Land of Dreams
Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny, had this to say in an interview with CBC Radio’s Jian Ghomeshi: My sense is that in my father’s generation, you wanted success and material wealth. You wanted a comfortable life, but that the way to achieve that was through commitment and a strong work ethic and personal integrity. But…
Continue readingCape Breton Island
My wife and I just returned from a week of vacation in Nova Scotia. We particularly enjoyed our time on Cape Breton Island traversing the Ceilidh trail and Cabot Trail. Nova Scotia is a proud land with a noble history. Scottish Highlanders, with their distinctive Scottish Gaelic language, were cleared out of the Highlands of…
Continue readingDon’t Miss Your Life
The perfect Father’s Day song. Don’t Miss Your Life (Phil Vassar and Charlie Black – Listen to it at http://www.philvassar.com/) On a plane to the west coast Laptop on my tray Papers spread across my seat A big deadline to make An older man next to me said, “Sorry to intrude Thirty years ago, my busy…
Continue readingLearning From Artists
My friend, Andrew, is blogging once again and invited some interaction with his thoughts about Christian music. You can find his thought-provoking, original, blog here. His blog got me thinking about some of my opinions about what gets labeled “Christian” music. There is plenty of good worship music out there that can be used to praise…
Continue readingLeadership
In an interview, Steve Taylor was asked about the lyrics of his song “I Manipulate*.” He responded, I came across a quote by author Florence Bulle that echoes my sentiments exactly: ‘How thankful I am for the many spiritual teachers and Christian friends who have counseled, rebuked, encouraged, exhorted, and deepened my understanding of God…
Continue readingThe Face of Christ
My friend, Mike Charko, and I wrote a song about seeing Jesus on the train. It is a poetic, imaginative piece that suggests that we should seek to love others around us as Jesus would love them. Mike found an interesting blog about someone else who imagined an encounter with “Jesus” on a train. Check…
Continue readingGrand Optimist
Okay, I will confess, I am obsessed with a song. I have listened to it dozens of times in the last few days. Ever since I saw it performed on the Juno Awards I have been obsessed with Dallas Green’s song, “The Grand Optimist.” Dallas Green who performs as “City and Colour” won the songwriter…
Continue readingWayne Kirkpatrick
A few years ago I was headed out on a long road trip and grabbed several CDs from my collection as “music for the road.” Yes, it was CDs at the time. I had not yet made the leap to an iPod that allows one to take almost all of their musical collection along for…
Continue readingThe Hometown Band
I arrived home from a week of Christmas and New Year holidays in Alberta and was pleased to find a package with two CDs in my mail box. The albums are Flying and The Hometown Band by “The Hometown Band.” They have recently been digitized from the original masters kept in the vaults of Universal…
Continue readingGood Work
When I grew up in Western Canada there was a weekly CBC television show called “Marketplace.” The theme song was sung by Stompin’ Tom Connors and the lyrics I most remember said, The Consumer, they call us, We’re the people that buy While everyone else is out to sell Some kind of merchandise Another sale…
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