It’s time for another official installment in the “Rabbit Room Interview Series” and there’s no better place to go than to the door of the (much too) humble mind of Eric Peters. For those familiar with the wonderful Scarce or even earlier material (Ridgely, anyone?), you know Peters to be a very talented singer/songwriter. What I didn’t realize is the fragile nature of the artist within…. Meet Eric Peters.
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Lest we in the Rabbit Room get too intellectual or elitist, I present to you a clip from the bonus features of the new VeggieTales video, titled Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry’s BIG RIVER RESCUE. Randall Goodgame and I once again had the pleasure of writing the silly song for the episode (and are putting the finishing touches on the song for the next video, too). This one’s a road trip song called “The Biscuit of Zazzamarandabo.” Go ahead. Say it aloud a few times. Savor it.
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How can you not feel a blush of hope when you listen to this one?

I remember at a meeting of the Nashville Weaklings a few years back, Andy played this song and asked us what we thought about the bridge. He wasn’t sure about it, he said. We told him he was a crazy foo’, that the bridge was great. It’s a good thing he believed us, or my favorite part of this song might not have made the cut. And then the world would have broken, or something.

This is called “New Beginning,” from The Morning, which is available on iTunes, here in the Rabbit Room, and at Andy’s website. See, we try to make it as easy as possible for you good people to support us.

The inhabitants of Canaan, the Canaanites, were not Israel, God’s chosen people. They were usurpers of the Land. Israelites were not to identify with the inhabitants, were not to make agreements or bargains or befriend them.

Romans 8:13, For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

When I sin it is no longer I that sins, but sin which dwells in me. The usurping forces inside me are “not I” but sin - remnants of sin-tribes, fears, etc., I have not yet slain. And if I go on identifying, making agreements, and basically partying with the Canaanites, I am not living in Eternal Life; I’m not abiding in Christ. I’m “walking according to the flesh.” And that is a living death to a believer; it’s a halfway house where sin is no longer enjoyable and yet we can’t stop doing it.
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First off, the UPS man just pulled away, having delivered from Barnes and Noble two books: Who is Wonder Woman?, a hardback edition of my friend Allan Heinberg’s reinvention of the classic superhero, and (gasp!) a new book by Frederick Buechner. That I spent my birthday gift card on a comic omnibus and a book of literary essays is evidence of the warring nature of my Geek and Bookworm aspects. Anyway. While you may not appreciate the artistic (and sometimes spiritual) dimension of a good comic book (we’re working on a Rabbit Room review of Hellboy, so in case you haven’t given that idea much thought, stick around and you might be surprised), I figure many of you are fans of Frederick Buechner and might like to know that his new book The Yellow Leaves–a beautiful title, I think–is now available. I’ll be savoring it right after I finish Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome.
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We sing this song in my church often.

The text is profoundly beautiful to me, and that Sandra was able to rescue it, along with many other hymns, from the flotsam heaved overboard in the American church’s mad voyage to Praise and Worship Land, is a great gift to the Kingdom. It must be said, many fine songs are still being written for use in corporate worship, classified as Praise and Worship songs because of their simplicity over the perceived archaism of Hymns.

But however emotional the repetitive praise choruses may be (and repetition, like liturgy, can be a good thing), we should take care to pay attention to the wisdom of our forbears, those who crafted songs without computers, usually unconstrained by the typical three or four guitar chords or three or four same rhyming words we always tend to use, influenced by poets like Shakespeare and Tennyson and not writers of three-minute pop songs. And that’s not to mention the theological depth of many (but not all) hymns.
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Continuing our espionage through Canaan, I found that Canaan itself meant “lowland,” from a root word meaning “to be humbled, subdued, be low, be under, brought into subjection.” Our bondages to sin, subjections to Satan.

Amorite - “a sayer” probably from amar, “to say, speak, utter, to think, to command, to promise, to intend.” Amorites were apparently the greatest and most powerful of all the nations of Canaan. The false agreements we make with the Liar are powerful. These false words we speak, these identity statements about ourselves, are the greatest and most powerful of all the soulish “tribes” in the promised land of our soul/body. These lies we believe can be used in a wider sense to include all these inhabitants of our inner landscape, because the lies are where the sin-tribes get their life. The cure: to recognize God’s truth, to speak it out and faithe in Him- to make our agreements only with God and His Word.
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I’ve often wondered what the “sin which indwells me” of Romans 7 really is. I was recently reading in Exodus and a lot of light was shed on the subject for me by the Word of God. The Old Testament is full of historical happenings which are simultaneously illustrations of truths or realities if we have eyes to see them and do a little digging into meanings of Hebrew or Greek words with a lexicon. The Passover is Christ our substitute; the Exodus from Egypt is our deliverance from bondage to sin; the Ark of the Covenant, made of wood overlaid with gold, containing the unbroken tablets of the Law and the jar of manna, is Christ, his humanity overlaid within and without by the gold of Deity, our living Law and daily Bread from Heaven.
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If you’re not familiar with Allen Levi, you should know that this song doesn’t necessarily represent the rest of his music. But then again, maybe it does: it’s a story song, it’s creative, it’s musically excellent (I mean, how cool is that occasional banjo?), and it presents the gospel in a way that conveys Allen’s deep and loving wisdom.  I chose this one because for a few years it was the only song my children requested from my iPod when we were on road trips, and it gave me a great way to talk to them about Jesus.

