I didn’t intend to blog this week, trying to take the time off to spend with the family, but this was important. If you read the news, you must be aware that ol’ man death has been on the move. Gerald Ford, James Brown, Saddam any day now… “Who next?” I hear you asking.

Well, I’ll tell you. Our goldfish. We used to have two. Ginger and Johnson. My wife called Johnson “Johnce”. We’ve had them since my birthday two and a half years ago. A couple weeks ago one of them died. I could never remember which one was which. I think it might have been Johnce. Well, tonight we came back from a little get-together at the Webb’s to find that Ginger was laying at the bottom of the bowl. I think it’s because we’ve forgotten to feed him (or her) for the past few weeks and she (or he) ate all the gunk that could be found on the side of the glass.

So we are pet-less.

And this will probably be all I’ll post again until the New Year. And then, hang on. Good stuff to come. New Caedmon’s record. Solo tour. And a stickie note full of random thoughts that I think will make good posts. Until then, hope you have a great week and I’ll see you next year.

From my family to yours, hope your day is peaceful and happy. And I hope somebody loved you enough to get you this. God’s blessings to you all.

I’m surrounded by conspiracy theorists. A couple of my really good friends land squarely in this category. And that’s a good thing. Or at least a really entertaining one. My friend Billy Cerveny feeds on this. We all joke that he might be in the CIA, but I’m pretty sure Cason really thinks he is. Casella’s on the fence. So Billy always does and says weird, mysterious things that get them going. I love it.

Now, this isn’t exactly a conspiracy, but it’s a pretty great theory. My friend Kevin Twit told me this one, and I think I might even agree.

I was reminded of the theory because we gave Sadie a bath tonight. She’s so tiny, now just over 8 pounds, and she doesn’t do a whole lot besides sleep (in the day, of course) so she doesn’t need them too often. Basically, we just cover her up in a towel, expose a tiny part, wash it, and move on to the next one. It’s cute to see how little she is, and she gets all squirmy.

Now, Kevin’s theory is related to this. The brain of a newborn is so undeveloped, as far as memory and association go, that they have no idea what they’re seeing, and they can barely see anyway. At first they just see black and white, then red, then other colors follow. This is why toys for tiny babies have a lot of black and white on them.

The theory goes that some people’s brains spit up memories of their birth, or early life, and the memories are filtered through how they think now. The bright lights, probes (thermometers?), faces that look like this…

The mind tries to make sense of it, put the barely visible details (and a healthy appreciation for Star Trek) together and: voila! Alien abduction.

Random, I know, but I always thought it was interesting, or at least comical. So, there you go.

Also, doing a Google Image search for “alien head” reminds me of three very important things:

1. The movie Alien was really, really freaking awesome.

2. So was Aliens (the sequel).

3. Seeing people’s “alien” artwork (and tattoos) reminds me of just how weird some people are.

And now, I’m going to try to get a bit of sleep while both babies are conked out and quiet. Happy Friday.

So last night we got the first decent sleep since Sadie was born. Not amazing sleep, but real actual human-ish sleep. And Ella has Parents-Day-Out today, so we get to take naps, too. AWESOME.

I’m going to make sound clips of the VisualSound WorkHorse Pony amp today. That should be pretty fun. If I get anything really interesting, I’ll post it for you.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and I’ve ended up reading more on the web than writing. A little different for me. I thought we could have a little fun and I’d give you six links to things that seemed interesting to me. Enjoy at your leisure…

LINK 1

LINK 2

LINK 3

LINK 4

LINK 5

LINK 6

P.S. I forgot this one.

A quick bit of Christmas news for you. I’m having a sale on my album The Morning. I’ll be selling it for $9.99 until Christmas. All my orders are taken care of through AwareStore.com, and they’ll be shipping stuff out until the last minute. You can order a cd and have it shipped straight to a friend. Doesn’t get a whole lot easier.

Except, of course, for the iTunes music store. All my albums are available there and you can send gift certificates over e-mail. You can even pick a certain song or album that can be downloaded as soon as the recipient enters the gift code. You can click on the link below, do a search for “Andrew Osenga” and pick any of my music to gift.

Click here for my webstore.

Click here to give an iTunes gift.

I make a decent portion of every sale through either store, so both choices are super helpful to me. I know some of you think about that, and I appreciate it, so I thought I’d let you know.

Also, you can still download my song “New Beginning” for free. Give it a listen. Give it to your friends, your neighbors and family.

Click here to download.

In completely unrelated news, my friend, Caedmon’s drummer and our AO.com hero Todd Bragg had an accident yesterday. He was on a trampoline with his family and hit the ground through the trampoline. An ambulance had to take him to the emergency room where X-rays showed he cracked a vertabrae. He’s in a lot of pain and won’t be able to move nearly at all for the next few days. They say it will heal by itself, but will take 6 to 8 weeks for the bulk of it. He and his family could use your prayer and encouragement over the next couple of weeks. Add to that, today, Saturday the 16th, is his birthday.

