Journal entry for: 10-10-2001

Hello Everyone,

      It's been a long time, and I hope you all are doing well. We in the band are doing fine. Last time I sent one of these out I told you that we were going to take most of the Fall off to be with our families, friends, and churches. It's been a wonderful time of regrouping, refreshing, and rethinking what we're doing. Thanks for your patience and support as we take this time.

      We have stayed pretty busy, though, this Fall. Our new record is basically done, and a lot of the groundwork is going on right now. The working title for this project is "The Way Home", and it is due out on February 27. We again worked with producer Malcolm Burn, but this time the emphasis was more on group writing and evolving the songs. We moved into a house in Kingston, N.Y. over the summer, and wrote the songs there. We really dig what we came up with. It was a goal to try and make every song unique from every other on the record, and from any other artists. We hope, and believe, that we made a record that sounds more like "us" than anything we've done before. We definitely believe that it's the best thing we've done yet, and we hope you'll agree. We're excited to get it out, and we'll begin touring again around the release of the record.

      The artwork is on its way, and we hope to have a few hints of it on the website within the next week or so. When it is complete we will be revamping the site, from the ground up. The Attic will be new and improved (and open!) as well. If you have any suggestions for things we could do, or you think we should have Attic members do, please let us know. We're excited to get that avenue of communication open again.

      This downtime has seen a lot of wonderful things, and we're very excited to share some of them with you. First off, B.J. got married two weeks ago. He and his sweetheart, Vickie, had a beautiful Nashville wedding, and the reception featured some great old rock and roll classics ("Celebrate", "Play that Funky Music, White Boy", "I Feel Good", etc.) played by some remarkably talented and good-looking young men in tuxedos: (B.J., Mike, Cason and I). We're excited for B.J. and Vickie, and ask you to pray for them as they begin their life of serving each other in marriage together.

      Also this Fall, Mark took the place of Derek Webb as Caedmon's Call opened for Michael W. Smith on a worship tour. He had a great time, playing to 10,000 people a night, and joining a tour ping-pong league. Mike has been busy in Alabama with his wife, and Cason and I have been working in Nashville. We've been playing with some of our friends: Matthew Perryman Jones, Jeremy Casella, and Billy Cerveny, as well as working on getting the Normals' record ready for release. I've been leading a small group Bible study with some guys from the college group at church and have had a wonderful time doing that. (I've also been reading the Harry Potter series, but I stayed up late last night and finished the latest one, and now I have to find something else to do with my life.)

      We have a few more shows this year that we're excited about. We're playing one in Peoria, IL, in a few weeks, and then we head over-seas in December for the first time. We're playing two shows in Germany and one in Holland. Cason and I have never even been out of the country, so we're pretty psyched about that. You can pray for our travel, though, because we're obviously a bit uneasy about that right now.

      Well, that's the short of it for us here in The Normals. Thanks for reading this, and for continuing to pray for us and support us. We hope that you all are having a wonderful and beautiful Fall, and we trust that the Lord is leading you and teaching you new aspects of His grace, love and mercy. Keep checking the website, as it will start changing here soon. Remember, new record: Feb. 27, we hope you like it. Thanks again, and may the Lord bless you all.

Grace, Peace and Truth,
Andrew