Listen friends! I know bad days happen but here’s some encouragement… Your day has to be going better than this guys.

I don’t know if it’s just me—I find that there are some pretty simple things in life that are just ridiculously great.

Driving at night with an open sunroof is amazing to me. Cool air blowing through the car with the night sky shining in is what it’s about! My beat up, last decade Camry is nothing special. Its front speakers crackle because they are blown so I usually just listen to the back speakers really loud. Both bumpers are cracked like the windshield. There is over 200,000 miles on the car so the engine leaks oil faster than I can put it in. But it has that sunroof, so life is good.

Every time I catch a second of the news lately, there seems to be a little bit of gloom that wants to settle in and stay a while. It’s really cool that there are simple things that can bring a smile to the heart. God is bigger than life’s craziness. He comforts the soul in so many easy to miss ways; we have to look more carefully some times. He is our peace and his spectacular night sky, shining through the window of a mess, blows my mind on a regular basis. We are in pretty stinkin awesome hands. What is it that makes you smile?

Wow what a long day! Sundays are long and caffeine filled. I hope you guys will let me wine for a little bit.

I took a position in Placerville at a Bayside Church plant about three months ago. Coming home to my bed has never been as wonderful of an experience as it is now; I have never needed sleep on Sunday nights like I do now.

So I’m a big baby (I know that’s what your thinking) but hear me out. In addition to starting Bayside, a man by the name of Mark South had, at the same time, asked me to team up with him at a Church plant that he was starting called Origin, in Rocklin, CA, which I had agreed to prior to the offer that I took at Bayside.

Why are you tired on these Sunday evenings and how do you lead worship for two Churches? Glad you asked! It is quite simple: Bayside meets in the morning and Origin meets in the evening.

My Sunday routine! I get up at 6:00—ok 6:20 after hitting snooze 4 times—and head to Bayside after the morning craziness of getting 4 people ready in one bathroom, AWESOME! Mid day is filled with, finding, learning, and sending songs for Origin that night (yeah, that can be done mid week but I am a huge procrastinator). At 4:30, I wake my family up from their naps, (jealous that I didn’t get one because I procrastinated) and we head to Rocklin—we are always late. The service starts at 6ish and we are never done before 8:30 because we have way too much fun.

But the night isn’t done there. It takes us at least an hour to leave Origin, and then we usually hang out with our cool Puerto Rican friends, Adam and Coppelia, until 11:00. But then I come home and blog about it. Genius! Yeah, Sunday’s are long and I am making it longer. I am so tired that I’m doing that thing where you just re-read, over and over, a line that you have written because you’re too tired to function. Good Night Friends!

I got the privilege to play a show with my brother tonight. It was good times for sure. He is one of my favorite people in the world. If you haven’t heard his stuff, check him out at myspace.com/Josiahjamesmusic (he will definitely be getting some web-estate of his own soon enough), super good tunes.

Not only does he write good tunes, He writes a ton of them. Every time I see him, he has a new song that he’s working on. I love that! I am so inspired by the belief that he has in his music–if you are on the receiving end of his frequent bulletin posting, then you know what I’m talking about.

He is in the studio right now and getting ready to release an EP. If you check out his page, you can hear the first song that he finished. It’s good stuff. It was cool hanging out with him and Colby (his producer) in the studio the other day. They are definitely doing great work.

I hope the picture is clear enough to get the details—There is a horse at the pumps! This is the town that I travel an hour to get to every Sunday and Thursday, to lead worship at a Bayside church.

I have been trying to figure out the best way to explain Placerville, California to everyone for a while now and I was lucky enough to come across this wonder before coming home from practice yesterday.

Placerville is a unique town. It is not that there are always horses posted up in the paths of all Placerville commerce, it is just that its social mindset exists somewhere in the space between Chuck Norris and 2008; and so, rather than common, it’s simply not by any means unlikely.

I love Bayside Placerville. I am fortunate to have one of the most loving and worshipful congregations that I have ever had the privilege of leading. The three months that I have spent there have been fun, interesting at times (like horses at gas stations), but fun.

I love how little I understand about technology. It actually provides a great deal of relational opportunity in my life: Instead of spending a minute with a friend who wants to show me how to work iChat, I get to spend ten. I am pretty bad.

But I don’t think it’s all my fault. I have definitely come to notice that electronics hate me. I am sure my iPhone will work fine for anyone. In my hands, however, it is a mystery of disfunction.

My wife is amazing. Electronics love her. She can figure out anything if she has an internet connections and 2 seconds. When I left this morning she had a killer photography business and no web site. When I came home she had chosen a name, bought a web domain, and built her own web site.

