Good God Father, the Oregon-based rock band known for their powerful live performances and upcoming album I Pray You, is scheduled to appear at the 10th Annual Fire Fest NW. The band will take the outdoor stage on Saturday, September 5, 2026, at 2:20 PM at the Skamania County Fairgrounds in Stevenson, Washington, located in the scenic Columbia River Gorge. This milestone 10th anniversary festival promises a family-friendly celebration featuring free camping, free food, and an outstanding lineup of live music. “We are thrilled to be part of Fire Fest NW’s 10th anniversary and look forward to delivering an energetic set for fans in the Pacific Northwest,” said Xwan of Good God Father. The event offers a perfect opportunity for music enthusiasts to enjoy high-quality live performances in a beautiful outdoor setting. Event Details

Patreon Exclusive: Celestion Seventy/80 vs Vintage 30 Shootout

We are pleased to announce the release of a new Patreon exclusive video titled Celestion Seventy 80 vs Celestion Vintage 30 Speaker Shootout, featuring the Blackstar HT Soloist 60. Captured during a recent livestreamed guitar tracking session for upcoming Good God Father releases, the video originated from an unexpected amplifier function failure. Following a successful repair, the session evolved into a focused comparison of two high-quality speakers available in the studio. The shootout examines the tonal characteristics of the stock Celestion Seventy 80 speaker in the Blackstar HT Soloist 60 against the Celestion Vintage 30 loaded in a 1968 Univox U320 APB 2x12 cabinet. Both configurations were driven by the Blackstar amplifier and reamped through multiple professional microphones, including the Shure SM57, Audix OM2, and Lewitt LDC 440. This detailed comparison provides valuable insight for guitarists and tone enthusiasts seeking to understand the sonic differences between these respected Celestion models. The full extended footage and session are available exclusively to Patreon supporters. Your membership directly supports the ongoing recording and production of the new Good God Father album. Access the exclusive content here:

From the hollowed hills of Oregon, Good God Father answers the call again to perform live at the prolific Fire Fest NW at Skamania County Fairgrounds in Stevenson, WA, just over Bridge of the Gods in Oregon. The festival is free for all campers, there is no entry fee, and there are free meals all weekend long, starting with Friday night dinner meal.

This is the second year since the festival changed the name from X Fest NW to Fire Fest NW, in a major rebranding with a new website. Despite the restart, the core of the fest remains the same, with familiar faces being part of the tradition going back 21 years.

Greetings Beloved,

Praying for your safety during these times of treachery. It’s me, Xwan, here, having just recovered from a week of no internet, and 36 hours without power. Things are back online now, and we’re awaking to discover that on the other side of the storm, YouTube has decided to pin another strike on our channel for previously generated content. Two videos were cited for “deceptive misinformation”. Nothing deceptive or misinformative about any of it, of course. So, all the more reason to get over to our alternative outlets to keep up with the mission:

Living with meaning means living the way you’re meant to. When you do that, you’ll Live, as long as you’re meant to. That’s why, when you make the choice to pursue rejuvenating and immune reinforcing habits, you’re doing more than getting healthier, you’re taking a stand on what you believe is right. When your exercise your right to live by choosing to live with meaning, by living the way you’re meant to, you’re telling the rest of the world, and all of its other ideas it has meant for you, that they don’t have a right to you, and your life. It is meant for you and you alone, and no one else. That’s something that can’t be taken from you. You’re liberty to decide what your life is meant for. That’s what makes liberty so powerful. That it’s so true, that’s its so inseparable from existence itself, it was meant to be found, meant to be cherished, and meant to be fought for, and killed for. Only, now, maybe we’ll finally arrive at the chance that it can be lived for. So live today, and make sure you’ve got the tools to do it well, with probiotics, digestive enzymes and essential vitamins and minerals that tell the rest of your body that it can be as free as your mind is.

