Andrew Peterson

Touring and Recording and Writing, Oh My

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 so far the results have been good. 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”, “World Traveler”, “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 me to duck into a coffee house and write emails, edit records, and/or work on fantasy novels. Which brings me to #4.

4) I’m dusting off my Spock ears and getting ready to dig into The Warden and the Wolf King, book four of the Wingfeather Saga. The plan is to release it in early 2013, which means I have about nine months to write the whole thing—and I’m honestly not sure that’s enough time. Knowing that this is the final book in the series ups the ante quite a bit, because I want to finish strong. So many stories fall apart in the final act, and I’m going to do my darndest to avoid that pitfall. The plan is to start on it during this tour, so that in the summer I can work on it in earnest, before the new record releases. That’s right, that’s a segue to #5.

5) The new album is supposed to release on August 21, which means we’ll be doing a release tour, hopefully with a band. That excites me terribly. More updates to come once we start booking it, but the release show will be in Nashville, probably as a part of Hutchmoot. (On to #6!)

6) Hutchmoot 2012 is being planned. I hope you can come. Last year the whole thing sold out in just a few hours and some of you guys missed a shot, so this time we’re going to do a better job of announcing it ahead of time, and we may even sell tickets in groups over the course of a few days. We’ll see. We also have some exciting releases from the Rabbit Room planned for 2012, but I can’t announce them just yet. In the meantime, I hope you’ll continue to visit the site, read the essays, and support the authors and artists there.

So it’s going to be a busy year. It goes without saying that I’m grateful beyond belief for your support and encouragement. I don’t deserve it, and that makes me even more thankful. See you on the road!

AP