On the Road...again

I'm sitting in the green room of our first Christmas show here in Louisville, KY.  We were picked up at 5:30 this morning in Nashville.  Early mornings are not fun, people.  Especially when...well, let me tell the story.

We had a great time over Thanksgiving...we went to Greenville and saw family, hung out with friends that we haven't seen in a while, etc.  It was great.  We were going to go to Seacoast on Sunday, but then figured out that with leaving at 5:30, we were going to have to pay for another day with dogs' kennel stay, so we decided to leave in time to pick them up last night.

We gave ourselves six and a half hours to get to Nashville, what is normally a five and a half hour drive.  Then, we lost an hour and a half on I-40.  It narrowed down to 1 lane for literally a quarter of a mile.  A quarter of a mile cost us an hour and a half.

Then traffic was pretty incredibly high volume.  That slowed us down.  All in all, it took us almost 8 hours to get home.  That kinda sucked.  We didn't go to Seacoast and we didn't get the dogs...lose-lose.

We stayed up washing all my clothes and getting the merch ready for the tour, etc. and finally got to bed about 11:30pm.  4:30 of sleep later it was up and to the buses downtown and off to Louisville, where I'm sitting now.

So...

The Christmas EP is out this week.  It'll only be at shows.  So, contact those members who are going to shows and have them pick one up for you!  It's the 4 songs that I let you hear the demos for earlier...all mixed and mastered!  They sound really good!  In fact, it's encouraged my label and management to be okay with me producing the next album.

Speaking of that...this year has been pretty remarkable for a new artist: January and the beginning of February were spent finishing the album.  Mid-February, I finished mixing the album 1 day and drove out with Jon Skaggs to start the promo/radio tour the next.  That lasted till April.  Then GMA week.  Then, more promo.  Then the first leg of the tour.  Then vacation.  Then touring, touring, touring!

This year will end with me playing 117 real shows.  On top of that I've made about 150 appearances on tv, radio, websites, interviews, etc.  That's the ones I can count.  I feel like there've been more that I just didn't keep track of.  I'm tired, to be honest.   But I think the NewSong Christmas tour is going to be pretty restful, even though we're playing almost every night!  At least I get to sleep on a bus every night instead of trying to lay down in a van!

Next year...well, next year is looking to be pretty crazy.

In January, I'll record the majority of the 2nd album.  What?!!!  I know I haven't even let you guys know about this yet!  I have 13 songs that we're going to record, plus the Requiem and there may be more later!  But we feel like we need to be ready to release in September of 2009 if we HAVE to, even though we probably won't release it till some time in early to mid 2010.  So, I'll be hitting the studio the first 2 weeks of January to track the songs.

Then the next 2 weeks, in between weekend shows, I'll be producing a band out of Colorado called Rough Draft.  We're gonna be doing an EP of 6 songs or so to try and help them get signed.  I'm excited...I really like their stuff and I think they have a great possibility to be great.

Then in February to the beginning of March I'll be hitting the road on a headlining tour with Meredith Andrews and possibly Phil Stacey (depending on his schedule with recording his new album and such).

Then in March I hit the road with Natalie Grant.  We're doing 35 or so shows through April and into May a little bit.  That'll be fun.  We're doing 1500-2500 seat places and I'll be going on right before Natalie every night, doing a 35 min set!  So, that'll be really fun!

Then in May, I'm working on a couple of bands with major labels...I'll be producing them hopefully around that time.  

In June throughout the summer, I'll be headlining the faith nights at about 35 minor and major league baseball parks before games.  I'll probably have an opener, though I'm not sure who that will be.  And that will be booked around festivals all summer long.

Then in Sept - Oct, I'll be hitting the Back to School tour again!  I'm excited about that.  This time, we have a lot more time to organize and we'll make it an actual tour with an opener or two and it should be really cool.

Somewhere in there, I'll be finishing recording the Christmas album, doing auditions for tv/film (we just signed with a new agent in NY) and producing as many acts as I can.

Next year is going to be busy, busy, busy.  

So, all that to say this: thanks so much for helping me have the year I've had.  It's been really great and you guys have had much to do with my success this year!