Journal entry for: 1-7-2000

Hey Everybody

     Well, it¹s the first e-mail of the year and I hope you all had a wonderful, wonderful Christmas season. I, personally, really did. We were off for pretty much the whole month of December. I got to go back to Illinois and just spend time hanging out with my friends there. It was so nice to be there long enough that the "He¹s the dude in the band" effect sort of wore off. I hope that you all got to have a few days to kit and have to yourself over the break. I think time to ourselves is one of the greatest and hardest things that we all need to have. Anyway, thanks for all of you who e-mailed us over break. I just checked the Normals account yesterday and had a rather huge number of letters, so rest assured that I will continue to write them all back personally, but it may be a few days before I get through them all, so thanks for your patience.

      In other news, I am excited to let you know that we are starting our new record next week. At last!! We are going to be recording it in New Orleans from January to March with Malcolm Burn producing it. We are excited to work with Malcolm, who has worked with Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel), EmmyLou Harris and Better Than Ezra, in the past. We have a number of songs that we¹re excited about, some of which you heard on our last tour, and some others that we¹re excited to get to work out. We ask again for your prayers during this period. This will be a great time for us as we¹ll be in a different city with different people and doing something that¹s really different for us. It is our hope and prayer that we really grow together spiritually, musically and personally as we pull together to make this record, and work to find more out about how God created us, uniquely, to be and let our music reflect that. Hopefully, the result will be a record that will make both you and us proud. Thanks already for your encouragement as we do this.

      Well, I don¹t really have a whole lot of deep thoughts for this particular issue, but I want to say that I appreciated all the responses my last letter got. It¹s nice to know that other people understand the way I feel. I¹ll have e-mail when we go to New Orleans, so you can continue to write me when I¹m there, and I¹ll keep letting you know how things are going with the record. B.J. and I are going to try to post some photos of the studio stuff as we take them. Well, enough for me today. Again, hope you all had a great Christmas, thank you for your prayers and your undeserving affection for us. You are truly awesome. Have a great day!

Grace and Peace

Andrew