As indie artists further dig in to their respective trenches across the new home recording landscape, this work horse has proven to stand the test of time: The E-MU 1616m from Creative has lasted 10 years, and three Windows Operating Systems.

As long as you’ve got a PCI-e x1 slot open on your motherboard, you’re going to benefit from the 192 khz speed with the same conversion technology as the Pro Tools HD Core A/D.

Seasons greetings,

I’ve come on to an opportunity where I’m able to invest in some new equipment for the studio, and that has me shopping for cameras. That has led me to choosing between three options, namely:

The Canon EOS -R, the Sony A 7III and the Fujifilm X-T3

Each of these are 60fps, and 4k. Although, Canon and Sony have the only 4k that is NOT cropped, I’m choosing the Fujifilm for more nuanced reasons that rely more on the color science.

Holiday greetings to you, As we’ve already buried ourselves in several hundreds of bags of popcorn, watching the events unfolding around us, and spanning the globe, I, Xwan, have taken a moment to outline some ideas, as we process next moves. Being driven further in doors, and in assessing the nature of things, there’s become greater opportunity to generate video content from here at my home studio. So far, I’ve managed to conquer half the globe in the game Civilization VI, as well as beginning to attempt some ASMR, in saying some prayers and reading some scripture. Aside from that, there was a great session playing EVE Online, where Twitch viewers donated $70 million ISK in one night! I STILL have that ISK in my wallet. So I’ve been working through learning the game, and incorporating it in to my content generation. Have to give mad props, and thanks to RonUSMC for raiding my stream. All this has been happening along side of coming music that I’m currently engineering and producing with what I anticipate will be a full length LP to release in the Spring. For the first time ever, I can confidently say, I am actually on schedule to do so. There’s also plenty of coverage of the ongoing election confusion in AZ. With all of this going on, it has me processing some ideas about what the point of all of this is. It’s about trajectory. Where are we going? how can we be sure that we know where we’re going? I process some of these questions, and answer a couple of others in this, my first exclusively posted Rumble video.

Good day,

This week, we continue our campaign push to migrate our content from major corporate conglomerates, (All the usual suspects… you know who they are), and build a stronger base on alternative platforms. To do that, we’re posting old videos on Rumble, one at a time, and today, it’s one of our earliest lyric videos of the song, Dedication. This is a song that’s been on the rosters for a very long time, being written around the 2005-2006 era, and recorded in the summer of 2006-2007 era. It was released with the rest of the tracks that make up what was the album,

Happy Thor’s Day folks (…. just kidding… you see what I did there? I called the fifth day, Thor’s day… because that’s what Thursday means….. which should tell you everything you need to know about the days of the week….), Just thought I’d send a quick follow up about X Fest NW, and what’s on the horizon for the coming fall season. I hope anyone that is on the East Coast facing Hurricane Florence is getting out of the way to a safe place! Advisories are now saying to evacuate, so get the heck outta there! X Fest NW was now a week and a half ago now, and we’re still reeling. It was such a great time! Amazing talent, and great people! Had some great dialog with friends we made last year, and a fun time performing. Had a rough time with the footage though, and for some reason the mix I got from the board to my laptop didn’t get any signal, so we’re without a good recording of the sound…. But I think we got enough to at least edit together footage for a music video, down the road. Now, we look to October, and the Feast of Atonement, at Yom Teruah, where we remember and meditate on the commandments that were heard by the mixed multitude at the base of Mt. Sinai: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain Thou shalt keep the Sabbath Day Holy Thou shalt honor thy mother and thy father Thou shalt not kill Thou shalt not commit adultery Thou shalt not steal Thou shalt not bare false witness Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s…. Likewise, the tradition in Western Christianity has been to venerate the honored, and pious Saints of old, and of all time, in one feast day, All Hallow’s Eve, or All Saints Day, a Day infamously contested to be the occult celebration of Samhain, or Samween, a celtic/druidic day of human sacrifice. Many to this day are either ignorant of, or scorn the notion that the practice of ritual occult human and animal sacrifice continues under the noses of even American civilized society, and even across the whole globe, in extent parts of the world, of either first or third world nations. In spite of this, it’s the work of the eternal Gospel to bring healing, redemption and reconciliation to the world, which brings light to these dark practices and exposes them for what they are. So we will be releasing a back catalog of recorded material across digital platforms in the coming fall season. It’s a compilation of previously released material, under former monikers, that is being put together as one collective album release, under the Good God Father banner, all as part of this rebranding campaign, “putting all thing in subjection under one head,” as it were. We’ve put out a poll on our Facebook page about it. Put in your vote! The release is called, “Chronicles”, as it will chronicle the past 11 years of two EPs, and one live recorded release, plus one early demo of the song that becomes titled as Uterus of the Witch, a song that is currently available for download from our Bandcamp page. This will be a campaign in order to raise awareness of our presence across web platforms, connect with new listeners, find our base, and raise some funds for a new full length recording, which is currently under way as we reassemble to a new studio location, Hearando Home Studio. Be sure to like, subscribe, follow, and share with your friends, and get the word out about what we’ve got going on, and help us reach our goal of putting out new music, and getting back on the stage this winter.

