The Lonestar Weekend

I met Robert and Kathleen almost five years when they hosted one of my concerts as part of 33Miles. One show turned into a ministry influenced by my old band's name and 33 The Ministry was birthed and now hosts numerous Christian concerts in south Texas every year.

The view from the Denver airport never disappoints and although I was missing my family this view from the jet bridge always reminds me that God is always at work, even creating sunsets.

I picked up my bat mobile from Budget in Dallas and crashed at my sister and brother-in-laws house for a few winks before I hit the road for Kilgore.

The bat mobile flew across the only real altitude changes in TX, the over-passes on my way to Kilgore.

The weather couldn't have been better, and it we spent a great few hours in the sun singing and preaching in the city park. The south is so cool and it was great to see old friends.

On Sunday morning I guest lead worship with my good friend Eric Michael at Lake Highlands United Methodist Church in Plano which is one of my favorite things to do. I love that my job keeps me in church every Sunday (wherever it may be) and I'm refreshed and inspired by watching and joining my colleagues in their various roles whenever possible. Eric is a gifted musician, leader and resourceful creative who has turned a dated gym into an inspirational place of worship. Since we have such similar roles as worship leaders and maintain music careers we had a ton to talk about and a lot of notes to compare.

Of course you can't go to Dallas without a meal at the best "Mexican" restaurant in America.

It was a tiring weekend but a blast to be on the road singing songs about my family and Jesus.

Here is the Church...

When Calvary Bible offered me a job last October I felt apprehensive and skeptical of the whole mobile church thing. As a touring musician I feel at home hauling road cases, but after years of pinching my fingers and dropping things on my toes the idea of an extra set up on Sunday morning sounded tiring. The strength of our calling to Calvary far exceeded being a little groggy on Sunday morning and now after almost a year of "mobile church" I've discovered several things. As I've read my leadership books and thought about volunteerism I've theorized that a team of the right volunteers can do more than paid staff and the people of Calvary have convinced me that it's true. It is inspiring seeing committed, enthusiastic people joining together in a shared purpose completing a task that each couldn't do on their own. Mobile church has shown me this.
But the end is in sight. I've been impressed with Calvary's financial stewardship and lack of debt which I've discovered is unusual in the church. Calvary will break ground on the Erie campus building in a few weeks and we'll be in our new building within the year.

Producing You are Exalted

Cross to Crown Record from Collin Stoddard on Vimeo.
Buy You are Exalted here.

This is a project I am proud to have produced and helped write, thanks to the executive producer Doug Goodin for your vision, leadership and talent that made record become a reality. Cross to Crown is an incredible ministry that resources churches by encouraging and equipping pastors through their seminary, books that they write and publish, and their music.

I appreciate and support the intentionality that went into creating You are Exalted. While hand-crafting, shaping and massaging the process and continually looking at the horizon is a long and sometimes painful process, it lead to making this record a huge success. One of the challenges of the creative process with any new artist is the amount of dialog and conversation that goes into discussing the heart, the message and the sound of a project. Most artists (even those who have never recorded a project before) have an idea of their sound and can fairly easily be identified by picking up a guitar and singing a few words. While Cross to Crown had the heart, vision and a general idea of the musical style, I was creating and aiming for a sound that we only had a description of and not necessarily a sonic example. This process takes a lot of trust for everyone involved: for Cross to Crown to trust that I hear what they're expecting to hear, and that I can deliver it, and for me that they'll like what comes from a tracking session! God was evidently involved in every process of this project and Cross to Crown was one of the best and easiest ministries I've ever worked with and I look forward to our next record together.

A little inside information about talent on the record, Adam Silverman played drums and I always appreciate his talent and contribution to almost everything I work on from my time in 33Miles to producing projects. We've known each other for a long time and it's a blessing working with someone who knows what to play when I don't know how to explain it. Cal Joslin who helped start the CCM group Sidewalk Prophets and I went to Belmont played bass. Matt Reviere, a session guitar player currently touring with 2012 Idol winner Scotty McCreery who I also went to Belmont with played acoustics and electrics. Tyler Ewing is an Emmy Award winning composer and the most talented arranger I've ever met and and he provided the string arrangements and tracking (I also went to Belmont with Tyler....) Jason Hall is an audio engineer who I refer to as a magician and mixed and mastered the record. (Sigh...yes, I also went to Belmont with Jason.) PS, You're welcome, Belmont, my next student loan payment is on the way.

