andrew dodson

The Josh Martin Band got together tonight for a meeting. I like meetings. Due to the nature of my schedule - dating back to college - I’ve grown to like planning. It’s even better when planning turns into plans coming to pass.

First topic of discussion was how to drain our bank account by the end of the year. You see, we’re a non-profit organization (technically speaking). We discussed the best and most useful ways to rid ourselves of a nice amount of cash by December 31st. I think we have a good game plan that will get us some stuff we need.

I’m more excited about planning our next album. Our original plan was to rent a cabin in Gatlinburg over a weekend and knock the majority of the recording out. However, due to some logistical issues, we’ve come up with a new plan. Even better - it’s caused us to push up our recording dates. Come mid-January, we’ll hole ourselves up in a lodge at Cedarmore Camp for a long weekend and get the majority of the recording done.

Josh is going to record acoustic demos in the next week or so to give us an idea of how the new songs sound. We’ve actually been playing a handful of the songs live, already, but there’s still plenty we haven’t heard. We have rehearsals scheduled for this month and the beginning of the year to learn and arrange the songs. By then, it’ll be time to hit the studio.

Song titles for the next album (but not limited to):
-Wrap Me In Your Cross*
-I Am*
-Learning More Everday*
-Sweet Embrace (by Ten Shekel Shirt)* …we hope to get permission to record this…
-Not So Easily Pleased
-They Call Me Crazy*
-What Part of Go Don’t You Understand (sure to be a fun song!)
-Depths of Your Mercy
-Fade Away
* - performed live already

I’ve launched my newest website, for my parents’ church - Capital Church of the Nazarene. I still need to gather information on their calendar and ministries pages, but it’s at least up-and-running.

Capital Church of the Nazarene - Frankfort, Kentucky

For those of you that may be looking for more Christian resources on the internet, I’d like to direct you to John Piper’s website. Listen to sermons, read sermon notes, and more. You can even read (and even download) some of his books. He’s obviously not in it for the money, but for the glory of God. Check it out…

Desiring God - God Centered Resources from the Ministry of John Piper: Sermons, Articles, Bible Studies about Jesus Christ, and more!

Congrats to Justin and Emily. This past Monday night, Justin proposed and Emily accepted. I’m grateful to have been a small part of the process (helping Justin make a t-shirt for the occasion). They’re great people, and they will have a great life together. Check out Justin’s blog for the full story…

The story of Justin’s engagement

After several months of putting off finishing the previous site design of my personal site, I decided to start from scratch. I spent the majority of Thanksgiving and this morning creating and finishing up my site’s new design. It was inspired by Shane & Shane’s website. Let me know what you think!

brianandrewdodson.com

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there in the blogosphere.

I’ve spent the day working (went in for a couple of hours at CLS this morning), eating, relaxing, hanging out with my family, doing laundry, and working on a new site design for my personal site. It’s been very productive, but not exhausting. I’m just glad to have the next few days off from work to recharge for the Christmas rush.

Tomorrow’s plans include working on more web site stuff, and a gig with the Josh Martin Band.

Enjoy your turkey!

Howdy folks. I’m blogging from my Holiday Inn Express hotel room in Atlanta. That’s “my hotel room,” as in - just me. It’s not that I’d mind sharing a room, but having my own room is definitely a preference. I’m missing out on some fun stuff back in Frankfort this weekend, but I always have a good time traveling and playing music.

I picked up a NKJV of the Bible this morning before heading down here. I’ve flipped through a few passages so far. It’s definitely better than the KJV (sorry if that’s your preference), but I’ll be sticking with the NLT or NIV as my preferred translations. I would compare the NKJV to the English Standard Version, or the NASB. Readable, but still “poetic” in style.

I saw Walk the Line last night. Definitely a good movie. I’ve never really listened to Johnny Cash’s music, or read much about his life, so it was interesting to learn a little bit about him (even if it’s through the veil of Hollywood). I’m highly intersted in purchasing his live recording from Folsom Prison. Just the whole idea of doing a live recording at a prison intrigues me.