So I’ve taken the time to write out the lyrics to DNR for a recent magazine inquiry, and thought that since that’s all taken care of, that I’d share that with y’all!

Enjoy!

Cool Kids and Short Kids

Look at the day, what do you say
We can go out to play
Hey,ho, what do you know

Auburn had played a number nearly successful performances around the valley. We managed to keep things pushing along at a fervent pace. Do Not Resuscitate was actually moving on the shelves at the one local record store where we had copies being sold. Then came the name change. Choosing a new name was not at all easy. Naming bands, albums and songs never came easy for me. Masonic Weird would be where things would land, and the story wasn’t exactly riveting. I was in my friend’s car, when we passed by a road to a masonic cemetery, and I said, “What if I used the name ‘Masonic’. That’d be weird, right?” And it was. I would receive a phone call from a friend about it, warning me of the perceptions people might have about the name. After a chuckle, I said, “Thanks for the call,” and completely ignored his warning. Now, if you’re on the outside looking in, you might say it was the beginning of the end for me as an artist. I didn’t think so. One thing was for sure, which was that I was not going to be swayed or pushed around by public opinion. My calling was and is to be a culture creator, and sculptor, and not to be someone who caved to the pressure of misconception. This created a lot of tension with folks. It pushed some people a little further and further from where I was. I was still heavily involved in “churchianity”, and the people who payed the closest attention were people who had an investment in their communities, and what I was bringing to the table put a bit of a strain on that relationship, because what I was suggesting brought forward too many questions. That’s the best way to describe what I was going through at the time. I had invested myself, and poured myself out in to a life that was beginning to betray my perception of things. If I was going to call it the way that I see it now, I was beginning to sense that people were resistant to me, and to what I was communicating. I was bumping up against a hidden wall that others had built for me, and I was not supposed to go beyond it. And it was for my safety. At least that’s how I perceive things now. Whatever the case was, whatever the feeling was, I chose what I chose for a specific, and distinct reason: that I should be the author of my own destiny, and that if I was going to be at God’s mercy, then I would make the space for God to show His mercy for me, without allowing the world around me to cloud out what that is, what it looks like, and how it would function. I was coming in to my own, at this time. I was married to my wife, a few months after the release of DNR, and we would have our first child, a son, a couple of years following. Over the course of that time, tensions would grow in my family, and I would continue to explore new aspects of life that I had never before entertained, and I would find myself up to my eyeballs in Bible study, which really didn’t start with as much Bible, as it did reading the books of others about the Bible. It was an incredibly formative time for me. Having a child puts you in an odd head space of looking back at yourself, as yourself, watching you live a new life all over again, and makes you reflect on who it is you’re deciding to be, in relationship to those others that come along side you on your timeline, while watching the ones that were closest to you shrink in the distance of your rear view mirror… I had the great fortune of being surrounded by very critical thinkers growing up in my family, and the issue of faith and reason was a topic of hot debate, between myself and my cousin, who had nurtured my love of music from such a young age. He sent me a couple of books to read, and from then on, I became an ardent reader. What hadn’t really occurred to me until that point was that I had already been a reader for a long while. Since youth, I would read horror stories and myths. My mother had amassed an impressive collection of children’s books she’d accumulated for us to read. We would read at the dinner table every night, which she was militant to enforce, and that not an easy task with four, and later five children. The quest to understand and absorb information would be a firm foundation for developing my intentions and worldview over what I hoped to accomplish with my talents in the world, with which I had been gifted in. It has been imperative for me to wrestle with them, accepting them as not coming from myself, but distributed to me from the One who gives gifts to the whole world, the greatest being the gift of Life itself. The temptation to use my talents as a platform for my own fame, and glory, and pride has never been so alluring as to arrest my attention. I knew there was a reason behind it that was bigger than the things that I wanted, and I was and have been on the hunt for those reasons, so that I could show them to others, and reflect on them so that we could all agree on what those reasons were and are, and will be. So I kept plugging away, learning, reading, and rocking, and giving myself the liberty to explore my own thoughts and experiences, and keeping track on my digital recording interface. By the time our son was turning a year old, we’d moved in to a home with my long time friend, Isaac Sturtevant, in a two story home that we signed a lease on… btw, never sign a lease, even with your best friends. But it was a great house, and we got a LOT of recording done. Isaac had booked a number of artists to track with us. He was great at the hustle. I was better with the more neurotic painstaking monotonous details of technical aspects of things. You might say “obsessive compulsive”, but I wouldn’t. Things have a place, and there’s a place for everything, but I’m not going to chew your head off about it. In any case, between the two of us, we got a lot done, and I managed to cut another for song EP, which would be the first as Masonic Weird, which we called, Manic and Self Medicated: The Plague. It was supposed to be a trilogy, as I’d written 8 other songs to go with it, but I was more concerned about getting a new product out there to push, and keep up the pace on the Portland scene, so that we could finish our absolute domination there. We printed 300 copies, and hit the streets, sure that the future was ours. What would stand in our way? To find out, you’ll have to tune in next time to this Bridging the Gaps Blog series.