Go buy this record! This year is filling up quickly for me in my studio. We are settling into our new house in Firestone, CO and my studio is now up and running it's new location with lots of new projects on the books.

I Worship When...

Calvary is working through a series called Stronger and this Sunday Adrian is speaking on growing stronger in worship. As a musician, music always comes to mind when I consider worship and I love to worship God through music. Everyone worships God differently and I shot and edited this video we're showing on Sunday of my friends sharing how they worship the Lord. I upgraded to Final Cut Pro X yesterday and it changed my life. I recorded audio on my Zoom H4N and being that I had such a limited time frame to shoot and edit this video and was using a new video editing platform I didn't spend much time editing the audio. What you hear is all straight off the SD card. I'm pretty impressed with that device!!

I Worship God When... from Collin Stoddard on Vimeo.

We Always Bring Our Best

Traveling is tough. Traveling with a family is tougher, and I always find myself dreading a road trip with our family of four, regardless of the distance. As a touring artist I find myself sometimes dragging my family to the strangest places experiencing the weirdest things, but we always grow closer together and discover life changing things we never would have encountered had we stayed where it's safe.

Drive south on I-35 from Kansas into Oklahoma and you'll see asphalt stretching miles in front of you, shrubbery, and that's all. Then just before you reach Oklahoma City and your bladder's about to burst you reach Edmond, Oklahoma. You may not remember the small suburb of Oklahoma City, but you probably remember this.

LifeChurch.tv is one of the most innovative and largest growing churches with an incredibly unique model of planting churches. They inherited this cross when they bought the land of a large struggling church which now houses their central offices. Completely updated and remodeled, LifeChurch's central offices aren't just a collection of office spaces, it's a think-tank and well oiled-machine overflowing with great vision and leadership to their growing 10 campus church.

Last weekend as we turned the four hour drive from Wichita, KS to Lawton, OK into a seven hour drive we found ourselves cruising right past the massive cross and I called my friend Chris Kuti who serves as the worship pastor at the Edmund campus and he gave up his afternoon to catch up and show us their facility. With the exception of the Cove in North Carolina, I have not been this impressed with a Christian ministry. 

Even though they won't all admit it, almost everyone I've interacted with who works in ministry has good ideas and desires to see growth in their flock, in quantity and quality. Blaine Hogan, the creative director of Willow Creek Church says in his book, Untitled, "No one cares about your ideas or how great a pitch-person you are if you can't execute your vision." What I saw at LifeChurch this weekend was great execution, vision, and leadership.

The campus aesthetically matches the visual branding of Lifechurch with hues of grey and red with their vision and values printed everywhere. Everybody who steps foot in LifeChurch will know what they are passionate about. Look around and you'll see that they practice what they preach. People are attracted to that.

LifeChurch believes in sharing the gospel and equipping every church, not just their multiple campuses, so much that they offer all of their resources completely free on their website. In many churches as giving is low and budgets are tight I personally have been greatly effected by churches response to freeze spending and hoard what they have. LifeChurch does the opposite with their resources and it's inspiring to see how many they have.

While LifeChurch looked awesome and exemplified quality, the articulation and execution of Craig Groeschel's vision inspired me the most. Every day I discuss vision and creative ideas with my wife, my pastor, my promotors and my creative team. In every discussion I hear the obstacles of implementation. While I've been guilty of making excuses I appreciated the example of pursuing a vision and seeing God bless a ministry with explosive growth. 

"We Always Bring Our Best." Out of all the prints throughout our walk this one stood out to me the most and has been ringing in my head all week. There are times I've been guilty of not bringing my best and I've experience the negative implications, or sometimes just lack of fruit. I've brought my best as often as possible and I've experienced the fruit. The fruit is inspiring, people are attracted to excellence and passion and want to partner with those who do great work. It's not rocket-science. Who do you hire to do a service for you? The person who does it the best. People (believers and non-believers alike) are attracted to excellence. What restaurants do you rave about? What parts of town do you like to visit? What products do you buy? What do you argue about with your friends? My assumption is that the answer to all of those questions includes the phrase, "the best." 

