Yikes, it’s hard to do this. But tonight is a night for just plain, stripped down worship through music. And I am trying really, really hard to resist the urge to bring pedals. Usually, I at least bring on of my Timeline’s to loop some acoustic stuff. But tonight just feels like it needs to be less…….less than what I think it needs to be.

And not usually. I mean, I’m probably waaaay on the liberal side of layering music, effects, instruments, arrangements, parts, loops, etc. There’s few things I love more than hitting the fuzzed out-overdriven, two note Coldplay-drive in the bridge of a huge worship song. But it’s the ebb and flow……all that isn’t as powerful if you don’t strip it down to just melody and worship every once in a while.

A few months back, I accidentally bought a pedal from Dwayne Larring, who was the original guitarist for Sonic Flood, and the producer and guitarist of both Matt Redman’s and Tim Hughes’ first albums. I had no idea it was him….I just bought the pedal, and in the midst of our conversations, I realized who he was. It was pretty cool for a no-name guy like me, who still hits and sings wrong notes and overplays and kills the worship atmosphere all the time and puts up a blog thinking somebody might actually read it, to actually talk with a guy who knows how it’s done. But he was a really, really down to earth guy, and just had insane amounts of wisdom. He told me how much he adored worship music, but that whenever it got to the point where it was empty of everything but music, it was time to re-begin. (And he said he personally usually re-begins with Matt Redman’s ‘When My Heart Runs Dry’, which is a really cool song that I had totally forgotten about.)

So anyway…….I think it’s probably important to re-begin every once in a while. And sometimes (on very rare occasions, mind you! hehe), that means that gear stays at home…….maybe. One little delay pedal won’t hurt, right? ;) And for those of you who are dyed-in-the-wool gearheads, don’t worry…….this blog is staying the same. I’ve got 5 fuzz pedals (mmm….fuzz) on their way in the hands of the very gentle and oh so cautious handling of UPS and the postal service right now, so once again, gear will rock and we’ll have ourselves an old-fashioned shootout. But it’s important every once in a while to make sure the worship of Christ is at the focal point, where it should be.

HillsongSaviorKing.jpg picture by rypdal95
(Hillsong’s opening of their last tour, the solo acoustic version of Savior King. That’s kind of what we’ll do tonight. Because worship teams can’t do anything original on their own……Hillsong has to do it, and then we follow suit. I’m just kidding…….sorta. ;) )

It’s the stripped down version of ‘Splendid.’ Splend. <–Okay, that was really dumb. I should use the ‘delete’ key. But that would totally ruin the whole ‘stream of consciousness’ thing.
Karl.