PRAISING SURROUNDS US / YOUR LOVE IS
These two songs were both written just before I was ready to start recording this project. The rest had been kicking around for quite a long time. It wasn’t until after I had recorded all of the songs for this CD that I realized the common thread that runs through them.
Included were three castaways from the first project I did in 2016. That project later ended up being rerecorded and split between “Awake and Sing, You Who Dwell in Dust” later in 2017 and “…And Let the Hills Hear Your Voice” in 2018 – making these three castaways now the firstfruits!
God has a way of putting things together which we just can’t understand until much later. Proverbs 20:24, you know?
Recorded 2/12/2017
GREAT AND MARVELOUS
(Castaway #1)
Recorded 1/28/2017
SET US APART
(Castaway #2)
Recorded 1/28/2017
THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION
(Castaway #3) I wrote this because it seemed to me that there were not enough “Easter” songs that focus on Christ’s resurrection. There still aren’t.
Recorded 1/28/2017
POWER AND RICHES
This was originally written as a call-and-response song, but it overlaps just enough that it’s not possible to do by myself, so I did my best to present it without the response. You can do that part.
Recorded 2/18/2017
THE ISAIAH 55 SUITE
This was the real reason I started this project. I had memorized Isaiah chapter 55 back in the mid-2000’s, and I was inspired to write a suite of songs from it in the late-2000’s. I just had to get this recorded…! Once I dusted it off though, I realized that it needed a lot of reworking before it would be ready.
INTRODUCTION
This was written spontaneously the day I was recording the Suite. I knew I needed some sort of intro, and since the Coda dipped into Chapter 56, I figured it would be fitting to reach back into Chapter 54 for this. I was about half way through recording the songs, and needed a short break from the guitar. I decided on the verses pretty quickly, and just plunked around on the piano before realizing I had a completed work. Nine or ten takes later it was back to the guitar.
Recorded 2/25/2017
VERSE 1
If you listen carefully, you can hear me yank the capo off the guitar when the key changes about 2/3 of the way through.
Recorded 2/25/2017
VERSE 2
Recorded 2/25/2017
VERSES 3-4
The original version of this song was vastly different. When I started re-tooling these songs for this project, I couldn’t quite remember how it went, and so I recorded it on 2/25/17 with the others, but I wasn’t particularly sure if it was right or not. After listening to it a few times with the rest of the Suite, I realized that it just didn’t fit at all. So, once I finally gave in to the reality that the Suite wasn’t complete yet, I began re-writing it in my head, and within a day I had come up with a completely new song which is one of my favorite parts of the Suite now.
Recorded 3/18/2017
VERSE 5
This is the only place in the Suite where I added any words to the Biblical text. But I think “You are worthy, worthy, worthy!” is appropriate to insert into any passage of the Bible. It is a reference to when Paul bursts forth into spontaneous worship in his epistles (Romans 11:36, Ephesians 3:21, 1 Timothy 1:17, 2 Timothy 4:18, for example).
Recorded 2/25/2017
VERSES 6-7
Recorded 2/25/2017
VERSES 8-11
Recorded 2/25/2017
VERSES 12-13 & CODA
When I was rewriting the Suite, I realized that I had never really completed this song initially, so being the last song, it was also the last thing I got to. As the Saturday I had free to record the Suite was rapidly approaching, I played around with this several times, and made copious notes to desperately remember where a phrase went up and where a phrase went down (and roughly how far), and where to stop or pause, knowing I would be recording this live. This version ended up being somewhat improvised, as the day was winding down quickly, and yet is another one of my favorite parts of the Suite.
Recorded 2/25/2017
SHOWERS OF BLESSING
This song also appears on “Alive in the Chapel – Disc 2.”
Recorded 2/18/2017
THE LATTER RAIN / THE FORMER RAIN (Now parts of the complete Isaiah 55 Suite)
These were both recorded on our back porch, which faces Melrose Avenue. It was raining, and it was really cold, and I kept having to stop when a car or truck came by. I used a boom box to play snippets of the Verses 8-11 track. These tracks have since been removed from the suite and dissected as background noise for the complete suite version.
Recorded 3/25/2017
THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER
The closing verses of Ecclesiastes is a fascinating portion of Scripture! This song had been kicking around since the early-2000’s (the original version will be found on The First & The Last CD), but I had never been 100% satisfied with it. I had decided that I wanted to include it in this project, but I felt it needed to be completely re-written. So I started looking at the various translations of this passage, and WOW – they are all so varied… So I finally printed out several versions, including the Hebrew (thank you Blue Letter Bible), and basically came up with my own paraphrase of the passage. This was a really cool exercise, which I would recommend to anyone out there.
Recorded 3/2/2017