It’s called “Where the People Walk Backwards”, from his album, The Moon is Round.

In the last month, I’ve been in the process of getting ready to move and I’ve put a lot of thought into why I have so much stuff laying around. My closets and drawers are filled with everything from Wendell Berry poetry, to Brewfest wooden nickels, to an old belt of M-60 rounds. So I’ve gone through it all and with each thing I pick up I have to decide if I’m going to keep it or toss it. Why on earth do I have a belt of M-60 ammunition? And why on earth can’t I bring myself to throw it out?
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In August of 2005, going from a Denver concert venue to their hotel, Marc Cohn was shot in the head in an attempted car-jacking. The bullet was slowed by the van’s windshield and the driver’s chin, and somehow Marc was able to remain alert as he was taken to the hospital where the slug was removed. He was awake, alert and expecting that he’d die soon.
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In light of Russ’s post about his 13 years of marriage, I submit to you “Give it Time,” one of the finest songs about marriage you’ll ever hear.

Around fifteen years ago, when I was a junior at Taylor Unitversity (the Upland campus), I walked with a pretty blonde beside the lake and I was pulling out all the stops. The sun was setting. Autumn was underway. And I was full of all sorts of profound reflections about the handiwork of God in the changing of the seasons.

We were holding hands. And that was cool.
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This is the newest single from Jason Gray’s record All the Lovely Losers. He wrote here in the Rabbit Room about some controversy (in the mildest sense) over the content in a few of the lines that radio stations were squeamish about sending over the airwaves. (Read Jason’s post here.) I respect Jason’s decision to change the lines so that the song (and the rest of his music) would have a shot at radio play. I respect it because I know Jason and I know that he isn’t a sellout, he isn’t changing his music so that he can make more cash, he isn’t wishy-washy on his artistic integrity–this just wasn’t a hill he was willing to die on.
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One listen to Ben Shive’s debut The Ill-Tempered Klavier will provide obvious evidence of why this young man has secured the respect of peers and colleagues on the inside of the Nashville music community. With The Ill-Tempered Klavier, Shive’s skills are now planted in the public garden.

Heretofore, there have been unsubtle hints: Andrew Osenga pronouncing Shive as his favorite songwriter, Andrew Peterson naming him as producer of The Far Country, his ubiquitous presence as a studio piano ace on a wide range of mainstream CCM records, Sara Groves choosing him to produce her next record, and the majestic arranging of the strings for Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God, The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ. Like a fast growing wildflower, Shive seems to pop up everywhere, though always in the background. Now, the secret is out. Raise the curtain on Ben Shive.

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Last time we heard from Randy, it was the first part of his Peanuts trilogy. Part 2 is an interlude, so I combined it with Part 3 so you can experience the beautiful way they go together. Excellent craftsmanship all around, from the (Ben Shive) production to the playing to the singing to the punch-yourself-in-the-face-because-it’s-so-good songwriting. If you don’t have this record yet, you really should. It’s on iTunes and here in the Rabbit Room Store. By the way, since Randy won’t brag about it himself, Charles Schultz’s wife wrote Randy a letter thanking him for this fine tribute to her husband. How cool is that?

P.S. If you live in the Nashville area, come out to the city of Franklin’s summer Movies in the Park event this Friday night to see the new VeggieTales film that features “The Biscuit of Zazzamarandabo”, a new silly song by Randy and me. We’ll be there, nervously evaluating the audience’s sense of humor. Here’s the link for more info.

(Posted by Stephen Lamb)

Saturday afternoon, I joined a good-sized crowd at Davis Kidd Booksellers in the Green Hills mall here in Nashville to hear Andrew read from his novel, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, book one in the Wingfeather Saga. They had about 30 chairs set up when I arrived, and by the time it started, they had had to pull out more chairs to seat those standing around and still didn’t have enough.
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Another goodern from JC’s latest album, RCVRY.

DISTRESS SIGNAL

(major against minor / breaking the glass case / where are you?)
words and music: Casella

Brother I can’t do this anymore
Your silence is killing me
Hiding major against minor chords
You disappear right in front of me

And how am I supposed to take it?
I’m already on my knees
And suspended in the distance
Between grace and gravity

Overcome by shadows of ourselves
Disguising our reflection
We could take the time to find our way
Across this disconnection

Because how are we gonna make it
If we both refuse to see
That we can’t go on erasing over
Every sad thing?

