Last night Daphne, my band KNAPSACKHEROES!, and I went to the album release concert for the Wes King tribute album "Life Is Precious". Almost a year ago I posted a blog from Emergent and said that I had just heard from Michael Card that Wes King (if you don't know him he wrote or co-wrote "I Believe" and "We Believe In God" and "This Is Your Time" and is one of the best acoustic guitarists on the planet) had cancer. I remember thinking, "I wish there was something I could do. This man is a big influence on me and as a musician I bet he has really crappy insurance. But what can I do?"A few months ago, Craig Mason (who actually signed Wes to Word, I think in the 90s) contacted us through MySpace and asked if we would like to be involved in the album, Life Is Precious. I was already familiar with it. Derek Webb was involved. Kim Hill and Paul Colman were involved. Freaking Phil Keaggy was involved. So, to even be asked was astounding. And there was my answer to "what can I do?"
By the time we got involved a lot of the songs I would have chosen (The Robe, Holy, etc.) were already taken. So, as I looked at the list of songs that were left and narrowed it down, I realized "Move to the Moon" would be perfect. I realize now that the song is complete (we finished it today) that we couldn't have picked a better song! For people who buy the album, it will be downloadable at www.wesking.com. You'll also be able to hear it at our MySpace soon, but buy the album because 100% of the money will go to Wes to help him pay for the cancer treatments.
Anyway, to know we are involved in the same project with so many great artists was more than enough, but sitting there lasty night felt unbelievable and quite surreal!
A bunch of great artists did their versions of Wes' songs. Kim Hill was wonderful. Derek did "I Believe" before leaving to do a webcast with Blue Like Jazz author Donald Miller. Paul Colman was great. He went solo recently…and last night he announced he’s joining the Newsboys!
This project also highlights the talents of a lot of really great up and coming artists. Caitlin Evanson performed last night was absolutely awesome. Check her out. (She's also really nice and she christened Daphne and me "Daphic" after the show. )
And then Phil Keaggy got up and blew the audience away...because he's Phil Keaggy. How do you top that? Phil and Randy Stonehill got up and did an old song. THAT blew my mind.
Wes got up and did a song (his first performance since finding out he had cancer) and we all remembered why we were there. He is so, so, so good.
We didn’t perform (thank GOD! We were nervous enough as it was and Wes sat on stage the whole night while people did his songs), but this door that has opened is going to open more doors! Pray for us with this whole thing. God is really blessing us in this ministry. And God has certainly blessed me in finding these new brothers!
So, then to top things off I find out that good old Shane Raynor has posted my solo song, "Nothing", on the Wesley Blog.
So, don't rain on my parade. I'm enjoying the candy being thrown from the floats too much.
