Andrew Peterson

Touring and Recording and Writing, Oh My

February 02, 2012

Happy Groundhog Day, folks.

I wanted to drop in and let you know a few things:

1) 2011 was a great year in many ways. It was one of my busiest, which is why I didn’t manage to blog much, either at the Rabbit Room, the Wingfeather Saga site, or this one. I hope this year is different, but I’m skeptical. Which brings me to #2.

2) I’m in the studio! I can hardly believe it’s been two years since the Captains Courageous and I flew to Washington State and recorded Counting Stars. That experience was wonderful—a ton of work in 9 days, but magical in its wintry seclusion. Rather than try to replicate something that was so rare, we decided to record this new record in Nashville, old school. But we invited producer Cason Cooley into the mix to work with Ben and Andy, and the results have been great. I can’t wait for you to hear it. We’ve tracked 10 new songs, and will work to finish the album on our days off from the spring Songs and Stories tour. Which brings me to #3.

3) I’m on tour! I’m writing this from a coffee shop in Broken Arrow, OK (I always think of Roy D. Mercer when I’m in OK), on tour with the honorable Steven Curtis Chapman and the also honorable Josh Wilson. Tonight is our first show of the year. Check out the tour dates to see if we’re coming to your area, and please come! The shows have been delightful. Steven’s a great performer, and he bares his soul every night in a way that’s deeply moving. He and Josh and I play on each other’s songs, which is a blast. Most nights I’m playing “Dancing in the MInefields”, “Planting Trees”, “The Reckoning,” and “Many Roads”, but every now and then I call an audible. The band (which includes the great Ben Shive, along with Ken Lewis and Brent Milligan) is amazing, and if there’s ever a wrong note it’s played by me and only me. The Fall tour was such a blast, I can hardly believe we get to do it all again for the next six weeks. One good thing about a tour that I’m not headlining, is that there’s time for Ben and I to duck into a coffee house and write emails, edit records, and work on fantasy novels. Which brings me to #4.

Surprise! A New Record

September 20, 2011

Friends,

I’m pleased to announce the release of a new album: Above These City Lights (Live). (Get it here.)

We recorded it last fall on the Counting Stars release tour, and then things got busy. Not only did we immediately hit the road for the Christmas tour, I spent all Spring writing The Monster in the Hollows. Meanwhile, the indubitable Todd Robbins (who mixed Resurrection Letters II and engineered Counting Stars—not to mention DC Talk’s Jesus Freak, but who’s counting?) took all the files from the live show and made them sound even purtier.

The project was originally intended to be an EP that highlighted a few of the songs from Counting Stars but when we heard how “High Noon”, “After the Last Tear Falls”, and especially the Rich Mullins masterpiece “Calling Out Your Name” turned out, we decided to make it more of a full-length record. At long last, the album is ready for your ears.

Congratulations to Pete Peterson and Jennifer Trafton

|  August 27, 2011

Last year at Hutchmoot 2010 an author named Jennifer Trafton showed up at the last minute and volunteered to help. I remember her walking in the room at the pre-moot meeting (redundant?) and introducing herself to the rest of the gang. I also remember seeing my brother Pete perk up and smile.

Now Jennifer’s dog [...]

New from N.D. Wilson: The Dragon’s Tooth

|  August 25, 2011

N.D. Wilson is the author of the best-selling 100 Cupboards series, Notes from the Tilt-a-whirl, an Annie Dillard-esque theological thrill ride of a book, and is one of my favorite storytellers. There’s a flavor in his books that, if you’ve read the likes of Tolkien and Lewis and Dillard and MacDonald, you’ll find familiar—-but it never feels like imitation. Wilson is developing a voice of his own, seasoned with just the right amount of beauty and truth and wonder. If you’re like me, and you’re a sucker for a good story about a kid on a perilous journey (inside and out), then get thee to the Rabbit Room and pick up The Dragon’s Tooth. Thank you, N.D. Wilson, for the stories.

I asked my friend Brian Wilhorn, an educator, book lover, and the brains behind the popular blog HelpReadersLoveReading.com, to read The Dragon’s Tooth and tell us what he thought. Check out his blog here, and follow him on Twitter here.

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Fantasy novels are sneaky. At first they whisk readers away to a foreign land with an honorable family determined to rule justly or where hardworking folk live under some tyrannical ruler. Next come the fantastical creatures, great flying beasts and beings with mystical powers. Then there’s the tense build to the epic battle where good triumphs over evil.

Readers know what to expect. Or rather I know what to expect. Rather, I think I know what to expect when it comes to fantasy novels. But just as I’m prepared to escape into a world where dragons breathe fire or fairies cast spells or inexperienced youngsters unexpectedly save the kingdom, that’s when fantasy novels get sneaky. Suddenly, amidst all the fires and spells and rescues, I find characters facing the very issues I thought I was escaping.

God’s Grandeur

|  August 17, 2011

God’s Grandeur
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I just stumbled on this poem last night and I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day. This collection of Hopkins’s poems is on my night stand, so I looked it up again as soon as I got into bed. I read it again just now, then forced it on Jamie (a professed poetry hater, unless that poem is about her, by me). She said, when I finished, “What—in—the—world was all that about?”

A Most Excellent Cave Blat

|  August 02, 2011

Two quick things:

1) THANK YOU for all the kind comments you guys have left. It’s a dream come true that this story has connected with so many of you.

2) My son Aedan (12) is quite the artist. He spends a ton of his time painting watercolors and penciling, and has even had a few official commissions. More than once, folks have come to our house, fallen in love with one of his paintings, and paid him to paint something for their house. It’s amazing. I drew like crazy when I was his age, too, but he’s way better than I ever was back then. I offer this drawing of a cave blat as evidence. He posted it on his art blog, The Crimson Phoenix. He also just posted another Wingfeather drawing–a fierce Grey Fang from the climax of North! Or Be Eaten. Visit his blog to see it. If you dare.