I want to trust you but you’ve lost all control
(Where are you?)
Nobody holds you like the hand of God

Just this weekend Andrew Osenga’s first podcast was posted on his new website. It’s called (ready for this?), “I Like Andy Presents: The I Like Podcasts Podcast.” You can download the podcast in two parts. The first is our conversation, which features, among other things, a few of my songs (and conversation about Battlestar Galactica and The Wrath of Khan), and the second is Andy and I playing “All Shall Be Well” live. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks, Andy O.

And so the Song of the Day comes back around to the B’s. Last time I chose a live version of a Ron Block song that Alison Krauss sang at one of the Behold the Lamb Christmas shows. This time it’s a pair of instrumental songs from his latest record Doorway. The first is called “Secret of the Woods” and the second is “I See Thee Nevermore”, both based on a passage from a George MacDonald book. This represents a gloriously unlikely convergence of two of my favorite–no, three of my favorite things: fantasy literature, great acoustic music, and the Gospel. The Rabbit Room exists for such a thing as this.
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Last Friday afternoon, some friends and I drove over to Memphis for a Sara Groves concert. I think it was the third time I’ve seen her play, not counting the times she has played for Andrew Peterson’s Christmas show at the Ryman, or the couple showcases I caught last month during GMA week. She was playing at Hope Presbyterian, just outside of Memphis, for the opening concert in their summer concert series, along with another artist, and played for almost 90 minutes.
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Welcome to a new series here in the Rabbit Room, where we will periodically peek into the lives of our contributors as well as other artists, musicians and writers in interview form. We believe that not only is it important to hear from those we appreciate so much but we also enjoy knowing about them as well. So in our first installment, it’s (finally) time for an update from our own Randall Goodgame:
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Derek played this song (from Mockingbird) almost every night of the 2007 Christmas tour, and by the end I came to love it.  I liked it, was moved by it, appreciated the lyric and the guitar part–but it took a good ten listens before the song really kicked me in the gut, and when it did it hurt.  I mean that as a compliment, in case it seems otherwise.  Sometimes the best music has to marinate for a while.
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If you are as eager to hear the Ill-Tempered Klavier as I am (which I doubt), pray that Bob Boyd would stop throwing up. Bob is mastering the record (that’s the last step in the process) and he’d be done already if he hadn’t picked up a nasty bug in Mexico over the weekend. I’m not postponing the release of the album, at least not officially. If Bob can get well enough this morning to get back in the chair, we may still be able to make the record available to you by the afternoon. But if he stays sick, we may all have to wait another day. Thanks for your patience, prayers, and support.

Ben

Jonathan Rogers, one of the first people on board with the Rabbit Room last year, has written several books, three of which are a Young Adult series called The Wilderking Trilogy.  Jonathan describes these books as a fantasy tale told in an American accent, and the following song is a great example of that.
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This week, I saw two concerts in three days: the first was Andrew Peterson and the Captains Courageous and the other was Cyndi Lauper and the B 52s. But first, let me backtrack a bit.

A while back for our 10th anniversary my wife and I decided to spend a weekend in Chicago – the city where we met – and enjoy some of the local culture before attending a retreat put on by Image: A Journal of The Arts & Religion. We scraped together $150 of activity money and our first adventure was to spend an evening at Second City – the comedy club that produced comedians like Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, John Belushi and others. As we walked in we were greeted by a group of well-dressed men who shook our hands, graciously thanking us for attending the evening and ushering us down the line to the place where we would buy our tickets. We were asked if we had reserved seats and when we said no, the woman assured us there was still room and that we needn’t worry. “Good, in that case, we’ll take two tickets.” Our guide to Chicago nightlife listed Second City tickets at $8 a piece, so imagine our surprise when the woman presented us with our two tickets and said, “That’ll be $100, please.”
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M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, The Happening, opened this past weekend and as a big fan of most of his work, I made sure I was there on opening day to see it. When I left the theater, I was dumbfounded. I was shocked and horrified. Is it that good? Well…no, it’s that bad. It’s a train wreck, a film so inconsistent, so incoherent, so poorly shot, edited, directed, and resolved, so carelessly crapped onto the screen that it’s a mystery to me how it came out of the same creative well as movies like The Sixth Sense and Signs. Something has gone seriously awry in the land of Shyamalan. Why is this happening?
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Allen said I could post this here in the Rabbit Room. For those of you unfamiliar with the gentle, giant soul of Allen Levi, you can hear his music at www.allenlevi.com–this piece will give you a good idea of what makes him so special.

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Perhaps you have never heard of Irena Sendler. She kept names. Names were important to her. She died two weeks ago today.

Yesterday evening, as a beautiful spring day was drawing to a close, my brother Gary, my nephew Caleb and i took a short walk through a hardwood bottom behind my house, Caleb, newly graduated from Auburn University with a degree in wildlife science, is a catalog of things that grow in the forest. It’s enjoyable and impressive to walk the woods with him, and to quiz him about Latin names of what most of us would simply call “a tree.”