After 3 amazing years playing with my closest friends in what was, to me, a hugely inspired project, I was left to my own devices, alone. I devoted my spare time to tracking songs that I had been writing in the back room of the church youth group building, where I had been serving as a leader. The rug, it seemed, had been pulled out from under my feet, and the wind taken from my sails. Yet, I wasn’t giving up. Too much had been invested, and I wasn’t going to watch that all go to waste. So I let some folks know that I was still working on new material, and I needed to put together another band. John, from Joshua Fire, had teased the idea that he would continue working with me, but I suspected that the material I was coming up with was a little more abrasive than he would be willing to entertain, and besides, he had a new calling now to the mission field with a long time friend. That’s when I got the call from David Rossing. He was another band, Still Speaks, which Joshua Fire had shared a bill with at a church concert only months earlier. As Dave was learning the riffs I had pieced together, I had auditioned a drummer or two, until finally we enlisted, Jesse Bearce, from Still Speaks. Then after performing a handful of times with some other folks on bass, my high school friend, Jeff Reid, maintained a prominent presence, and tracked a few of the parts on the album in the works at the time. Auburn was the name I initially came up with when my wife (girlfriend at the time), suggested I name it after her sister, for some reason, and her name is Aubree. It was something that I ran with, because at the time, the idea of being colorful and abstract appealed to me, and would continue to be a theme up until even now. Something that I had come to realize very strongly with where things were going was that people were going to infer their own ideas in to what I was creating, regardless of what my intent was, which I found to be important for the sake of asking questions. People that want to know what you’re about will ask, when you give them the room to wonder. There was plenty of room to wonder with Auburn. Our first official performance as a band was opening for Liana Bumstead’s CD release party, an album that I was producing as part of our indie record company startup called, Berean Records. After ruffling some feathers and rustling some jimmies, Auburn took their stride in another direction a little further away from the Christian realm/market, to fill more indie rock bills at bars in Salem and Portland. By the time I’d finished the album, I had my recording equipment that I had amassed staged at my friend’s home in Dallas, and began to get more involved with producing other bands. We’d formed a fully functional home studio operation, and it was fun. After about six months or so, we finally cut my first release as Auburn, titled, Do Not Resuscitate, which was put together entirely from scratch, and mastered by my friend, Steve Smith, who was helping to spearhead developments with Berean Records. I had ordered CD-Rs, which simulated the cut vinyl aesthetic, and bought some clear cases, and printed sleeves from my printer, and burned all the CDs myself. It was 100% beginning to end, DIY, put together all from resources at my finger tips. A recording that I’m still very proud of and would form the basis for I hoped to operate. We received a great review from the local, but now defunct paper, Salem Monthly. I’ll have to dig up the only paper print I have of it, since there is no longer any digital record of it. The CD release would also