Let me make sure I explain this right. She doesn’t build websites! She wanted one, so she got online and figured out how to do it; and she built it for free. And it’s pretty sic. That’s my wife Celestial. Check out chatterboxphotography.com it’s pretty stinkin great.

OK! Today is a cool day! It’s Wednesday and that is obviously really great. I am not exactly sure why, it just seemed like it would be a fun way to start out this blog. But what IS really great is the fact that I am going to be releasing my best and greatest—and first—EP and I am really almost giddy about it; infact, I am going to change my myspace mood to giddy when I am done with this.

We are planning the release for January 1, 2009 (that way everyone will have already spent all their money on Christmas and won’t be able to buy the EP). Hmmm…I don’t know, it just seems like a brand new EP from a brand new artist will be a great way to kick off a brand new year. We will see what happens.

Either way, I will be very excited to finally have a fully produced piece of art that a few of my songs will get to show up in. I am undecided on the title, torn between Blinding Light or a simple self-titled which seems to be a common first release. Anywho, stay posted as the process unfolds. I will be in the studio soon.

School life as a family guy, worship leader, singer/songwriter, self-booking agent, self-promoter and self-manager is complicated. Not that there aren’t a million other guys out there with heavier weights than this, I am just saying that it’s complicated.

For instance, right now, I should be writing a twelve page paper that I will turn in tomorrow night for 60% of my grade. Now, that’s not at all interesting and provides very little insight into the world of rockin roll. Besides I have to read a couple hundred pages before I right the paper and that has the same un-appeal as the former.

You guys are so much more interesting to write to then my professors! For you guys. Fragments. Are ok. I don’t have to get out my grammar book and make sure that I am conserving technical points in my final grade so that I can make up for the lack of content. If I could I would just write for you guys all day. But less I fail, I had better get to the school stuff. Cheers!

Christian conferences are nifty things. A bunch of people who care about the same stuff get together. That’s kind of cool in and of it self. The other neato aspect of the conference is that people are paid to share the secret about how they became really great and how others can as well. There is huge energy and excitement as conference goers go from one class to another to find these secrets.

This weekend, Bayside Placerville, (a church that I lead worship at) gave me a couple of tickets and sent me to just such an event. It was the Christian Musicians Summit at Bayside of Granite Bay (Lincoln Brewster’s Home Church).

The funniest thing that I experienced while I was there was a session that I happened into by accident. I stepped into a room of 500 people, a band that was rocking. An 80’s guy stopped the bands play and moved the musicians to different parts of the stage. Turns out the session was called how to better communicate with your audience and that 85% of communication is what people see rather than hear. The session focused on the visual component of performance, the value of movement on stage, and tips like, move side to side rather than forward and back—it gathers attention better.

It got really great when Mr. 80’s spotted the pretty girl on stage and realized that she would look much better at the head of the stage. He physically guided her to the front of the stage after commenting on her beauty at which point her husband (who was not the 80’s guy) quickly identified the ring on her finger (we all laughed).

It got better still when he had the band sing through the bridge of the song again, this time instructing Miss Pretty (Mrs.) to face the worship leader while she sang her echo line and look into his eyes—evidently, this builds tension. This didn’t do it for him so he had her take a few steps toward the worship leader after she sang her echo. More tension. At the end of the bridge the worship leader and the girl were face to face.

I couldn’t control my laughter through the whole event because it was like I was watching a spoof on church production but it was actually the real deal. I was at the concert that night, the girl that was on stage sat behind me. I got a chance to talk to her about it and we had a great laugh over the whole thing. And just for the record, not all the sessions were silly and inappropriate at this conference…only some.

Today is what I consider day one of my entry into the world of blogging. I am not counting the actual day one because that was merely hello. Granted it was the real day one but whatever. On this day one, I am interested in learning what blogging is all about. I have never really read blogs so I decided to do a little inquiry as to what the scene is all about.

Since I only know one real blogger, I decided to do a little Google search of Brody Harper. To my amusement, several pages of results came up all of which referred to the Brody that I know. A lot of the results were from his vast activity on the WWW, but much of it was other people referencing his work. He is referred to as the blog guru, as changing the Christian music industry, and one referred to him, very affectionately as, “the man”.

So now I am going to start bloging as well. I read his stuff and some other guys that he referred me to and I think that I understand how it works: Talk about nothing, something, or nothing that you are clever enough to make sound like something. But most of all, just say it how you see it. Most who do it well aren’t trying to sound awesome. Trying to sound awesome when you’re not, well, it’s ridiculously un-awesome.

So here we go.  Thanks for coming along with me.

-Elijah