Here's the Thing

As you can see, Molly, Blake and I carved up some pumpkins last night. I hadn't done this in years and had a really good time. With Molly acting as creative director and me picking up most of the scraping and fine tuning duties we were just plain unstoppable. Blake? Oh, he mostly handled the executive consulting and supportive nodding side of things, since Molly and I were being gourd hoarders.

My favorite part of bringing these jack-o-lanterns to life was that we bought 8 pumpkins, and paid under $9. That's a lot of bang for your buck!

A few months ago I recorded a mandolin part for a song that my good friend T(h)om was producing. His sister-in-law, Amy Gustafson, was recording her third independent album, and T(h)ommy Tacklebox asked if I would mind throwing a little juicy mando nectar down for one of the songs. I warned him that my mandolin skills are mostly smoke and mirrors, but agreed to give it a shot. After about 1,500 takes we thought we had enough to find something useful but, not surprisingly, T(h)ommy Towkick still had to do some cut and paste magic to make a listenable product. Oh well; I warned them up front.

Here's the thing. Amy is distributing the CD via CD Baby, and it's available on iTunes. You can literally go to the iTunes music store, search for Amy Gustafson, and buy the CD. The preview clip for song I worked on, called "Miles Away," even includes my magically delicious (and cosmetically reconstructed) mandolinnery. Crazy stuff.

The first official Paul Ramey Band event with me in tow is in the books, and it looks like things are only going to be picking up steam from here. We made our maiden voyage to Richland, WA on Friday afternoon, and set up for the first of five Quake conferences over the next ten months or so. It was an incredible experience, from beginning to end, but there were some definite highlights for me.

First and foremost, it's always good to spend time with good people. If you have never been on an overnight moving job with a handful of degenerate movers you might not fully understand this, and that's a good thing. Nothing can substitute for hours of time spent together, not even "team-building exercises."

Second, after setting up for Saturday, we all left the church where the conference was to be held, and drove about 15 minutes to another church to sleep. I mentioned to someone on Friday night that it seems funny to drive across town to sleep, just to wake up and drive right back. We might as well sleep here; the pews here are actually quite soft! Well, here's the thing. After we left Friday night (about 11pm), and before we arrived Saturday morning, someone broke into the church where we had set up. They stole the church's computers and set the offices on fire. The fact that we all got about 4 hours of sleep made this news seem a bit like a dream, but the smell of burnt carpet and treated wood helped reality to settle in. Miraculously, none of the conference materials were destroyed, and the fire inspector cleared the sections of the building that we needed to use, so things went ahead as scheduled. God's work will not be stopped.

Third, it was really good for the band to play together. Practice is valuable, but we played somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 songs, over the course of six conference sessions. That doesn't include practicing Friday night and between sessions, either. I really needed this to start to settle in as a new member of the band. Once I feel more confident in the songs I'll feel more confident about giving input, etc. It's just really nice to have this one done!

Things are only getting busier, too, with committments to the Crossroads youth group, Beaverton Christian Church, and the Innovative Evangelism Conference, among others. Busy times / good times.