Has been over a year since I posted! Well, I guess that's the way it goes. I live on a farm outside of bozeman and I've been playing a decent number of shows around here lately, and really learning to have fun again. I've also really been wanting to start a band. Most of the time it doesn't even matter what kind of band. I think it changes every week. First it was a celtic band, then a bluegrass band; lately it has been either 80s hair band or Blues...it boils down to this-making music with other people is FUN. Way more fun than doing it by yourself.
     I've been playing a lot with my friend Lincoln and having a blast-we did a house concert a week or so ago here in Bozeman and had a great turnout and a great time. I posted some videos below.


                                                         Cry, Cry Darlin' (Traditional)

 

The Queen of Iowa(Andrew Peterson)

                                                    The Far Country(Andrew Peterson)

On another note:
I accepted a job for the summer working in Yosemite National Park as a trail crew leader for Youth Conservation Corps, and am super excited about it. Yosemite is a place I have wanted to go to for years, and now I finally am going. If all goes well, I will be climbing El Capitan and Half Dome later this summer.

The mountains still grip me. I still go back and forth between the life of a musician and the life of a outdoorsman. They don't need to be mutually exclusive but seems they often are. Perhaps I am zeroing in on what it means to be both.

Culture, facebook, and climbing

Many of you who have listened my music, will have most likely noticed a bit of a theme(on Prone to Wander anyway). I tend to get a bit frustrated with our culture, and have written quite a few songs out of that frustration.
But rather than just condemn it again, I have been wondering about why our culture is the way it is, and I believe that it mainly comes back to one thing. People long for meaningful relationships. And our culture is no different, but it HAS, I believe, taken that longing that is so central to the human experience and kind of mutated it, or...I don't know the right word...twisted it. That is why Social networks(mainly the facebook) have become so popular. That is why sex is so prevalent in our culture. It is because we all deeply desire to connect to other people. It is a powerful thing, and a good thing.
Yet, is it just me or does something feel lacking? Facebook seems to leave that desire hanging for me. Unfulfilled. Because it is not real community! It could never replace real human interaction. Sometimes I am afraid that it is starting to(even as I post this on my facebook page).
For the past year, I have been making trips down to Utah, to the Moab area to climb at a place called Indian Creek. There is something amazing about it, and every time I am there, I feel completely content, happy, fulfilled. You could argue it is because it is in a beautiful place and I am climbing everyday. But I think that it is the depth of community that happens there. There are no computers, cell phones don't work, you have to drive 10 miles to the only outhouse and put a note on the message board if you want to get a hold of someone, and it may take a day or two. There is no technology. You depend on each other, and it is not a disposable community like facebook, where you can choose your friends and make yourself look cool, like the person you want everybody to think you are. If you think about it, nobody sees the bad side of us on facebook.
I, like you, long for deep relationships. They are what make life worthwhile. I hope that you will join me in attempting to find real community.

Questioning God

I realize that these topics I am starting the blog with are heavy. However, these are the things on my mind, and also, these are the things that I have been writing music about lately.
In addition to being a wanderer, I also by nature am a questioner. It seems that I question everything(to a fault sometimes!) whether it be someone telling me what I should do, the point of life, or if I should go to to the store and buy a half gallon of milk or not(not even exaggerating).
I have always considered this to be a good personality trait. But I have also come to realize that there is a threshold for our brain, our soul. There is only so much questioning our minds and hearts can take.
It has been the same with God.
I think most of us, if we grew up in a church, had a certain mindset instilled in us that questioning is at the least discouraged, and at the worst, plain wrong. Questioning is seen as a weakness in faith. This always frustrated me. Because what you end up with then, is a community full of people who are very set in their beliefs, but may have no idea why they believe what they do. They have never owned their own faith.
I believe that God not only is big enough to handle our questions, but actually welcomes our toughest, most exposing questions. Isn't that what you do when you are trying to figure out who someone is? Ask them questions.
My decision to pursue music in the way that I have has brought up many questions about who I am, what my goals are, but also who God is. There is a healthy way of questioning, and there is a cynical way of questioning, and I have been in both. God, what are you doing? What am I doing? Do you even care what I am doing? God has often seemed silent in the past few years, to the point where I have wondered if He is there, and that is very confusing, disappointing...
I think it is an important season of life to go through, and I think most of us have gone through it, or are going through it now. And I still maintain the sense that God is there, somewhere, but at times it seems like more than we can bear, and as I said earlier, there is only so much questioning we can take before it turns into a downward spiral. Which brings me back to the need for community, for people who can walk with us through our questions and not just feed us answers.
I will probably always be one who asks questions. I do hope to find answers as well, and believe I will, and have already. (at the very least, all the questions are producing some pretty good new songs)
As I have always said, it is better to ask questions, because when we stop asking, it means we have stopped caring.
Those who seek, will find.

Silence

To continue with the theme of Community, I'd like to share a song by one of my good friends, Matt Tyers, a very adept musician and brilliant lyricist. I don't think he will mind me sharing it. It not only makes me think of community, but also how our current culture can isolate us, though we may feel more "connected" via our machines, unfortunately facebook is not an adequate substitution for real interaction. The song is titled, "Silence."

He turns the key and turns the light
The door is from and to a world of silence
He hangs his coat and checks his phone
The couch, the clock, the microwave, and silence

We were made for more than this
We were made for song
But for all our noise the sonnet slips away
And eternal conversation fades to silence

A life apart from life himself
entropy and atrophy and silence
turning black the hands of time
turning left the world the right of silence

We were made for more than this
We were made for song
But for all our noise the sonnet slips away
And eternal conversation fades to silence

You can listen to the song on Matt's myspace; (and I would strongly encourage it)
www.myspace.com/matttyersmusic

Life on the Road

It comes as no surprise to many of those who have known me over these past several years, that I am a wanderer. Perhaps it partially a self chosen title, but it certainly has become something that people identify me as. The traveling troubador-selling all his possesions to live out of his car and play music across the country. The mountain man-always looking for the next best challenge, the hardest climb. The longest I have lived in one place in the past 3 years has been only a few months. And while I have heard from many folks that they are envious of my lifestyle, the things I do, and the places I see, something in all of it seems missing to me. And I believe I am beginning to discover what that is. It also comes as no surprise(at least to me) as I have talked about the importance of it for so long. Community.
Pursuing a career as a musician is a difficult path. I knew this when I set out in pursuit. But I didn't know why. It's true that it is hard to make enough money to support yourself, hard to find people who will pay for music in our culture. Hard to promote yourself day after day after day. But the hardest part, at least in my case, has been that life as a Singer/Songwriter is a very solitary one. Spending all day at home online finding venues, sending emails, writing(or trying to write) songs, recording, scheduling trips...
And while on those trips driving alone, seeing friends only for a few days at a time, I have realized that a life as a wanderer, if prolonged will leave you with no community-nothing to ground you. Many of the friends I have made in my wandering are very dear friends to me, but I must imagine that to them, I am a friend who is only around for a few days out of the year. It must be difficult to commit to such a person.
We were meant to live in community. It is the way God intended it. The struggle for me lies in my deep desire for such a community, but also a deep desire to pursue a career in music, which to some degree, requires traveling for extended periods of time. How do I balance both? How can I immerse myself in the music industry in order to further my career, a culture that drives me insane? How do I build community when I am constantly traveling? Is there a way to build a career in music and stay in the same place? These are the questions that are daily on my mind.
They can weigh heavily sometimes, and make me want to move to the mountains. Though I may be defeating the purpose there...community with other people can be hard to come by in the woods.