"All the glory be to God!"

Noble-sounding, and simple enough to say, but what does it mean?

What does it mean to me, as a singer?

On the road with AHQ, I am constantly praised, both as part of a group and individually. After the concert on Thursday, a man who had come with a group from a town near Chicago, in the course of our conversation, said "...of course you want all the glory to be to God..."

What does that mean? Does it mean that I shouldn't enjoy being
congratulated? Does it mean that I should sing worse to "keep myself humble"? Should I try to not feel good about myself in the area in which I am being praised?

Naw, those aren't solutions, though the line between feeling good and feeling pride may be a fine one.

On the one hand I find my "Praise the Lord"'s ringing a little hollow at time because something in my heart wants to revel in the praise and believe it all. But on the other hand...well, maybe there is no other hand.

I want to go to the Singing in the Smokies and just tear it up. I want people--professional singers--to tell us that we're something. I want them to say, that little tenor, man, he's great.

But here's what's wrong with that. The motivation. I want glory for myself and not for Him. That's what's wrong. It's not wrong to enjoy praise, but the issue is the ultimate reason for which I sing.

Why, oh why, does one heat up when they sleep? What's worse than waking up hot?

So if you're in the middle of the day, between meals, and someone offers you apples when you're not hungry, are you better off eating them or not?

Why would they call me a little tenor anyway?

I'm exhausted after the concert tonight. But it went well. We had a few issues, and my voice was so whatever that I couldn't hit even an E-flat below middle C without sort of croaking, but hey, I could sing high (usually) and that's what counts when you're a tenor!

It was hard in spots, though. Hard in a way that when you're feeling that way you wonder if there's any way you have "When I Lift Up My Head" in you.

If you've read the by-log, you know that my favorite song on the new album is Invocation. I realize though--and further evidence of that tonight--that it's not going to be our most popular song. It's just not the type of song that our audience really likes and appreciates fully. That's the impression I get.

Tomorrow is Plain City. Saturday is Inspirations Reunion. Sunday, Bryson City for Singing in the Smokies. I was nervous before this program, I can't imagine how nervous I'll be before that.

Tom, it's a good call to not sing Invocation or When I Lift Up My Head at the beginning of our set. We need to get a bit comfortable before singing those songs. But maybe we should sing 'em first, it'd be good for us.

In other news, T. Nice, Trevor, is dating! And Angie Troyer of all people. My, my. Way to go Trev-meister.

Trevor's made a hole-in-one before. He's a good golfer. I'm sure that's what attracted Angie.

Ookay. We're about ready to leave for concert #1. I've got my suit, and other needed accessories. Kon's been taking a nap, hopefully, 'cause he's been real tired and there's probably not going to be much letting up in the next few days.

We've got our program lined up. It'll be pretty short tonight, no more than an hour probably. That's good for 14 or 15 songs. Todd's going to set up his sound system for us.

I met a delightful old couple today, in Chicago. Their daughter had traced their geneology back to 303 A.D. They told me that their ancestor must have been in the army because he won a battle and some German king rewarded him by giving him some land and a woman. They thought that was real funny, that they'd give this dude a woman as part of a reward. They were cool because they didn't seem tired of each other at all, even though they were in their seventies. They still laughed at each others jokes, and they did it in a way that you just knew that they laughed that way together in private too.

Then I talked with a liberal Catholic monk on the plane from Chicago to South Bend. Arggh! I almost feel a little guilty for having such an amiable conversation with him. Nice enough guy, but he thought that the value in faith was the strength it would give you in time of crisis. Didn't matter so much what faith it was.

By the way, if you plan to go to the Singing in the Smokies on Sunday to see us, please realize it's $18 to get in. And another thing, we still don't know when on Sunday we'll be singing or even how many times we'll be singing. Hopefully tomorrow.

Tom wanted me to mention that I'm at my favorite commenter's house. Not sure why he thinks I would think he was my favorite commenter, seeing as he rips me in them!

But hey, we sang tonight. AHQ sang lots of songs tonight, and it wasn't like we missed a huge beat. We'll fine-tune tomorrow before our first concert at Todd Neuschwander's church.

There was one other thing that I wanted to write about last night.

