May 30
I have to tell you, I listened to this tape for the first time in about 2 years a couple weeks ago and I couldn't help but laugh when I heard this song. For those of you who are keeping track, this is from the first night of Reality Check 2000 at East Baptist Church in Charlotte (if at this point you're completly lost, head on over to www.myspace.com/timhoeksema and check out the "Stand Up and Praise Him" blog).
This was the night where the congragation was invited to get a little taste of what would be going on that week. Some way or another it was decided that David Cruse (our choir director) would be involved with the music that night. He, along with Tammy Miller (our pianist) and Gabe Hoff (one of the choir members) joined Luke and I on vocals. The instrumentation simple, it was just the core band that night.
Now the reason I laughed when I heard this doesn't really have to do with anyones performance or even the audio quality. It was all because when we would play this song in our youth service, everyone would yell out "Oh Oh, Ooohh!" in between the verse and the chorus. It pretty much makes me laugh every time I hear it because it's pretty silly, but this version of the song has an extra goofball quality to it. See I learned this song when I was still living up in Michigan and had played it there with my friend Andy Lloyd. Andy is probably the most talented musician I have ever met, and played countless instruments, one of which is the steel pan. When he and I did this song together he used his steel pan and so our version had a islandy kind of feel to it so the "Oh's didn't seem so bad then..... Not the case in the version with the choir here! I guess what it really boils down to is that I am amazed I got those folks to do it! (With the exception of Tammy, cause she has some soul).
Well thats all for today. I hope your week is off to a good start. Hopefully I'll get the rotation back into swing this week and get some Reflections of Glory stuff up on Thursday. See Ya then..
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May 25
I know, I know, I didnt post anything on Wednesday and you had to listen to the same old songs for the last 4 days. I dont really have a good excuse for it but I will make up for it today.. Yes thats right, youre getting a triple post today! And coincidently, all 3 songs were written by the same band
The first two songs go together as a pair and Ive been trying to get a decent recording of them for the past 6 or 7 years with 2 different bands and even on my own. Something would always happen though. For example, if by some miracle we played and sang them well then the sound quality would be awful, and if the sound was good wed go ahead and mess that up by playing as bad as possible. Its finally come down to a combination of recordings, one from a Reflections of Glory practice (augmented by some overdubs) and the other is a studio recording I did a couple years ago, but before we get into all that let me tell you about where I first heard this music.
When I was about 13 I went to the Michigan Church of God summer camp for a week during the summer. It was a family camp with various activities for every age group. There was a big barn that the youth would gather and worship in, and during one of the youth services I was introduced to a Youth Minister/Worship Leader named Chris Spitters. Chris had a band called Embrace and they put on a concert of original music one night during the week. I went down to listen to them and it was completely unlike the music I had grown up listening to. I was used to church music being a Piano and Organ with a somewhat stuffy singer waving his arms around behind the pulpitbut this was different. There were guitars and drums, which I was used to now since the church we were going to at the time incorporated these instruments too, but this was a bit heavier than the music at my church, and the people playing here werent much older than me. I found out that the guys in the band had written all the songs they played that night, and I think that made an impression on me too. I liked what I heard, so I bought one of their cassettes for $7.00 (I know, thats funny isnt it, I bought a cassette. At least I didnt say vinyl.)
I hadnt started playing any instruments quite yet, but as soon as I started playing drums I would listen to that tape and try to play along and when I picked up the guitar I tried to learn the chords too. By the time I moved to NC and met Luke and Andrew, I knew those songs like the back of my hand. When we first started playing outside of our church and needed some material that we could stretch out, I figured I should introduce them to the band. 4 of them went into our heavy rotation: Faith, Hope and Love; I Do Believe; and Wanderin/Open Wide. We took some liberties with the arrangements, adding a lot of room for jams that didnt appear on the original 3 or 4 minute recordings, but the songs structure and the lyrics stayed the same.
I Do Believe was the one song we performed best (and most often) and it was also a crowd favorite, so we have a few good MRW versions of that one on tape (including a video that is the third portion of todays post), but we never could get our act together on WanderinI always thought that was a shame because I really like the lyrics. The Wanderin part was from mans perspective, feeling the separation between himself and God and realizing that its his own fault. Open Wide is God calling his prodigal son back to himself and telling him that he is still loved.
