Easter Once Saved The World
Easter … you know what it’s all about right? Chocolate and bunny rabbits …
Easter … you know what it’s all about right? Chocolate and bunny rabbits …
You’ve thought it before “… I’m too old for this”, or maybe you’ve pondered “I’m too young …”.
But Connor Franta, Social Media Celebrity, will tell you different. Our age is a mindset and shouldn’t control us or our decisions according to Connor. He goes so far as saying we should do whatever we want regardless of our age.
Connor explains his position in this 4 min 37 sec video.
Here’s my take on Connor\’s video. He had me in the first frame … mmmm … Chemex makes great coffee! After that he couldn’t do any wrong – well maybe …
Being too old [or too young] has always collided in my life. It’s mocked me and moved me, called me onwards and chided me. Connor argues your age shouldn’t decide what are you going to do, or not do. I agree – in some ways.
There are some things that just aren’t OK no matter what your age. I’m not talking about doing drugs when you’re a minor … I’m talking about doing drugs when you’re an adult too!
I was also rolling my eyes listening to Connor say “if you want to do it, just do it no matter what your age …”. No matter how much we like the ‘Theology Of Self Satisfaction’ it breaks lives. Moving to Las Vegas at 99 appeals to our “me-ness” [it’s not a word but you get it] but ignores reality. Time with our families and friends is short. At 99 you may be a mother. You may be a grandfather. Packing your suitcase and jaunting to Vegas is a self-obsessed act. It\’s not age that should stop you moving to Vegas. Doing whatever we want, whenever we want, is a perpetuating lie. The people around you DO matter! They need to be a part of the decisions and choices we make in life.
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”kicking rock … grand confident vocals … layered guitars
… similar timbre to Switchfoot\”
Kelly O’Neil (Foreigner, Kevin Max, Jaci Velasquez, CCM & CrossWalk magazines)
“… drawing comparisons to artists like Jon Foreman, Bono and Martin Smith\”
Scoop Independent News
FOLLOW US
But there is much I also agree with Connor on. Age IS nothing but a number. I don’t think he means 70 year olds should run 100m sprints or wear stilettos. We know God thinks age is just a number too. The Bible records God using people of all ages to do amazing things all the time. Not just the young. Not just the old. All people.
I guess the key questions is this: have you listened to the lie that age disqaulifies you? Fear is a Liar. God is love. He believes in you. Get out there and do what God has made you to do REGARDLESS of barriers you face – barriers like age.
C’mon … let’s trust in God and not in our age!
Fight your fears and fuel your dreams with my alt-rock anthem that featured on The Voice EMC!
Download your free song now!
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”kicking rock … grand confident vocals … layered guitars
… similar timbre to Switchfoot\”
Kelly O’Neil (Foreigner, Kevin Max, Jaci Velasquez, CCM & CrossWalk magazines)
“… drawing comparisons to artists like Jon Foreman, Bono and Martin Smith\”
Scoop Independent News
FOLLOW US
Project Gutenberg has no answers when you\’re laying down guitar licks to a glowing \”record\” light. Sounds that capture the hope and struggle of songs on 6 strings can’t be searched for in Wikipedia. Playing guitar is an organic and edgey process that I needed to capture on my last record.
Selecting the right guitars for recording takes experience and talent. My Producer Andy Mak, from Sydney\’s The Grove Studios, brought that to the project. He also bought great coffee too!
Wikipedia or Project Gutenberg or Skillshare are all great, after all education is important, but playing guitar is importanter …
PART ONE: Below \”What\’s On the Tele?\”
A 1969 Fender Telecaster was one of the stars on my recording. The Tele is still in demand today, with little changed, since it inception over 60 years ago. People mock its simplistic design and shape calling it a “Plank“, with the bridge nicknamed “The Ashtray”. But simple things work and are reliable so the Telecaster is a workhorse guitar. It’s very very versatile as shown by its myriad users throughout the whole spectrum of musical taste. The guitar’s wide sound range is produced by the two pickups; a bright, sparkly, treble rich bridge pickup and a warm bluesy tone from the neck pickup – but not the Tele we used … it’s a Franken-Tele! Watch the video to see what I mean …
The Fender Telecaster unites Status Quo and Hot Chip. It’s the signature guitar of Keith Richards, Chrissie Hynde, Radiohead\’s Jonny Greenwood and the Clash\’s Joe Strummer. It\’s all over records by Elvis Presley, Booker T and the MGs, PJ Harvey, Blur, the Eagles, Manic Street Preachers, and hundreds more.
The \’69 Tele Andy Mak arranged for us to record with for my record was it’s hard-working backbone. It’s stringy, cutting tone breaks through everything capturing the tension between hope and struggle in my songs. Tele’s are notoriously warm too while being a little raspy around the edges – I needed a guitar like that and the Tele delivered.
But there was more than the Tele involved in \’Hope On My Horizon\’ – there were 2 other guitars that built the \’Switchfoot layered guitar\’ sound that music critics loved. Read on to fly with the Jet and meet my mate Martin below …
Fight rejection and fuel your dreams with Peter\’s alt-rock anthem that featured on The Voice EMC!
