Sept blog 2

The last few weeks has been both challenging and rewarding...

As 'Three' we have been meeting up at least twice a week to play through songs and play about with ideas ect its been really cool building up this sound.

We led at xalt with 2 days planning, in which time we wrote and recorded 3 backing tracks, which is if you think about it, pretty darn fast.

The night of Xalt was deff a learning curve! It was the first time we had led at anything that big and the first time we had ever played using backing tracks, so of course it wasnt perfect, but the general sound coming from the band was a very full, whole sound, which is what we had been trying to achive.

Am now very excited about the prospect of us writing some new tunes and playing them around the town, there seems to be a real buzz about what we are doing at the mo.

Who knows what will happen next!!

(and thanks to laura who sung with us)

Sept so far

Right well, lots to say...

Aug was good.
Xalt at the end of it was interesting in parts and good in others!

now for the 'news'
At the end of Aug i went to wales, but we went via Manchester as i was appying for a charity called Innervation Trust as a drummer in a new schools rock band. Which would be based in Manchester, and so would be moving away. I decided not to tell anyone at this point as i had no idea what the outcome would be and i didnt wanna scare people! lol
The interview with Mark Pennells and Zarc Porter went very well, i did a little bit of drumming and a bit of an interview, which both were good.
For the following 2 weeks I was still keeping it quiet, you know, just in case, i really wasnt sure what the chances of me getting it was.

This morning i got a letter telling me i didnt get in.
Which at first was a bit annoying, as im sure you can imagine, but as the day went on i started to think about stuff and maybe this wasnt right for me, and am now quite excited as to what plans God and Colchester has in store for me now as this is where im staying...for now : )

Me Jason and Lee are just starting up a band, we have no idea what we are called, what we are playing and where we will play, but it really has a buzz of possibility to it, so i'm looking forward to seeing what happens there!
Plus i still seem to be getting asked to play in churches all across the town (insaine i know!) which is really rather cool and not something i should be taking for granted.

and finally, I really recommend checking out this band, One Eskimo.
I saw them support Faithless and they are simply fantastic.


so, sorry Colchester, you havent got rid of me yet....

August

So, where is the sun this year??

The end of July was Xalt, which could have been a come down after a massive BeXalted weekend followed by a week of Momentum, but it still had its spark, inculding us doing Shine Jesus Shine, twice!

Infact this Xalt was for me really cool, i was able to just be a bit more free with my playing, and not have to feel like i have to be anyone else behind the kit.
As a result i think it was prob the best drumming i had done in my life lol so thats gotta tell me something!

I turned 21!!! (dosnt feel any differnt haha)

Just to keep you updated, my ride cymbal is now a 22" A Custom, and it sounds awesome!

Xalt in 2 weeks!

July... Continued...

I'm not going to be able to write everything, but I'll give it a go...

After a big faff about with some drum shops, i finally have a new ride cymbal! its a 22" A custom ride, and its emmence haha i love it.

On the 13th,14th and 15th of July was BeXalted in the Arts Centre...

The Xalt band played on the Saturday night and it was a fantastic evening, for the first time, during the sound check, Kristian actually asked for more of me in the foldback!! haha!




It was a fantastic experience to finaly be playing in a venue where im not always being told im too loud, felt alot more able to just do what i wanted and not always be wonderin and I too loud?! so that was good.

Sunday morning we had church there aswell which was good, Jas played bass, hes getting better and better!





This week i have just got back from Momentum, where there was 4 thousand people packed into a warehouse praising God, always a great experience.

Once again after watching Paul Evans (the drummer) i am feeling very inspired and i seem to learn loads after watching him.


im guna stop there cause otherwise what i say wont make sense...

Drumming in the town centre on lion walk this sat afternoon, 1 - 3pm.
then at Elim from 4pm
Xalt starts at 8pm.
bak at Elim Sunday at 9am.

July so far.

man its been busy!

Was drumming last Sunday night at kingsland, went alright.
This morning was good, had full band back at elim, jason is gettin very good now on bass, drums and bass sounding very good together.
Time is limited now with working and doing stuff every night of the week to keep this updated but ill do my best : )
Got a practice for BeXalted on tues, then Friday night is the start of fun!

