Sparks from the Fire » church music

An Inspirational Man

Peter Link — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:36:09 +0000

Pete’s pick for most Inspirational person this month is a friend.

I’ve known Jon McLaughlin for several decades now. We played high school football together, right next to each other – he, left tackle and I, left end. I’m glad I didn’t have to play against him. I’m glad I was on his team. In practice, whenever coach would say to anybody, “You line up against Mac.” you knew you were in for it. It usually wasn’t a pretty sight. The boy/man was a bulldog. He still is.

He re-emerged in my life several years ago with an unlikely project. It turns out that he had been teaching Sunday School for many years and had evolved his teaching of the Ten Commandments into something more palpable for teenagers. It is written in the form of accessible poetry and presents each commandment through the eyes of God’s love for man. Though he wrote it for his teenage classes, I found it to be a modern approach to these ten ancient laws for the whole family.

How this ferocious tackle came to be a Love poet is a fascinating tale. I certainly can’t tell it all here, but suffice it to say he did not move from one to the other, he really amalgamated the two qualities into a most interesting man.

I have long admired this quiet, gentle butt-kicker from afar. But lately I’ve had a chance to get to know him more personally. His idea was to combine music with his Ten Commandments project in a new and original way, record it and release it as a CD. He came to me because I’m the ‘music guy’ and I’m into this whole Inspirational thing and besides, I’ve got a record company. So on top of all those previously mentioned attributes, he’s smart.

Working with him over these past couple of years has sometimes been like going into my stance across from him in football practice. One could fear for one’s safety. But I learned from our beloved coach back then that the harder you hit, the less chance you have of getting hurt, so we sometimes duke it out a bit in this adult game.

The sparks we’ve created have made the project better. We’ve pushed each other to greater heights of artistry and manhood. Along the way I’ve not lost, but gained new respect for his inner man, his sense of himself, his quiet strength and his ability to work till he gets it right. The bulldog still lives in Mac, but he keeps it on a chain. I’m grateful.

The project is in development. It’s a doosey. If all goes according to Hoyle it’ll be out sometime late spring, 2009.

Though the project is Inspirational and right up the alley for Watchfire Music, the man is the most fascinating part of the puzzle. This project will be successful because this man will make it so. He has all the ammunition, and at the center of things, the bulldog perspicacity to get the job done.

Again, I’m glad I’m on his team.

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

The Palms

Peter Link — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:49:14 +0000

The Lyrics

I like story songs. And I love a parade. There is great drama in a parade. You stand on the curb and wait excitedly for it to come. Whatever ‘it’ is – it could be your daughter playing the piccolo or your high school marching band or the queen of the day waving in the back seat of a convertible. It’s proceeded by bands and clowns and majorettes and often followed by the same. You stand on the curb and await the big moment as the excitement ratchets up. You crane your neck in anticipation of the big moment.

And then it’s there! And the tears come to your eyes, and hope is restored and somehow the wait always pays off in a laugh or a ‘wow’ or a splash of pride.

And then it passes by and continues on its journey. And you wish you could prolong the moment, but you can’t. It’s the very nature of the parade. It gives you a taste, but for a moment. Sometimes you can run along with it for a moment or two trying to prolong it, but usually, by then, it’s over. The crowds are too much and ‘it’ moves on down the road to another place in time. The Music

Cut to another story: I was in Santa Monica at my partner’s office. He had to go to a meeting and left me in the office finishing up some work. I was to wait for him to return. I finished my work and with nothing to do, pulled his old guitar down off the wall, dusted it off, tuned its woefully out of tune strings and began to fiddle. Suddenly out popped a fully formed song – verse and chorus. It was born so fast, I knew it to be a gift from God emailed in His inimitable fashion. He was saying, “Here’s one for ya’, Pete”.

How to remember it? I had no music paper, no tape recorder, 3000 miles from my studio and there was so much of it and it was so complete that already I began to feel it fading away in memory. I played it through again and thought, “I’ll just keep playing it over and over until I memorize it. But then my brain started to get in the way and I started considering other chord substitutions and alternate melodies and I thought, “Oh no, now I’m really going to lose it!”

Suddenly He gave me another great idea! I walked over to the phone, dialed home in NYC and calmly sang the song into my answer machine leaving explicit directions to my wife not to erase this message.

When I got back to NYC I relearned the song off the answer machine. There was a melody and the chord progression, but no lyrics. Since the song was so obviously a gift, I knew it would have to be a sacred song.

The Palms

On the way to Jerusalem
Thousands gathered to watch him go by
On the way to Jerusalem
There on the road
He carried the load of this world
As the colt carried him on his back
Colt and rider
Colt and rider
Colt and rider
On the dusty road

These are the palms of peace
Given in these times of strife
These are the palms we gathered
Thanking you for your life

These are the palms of joy
Given in these times of trial
These are the palms of homage
Bearing you mile to mile

So lay down the palms
Make the earth clean and pure
Lay down the palms
Comes now the Christ
Comes now the cure

These are the palms of dreams
Given in these times of doubt
These are the gifts we bring you
For casting the shadows out

Colt and rider
Hosanna in the highest
Colt and rider
Hosanna in the highest
Colt and rider
Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna
On the dusty road

Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna
Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

Even More Inspiration

No Emotion

Peter Link — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:40:22 +0000

A woman called several weeks ago to thank me for a sacred song I’d written that she sang as a solo in church. We had a most friendly talk and near the end of the conversation she said proudly, “I just want to assure you that I sing your songs with absolutely no emotion.”

This took me back a beat and so I asked her what she meant by that and she explained, “Well, I think there should be no personality in church singing whatsoever, that the solo should be performed emotionless.”

As we talked I discovered a real confusion in this poor soul about the art of sacred solo performance. She was essentially confusing bad acting with emotion; and since she basically did not understand the craft of acting through song and did not like it when other singers “hammed it up” in a church solo, she had made the wrong decision that all acting/emotion in a performance was bad. I tried to help her make sense of all this, but she would have none of it. To her, ‘emotionalism’, as she called it, did not belong in the church service.

As a composer who has been thinking about this fascinating world of music for about 40 years now, I’ve come to think of music as essentially aural symbols of emotion. The drama of a song is hugely important to me as I write and governs its flow. Without emotion, what do you have? A passel of notes arranged by some intellectual method which most often results in a boring song – boring, because it does not go anywhere.

Devoid of emotion, you have a song devoid of interest. It’s why people are not that attracted to computer written music. The computer is smart and can arrange music in lightening speed, creating millions of compositional patterns, but no computer has ever written a song that captures the public consciousness and probably never will unless somehow man is able to teach computers how to process with human emotion.

So I say to my friend, the soloist who sings with no emotion, please don’t sing my songs that way. Let the reality of your emotions be expressed through the lyrics and the melodies of the song. Touch people’s hearts with your feelings. Tickle their imaginations with your deep understanding of the full range of emotion that plays through a song. Share your emotional insights of these sacred songs with your audience, your congregation, so that all may take advantage of your spiritual insight.

When you hide your emotion or lid it down, you simply cut off the real experiential possibilities of the song. Bring your own particular corner of life to the song through your true feelings so that I may see the truth through your eyes.

And if your personality, or better, your individuality, shines through the song, I say we’re all better off for it. If you can bring a tear to my eye or a laugh to my heart in the course of the solo, that really means that you have touched me so deeply with the truth of the song that I am moved – moved from one point of understanding to another higher one. And that, my friend, is why I go to church.

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.