I once had to write a poetry book when I was in jr. high/high school.  The name of my poetry collection was called “Traveling.”  I recall writing a poem called, “I’m So Tired.”  As I sit here writing this blog for you all, I feel so very tired.  I stayed up late last night, got up early today and haven’t eaten a meal on a regular schedule since I can’t remember when.  All that, and my arms feel like they are gonna fall off into a hole somewhere because I carried a 5 lb. bag of ice on each arm all the way across a hotel and convention center this morning.  Couple that together with low blood sugar and chaos and there you have me.

Ok..back to the poem.  From what I can remember, the lines went like this.  “I’m so tired that a cow looks like a mule.  I’m so tired that I’m glad I’m not in school.”  That’s all I can remember.  Basically, I really wanna fall asleep and take a nap right now, but I’m trying to get great content and interviews for you all.  I’m trying to adequately convey the insanity of the GMA experience.

Ok, well, I’m uploading videos to YouTube right now and I’ve added some stuff to our Photobucket.  You should go check out our stash o’ stuff.

I’ll blog some more later.

*falls asleep*

Hi Blog-readers!

I’m excited to be Blogging from GMA Week, for CCM Magazine! Here’s the run down on Day 1 of Gospel Music Week…

Firstly, I thought I’d show you a sneak peek of me getting my hair done… I figured some crazy hair dye would be a fun way to prepare for the week, so I went to the salon and got my two-tone blond and black hair color re-done! Years ago I used to have a desk job in an office, so now that I’m a full time worship leader/songwriter I like embracing the opportunity to have crazy hair for once in my life!

Today, Sunday, I kicked off the morning with a 6am alarm clock call. I drove from my home in Franklin to the Nashville Rennaissance Hotel for the 8am Morning Worship..early…owch! Beth Moore spoke and Travis Cottrell led worship. Both rocked! Travis hit some seriously big powerful notes for an 8am set, which was impressive! At the worship event I ran into Bill Martin from the JOYFM radio station in FL. He is a reader of my Blog (vickybeeching.com) and it was fun to chat about Blogging with him! Here’s a snapshot of us.

After that I headed to the Nashville classic food place “The Pancake Pantry” with friends. After some Sweet Potato Pancakes, I headed back to GMA. Had coffee with Julie Reid of Worship Leader Magazine, a great chat with Bill and Kathy who run Alive Festival, then some Earl Grey tea with one of my precious mentors Melody Green. Following that I headed to the evening Worship Event where Michael W, Israel and Mandisa led us in awesome praise! Rebecca St James shared some excellent words about Compassion International and an offering was taken - I forget the exact figures but a really encouraging amount of money was raised for Compassion tonight! Great to know that children’s lives were changed tonight by those donations!

So its been a brilliant kick off for GMA 2008 as the day was so filled with worship and teaching. Feels like Jesus really is the center of it all. Plus I got to eat pancakes, which makes any day a great day!! More to come tomorrow (blogging that is, not pancakes….thats my carb quota for the week!)

Love,
Vicky
(www.vickybeeching.com)

DAY1 GMA 2008–Esterlyn 

Howdy! My name is Luke Caldwell I am the singer for Esterlyn and it is a pleasure to meet your aquaintance. We want to thank ccmmagazine.com for asking us to blog each day during our first GMA. Hey that rhymed! Since this is our first GMA you could say we are pretty green. So far our favorite reference for GMA has been “give me attention week.” I think that is the main goal of GMA but I am hoping to be proven wrong.  

I got to bed at roughly 6:13am this morning after spending way to much time on ichat and Facebook. My soothing alarm hit me up at 9:37am. Yes that was roughly 3 hours and 24 minutes of sleep. I have issues.  So anyways it was time to make our way down the renaissance hotel. This is pretty much where everybody meets and greets and what not. We walked in through the glass doors and the madness “officially” began. Now we are a new band that has only had our album out for about a month and a half so most of our time here at GMA is going to be taking time to get acquainted with a variety of people. This is how it started for us.  