Xalt night on the Saturday should be good, new ride cymbal arriving this week, you should see the stand its going on! its huge!!

Having church in the arts centre on Sunday morning aswell which should be really good, if your not doing anything Sunday morning i invite you to come and be a part of it!!

will prob hav alot to say after bexalted lol

then its momentum

then Xalt.

24th 25th

Sunday morning saw the return of the drums to Elim!!! yay!!

After our 4 week period of having a 'stripped down' time of worship, last Sunday morning was back to being a little louder.
We had just drums bass and guitar, but we had such freedom during the worship, and it was awesome to see everyone just going for it, felt like we were back.
In the evening me jason and dad helped out joey, who was leading worship, at St Johns church, Jason was playing electric, for one of the first times in a 'proper' service, but the sounds he was creating were just amazing, really does go to show that it dosnt have to be complicated to be effective.

Monday night the Xalt band led at Kingsland for the final night of the Equipping the levites series, again there was an amazing freedom within the band, and in the 2nd set after the talk there was some unreal moments of ppl just shouting out and dancing and all sorts, an amazing energy was in the room ( i was knackered afterwards!! lol) but every member of the band was totally just lost in worship, in fact i think every1 is the room was. An amazing end to an amazing month....xalt on saturday : )

ps book for bexalted!!
www.bexalted.co.uk

Job!

I now have a job! lol which some ppl will be very suprised to hear, but yes its true, workin 8am till 4pm, mon to friday, so all is well in the world!

Monday was once again the levites thing, xalt band led worship which i think went quite well, hope so anyway!

looking forward to sunday, keith is playing his flugal at elim in the morning with kristian and then im drumming with Rob at Kingsland in the evening, so should be good!

now searching for a ride cymbal...i have my sights set on a Z custom 22" rock ride, but havent found any yet, everyone keep your eyes open! prob guna need another boom stand to go with it as it wouldnt hold up on my lil stand that ive got at the moment!

4th 5th June

Last Monday was the event hosted at Kingsland called Equipping the Levites
Which is basicly a worship training evening for anyone involved in worship, the is one every monday night all this month.
Me and Jason were asked to play, Rob Buckingham was leading.
It seems every time we play at Kingsland there is an incredible freedom during the worship, people were really just giving everything they have. Of course when you get a group of 50 people all involved in worship its gonna be quite special anyway.

One of the things i found most amazing was that there were quite a few drummers there, some from that church, and yet, there i was sitting on thier drum kit. Its something im not really sure even now ive got my head round lol
Its such a humbeling experience looking out and seeing other drummers out there watching you, inc some who i remember watching from when i was 6.
I wouldnt say im a great amazing drummer lol i just seem to have an understanding of what makes good worship music, and letting God flow through that, i guess in a way the talent side of it is not that important, there are several musicians i know who as far as talent goes....well, it dosnt go very far lol but they are so switched on with what Gods doing during a worship set and can feel where the song is going, that its just incredible to be able to work with them.

tuesday was a tad random, ended up going to Lincoln with some of the Kingsland bunch to watch a recording at the NewLife church, some dude called Godfrey!

There was about 200 people in this church and he basicly just said at the beggining, forget the mics, this is just an evening to worship God, i really liked that.
There was a full band on stage, they had clearly done thier homework as far as the songs went, and we hardly needed to repeat anything, however the best bits of the night for me was the inbetween bits of songs.
If he needed to tune up or have a drink or whatever, he would just signal to the keys player, and he would put in an epic pad sound, the elec guitarist had an ebow with him, and the percussionist would be almost knocking on the bongo, was an incredible sound,

then people would just start singing out, the whole idea of singing a new song to the Lord, well there was about 150 new songs written that night lol

I love that the best moments in worship are when we are hardly doing anything.

