I spent half the summer on the first US leg (Ohio, Pennsylvania, California & Washington). The last few months on the Irish leg and this Saturday 14th November I’m doing a live broadcast from my own front room!

It’s the equivalent of U2 playing at Croke Park in Dublin and you’re invited!

I’ll be broadcasting it live here http://blog.andyrogersmusic.com/tv/ at 8pm UK time Saturday Night.

This will be a ‘global’ broadcast with me, my cello player, the very talented Gwyneth McBride, and a few friends gathered my living room here in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.

I’ll be doing acoustic tracks from the new album including Be Thou My Vision plus there’ll be some surprises.

Here’s the schedule:

Saturday 14th November 2009

UK  GMT  8pm
USA. PST:12:00:00 Noon,
USA. MST 1:00:00 PM
USA. CST 2:00:00 PM
USA. EST 3:00:00 PM

Europe CET: 9:00:00 PM
Europe EET: 10:00:00 PM

Australia EDT: Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 7:00:00 AM

Hope you can make it to the live stream http://blog.andyrogersmusic.com/tv

I’ll send you a reminder email just before we go live.

Speak soon.

Cheers - Andy
P.S. Follow me on twitter for updates www.twitter.com/andy_rogers

See you then.

Tags: houseconcert, livestream,

I’ve included my reply but I’d love to hear your thoughts too - please leave a comment below.

Hi Andy



Have you got any advice in ‘capturing the sound of a nation’???…… I
lead worship in a small congregation in North Wales where Welsh is the
first language of the majority of the population. Hymns from the last
revival still carry the heartbeat of God and expression of life in the
current church, modern worship songs (stuff from delirious, hillsongs,
godfrey birtil, brian johnson, chris quilala….) are sung in our
church, some of which are translated into Welsh but these don’t carry
the rhythm and ‘welshness’ that would come from inherent welsh worship
songs….. I’ve written a few but am struggling to carry the ‘modern
feel’ with the shape of the welsh language …. and capturing THE sound
which says ‘I’m welsh, I love God, move Holy Spirit”……. Sorry, very
difficult to explain exactly what I mean but you’ve managed the fusion
of celtic sound with modern worship….. Any help you can offer from
your experience in Ireland?



Robin

My Reply:

Hi Robin

That’s a great question.

I don’t have any definitive answers but here are a few pointers that have shaped what I do along the way.


1. Don’t try to sound like someone else.

I go to a Vineyard church (www.causewaycoastvineyard.com) and although I’ve been part of the worship team here for almost 10years most of what I do outside of that local context is not in the Vineyard network.

A few years ago a friend of mine took me aside one day and gave me
some direction about music & songwriting. He said ‘Andy, you’re
like the fig tree planted in a vineyard that Jesus talked about -
although you are planted in a ‘Vineyard’ don’t try to produce ‘grapes’,
don’t try to write songs and make music to fit that mould - be like a
fig tree and produce the fruit/songs that come naturally’.

For me at the time it was very liberating. It’s more of a principle than a ‘how to’.

2.
Another useful piece of practical advice a prophetic guy gave me was to
simply record my personal private worship sessions because every now
and again something would pop up that would be for wider ‘public
consumption’. The idea was that the ’sound’ would be captured. By sound
I mean the heart-beat kind of thing - if that makes sense?

3. I intentionally sing with my own accent as much as possible.
Over the past few years I have been intrigued by the worship described
in heaven (Revelation 7:9-10). It appears that in the midst of all the
expressions of praise going on that the worshipers were still
identifiable by their God-given ethnic identities (’every tribe and
tongue and nation…’).

For me, part of that is singing in my
own voice and finding other ways of authentically worshiping as someone
from my particular culture. This doesn’t necessarily mean returning to
traditional music to express that, like David we do ’serve the purposes
of God’ in this generation, but still there is something to be drawn
from our roots.

I hope that helps. It’s just a few ramblings from someone who is journeying the same quest but by no means has it all together!

Cheers - Andy

Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts…

On my recent US trip/tour I did a cover of Brian Houston’s “We Don’t Need Religion”. It’s a song that was written against the backdrop of the heady cocktail of politics and religion which has intoxicated our culture here in Northern Ireland for a long time. It voices the cry to be free from all that and has gotten him into trouble as result - some radio stations refused to play it!

According to Wikipedia “A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for social change”. By that definition some songs that the church sings should be protest songs. If we are being ’salt and light’ in our sphere of influence then social change would be an expected by-product.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think and I’d love to hear about other great examples of Christian protest songs.

I see the people in the balconies, in the streets an in their cars
All the party going animals out in the backrooms and the bars saying:
we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion

I’ve been a timber jack, I’ve been a labourer, a shipyard man and a shirker
worked with builders building houses and heard a million McDonald’s workers saying:

we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion
we don’t need religion - but we could use the love of God!
Woh, oh oh oh…

I’ve got false prophets on my TV tellin me this union’s doomed
while all the spirit filled believers shake up the floor space in the room saying:
we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion

Come on you pastors and you preachers, all you priests, nun’s and scholars
Come on walk down the road without those robes, crucifixes and orange collars

we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion
we don’t need religion - but we could use the love of God!
Woh, oh oh oh…

Well is it Saturday or is it Sunday, to tell the truth I’m never sure
There’s a sabbath in there somewhere, how come we never try Yom Kippur
we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion

And while we’re all so busy fighting using up God’s precious time
There’s a thousand starving homeless saying buddy can you spare a dime

we don’t need religion, we don’t need religion
we don’t need religion - but we could use the love of God!
Woh, oh oh oh…

Buy.One.GIVE.One.For.Free

Yep, when you buy a copy of Mercy Tracks Me Down you will also be giving away another CD!