Our first interview was with American Bible Society. We walked into a suite where there was a green screen three cameras and some Dunkin Donuts. We talked about how the Bible has made an impact in our lives and also spent some time challenging believers to really allow God to speak into their individual’s lives through His Word. They gave us some blue and orange M&Ms when the interview was done. –GO BOISE STATE! We are from Boise, Idaho.  Anyways it was awesome. Our next interview was with TVU. This is a 24 hr music video channel that has recently added our debut video “We All Need” It was super laid back and the crew was sweet as pancakes smothered with syrup. We talked about the kutless tour and coffee. Huh? 

We had about 10 minutes to grab some Starbucks and then drive out to Murfreesboro where we had a show tonight with Kutless and Chris Taylor. It was radical. Well it is now 1:02am and my wake up call is approaching rapidly for day 2. A couple of the other guys our catching up on LOST right now. This is our life.

Tomorrow we will be filming video for this blog..  

Have a happy day  

Luke

Esterlyn 

This is my weblog, my documentation, my inside look at GMA Week in Nashville TN.

First we need a little background.

OK, my name is David Crowder and I’m in a band that holds the GMA title for Best Band Name Ever. Were proud of this, the GMA title for Best Band Name Ever. Actually, theres no such GMA title for best band name, but there should be. Wed totally win. Now, you should know that GMA stands for Gospel Music Association. That means that, for GMA week, everyone who is a part of the Gospel Music Association, and also some people from North Carolina who were walking by and saw everyone walking around with super cool lanyards and thought it would be fun to wear a lanyard, well, they are all here in Nashville. And I’m going to talk to these people, all of them. Well, some of them, probably. Regardless, for better or worse, you’ll get a peek at the week from my vantage point.

So, let’s do this.

I arrived last night by plane from Baltimore MD. Baltimore is a fine city. If you haven’t been, you should go. Very nice waterfront. You can rent these large aquatic dragons and peddle around the bay. I did this and was honked at by a water taxi. I mean how amazing is that? Being honked at by a water taxi while pedaling through the bay in a large purple dragon. in a word, awesome.

We arrived in Nashville early evening and after mistaking a Casting Crowns concert for a Predators (Nashville professional hockey team) game, we (Toni, my wife and I) were in our Hilton hotel room bed, eating grilled cheese, french fries, and mashed potatoes, by 7pm. Room service is awesome. There seems to be two hotels that most of the artists wind up staying in, one is the Hilton, and the other is the Renaissance. This will be our 4^th or 5^th GMA and heres what we have learned about the two options for lodging: If you want the best-club-sandwich-ever brought to your room and are willing to wait an hour for it, then you will want to stay at the Hilton. If you want your pants hemmed, well, youll need to stay at the Renaissance. Thats pretty much all you need to know about the lodging situation. Oh, also, the Hilton has less television channels.

This morning, lobby call (well talk about the lobby later) was 8:15am. I was scheduled for a sound check at 8:20. Mike McCloskey, who is with our label, sixstepsrecords, was waiting to take me over for it. I was late. Not good to start things out this way. My watch displayed 8:19 by the time I had purchased one 9-volt battery and 2 double A batteries from the hotel gift shop. I paid like 100 dollars I think. I arrived at sound check and realized I had neglected to bring an instrument cable to plug in my guitar. The guy with the audio company ridiculed me. He said, well, lucky I showed up with a sound system. In other words, I, being the guy that is supposed to play his guitar, should have showed up with everything needed to play his guitar, such as a guitar, a cable, a pick, etc.. Cool. Then I realize I didn’t have a guitar strap. This would also be something the guy thats supposed to be playing the guitar should show up with. So, I stole one out of Chris Tomlin’s guitar case that was in the back of McCloskey’s car. No one will know. I’ll put his back and buy one later. I doubt the hotel gift shop has one, but I’m totally checking.

