the first time i came down here for GMA Week, i dared to stray off of the beaten path of broadway, commerce and 2nd… rather than staying close to hotel and visiting the close showcases, i remember choosing to head off to a somewhat distant venue on foot late at night… i remember this distinctly because i remember walking back to my hotel somewhere in the one o’clock hour and encountering the kinds of characters that your parents warn you about…

i wasn’t necessarily concerned for my own safety or anything like that, but i felt a tug on my heartstrings as i considered the irony of a city that revels in being the center of the Christian music industry, which is home to many great artists who do many great things to help people from many lands through partnerships with many great organizations, seemingly ignoring the many great needs and people in need living in its own backyard…

today, i was privy to another glimpse of this as i ate my McDonalds value meal, watching CNN news broadcast from the television on the wall, apparently marking this as a somewhat upscale McDonalads and noticed no less than three homeless people enjoying the warmth and sharing soda refills from a Happy Meal cup that they had picked out of the trash…

i’m just not sure what to do with this, right now… but it’s weighing on me…

peace… love… bdg…

well, i did a lot of waiting for lift off actually as the plane sat on the runway for a good half hour or so and eventually ended up landing a good 45 minutes later than planned… fortunately evertything went pretty smoothly otherwise and, after a twenty five dollar cab fare, i made it over to my hotel in time to drop off my bags and catch a church service at a local building of worship type persuasion…

i’m not going to name the church, because it’s not really important, but i will say that it took me at least five minutes to find a door to enter and the door that i found ended up leading me around the backstage area of the church until i found my way around to the back of the sanctuary… not the best first impression and the odd looks i got from the ushers passing out bulletins didn’t help at all…

Anyway, it was a reminder of how i’m sure we can all be better at treating visitors to our church…

After church, my room still wasn’t ready, so i headed to the closest, cheapest place i could find to eat that was not White Castle (see previous not to self)… that’s right, Micky D’s… i’ll revisit that experience in another entry, but right now, as i sit here on the hearth of the hotel lobby fireplace (not very comfy, mind you) it seems as if the manager may have a room ready for me… too bad all the good napping hours have passed…

peace… love… bdg…

Note to Self

Self, resist the temptation… despite what Harold, Kumar, The Beastie Boys, or anyone else tell you… do NOT give in an visit White Castle… it’s clearly not real food and no good can come of eating it… whatever it takes, stay away… that is all for now…

peace… love… bdg…

Sunday morning and i’m on my way… we made it to the airport without too many hitches despite the dark and the rain and i wouldn’t exactly say that i breezed through all the checkpoints, but they moved along as best as could be imagined… now i have about twenty minutes or so before boarding and i’ve got some “cheap” coffee and a light and fluffy crossaint minus the light and fluffy… not much to say just yet, but it’s pretty hot, i’m tired and i probably couldn’t articulate anything too well anyway… i think i might sleep on the plane…

well, off to enjoy my breakfast…

peace… love… bdg…

so today is already a blur… but here’s what’s mixed into the scenery… RED went well i suppose, it’s tough to know what to ask sometimes when there’s no new album or anything coming up, especially that early… Anyway, Casting Crowns were rather nice, we talked about their trip to North Korea and more, Flatfoot56 are tall, and the Monk & Neagle mini-showcase was really nice… i had to truck up to the 18th floor on the other side of the building, but they played three songs for a rather small gathering of us media folk which was pretty cool… not sure how i got included in that, but i enjoyed it…

then, back downstairs for Leeland, Jars and Wavorly, which is a new group that was pretty fun to chat with… clearly everyone was pretty tired and some of the interviews ended up being a lot shorter than i expected or hoped… bummer, but such is life i suppose…

i swept through the booths after finishing up with Wavorly and met up with one of my co-workers from ABS to see how the week had been going for them… They’ve been shooting video footage of artists for shareyourstorynow.org and it was good to hear that things had been going pretty well… if all continues to go this well, there may be some changes made in my job description and whatnot… never know what God’s doing…

