Plans for the Summer

The US Capital building at night
Originally uploaded by mnesterpics

With it being Spring Break, it's time to be lining up the plans for the summer. Job plans, more specifically, because trying to find a summer job for a college kid much later than April Fool's is a joke.

Step One: Go back to school for six weeks.

Aubrey and I finish finals Friday May 8th. The 'rents (parents) will all drive down that day for us to get packed up and hauled back home to Bentonville for the summer.

After a few days off, I start back at my job for the NWA Naturals Baseball Team doing video production. I'll get a few home games in before our family vacation in the middle of the month.

My family (Mom, Dad, Caleb and I) are all going to Washington DC for a week. We have also invited our Aunt Vickie and Aubrey to tag along on the Magee Trip. Monday-Friday; May 18-22.

I will have a few church summer camps lined up to do Live Audio work for. Those are not concrete settled like my Naturals work, but are hopeful and likely freelance jobs that should be good work.

That's it for the remainder of the summer. Consistent nightly baseball game video work for the Naturals, and occasional freelance production work around the state.

If it's offered, Aubrey and I are going to take Spanish II at the NWACC too. That's three hours that we both need, and can knock out together, in a rushed summer term as opposed to a droning college semester.

There's the business schedule at least. Not forgetting, of course, that this IS summer, and I WILL be having fun too. It's summer, and I'm a college student. It's supposed to be fun, I think. :D

Refuge Worship

I'd never make it in the record industry, but here's a recording from OBU's Refuge ministry. It's nothing special, just a section of the third song.

Lead me to the Cross
Refuge Worship

Vocals: Rachel Chapmen

BGD Vocals/Rhythm Guitar: Klayton Seyler
Bass: Wes Hymer
Percussion: Matt Engleking
Lead Guitar: Sky Howard
Cello: Julie Tucker
Violin: Matt Morrison

I was not TSA's friend this morning

Mom dropped me of at our Northwest Arkansas XNA airport this morning at 5am. 6:10 flight. Plenty of time.

I step up to security,
DL and BP, with NP. LOL

Statement: I respect and appreciate TSA. They sit there all day, boring, and keep the knives and guns off the planes. I like that.

Set my rolling bag on the x-ray. Belt off, laptop out of backpack, iPhone rides with it's MacBook buddy through the scary X-Ray Machine. I'm looking like a 13-year-old world traveler right about now.

Smile at Mr. Doorway to Doom, and one foot in.... 'WHOA! Need to see your boarding pass, sir'.

I smile as my boarding pass waves goodbye from inside my backpack from inside the X-Ray. It's on the freedom side. 'Martha this kid needs a boarding pass that already went through'.

They pull my backpack out and back to the back of the line, we're starting over, while my rolling back slides down the freedom slide, looking good.

I get the boarding pass, and my backpack gets on round 2 to go meet it's rolling bag and laptop buddies on the freedom side.

One foot in 'SIR I'm going to need you to remove your shoes'. Oops, no problem. Let me just hop in the end of the line here. Rolling bag, iPhone, MacBook and Backpack are all looking pretty good on the freedom side. Shoes go in. I go thru. Smile.

Robert comes out from behind conveyer belt, "good, what took you so long? we've got to take everything out of your rolling bag.

That's fine. They didn't like my Canon Speedlight Flash too much. That's reasonable. I can handle one more quick screening.

Martha comes over. Sir, now that Robert's got your rolling bag taken care of, I'm going to need you to empty your backpack there. hmm? ok.

--- ----- ---
OK, at any given time, I have a knife in my back pocket, a knife in my backpack, and a knife strapped to my flashlight. But no worries, I know you can't fly with knives!
--- ----- ---

What's wrong with my backpack, Martha? "Sir you can't fly with a 4" knife in your backpack. Knife #2 managed to slip past my knife check at the house, but not past TSA. They're good at finding knives.

They set my knife aside, and run my backpack again. Sir, there is a second large metal object in your bag I'm going to need you to remove. Flashlight, we're good. Run it again. Sir, we're showing a large block of metal over in the side pocket here. Canon SD750, we're fine. Run it again.

My poor Jansport Backpack has been pumped with more radiation than a rod of Uranium right about now.

My PW'd Speedlight rolling bag pukes out of the machine, good to go there. One down.

They don't like my Sony V600 headphones either, Phillip. But, they decide to let me board, but they like my knife and think it should stay with them.

I love that knife.

Don't worry, there is a girl about 4 inches from the Knife Knabbers that would LOVE to sell me a knife-sized envelope for $5. I package it up and address it to Bentonville. TSA says they'll put it in the mail for me... Saturday? DAAAANG.

If they drop it in the mail this Saturday, and it's going to Bentonville, it will arrive Monday morning, merely hours after I arrive back in Arkadelphia, AR.