Well, the sound check took all of 2 minutes once the funny audio guy who makes really smart passive aggressive jokes loaned me a cable. Leeland (a band from Baytown TX and also guy named Leeland) was/were setting up, getting ready for their sound check. They had all of their cables and did not get ridiculed by the funny audio guy. When I finished singing and playing a little, making sure I could hear everything and that the front of house audio folks had what they needed, Leeland’s drummer, who happens to be from Texarkana, and whose parents office I used to mow for 20 dollars a week when I was but a young tike (I am from Texarkana as well), said, in a really over-the-top ridiculously thick East-Texan accent, Hey, dyoorite that? Thats real pretty like. He was joking. He does this, the joking. I think this question must be an inside type joke for the band Leeland, as in, perhaps they’ve been asked this question before by someone with a really think East-Texan accent, because the rest of the band was laughing when he, Leeland’s drummer, said this. I told him, No, your Mom did. Shes got a real ear for melody. Mom jokes are always funny but rarely appropriate.

After playing Remedy for the Echo awards lunch I attended the artist/DJ reception. This is a very large room where all of the artists from each label stand around and chat with folks from different radio stations, and also people from North Carolina with super cool lanyards. I usually lose my voice during this little get together as you have to yell over the din of the room to communicate. But its great fun catching up with folks and good to see people you lay eyes on once or twice a year.

This same room is then converted into booths for the artists to sit at a table and read what are called liners. Each booth has a name over the table indicating what artist will be sitting there and then nice people from the radio stations line up with their portable recording devices and sheets of paper with verbiage of what theyd like you to read into the portable recording device, like, hey, I’m David Crowder from David Crowder Band and your listening to Bill and Kathy in the morning on WKZE, your choice for your favorite Christian music, or some such thing. It’s pretty fun, trying to read in a way that doesnt sound completely lame. It’s harder than it sounds and I think of it as a challenge. Its all a very socially mysterious exchange. Heres the most fantastic portable recording rig I saw today:

Also, something fairly notable occurred at a neighboring booth:

If you’ll notice, my mate Chris Tomlin’s (the guy who I, earlier in the day, stole the guitar strap from and who has written pretty much every song in the modern worship lexicon) name has a slight issue with spelling. Also, you may note the beams of light, as in, from heaven above, shining down on Mr. Tomin and Mandisa’s booth. This is significant, the light, I think. Also, that is an L handwritten on the sign with an arrow indicating where it is intended to be placed. I was told Chris wrote the L in himself but I can’t imagine how he’d be able to reach it. Mr. Tomin is only 4′3” tall, so I just dont see how it’s possible. I can say this because I’m 12′8” and were friends and he doesn’t like to stand by me in public because of this height disparity, and besides he has light from heaven shining down on his booth and stuff, so, in turn I get to make height jokes, which again, while funny, are rarely appropriate.

Well, Im off to the evening festivities. Stay tuned; well have more goodness tomorrow.

GMA 2008 is upon us!

Welcome to our coverage of GMA 2008!  We’re excited to bring you exclusive updates from the craziest, most fun week in Christian music.  Live from Nashville, TN, David  Crowder, Esterlyn, The Rubyz and Vicky Beeching are bringing you GMA Blogs on this website.

Check this blog daily for not only blogs, but videos and pictures from those artists.  Also, I’ll be updating you several times per day with my commentary on the action here and video and pictures of my own.

So, bookmark this page or add it to your favorites.  Do whatever you need to do to stay connected with GMA.  For even more coverage visit http://www.cmcentral.com, http://www.ccmmagazine.com and http://www.christianmusicplanet.com. 

All week long I’ll be updating you and telling you about my encounters with Christian artists, showcases, interviews, artist chats and of course the Dove Awards.

Stay tuned.  You don’t want to miss it!

~Lindsay

P.S. If YOU want to get in on the action, you can chat with 16 top Christian music artists on our CCMmagazine.com Forums.  Click on the following link to post questions for these artists.   And, if you can, stop by and chat with them live next week.

Click here to chat:
http://forums.ccmmagazine.com/forumid_97/p_1/tmode_1/smode_1/tt.htm

You may or may not recall me mentioning the small group I’m involved with; I’ve blogged about them before. My observations today are less spiritual than, well, random, I guess. Anyway, as small as we are, I’m noticing a disturbing trend.