Download your free song now!
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”kicking rock … grand confident vocals … layered guitars
… similar timbre to Switchfoot\”
Kelly O’Neil (Foreigner, Kevin Max, Jaci Velasquez, CCM & CrossWalk magazines)
“… drawing comparisons to artists like Jon Foreman, Bono and Martin Smith\”
Scoop Independent News
FOLLOW US
Coming soon …
Fight rejection and fuel your dreams with Peter\’s alt-rock anthem that featured on The Voice EMC!
Download your free song now!
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”kicking rock … grand confident vocals … layered guitars
… similar timbre to Switchfoot\”
Kelly O’Neil (Foreigner, Kevin Max, Jaci Velasquez, CCM & CrossWalk magazines)
“… drawing comparisons to artists like Jon Foreman, Bono and Martin Smith\”
Scoop Independent News
FOLLOW US
Coming soon …
Fight rejection and fuel your dreams with Peter\’s alt-rock anthem that featured on The Voice EMC!
Download your free song now!
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”kicking rock … grand confident vocals … layered guitars
… similar timbre to Switchfoot\”
Kelly O’Neil (Foreigner, Kevin Max, Jaci Velasquez, CCM & CrossWalk magazines)
“… drawing comparisons to artists like Jon Foreman, Bono and Martin Smith\”
Scoop Independent News
FOLLOW US
I remember where I was and what I was doing when Shirley called me and told me her bad news … she was dying.
I felt so awful …
But the rest of life and the universe just continued on as normal, as if Shirley was fine.
We kept on hanging out with John and Shirley as she continued down hill. Her spirits were high despite her ever decreasing health and comfort.
During one visit Shirley pounced on me with a question, “Will you sing for me at my funeral?”
Inside I wanted to run for cover …
I wanted to say “No!”
I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t be able to keep my voice from breaking down while trying to hold a tune.
I needed her to know that singing a song celebrating her life would be more than I could bear.
But if you knew Shirley you’d know I had to say “Yes.”
So together we played her favourite tunes and laughed like naughty little kids when she cheekily decided on an Elvis song … but John helped us to see some sense that it was a funeral after all. Elvis lost his #1 spot.
Shirley settled on “Reason Enough” as it was a song dear to her heart that celebrates trusting God despite our circumstances or troubles. She had known enough trouble but these months wrestling with death were beyond hard but as we listened the lyrics fitted like a glove \”…so I won\’t wait for signs and wonders to teach me how to trust, cos you\’ve already proven Lord the depths of Your great love\”.
I have to admit it\’s a great song … but it’s a country song … what do you say to your dying friend when they ask you, a rock singer-songwriter, to sing a country song at their funeral … I nodded and I smiled.
The day of Shirley\’s funeral came.
Shirley\’s passion for enjoying life and trusting God was plainly evident at her funeral – the teal coloured casket she had chosen was a dead giveaway.
I sang my heart out for Shirley – for John, for her family, for her friends and for her memory. There was a bunch more vibrato in my rough rock voice than there ever is.
We remember you Shirley.
I’ll join you in heaven one day.
Till then I’ll remember your smile and your love for God.
I just wish you\’d settled on that Elvis song and didn\’t make me sing a country tune … we\’re going to have a long talk about that when I catch up to you on the other side :p
Love ya
Pete
Fight rejection and fuel your dreams with my alt-rock anthem that featured on The Voice EMC!
Download your free song now!
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”kicking rock … grand confident vocals … layered guitars
… similar timbre to Switchfoot\”
Kelly O’Neil (Foreigner, Kevin Max, Jaci Velasquez, CCM & CrossWalk magazines)
“… drawing comparisons to artists like Jon Foreman, Bono and Martin Smith\”
Scoop Independent News
FOLLOW US
What was I thinking!
When I sat down with my Martin D-28 guitar and scraps of ideas to write \”Hope On My Horizon\” from my Auckland based studio I didn\’t think about how a song can help predict the future. I honestly never really thought about the journey this song might possibly take – a journey from my paradise at the bottom of the world here in New Zealand, over the uncertain and unsure Tasman Sea to Australia, and then, braving the foaming cauldron and colliding Antartic cold of the Indian Ocean to sail to the Ship of Hope in Africa.
Sure, I was wanting big things to happen when I sat down and started strumming some chords … but my ‘big’ was simply wanting Graeme and Sharon from Mercy Ships NZ to like the song once it was written! Who says musicians aren’t insecure :p They had asked me to write a song but I’d neglected to tell them that this was in fact the first time I was writing by request. I had never done this before and cautiously fretted over whether they would even like the song.
The situations I have gotten my self into in life have sometimes been of my own making. Some of those times I’ve tried to blame God – He is big enough and tough enough to be used as a scapegoat and there seems to be plenty of people in the world, just like me, who are happy to fling blame at His feet without hesitation. Except this wasn’t one of ‘those situations’ – I was under pressure with my confidence and music on the line because I was responding to God telling me to take this opportunity to help Mercy Ships NZ – He’d simply said “go … write a song”.
