Gbotts.com

One step at a time…

Wow! What a great few weeks! I’ll have to get a more detailed report out later… But for now… I had a fantastic time with family in Illinois, and now I’m in Virginia having a fantastic time with friends!

Also, to let you know, it looks like Wandering will be playing next month on the 20th. More details to come… But probably not on this site. You see… By next week, I hope to have a website for Wandering all set up and ready to go! I’ll get the link to you guys as soon as I’ve got it… It’ll be good!

For now…

One step at a time…

The concert this past weekend was awesome. High fives and congrats to Jerry Erickson, Caleb Brown and company, and my fellow Wandering band-mates! It went really well, there was great food, and I got an awesome sunburn to prove it all.

Working a lot this week, and looking forward to next week. We’ll be heading down to Decatur, IL on Sunday to visit my grandparents. I’m looking forward to seeing them and my cousins again. I may decide to leave my computer at home, so I might not get a blog post in next Wednesday.

One step at a time.

Christmas concert is comin’ up! Looks like December 18th at 7pm, held at Mildred Bible Chapel (a few miles north of Pine River on 371), and a date yet to be determined (I will update once I know), held at Crossroads Music Cafe in Brainerd. (EDIT: December 19th is confirmed at Crossroads Music Cafe!)

Traditional Christmas songs… Contemporary music. Come on out for an excellent night of music in anticipation of Christmas!

I hope you guys can make it… The music is really coming together.

And remember… While we’re all busy during this season getting ready for Christmas and with all the other things we do… Let’s stop and take a minute to remember why we’re here… Because our God came down to earth, was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died the death of a rebellious criminal (a punishment meant for us), and then rose again three days later. And remember that He will soon return as the conquering King and reign over all the earth! Praise God!

And there you have it.

It was indeed a sad night Monday.

Alas, my guitar (the acoustic borrowed from Dan) has taken ill. ‘Though in appearance, everything seems to be in order… It no longer can send the sound of my fingers playing upon the fine strings to that which I am plugged into.

Did I not love it enough? Was my playing, perhaps, too little (or too hard)? Oh, the deep sadness which wells up within me when I consider that…

…Oh, forget that.

Anyways, my guitar is giving me problems. For some reason or another, it no longer sends sound to the sound board, just a buzz. I’m not really sure what I can do about it, either. I checked a few things, and I’ve decided that the most likely problem is the pre-amp. I’m not sure if that’s repairable, but we’ll see. Definitely sad, because I don’t have a backup acoustic. I was able to borrow another guy’s guitar to play at Junction last night… But I won’t be able to do that for anywhere else. All I can do there is set up a mic in front of the guitar. I’m gonna take it in and have someone look it over to tell me what can be done and how much it’ll cost. Until then, no plugging in the guitar for me…

So… anyone want to buy me a Taylor T5 to replace it?

And there you have it.

It seems that I’m finally getting over this cold… Huzzah! Definitely feeling better this week.

Also this week… Redneck engineering at its finest! I don’t have any pictures at this point, but I’ll update this post when I have a chance to get some (read: when it stops raining… which it hasn’t all this week). My dad and I put together a wood shelter out of pallets, pine board scraps, and two sections of a tall, straight tree. There’s no roof, yet (that’s going to be some tin we’re getting from our neighbor), but it’s rather impressive looking. It’s even (mostly) stable! And none of the materials cost a cent (except for maybe the pine board scraps… I’m not sure if those cost anything or not…).

And, in other news, Wandering has finally resumed practice sessions after a long break. After the last concert, we had trouble getting back together due to conflicting schedules and sickness, but now we’re back. There’s a few things we’re looking at doing pretty soon. First, we want to make sure we’re at our best on all our songs by practicing regularly. Second, we’re starting to prepare for this year’s Christmas concert! That’s right, the concert that started it all is returning to central Minnesota! And finally, we’re looking into doing a joint concert with Caleb Brown, a worship leader in the area. He’s got some great songs, and a passion for worship, so we want to do some music together. There will be more details on these concerts coming later… But the Christmas concert will probably be around mid-December, and the joint concert will either be late November or sometime in January. Not sure on that yet…

Oh, and one more thing… Last Tuesday night at Junction, I had my first experience playing lead guitar! It was great, and definitely a stretch for me, as I’ve never played that style in that kind of setting before. I enjoyed it, though!

And there you have it.

I give you…

Music!

Out of Thorns – For those of you with my CD… this song will be familiar… It’ll just sound a bit different.

That’s Whatchya Need – I think this is one of our favorite songs. This version came out fairly well.

I apologize for the low quality – it’s what we had to work with. If we can claen it up, I’ll repost them (I might even post a third song as well, who knows?) If someone out there wants to take it, clean it up, and give it a nice professional shine, feel free… Send me a copy when you’re done and it’ll go up.

And there you have it.

P.S. – I’ve been a little under the weather all week (or, rather, for the past three…), which is why my posting has been sparse. It’s not enough to knock me out completely, but it’s enough that I don’t really feel like doing much.