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I’m happy to present to you a song from Ben Shive’s upcoming The Ill-Tempered Klavier. The album is nearing completion, and “S” is next in line for the song of the day, so Ben agreed to let us post this one. It’s called ‘97, a song about the year his older brother went away to college. Beautiful, sad, and melodic, oh my.
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I got to see Andrew Peterson and the Captains Courageous (Andy Gullahorn & Ben Shive) this weekend when their adventuring brought them to Minnesota. They played in a good sized Lutheran Church in Lakeville with a row of peer-admirers sitting in the front. Taya and myself as well as Joel Hanson, Troy and Sara Groves, and a couple of my friends sat rapt with attention as the evening began.
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At Davis Kidd Booksellers, arguably the coolest big bookstore in the Nashville area, I’m honored to be reading from On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, as well as playing a few songs with my good friend Randall Goodgame. I hope you can make it out. Bring your kids, or your selves, or your cardigan sweaters.

Where: Davis Kidd Booksellers, at the Green Hills Mall
When: 2:00 PM
What: Toothy cows, singer/songwriters, books
Why: To experience the thrill of peril! Adventure! Mystery! Internal rhyme!

Hope to see some of you there.

Thanks!

AP

Oh man, do I love this song. The big last chorus is so beautiful it’s made me cry (though according to my friends, that ain’t saying much). I’m pretty sure Andy Gullahorn wrote this one, but Jill’s voice just knocks it out of the park.
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Do you ever feel like God’s punching bag? I do. I’ve felt like that for most of my life, now that I think about it. Whenever I step out on faith, I find holes in the floor. I’ve fallen so many times that standing at all sometimes feels like valor, much less taking another step. But I keep on, out of stubbornness sometimes more than anything as noble as faith or hope, thinking that somewhere down the line, somehow this is going to make sense. Somehow all these trips and falls and bloodied knuckles are going to achieve something one day, right? One day I’m going to follow where he leads me, and it’s going to be somewhere other than off a cliff, right?
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For those of you out there holding on for life.

The Bible is a collection of some of the greatest and earliest stories in human history. Love stories, dramas, action-adventures, romantic comedy, war epics, soap operas–you name it and there’s something to fit your bill. Given our love of Story here at the Rabbit Room, I thought it would be fun to hear what some of our favorites are. We don’t want any obvious answers here, though, so let’s all agree that the Gospel story is the big one and look a little further. In fact, let’s keep it to the Old Testament. So let’s have it, what is your favorite Old Testament story and why?
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Well, it’s Monday and here we are at the P’s. Technically, it’s Eric Peters’s turn at bat for the song of the day, but I’m in a Super 8 motel room in Wausau, Wisconsin and all of the EP music I own is on my home hard drive. Never fear, Eric Peters fans. Tomorrow is his day.

I chose this song because we dusted it off and included it in our set this weekend in Wisconsin and Minnesota, reminding me of how much I love to play it, and why it was written.

My friend Joel Caldwell flies around in Alaska, bringing much-needed encouragement to the many missionaries braving that fine country’s harsh-but-beautiful conditions. And when I say harsh, I don’t just mean the rugged landscape and the brutally long, cold winters. I’m also talking about the stoic, quiet, strong people who live there. Of course I don’t mean everybody, but during the week I spent in northern Alaska I encountered some of the toughest people I’ve ever met. Wonderful, warm, gracious people, but tough.

This lyric is peppered with images and metaphors that I knew would be a little vague to the casual listener, and when I perform it I have a hard time not explaining the minutiae of each line, knowing that it’s too much for an audience to digest in one listen. I trust that the repetitive chorus is enough to latch on to, enough to help the listener fill in whatever blanks are left by the images flitting by. But I thought I’d tell you a little about what’s behind some of these lines, just for fun.
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This is the song that made me an Andrew Osenga fan.  It’s almost unbearably honest, so beautiful, so contrite.  It expresses so eloquently the way I’ve felt in the wake of sin that I have more than once muttered this song as my best prayer for forgiveness and help.  On this note, have a great weekend and be thankful that you are loved.
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From Gullahorn’s website: “I say this is the love song to my hat. It was also a way to complain about lazy music industry people - but that is not as endearing.”
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I spoke with Jason on the phone today and when I told him that he was next in line for the song of the day, he pleaded that I not post his song after Goodgame’s Peanuts goodness. But I have no choice, I told him. I’m posting the songs of the day in alphabetical order according to artist, and Gray comes after Goodgame. Besides, though his great humility may tell him otherwise, Jason has nothing to worry about. His songs are honest and well-crafted, not to mention excellently produced. Check this one out, for example, sung with his musical compadre Sara Groves:
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Do you ever find an album that so inexplicably captures you for a season that it’s all you can listen to? That’s what has happened to me with a recent little EP I discovered by Thad Cockrell called “To Be Loved”. Thad is a Nashville transplant who writes songs that feel like modern day gospel hymns. His songs are part folk, part alt-country, part Americana, part gospel, and even part ambient, but in the end the songs always add up to more than the sum of the parts.
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I chose this song because I was was around during its pregnancy. Randy started with the first few verses and played them for me one afternoon while we were cowriting (working on a song of mine called “Alaska or Bust”, in fact). Charles Schultz had just died, and Randy wasn’t sure if the verses were good enough to turn into anything. I loved the verses, I said, and asked if I could try my hand at finishing the song. He agreed.

