Feels like we’ve been in the Toronto / Jersey area alot lately… I guess we have… I’m excited to get back… truth is, I’m excited to just get back on the road… as much as we pine for home when we’re gone there’s just something about being rested and reuniting with the guys, getting back on stage with a clear head and a rested body - that feels like me doing what I was created to do. I LOVE doing what I do by the way… I’m so fulfilled to have the creative outlet that I have. So blessed, so lucky, so grateful. It’s interesting to me too - in reading the comments - at how many of you that read the blog are also musicians (aspiring or otherwise) and are dealing with many of the same issues/challenges. I think it’s cool, I’m excited about the relationship that can come of our little internet relationship. I’m off to soundcheck - tim.
This past week was release week… the time in every signed musician’s life where their value as a recording artist is reduced to the exact number of CD’s/legal digital downloads they can sell in the first week of a new record’s release. Right down to the single digits, the scans are counted and the fate of the record (and in many cases - the artists career) is cast…. Okay, i’m being a little melo-dramatic - it can be a very exciting time - but it can also be a stressful, fearful, and insecure time as well… It’s always been difficult for me to separate MY worth from the success and momentum of the band… And this unhealthy pattern is only intensified when something like release week puts a big ole’ magnifying glass on the situation. As hard as we work to establish ourselves, to write music, and lead worship from a genuine place I’d be lying if I said it was always motivated from a place of humility and surrender. Most of the time I walk on stage insecure, fearful, and intimidated… The truth is that I’m constantly having to lay down my pride, and subsequently lay down my music career, the very thing I work so hard to control and see succeed. It’s just so interesting to me how far i HAVEN’T come… All it takes is a little industry ‘under-performance’ to make me second-guess the very thing I’ve been called to!… as if God CALLS me to sell records!? He doesn’t by the way… He calls me to service. Service that’s not dependent on how I feel or how I’M being validated. At the end of the day, I don’t believe God cares much about record sales, radio chart positions, or even how many people hear my music… He cares only about my heart. About my soul. And about my Spirit. My music isn’t important to the Kingdom, only my love is. And that’s the lesson i guess. let us not find our identity or worth or value or hope in anything but Christ. Because only in Christ can we truly find any of those things anyway. that’s all i got for now. tim.