Here is an updated Spotify link to my whole musical catalog, with the brand new instrumental album of 17 guitar tracks, Theological Library Music, at the top.
Watch for a series of daily YouTube video premieres, scheduled for 4AM (CDT), August 4—8 and August 12—15, 2025, featuring nine of these tracks.
Here is a sample:
New Christmas songs are not born every minute, nor every day, nor even every year; mostly we just hear the old ones rehashed again and again, some beautifully, some less so. The point is: once upon a time, "Joy to the World" (1719), "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" (1739), "Silent Night" (1816-18), and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" (1868) were brand new. The same is true, of course, of all the secular songs we have come to think of as seasonal staples, of which there is a seemingly endless stream of dumb covers.
This Christmas song, "Writing Case [Born to Free]," is new this year, A.D. 2024. It was written in less than a day, with the guitar setting coming on the evening of December 18, and the lyric in the early hours of the morning of December 19, 2024. A couple of stanzas from Rossetti's reading of Revelation got me started on the lyric, but only one or two of her (p.d.) turns of phrase made it through unaltered; no, by God's grace, it's my lyric.
The guitar part is quite simple and was recorded in one take on December 19 (though this single take was shortened, since I repeated it more times than necessary). The vocals were recorded later that day, but I revised a few words, so I did a couple of quick retakes on Friday morning, December 20, with video running, as I awaited for the arrival of a contractor. (One does what one can in the comings and goings of life to "make the most of the time.") After another appointment, the guitar videos were done in the late morning and afternoon (but the afternoon shots were unusable for being too dark and badly framed), video edits in the evening, with a few early morning edits on December 21. The track was released on the morning of December 21. Start to finish, from chords to lyrics and melody to recording to editing to mixing to video to track release, less than 72 hours. All this is simply to say that, when the Holy Spirit has something to say, we do well to just go along and enjoy the ride.
So, Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy birthday, Jesus. And welcome to the world, little song. May you, "Writing Case [Born to Free]," soon find yourself well-known and happily numbered in the beloved repertoire of sacred Christmas music.
NOTE (likely to be repeated): Although this track is available on most major streaming services, I actually use very few social media platforms; so, when it says, "Please share with those you love," I would be grateful if you would funnel this musical "Jesus prayer" to your loved ones by way of (copy and paste links to) any social platforms that you happen to use. Thank you for doing so. Thank you, as well, for going the extra mile to support indie authors and musicians by, not just liking, but sharing, purchasing downloads, spreading the word, etc. God bless you. God bless us, everyone.
This psalm is designated a "Shiggaion" in its superscription, whatever that is. Strong's Concordance suggests it is "perhaps a wild passionate song with rapid changes of rhythm." Admittedly, this new setting—("Chadash" simply means "new")—has no dramatic rhythmic changes, but the intervals are a bit wild, and the sassy Dsus4/D trill (I'm talking chord shapes here, not actual notes) lends it a feel that seems worthy of the designation: shiggy. [But, please, let's not confuse it with the "shig" that is going on in west coast cities right now. Lord, have mercy.]
Year D, by the way, recommends Psalm 7 for the Great Vigil of Holy Saturday and for 11th Ordinary.
UPDATE: Streamers now added. Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Pandora, Deezer. Watch for YT, Tidal, and others soon.
Just released, this epic 10-minute track for an epic psalm. If there was ever a psalm for a blue Christmas, this one is it.
And in case you are wondering what all these psalm recordings have to do with Year D, well, it is these very individual lament psalms (those excluded from the lectionary) that started me on this Year D project in January 1999, during a course on the Psalms with Walter Brueggemann, going on a quarter century now.
Lower prices on Christian resources, of course!
No time to list them all. But check out my Amazon author page and you will see.
Note the several Advent and Christmas selections, from the sublime ...
... to the childlike:
Lots more to explore and enrich your faith in the coming year.The streamers are opening up as I write. Looks like Pandora and Amazon are up first. Meanwhile, you can now audition the full tracks for free on HearNow. CDs are not yet in the offing, though I will likely do a short run of 500 or so at some point.