There’s only about ten of us all together, five couples made up of seemingly run of the mill people, nothing extraordinary about us that I can see. But in the past month or so, two of the women have fallen down their stairs at home, one breaking her wrist and the other her shoulder. The second was just the other day, and I heard the news from a brother who was golfing with her husband when he got the call that an ambulance was taking his wife to the hospital. I appreciated him letting me know, as he assumed I’d be wanting to take the family some meals, lift them in prayer, bear a part of their burden in some practical way. And I would have. If I wasn’t laid up from a recent arm surgery at the time. Yup, as Nancy was tumbling down her front staircase I was having a large cyst dug out of my upper arm, complete with smoke rising from my shoulder as the doctor cauterized my veins. (I only mention that part because it looked so cool. I even thought it was cool until later that night when I dropped to the couch for the next 40 hours).

Well, no worries, I’d just call another sister to take up the slack. Sounded good until she answered the phone in a strange croak, not unlike a rabid frog. Yup, sick with the flu and recovering from her own colonscopy. See what I mean? A bit spooky, I’d say.

Yes, there’s still one woman left still standing to make dinner and represent. But the problem is I’d have to climb a flight of stairs to get to the phone. A girl really can’t be too careful these days, you know.

A lot of trends start in Hollywood, and that ain’t necessarily a good thing. I watched a TV report this morning, complete with a pictorial array of ‘stars,’ on how famous unmarried parents have helped to coin a new word into the popular lexicon: baby daddy. Apparently that’s how you introduce your baby’s father when you’re unwed. “Please meet Henry, my baby daddy.” Creepy on a number of levels.

But I’m also picking up on another slowly developing rise of events that may or may not be something to worry about. When I read this morning about the depression struggles of Fall Out boy frontman Pete Wentz, and his newly revealed suicide attempt, it brought to mind the more highly publicized troubles this past fall of popular actor Owen Wilson, and a tiny alarm went off in the pit of my stomach…or the back of my mind… same thing. I wondered… is this too a trend that could reach into popular culture?

You think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill? Who could have foreseen 25 years ago the number of teenaged girls who would willfully starve themselves to the point of death to emulate celebrities? Stranger things have happened, unfortunately. And the briefest of searches on celebrity suicide attempts quickly turns up a surprisingly long and diverse list, including Halle Berry, Donna Summer, Greg Louganis, Drew Carey, Mike Wallace, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Young, Adam Ant, Tai Babilonia, Drew Barrymore, Danny Bonaduce, and Johnny Cash, among many, many others. Some were more serious than others, but all were confessed by the celebrities themselves as sincere desires to end life at the time.

It brought to my mind a remark made to me yesterday in an interview with talented, upbeat indie performer Alyce Metallo. She mentioned to me that there needs to be more songs that tell the truth about the world’s need for a savior, songs with a clear-cut gospel message. I found it a provocative thought, and wasn’t completely clear just how much I agreed with her at that moment. This morning’s news, and the recent rumblings of my stomach/mind, make me wonder anew.

‘Tis a season of change, around CMCentral, Salem Publishing, and in the music industry at large. But say it with me, people: change is good. This is one that I think we will all enjoy anyway.

The present review scoring system was one I inherited upon my arrival as Editor of CMCentral a year ago. I never liked it, the readers never liked it, and I can only imagine that the artists found it confusing as well. But when questions were raised and sturdy arguments voiced against said system, the benefits of the 1-100 points were presented as a done deal. If it was good enough for grade schoolers, it was good enough for us.

Well, readers, let the church bells chime and the people flood the streets in joy, for the system, she is gone. In the wind. Out of gas. No more. The good people at Salem Publishing have allowed us to move into the 21st century with a new review score system, one that imparts information in a manner easily grasped. A review, at its heart, is simply an opinion, after all. I try to do a general run through of an album’s significant moments, but what I find significant may be quite different than what you find significant, and I recognize that not everyone is sitting on the edge of their seats with bated breath waiting for my opinion to drop from the heights. So a simple icon might present the general sense of a review in a quick, easily accessed format. A 5 star system will be our new scoring mechanism, one that most readers are already very familiar with. Let the grade schoolers deal with the percentages; we like our stars and half stars. Look for the shining to begin next Tuesday, the day that new reviews post on CMCentral.