26th 27th

Xalt was good!!





so was Global Day Of Prayer, bit wet though

19th 20th May

Saturday the 19th was Worship Central day!
Me Jason and Adam drove up, and parked next to the church! haha. The day was very good, in the morning Al Gorden led worship which was good, in afternoon we attended talks in 'God in work' and 'The trintiy' both were interesting at times.
Then the evening was Tim Hughes leading with Mark Beswick, which was you can guess was very very good!
One of my fav drummers Paul Evans was playing, there was a short black fella on bass, he had cool writen all over him! But the thing that blow us away was the electric, now this is something that we have struggled with in our church recently, its not just being able to play electric, its having that worship understanding of your instrument, and of course this applys to everything.
There were moments when the strings off the keyboard were playing and the electric was almost singing along, was amazing. Then other moments when everything was really big and all you could hear was this incredible wall of sound off the electric.
Was interesting to see that acc guitars played a very small part of thier arrangments, once the electric was all in then it was pretty much just elec drums bass and keys, which made up the core of the band.

Sunday morning was a bit of a celebration, and for the first time in a long time the whole of our band felt very free in being able to 'go off on one' and in fact at the end of the service we just kept playing as people were being prayed for, and went into this amazing 15 mins of just improv stuff, which was just as powerful, if not more so, than the 'structured' songs.



Xalt next sat which i cant wait for!
and later today im back off to kingsland to do some more recording, in the words of our pastor Keith on sunday morning, "God is Good, ALL THE TIME!!"

The last 7 days

Well i guess the interesting part of the week would be Thursday night.
While playing football i started to feel faint and dizzy and so i sat down. 5 mins later i was throwing up, as you do, and then had to drive home from tiptree feeling like this. Amazingly i made it home (with a stop to throw up into my lap) and then Dad rushed me off to A & E. Everytime i would stand up i would faint, which isnt helpful when going to the toilet...believe me!
Ended up having to stay the night and spent most of Friday there aswell, not really being able to even sit up. But as the evening went on i seemed to perk up, thanks to visits from people and constant prayer from which i found out afterwards from about 200 people. Walked back into my house at 9:30pm on Friday, so was exactly 24 hours. The doctor said it was some kind of blood virus. My aim was to be able to play Sunday morning for our baptism service.

Saturday spent relaxing and drinking pure orange juice.

Then Sunday morning i was feeling fine and drummed at 9:30am at elim!
We had 5 people being baptised, including my friend Cat, which was really good to see, shes had quite a journey in the last 8 months! The place was packed which also was a really good thing to see.


Bank holiday Monday was good fun, me and Jason went round Kristians and did some recording of a song we had writen some time earlyer.
Its not finished yet but its sounding really really nice and am very pleased with it!

28th

This was an insaine weekend.

I arrived at elim at 8am to start setting for the day.
We had a worship training day with Kingsland church, and had about 50 or so people attend.

The day started with some worship
Then various talks and practicle workshops during the day about worship and worship leading etc.





The day finished at 4pm, then we started setting up for Xalt which started at 8pm!
It was just one of those special evenings really, hard to put into words on here.
A very blessed weekend : )



Thanks Jam-es!

23rd - 27th April

All of last week i was living in Southend with Collective!

My week from Monday to Friday involved getting up at about 6:30 and going into a school, doing assembilys, music and drama lessons.
all good fun.
Very knackering, got home on friday night and then to elim!

13th - 15th April

What amazing weather we have been having! whats the bet it wont last much longer! haha!

Friday i was off to kingsland to help Rob Buckingham with some songs they are recording, afew cheesey ones but the kids love it. Then we worked on one of his, and we had me on drums, Lee on bass, and Rob on guitar singing, all in this one little room, all at the same time! Was something i had never done before but it was really really good. They are both so switched on with worship music and what sounds good, it all seemed to come together very quickly.

The evening/night/morning of friday was insaine, so much happened that i cant type it on here lol ask me if u wanna know though, God turned up big style.



Sunday morning i was back on PA duty! yay! another little break from the drums, always handy. We had a good morning and it all sounded great!

