I’m going to ask you to spend another two dollars today.  You know why?  Well, first because it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want on it, and second, I want you to hear my friend Michael’s new song and also my friend Phil’s new song.

Pocket Full Of Rocks released their new song “Alive” today to iTunes and it’s absolutely worth picking up.  I’ve known Michael for a while now.  Him and his wife live down really close to us, but in ‘Nashville language’ that means that we have to schedule time to get together three months out and even then it’s hard to get together.  There’s a rumor that we might be getting lunch one of these days, but I’m not sure when…. Sorry… long rambling story about how I wish we could hang out more.  Anyway…. go now and first check out Pocket Full Of Rocks’ “Alive”.  Then come back here for your next mission.

You back?

Okay, next up is a Mr. Phil Wickham.  Phil’s new single “Safe” featuring Bart Millard from MercyMe is also available on iTunes today for the low (though fairly standard) price of 99 Cents.  You see how I did that?  I made it seem like a reasonable price by saying “for the low price of”… Clever marketing right there folks.  Seriously though.  If you haven’t heard Phil’s song “Safe” yet, you’re missing out.  Seriously.  There’s something missing from your life.  And that something only costs 99 cents.  Can’t beat that can you?

Go now.

So let’s recap your mission at iTunes today shall we?  First up, we’re going to get Shane&Shane’s “Everything Is Different”.  Then we’re heading over to get Pocket Full Of Rocks’ “Alive”, and finally we’re grabbing Phil Wickham’s “Safe”.  All in all I think it will set you back exactly $11.97.  Not bad for 17 songs eh?  Go now and you can come back and thank me later.

My friends in The Myriad sent me over this little video and I’d love to know your thoughts.

Steven, their guitar player mentioned that they did a video specifically addressing the issues of factory farming and that surprisingly its been a little controversial among Christians.  I’m curious what the crowd here thinks.

And while we’re here talking about The Myriad boys, they are out on tour right now with another guy you need to check out named Tyrone Wells.  Tyrone used to be in band called Sypark, but his solo stuff is ridiculous.  Check out their dates and see if they are coming close to you…. and then you must go and tell them hey for me.

So back to the original point of this post.  Factory farming and cruelty to animals?  Controversial or a no-brainer?

Ready?  Go.

I’m not normally one to preach on here.  Mostly because there’s plenty of other people out there that will say things far more thought provoking than I would, and on the flip side of that, I don’t think so highly of myself that I need to make this blog any sort of authority in your life.  That being said, there is one thing I have wanted to mention for a while now, and ironically haven’t had the time to sit down and hash it out.

Growing up I never really noticed it, but the older I get the more I realize that people are quite honestly too busy to care.  To care about people, to care about community, to care about anything but what they are doing causing them to be busy.  Whether it’s a job, a charity, a project, or something as simple as living day to day.  And to be honest with you, I fall in to that too.  I get too busy to care about other people.  Sometimes I even notice myself getting too busy to even really take the time to focus on my family.  And that’s crappy.

Dad’s, are you too busy working or advancing your career that you forget to spend time with your kids? Church’s, are you too busy making sure your Sunday runs smooth that you forget to connect with the people walking in the door?  Mom’s, too busy checking off your ‘to-do’ list to make sure that you’re spending time enjoying your family?  Friends, are you only interested in hanging out if there’s some project to accomplish?

This is something that Kristin and I have talked about a lot over the past few months, and I’ve sort of just been chewing on it for a long time.  When Kristin and I first got married we would have people over all the time to just hang out.  Nothing else.  There was no purpose, no objective, no projects that needed to be done.  We just enjoyed hanging out.  A community.  Now the older we’ve gotten, the busier we’ve gotten and quite honestly, since we have moved from California, we’ve noticed that people just don’t seem to want to hang out if there isn’t something to accomplish.  It seems like if there isn’t a reason to ‘hang out’, no objective, no one is interested.  Is it like this with everyone?  Is this how adults operate?  Something we’ve just got to get used to?  A southern thing?  Or it’s possible I’m just crazy.

What do you think?

It’s been a crazy couple weeks in the life of Brody Harper that’s for sure.  With everything that happened with Billy and dealing with all of that last week, to having a week “off” and an amazing anniversary date, to waking up this morning to a flurry of text messages from concerning the tragedy last night involving MercyMe’s bus it’s been a lot to keep up with.

Again, I’m not really ‘allowed’ to say too much about details, and quite honestly there’s not a lot more that I know that isn’t all over the internet by now anyway.  What I do know is that the guys are pretty shaken up emotionally and are very concerned for the families of those involved.  It’s another sad situation and I hope that there’s some resolve for everyone connected to it.

Thanks for your prayers and support to the guys.

So last week we took our last ‘mini vacation’ of the Summer and drove out to Pigeon Forge to meet up with Daniel Renstrom and his family. Their family was having a yearly family reunion and we were invited to crash it for the weekend so we made the drive out to East Tennessee for a couple days.  Daniel and Danielle have quickly become some of our favorite people in the world and we’re slowly working on getting them to move to Nashville, and their extended family that we met out there were equally as awesome.  All thirty something of them.

The first night we got there around dinner time and had dinner with everyone, then we went and tried out a little mini-golf.  Kristin had been trash talking all day about how good she was at mini-golf so we challenged her to prove it.  Daniel and I ended up tying with the best scores, which happened to be a way better score than Kristin had, but in her defense there were kids running around like mad the whole night.

