In the control room at Wildwood Studio with Phillip Keveren, Brendon Harkin, and Paul Marino
Phillip conducting a string take
At my oh-so-comfortable photo shoot
Aaron Crisler and I - he actually let someone else take his picture!!
Shooting the segments for a music video show called Control Track at ICRS
Recording a radio interview with Bob Crittendon of Faith Radio Network at ICRS
Doing a book signing during ICRS
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’ve been home for a bit, so I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning my kids’ rooms with them. That sounds not much fun, but I actually really like being with them, even though we were cleaning. One afternoon, a little storm blew up, and had, um, 80 mile an hour winds and knocked down a whole lot of trees. We lost power for about 48 hours which made things interesting. And very, very hot. It was about 100 degrees that week. We were lucky, though. There were a lot of people in our area who lost power for more than a week, some for ten days.
I was very happy for power, and happy that I could get ready for my next trip. I’ve spent the last week in Nashville finishing the final vocals for the new album, doing the photo shoot for the cover, and also doing the recording sessions for the string players. Recording vocals can be kind of tedious since you usually end up singing the same song for several hours, but I’m happy with the takes. I also kind of loathe photo shoots since I feel stupid most of the time. Who wants to have a bunch of pictures taken of them, anyway? But even that went well – the photographer, Aaron Crisler, is really good at putting me at ease. He did the photography for my last album as well.
But the string session. Oh, the string session! Can I take a minute to gush? These are the same players who did my last album as well. They are all in the Nashville Symphony and they all record pretty continuously. They are absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen anything like them – no one should be able to read like they do, it’s just incredible. And the string arrangements for this album were done by Phillip Keveren (also from the last album) and they were just stunning. A few of them actually brought me to tears. One in particular sounds like a movie score, one with Liam Neeson running through moors somewhere in Scotland. Do you think the IRS would believe that I had to write off a trip to Scotland to record a video of me running through moors because, well, listen to those strings!! Clearly there was no choice!! 🙂 Phillip’s just an amazing arranger and pianist, and he also recorded a few of the piano tracks on the album.
My producer, Paul Marino, is doing an outstanding job, and after hearing those string arrangements, I am just beyond thrilled to share this album with you all! The songs are written to the glory of God, and I can’t wait to see where He will take them and how He will use them! Lifeway has already asked for the publishing on them, and I think several will be used on other projects, so that is really fun.
We’ve named the album “Someday,” and the release is now officially set for October 2nd to coincide with Sensory Awareness Month in October. I will have them before then, though, and you will be able to pre-order and get them before the official date AND have them signed, so make sure you join my email list if you haven’t already done that since that is where I’ll announce that! Here’s the link to sign up for my email.
After Nashville, I flew back to Florida – again! I’m making a habit of this. This time I came to do the ICRS (International Christian Retail Show) convention. I had a book signing for the book stores on Monday, and since so many different media outlets come to cover the convention, I had several interviews for magazines and radio shows as well, and even did one TV show in the lobby!
I also had a great book review come out this week. You can check it out here.
It’s been so fun to see how God has already been using the book, and I was very encouraged to hear about all the ways He may send it out after this conference! I’m ready to be home again with my family, and I’m also watching to see where God may send us next.