be the first time that we get Yehuda McKay on the stage with us on the bass, as Jeff decided he wasn’t interested in getting wrapped up in the pace we were at, which was break neck, playing every weekend locally for months at a time. I was intent on putting our name on the map, and making myself a staple to the scene. By this time we had a line-up which would cover a lot of ground for the next 5 years, with Jesse, Yehuda, and I. Dave would stepped out of the band, for his own reasons, which I can’t really recall today. Tyler Steele then would become the staple rhythm guitar, and is on all of the live recordings that we have, including our performance at a skate rally video that you can see on our YouTube page. We were living the high life in those days. We were playing a lot, and getting tighter and sounding better all the time. However, there was definitely a big difference between Joshua Fire and Auburn now. We didn’t have the same reception in former circles that Joshua Fire had been afforded. There was very much an air that we were on our own. There was decent enough support from youth group kids, but the problem there was we weren’t going to be able to afford our rock and roll lifestyle this way. As much as we performed in Portland, we simply did not have the network out there that we had on the west end of the valley. This would prove to be our Achilles heel, after the years wound down, and continues to be a struggle even now, especially as tensions have grown around here with regard to worldviews, and agendas. The fact of the matter is that culture doesn’t exist in a void, and it is all directly interacting with, and related to the habits, mindsets, and intentions of the people, collectively as a whole. That is the point where Good God Father has stepped in to take a stand. Auburn was not that. Instead, we saw ourselves (or at least I saw things this way), as being the servants sent out to all the corners of every street in search of people to attend our great wedding feast, as the parable in the New Testament goes. The best part about it was meeting the other bands that were in it, and feeling like were a part of an army of troops who were right there in the trenches, toughing it out with us. As many as there were that were hardly a pleasure to be around, there were three times as many that really lifted our spirits, and made us feel like we were a part of something really special. In those days, most everything we did was managed on Myspace at the time. Booking, promoting, fan reach, networking, you name it. But we ran in to a problem there, as we were not the only group who went by the name Auburn, a detail I assumed would get sorted out over time. Unfortunately, the other group, Auburn, was an east coast band that had a bit more traction than we had over here in the west, and were under contracts with record labels, promoters, and the like. So then, rather than fight it (even though I figured we still had precedent, being that we were older), I decided that it would be a better idea just to change the name of the band, and go through a re-branding. For me, all that would mean is that I’d sign up for a few new accounts on myspace, and just let everyone know about the switch. What I didn’t know, and what I couldn’t see, is that there was an entire ocean above me, and I was leagues beneath the pressure of it, and so were the people closest to the surface. If we were going to survive, we would have to really build on a strong enough foundation to weather the storm. Next time, I’ll take you in to the eye of that storm.