And in further unrelated news, my blog hero Shaun Groves has just put up a new site that I think you all would enjoy. It’s called the Shlog. He writes about music, theology, his family and pretty much anything else. It’s the only blog I check every day. You should, too.

Well, the only other thing I have for you tonight is that after a good three or four months, our TV remote control showed up again tonight. It was under the arm of the couch that I swear I checked a hundred times. My brother-in-law Clay has longer arms, though. Thanks man. Now we can watch our six channels with complete volume and commercial-avoiding control. Which of course means I’m watching Justin Timberlake be both pretty actually funny and musically great on SNL. Smart guy. He hires GREAT bands. And now I should go to bed.

For Christmas this year I decided to give you guys a song off of my record. Some of you have it already, I know, and so it’s not a big deal, but to those of you who haven’t bought it or heard it (which you can for free right here) I’m giving you a song.

In honor of Christmas, the New Year and my new baby girl, I thought track 13, New Beginning would be appropriate.

Click here to download.

If you want to help me out this Christmas, I’d love it if you’d take this song and send it to your friends. Leave it on your desktop and send it to people you instant message with. Add it to your e-mails. Let people know about this guy whose music you listen to and/or whose blog you read. It would be wonderful for me, and I think it could be a powerful song for people this time of year.

I told you how I wrote some new lyrics for the third verse last week and now seems like a great time to post them…

I’m tired of being an angry man
I’ve hid inside for far too long,
you kept your vow and held my hand
while I looked for God in rhyme and song,
our girls are dancing in their dreams,
the promise of a better life,
I want to be a father full of grace
and a loving husband to my wife…

Thank you guys again for allowing me, and my friends, to do what we do. I am continually humbled and grateful. I’m thrilled to be working on a good amount of Spring tour dates, so hopefully my songs and I can connect with you in person soon. I hope you guys enjoy this song.

Man, I had fun tonight. We played our set with Matthew Perryman Jones (who if you haven’t heard him, you must go here now and fix that) and it was awesome. Really one of the most fun shows I’ve played in a while. Matthew’s songs are great and his voice is beyond great. Seriously, it’s like the clouds part and the heavens speak deeply when he sings.

We got to actually work on arranging stuff a bit in rehearsal the other night, and it made such a big difference. I find that when I play local gigs without rehearsing a ton I play in a way I never would on a record, and I’m usually very unhappy with it. I need to make a sign on the floor really big that says “play less!!”. I think I compensate for not knowing the songs super well by barreling through them. Doesn’t make sense, but I know we all do it. The more aware of this I become, hopefully, the more thoughtful and musical player I’ll be.

I worked over at Jeremy’s Map Room today on a record he’s producing for Joe Bassett. I did Joe’s EP a couple years ago and so it was fun to be a part of this new one. Used the Visual Sound Workhorse again, and it did great. Also got to pull out a bit of electric baritone and just fell in love with the depth and beauty of that instrument all over again. Getting to hang out with Jeremy wasn’t too bad either…

We’ve been working hard at making the transition to having two kids. Both girls are wonderful and sweet, but it’s been pretty tough. Harder than we thought. For the past few days Sadie’s been up all night, then of course Ella is up all day, so sleep has gone the way of the dodo.

Alison’s mom has been staying with us, which has been super helpful, but tonight is the first night with just our new four-person family under our roof. The Christmas tree is lit up and all the girls are amazingly asleep at the same time. It’s quiet and it’s nice.

I’ve been reading a collection of short stories by Wendell Berry called That Distant Land. Now, I’ve been accused of being an exaggerator before, but I am not at all in this next sentence. I have read four stories in this book and he is easily one of my favorite writers ever. Top Five. The way he writes is stunningly beautiful, very simple and honest. His writing is a feast. So rich and full, but easy to enter into . The thing that really kills me is how lovingly he treats all his characters. His villains do terrible things, but he loves them. It is the Gospel without ever preaching a single word. I have been moved to tears with almost every story and I beg you all to read it.

Well, I should really get to bed. Thanks for your patience with me in this crazy season. I’ll try to keep the posts coming a bit more regular as I get back on my feet. Also, keep an eye out, I’m starting to book my first-ever solo tour this Spring. If you are at all interested in bringing me to your school or club or church or whatever, please let me know. I’ll have some dates to share in a few weeks. And I’ll have a Christmas sale in a day or two. Just waiting on Aware to get the price change up and I’ll post a fresh link. Nothing says Merry Christmas like an Andrew Osenga cd. I think I read that in a Wendell Berry story…

I’m playing guitar for Matthew Perryman Jones Wednesday night at a club here in town called The Rutledge. If you’re in Nashville, you should come out, it will be fantastic. We rehearsed tonight and it was a blast. It was kind of a nice release from the stress and (good) craziness of the new baby and visits and no-sleep and hospitals and all. We just set up and played some of my favorite music. Not a bad way to kill an hour or two.

