Spanish flair, and the fact that it was composed in front of Mom & Dad's fireplace caused my sister Rachel to dub the song thus. There's just nothing quite like sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold evening with a good cup of hot tea! Please forgive any similarity to Spyrogyra's "Sunflurry".
The day Ben turned 19, I completed composing this one and got Rachel to play the synth part while I played the guitar. Rachel was around 12 then; she picked it up in about 5 minutes and did an incredible job! Then we played it during Ben's birthday party. The other thing I remember at that party was that Ben's friend Corky almost got his ear blown off by one of those explosive party favors, and at the end, we all recounted interesting things that we remembered about Ben in the past. Corky left eventually and came back into the house some time later with one more story: "Remember the time I came to Ben's 19th birthday party and couldn't start my car because I had left my car lights on...."
Another Summer song: I had a difficult time for about a year as I was finishing school and launching my life as an adult. It was hard for me to part with childhood, and I got real pensive and sentimental. But "music hath charms...", and in several songs, I was able to deal with these feelings before God and get on with life. I had fun with this song because it just doesn't have an ending; I drove my family batty playing the theme over and over again on the little Casio!
Dad is the most important man in my life because his discipleship has been invaluable in shaping me. Even though he kept long hours in the ministry, he would always be sure to spend time with us kids. When I was little, there was nothing I looked forward to more each day than Dad's arrival at home in time for a late dinner--I'd run and jump up into his arms to greet him when he'd walk in the door. On Sundays, He'd climb up in the treehouse and teach me about God's ways. When I got older, he'd take me out for breakfast once a week to just talk. He also taught me how to work with my hands to build things, and we were always working on some project or another which would invariably be strung out over many weekends. He is a very wise, godly man, and I still consult him when I'm making big decisions. It's always hard to think of good gifts for him, but I made this song for his 40-somethingeth birthday. Although it isn't much, I think this song expresses my love for him better than I could do in words. Dad's birthday falls in the middle of Camp Briarwood, so Ben had most of my equipment at Camp, hence the "1st stage" recording.
Since Dad directed Camp Briarwood, I spent most of my Summers working as a camp counselor there. Cannon Hall was the crude gym at Hargis Christian Retreat, where Camp was held; it was the place that the day-camper boys would roll out their sleeping bags to spend the night on the last day of their week of camp. Once the homesick ones had finally stopped crying, & every-thing was dark and quiet, I'd play some of these instrumentals on my guitar for the kids that were still awake. This tune emerged during this time the last day of the last week of the last Summer that I was a camp counselor. I'd love to go back some year...
I asked Paula to marry me just before her 20th birthday in early September: We put together a picnic lunch and hiked out to Glenn Falls to enjoy the afternoon. After we finished and started talking, I reached into my wallet, talking about some "buy 4 get 1 free" Christian music coupons that we could use when we went shopping next, pulled out the Ring, and asked Paula to marry me. We had decided not to kiss until we were engaged, and thus we consummated the engagement!
Paula and I were married by my Dad on Feb. 24, and moved into our first home; a townhouse apartment in Fairyland (the residents pronounce it "Fer-lun"). It was so exciting to have my own home for the first time and to start my own family!
We heard an interesting Irish-folk-type group called "The Crossing" perform at our local Church fellowship, and it got my mind thinking along those lines musically. My ancestry goes back to the Wilsons of Ulster, Ireland, so here is a gig for the Wilsons!
This was the year that I graduated from college, began life as a married man, and began the fund-raising for my salary as an InterVarsity "missionary". In the midst of all the changes and difficulties, I still experienced joy in following my Lord Jesus, because "His yoke is easy and His burden is light". There really is something very freeing in obeying God even in difficulties.
Do you ever feel the incredible tension between your sinful heart that is in rebellion to God and your desire to love and obey Him? When we read the Bible, we see the standards of holiness to which our Lord calls us, but as we live in a sinful world and find ourselves sinning too, we yearn for the innocence of Eden and we look forward with eager anticipation for the time when we shall see our "First Love" in heaven and be holy like Him! (II Cor. 5:2; I John 3:2)
The first melody in this number came to me while I was waiting for people to come to a home worship meeting. The invitation had been given, the house had been cleaned, snacks had been cooked, and I sat with my guitar on our living room floor, waiting as the appointed time for the meeting came and went. Why didn't anyone want to come? Some weren't interested, some had excuses like time conflicts with work. But still it is difficult to deal with those feelings of rejection. David Kennedy Bird reminded me that God has felt the same way, as evidenced by Jesus's parable of the wedding feast in Matt. 22:1-14.
