Sadly, this is my last tour with the Joyful Noise! band for a while. With the success of my band CCB, and in order to simplify my life a little bit, I’ve decided not to return to the JN! group next year. It has been a blast, and I will miss these amazing people dearly! But we have one final tour to do and we’re heading to Tennessee. Even though we’re not going to make it to Nashville, I’m pretty excited about going to Tennessee since I’ve never been. I’ll be blogging about it right here, so stay tuned!
Posts under ‘Projects’
Joyful Noise! Tour 2011
Over $12K Raised for Compassion!
If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that I play in a band that backs Joyful Noise!, a Christian youth choir. Every year we do a concert (or two) to raise money for Compassion International and then we also tour for a week, taking offerings for the same cause. Joyful Noise! is an amazing group, and I’m excited to announce that at our concert this month we raised over $12,000! That’s a lot of 3rd world kids getting help. I’m amazed at the generosity of folks, especially in these tight times.
I’ll be blogging about the tour in June, too. We’re headed to Tennessee this year. So any of you readers from TN, stay tuned! I’ll post an agenda soon and maybe we will see you at a show!
Some Updates on the Blog
I haven’t been posting much here because I started playing with a new band, the Chris Collat Band right before Thanksgiving and things have been going incredibly well (you can read the crazy story about how I got into this band here). I’ll admit, it’s a big life adjustment for me, married with 3 kids and a full time job. But this opportunity came up and is going so well that I’m having the time of my life playing music again with some incredible musicians.
But rest assured, I haven’t abandoned this here blog, no sir! I’ll be blogging about the band, plus I stilll plan to share my DIY successes and failures, talk about guitars, bands, and stuff. As a matter of fact, I’m meeting more local musicians and will be writing about some of them in the coming days and weeks. There’s some really exciting things happening in the DC music scene right now and I’m thrilled to be part of it.
The Chris Collat Band
My neighbor Teo is a phenomenal bass player and a great friend. Sometimes he brings me in on projects he’s involved with, and I’m eager to do it because we’re musically compatible and he has an amazing ear for arrangement & production. Plus, his enthusiasm is incredibly contagious. So I jumped at it when Teo called me up the week before Thanksgiving & asked me to come to a rehearsal for the Chris Collat Band.
A little background: Even though Chris has been writing & playing solo & duet music in the area for years, he only started forming this band in the past couple of months.. starting with a trio with himself, Teo (bass), and Derrick (drums), then adding Aaro (keys). They entered the Original Music Battle of the Bands competition put on by Last Call Entertainment, SeeJoeRock.com, & Guinness at Auld Shebeen in Fairfax, VA. They won the first round. Mind you, this was up against some of the best bands in the DC area.
Working on an original musical production: Jerusalem Ascent
Last year, my church did a study series on the songs of ascent (Psalm 120-134) in the Bible, and as a result, I started putting these Psalms to music. Well that has kind of snowballed into a full-on musical production that we’ll be putting on in September. I’m arranging most of the music for it, with the playwright Ruben contributing, too. Here’s Ruben describing what the project is about:
Jerusalem Ascent – Promotional Video #1 from Nicholas Schroedl on Vimeo.
There will be more interviews and sneak peeks in the coming weeks. I’ll be sure to post them here, and you can also check out the website for the production: jerusalemascent.com