what a month. God has done some amazing things in people lives, and i’m glad i got to be a part of the journey.
close to a thousand people have been participating in some way, and many of them have been listening the 30 Days of Praise album. that is a humbling and exciting thing. i am grateful that God gave me the project to work on and the people and music and lyrics and energy and joy to do it.

last night we capped off the month with a night of praise. it was amazing, the passion and energy in the room was greater than i have ever seen at our church. praise God from whom all blessings flow.
here was the setlist:

intro/doxology
great is the Lord
let God arise
glory to God
all creatures
king of wonders
every generation/never ends
this is our God/amazing grace
i will rise
happy day
hallelujah again
teaching from Psalm 150
Psalm 151 activity
from the inside out/glory to God
the stand
hope is in You
doxology

and i got to hit the cymbals as hard as i could two times. (which makes for a happy evening for me)
great night.
great God.

thank you, Green Valley Church, for giving me the opportunity to write songs and worship with you.

Join me in committing to praise God for 30 days. Head over to 30daysofpraise.blogspot.com for resources like music, devotionals, and sermons. It all starts on January 1st, but check out the link now to get involved today!

The album is still in the works, but should be all done, mixed, mastered, and available for download at www.davidtoneymusic.com in a few days.

thanks!

you will want to get this one.
a bit haunting. a bit awesome.

my three favourites are:
track 2: swirling strings, belling rhodes, sweepingly-large piano, marchingly-building snare, and lots of “joy”
track 8: derek webb and some other guy offer a duet with constant harmony, amazing lyrics, and a bright, reverby something in the background.
track 10: i love dynamics. a 7 minute song that does nothing but build. but that can get old at some point; unless you create a track like this. vibratoey melodies and orchestral moments build with separately panned snare rolls into an enormous chorus of hallelujahs. unbelievable.

check it out. it’s fantastic:
http://www.greatcomfortrecords.com/music.php?releaseID=2

last year, the great addition to our holiday listening was Hotel Cafe’s Winter Songs. a collection of female singer/songwriters with phenomenal voices and unique arrangements. our friend (and by friend i mean we’ve talked to her a couple times) Sara Bareilles, sings on the amazing opening track.
It’s not a perfect album (i usually skip one or two). but overall, it’s amazing. check it out: http://www.hotelcafe.com/wintersongs

red and green are finally an acceptable color pair. terrible sweaters get to come out of the drawer. there’s sugary special drinks and claymation and family you don’t want to see and family you do want to see and bad movies with arnold schwarzenegger and great movies with peter billingsley and fireplaces or fake fireplaces and heaters and music. lots of music.
it’s hard to weed through the massive amounts of remakes and random singles, but each year, i seem to find one new album that blows me away and defines that december for me.

in 2006, sufjan stevens came out with his 5-disc christmas compilation. apparently, he stole my family’s idea of making a christmas cd for friends each year. but then he made his better. he put 5 of them together for this folky/lo-fi/brilliant/fun release.

highlights:
\\since it’s christmas let’s be glad: banjo. beautifully off harmonies, sleigh bells, “since it’s christmas let’s be glad/even if the year’s been bad/there are presents to be had/a promotion for your dad/don’t be angry don’t be sad” one of the few times that glaringly obvious rhyme works wonders.
\\put the lights on the tree: the “hit” of the compilation. there’s a video here __. rhodes. syncopated rhythms and a slew of wind instruments. “call your grandma on the phone/if she’s living all alone/tell her Jesus Christ is here/tell her there is none to fear” we sang it with our choir las year in church. it was great.
\\come on! let’s boogey to the elf dance!: “k-mart is closed/so is the bakery/everyone’s home/watching tv/santa claus is coming/hear the banjo strumming” pulsing/building piano. banjo strums. on this one the lyrics are the focus. making you laugh and smile the whole way through.
\\the little drummer boy: my favourite thing to do to standard christmas songs is jack up the chords underneath the melody. and sufjan does it to perfection here. what once was F C F is now F Am Eb F.
\\sister winter: the best original of the bunch. a well written and constructed song with swooping strings and build in the middle that exlodes into [Ab Eb Fm Bb repeat many times with the look of Christmas Joy on your face] (that’s from the chord book that comes with the cds)

so there’s one highlight from each disc.
grab the album on itunes or at the record label’s website: http://asthmatickitty.com/songs-for-christmas
it’s fantastic

we’re on the edge of winter: getting our tree. stirring the apple cider and the holiday nog. listening to xylophony music. getting stuck in mall traffic.
and it’s finally fall.

in southern california, we get cheated out of fall. i guess we are spoiled with sun, so cold and rain are special to us. we nostalgiaize falling leaves and colourful trees and sweater weather because here, that happens one and a half days each autumn. and it happened last week. it was nice.

i like my family.






thanks to the Youngrens for the amazing photos.

every year, our family makes a four song christmas cd with all the bells and whistles and shakers and toy pianos and xylophones and stuff.

this year, we included a choir of fa la la’s from the family room.

how do you rank your top ten artists of all time? i mean, in jr. high, all i wanted to listen to was MxPx, and Supertones. then in high school i moved to Five Iron Frenzy and Ghoti Hook. a kid being thrown into whatever my friends listened to (although i still hold that Ghoti Hook is awesome). and then, a great day, as i discovered classic rock: Boston, Kansas, Styx. liquid gold flowing from the guitars and vocals of the classics. but, senior year of high school, one band changed everything. layers and layers of guitars, dynamic drums, effects effecting effects, powerful falsetto vocals, and a sound that was intentionally raw with sounds i didn’t know existed.
Radiohead (the Bends, OK Computer and Kid A (at that time)) really began my love for great, artistic, original, interesting music. they made me realize that songs weren’t just a composition of chord progressions and melodies, but a moment of art where all parts are working together to create atmosphere, mood, and emotion. the next big thing for me was Jeff Buckley. gut-wrenchingly emotive vocals and amazing guitar work influenced by music all over the world. the third part of the puzzle was discovering Sigur Ros. before them, i didn’t understand dynamics. they can spend 4 minutes building and you think they can’t get any bigger; but, then they spend another 4 minutes building. seeing them live in an opera house was what solidified my desire to make music my whole life. the final influence of this four-part flow in my life was Sufjan Stevens. he brought the banjo, folkyness, multi-instrumentation, and 1-minor5-4-1 chord progression.
SO: Radiohead–Jeff Buckley–Sigur Ros–Sufjan Stevens. there were hundreds of other bands in that process, but these four set the stage for where i am at now.
with that, here are my top ten albums of all time:

1. In Rainbows | Radiohead
1. Grace | Jeff Buckley
2. Kid A | Radiohead
3. Takk | Sigur Ros
4. Illinoise | Sufjan Stevens
5. The Bends | Radiohead
6. Control | Pedro the Lion
7. OK Computer | Radiohead
8. In Reverie | Saves the Day
9. Clarity | Jimmy Eat World
10. Love is Hell and Gold | Ryan Adams
11. Abbey Road | The Beatles