My memory tells me that Inexposed was the more genuine of the projects that I had going on at the time, and would set the stage for how things would develop for me in the future, Joshua Fire was the next necessary step for me to take in discovering the layers beneath the surface of what it would mean to be a professional artist on the U.S. market. Most people in music look at the business end of things with disdain, and we were no exception to this. Joshua Fire, being inspired by the more transcendent issue of the cosmos, in particular salvation through Jesus. We were preaching the Gospel, in our minds, and the music was central to that issue, and needed to be considered with sacred caution. Most of the live performances were free, and involved raising money for missions organizations. Our first performance was an outdoor evangelistic “tent revival” style event, where we performed songs, and John Marr, our lead vocalist would preach a sermon. It was a very heavy handed endeavor, with a very distinct worldview to reinforce our efforts. As such we were moderately successful in keeping our budget above the water. We managed to release our first album, Numatic, after a week of tracking at our friend’s home while his parents were out of town. I couldn’t tell you what our sales were now, but I can say that we ordered a thousand, and I think I have one copy left, and we handed out plenty of them, as you might imagine. Enough momentum had built, and we kept busy, and even made our way in to Canada at one point. I made it there and back with $5 of change in my pocket. I think they let us in because they felt sorry for us or something, because when we came back, apparently there was a bit of a stink at the customs office. We didn’t make any money or anything, we were just performing music for people, for free, the way we always did. I still don’t know exactly what the problem was, exactly, but we had accomplished our mission, and managed to record the whole thing. We lost the tracks, however, since the console we recorded on crashed, and was never backed up. That would be the story for me a number of times throughout the years. After the trip we were pumped, and even came away with a new song I’d written on a little nylon folk string guitar that I had been playing around with in open G tuning (DGDGBD… only tuned a half step down from that. I’ve always tuned one half step down from standard). Once I’d graduated High School, we had become decently by living in a large country home outside city limits. Our rehearsals were regular, and we had accumulated a decent collection of gear. John and I even made a 48 hour drive to go pick up some heavy duty Cerwin Vega speakers. Of course, before endeavoring to dive headlong into the venture, I was advised at the time that I should consider going to school rather than hanging my hat as a musician, but to no avail. I had no interest. I was a firm disbeliever in the educational system, and continue to be so today. I can tell you now, 15 years later, I am perfectly satisfied with my choice. There’s plenty I wish I’d known then that I wish I know now, but that issue never changed for me. So after a year at the house, we had built up tracks for what would become our second album, titled Kariss. We wouldn’t track it there, since the house situation would be dissolved in to new living arrangements, which I believe, if memory serves, was because the owners were hoping to sell the house. So us bachelors of the band (Wes Root-drums, Rob Meyer-bass) all moved in to an apartment together, and John moved in to a house with his wife and kids, which was where we would track the bulk of the album. John built a box to act as an isolation booth where we tracked vocals and guitar parts, and was staged in the garage where spiders of abnormally large size had made their homes, which we suspected was the result of the nearness of a stream to that particular location. There was an odd foggy haze that came over the band at the time, which was remarked by John as being the result of our choice to no longer refer to the band as “Christian”, and thus the “blessing had left the band”. As much as that may have been the case, there came with that choice, another that would leave an equally disquieting feeling in myself, when we asked Rob to leave the band. His performance on the first album left a enough to be desired that we felt that our friend Ryan could solve for us in the next record. As we were making these choices, and sorting this issue out, I went on to fill out some of the bass tracks to keep the ball rolling. By the end of the summer, the album was finished and ready for mastering, and we had them printed by that next spring (I think? The timeline is pretty fuzzy for me these days…. wonder if there’s a way of ever really knowing…), and our CD release was well publicized enough that we managed not only to break even that night, but even bought ourselves some chips and dip with an extra couple bucks we’d managed to rake in. The rest of the summer was filled with random festivals that were booked with the help of a friend of ours. We even had some back door meetings about the idea of starting a record label with the growing number of musicians we had become surrounded by. This would be how I would get involved with my first work acting as an engineer/producer for Liana Bumstead (now Stone), and here album, Things That Rust. She actually appears as a backing vocalist on the song, Beautiful To Me, with my now wife, Teal Davis (at the time). Teal will tell you, I was a real slave driver about tracking that song. Lan (that’s Liana’s nickname), would tell you I wasn’t much different tracking her album either. I tend take my roles pretty seriously, and probably to a fault. With Joshua Fire, that summer was the beginning of the end. We had a great time playing all these festivals. There was Freedom Fest, Mt. Dew Float Fest, Joshua Fest, Son Fest, and Splash Fest, which was at Wild Waves in Washington, and another one at Horning’s Hideout in Oregon. A lot of driving, a lot of fun and a lot of stories. But it was exhausting, and the married guys in the band were definitely feeling the taxing nature of stretching ourselves so thin, and not seeing much return. There was more to that as well. Tensions had grown a bit caustic with there being some idealistic distinctions that were proving to be an issue, which also aggravated the differences in our musical taste as well. We were getting tighter as a band, and our sound was becoming more refined, but our insecurities were catching up with us. Our last performance would be with our friend Dave Barnhart, instead of John on the vocals. While this seemed to leave the others at ease, I felt up a creek without a paddle. I would have to make a new choice, and go in a completely new direction, without these guys that I considered brothers to me. Find out next time, what direction that led me in.