I’m outta here. See you back in Frankfort…

I don’t get the opportunity to boast too often, but I’m going to. But you know what? I’m not going to boast about me. I’m going to boast about God.

First, you have to know that as I type this, it’s 12:36 a.m., and I’m sitting at my desk at CLS. Today was the most frustrating day at CLS until about fifteen minutes ago. I noticed my email wasn’t working this morning, but everyone else’s was. I decided to fix the problem, but instead, in the process, caused our entire network to go down. Seeing as it was my fault, I was bound and determined to fix it myself. I spent the rest of the day attempting to resolve the issue, all the while trying to get work done that needed to get done. I began to get extremely frustrated, and this culminated with jumping down a customer’s throat on the phone (fortunately, I need to talk to this person again tomorrow, and my intention is to apologize).

I left for two hours to attend Saxton’s rehearsal, and returned shortly after 9 p.m.. Around 11:30 p.m., I realized something. This entire time, I was “leaning on my own understanding” of the situation. The entire day, I tried to fix the problem myself. Me, me, me. I stopped and said a prayer. I asked God to guide me and give me wisdom and knowledge to solve this problem. Less than an hour later, our network is up-and-running like a charm.

How stinking awesome is this? You CANNOT tell me God doesn’t answer prayers. Just when I was about to give up, head home and go to bed, I said my prayer. It was answered. As of this moment, I’m feeling quite the sense of accomplishment, but I don’t deserve a bit of the credit. This is so cool…

I’m planning for a pretty quiet weekend, but one that will hopefully be productive (this post is actually just motivation - if I write this now, maybe it’ll cause me to actually be productive and make this post true).

After a trip to the gym, I’ll get to work on a couple of websites tomorrow night, with hopes of finishing them up. I’ll let you in on a little info… I have a really cool idea for a new version of my sad, never-gets-updated personal website. If I get really creative, I might have a new site for myself come the end of the weekend. The main goal is finishing the site for Capital Church of the Nazarene.

Saturday will be laundry day, but I’m hoping to get some more things done as well. I’m heading to a bonfire on Saturday night, so I need to make the most of my time during the day.

For now, it’s off to bed, with the hope of getting a lot done at work tomorrow (very busy right now!). Adios…

For the past several weeks, I haven’t been terribly interested in buying new music. Since I’ve been MP3ing my CD collection, I’ve found myself listening to old stuff more often. But, today, that changed.

You see, today was payday. I had a little more overtime on this check than I thought I would, so I had more money than I’d budgeted. The smart, Dave-Ramsey-thinking individual probably would’ve put the money to “good” use (savings, pay extra on a bill, etc.). My definition of “good” in this case is a little different than most.

I hopped onto the iTunes Music Store and purchased the following albums:

1. Shane & Shane, Upstairs - since seeing them in concert a couple of nights ago, I’m hooked on these guys right now. Their folksy, jazzy style is unique as far as Christian music goes. The Shanes are also incredible vocalists. Great melodies & harmonies, great lyrics. They’ve got a good thing going.
2. Jamie Cullum, Twentysomething & Catching Tales - Wow. This guy is great. A strong influence of jazz spiced up with other styles (including some electronic sounds from time to time). Think of a young, modern, hip version of Harry Connick, Jr. (not that Harry’s not hip). Now make that person British and you have Jamie. Good, good stuff.
3. Jeremy Camp, Unplugged - another nice surprise. I like his music a lot, but it has one weakness - it all sounds the same. However, this live set mixes things up a bit, and creates fresh versions of some of his better songs. It’s cool to see a Christian artist do something like this.
4. David Gray, Life In Slow Motion - I only listened to this a couple of times while at work, so it didn’t have my undivided attention. But, I heard some good stuff. People seemto really like this album after his last was a bit disappointing. I’m sure it’ll grow on me. I enjoy pretty much everything he writes.

Last Friday, I bought both of Matt & Joanna Black’s CDs after their performance at Vertex. I’ve really enjoyed listening to their music. Think Christian folk.

The great thing about buying all of this new music? It’s all really, really good. I should have plenty to listen to for the next few weeks until I get the itch to add more to my collection.