Answer: Because he looks British.

Don’t thank me for that one, folks, it was a gift from Andy Peterson. He says it also works well with “French” but only time will tell, I assume.

Alison’s brother Clay had some surgery this week and is laid low recovering. I decided to head on over last night and make him watch Shaun of the Dead with me. If you haven’t seen it, you should. A romantic comedy with zombies. Hilarious.

It’s a British film, which I am having to add to my already overwhelming “Cool Things British People Have Done” list. Other notable mentions:

The White Album
Orthodoxy
Who’s Next
The Office
Vox AC30 amps
“When the Levee Breaks”
all the weird stuff Radiohead does…

As you can see, I’ve barely scratched the surface of how cool it must be to be British. Oh, and the teeth. Like Rich Mullins, I’m a good midwestern boy, I give an honest day’s work when I can get it. But I think I might choose to be British if I was given the choice. For the accent alone, even.

So last night, after catching up with Clay (and Shaun) I sat down in front of the ol’ IMDB (The Internet Movie Database - which as the eternal answer to the question “what else was that guy in?) and found out a couple awesome things about the movie. Well, one. Chris Martin from Coldplay is a zombie extra in it. I pulled up the movie and found that part and, sure enough, there he was. All skinny and lurching.

I’ve only been to London one time (well twice, but only once did I get outside the airport) and I loved it, but it was too short. Caedmon’s was on the way to India to record Share the Well and we spent about half a day and a night there. We went to a pretty awful musical on West End called Bombay Dreams with the hopes of getting inspired about India. It turned out to be a very expensive nap.

Here is where I need to tell you a little bit more about my friend Todd Bragg. He’s our drummer, and his kindness excedes his talent, which is saying something. Also, he snores. Loud.

So there we were, sitting in this musical, all jetlagged and sleepy. The show got to the emotional culmination. The love scene. The guy and girl finally admit their feelings and sing a sweet and tender ballad. At probably the quietest part of the whole evening Todd, fully asleep, let out the biggest snore I’ve ever heard. It helped, I’m sure, that the acoustically perfect hall took that snore and amplified it like a thousand times. I’m sure the performers heard it. Our whole section got the snickers. It was awesome.

That was pretty much my only London experience. Oh, and we went to Westminster Abbey where we got to see Caedmon’s grave stone. That was pretty cool. He was over where they keep all the extra folding chairs, so we had to get a monk to come and move them. Obviously, he’s a big draw.

ANYWAY, so last night, after I watched Shaun and found out about Chris Martin I ended up googling Scotland Yard. I have no idea why. I ended up finding this website of a “virtual tour” of London. I looked around for way too long and then got up to go to bed. And I was dizzy from all the 360 action. I’m such a nerd.

Oh, and I found this photo the other day. It’s from Ella’s brief tenure as a Backstreet Boy…

The house is quiet now. All three of my girls are asleep. Alison, Sadie and I got back from the hospital last night around 12:30. It was a long night, but today has been a mostly restful day, so that’s good. My parents are in town, as is Alison’s mom. Her dad will be here over the weekend.

Having your folks around is way more valuable with the second baby. Why? Baby-sitting. They’ve all been great playing with Ella while Alison and I try to catch up on our sleep. And they keep making food. This is not a bad thing.

Ella seems to like having a little sister. At least, she likes having a baby around. She has made sure that we are all aware where the baby’s nose is. It’s the little things that count, you know.

Last night was Andrew Peterson’s Christmas show at the Ryman. I got there a few songs into the first half, so I didn’t miss my part. I sang “New Beginning” off of my album The Morning and wrote a new third verse for it on the way to the Ryman from the hospital. I like what I have on the record, but I feel like I finally got it really figured out a year too late. Maybe I’ll sing this new verse live from now on.

I play mainly electric during the Christmas portion of the show and I used the new Visual Sound Workhorse amp live for the first time. It sounded fantastic, I thought. It’s a very, very clean amp, but it still has bottom end, something I feel is usually lacking with others in a similar field. In fact, I had all my EQ’s set right in the middle, at 5, but had to turn the bass down to 4. I like a lot of low-end presence usually, so that was surprising. Anyway, I had fun using it and playing the show for my last time this year. They’ve got another week of shows and I’m sure they’ll be great.

Well, I’m going to go and read a little bit, or maybe see who’s on Letterman and hold Sadie. It’s fun. I can already tell a few differences between her and Ella. For one, she actually has hair, and hers is dark. Ella’s is a very light reddish blonde. Sadie is a mover, too. Very squirmy. Ella’s a bit more of a cuddler. Neither of them seems extreme in those categories, but it’s fun to note the difference and wonder what that will mean later on.

Anyway, thanks so much to all of you for your prayers and your notes of encouragement and congratulations. What a blessing it is to be able to share this with you guys.