ELL Oh ELL

But, I still love TSA. They do good work, and they did a great job of keeping a knifing photographer from running loose.

Travis Cottrell

I am pumped. PUMPED. It's 11pm. In about 12 hours, I will be in Nashville, TN. Unexpected twist: that is not why I am pumped.

In less than 12 hours, I will be in Franklin, TN. Travis Cottrell lives in Franklin, TN. I am PUMPED about getting to see him.

Travis and I met about... (I need backup) seven years ago. FBC Bentonville hosted a women's conference one weekend, and flew in a worship leader and guest speaker. Travis and his team led the women in worship all weekend. My great friend Phillip Johnson was on the media staff of FBC Bentonville, (I think he WAS the media staff at the time) and invited me to tag along for the Weekend of Women.

Maybe it was to double the testosterone level in the room, maybe he needed me to help him lift all the sound system gear, maybe it was to be nice. I was 12, I'm telling you it wasn't for my testosterone. :D Phillip has just always treated me well.

Anyway, Travis, Phillip and I spent the weekend together, camped out behind enemy lines of the Women's Conference, and got along really well as the males among makeup.

The conference leaders asked Travis back for all the conferences following that first year, and Phillip asked me back to A2 (Audio Two, AKA: Audio Assist) the conference. Travis, Phillip and I got to be closer and closer friends through our annual event.

Then my senior year in High School, Travis and his worship team was leading the music for a conference in Branson, MO. Something like a ten hour drive for them was a two hour drive for me. Travis invited me to come up and be the road manager for the gang. I'm no professional road manager, but I tried to work hard.

Travis, like Phillip, has always been overly nice to me. He had no reason to go out of his way to befriend a 19-year-old punk like myself, but he did, and he has continued to maintain contact even through his busy event and recording lifestyle.

I can't wait to meet Angela and the kids. They've all got school this week, so I'll only get to hang out at nights, but I still can't wait. I have only heard great things about Angela, both from Travis and others, and hopefully Jack and I are a close enough age where I'll still be cool to him. Basically, I'm nervous and PUMPED.

Thanks for helping me let a little air out, I might be a little too PUMPED right now.

Clock says 11pm.
Alarm says 4am.
I say "bed time".

Thanks for reading! If you're on the 6:10 XNA-MEM, I'll see you in the morning. Otherwise, have a great night, and a pleasant tomorrow!

Building a Drummer: a Foundation

When I was 16 years old, I began fiddling around with drumming. Both with hand percussion, and with a full drum kit.

I'm unsure how most drummers begin, but I didn't run out and drop $3000 on a drum kit. Thanks to my church, I had moderate access to an electronic drum kit that was only used on Sunday mornings. A few times during the week, I would have 20mins or so on this Roland V-Drum kit, where I would just work on the basics.

At home, I would listen to a song over and over, memorizing the drum part. Then, when I had that rare 20mins at the church, I would try to replicate what I had memorized off the track.

This went on for about a year and a half before I got really anywhere at all. At the same time, I was also working on my hand percussion.

At the youth building, they frequently did "acoustic worship" when their drummer was unavailable for a Wednesday night or something. These sets required an alternative percussion instrument, so they usually utilized a congo or djembe.

I got where I could substitute for the real drummer, and knew enough basics to fake my way through a worship service.

After two years of secretly getting 20mins on the electronic kit from time to time, and playing on stage for the youth about once a month, I graduated from High School.

Over the summer, there were two or three Sunday services that the primary church drummer was out of town for. The music minister (Ken Montgomery) had heard me banging around on the electronic set, and learned good things about me from the youth, so he asked me to play.

These two or three times were some of the scariest moments of my life. It was a big change going from quietly messing around alone to playing with a 20-piece orchestra live on stage for 1,000 people.

I had to quickly evolve from just memorizing Jars of Clay songs for fun. It was time to grow enough to drive a stage full of musicians. Just like my beginnings in the youth department, I knew enough basics to fake my way through, and the services went fine.

No rock show, but fine.

Then I moved to college. I found one of the on-campus student ministries, and started attending. My first visit, the music guy (Taylor Wood) asked if I could play any instruments. I mumbled something about a djembe and he said "here's our new drummer."

Now I practice with the band about 5hrs a week, for our Monday night worship service. We have also had a few special gigs around the state, nothing farther than 2hrs.

This whole faking it thing has really worked out pretty well. By faking my way through something the first few times, I get my foot in the door. After the initial few times I'm comfortable, and they let me stay. Then I've got the opportunity to practice and grow, until I can stop faking it and start feeling natural.

I've been playing with the MBSF Eleven88 band for almost a year now, and have really grown as a musician. I still don't call myself a drummer, but I've gotten serious enough that it's time to start building my own drum kit.

My goal is to slowly gather the pieces of my kit over the next few months, having my full drum kit built by July.