As I already mentioned, the versions here were recorded at 2 entirely separate time by 2 different bands. Towards the end of the time Reflections of Glory was together, I figured Id give these tunes a shot with those guys. The practice that the recording of Wanderin comes from was from a night when Ken, Skippy and myself were the only ones there. I had been working on the structure of the song with Skippy before Ken got there, and when he arrived I threw him the chord chart and we launched into it. The beginning jam was something I had just recently added to the piece and just seemed like an appropriate meandering instrumental to fit the lyrics. I did some editing because the original version clocked in at over 6 minutes and had some pretty noticeable mistakes in it (There are some other mistakes I left in, but they add a little personality to the it so I guess its okay). I also added an acoustic guitar (playing the part Wes would have had) and little guitar motif from the original Embrace version that I never had the chance to play since I was always the only guitarist. I also re-recorded the vocal (since in the midst of my editing I pretty much destroyed the original vocal file).
Im pretty sure I recorded this version of Open Wide right before Reflections of Glory came together. I had a very clear vision of what I wanted it to sound like and I had also just bought myself a digital 8-Track recorder and was looking for an excuse to do some recording. I had the option of recording live drums, but that had never worked out well for me, and I only had one track to put them on. I was also worried about the timing being perfect since Id need to add the rest of the instruments on top of the drums, so I used a drum machine program called Fruity Loops (Now youll all understand why the drums sound a little off. I couldnt really do any equalizing of the individual drums and cymbals). I double tracked the acoustic guitar, sang the lead vocal and two harmonies, and this was one of the first songs I ever added mandolin to. Hey, this is the first time Ive ever posted a song with mandolin up on the web, lets take a moment to take in the history here..okay thats about enough of that. I did add a little electric guitar part this afternoon and a little ad-lib vocal, but other than that this is the version I recorded on Mini-Disk, dumped into Pro Tools and re-mixed.
So wow that turned out to be a lot more than I had planned on typingand guess what, theres more! Dont worry it wont be too bad. Let me just give you a quick heads up on the video. This was filmed at MRWs second show at the Rock N Java. Out of all the videos I watched, this is one of the best ones. The band seems very in tune with each other and on top of our game. Theres a little clip of the crowd before we start playing where a guy from our church shouts out I Love This Band!!. I couldnt resist leaving it inAnyway, heres the link:
Mighty Rushing Wind: "I Do Believe" Live at the Rock N Java
Well I hope you enjoy all the new material. Drop me and email or a comment on MySpace and let me know what you think. Ill get to work on the MRW tapes and Ill try to have something new up by the beginning of next week. See Ya..
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May 22
Hiya Folks! Now technically it's still Monday, so I didn't miss my self imposed deadline to post something today, but I'm not sure how many of you will be up to hear it tonight..Oh well, at least you can't call me a liar.
Tonight I'm dishing up a heaping helping of Timmy The Sherpa (mmmm, Tiimmy The Sherpa.) For those of you who were around during the band's short existance, or maybe those of you who have heard stories about us, you should know that we had a pretty goofy sense of humor that came through our music. Case in point..."You Can't Beat My Funk in the Trunk". One day we were all over at McGuizz's apartment for practice, and Jon King our guitar player came up with the chord progression for this tune. Since it was an instrumental we couldn't really pull a song name out of the lyrics, so what were we to call this little diddy? Fortunatley for us, McGuizz had a poster from a wild game store in Michigan that had little picture of a deer and made a reference to it's "junk in the trunk". Well of course, with a slight variation, this would have to become the song title!
We played "Funk in the Trunk" at nearly every show we did, but this one seems to be the best played and mixed. In fact, this is the first song I've posted here that I haven't edited or remixed in Pro Tools, so thank you Show Production students for saving me some work!
This show was somewhat odd for us because our percussionist/vocalist Soulman was in a lab (in the same building actually, he and his class came out on break to see us play), so we didn't have quite the same power as in some other shows and we were also somewhat limited on material. All in all though it wasn't a bad night and this was one of the highlights.
Well I hope you enjoy the music and I look forward to sharing more with you. I've promised you something special this week, a unique duo of songs that will hopefully be up by Friday. I'll also work on getting a new MRW clip up on Wednesday. Who knows, you may even get a video out of me sometime this week (wow, what a generous guy I am.) Goodnight!
