I posted this on the Warnbro worship blog but I love it so much I’m gonna put it here as well (plus I wanted to test that posting YouTube Videos works with my new blog install..)
The music is inspiring and I like the comments he makes at the end… Enjoy.
Tags : U2, Worship
Categories : Video, music | 0 Comments
One of my guilty pleasures in life is that I really like country music. Don’t know why that feels like something to be ashamed of but it does – maybe because Perth is decidedly not a country music city (although it sometimes feels like a big country town but that’s another issue..) I never was much into it until 2007 when we visited our friends over in Nashville in the USA. As Nashville is the Mecca of country music I decided to acquire a taste for it – started listening to Keith Urban, Alison Krauss and a heap of others and discovered I loved it. I think if you set your mind to it you can acquire a taste for just about anything – for example this year I decided to acquire a taste for beer. I’ve never been a beer drinker my whole life but decided to give it a try – so while spending a couple of weeks in Queensland for Uni with nothing else to do except lie on the beach and skip classes I made a concerted effort to learn to like beer and was successful… but I like country music more. In addition to the above artists another one of my favourites is Brad Paisley – that guy writes some great songs and is an amazing guitarist!
One of the other things I am into (aside from country music and beer) is playing worship guitar in our band at church, but I’ve never found a way to combine the two (country and worship that is – hard to combine beer and worship…) until now…
Wash Away is a recently released album from a guy called Don Poythress who is a top songwriter in the Nashville scene, having written for quite a few big names in country music. He is also a worship leader at his church. I really like this album for a number of reasons, and not just because it has a strong country flavour.
Firstly the songs are interesting. Often with worship CDs lately I find there’s 3 or 4 songs that grab my attention and then a lot of more mediocre, less memorable ones. On this CD almost every song has something interesting about it, even the songs I am less keen on still hold my attention. There is a creativity in the music that grabs me – partly it’s the lyrics, partly the song structure, and partly the instrumentation. Every song is different. They don’t all sound the same. There is plenty of musical space – but also plenty of moments of musical virtuosity (for want of a better word) that inspires me as a musician. For example the mandolin introduction on “The Faiithful Love of Jesus” is exquisite – I really must pick up my mando more and put more effort into learning it. And there’s plenty of nice slide guitar, acoustic, and of course distorted Telecaster licks on the album also.
Lyrically the album is good also. I think it’s probably hard to be original as a worship songwriter but Poythress does a good job of creating some fresh and inspiring songs which range from up-tempo country rock to more hymn like songs. Some of the ones I like best are Expectation, Fill Me Up (greater slow song – powerful lyrics), and A Thousand Generations (up tempo but interesting lyrical theme…) The title track is really good as well.
If you haven’t yet acquired a taste for country music, try not to let that put you off this CD. The songs could easily be reworked to de-countrify them for any sort of worship setting. I’m glad I thought outside the box of the usual suspects for worship music, and I would encourage you to get on your boots and do the same – it’s well worth the ride…
Tags : beer, country music, Worship
Categories : Church, music | 0 Comments
I continue to not be too active here in this blog due to study/family/ministry/work/facebook etc, although have been a little more involved in our worship team’s blog here : http://wccworship.wordpress.com/
In the process I’ve recently discovered a few brilliant worship guitar blogs that have really got me inspired. Here’s a few of them :
They are all now fixtures in my newsreader and all are excellent, but I’d recommend the first one especially. This dude has a mountain of good material, loves U2, and is pretty damn funny too. So if you’re into that sort of thing, check it out. In the meantime I’ll be off hiding out in facebook as usual.
Tags : Guitar, Worship
Categories : Blogs, Church, Links, Worship | 5 Comments
Worship Guitar Guy – cool blog this. well presented with some useful posts. Just wish he would update it a little more consistently than he does. But for church guitarists, it’s definitely one worth checking out.
Tags : Blogs, Guitar, Worship
Categories : Church, Guitar, Worship | 0 Comments
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