The Bible is riddled with encounters between God and ordinary folk where He asks them to take a step and the outcome of risking that God knows what He is doing results in something incredible. But sometimes when I take steps to follow God\’s leading nothing \”life-changing\” or \”world-shaking\” seems to happen. A lot of the time it frankly appears to be quite insignificant while life seems to be mostly mundane. When I take a read through the Bible, except for the few amazing instances, people\’s days on earth seem to be like mine – ordinary and uneventful.
It’s only every now and then that a prayer I’ve prayed that seemed lost in my disappointed memories suddenly comes alive or that a small obedient step I take turns into a huge adventure that I would have never imagined … but only sometimes. Frankly, I never saw this one small step to “go … write a song” in my little studio at the bottom of the world, would grow into a global voyage of discovery.
Frankly my immediate problem was writing a song that would help raise money for Mercy Ships NZ. That\’s enough pressure to deal with when you sit down to create a tune from scratch. So with the title they\’d given me, \”Hope On My Horizon\”, a few scraps of lyrics and some snatches of guitar chords I started weaving the song together … with nervous mistakes as I went.
When I first played Graeme and Sharon the first cut of the song … they loved it! Whew! At least I think they liked it … it made Sharon cry :p
Grab the courage to take that step listening to Peter\’s alt-rock anthem that featured on The Voice EMC!
Download your free song now!
Soon after I heard God whispering to me to take other songs and bundle them together with \”Hope On My Horizon\” to make a CD that told more of the story. So I knuckled down and finished writing \”Dead Man Walking\”, \”Better Man Someday\”, \”Obsession\” and \”I Believe In You\”.
But finding a Producer in New Zealand to record the project with me was a frustrating year of yearning which kept resulting in dead ends. After I\’d had another \”going-nowhere cold-shoulder NZ Producer meeting\” my wife suggested \”How about recording in Australia?\”. I was feeling discouraged and not even slightly optimistic so the last thing I wanted to do was to pluck up my confidence and take on the larger Australian marketplace in the search for a Producer.
But one thing I know is Miriam has a God-given knack to catch a glimpse of things that are possible that I have no inkling of, so I\’ve learned to lean in when it makes sense to Miriam … but no sense to me. Needless to say within weeks I was booked with Andy Mak from Australia’s The Grove Studios in Sydney to make a record! This little song, penned in my little studio, now had an international team onboard and was embarking on a voyage across the Tasman Sea. We recorded the CD in Sydney, and then went on to master it in Melbourne, manufacture the CD\’s in the USA, to ship it all the way back to New Zealand!
I was asked a rather odd question by Sharon from Mercy Ships NZ during the project – she asked why I decided to write the second verse lyric “Scratched out a half-baked plan on a wrinkled serviette cos I won’t waste my life away”. I told her that I had loads of lyrical ideas describing how it would feel to face the journey to a hospital ship, but that I had cast all those ideas aside for these lyrics as they just felt “right” when there were so many others I could have used … she was shocked. She questioned me in an almost disbelieving tone “… you knew right, you knew about Don Stephens the Mercy Ships founder … right?” I stumbled a confused “…. no … what do you mean?!?!?!” Sharon then told me how Don had originally drawn out his idea for Mercy Ships on a serviette … just like the lyrics I had penned in my studio a world away. I was even more surprised and shocked than Sharon – I had no idea this had happened!
Just like the CD, the music video for the song “Hope On My Horizon” also packed it\’s bags and took flight after Australian video producer Madeleine Hetherton partnered with SBS Australia to shoot a documentary aboard Africa Mercy in Guinea and kindly offered this raw real-life footage to be combined with my studio recording footage … so the Hope On My Horizon music video was born. God only knows where things will lead when you simply say “Yes” to His whispers ….
If this wasn’t unexpected enough I recently received an email from Africa Mercy telling me they were going to play the ‘Hope On My Horizon’ music video to the entire crew onboard – this little tune had travelled all the way to sing for the real heroes of hope right there on the Surgery Ship .
Frankly, while I write this I am still dumbfounded as to how this has all happened – how responding to God\’s invitation to sit down with my guitar and notepad, turned into a song powering a ship in the poorest parts of our planet. I am amazed at how my simple “Yes” was used by God to do good and give hope. Never underestimate where simply saying “Yes …” to His stall small voice will lead you!
Leave a comment below about what’s happened to you when you’ve stepped out to do what God was saying to you and how your small “Yes…” turned into something you never expected.
Grab the courage to take that step listening to Peter\’s alt-rock anthem that featured on The Voice EMC!
Download your free song now!
\”5 out of 5 Stars\”
Heath Andrews, Music Critic
\”kicking rock … grand confident vocals … layered guitars
… similar timbre to Switchfoot\”
Kelly O’Neil (Foreigner, Kevin Max, Jaci Velasquez, CCM & CrossWalk magazines)
“… drawing comparisons to artists like Jon Foreman, Bono and Martin Smith\”
Scoop Independent News
FOLLOW US