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May 20
Well it's another beautiful weekend here in sunny Florida, the perfect kind of weather that makes you want to....stay inside and watch the new MRW video! Heres a link:
Mighty Rushing Wind: "Treasure"
So let me fill you in a little on this clip. We're playing at an event called Saturday Night Alive. A little church in Cramerton, NC (about outside of Charlotte) would hold a service once a month specifically designed to bring unity to the youth of the city. They would invite youth groups from different churches all over the area and in turn those groups would invite whoever they could. Every month there was a different Worship Leader/Group, some kind of other special group (We saw a mime team and a drama team on different occasions when we attended) and the organizer of the ministry, a Woman named Susan would speak.
This was the 3rd or 4th SNA we'd been invited to play at, and by this time they had outgrown the sanctuary at their home church so we met at the much larger Linwood Church of God. The fact that we'd never been to this church and weren't exactly clear about where it was located added more stress to what had already turned out to be a stressful day. This was the first time Jamison Wooley would be joining us as our official third member (outside of our own church that is), and we had very little notice about playing in the first place. Everything came to a head when we got to the church and the band had a bit of a heated discussion in a back room after our sound check. It seemed like the start to a bad evening, but I've always found that when we were honest about our own attitudes and got ourselves out of the way that the Spirit of God was free to use us, even through our shortcomings and awesome things would happen. There was a really moving altar call that night and I'm very proud that MRW was able to be a little part of it.
Before I stop writing, I just want to mention that I've got some big plans for next week. There's quite a lot of new music that I'll be posting, and that means I'll have to take down some of the songs that are already here. If you're at all interested in having a copy of any of these songs, I'd encourage you to download them now before they're gone. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you back here on Monday...
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May 18
Hi Everybody! (He says in his best Dr. Nick Riviera impression..) It took me a couple days, but I did manage to find a Reflections of Glory clip that didn't: a.) Have terrible audio quality to the point that you couldn't even listen to it, or b.) Sound like it was played by a bunch of 6 year olds who decided to play with their dad's guitar collection. (Pardon my rant, I'm a little bitter over the lack of material that was recorded by this band, most of our good stuff will never be heard...)
So this clip comes from a video that was shot for us by a member of my church the first time we ever played there. I had been attending New Hope for a little more than 6 months and it had been really awesome. No one really realized I had any idea about sound equipment, and the church wasn't exactly ready for a full time band. So, for the first extended period of time in about 6 years, I had the opportunity to worship as part of the congregation like a normal person! This was a special night though. I can't remember exactly how it came about, but it seems like Ken Chrismon (who sat in with us on that evening and later became our permanent bassist) had the idea for us to come and play for the majority of the Sunday night service.
I guess what really strikes me as funny about the whole situation is that we practiced in the old sanctuary at New Hope every Friday night. This is the same building that housed the Sunday School office and classrooms, and I know that on occasion Sunday School teachers had been in the building while we were practicing, but even so, the congregation seems genuinely surprised at the end of the song that we could actually play!
Oh yeah, I guess I should also mention that a group of girls from the church had been working on a dance routine (I'm not sure if thats the correct phrase or not, but let's just go with it) for this song that they had performed the day before at a big gathering at the largest church in Charlotte. When Judy (our pianist, who also worked with the childrens choir and had taught them the dance) heard that we were playing this song, she asked if they could dance, and of course, how could we turn them down?? So just to clarify, when I say "Thanks girls, that was great" at the end of the clip, I wasn't insulting the rest of the band.
As long as we're clearing things up, that's Mr. Nolan on lead vocals with Wes and I backing him up. So go, have fun, listen to the music, and check back here tomorrow for that MRW video I promised..
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view all 21 posts
TimsFavoriteGirl
Nice pictures , you have an awesome Site ! keep up the
good work I love you so much , so does your little
producer :)
posted May 21
wakkosmommy
You have done a great job. I enjoy the music and the
writting.
posted Apr 27
MelodicD
Woo Hoo Daddy you are so awesome!
posted Apr 25
TimsFavoriteGirl
I love you Baby you sound awesome! you never fail to
impress me with all of you talents, you have an
unbelieveable passion for music, that I know will never
fade. :)
posted Apr 24