Monthly Archives: October 2007

     Fresh off the heels of Radiohead’s innovative marketing effort, Paste Magazine is offering readers the opportunity to set their own price for a year’s subscription — anything from $1.  Those who choose to pay more than the customary $19.95 subscription will be honored in a future issue, but the basic marketing pitch is “pay what it’s worth to you.”  You can sign up online right now, inserting the price that you would like to pay.      Paste magazine attempts to find ”signs of life in music, film and culture,” and is known for their inclusion of a CD sampler in …« Read Entire Post

     From Tim Smith of Mars Hill Church in Seattle (check out their website from our Helpful Links page and read the full article excerpted below by clicking HERE):      “I am not arguing for an a-historical, throw the baby out with the bathwater approach. What I am arguing for is a missional re-appropriation of elements of worship that takes into account the people who are being led into worship and the world they live in. The most appropriate response of worship for any congregation will always come from within that congregation. I believe most churches don’t work to create indigenous …« Read Entire Post

“Like most writers, I don’t like to write; I like to have written.” – William Zinsser, “On Writing Well”      True, isn’t it? A writer will do anything to get out of writing — another trip to the coffee shop, an episode of The Jeffersons on cable, a phone call, or even an extended discussion about the idea the writer has for his story, song, novel, play, or what have you. But actually sitting down, turning the cell off, and writing … man, that can be scary. Here are some nuggets to help, courtesy of Thomas H. Uzzell’s article “How …« Read Entire Post

Derek Webb (photo courtesy of Christa “no relation to Derek” Webb) It was good times all around last night as Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken performed in front of a sold-out crowd at Sojourn’s music venue, The 930. 

     Chord sheets for the songs on “Before The Throne,” as well as many songs from our other CDs, are available right here on sojournmusic.com.       Just click on the “Music” tab or click on the section belonging to our worship albums, “Before The Throne,” “These Things I Remember” and “With The Angels.”  View the track listing at the bottom of the product description for each CD and you’ll see imbedded links marked “chords” next to each song.      Feel free to use these songs for anything from personal devotions to church worship services.

     No matter what form of creative writing you do, you’ll hear teachers and artists talk about the importance of finding one’s “voice.” What does that mean?     Think of it as discovering what makes you uniquely you. What do you have to say that’s different than what everyone else is saying, or how is your presentation different than the presentation of others?       Most writers start out mimicking those they admire, just as painters have traditionally developed their craft by copying the masters. This is a time-proven technique. But there comes a time when a good writer begins to fuse …« Read Entire Post

From “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis: “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower—become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.”        A sobering thought indeed.  The spector of misplaced priorities looms large and, as in every other situation in life, …« Read Entire Post

DrakeAudio.com recorded one of Sojourn’s four Sunday sets of songs for worship this past Sunday, October 14.  Sing along on the classic hymn, “All Creatures Of Our God and King.”  Next, listen to two new Sojourn originals, “Let Justice Roll Like A River  (CLICK HERE for the chord sheet)” and “Where Your Praise Never Ends (CLICK HERE for the chord sheet).”

     In past columns we’ve looked at the creative writing process from the standpoint of worship music and other songwriting endeavors. Although every kind of writing has it’s own uniqueness and set of “rules,” good writing is good writing, and many tricks of the trade apply to any form. Today we get what will perhaps be the most helpful advice yet for ALL writers, and it comes from a playwright.     Jeffrey Hatcher, a great playwright himself, wrote a book called “The Art & Craft Of Playwriting.” I highly recommend it for anyone who’d like to write for the stage. In the appendix, …« Read Entire Post

     If you live close to Louisville, don’t miss your chance to hear Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken in concert at Sojourn’s music venue, The 930 Listening Room (930 Mary Street, Louisville).      Only 85 tickets remain for this show that takes place Wednesday, October 24 at 7:30.  You can buy them online by clicking HERE.      Also, click HERE to read an interview with Caedmon’s Call in Christianity Today about their new album, about Derek Webb rejoining the band, working with their new record company and more.      And speaking of Christianity Today, our 5 Star Review sale continues.  …« Read Entire Post

Republished from the Sept/ Oct edition of Travelogue:       By any standards, Sojourn’s all-ages music venue, The 930 Listening Room, has gotten off to a fantastic start this year. New venues often remain unknown to even neighborhood locals for up to a year, incur huge financial losses for at least as long and have difficulty booking credible acts, especially in cities with plenty of mid-to-large sized venues such as Louisville’s Headliners Music Hall, Uncle Pleasant’s, The Rudyard Kipling and Phoenix Hill Tavern. Yet under the leadership of pastor/elder Mike Cosper The 930 has had a banner first-year. Much of what has made …« Read Entire Post

