We Made a Folk Album, and Jesus is Awesome

Well, as is customary with any of the blogs I've attempted in my life, there will be seasons of inactivity due to the standard excuses of general busyness followed by an obligatory apology to the reader for my inability to regularly continue that which I started. Today there will not be the apology, for I am learning more and more the importance of simply spending my time exactly where the Father wants me to spend it, and although this is certainly done imperfectly, I have also learned not to mourn the things not done (especially be it through obligation).

In our last post, I posed some questions that had been my musings for some time on beauty, art, culture, and coffee, of which I'd love to explore some more, but first I have to tell a story...

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If you were unable to read one of my previous posts entitled "Why We're Making a Folk Album," then that might serve as a proper prequel to this story. I might title this story: "We Made a Folk Album, and Jesus is Awesome." (except that title might give away too much of the plot line... it's a working title for now)

I'm in a folk band and we're called Commoner. It consists of my sister, my two friends, myself, and sometimes a couple other people. We started making music this past Spring at Nate and Mary's house on State street. Out of the blue, Jesus gave me the ability to write folk songs and over the course of about a month we had more than enough for a full album. Shortly after that, I ran into a studio producer in Mississippi who encouraged me to come by the studio and talk about recording. It seemed like a wonderful idea, but the price was a bit out of our budget.. fortunately there's this great thing called Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a website that allows creative projects to be funded online by several different people. Instead of one or a few people giving a lot, it's a lot of people giving a little (although, I've seen more generosity through the funding of this project than i've seen in quite some time).

So we made a snappy little video, put a bunch of graphics together, and recorded a few of our songs in a friends bedroom to get our Kickstarter page set up. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. To see our close friends and family giving generously, but also to see people I haven't spoken to in years give their hard earned money for our little folk songs was humbling at best! The first day, we raised over 10% of our goal, and I could hardly believe it! I mean, these were high school and college students, and people on missionary support, and families who I knew were struggling financially, and they were giving crazy amounts of money! But it's not like this was an impersonal donation to the salvation army... this was someone literally showing us that they saw the work of God in our lives, that they believed we were listening to His voice, and that they wanted to be a part of it. We didn't ask them to, they didn't have to, they just did! 106 people!!

The first couple of weeks were unbelievable. I would get the little notifications on my phone every time someone would give and it would always make me so happy, no matter the context.. so much so, that it started to control me. I have a bit of an obsessive personality and as the funding deadline drew near, I noticed myself becoming more and more upset about the possibility of us not raising the money. What at first started as an idea held with open hands, became something I tried to control, which in turn started to control me. "Maybe if I do enough on Facebook, or do another video then we'll raise our goal." I was quickly turning my eyes to what I was doing rather than what was being done. And more importantly, I was more interested in raising our money through Kickstarter than than seeking the reality Jesus' life at work in my life in the present. This wasn't a conscious choice of course... I just started to focus my attention way more on the wonderful gifts rather than the glorious Giver. This manifested itself in several long days of menial tasks in an attempt to work this thing into being.

Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

This was His idea anyways! He told me to do it, so why did I start to freak out whenever it looked like it wouldn't happen? Because the enemy loves to do whatever he can to get our eyes off of Jesus. Satan knows what works best to get me focused on what I'm doing rather than what He's doing through me. My dad would always say "The thing is not the thing, but the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing" The thing was raising money to make a folk album, but the main thing was following the call of Jesus to the ends of the earth.

But God saves. He always does. And when you're walking with people in community, He'll often use them in the process. My amazing wife and my precious younger sister sat down with me one afternoon, as the exhaustion of working in my own strength was in full swing, and spoke truth into my life. They didn't give me an answer, they didn't tell me what they thought I should do, they just implored me to hear from the Father. They saw this thing start to control me, so they sought freedom for me.

Then God freed me.

Community is so important. Walking with people that know you and see how you spend your time and what consumes your thoughts, is crucial. It's how we were made to live.

But, it's not over!! So God freed me from this imprisonment to my circumstances to the point where I was unattached to whether or not we raised any money at all for our folk album... then He gave it to us anyways! In 1 day, we raised $1,000 which shot us far past what we needed. And!! - We reached our goal on National Coffee Day!! Come on!!! Jesus loves us so much!!

Then we went to Mississippi and made a folk album, but that's another story altogether.



-Trey

ps. the video is a poem I wrote for my church about the importance of community.

Why we're recording a folk album.

In 2 months, we're heading back to Mississippi.

But just for 7 days! Our band will be recording our first, full length album with BlueSky studios in Jackson during the first week of October. We're obviously quite excited, as any musician would be, but most of our excitement is directed less towards the album itself, and more towards the ensuing journey it will bring. This is our mission! This is how we're going to bring the Gospel to the dark places of our county! This is how many people we encounter will hear about Jesus, and hopefully respond with a desire to initiate a relationship with Him! I'll explain by telling you the full story...

I've always wanted to write songs. I first became interested in music when I was 13 and decided to grab my dad's Ovation from his closet and start awkwardly strumming out some chords my friend showed me. I learned fairly quickly and started doing cover songs the next summer, but that's about as far as it went for awhile. Granted, I did get a lot better a guitar, but I was never really able to write songs for about 8 years. Even my first few songs were messy at best. I was in a band in Jackson with 3 of my best friends in the world, and we were having so much fun making music that I decided we should do originals just for fun. What came after that was not necessarily bad, it just wasn't good. People said they enjoyed my songs, but I never felt like I had a gift of song writing. They were mostly about my relationships with Allie or stories about different people or places. They were mindful of Jesus, but not actually about Him. They were few and far between and I always felt like they were forced; sort of like telling a story in Spanish without actually knowing how to speak it very well... I could get by, I just wasn't fluent.

Skip ahead to this past winter where I experienced probably the darkest time of my life. An adrenal gland failure, mixed with a vitamin deficiency, during the worst Indiana winter in 100 years led to depression, chronic fatigue, and lethargy unlike I'd ever experienced. I lived in this for about 5 months before Jesus miraculously saved me. And when I say "Miraculously," I mean it. In one day, my condition was diagnosed, I started a vitamin program to heal my adrenal glands, God released me from the job I had endured for 6 months, He called us to be missionaries in our town to start the things we had been praying into for years, and we started planning a month long trip to our beloved Mississippi. Our lives changed. And with that change came something unexpected, but quite welcomed: I started writing songs.

Maybe the best way to describe what happened is to liken it to when people are baptized by the Holy Spirit and they start speaking in tongues: something wonderfully spiritual happens to a person and then they immediately start speaking a language they never knew before. I guess I was baptized by the Holy Songwriter. That's not to say that my songs are divinely perfect or anything... they're certainly divinely inspired, but I still wrote them and I still mess things up a lot. God just decided one day to give me the coolest gift that I'd been wanting for 11 years. His timing was pretty great too!

Maybe a month before this, I had planned on doing a show with a kid from our Tuesday morning art ministry who was a crazy good musician (his name is Jimmy and he's incredible. He was invited to play in the San Francisco Folk Festival this past summer... check his music out here). I had promised him the show so that he would have a chance to perform his songs for some people in our church. But then 2 weeks out, I realized that it would be too much to for me to juggle with my job, getting ready to go to Mississippi, and having to move all our stuff out of our friend's house that they were selling. I had planned on canceling, but before I could tell Jimmy, me and Allie were at a Missional Community conference in Ohio and the Lord clearly led me not to cancel. Jesus told me to do the show because He wanted us to sing songs about Him as a way to preach the gospel to the people in our town. I was really excited to get such clear direction and looking forward to doing the show, but I wasn't really sure what songs He was talking about. There were a few covers that I thought would be cool, but it seemed like something was missing....

Well, you can figure out the rest.

I got my sister and good friend together, and in 10 days, the Lord gave us 10 songs which we were able to perform at the show, and it was beautiful. As I looked at people's faces while we told them about Jesus using folk music, I couldn't help but think that He planned that for me before I was even a thought. I could see His smile, as He wrote the notes for my existence before He even created earth. I could see the joy in His face as He watched me, so fully satisfied in Him, as I operated in things He had for me, using things He gave me, to reconcile things back to Him. It was wonderful.

Have you ever done something you feel that you were created to do? Eric Liddell says that's when he "feels God's pleasure." I couldn't agree more.

Since then, we've written 30 songs and have painstakingly chosen 11 to record so that as many people as possible will hear these songs about the Jesus that has so greatly changed our lives. We want to bring these songs to dark and spiritually abandoned places to tell lost and hopeless people about a Man who wants desperately to redeem their hurting hearts back to Himself. We want to dispel the lies about the person they may think is Jesus with the lovely truth about the real, live, crazy awesome One.

And let me tell you: Jesus loves folk music. That is why we're recording a folk album.