One of the most controversial classical pianists in the 20th century was Glenn Gould. He was so into being true to the music that he though live concerts were at best unfair and at worst immoral.

The reason for this startling opinion is that the reality of concerts is that the sound must be adjusted for the guy in the balcony. He thought that technology - recording was the way to truly capture the spirit of music, because you could have multiple tries and could produce it to sound just the way you thought it needed to sound.

What a strange idea, that concerts are bad because they aren't pure enough to the music.

Switching gears. This sounds exciting, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on Statisticians' job outlook:

"Statisticians with knowledge of engineering and the physical sciences will find jobs in research and development, working with teams of scientists and engineers to help improve design and production processes to ensure consistent quality of newly developed products. Many statisticians also will find opportunities developing statistical software for computer software manufacturing firms."

And,

"Because of the widespread use of computers in this field, statisticians in all industries should have good computer programming skills..."

Let me talk about a feeling I had today. It’s a feeling of dread, a feeling that you are in way, way over your head, that the expectations another has placed on you are like the Sears Tower.

It happened when I was on the phone with a quality guy from a sawmill who started asking me for my opinion on a good way to design this productivity improvement idea that we were exploring. He wanted ME to give HIM some ideas on how to make the plant better.

Now, in a way that’s my job, but I just can’t see it happening in the context of a sawmill. They know that stuff in and out. It’s such an established industry that they’re very savvy productivity-wise. Or maybe it’s just that I’m inexperienced and don’t know what I’m doing.

At any rate, I can’t figure out why this guy was so hesitant to go ahead with this idea, because it could save them thousands and thousands of dollars every year.

I recovered from that awful feeling, though. I talked to one of the leader guys at the IAC and he had words of wisdom that soothed and calmed my fears.

One thing, if you ever jog on country roads in the mid-Willamette Valley in Oregon in early summer at dusk, watch for skunks.

I found a note in my car’s windshield this evening. It said, in womanly scrawl:

“Thanks for parking so close. Maybe next time I won’t have to climb into my passenger side to get into my car! Next time try thinking about other people!”

Ok, so I’m properly chastised. I’ve never thought about my parking habits from the other person’s perspective before. It was a narrow opening and of course I leaned toward her side because it would give me more room to open up on my side.

A person doesn’t really think about that, because you don’t have any contact with the person who drives the car that you park beside. But they are people. Maybe she saw the old Gideon’s Bible in the back of my car. I wish I could apologize.

It’s time to reach way back, way, way back and find the suitcase of the Philistines. This gargantuan specimen was purchased on a trip to the east with my uncle Paul and fellow quartet members at a flea market. Not the highest quality piece of luggage you ever did see, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Imprecisely speaking, we’ve got to take as many Purpose CDs with us back east that we feasibly can. We’ve had bad experiences with estimating too low before tours. What a pain it is to try to ship albumage to where you will be 3 days from now.

So since this is the biggest program (gig) we’ve ever done, it’s impossible to tell how many to pack, so we’re just going to stuff in as many as we can. 600, 800 albums of Purpose plus maybe a couple hundred Lookin’ Up’s.

Amazingly, it turns out that my father and the brother closest to him in age didn't talk about girls. At all. That's crazy!

I've written the by-log for almost a year and I don't think there's been a time when it's been so neglected. I'm just dry.

Purpose, in my opinion.

Best-performed song: Invocation
Best lyric: And Can It Be
Most compelling moment: David's lead on that last, quiet chorus of the Stand In Awe medley.
Worst moment: a spot on the last chorus of Purpose
Best Ending: When I Lift Up My Head
Best arrangement: Invocation

Yea for one-word titles of songs.

Yea for the Pevensees.

About those Pevensees. There's a song by Chris Rice that has a line in it about these people and I never knew what he was talking about. "...reads just like the Pevensees, adventure..." That's the line. And you know who the Pevensees are? They're the original four children in The Chronicles of Narnia! Peter and Susan and I forget the others, Lucy maybe. What an adventure they had. It totally makes sense, too, in that song.

Nonny, nonny, odle-ay,
River washes over me.
Up for air and carries me away.
Nonny, nonny, odle-ie,
Run the earth and watch the sky,
Playing hard and waiting for the day...