after that - and a quick bit of scavenging the press room - i made the decision to drop a bunch of stuff off at the room before heading down to the Word sponsored fondue event which may or may not have been called, “What Would Jesus Fondue?”… that was kind of a mess, in every sense of the word… fondue in and of itself can be messy, but if you add a lot of motion to it, then it just gets worse and worse… if my memory serves me correctly (and Plumb will agree that it is trustworthy), this is the order of artists that i visited with… Salvador, Plumb, BarlowGirl, Jackson Waters, mikeschair, NeedToBreathe, Point of Grace, Pocket Full of Rocks, Mark Roach, Nicol Sponberg, Marie Miller, Mark Schultz, Group 1 Crew, Nate Sallie, Big Daddy Weave, pureNRG and Building 429… any weight that i may have gained was lost in all the shuffling around and balancing of plates, utensils and everything else…

from there, i quickly made my way to the riverboat and enjoyed the food and music there… not much as far as conversation went on, but we saw some performances by Casting Crowns, John Waller, Leeland, Monk & Neagle, and Michael W Smith as well as some Presidential Volunteer Service Awards given out to Brian Littrell (for his work with The Healthy Heart Club for Kids and Jars of Clay (for their work through Blood:Water Mission)… also there was Bingo and a very good meal, though i wasn’t quite hungry yet…

there’s more from tonight, but i really need to get to bed… pretty light day and i get to sleep in a bit, but i still have 3 interviews to do and then the Doves and a very late night ahead followed by a fairly early trip to the airport… Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the guest blogs…

peace… love… bdg…

down in the west end of the NCC chink-chinking up the track ready to plummet down into the stream of morning interviews… still trying to shake off this fog of sleeplessness and weariness… working on my second cup of coffee… and definitely still ready for a couple more hours of sleep… at least it’s cool down here… it’s pretty nice… this morning i’ll be talking with RED, Casting Crowns, Flatfoot 56, Monk & Neagle, Leeland, Jars of Clay (Steve and Charlie) and Wavorly…

after that, i plan on cruising through the booths and displays before heading down to the Melting Pot for another stream of 20 some artists… to quote Verbs… gotta keep movin, that’s for real…

peace… love… bdg…

i talk too much and i’m tired… beat… exhausted really… and i’m way behind on keeping you up to speed with the events of this week… so here’s some of the quickness to hopefully catch up…

first, about last night… we went to the songwriter’s showcase, an event i skipped out on last year in order to attend the indie community showcase… this year, i wanted to see the songwriters… so that’s what i did… hosted by Mandisa and Mark Schultz, the event was quite enjoyable… even when Mark was awkwardly and uncomfortably “hitting on” Mandisa… the theme of the first set was “alright” and it started on a high note with Sanctus Real’s acoustic version of “I’m Not Alright“… spectacular… the rest if the first set didn’t do much for me, but Mandisa closed it out with a new song - i think she said that it was the lead single - and it was cool and all, but my favorite part of that performance was Matthew West’s sweater which had a lightning bolt on the back…

Set two began with DecembeRadio performing “Drifter” and included Ian Eskelin trying to sing “Me and Jesus” - it was quite a strain - Chris Tomlin performing “Made to Worship”, which bled into “How Great Is Our God” and Mark Schultz closed with “I Am” the final set included BarlowGirl and ended with Mark Hall, who recently won the BMI songwriter of the year honors… good experience… and apparently the one and only Chris Sligh showed up, but i didn’t actually see him…

back to today’s past… still haven’t finished typing up the article, but i did interview Britt Nicole and got some great gangsta cookies and fellowship with the Scribbling Idiots, Ajax, Sintax, and the Illect Crew… thanks guys you’re an oasis where ever you go…

next came dinner with the amigos and a publicist, to which i was late for various reasons… we did have a great time though… we all seemed to fall right into step with each other and the conversation just flowed very nicely… good times and good food… and man, was that a lot of nachos… we ordered a “half order” of nachos for the table and it took up the whole center of the table… it was like a fruit basket but with chips, salsa, peppers, chili and the like…

after dinner we headed back the room for a little bit, planning on going to the Sanctus Real show, featuring NEEDTOBREATHE, This Beautiful Republic, Jon Foreman and Future of Forestry… we caught the shuttle and headed to the Exit\In only to find a line down the block and the knowledge that it was a 21 and older show - not a problem for me, mind you, but i remembered the line at the Exit\In from last year all too well….so we got back on the shuttle and enjoyed the comfortable round-trip ride…

