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Contests Production music Quirky

CD Baby and Me

A few days ago Simon and I sang for you our new song, “Clouds So Fluffy and Free.” The next day I saw an ad for a CD Baby jingle writing contest. Suddenly, “clouds so fluffy and free” became “CD Baby and Me.” Serendipity? Fate? You be the judge.

Speaking of judging, if this doesn’t win the contest, it will prove, once and for all, that there is no justice in the world. It’s a bonafide earworm. Of course, I’ve been listening to this 30 second bon bon over and over again for two days, so it may be more a matter of it being stuck in my head than the song being catchy.

After recording it in pristine 24bit sound, I decided that an old record player version was also called for. Enjoy them both for maximum enjoyment.

Categories
Quirky

Clouds, So Fluffy and Free

They don’t get much fresher than this. This little ditty was written about 12 minutes ago.

I was sitting on the back porch working on a soon to be completed Evanescence-esque song for a singer in New Zealand, when my son Simon joined me. I tried to get him to enjoy the clouds floating overhead (instead of asking me if he could play Connect Four on the computer), so I wrote this little song to encourage him to relax and enjoy nature. Now you, too, can join Simon and me in our little paean to our fluffy friends over our heads.

MP3

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Congregational Songs Retuned hymn

Awake, Sweet Gratitude

Ascension Song coverThanks for bearing patiently with the sins of my youth. (I.e. the recent “Spring Cleaning” series.) There are more, but I’m going to give you a little break from that nostalgic tour de force, and introduce something brand new.

“Awake, Sweet Gratitude,” was written for the recently released Cardiphonia compilation Ascension Songs, a great collection of 18 retuned hymns by great songwriters around the USA and beyond. The text is by Augustus Toplady. It does a great job of exploring the role of Christ as the heavenly intercessor–we have a sympathetic advocate in Jesus, who lived among us and ascended in body to the Father’s side. Check out the PDF leadsheet to study the words more carefully.

I took a little different tack on this recording. I wanted it to be a group project, so I enlisted the help of a number of friends from Grand Rapids and beyond. Each contributed a track or two, then I combined them all into a mix that sounds surprisingly coherent given the variety of voices and instruments that went into it. Here’s who took part:

  • Jess Alldredge, backing vocal and violin
  • Luke Brodine, backing vocal and accordion
  • Michael van Patter, accordion
  • Bruce Benedict, mando
  • Dave Landrum, banjo
  • The Church of the Servant Zoombaphonics, choir
  • Greg Scheer, lead vocal, trumpet, trombone, guitars, mandolin, string bass, drums/percussion
Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Praise the Lord!

When I returned home from my time in Europe, I kept in touch with Annegret. She was a music director and teacher at a church in the area. So when the Hermsdorfer Kirche had its 100 year anniversary she asked me to write a cantata for the occasion.

And that, my friends, is how a young man from Narragansett, Rhode Island has a cantata premiered in East Germany.

Preist den Herrn!/Praise the Lord!

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, The Needy

The Trübenbachs were awesome. They were a solid family trying to live right in an extremely stifling government and culture. Annegret was about my age, and she and her sister Julia took it on themselves to show me around the area. Our sightseeing included a stop at the Scheer bakery in Ernstthal, which was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced: “Hi, I might be your relative.”

Den Armen/The Needy

Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Interlude

Indeed, the Trübenbach family from the Chemnitz area (Karl Marx Stadt at the time) invited me to stay with them. After my studies in Salzburg were done for the year, I hitchhiked my way through Hungary and Germany, with the goal of ending up in East Germany.

My plans were temporarily thwarted when I tried to hitchhike across the border. The guy who had picked me up got cold feet a mile from the border and let me out. I walked past a mile of cars trying to get a ride, then I got to the border on foot hoping to walk across the border. The border guards told me that I needed to take some sort of official transportation into the country, so I hitchhiked to the nearest train station.

By this time it’s getting late, I’ve been walking in the hot sun with a back pack all day, and I haven’t had anything to eat. Starving. The problem? I’m on a train in East Germany, and I’ve got no East German currency. I had a small bag of raisins which I nursed for the rest of the ride. When I arrived at my destination (a campground was the cheapest option while I waited for the Trübenbachs to pick me up the next morning) I was famished. I will not tell a lie–I traded some money on the black market so I could buy a soda and a bag of chips before drifting off to sleep.

Interlude

Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Who?

When I mentioned that my ancestors came from the Chemnitz area, she told me she knew some people there and could probably arrange a place for me to stay if I wanted to explore my roots.

Family folklore has it that my great-something Scheer came to America to seek his fortune, and then went back to his home town to fetch a bride. (That’s how they rolled back then.) He was from Ernstthal, where his family owned the town bakery, and his bride-to-be was from neighboring Hohenstein, where the family business was sausage. A match made in heaven?

Wer?/Who?

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Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Lord of All

One of the excursions she invited me on was in the Black Forest. There I met a young woman who happened to attend a church that happened to have a sister church in East Germany.

Herrscher/Lord of All

Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, You His Servants/From There

That au pair made good on her offer and invited me to her house in Steiermark when I had semester breaks in Salzburg. Then she began doing missions with Operation Mobilization. Once again, I was invited along for the ride. (If you’re getting any ideas–her intentions were purely evangelistic, and she eventually married her mission partner.)

Ihr Seiner Diener/You His Servants; Von Dort/From There

Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Halleluja!

So how does a young man from Narragansett, Rhode Island have a cantata premiered in East Germany?

First, he spends a year studying in Salzburg, Austria. No. Wait. First, he meets an au pair in Narragansett who is kind of enough to help him practice his German and dumb enough to say “If you ever get to Austria, I’d love to see you.”

Hallelujah!