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Thoughts on the New Album

Posted by Keith on
Monday, May 28th, 2012
in Uncategorized
| comments: (0)

One week from today I’ll be sitting in Roy Salmond’s studio digging into my third studio album.  I have to confess, I never believed I’d be doing a third album.  When I did “Broomtree” in 2007, I was happily pastoring and thought an album might be the way to get this whole “music thing” out of my system.  When I did “Rumours of Light” in 2010, I thought it was going to be a bookend on this little hiatus.  But now, gearing up to do this third album, things have changed.  I have resigned to the fact that I’m not a pastor taking a break from church ministry to take an extended sabbatical as an itinerant music minister.  I am a singer/songwriter with a small but very loyal and supportive fan base who is embarking on the next stage of what promises to be a long exciting journey.  God’s grace and your support have made this possible.

In the past few weeks since announcing the studio dates, there’s been a great outpouring of excitement, enthusiasm and generosity.  What a blessing!  Despite my attempts to deny it, I am an affirmation junkie and the support and encouragement I’ve received in the last few weeks has had me over the moon with joy and courage.  Thank-you!

Roy and I haven’t talked about album titles or anything like that yet.  It’s a bit premature.  But I’m thinking of calling the new album “The House With the Sunflowers”.  It’s the title of one of my new songs.  A lot of the songs so far have to deal with my uneasy sense that there’s a growing gap between what we in the West in this moment in history call “Christian” and the life of Christ.  It all started with a quote I read in a book by Miroslav Volf, a Theology professor at Yale University Divinity School.

A native Croatian, Volf returned to the former Yugoslavia in the early 90’s.  There he was confronted with the dilemma of how to look a Serbian in the face, in the wake of the war and genocide that had been waged between his people and theirs, and offer genuine forgiveness and reconciliation.  His book, “Exclusion and Embrace” is a rigorous theological exploration of the resources which exist in the gospel that make reconciliation possible.

Volf says that to embrace another requires an act of self-donation, particularly when the other is one’s enemy.  Embrace implies solidarity, and true solidarity is an act of self-giving love.
“..solidarity refers to ‘struggling on the side of,’ rather than simply ‘suffering together with,’ solidarity may not be severed from self-donation. All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side. To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology.” –  “Exclusion & Embrace”
It seems to me that the church in North America today is concerned more with claiming the comfort of the Crucified (Jesus) than with walking in His way.  Rather than learning to live daring lives of self-donating love, we’ve transformed Christianity into a means of insulation and medication.  In other words, we use our faith to create divisions between ourselves and people we find uncomfortable (it’s easier to exclude someone on the basis of religion than to admit you just don’t like them), and we use it in self serving, self affirming ways to medicate our loneliness, our boredom, our need for significance, or our need for acceptance.  In many ways, we’ve turned the church into “The House With the Sunflowers”.  But the way of the Crucified One is not about insulation or medication, it’s about self-donation and self-sacrificing love.  Following Christ is not simply about finding His comfort and consolation, but rather extending comfort and consolation to others at the expense of your own.  Most of my writing on this album is my attempt to work through this uneasiness and find the way forward.  This album is going to have a lot of songs about love.

We’re taking a different approach to the recording of this album.  Rather than building the songs from the ground up (drums & bass before guitars, vocals, overdubs,etc.).  Roy’s intent is to make a songwriter’s album.  Recording me first, and then building in the other musicians around my performance.  I’ll likely live at the studio while we do this one, and we plan to work night and day for two weeks straight to get it done. This is a more immersive process than my previous recordings, and I’m intrigued by the “vibe” it’ll give the whole thing.

My friend, Derek Selinger, is going to tag along for the first few days to do some interviews and to help document the whole recording process.  Derek will also be producing a music video for me later this summer.  You can check out some of his other work here. (Click Here)

All of this takes money.  Total budget for the album and video content is around $17,000, and friends and fans have been quick to pitch in and help us out.  As of today we’ve raised around 40% of the necessary budget with new funds coming in every day.  You can help with the funding by pre-ordering CD’s here on the website (Click Here), by making a tax deductible donation in my name to Incarnation Ministries (Click Here), or by taking advantage of the many incentives on my crowd-funding page (Click Here).

Thanks for all you’ve done to support me so far.  I can’t wait to share this new album with you.  I have a feeling this is going to be the best yet!

Sincerely,

Keith

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