I’ve decided to start a series of emails where I go over my history as an artist, and bridge the gaps between us, and give you a full context of where I’m coming from. What may or may not be clear by now is that Good God Father is the distilled work of me, Sean Lewis, after years of efforts with other bands. Music really goes back to my earliest memories, as my grandfather would allow me to play on his roland keyboard. I learned the typical few nursery rhyme songs, like twinkle twinkle little star, and so forth. Whatever songs you could make on only the black keys. Beyond that, I was all about those crazy Roland synth sounds, and LFO filters. Then by the age of 10, when my cousin had brought his drum set over to my house for his personal practice I learned my first drum beat, and I was absolutely obsessed. I had to learn the drums. So I enlisted in my school band as a percussionist. I was a bit of a procrastinator though, so I would get through that year just to forget to sign up for band the next year, and instead signed up for video production as a news anchor. My cousin had taken his drum kit from the house anyways, and I really didn’t have anything to practice on. So I would get just nosy enough to pull my mom’s acoustic guitar out of her closet that she’d been hiding from everyone, so it wouldn’t get destroyed, and I began to learn guitar riffs. The first being Come As You Are, by Nirvana. It drove my mom crazy, because that’s all I would play for months. But I slowly developed my calloused fingers to form chords, and learned a couple of progressions, the old classic, Tom Dooley, and some more Nirvana songs, of course. After a few years, my grandpa had something return to him that I had no idea about. It was a Univox U320APB 50 watt amp, and a Kay electric guitar. Now we were ready to rock! The summer of 1998, I learned every song I ever loved. But song writing had always eluded me. I was less interested in that, and more interested in sounding like Daniel Johns, or Scott Weiland. With the internet developing more and more all the time, I came across a songwriting app, which allowed me to plug in tablature, which had feature where I could actually play back and hear the music I had written. The was the very beginning. I was ready to start burnin’ out chops and form a band! But there’s more to the story than meets the eye. My family life was a tad bit tumultuous for a period there in those early years, which inevitably led us in to a church. At least from my upbringing, I didn’t exactly grow up “in the church” as they say. So when we started, it took some adapting. I was heavily resistant to the whole thing. I absolutely loathed the music. I thought it was pandering, condescending, and childish, and really didn’t understand what people loved about it so much. I saw everyone around me closing their eyes, and getting in to it, and I thought they were weak. “Church is a crutch”, my grandmother used to say. But then I had an experience, which I won’t go in to here, because it was very personal for me at the time, but it was enough for me to believe, in a way that I couldn’t ignore, and so I was baptized in a Foursquare Church we had been traveling 50 miles to once a week. So as a church boy, I continued to suffer with the music, but as I was learning to play, I would think in my heart, week after week, “What can I do to make this better?” Which really translated in to, “How can I make this in to rock music, and not this weak sauce adult contemporary?” Well, this culminated in to a trip to a youth conference in Tennessee called, “Covenant High In Christ”. I was never able to afford events like this, but someone who’d raised money to go on the trip had gotten in a tragic accident, so I was able to go in his stead, which was extremely humbling, since it was such a transforming thing for me. I learned a lot there, and connected with some great people, and had some very special moments, one of which was actually getting to jam with other people, for the first time ever. So when I got back, the next year, I got my first guitar (an Epiphone Les Paul Special II), and my youth pastor gave me my first little solid state practice amp. I was on my way to rock and roll glory. I started playing on the youth group worship team, and from then on, would become heavily invested in church worship music for the next decade or so. Playing in that context gave me the confidence to audition for the High School Jazz choir ensemble, and would play guitar for the rhythm section my Junior and Senior year. This would set the stage for me to finally form my first band with some friends that wanted to put one together, with some mixed and matched elements here and there, but ultimately culminated in what would be called, “Inexposed”. I sure hope that I have some video out there somewhere of those days, but I digress… I have none at the moment, and we made no formal recording, but we did perform for a few local venues and events. The music was all songs that I had written, and performed as a three piece with Sam Roe on bass, and David Schug on the drums. After a couple of years, I was invited to play in another band with some church friends of mine, called Joshua Fire. This appealed to me, since Inexposed wasn’t exactly a ‘Christian’ band, and at the time, I had very serious investment in just such a notion, as I had grown in great fervor of my faith. Needless to say, my Inexposed friends were not too happy with me about this. However, joining Joshua Fire would become one of the most foundational experiences I would have as an artist, and as an entrepreneur. We had a focused intent to make something of this band, believing that we had a great sound, and a great answer for the world around us. We poured everything in to our recording and our performances, and we had wide spread support, and had developed a very strong relationship with people that loved our music. We would go on to track two full length releases, the first being Numatic. Numatic was my first studio recording release. I’m still working on making that one available online, but haven’t made that one happen yet. I’ll leave you with our second recording, Kariss, and fill you in on what happens with Joshua Fire in the next email.