Sunday evening me and Jason once again bombed down to Mersea to play in the Causeway band, some very good song selection. However the evening was more about raising money for two members of the church to go do missionary work in the summer, think there was about £200 raised that night, ontop of the £1,000 they already had, so they are doing well!
Maybe that just distracted peoples focus from wanting to then worship, im not sure, but its deff an odd feeling when you look out and theres 50 ppl looking back at you with thier arms crossed...

I guess its in those times you start thinking, well whats the point in me being here then??!
But actually thats just it! Even if there was NO-ONE there at all, it would still be worth us being there, because that worship time simply wasnt for them, they could have all gone home at that point if they wanted, it didnt matter. If people clearly dont want to be led in worship, dont lead them. But still play and sing with everything that you have, because he deserves nothing less.

31st March / 1st April

Well if it didnt feel like i was on tour last weekend, it did this weekend!

Saturday was our March Xalt day.
This was a fairly hectic day all in all, I arrived at Elim at about 3pm to do a bit of setting up, then left Elim at 4:20pm to drive to Bury St Edmunds to pick up my good friend Chesh, a very quick turn around and back to Elim for 6:02pm (pretty good i thought!)
Xalt itself was very good, we had about 80ish people there which gave it a good atmosphere.
Towards the end we did a Fire Tunnel, which are always special occasions, you can see the Holy Spirit resting on people as they walk through, so that was very cool.
Then after Xalt had chinese and then back to Bury! Home at about 1:30am!!

The next morning had the potential to be one of those 'the morning after' kind of mornings, and we were slightly down on numbers because of students being away, but it still was a very good morning.
Then after the service began to pack down the drum kit again, as we were due at St Johns at 4pm.

Dad cooked me lunch, that the afternoon to be abit more relaxing!

Arrived at St johns at 4pm, this was extra special for me because it was at St Johns that I started to pick up drums again, about 4/5 years ago, so i guess it felt abit like a home coming.
Was able to set up right in the middle of the stage, as the regular bands set up over on the far right hand side. So that was good.
The guys doing sound were so helpful, made setting up and practice go so much easyer.

The event started at 7pm, so of course in true church fashion, we started at 7:15pm!

We were so blessed to see that about 150 people had in fact turned up for this evening, just one of those wow moments for all of us i think.
The actual service went very very well, in fact the 1st set was proberbly the tightest and locked in with each other that we ever have been. (I was knackered after the second song!)
We had planned for a big finish with Happy Day, but God had other ideas, and we ended up just inprov for about 30 mins and God just moved through His people.
There was a fantastic moment at about 9pm where Bob said there will be tea and coffee at the back and the band are just gunna keep playing for a bit, and no-one moved...wow.
I know the whole band came away from that event just blown away and so so blessed by what had happened, a fantastic end to a manic 7 days.

25th March

What a weekend.

This morning i was determind not to let anything knock my focus on God, and i think i did that quite well! was rly able to 'go for it' again in the service, which was fab cause i just feel im back doing what im ment to be doing.

The evening we played at Plume Ave, awesome bunch of people, so welcoming.
The evening service i thought went really well, i loved playing with foldback wedges again instead of in-ears, just felt so much more free.

I felt able to put everything i had into it tonight, which is the first in a long time. God decided to meet with me through it. Always a great feeling.

My theory from the last blog proves correct, i was focusing on how i use the bass drum alot, its such a powerful tool, and you really can see its effect in front of you.

xalt and st johns event next week....

Worship Central

wow!!
its half 1 in the morning (as the clocks jus went forward lol)

Have been in London all day today at worship central which is hosted by HTB.

Sometimes i can get stuck in the same cycle off stuff within worship so its so nice to be able to go somewhere else and just get loads from it and learn and gain ideas, which is just what i did today!!
Not only was today just a general topup, which i needed, but i have also learnt loads about how we should be helping each other so much more than we do.

Interestin ideas that were used today:
At HTB they have an organ, and today, Tim hughes and his band led worship beautifuly using not only an organ but several stringed instruments, gives the worship such a fantasic feel.
I love the idea of using old methods of worship and mixing them with new ones. Wish we could do more of that really.

