Last night Tim, Jill and I went over to Dana’s to hash out more of these songs for our recording project.  We head into the studio on the 10th and with that date rapidly approaching, we want to make sure that we all know the basic structure of the songs.  It’s a fun process, but it is missing a key component; guitars!

Joel Piper will be engineering and producing this little project and will be doing a bulk of the guitar work.  Since he’s not in on these early sessions the songs are not exactly zesty.

It will be really interesting, and I think, refreshing to hear what the guitar lines add to these songs.  I’m excited for the final product and am now just getting antsy to begin.

We’ve got some trimming to do (13 songs to 10) and a lot of production to add to this stuff, but it is getting more and more fun as we go!

stay tuned…

This was our opener for the 40 Days of Love series which started a couple of weeks ago.

Enjoy!

On Tuesday of this week Tim, Jill, Chris and I all went over to Dana’s to hash out a few songs and prepare to record some demos.

We worked through 5 songs which was pretty surprising considering they were mostly new to Dana and Chris.  I suppose not having a guitarist in the room made it go quicker as those guitar parts tend to be the driving hook and developing those can take some time.  That can happen a bit later though.

For now, we’re plowing through.  We’ll get together on Sunday and work out the rest and then Tuesday night we’ll start laying down drum and bass tracks.  We’ll continue to build these rough demos of each song so that we have something to play to in the studio in February.

This process, though somewhat laborious (that’s right, I said it) is really fun for me.  I really like getting in a room with other musicians and thinking through where songs can go and what we can do with them.

I’ll try and get some video this week and post it here so that the 5 of you who read this (hi mom) can get a sense of what’s going on.

oh by the way, I think we have a name:

drum roll please…

The Avenue

What do you think?

So we are locked in and will start recording February 10th!

There’s a lot of work to do in the meantime demoing songs and making sure we know what we want to do, so while it’s going to be a lot of fun, it’ll also be a lot of work.

I’m really excited about this project and feeling more and more like this is something we should do.  And I think the end product is going to be something great!

I’ll be posting video and pictures during the process and letting you all see it as it unfolds.  And, of course, I’ll let you in on how and where to buy this thing!

So stay tuned and wish us luck!

I have been thinking through and sorta-kinda working on a recording project for a long time now.  It’s one of those things that I really want to do, but have never really believed that my stuff was good enough that people would want to listen to it.  I worry that I’ll put a lot of time, energy and money into a recording project and it just won’t be that good.  While I’m not sure any of those insecurities have left, I am sure that this is something I need to do and am going full steam ahead.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing as of late with Tim Douty (a phenomenal piano player and writer) and I think we have some good stuff.  I’m currently lining up studio time and am going to do this over the next few months.  I think what’s great about this project is that it won’t just be mine.  I’ll be sharing a lot of the vocals with Jill (Tim’s wife and a great singer) and the songs will almost all be co-written by Tim and I.  It takes the pressure off and makes it a lot more fun.

We’ll see how things materialize and, I’ve got to say, I’m a little nervous about writing about it this early as that means we have to do it, but I’m really excited to see what happens.

I got this email from Dana a couple of days ago:

“I was looking at my blog stats today and found that somebody reached my site by searching for “Paul Haugen Tuba”. Just thought I’d share that with you. Not entirely sure why.”

Whoever it was that was searching for me and my tuba playing, I’m right here.  Unfortunately, I never played the tuba.

2009 has come and gone and I thought I would recap some of my highlights.

You remember when your grandparents or parents would tell a story and they would say, “the year was 1965…”? I’m not that guy.  I don’t generally remember the year something happened as much as I do the event itself.  I remember making a cross-country trip with my family as a kid and I remember the first Major League baseball game I went to and I remember the first time I kissed my wife, but for the life of me I don’t remember the year these things happened.  Frankly, why should I?

I was thinking about 2009, though and realized this was a pretty big year for me.  There were a handful of pretty life-changing events that took place and I thought that if I didn’t remember the year, it would be hard to see how much God had blessed me with.  He didn’t just give me a few good things here and there, but he blessed me with a lot of great things continually.

So here goes; my recap.

1) Gracie Mae - This one was an easy #1.  Jenn and I had our first child and she is the love of our lives.  I was always excited about having kids, but having Grace has surpassed any expectations I may have had.  She’s just so cool and fun!  I’ve had the somewhat unique opportunity to be a stay-at-home dad two days a week and, while I’m a bit out of my element at times, it’s really allowed me to have a pretty special bond with her.  She smiles all the time, seems to love music and really likes snuggling up to daddy.  Frankly, she’s my favorite thing in the world.