Alright, so after last night, when I sat down to churn out one of these blog post thingies, I got nearly to the very end of a hefty post just for my phone to completely drop my draft. So this time, I’ll try to keep things short and sweet and to the point. First, to catch up on, Good God Father shared in two recent performances which were captured on video, which you can watch at these links:

Link to a report by Paul Pinkerton on pyramids in Sudan, showing the extent reaches of Egyptian influence in Africa in three capitols of Kerma, Napata, and Meroe. These discoveries and more.

https://m.outdoorrevival.com/travel/sudan-has-more-ancient-pyramids-than-egypt-and-they-are-spectacular.html?utm_content=bufferc9998&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Grace, is a word that, like many before me, has taken hold in such a way that I cannot deny it’s value to me. This came to me, as itself a grace, or gift, that I didn’t wish for. In fact it came through much pain, like many of my generation. Once I found it, I reasoned that if this gift was so vast as I could then imagine, to my still developing intellect, then the storehouses where those gifts originate must the more vast be. So much so, that it’s power to form is so perfectly corrective so as to perform it’s own distinct purpose of will. As one imagines grace, in themselves, they imagine an image that could not come from it’s own members, but from the images impressed upon it from without. This is the result of the combined geometry of the world without which is represented to the mind within, via complex physics of electrons and neurons, and how the simultaneous action of those result in an interpreted ideal in the mind of human beings, and even all living beings which have senses to interpret the signals that the environment assert.