Share the music of Dave and Jess Ray on NoiseTrade!

We are happy to announce an easy new way to download and share the latest music from Dave and Jess Ray!  Using NoiseTrade you can either tell five friends about the album and get a free download, or pay whatever you think is appropriate for the music.  If you click “Tell 5 Friends” you’ll be asked to fill in five e-mail addresses of friends who would like to hear about the music and you’ll get a code for a free download. (And they will get an e-mail inviting them to do the same.) Or you can simply click “Pay What You Want” and pay anywhere from $1 to $25.  So check it out by using the widgets below and help us spread the love!

Doorpost Songs CD Release Concert

Mark your calendars! The CD release concert for The Doorpost Songs: Next Generation will take place on Friday, June 12 at 7 PM in the Tallowood Baptist Church Worship Center as a part of our VBS Family Night. It’s going to be a great night of music and worship as over 100 kids sing the new Doorpost Songs with a full band led by Jess and me. And the best part? It’s absolutely free! So mark your calendar, invite your friends (especially your friends with kids) and come enjoy this wonderful evening!

To the Manufacturer!

It’s out of our hands! The Doorpost Songs: Next Generation has gone to the manufacturer and should return in plenty of time for our release concert on Friday, June 12. It’s a great feeling to finally send a project like this off to print. It’s been eight months since our first conversations about putting this project together, six months since I began writing songs, four months since we finished the band tracks, and almost two months since the kids laid down the choir tracks. But here we are, reaching the culmination of all the months of effort. I can’t wait to hold the final product and let people get a taste of what we’ve been working on.

It has also been a rewarding process spiritually, as we live with these songs, each one grounded in such important truths. Lately I’ve been thinking about one of the songs, called Shine Like the Dawn, which comes from Psalm 37. The text calls on us to delight ourselves in the Lord, promising that He will give us the desires of our hearts. Then the part that has been sticking with me:

Commit your way to the Lord;
Trust in Him and He will do this:
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
The justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

What a great image, that the justice of our cause may shine like the noonday sun. How often do we commit ourselves to causes so just that they shine in this way? I find myself often committed to much lesser causes, which mostly involve my own pleasure. I guess that’s why it’s so crucial to find our delight in the Lord, so that the desire of our hearts is simply Him. That is a desire that He is sure to grant! And when our delight is in Him, then our causes will truly be just, shining like the noonday sun!

Final Mix

It is finished!  Well…sort of.  We have signed off on the final mixes for the new Doorpost Songs project, which will be called The Doorpost Songs: Next Generation.  It’s a bittersweet sort of feeling, coming to the end of a project like this.  It’s wonderful to see everything coming together and to hear the culmination of the creativity of the last few months.  But in other ways we miss the process of creating, which is just as fun and fulfilling.  But I suppose the tension between the two is what keeps us moving forward, the creating drives us to the finish, and the finish reminds us how much we enjoy the creating.

We have also received cover comps from our artist, Benji Peck, the same artist who did the artwork for the Dave & Jess album.  He’s got some great ideas that we’re working through now.  We’re looking forward to unveiling the final cover sometime soon.  It’s hard to believe, but release date is only six weeks away!  We can’t wait!

Kid Solos

The final recording element for the Doorpost Songs has been completed!  On Thursday, April 9 I recorded three children singing solos for three different songs on the record.  Kayla Smith sang the introduction of a song called “Crucified with Christ,” Reyna Prameswari sang a chorus of “Seek Me,” and Ben Brown sang a verse of “Whatever You Do.”  They all did a fantastic job!

I continue to receive mixes from Scott as he has time to get things finalized.  Once I get a mix Jess and I will listen in several different mediums to get a feel for how the mix will sound in the types of places people will be hearing it: in the car, on the computer, through headphones.  Then if we have any tweaks to the fix we’ll fire off an e-mail to Scott and discuss them.  So far we’ve gone through five mixes, with five left to go.

We’re also working with Benji Peck, the artist that did the artwork for the Dave and Jess Ray record.  He is a great designer (check out some of his work here and here) and has agreed to work on this project as well.  We can’t wait to see what he comes up with!

Recording the Kids

Well, we have finally reached the end of the recording process for the new Doorpost Songs record.  Last weekend our friend and producer Scott Williamson came down from Nashville to record our 25-voice kids choir for the album.  We set up risers for the kids in the Fireplace Room at the church, set up a makeshift studio for Scott just outside the door, threw up some microphones and went for it.

The kids did a great job.  I don’t know if they realized just how much energy it was going to take to sing the songs over and over until they were right, but (after a bit of mild grumbling) they got used to the process and thoroughly enjoyed it.  At the beginning of the first night I was talking to the kids about giving me lots of energy, and Grace Jones, a fourth-grader, raised her hand and said, “I’ve got five million shots of energy!”  At the end of the night, before the last song, I asked her how much she had left, and she responded, “One thousand, one hundred.”  Then, after the final take, I asked her if she had any energy left and she held up one finger and said dramatically, “One.  Just one.”

I had a blast conducting them (although my arms were quite tired at the end of Saturday from waving them all day) and was especially moved to hear them quoting the words of the songs from memory.  Since they were singing from memory, before each song I would review the words for them, asking them to give me each successive line of the song.  The words just flowed out of their mouths, and it was incredible to hear that they had already committed these great truths to memory.

Perhaps the most fun moment came at the very end of Saturday’s sesssion.  We had finished early – because they sang so well! – and had lunch together, and then as we waited for parents to come and pick up the kids we went back into the “studio” and Scott played a couple tunes for them.  They were incredibly excited to hear themselves, crowding around Scott’s little desk and dancing to the music.  After the first song, Scott started a second, but stopped it in the middle, saying “You get the idea,” which was greeted by a unison chorus of “Awwwwwwww!”

All in all it was a very rewarding weekend, and it was my privilege to be a part of it.  Thanks to all the kids who sang, and all the parents who helped!  Now we start mixing and mastering and before you know it the new Doorpost Songs album will be here!