Paul Evans was drumming, love watching him, he makes worship drumming look so easy. (even though he started Happy Day with the drum beat of Beautiful One by accident!)
His drumming ability is good, but his knowlage of what makes a good worship drummer is outstanding.

Now here comes a bit of a BIG stantment!.....:

I think i have put my finger on what exactly it is that makes a worship drummer go from good, to very good. Worship drumming is in fact all about the builds, if you can build a song right, and get a driving feel to it that just makes people want to clap along or start stamping or whatever it is they do, thats where the most powerful moments are when drumming in worship.
And to do this best, its all about where you put in your bass drum, and at what pace you do this at, this is something i have been working on for a few months now, trying to get more options of how to use the bass drum better, and it really really works, its proberbly the most powerful part of the drum kit, its what stirs up peoples hearts. So, a bold statment, but i think worship drumming is all about the bass drum :)

9th 10th 11th

Another one of them crazy weekends!

Friday i spent the morning with Rob Buckingham (worship leader at Kingsland)
He had asked me to do some drum recording for their new worship album, always nice to be asked to be involved in other peoples projects, sort of felt a little bit of ownership towards it afterwards so ended up helping out on the Saturday aswell

On the Saturday they were recording the 'audience' parts. So that involved 30 ppl standing as close together as possible with mics all around them singing as loud as possible to a backing track, so quite good fun really, no i didnt do any singing.

The Sunday morning then rolled round, a good morning i felt, Jason was on electric so was good to be able to get some good sounds coming from that direction.
Then streight after the service i rushed off to the Charter Hall where kingsland had been hosting an event of which just over 1,000 people turned up, good to actually see the church of Colchester all in one place, dosnt happen very often.

Then in the evening i was asked to drum at Kingsland again haha they must have had enough of me by now! There was only about 40 people there but that was understandable considering the morning they all just had. Worship was very fast and uplifting, somtimes makes a nice change, all very light hearted and just wanting 2 praise God, so a good evening.

All in all a good weekend!

4th March. Crazy Days

Its very odd, how at the time when you feel least 'going for it' or not particually 'connected' with God, that is the time he will lift you up.

Im not really sure why, maybe it was the late night the day before, but sunday morning i wasnt really with it. But the morning went well and God was lifted up.
Then in the evening me and Jason bombed down to Mersea again to play in the Causeway band. Another nice evening as 2 young people were being baptised, so there was a fair number there aswell...
But again i just wasnt totally 100% going for it like i seem to find myself doing when i am sat behind the kit, but thanks to the grace of God he was still able to use me, even though i didnt rly feel useable.
A man came up to me at the end and we had a chat about drumming and music and worship etc etc which was really cool, what he was basicly saying was i should be in a 'proper' band aswell lol
I didnt rly understand what he ment untill i got home and i told Dad about this man, and turns out he used to play keys for quite a mainstream christian band that used to tour the world haha so that was quite cool.

Then when i got home i found myself with a myspace mesg from a girl i had never met, and she basicly wrote along the lines of, are you the drummer? you were amazing etc etc
which when you just read is like, yeh thats nice, but i had to step back and just realise how good my God is, at the time when i felt most disconnected, God clearly shone through me, and used the gift he has given me to lift his name. wow long blog, sorry bout that lol
cant wait for xalt now....

Feb Ends - March Begins

Last Saturday night we had our Febuarys Xalt evening. The was a fantastic turn out for the night where our guest speaker, Mark Pugh, gave a moving talk on being 100% for God.
Personally i had been having a rough week leading up to it but i found that the moment i sat down to my drum kit and started to play, everything else seemed to fade away and all that was important is lifting Gods name.

This weekend im drumming at Mersea on sunday night which im looking forward to, its a baptism service which are always special occasions.
And in the morning im back to drumming! wooo! as last week i was in wales and the week before was 'the sound guy' so im looking forward to making some noise for God all the way through the day!

We have very recently been asked to take Xalt to Plume Avenue at the end of this month, and then the week after we have Xalt, which im looking forward to more than ever.