The next day I played him what I had written and he wasn’t crazy about it. Neither was I, come to think of it, because my attempt was a song that was much smaller than it deserved to be. Randall worked on the song for years, a fine example of the fact that songwriting is more like tending a garden than bobbing for apples. I heard probably three different versions of the song before he was finally satisfied, and in the end the song branched out into three parts, an ode to excellent, creative songwriting as much as to the enduring work of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts.

To my delight, one of my lines made it to the final version:

She always wore that same blue dress
‘Cause she fancied Schroeder liked that color best

My own personal connection to what I consider to be a truly Great Song. A song for the ages, Randall.

Matt:

We ended our last conversation with the ’sleeper’ category and it got me thinking - what is my favorite absolutely sleeper pick out there?

Now, let me clarify what I would say a sleeper pick is. I don’t mean an Oscar winner that didn’t make much at the box office. I’m not talking about a cult movie. So when I write sleeper, I’m talking about a movie that wasn’t a critical fave, a commercial fave or really anyone’s fave at all. And yet it’s on your list.

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Take a few minutes and listen to this pretty, sad, hopeful song by Jeremy Casella. It was hard to choose just one song from his newest album RCVRY, but I landed on this one because of the story it hints at. I’m intrigued by songs like this–songs that convey an emotion, paint pictures of a time and place, but don’t come right out and smack you in the face with their deeper story. Not only does it give you something to think about, it allows you to superimpose your own story into the song, and sometimes it helps you to feel less alone.

Listening to this record today reminded me all over again what a great piece of work it is, from start to finish (it’s available in the Rabbit Room store and on iTunes, not to mention Jeremy’s website.
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My wife hates my desk. And this is completely understandable.

My personality type is “Selfish”. The test results may tell you I am a ‘Lion’ or ‘ENFP’ but one quick look through my actions on a daily basis and it’s clear I was raised an only child. When I am working (or playing for that matter), I hate to be interrupted. Headphones on, laptop bright, fingers pressing all point to a world meant for one. And my talented, multi-tasking wife wonders what my problem is.

It happens all the time: she peeks her head around the corner wondering what I think about a certain issue and I respond as if I was writing the Magna Carta. The ensuing arguments and hurt feelings aren’t worth the quick lapse in work and you would think I would know this lesson by now.
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Ron Block has written several of Alison Krauss’s most popular songs. In 2003 the two of them were a part of the annual Behold the Lamb of God Christmas show, and played “There is a Reason,” one of Ron’s finest. I wish you could have heard the way the audience gasped when the first notes of Alison’s voice rang out–she really is a rare treasure, and there was no denying it that night. But without great songs, like Ron’s in this case, her great voice would only be that. The combination of excellent, meaningful writing, impeccable musicianship, and that angelic voice are enough to level a room.

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In the most recent issue of the design magazine STEP Inside Design there’s a brilliant essay entitled “The Man in the Irony Mask.” Writer Natalia Ilyin makes the case that the long-standing vogue for ironic detachment in the arts has led to an “unfeeling, even cruel aesthetic.” The essay is illustrated with screenshots from 2008 Superbowl commercials, and the meanness of those ads–the dehumanization, the humiliations–really is shocking. (Equally shocking was the realization that I laughed at many of the ads when I saw them during the game.) Irony is a mask, Ilyin argues–a mask we wear because we feel shame.
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Last night I had the pleasure of attending (with novelist and Rabbit Room contributor Jonathan Rogers) the second taping of Tokens, a journey through books, music, humor, and theology in the spirit of A Prairie Home Companion. This week the special guests included Buddy Greene, band leader and consummate musical genius Jeff Taylor, Annie Moses Band, Native American singer Bill Miller, and the excellent Julie Lee.

I visited the website today to see if they had posted any of the clips from the show (they haven’t yet), and stumbled on this great performance by Buddy Greene and company from the first show. I know this Mark Heard song from the Pierce Pettis album State of Grace. It’s such a rousing song that it’s easy to miss how great the lyrics are.

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I write and speak for a living. Sometimes it is my own story that I communicate while many times it is the stories of others - of friends, Biblical characters, interesting people past and present. It is honestly a fun way to spend my time and I enjoy what I do.

