Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Happy Cinco de Mayo, everybody. I thought I'd celebrate with a brand new podcast.

This week's show features mewithoutYou, Bon Iver, and some guys who beat on a washing machine.



Listen to the podcast here!

Peace,

Joshua

JoshCast011

New podcast up.

I guess mypodcast.com reduced the amount of bitrate they allow to be saved on their site, so I had to reduce the sound quality a little to get it to fit. Luckily, with my new condenser mic, everything worked out okay.

You can download the newest edition of the podcast here.

Featuring:

Passion Pit

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Andrew Osenga

and much more!

Check it out!

Peace,

Joshua

Update

I'm out of town for the weekend in Kansas City (well, Liberty, technically), and it was brought to my attention that I haven't posted in a while.

With the craziness in all my classes, preparation for seminary, and an upcoming marriage, it's pretty safe to say I've been occupied with other things.

Anyway. I'm not going to take this time to catch you all up on everything that's happened in the last month or two, but I will give you these three things:

1) I finally got my new guitar. It's an Alvarez FF60WR folk-style cutaway acoustic-electric. It sounds AMAZING, and I'm so lucky to have it! I can finally plug in! And the best part is, even though it's a discontinued model, the list price was originally around $900, and I got it on ebay (plus a hard case, which runs around $100) for only $250. I can't wait to do some jamming!

2) Andrew Osenga's EPs, "Letters to the Editor, Vol.'s 1 and 2." I've been obsessed with this guy for a couple months now. His basic mixing and layering of vocals with guitar melodies is astounding, and I love his lyrical content. I highly encourage you to download both EPs for free (and completely legally!) at his website. They make excellent road trip music. Let yourself be challenged by his message.

Check out "Swing Wide the Glimmering Gates" below:



3) Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, KS. The home of the CREATE program, and my hopeful choice for my Master's degree in Divinity. I went in for admissions interviews on Friday, hence my staying in Liberty with Tyler and Jess this weekend.

Peace,

Joshua

A Moral Conundrum

Oh man. Is it really down to either LOST or the Simpsons?

Come on!

Holy Week and Stuff

I don't really know how many people read this blog (I don't know how many views I get on a regular basis--probably not many, but some comments sure would be nice, just to know people are reading. Hint hint), so I'm not really sure how religious you folks are.

I'm taking a week off of facebook to disconnect myself a little, to try to clear my head and think and pray a little bit. It's Holy Week, the most sacred time of the year on the Christian calendar, which remembers the last week Jesus was alive in Jerusalem before the Romans executed him as a revolutionary. So I'm taking some time to myself to meditate on what it means to follow the heart of Christ. I think that the crux (no pun intended) of Jesus's message is that if you believe in something strongly enough, and you're willing to fight for it--nonviolently--you have to be prepared for the consequences. That's a lot of theology packed into a tight paragraph, but it's all I'm really willing to go for tonight. Please don't think I'm a crazy religious fanatic. By the way, on a obliquely similar but completely different subject: if you're interested in reading a paper I just wrote on Luke's beatitudes ("Blessed are you who..."), you can check it out at my more politically/religiously charged blog here. Let me know what you think.

Anyway. Here's my new obsession, which I mentioned a few weeks ago.

t's really similar to a monome, but a couple hundred dollars cheaper. In this video, the program being run is very similar to an iPhone app I saw Matt use once, but I'm hoping (once I acquire one) to move on to some more difficult programming. I feel like I'm on the verge of having everything I need (want) to make the kind of music I'm looking for. It just might take me a while to get there, what with me getting married and all. :) It looks like I won't be playing much music for a while pretty soon.

My posts here might increase slightly in the next week, since I won't be on facebook. Be sure to check in on me periodically.

Peace,

Joshua

Jam Session

So...

I had an awesome jam session with my new friend Daniel Atwood and his friend Nathan last night. We played well into the wee hours o' the morning, but it was totally worth it. Here's a snippet of the almost two hours of recording time I caught with the mics (the acoustics in the room aren't so great, but not bad, considering we were using my little CAD condenser mic and a little pencil mic):


Also, Alyssa got me a neat little tea pot yesterday from a local thrift/antique/hipster shop while I was at work. I'll post pictures sometime soon.

Also, I'm reading this book now:



It's incredibly awesome, and I would love to find someone else who's read it and have a conversation with them about it. I'm not entirely sure why it kicked up as much controversy as it did, unless--like most controversies--the people who protested the release of both the book and the movie had neither seen nor read either of them.









Also, I just received word today that one of my poems is being published by this literary journal.


I also get a chance to record myself reading the poem (It's called "My Family Names Their Clocks and I Don't Know Why") for the literary journal's Illinois public radio program for NPR. So that's cool.





Also, I recently won the Sigma Tau Delta writing competition, and will receive some a little money and publication in our school's student lit mag. That's cool, too.

Hope this finds you all well. In the meantime, don't let things like this get you down.

I'm doing my best to not let it affect me.

Peace,

Joshua

New Guitar

Well, I did it.

I bought my first guitar.

Well, technically it's my second. I got my first guitar, a Takamine G-Series Dreadnought, for my 18th birthday from my family, and it sat unused for the better part of a year and a half before I picked it up to start learning.
I've been playing for about three years or so now, and finally thought it was time to move on.

I love my Takamine, and it will forever be my first guitar--the one I learned to play on, the one I used to lead music at camp and at worship services. But it's not quite adequate for the type of music I want to play now.

I ended up paying $260 for an Alvarez FF60WR on ebay. It comes with a hard case. It looks like a fantastic guitar, and--the most important part--it's an electric acoustic. For years I've struggled with not being able to plug my little dreadnought in, and the FF60WR comes with a System 600 MKII preamp and EQ. I don't think the FF60WR is made anymore, but the list price used to be around $700 or $800, if I remember right. Plus, the guy I bought it from threw in a hard case, as well. I think I got a pretty sweet deal, but we shall see.

Here's a weird, sideways Bob Dylan-ish demonstration.