andrew dodson

I’ve spent most of this evening listening through the recording sessions and doing rough mixes of all of the songs.  I still have a few to mix, but I’m really pleased so far.

From a personal standpoint, I’m pleased in a couple of ways.  Normally, I like to lay down scratch drums for everyone to record their tracks, then go in at the end and lay down my final drum tracks after everyone else has laid down parts.  I do this so that I can put fills in appropriate spots.  This time around, I’ve laid down my drums first.  We played the songs “live” while I recorded drums.  Since I consider myself a better live drummer than a studio drummer, this worked out pretty well.  I was able to get most of the songs in two or three takes, which helped speed things along.  I think it’s some of my better studio work.

The drums also sound really good.  I am biased, but I think a good drum sound makes or breaks a recording.  The lodge had great acoustics and you can tell on the drum tracks.  I made some good choices on drum mics, and made sure my drums were tuned well (I am sometimes lazy about tuning my drums). 

We still have a lot of work to finish the album (more songs to record, vocals, extra stuff), but I’m excited for the chance to share these songs with people.  Hopefully that will be sooner than later. 

I did a “live blog” for the JMB recording sessions over the weekend.  This was posted on the JMB website… pictures & videos coming soon:

Tomorrow, the Josh Martin Band begins the process of recording our next studio album.  On the eve of the recording weekend, I had a couple of thoughts.

Two years ago at this time, I was on my way to Minnesota for the Desiring God National Conference.  Head over to my photos section to see pictures from the trip.  It was my first conference and was a blast.  Aside from hearing some great speakers in person, there were a lot of little things that made the trip fun.  The bed at the hotel was insanely comfortable.  The Michigan Wolverines’ football team and the Chicago White Sox stayed in the hotel - I rode the elevator with Jermaine Dye and saw Paul Konerko in the lobby.  It was a great trip.

A little over two and half years ago, as the Josh Martin Band recorded our previous studio effort, The Point Community Church started.  I remember driving from Cedarmore on Sunday morning - after a full weekend of recording - to a skating rink to set up my equipment for our first service.  Since then, The Point has grown to 300+ members and 200-250 weekly attendance.  Sometimes, people ask me why I still live in Frankfort.  The Point is one of the reasons why.  I really love my church.

So, here we go.  Recording again.  The great part about this album is that we have no idea what will end up on the album.  We begin the process with only a handful of songs written.  Over the course of the fall, we’ll finish writing some more songs to finish out the album, but those songs remain a mystery.  Stay tuned for more updates from the studio.

It’s been a little quiet ’round the blog since my Palin posts.  Not much noteworthy happening in my world, I guess.  It will likely stay quiet around here for another few days.  CLS is in full swing, as fall is probably our busiest time of the year.  It is likely that I will be working some overtime for the next couple of days to get ahead.  Why?

I will be taking off on Friday to begin recording the next Josh Martin Band album!  As of now, my plan is to spend Thursday night setting up at Cedarmore.  The rest of the band will come in on Friday and we’ll be rolling by Friday afternoon.

As I did for the Not So Easily Pleased recording sessions, I will be live-blogging the recording sessions.  I also hope to provide YouTube clips, pictures and more.  I’m looking forward to it!

The disclaimer in my last post said that I had yet to do any research on the subject of a female being a political leader. These types of questions fuel my study of the bible, so I started digging in.

In Judges 4, we see Deborah as the only female judge of Israel. In Isaiah 3:12, Judah is pretty jacked up, and God says women will rule over them. Most read into this to say it was because all the men were jacked up, so God punished Judah by appointing women to lead them. While that’s likely the case, based on the text, it also shows us that God did ordain for women to be political leaders. And, who’s to say that America isn’t pretty jacked up in its own right, so we might need a woman to set us straight (please don’t read too much into this statement).

Elsewhere throughout the Bible, we see plenty of queens being mentioned. Not to mention, women like Ruth and Esther who were influential in one way or another.

Am I too far off base here? I’m curious to know what other people think. I just disagree with Pastor Baucham on this issue.

Well-known pastor Voddie Baucham recently appeared on CNN to discuss the Biblical stance on whether or not Sarah Palin should be the Vice President. The discussion gets pretty interesting. I have to applaud Baucham on his passion for preaching truth and staying true to the Word. But, I also have to say I’m not sure I agree with him. He thinks Palin should not be the V.P.

I believe the Bible teaches women should not be pastors of a church. In fact, I think the Bible is very clear on that subject. Without doing much research on the matter (my disclaimer), I don’t believe this teaching carries over to government. Not because of separation of church and state, but because I don’t believe the Bible ever mentions that a woman should not be a political leader. It does, however, say that God ordains the leaders of our government and that we should submit to them.

And, for the record, I think Palin is great. I wish we could swap McCain and Palin on the ticket.

Check out the video for yourself:

So, I totally missed the boat on the release of the NLT Study Bible. I had absolutely no clue it was in the works. I checked it out tonight at the bookstore and it looks pretty good. Of course, its timely release is surely a ploy to compete with the October release of the ESV Study Bible. I was surprised at the sheer amount of study notes included. Nearly every verse has something.

I might have to rethink my previous plan of the ESV Study Bible being the last bible I purchase for a while. I feel like I’m in the minority of people who are both ESV and NLT fans. To be clear, I’m a fan of the second edition of the NLT. The first edition was quite bad. The second edition puts it well in line with the NIV in terms of readability and accuracy for a paraphrase translation. I really like its style and how it reads.

Go check out the official site.

(by “smart” I don’t mean just knowing a bunch of stuff. I mean knowing a bunch of stuff and then applying it)

1. Go read this blog post by Mark Driscoll and bookmark every link he mentions.
2. Read and listen to everything from every link you bookmarked.
3. Commence getting smart.
4. Conclude getting smart.
5. Start applying smart-ness.