To conserve money, we kept the A/C off as much as possible that Summer, so it got quite hot upstairs in the room where I had set up my office to work on the fund-raising. The physical drain of the heat and the emotional drain of asking people for support got too much for me sometimes, so I would go to the cool downstairs with my guitar and play out my frustrations. During this time, I recorded four songs using kitchen utensils for percussion, and this is the most mellow of them. Can't you just feel the heat melting you in this song?
I don't know if I've ever had such a difficult Summer as that one. Paula worked full-time at a law firm downtown, so I cooked all the meals, and worked lawn jobs to supplement her income. The worst part was the pressure to raise my own salary--I wasn't going to get paid until I had found enough people willing to contribute to my cause, and most of the people I asked weren't interested in putting their money into this ministry. We had very little fellowship because we had to travel a lot away from our church in Chattanooga, and most of our friends were college students gone home for the Summer--and, of course, there were few people who understood our situation. But God purifies us in these hard times and matures us spiritually. It pleases Him when we persevere in difficulty and cling to Him. (I Peter 1:6-7; James 1:2-4,12)
Dad grew up in Pensacola right off the Bayou Grande in a big house that his family had built themselves.Dad's mother, set up an art gallery there with her paintings now that her seven children are out of the house, and my family has always loved going down there to vacation at the "Saltmarsh". We love the slow pace of life there at my grandparents: meals sorta develop whenever everybody gets hungry enough, and we kids could always go swimming in the bayou or sit on the veranda and talk with whomever was there, or read and look at the paintings in the big living room. This recording was done in the living room there--Ben is on piano, and I'm on guitar.
Towards the end of Summer, Paula and I decided that it would be more honoring to God for her to work at home and have children. This meant that I needed to step up my wages; I hadn't even raised half of my InterVarsity salary, so I started looking for another full-time job. I wrote this melody on scrap paper while I was waiting in a parking lot, early for an interview. We learned a lot about patience that Summer; we have to depend on God (not ourselves or anybody else) to take care of our needs. We noticed that God doesn't generally provide in advance ("give us this day our *daily* bread"). We just had to learn to patiently wait on Him. God kept me from getting another job and, in the nick of time, arranged for us to receive half-salary from InterVarsity. I stepped up my lawn work a little, and all our needs were taken care of. Four months later, God had provided enough additional support for us to begin full-time work and full salary in InterVarsity's missions branch.
Thrice a year, my InterVarsity Missions Fellowship (IVMF) national staff team converges on a city for several days of meetings. Los Angeles was the city this spring, and I was just amazed at this city! Millions upon millions of people of all races are spread out for miles & miles in that basin. It was wild to overhear so many different languages while walking down the street; I stopped by a Cinqo de Mayo celebration and didn't hear a word of English for about an hour! The recording is a little rough, because I didn't have much to choose from in this year. I have done so little composing lately, for my work with IVMF is taking all my time. I've just had to make a sacrifice of the music I enjoy in order to do an effective job of urging Christians to participate in evangelizing our world as I work with IVMF.
Does it sound familiar? This recap of the opening tune was recorded at Ecole Radio Biblique's studio in Marseilles, France, while I was on a Summer missions trip. Their radio program "Nour ala Nour" is recorded there and broadcast all over S. France and N. Africa to Arabic Muslims-ªmost of whom have no other way of hearing the Gospel! To tell the truth, the producer was out of town, and I found the keys to the studio while helping tile their office floor. Chris Elliott, my companion during the trip, set up the drum track. There is really nothing to compare to leaving your own culture and being in a totally different country where they don't speak English--you really ought to try it sometime. God used this experience in my life to build in me a compassion for people (like the youth in post-Christian France and the Muslims in N. Africa) who may never hear the Gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ until a missionary starts a new church planting project for them.
*Sheet music is available