But every job hits a wall and I recently retreated from my own life to the wonderful countries of England and Ireland. During my two weeks there, I found myself writing and reflecting about my own job and my role as a storyteller. I began to think about the health of a storyteller and what I am finding to be true. Here’s part of what made its way into my journal:

“I’m reading in a cafe. NLA. No Laptop Allowed. This is nice. I’ve watched four movies in four days. I’ve spoken with total strangers and made new friends. Other people’s stories. It’s nice to step into them. I need to step into them. After all I am a storyteller by trade and my own story isn’t nearly enough to propel the heart of a storyteller.
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While you may not agree with everything Mrs. Robinson says, I think you’ll agree that her spirit is as sweet, her mind as sharp, and her thinking as deep as her novel suggests.  We still have a few copies of Gilead for sale in the Rabbit Room, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

(By the way, I think Terry Gross is an excellent interviewer, but she strikes me a little hostile to Christians at times.  Marilynne Robinson seems to confound her a bit, and I love it.)

If there ever was a fan of Narnia, it’s me. I first read the Chronicles as an eight year old boy, and I have read and reread the books so many times I can’t even begin to count. What those books awakened in me was longing, a longing for I-knew-not-what, a longing I could not shake or rationalize or hide, a burning desire that turned into a lifelong search for truth as I spent my teens and twenties devouring the C.S. Lewis catalog.
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One of the first times I stayed at Andrew Peterson’s house, he insisted I watch Band Of Brothers and made me take his DVD box set of the HBO miniseries home with me, assuring me “It’ll change your life.” He was right.

World War II veterans are currently dying at a rate of more than a thousand a day, and it was in the interest of honoring and remembering their extraordinary courage and sacrifice that this series came to life. Even if you’re not a fan of war films, there’s much to love about Band of Brothers – just ask my wife, Taya, who refuses to watch these kinds of films but loves it as much as I do. I think that’s because the series is less about the war than it is the personal stories of individual people and the deep bonds of friendship that carried them through one of the darkest times of the 20th century. Band of Brothers is more than just a film, it’s an experience and an invitation to be witness to the kind of community, brotherhood, and love I think we all long for, but rarely know.
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A few days ago, we had our first Weaklings meeting in more than a year. If you’re not familiar with the Nashville Weaklings, it’s a collective of songwriters not much less diverse than the group of contributors here in the Rabbit Room. Randall Goodgame and I decided a few years back to try and emulate the Oxford Inklings by meeting with other singer/songwriters for the purpose of…what?

Well, for one thing, for the purpose of getting off of our rear ends and really working. There were other considerations, like community, encouragement, critique and the like, but for me at least, having some kind of accountability on a regular basis was a big plus. Knowing that a Weaklings meeting loomed on the calendar meant that I’d better stay up that extra hour or two to make sure I had my newest song in the best shape possible before I sat in a circle with these formidable songwriters and laid it out for inspection.
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It’s in there, under the Books tab (or under the AP tab), at the bottom of the list. Some people have asked whether it’s more helpful for me if you pick up the book at your local Barnes and Noble, from Amazon, or here in the Rabbit Room. The answer is, “Yes.” Which is to say, I’m grateful that you’re reading the book, no matter where you buy it from. And if you get a chance, I’m grateful for any ratings or reviews you can add to Amazon.com or BooksChristian.com. I still hear that those reviews are a pretty important part of the buying process for a lot of people.

The books sold here in the Rabbit Room will be autographed, and if you’re buying the book as a gift for some starry-eyed kid in your life, I’m happy to personalize the autograph for them. Just send an email to info@rabbitroom.com after you place your order.
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Stephen Lamb, a regular here in the Rabbit Room, wrote a review of his recent concert experience with our own Eric Peters. You can check out Stephen’s blog here. –the Proprietor

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Around this time last year, Eric Peters played a concert in Murfreesboro, TN that I was planning on attending, but bad weather, a long work week, and sickness conspired against me and I wasn’t able to make it. So when Eric posted on his website a couple months back that he would be playing at the same church again this past Friday, I immediately added it to my calendar. I’d heard Eric play a good bit back when the Square Pegs were playing weekly in-the-round shows at the now defunct Radio Café here in Nashville, but hadn’t seen him play a full concert until now.
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I’m deeply grateful that Jason Gray mentioned this movie in the reply of a recent post. It won an Academy Award in 1987 for Best Foreign Language film. I’ve intended to see it for a long time and Jason’s recommendation was the final inspiration that brought me to move it up in my Netflix queue.

It’s a movie of understated beauty. The Danish landscape is filmed with muted browns, grays, and yellows. Though the topography is overgrown and rough, its muted colors seem an appropriate backdrop for the grave, ascetic characters that inhabit the small Danish fishing village in which the the film is set.

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Jeffrey Overstreet, fellow Waterbrook Press author, wrote a review of Prince Caspian that echoes much of what I feel about the film. Click here to read it.

I just got off the phone with my brother, who really liked the movie. He challenged my opinion (see the comments from the previous post), but ended up solidifying it. The conversation also reminded me of a few more issues I had with the changes the producers /director /screenwriters made. (I’m almost finished waxing opinionated, so don’t worry that you’ll have to read Caspian rants all week.)