The next day we packed up early and went to Dollywood and the water park that is connected.  Kristin took Blue on some of the bigger kid water slides and I stayed with the little ones the the more age appropriate stuff, then when we went over to the ‘theme park side’ I took Blue on his first roller coaster ever.  Which is absolutely one of the funniest videos I have ever seen.  We were there for the day, but then I had to make it back to Nashville for bus call.

All in all another great little getaway and I’m glad we took the time to do it.  Thanks to Daniel and Danielle and the rest of the family for including us.  We had a great time.

Oh, and by the way.  Daniel has a new Christmas record that you all will buy this October when it comes out, so just a heads up on that.  A-Mazing.

My friend Chris needs your votes.  Okay, well he may not need them, but let’s say he would greatly appreciate them.  See, Chris designed this t-shirt and over at RedIsWhite.com and you have the opportunity to vote on it’s success.  Now, if Chris’ design wins, RedIsWhite.com will print the shirt and sell it on their store.  Not a bag deal eh?  All it takes is logging in and clicking the ‘5′.

There’s also some pretty cool shirts over there if you decide to browse around.  So head over there and check it out.

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I tagged along today to Fee’s photo shoot for their next record.  Obviously these are ‘behind the scenes’ photos of the photo shoot, which I’m glad Josh didn’t get mad at me for taking.  We spent most of the day outside of downtown Nashville in some rundown areas, and under the freeway.  You know, where bands normally hang out when they are getting their pictures taken.  We had a great time hanging out and trying to not step on any nails and I think the pictures are going to look great.

That’s all for now.  I’m tired and Kristin and I have an Office to watch.

I’ve known Randy since we were seven.  We were on the same little league baseball team together.  We went to Jr. High and HIgh School together, graduated together and now we work together.  Today he turns thirty, and that completely weirds me out.  Thirty?  Really?  What the heck happened?

We’ve got a ton of stories over the past twenty-three years.  Some that we can look back and laugh at and some that we would never tell our kids to avoid the risk of them acting like us, and I’m sure there are plenty more to come.  

Randy’s been in Tennessee for about six months now, we’ve had a pretty cool time living in the same city again, and one thing’s for sure.  SkörInc wouldn’t be what it is today without him working way too many hours making things work right.  Today he’s taking the day off work, and see what this whole new decade of life is all about. 

So, head over to Randy’s blog and wish him a ‘happy thirty’.  And for those that have already crossed the ‘thirty’ line, I’m curious, did you notice anything change?

Happy Birthday Randy.

So, tonight I’m headed to downtown Nashville to watch these guys sing some songs.  I only know one of them personally, but I’m pretty excited to hear their stuff.  I met Luke when he sang at our church one time when I was playing.  Does that mean that I played guitar for him once?  

Okay, new description… I played guitar for Luke one time and we hit it off talking about business ideas and marketing things.  Now we are friends.  How’s that sound?  Better?

Anyway, that’s the plan for tonight.  I even heard that Chad is going to be there.  Also, rumor has it there might even be a live broadcast of sorts from the show, but I will keep you posted with the details on that.

Other than that, it’s Monday and I’m slammed.  Hence the brief post.  What’s your plan for today?

I knew I liked Daniel when I talked to him on the phone the first time.  For whatever reason we ended up sort of just ‘hitting it off’ and have been friends for almost two years now I think.  Well, this week Daniel and his wife came in to town for the Andrew Peterson, ‘Behold The Lamb of God’ show at the Ryman and were brave enough to stay with us at our house for a couple days.

Daniel and his wife came in Thursday evening and we grabbed some dinner with them, some friends of theirs, my parents, and Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.  Okay, well we didn’t actually have dinner with Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, but they were at the table next to us and most likely wish that they were at our table because it was clearly cooler.  After dinner we were blown away by Andrew Peterson and friends and their Christmas extravaganza.  Kristin reminded me that this may not have been the forth year that we have gone, and it might be the third since we have only lived here three years, but I’m still convinced that I’ve seen it four times.

Yesterday was a pretty chill day.  We all hung out at our house for the first half of the day giving kids naps and really getting to know each other.  Daniel and I had only met in person, one other time and our wives had never met, so it was cool to get to know them better.  We officially like them now, and have made it our mission to get them to move here from Raleigh.  After naps and all we went into downtown Franklin and met up with Randy for dinner and dessert and some walking around.  The weather was nice enough to warm up for us and our walking so nobody froze to death, and then we just came back to our house for tea and more talking.

Here’s the thing about people that you first meet and you end up spending most of the time talking.  In my experience, some of the best friends that we have are people that we can sit and talk with for hours.  There aren’t many people that we do that with but for some reason Daniel and his wife fell into that category over the last couple days.  Hopefully they had fun and didn’t leave today thinking we are weirdos or anything like that.  Oh yeah, and if you haven’t heard me talk about Daniel here on the blog yet, you must be new and you must buy his record.  Seriously.  Go now.  Buy it.  Buy lots and give them to people you like.

So that’s the update from here.  Hope everyone is ready for Christmas.  We’ve got some crazy news from the SkörInc camp that I am really excited about, but I will save that for another post.  Enjoy your weekend.