Josh and I headed down to BB Kings to check out the Yellow Tangerine showcase - mainly for The Afters - and then Kevin Max’s closing performance at the Dog and Pony Show… The Afters were solid…they played some new songs and some favorites… Kevin was delayed because of people staying on stage too long or setting up too slowly or some combination thereof… and he started off really slow… i mean, really slow… i was about to conclude that he was past his time, but he really picked things up on the second half of the set… Luna Halo played the role of his band…

okay… then we tried to go to a gas station that has “Open 24 Hours” posted on its locked doors… i just wanted a soda… so instead we got change at the front desk and went to the machine where i got 2 sodas and all my quarters back… fair enough…

and now i’m done… seriously, i’m gonna crash… tomorrow is the earliest and busiest day of all… six interviews and a mini-showcase all before noon… then a 4-hour media block engagement followed immediately by a dinner cruise… then showcases… YOWSAS!… hopefully i’ll have a chance to get an update in there somewhere…

peace… love… bdg…

or not… i guess those were all cancelled on me… fair enough… well… i’m working a bit on my article and i’m charging up my technical marvals… then i head over to interview Britt Nicole and hit up the illect recordings/sphere of hip hop suite for some good rap cookies….

peace… love… bdg…

Well it was good to talk to Sara… she’s always a good one to chat with… and currently six months pregnant to boot… new baby, new album, lots of good stuff to talk about… unfortunately, it started a little late and even though i cut it a little short, it ran a little late and i was a few minutes late to the Bridge Deli and, assuming the best, my next interviewee was m.i.a…. oh, Switchfoot just walked by… i didn’t realize that the whole band would be here… anyway, i decided to walk on over to the Hilton since i’m supposed to meet a band for lunch… not sure if i’m supposed to actually interview them or not since you know it’s lunch, but it should be free food and i’m starving… aside from a couple cups of coffee and a banana, i haven’t eaten yet today… and it’s kind of like it’s quarter after 1 for my stomach… something smells good…

it’s pouring outside right now so, i’m glad i’ve already walked over here… bummer… i don’t know where my afternoon interview is supposed to be… just realized that… bummer…

okay, just got called away for the lunch thing and yes, it was an official interview as well… kind of strange to be recording in a sports bar while everyone is just eating and what not… much less conduct an interview… anyway, we mostly chattered away and had a good meal though the publicist seemed to want it to be a little more focused… it was a pretty good time, and probably a really good test for this iPod mic… on the way out a chatted a bit with Rob from Pillar since he was in the lobby… he’s a nice guy… actually, i’ll say that he’s a really nice guy, ’cause he said he might be checking out the site right about now…

Currently, i’m outside across from the Hilton… there’s a fountain and some benches here to make a park and that’s cool and all, but these benches aren’t very comfy and it’s kind of loud here… it’s nice to be outside though… away from the people noise… i should probably go figure out where to meet this next interview…

peace… love… bdg…

Well, sleep came too late and morning came too early, but that’s the nature of the beast here… it’s almost 11 and it seems like i’ve been up for the whole day already… and really, i’ve only gotten 2 interviews under my belt today… the third one is scheduled for right now, but um… let’s just say that if the guys from this band are actually here where they are supposed to be, they look nothing like their press photos and i have no idea where they might be…

good talks this morning though with The Afters and Chris Rice and some good things to come still… i also got a bit of my article typed up so hopefully that will be done by the end of the day… i scooted over to where my co-workers are supposed to be doing some video interviews, but it was vacant… wonder what happened…

Also, i finished uploading yesterday’s pictures… apparently it was cut off last night… more pictures will come later today i’m sure and hopefully i’ll be getting better at uploading to Flickr so that they’re better organized… i’m gonna go try to grab a coffee and head off to my next interview… Sara Groves… i need to be on my a-game…

peace… love… bdg…