Here’s how it works.

Over the past few years I have been traveling with teams and bands to various parts of the planet, Europe (East & West), the Far East as well as closer to home working in partnership with local churches and ministries. And one of the most effective ways of connecting with and influencing folks who have yet to meet Jesus is by giving away FREE worship CDs.

Let me give you an example.

Last year as a result of playing in an ex-KGB drinking haunt in Lithuania, which is now a bar/restaurant, our band got booked to play at a science conference - yeah, really!

We got invited to play at the party night for an international gathering of marine biologists on the shores of the Baltic sea in Lithuania . In these scenarios whilst the crowd are partying and being entertained what they probably don’t realize is that we are worshiping and they are being drawn into the experience.

It’s a long story but we met one of the organizers a few days before the event and gave him a copy of a CD.

When we arrived to set up for the conference he said that he had been playing one of the tracks on repeat for 3 days because it kept the stress at bay as he was managing all the last minute emergencies that crop up when organizing an event like that.

Although not a follower of Jesus, the song that really ‘hit the spot’ for him was the guitar driven anthem version of Be Thou My Vision from Mercy Tracks Me Down. He said that he felt a real sense of peace as it played in the background and it has led to an ongoing connection with the local church there.

Here’s how you can partner with this initiative.

For every CD you buy through this link I’ll arrange for another to be given away for free on your behalf and together we can influence others towards a life changing encounter with Jesus.

Buy One GIVE One For Free

All this for only $14.97 + P&P

He told me that it had really worked well in helping folk worship and connect with God with a sense of intimacy.

One of the things that excited me, apart from the encouragement of seeing a song idea completed, was the fact that despite the song not being recorded, formally published or having to get some sort of distribution deal thousands of people were worshiping with it. And at that point I had yet to even hear it!

Gotta love this new fangled ‘interweb’ thing!

I’ve recently been using this version while here in the US and the feedback from first time hearers have been the same and shortly I’ll have the pleasure of meeting with and c0-leading with Sam.

I haven’t yet recorded the song, but Sam has - here is his YouTube version.

Enjoy!

It has been overwhelming the response to the house concert tour - I’ve had more invitations than I can probably fulfill but I will do my best to include as many as possible this time around.

Tags: houseconcert, andy rogers,

Whilst it was a Vineyard event it was open to anyone so it was great to see Baptist, Catholic, Pentecostal as well as Vineyard churches represented.

Rather than write a ton of text check out the video below.

It’s a clip I did for my prayer team (I’m incredibly fortunate to have some folks willing to pray into these adventures) to inform them of the results of their efforts.

The effect has been profound.

I got this recent email from one of our translators at the Vineyard Worship conference in Lithuania. There seemed to be many there living under a heavy weight of depression so we invited anyone who could identify with that to come forward and we played and sang over them.

Here’s what Adone said:

I also wanted to share with you an amazing thing that has happened to me. When you guys invited people who feel heaviness inside to come out in order to play worship music over us, I did because I’d been living with it for a long time. I didn’t feel anything particular happening at that time but during the next two days the heaviness that I used to feel gradually left me completely. I used to pray that God would restore the joy I once had but he did something different - he gave me a new joy.

Worship & prophetic music can be a powerful thing. In fact my understand of it’s effect was really helped by something I read on Dave Wainscott blog a while back.

He quoted this.

While searching for the chemical origins of life, Shsumu Onnu found something unexpected: a waltz. Bored with tedious mathematical equations, the geneticist decided to convert chemical formulas for living cells into musical notes. He figured listening to the complex genetic codes, rather than staring at them, would make elusive patterns easier to detect. In the process, Onnu discovered genes…carry a tune. The tunes he found were not just the interesting random notes which other scientists had predicted…Onnu found genuine music…sometimes with an uncanny similarity to the works of great composers.

Translated into sheet music and performed on the piano, a portion of mouse RNA…sounds like a lively waltz. Except for its quicker tempo, parts of the mouse RNA Waltz are dead ringers for passages in Frederick Chopin’s “Nocturnal Opus 55.”

The musical score within a cancer-causing oncogene sounds somber and funereal, while the gene responsible for bestowing transparency on the lens of the eye is filled with trills and flourishes…When Onnu translated a funeral march by Chopin from notes to chemical equations, “entire passages appear identical to a cancer gene found in humans…the same patterns which govern the movement of planets and galaxies also appear in genes and in music.” -Dr. Jill Niemark

Amazing - what do you think?

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the
violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for
about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was
calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of
them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle
aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and
stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.A
minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman
threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A
few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him,
but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he
was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3
year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped
to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child
continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was
repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception,
forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played,
only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money
but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he
finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one
applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the
violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He
played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin
worth 3.5 million dollars.Two days before his playing in the subway,
Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average
$100.00 each.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing
incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as
part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of
people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an
inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it?
Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If
we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians
in the world playing some of the best music ever written, how many
other things are we missing?

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Mary-Kathryn: Poured Out In Praise - CBN.com