     Writing worship songs is hard work.  A lot goes into the creation of something that will be used in part as spiritual formation (it’s often been said, “Show me the songs a church sings and I’ll tell you what they really believe”) and also as one way in which a body of people worship God together.       The eleven songs on Before The Throne passed through a screening process that included these elements, as outlined by Sojourn Worship Arts Pastor Mike Cosper: Theological Truth – Does the song faithfully present Biblical truth? This is a fairly simple category.  Is …« Read Entire Post

“I had tried to visit Woody (Guthrie) regularly … Woody had been confined to Greystone Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey, and I would usually take the bus there from the Port Authority terminal, make the hour-and-a-half ride and then walk the rest of the half mile up the hill to the hospital, a gloomy and threatening granite building …. Usually I’d play him his songs during the afternoon. Sometimes he’d ask for specific ones — “Rangers Command,” “Do Re Me,” “Dust Bowl Blues,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Tom Joad,” the song he’d written after seeing the movie “The Grapes of Wrath.” …« Read Entire Post

“… I was having dinner at Johnny Cash’s house outside of Nashville. There were a lot of songwriters there. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Harland Howard, Kris Kristofferson … Joe and Janette Carter … cousins to June Carter, Johnny’s wife. After dinner, everybody sat around in the rustic living room with high wooden beams … We sat in a circle and each songwriter would play a song and pass the guitar to the next player. Usually, there’d be comments made like, “You really nailed that one.” – Bob Dylan, “Chronicles, vol. 1″      This is the kind of thing that I’d …« Read Entire Post

reprinted from Tangzine.com, used by permission of author Matthew Ralph     On the surface, Great World of Sound is a lot like the most talked about aspect of the annoying TV show American Idol — talentless hacks are exploited for being, well, talentless and hopelessly naive suckers who think they have a real chance at being pop stars.      Funny as the auditions can be, there has always been something unsettling to me about laughing at someone who isn’t trying to be funny. That unsettling feeling lasted for me much of the way through Great World of Sound.      Like …« Read Entire Post

Sojourn’s Worship Arts Pastor Mike Cosper explains the Biblical understanding of worship and the theological groundwork behind “Before The Throneâ€? in the second and final installment of this article:      So often, we look at our church services as times and places where we start and stop our worship. In the light of this reality – life lived in communion with God made available to us through the sacrifice of Jesus – we can say that we are not isolated individuals who gather to worship, but rather we are constant worshippers, living sacrifices who gather together to join our worship and encourage one another. …« Read Entire Post

In honor of the 5-star review our brand new CD, “Before The Throne,” received in Christianity Today online, we are announcing a “5-Star Review Sale” in our Store.  To access it, CLICK HERE or choose the “Store” from our main page . That’s right, “Before The Throne” is now only $10 here at sojournmusic.com including shipping (international orders are an extra $2.) Pick up a copy or two today! Our earlier CD’s are on sale as well.  Please note that “These Things I Remember” and “Songs For The Advent” are currently out of stock, but we will have more in 4-6 weeks.

“Cinematic rock” band Dirt Poor Robins (Sojourn’s own Neil and Kate Robins, who contributed “Evergreen” to “Before The Throne“) are featured in a half-page spread on p. 33 of the October 3-9, 2007 edition of Velocity, operated by the Louisville Courier Journal.  CLICK HERE to read the article online. You can visit Dirt Poor Robins’ official site by clicking on their name in our “Helpful Links” section.  And you can hear an mp3 of “Evergreen” in our Virb site, www.virb.com/sojournmusic. 

Sojourn’s Worship Arts Pastor Mike Cosper explains the Biblical understanding of worship and the theological groundwork behind “Before The Throne” in this article.  Part One appears below; stay tuned for Part Two: 2 Corinthians 6:16: For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” The “real world” is a deceptive phrase. If we’re not careful, we come to believe that the things we see, the things we touch, the people, places and built environment around us are …« Read Entire Post

Guest writer Kevin Janes, booker for Sojourn’s music venue, “The 930 Listening Room,” on the subject of music and the Church: Understanding Music by Kevin Janes Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. – Flannery O’Conner Here We Are Now, Entertain Us “Here we are now, entertain us.” In 1991, a young man from Seattle named Kurt wrote these harrowing, profound words. In the Nirvana song “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the lyrics were provocatively sung with …« Read Entire Post

CLICK HERE to read Christa Banister’s review of “Before The Throne” in this week’s edition of Christianity Today Online.  “Before The Throne” earned five stars.  A sample from the review: But every once in a while, I receive an album that pleasantly surprises me on all fronts. Not only is the packaging impeccably and cleverly designed on Sojourn‘s Before the Throne, but the worship band for Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky also managed a far more impressive feat: They actually wrote worship music that I didn’t feel like I’d already heard a million times before. Hard to imagine, I …« Read Entire Post