2) My wife - Now, I didn’t get married this year, and though Jenn and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary, it wasn’t a milestone anniversary, like 5, 10, 20, 50, etc.  However, Jenn and I grew even closer this year.  We worked through some pretty challenging things at times, from work stuff, to family issues and others and got through giving birth.  I also saw Jenn in a way that I haven’t seen her in a long time; right in the center of God’s will.  Jenn has been trying to figure out what she’s meant to do for a while now.  She’s taught in a couple of different schools and both have been really bad situations.  She’s done ministry and while she’s really great at it, figuring out how to do ministry when it’s not your full-time job has been a hard adjustment.  She’s been going through this rather tough process for 3-5 years now and while she’s always had a lot of faith, there have been times where it’s hard for us to see that she just can’t seem to find that “sweet spot.”  That all changed this year when Grace came along.  During her pregnancy, while she was well within her rights to complain and be frustrated she spent much of her time laughing.  Watching her give birth and fight through all the pain and junk that comes with giving birth (reason #437 I’m glad I’m a dude by the way), she pushed through it all and now is an amazing mother.  I love watching her with Grace.  She never seems to lose her patience and she at various times will just look down at her and say, “man, I love this girl!”  It really has been great to watch her step into mother hood.

3) I got promoted - Kimberly MacNeill is the greatest boss anyone in my position could have.  She has taught me so much about ministry and service programming and this year, as she stepped into a new role, she and the executive staff turned over her position as Pastor of Worship and Arts to me.  Since then I’ve gotten the chance to “hang with the big dogs” on the executive staff and be completely in charge of our weekend services.  We’ve been working so hard around here and I think our team has been doing great.  We did “Journey” a four week series using music from Journey to help people navigate tough times, “Re-Dream” a four week series helping people see past the difficulties in life and imagine all that God has still in store for them and a Christmas season that included “A Beatles Christmas” our special Christmas Service chalk full of amazing music and a candlelight service that was fantastic.  2010 will certainly bring a ton more work, but I’m so excited for what lies ahead.

4) Songwriting - I’ve been writing a lot of new music and am excited to see what happens with it.  I’ve gotten to write and record with some great musicians like Dana Pellerin, Luke Mundy, Tim and Jill Douty, and Paul Carlson and Justin Kulekjian.  I’m so stoked to see what God is able to do with these songs as we’ll introduce some of them at Clovis Hills in 2010.

There have been so many other great things that have happened to me this year that it would take multiple posts to talk about it.

I am so excited for the new year and am looking forward to everything God does!

I had a good conversation with Aron and Jen this afternoon that got me thinking about the political climate in our country.

When did we become so polarized?

Somewhere along the line we began hating each other so much that we went to our separate corners clinging to our values and we decided only to come out long enough to tell the other side how crappy they are.

If we could all drop our weapons for a moment and look around I think we’d see that neither side is doing much of anything.

Name a member of congress that is legitimately concerned with your well-being.  Maybe there are some in there, but when do I get to hear from them?  If you don’t play the game your ideas don’t get heard and if you play the game it would seem that you have to make so many compromises that your ideas are no longer yours.

I would love to find one politician who instead of reciting the party’s talking points or spending millions of dollars on smear campaigns of their opponent, lays out a plan to fix our problems that is clear, concise and actually works.  Give me that guy or girl and they will have my vote.  I don’t care if there’s a D or an R next to your name.

It’s like this health care deal.  I know there are way too many people in this country who cannot afford quality, affordable health care.  I’m one of them!  Why is it that the left thinks that doing something, even if it’s horrible like the current 2,700 page monstrosity, is better than nothing?

Why is it that the right thinks that because the left wants to do something they should do nothing and pretend there’s no problem?

These people don’t make sense!  There are real problems that need real solutions and, this side of Heaven, we’re not going to see progress made until people stop screaming at each other long enough to sit down and talk about actual solutions.

On Sunday after church Jenn and I got to go camping with some of our best friends in the world, the Percivals.  We had a blast!  We got up to Sequoia National Park Sunday evening around 5:30 giving us just enough light (with the help of our lanterns) to set up our tents and get a fire going.  We had burgers and hot dogs, I made bacon and eggs in the morning and we got to do a lot of playing.

It was very cool to get to use a lot of our new camping gear (courtesy of Jenn’s parents, mostly).  We busted out the propane stove and our camping cookware set complete with pots, pans, cups and plates.  It was fantastic.

The Percivals have 4 kids, 3 of which they brought with them (they left the 1 year old with some friends) and it was very fun to see them running around.  These little girls were cheating death for 2 days climbing rocks, navigating the camp fire (one of them actually stepped in it at one point; she’s ok) and even breaking in their new princess fishing poles.  Needless to say, Snow White is about as good a fisherman (fisherwoman?) as I am, so they didn’t catch anything.

We had a great time, but lived in fear of getting caught in the rain as that was the prediction.  Fortunately, the weather held off until the last morning and we were already pretty well packed up so that we could make a quick exit.  To our surprise, though, we did not get caught in the rain, but in the snow!

I woke up and quickly scurried out of the tent to take my morning…stroll? and felt little snow flakes falling.  It didn’t stay light for long and soon we driving home in some beautiful, though a bit scary, weather.

Maybe I should’ve sprung for 4 wheel drive on the Escape!

Really?!? Crying bunnies?!? Drowning puppies?!?

Come on environmentalists, is this really the most effective way to get your message across?