In Wichita last weekend we stayed with an airplane enthusiast who is rebuilding a Fairchild PT19 warplane. Although I don't really care about airplanes, I found myself wanting to just hang out in Wayne's hanger for hours just watching him work on his airplane and admire the precision and excellence of the best woodworking I've ever seen. He and his partners are confident their quality craftsmanship will win numerous awards at the next Oshkosh and potentially make them an extra one-hundred-thousand dollars. 

I played at Lawton First Assembly in Lawton, OK several days later and saw their newly installed Nexo sound system, their gorgeous building with Pottery Barn couches and coffee tables and gorgeous paint colors. In addition to their aesthetics they went to great lengths to make me comfortable and honored. They succeeded and evidently everyone who joins them feels the same way. In a town of 100,000 people they are a thriving, influential mega-church.

While I'm convicted about the areas in my life I don't bring my best, I want for my family, myself, my creative team, my musicians to always bring their best. Imagine how inspiring and awesome life would be if everyone did their best! I'd love to experience that! Regardless of the affects of doing everything to the best of our ability, God asks us to bring our best and it honors him. That's why we do it. Where do you need to bring your best?

A Tedious Process

Our move to Colorado has really been a three month process and I've had enough work that I haven't been able to temporarily shut down operations! The show must go on and in hindsight I find it humorous the places I found myself editing tracks and comping vocals. Check out a few of them!!

For the first time since our college days at Belmont I got to work with Matt Reviere, an incredible guitar  player on a record from Cross to Crown Ministries. Much of my producing these days is done long distance which has major pro's and a few cons. My interaction with studio players these days looks like this. Yes. This is conversation via FaceTime. Thank you Steve Jobs.

One of the biggest benefits of tracking parts long distance is that it can be a more cost effective way to produce a record with Nashville studio players. They don't have to travel to me and I don't have to travel to Nashville and we achieve a quality product similar to what we would in a Nashville studio. The downside is flexibility, but thanks to my good friends who will take a long distance studio gig from me they are always willing to re-track parts that aren't exactly what I had in mind. We share files over DropBox and I do a bunch of editing!

Tracking this way does make me miss the chemistry and camaraderie of tracking and hanging out in the studio with excellent musicians, but we get to work in our personal studios on our time. Pretty neat deal.

Make it Easy.

For the sake of your attention span and in light of my last blog which took about 20 minutes to read, I'll make this one a little easier. Our church meets in a school. Calvary is a special place with an abundance of volunteers which makes set up super easy...when everyone knows what to do. I made enemies of our tech crew pretty quickly by telling them to carve the sometimes one-and-a-half hour set up time to thirty minutes. I knew this was a lot to ask, after all, Sunday morning at 6:30am isn't a fun time to be awake let alone push carts and patch audio cables. Groups of people are capable of building incredible things together, just look at the Pyramids. Our "pyramid" was a thirty minute setup time and it started with getting everyone on the same page. I prefer to call it getting everyone on the same stage...plot. See how I did that? I probably insulted Illustrator and Adobe by using their baby to create a vector file of our stage plot, but I say always use the best tool for the job. Always.

    

I give you the Calvary stage plot. I took our set up team out to coffee and handed them this and an order of how to set things up: (I added the first one for effect) 1. Don't hate me. 2. Power 3. Avioms 4. Instruments 5. Audio Note: Coil the excess at the instrument. My tech director and I made a 25 ft quad box power cable that probably would have kept the Titanic from sinking (somehow). Aviom CAT5 cable runs on top of the quad box (we purchased the Aviom power distribution unit which replaced the need to have each Aviom individually powered, and audio cables run on top of that. The biggest thing that drives me bonkers on a stage is spaghetti. Save it for the Italian restaurant. XLR cables are notorious for not working, but you don't know that they don't work until everything is patched on top of them and you're starting sound check! Coil the excess at the instrument so there isn't a huge pile of linguini in front of the patch bay, and make sure all audio cables are laid on top and it makes re-patcing and tracing cables so much easier. Try it, you will thank me. Even if you don't set up every week, try it. For some reason, perhaps extra intentionality, we have less problems when we are tidier. The result? 25 minute set up time. What that translates into? Extra sleep. Nobody says "no" to extra sleep. Nobody. You're welcome. Collin