The thing that made Caspian worthy to be king was his deep love for Narnia. His nurse filled his head and heart with stories of Old Narnia, and he longed for it to be true. When Caspian finally meets Trufflehunter and the dwarfs, his wildest dreams come to life before his eyes. This sense of wonder and ache for a truer, better world seems to be one of Lewis’s themes, not just in this book but in much of his writing. Where was that in the film?
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Many thanks to the fine folks at Trinity UMC in Murfreesboro, TN last night for hosting me a second time. This was originally scheduled to be a show this past December, but one I had to cancel due to a severe cold, possibly the flu, the first I’ve ever had to cancel on account of illness. They were kind enough to let me reschedule, and though it was a small-ish crowd (apparently it was graduation night across the land), Paul Eckberg and myself were able to make some music that I felt came off sounding fairly decent considering we were both getting over (more) various sicknesses ourselves and hadn’t played or practiced together in nearly a year. Paul is absolutely tremendous and is the consummate professional musician, ever prepared and as tasteful in his playing as the summer day is long. It’s nice to have utter confidence in the musicians one occasionally gets to play music with. I don’t get to do it often enough, but I do love playing music with Mr. Eckberg. Also, many thanks to Stephen of the SPAdotnet who showed up to support myself, Paul and Chris Lee. Please be kind in your assessment, Stephen.

On the 40-minute drive home, I tried praying, but quickly realized I had no idea what to say since it felt like it had been so long since last I earnestly (and honestly) tried communicating with God.
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I haven’t seen it yet, but I just finished reading it again to my children.

Now, if you know me at all you know that I’m a cry-baby. For example, I got choked up tonight when I was watching Indiana Jones II with my boys for the first time. (It was when they cheered when Indy snapped out of his creepy trance by the lava pit and winked at Short Round. Woot!)  So of course my chin quivered when I read parts of Prince Caspian.
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I know what you’re thinking…well, I know what I’m thinking. “A review of a movie involving a sex doll? In the Rabbit Room??” But we are all safe because, well…suffice it to say, I recommended this film to my mom. My mom. I knew I was going to like it, because hey, his name is Lars Lindstrom and he wears fair isle sweaters — what’s not for a good Swedish girl to like? What I didn’t know was how the film’s quiet, stealthy tenderness would move me, or how Ryan Gosling’s nervous facial tics would immediately endear me to his character, or how sweetly this strange story would unfold and lay itself bare.
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I’m going to tell you about a Cool Thing.

What is this Cool Thing, you ask?

It’s called Tokens.

It’s a radio show in the vein of A Prairie Home Companion, put together by Lee Camp, a theology professor at Nashville’s Lipscomb University. Jeff Taylor, the musician who you may have seen playing with Michael Card, Buddy Greene, Ricky Skaggs, the Chieftains, or–if I say so myself–myself, is the band leader for the show, and told me about the concept months ago. He asked if I’d be into playing on it and I immediately said yes.

The house band is a who’s-who of great (and I mean great) Nashville players, like the aforementioned Jeff Taylor and fiddler Aubrey Haynie (the genius who played the mandolin and fiddle on Carried Along way back in 1999–remember that killer mandolin/fiddle romp at the end of “The Ninety and Nine”?). But in addition to a great band, the show featured taped interviews with authors such as Brian McLaren, plus skits that were–I know this is hard to believe–actually funny. The show was a delight. Ben and I stood in the wings listening to the rehearsal with the feeling that we were witnessing the beginning of something very special.
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First off, I’ve never had a book change my life so radically as this one. I read it on a flight to Calgary a month ago, and as I devoured Steven Pressfield’s chapters on Resistance, I found myself looking into a mirror of my own procrastination and excuses why I didn’t write songs more often, work on more new banjo tunes, hone my talents more diligently.
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On May 22 an event will happen that I’ve been longing for all my adult life. Indiana Jones will return. He will ride out of my memory and be real again, large in the light on the screen with his crooked smile, bloodied knuckles, and awkward machismo. Just typing that name got me a little choked up and nostalgic. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the first movies I remember seeing (it was either that or The Empire Strikes Back) and I don’t remember whether my interest in archaeology predates Indy or not but either way, both he and it are integral parts of my childhood. He was the greatest of silver screen heroes. Smart, rugged, wearing a leather coat and a hat that no one since has been able to pull off and he’s got a freakin’ bullwhip! And on top of all this he’s risking his life to save the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat itself.
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Remember parachute pants? Man, I hated those things and everyone that wore them irritated me–until the day I bought a pair and realized what I was missing out on and just how glorious it is to have thirty-seven pockets on a pair of pants that are too tight to bend over and tie your shoes in (that’s why they make Vans loafers.) So the question is: What cultural phenomenon, whether technology, music, fashion, art, or anything else, did you miss out on until the last possible minute and then finally give into?