A bit of background: Thinking I was done with this pent-up musical outburst of slapdash records that has coincided with the most recent plague year, i.e., when Enter the Arbiter was completed near the start of Lent 2021, I soon afterwards heard our church musicians offer a rendering of "The King of Love My Shepherd Is" (Psalm 23 set to the tune St. Columba) sometime in mid-March. I thought: Gosh, that is such a lovely, classic tune, I really should work out how to play it, which I soon did and sent a little instrumental video (using only the camera's thoroughly useless built-in condenser mic; what was I thinking?) to a few folks for an Easter morning greeting (all this just to identify the timeframe). St. Columba, though, required me to put down my pick and use all my digits. With that, this record started to take shape, with all of the tunes and settings done entirely pick-less and with no need for long nails. (Good thing, too.) My nephew (by marriage) tells me "the kids today"—I think he likes to say "the kids today" because it makes him sound older—would call it "slappy." Even more than St. Columba, Psalm 39, with a thoroughly groovy/wurly e-piano solo in the closing section, is especially "slappy," more salsa/flamenco than "Just Passing Through" or "Just VII. So (Take Up the Slack)" (both tracks from the instrumental Just, which was released at the end of December). I think of the pick-less approach on this album as an organic combination of light brushing and flicking, occasional snatching, some pluckish tickling as needed, and yes, frequent rhythmic muting or slapping, but without the elegance of the popular "fingerstyle" that is quite beyond me. If Just was a foray into a more pizzicato style of flat-picking, this will be the slappy album.
The texts are all psalms identified in Year D as underrepresented or untouched by the Revised Common Lectionary. I call them "Revenant Psalms" because, though they have been around for the better part of 3000 years, they are neglected when it comes to the regular reading and preaching rotation of the church, and are thus due for a "comeback." Since many are lament psalms, which function therapeutically to move the praying suppliant from complaint to catharsis to praise, and with so many people, and indeed entire nations and cultures, so in need of healing and therapy (I mean it kindly, but I do mean it), one could well argue their comeback is long overdue.
Several of the texts are metrical paraphrases that I have enlisted, and in some cases adapted, from The Psalter Hymnal (1929), the content of which so far has not made its way onto Hymnary.com.
Four tunes are ancient/traditional, namely, Health from the Cup, St. Columba, Brother James' Air, and Salley Gardens, some of which I have modified, e.g., for vocal range (apologies to Brother James), etc. Eight others, however, are my own, so I took the liberty of giving these guitar-based settings their own names: Neo Sheminith (a nod to the superscription to Psalm 6), Happy is the Nation, The Measure of My Days (both focal verses from Psalms 33 and 39, respectively), Leave a Blessing (it just seemed to fit the spirit of the opening of Psalm 41), Hachilah (again a reference, perhaps a bit obscure, to the superscription), Variation on St. Columba (just what it says), In the Cave (yet another epigrammatic reference to the literary context behind the psalm), and finally, Erhameka [Heb: "I love you"], the simple, hooky progression that drives the epic-length folk-rap of Psalm 18.
Particularly satisfying and quick to take shape (composed just before dinner, recorded just after) was the Variation on St. Columba, which is rhythmically derivative from and lands on the same resolution as the original, but the chord inversions turn the pastoral tune into a lullaby of sorts—perhaps for a traumatized child suffering from nightmares—which totally reframes this difficult imprecatory psalm. It's as if to say, "Shhh. Be not afraid. The baddies won't get you. God will see to that."
Everything was recorded at home, except for two tracks (Psalms 6 and 18) and a few retakes (on Psalms 39 and 129), that were done in the North Woods of WI, sandwiched between a normally sleepy, but suddenly and surprisingly busy grass airstrip and a lake with not a few skiers and jet skiers working out the kinks. Charlemagne the Cavalier — the handsome cover model on last September's Persevere — was present for most tracks in both locales and snored contently through several of them, which was fine.
I think my favorite track is probably Psalm 41, for which I decided — at the risk of repeating myself, again, and yet again — to compose something that simply made use of, and rearranged, a lot of my favorite chords. I probably should have repeated the last phrase (instrumentally) at the end, since it is so nice and fun to play.
Another favorite is Psalm 142. The tune, In the Cave, starts with the same fingering configuration used in the sketchy instrumental, "New Thing," on Persevere.
Particularly timely is Timothy R. Matthews' paraphrase of Psalm 82, which I set to a very up-tempo version of Salley Gardens, modifying a couple of lines, especially in v. 2: "feckless titans," "suppress," and "sinister devils" are my word choices, which seem both to honor the spirit of the psalm and speak to the corruption of those today with too much influence and none of it good.
The cover design is mine, or at least the illuminated guitar and dove are my digital creation, superimposed on a scan of the 500-year-old wrapper on Jodocus Windsheim's Confessions of a Repentant Christian (1520), which serves as the background.
As for the flagrant overuse of reverb throughout, I know, I know, it is an amateurish giveaway. But if there was ever an album that cried out for such a lonely, empty, large-hall sound, would it not be a volume of mostly lament psalms that fell victim to cancel culture decades before it was ever a "thing" and now arise anew to voice the deepest, long-repressed memories of God? Repressed or no, these psalms are still "Word of God" and the Word of God has a way of making a comeback. Just ask Jesus, the Revenant Lord, who has yet another comeback planned, at the close of the age.
Now available through your choice of streamers:
