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Our band Levite played for my church’s 2010 kickoff, and Mrs. 22frets was snapping photos. There are more on her blog.

It was an absolute blast, and it felt good to kick things off with energy.  We played a medley of Hosanna and Here I Am To Worship, Breathe, Living Water, and closed out with By Faith.

As I said in my New Year’s post, I’m looking forward to doing a lot more with Levite this year, and I’m thankful that Rich (bass & keys), Fran (keys), Scott (drums), & Katy (vox) made it so easy to get things going.  Our amazing part singers also really brought it today; adding some beautiful harmonies on the tunes.

Now we’ve got to keep the momentum going!

Mike wasn’t there today (our other guitarist/vocalist/drummer/bassist/theguycandoanything), so we felt a little bit like Levite minus 1, but everyone did a great job filling in.

Knowing that the theme of the new year had to do with faith, we started working up one of my old original tunes called Not By Sight, but didn’t get it ready in time.  They announced the official theme today at the kickoff, and you’ll never guess what it is:

“Not By Sight.”

Looks like we’d better get busy on that one!

I don’t know about you, but when a new year comes along, I jump at the chance to re-examine my goals and re-focus my efforts.  Yep, I’m sentimental that way.  In terms of reaching my goals musically, 09 was a good year but not a great one.

The Good of 2009– I started this blog, joined Twitter and connected with a great community of guitarists, musicians, & craftsmen.  I bought the Taylor guitar of my dreams (or one of ‘em, anyway ).  I also hooked up with House of Echo and Amanda Joy, 2 fun projects I will be involved with for the foreseeable future.  I continued to play with the ever-exciting Joyful Noise band.

My Goals for 2010–

Reinvent my Tone: Late in 09, I decided to completely reinvent my guitar tone.  That led me to discover and buy a set of Slider’s Vintage Classics Pickups, which are blowing my mind (and my neighbor’s ears).  The blog entry is overdue on these pickups, I realize.  Sorry, Slider! I’ll continue to reinvent my tone in 2010, including (hopefully) assembling my own guitar and shopping for stompboxes.

Become a Student Again: My practice time has become all about learning the next set of tunes.  I need some fresh teaching.  I’m starting with Robben Ford.  I’ve been listening to him lately and his playing is fresh & inspired.

Have a Working Studio: One thing I started (but did not finish) in 09 was cleaning & setting up the studio so that I can record.  This is a top priority for 2010!  So is recording, both fingerstyle and electric.  My last release is dated 2003.  ‘Nuf said.

Give my Home Church Priority: I do a lot of fun music projects, but many of them are outside of my home church.  This year, I want to get into a rhythm (no pun intended) with our praise band Levite, and help make our worship services excellent.  I also want to include many other talented people in our performances this year, including my kids (at least 2/3 of which have strong musical ability).

Continue Working with Amanda Joy & House of Echo: Special things are happening here, and I’m fortunate to be part of this group of incredible musicians.  I’ll be blogging more about these projects in the new year.

With these goals, my family, job, and hockey it looks like I’m in for a pretty productive year.

Buckle up,  it’s 2010!  Happy New Year!

Friday night I got the opportunity to play guitar with the band House of EchO.  We played the Rock4Jesus Benefit Concert at Montrose Christian School to raise missions money for Guatemala.  What a blast!  David, De Juan, Paul, Teo, Thomas & Amanda are fantastic musicians and just great people to hang with.  They’ve won a John Lennon Songwriting Contest award, and earlier this year they won the DC/MD/VA Idol Competition.

The evening opened up with a student praise band and Hugo Quinonez and Friends salsa band.  Despite the rain and a brief power outage, there was a good turnout.

All this came about because my next-door neighbor Teo is their bassist, and has been trying to get me out to play with them for a while now.   So, thanks for your persistence, Teo!

Beth and the kids were there, and Beth has some photos of the concert on her blog zoo reflections.

P3T3RK3Y5 took some great photos of the concert (thanks, meltingearth!):

I didn’t know this was being taped, and forgot it existed until I found it yesterday…me playing Pete Huttlinger’s arrangement of Josie and Laurence Juber’s tune Cobalt Blue at my company picnic 2 years ago.

Wow, here’s a gem I just stumbled upon on YouTube:  Chet and Mark playing I’ll See You In My Dreams and Imagine in 1987.  A beautiful pairing.  Makes me glad Mark has a new album coming out.