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Some of you may have heard of the community of singer/songwriters known as the Square Peg Alliance. Our newest inductee is Ben Shive, as you know from a few posts ago. Thanks to everyone who placed orders for Ben’s upcoming album. If you’re on the fence about ordering the record, maybe this little video will push you over the edge.

My wife has a gift for spotting pheasants when we are driving. It’s a skill she learned from her dad and I’m always amazed at how she can spot these birds - so well concealed by their environment - as we speed by at 65 mph. “If you just keep your eyes open, you’ll always see something” she told me once when I asked her how she did it. I have found that this is great advice for more than just pheasant sightings, and offers no end to wonder and delight as I learn to keep my eyes open for the God who, as it turns out, has a knack for showing up in the most unlikely places.

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I’m going to cast off all reserve and gush about the songwriting of one of my best friends. Ben Shive, the newest member of the Square Peg Alliance, wears a lot of hats. He’s a husband, a father of three (soon to be four) children, a prodigious musician, a record producer, a songwriter, and I’m proud to say that for the last 6+ years he’s been my riding in my gang, the Captains Courageous.

Ben is responsible for such lines as this one, from “Canaan Bound“:
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Matt:

The summer movie season. I can sum it in two words: endlessly mindless. Three months of raunchy comedies and flying stuntmen, formulaic romances and exploding aliens. And I can’t say I’m excited in the least.

My favorite time of year is Oscar season. I love a good story. I appreciate memorable acting performances far more than speeding cars. I enjoy beautiful cinematography or clever camera angles more than soft-core porn and fart jokes. And my wish for this summer movie season is that some studios would offer something worthwhile in the middle of the endless drivel.

Curt, are you with me?

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I just got a proof for the audiobook of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness and posted the first few tracks at http://www.myspace.com/andrewpetersonmusic. Peter Sandon, a bona fide British guy is the reader–they asked me to read it but I always imagined it being read with a British accent so I begged until they succumbed and tracked down Mr. Sandon. The only thing I don’t love is that he pronounced Gnag and Gnorm like “Ga-nag” and “Ga-norm”. Ah, well. But he’s a great reader, and as soon as the audiobook is available I’ll let you know.

Enjoy!

From Jason:

I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Michael Card and Wayne Shepherd at Mole End, Mike’s studio in Tennessee, for his radio show. I had lost my voice the week prior and it was just barely coming back by the time I flew into Nashville, but maybe it was appropriate considering that our conversation was about the virtues of weakness.

I sang a few songs and Mike even joined me on piano for “Everything I Own” - which was a great moment for a guy who grew up with Michael Card as one of his heroes! I hope you enjoy listening to the conversation I had with Mike and Wayne. If you missed it when it aired on the radio, you can listen to it here (the interview is the second half of the program).

I just stumbled on a copy of O’Connor’s complete short stories at a used bookstore here in Nashville and listed it in the Rabbit Room store. Years ago a friend bought me this same edition and I read it with a sense of creepy amazement; it was like nothing I’d ever read. I knew Chris Slaten was a big fan of her work so I asked him to write a recommendation for the book. We only have one copy, so if you click here and can’t find it, someone beat you to the punch.

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This collection is essential to both long time fans and first time readers interested in the work of Flannery O’Connor. My first time to read a handful of her short stories I was helpless to interpret them. One would expect that reading the 1950’s work of a female “Christ-centered” southern fiction writer would be a simple, modest or at least predictable experience.
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Hey, folks. Today I had a radio interview with Cindy Swanson of 101 QFL, a station in Rockford, Illinois. Here’s a link to her blog, where she reviewed On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, and here’s a link to download or listen to the interview.

I’ve been hiding out in the local coffee shop most days, writing furiously to meet my deadline for book two (the title hasn’t been decided yet), enjoying myself but at the same time remembering that writing takes a lot of work. I’ve been consoling myself with Anne Lamott’s freedom-giving advice for writers: You have to be willing to write a crappy first draft before you can get to the (hopefully) good final draft. I keep wanting to go back and self-edit, to worry over sentence structure, to liven up the dialog, but the book would never get written if I did that too much.
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Question of the Week: “Can you identify a common thematic thread that runs through your work– something that separates you from other artists in your field? Or, in regard to work other than your own, what kinds of themes are you particularly drawn to?”
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I just returned home from a joyous, frustrating, exciting, confused, fun, boring week in Nashville. It’s properly called GMA Week and it stands for Gospel Music Association’s week-long event of seminars, interviews, luncheons, dinners, concerts, schmoozing and culminates in the Dove Awards (the Christian Grammy).

It’s an adjective-filled week (see above) for myself because I’m mostly there to interview approximately 25 bands and artists of various types - Tooth & Nail screamo acts to worship leaders. And the process is either thoroughly enjoyable or a Job-like exercise in patience and slow mental torture.
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