It began with his visit to assist in the cleanup work after the deadly tornados that ravished Macon County, TN on February 5th. Brandon Heath returned from that experience with a continued burden to help, rather than a self-satisfied smugness that he had gone at all. I say that I guess because I could imagine myself doing it; feeling so good that I had contributed at all that I missed the opportunity to do more. Not Brandon. In less than ten days he managed to put together a songwriters-in-the-round show to raise funds for his beleaguered neighbors. Seventeen people had been killed by the storms, and 150 homes and businesses were destroyed, but Brandon and friends Bebo Norman, Jason Ingram, Nathan & Christy Nockels, and Michael W. Smith came together to provide support, to shine a light into the darkness of those devastated lives.

The free concert took up a love offering of $18,690 for the survivors, and another 85 people committed to join in the clean-up project. It did my heart good just reading about it, for several reasons. The obvious, of course, is that one man cared this much. I love it that Brandon Heath didn’t just write a check; he traveled to the hurting community and picked up a shovel to show his concerns. And he broke through the scheduling challenges to bring together other artists who cared enough to give their time as well. To put together a concert in less than ten days is impressive in itself. Together the arts community raised a significant amount of support for the hurting survivors.

It’s gratifying to see people beginning finally to take up the cause of Africa. But it’s heartwarming too to see the same cup of cool water offered to sufferers close to home. I pray that the broken-hearted of Macon County feel strengthened by the efforts of Brandon and Friends. I know I do.

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the perks I enjoy most with this CMCentral gig is the opportunity I have to speak with artists passionate about their musical mission and the God who calls them to it. I’m so often inspired by their zeal, by their dedication. Today was no exception.

I spoke today to Braille, a hip-hop artist who next month is putting out his first nationally released album. But to tell you the truth, we didn’t talk at all about the new album. Instead, he shared with me a bit about his story, about how he lives out this life and Who he lives it for. I wish you could have heard him, because it’s one of those stories too easy to gloss over while reading, to see a few facts and make all the wrong assumptions.

If I tell you he’s been pursuing music full-time since he was fourteen, you might find that interesting. He describes himself as the lonely boy who sat on the bus with ear-phones, listening to music no one else dug. When his family moved across country when he was in his mid-teens, he used the opportunity to take buses to nearby cities every weekend and catch the latest rappers. As soon as he graduated he moved to the nearest big city and spent a year chasing the scene, crashing on various couches to do so. You might be thinking ‘slacker’ at this point, but wait, there’s more. When he married his wife a few years later, they both lived out of their car for the first few years as they followed his musical dream. Yeah, they cleaned houses to make a buck here and there, but they were all about the music and their calling. Are you thinking ‘selfish’? I wish you could hear him. As he speaks of those days, his voice contains nothing but excitement and gratitude for the way the Lord opened doors and provided.

They bought a house and had a daughter, but guess what? They just sold it, and are preparing to tour the country for the next year, with their 15-month old daughter, and perform music from the new album. He assured me that this time around, they’re getting hotel rooms so their child is comfortable. But still, the same excitement and passion floods his voice as he speaks of the coming year. He talked about avoiding pride, about the occasional doubts, about his motivation…. and the Lord is in all of his thoughts and considerations.

I listen to him from my comfortable chair. I’ve got a fire going a few feet away, and I’m feeling pretty cozy. And I wonder… it would be easy to pass judgment, but would I make the same sacrifices as this guy? And where did he find such a supportive wife?! We hang up the phone and I sit and give thanks that the Lord is still raising up servants to take out His message, no matter what the cost. I’m glad for these examples of sacrificial life-styles, and grateful that I get to speak to people this passionate about their calling. And as I rise to throw a log on the fire, I quietly ask God to expand the boundaries of my heart, so that maybe I can be as willing as this young family.

Check out Braille here. You won’t find pictures of him and the family in the car, but you can find out a bit of his amazing story and his music.