Voices In My Head Episode #259: Back From New York, Crowd Music Makes Some Noise, Andrew Peterson Ap

Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and I am ready to do this podcast today. Thank you. It's been a week since I actually podcasted last. I don't know the last time that I missed a week, but I missed last week, but it was for a very good reason. I was finishing recording my new album in New York with Brothers McClary, and man,— did we have quite an experience. A good experience, I must say. Very hard. 12 to 15 hour days every day being in the studio, but creating in a way that I've never had the chance to create before in a studio. When I did the album with Lifeway Worship a couple of years ago, that was the kind of thing where I came in, they hired a bunch of really incredible studio musicians, we went to one of the best studios in the world, definitely in Nashville, and they knocked out a bunch of songs in one day, and then over a couple of days I went back and recorded vocals, and then maybe one more day to do the background vocals, so we had it all done in about 4 days. But the whole process took over a year, and I didn't really feel like I got to put my stamp on it. I mean, I wrote the songs and I sang on the songs and I did some guitar solos here and there throughout the album, but most of it was other musicians playing my music. And let me say about that, first of all, I will be forever grateful to Lifeway Worship for letting me make that album with them. That was an awesome experience. I can't place even how much— there's no dollar amount to say how much it meant to me, how much it was worth to me personally. And even just to meet some of my musical heroes who are these studio players who have played on everybody's albums, that was an amazing experience and I'm always going to treasure that. The great engineers I worked with, just the people at Lifeway, it was just a beautiful experience and I sincerely hope I get to do something like that with them again one day. But this was a completely independent project this time. As you know, when you've been listening to this podcast, I've been raising funds independently for this. I have had no help from anyone except for listeners and people who have been supportive of my music. And we started out with a goal of $10,200 to raise to cover the recording costs. We have now raised over $5,600, and, and so that means we are getting closer and closer to the goal. I don't have enough to finish paying for it yet, but the album is now recorded. And so I'm running a second Indiegogo campaign. I'm not going to talk a lot about about it here, but if you go to Indiegogo.com and look up my name, Rick Lee James, or Thunder, you'll be able to find my project on there. We're basically treating it now as pre-orders for the album. It's complete. It'll be another month and a half, probably 2 months, before they get around to actually being able to mixing and mastering it, but once that starts, it'll be a fairly, fairly quick process. So I'm hoping late fall— I mean Sorry, late summer, early fall for a release of this album. That is my goal right now. So now it's all the other stuff, but there's such a huge load off my mind. So I want to talk to you in the future about my experience being in the studio, because that was— it was just something new I had never gotten to do in that way, where I could just take the time to create. I played so many instruments, I got to sing background vocals on parts. I, I mean, I just really took time. We explored the space of the studio, and we came up with some new and unique sounds, I think, that you aren't going hear everywhere. Everything from, you know, who would have thought other than Chris Hoisington, my producer from Brothers McClurg, who would have thought to use something like a potter's wheel as a piece of percussion? But there's a song that we sing, Be My All, that I wrote with Randy Cox, and there's a line that says, you know, be my heart, be my provider, you be the potter, I'll be the clay. And Chris just had this idea, what if we can find a potter's wheel and use that as the percussion? So the percussion on that song, the only percussion in the whole song, is a potter's wheel being run, and it sounds just beautiful. The whole album is— it was so musical and so creative. We got so many different styles in. There was part of it that was very difficult, not because we were having trouble playing it, but just emotionally. There's a song that I wrote about the 3 losses of our babies through miscarriages that my wife and I experienced, and it was hard. I mean, it was hard. It was emotionally draining and difficult. There was other parts that were so filled with joy, and I look I look forward to talking to you more about it in the future, but what I think I want to do with that is maybe go through and do sort of a song by song, talk about what it was like being in the studio to record each song. I've got a lot I want to talk about today on the podcast, and it's very music-centered today, so I hope you're a big fan of music. So all that is to say, if you go to Indiegogo.com and look up my name, you can still help us with the making of the record. We have about a month left. I'm not doing it as big and high-pressure as I did before. I need lots of help from you, but I'm just kind of letting it be what it is this time. This is the second fundraiser. We have less than half to go. It's still a huge obstacle, but we can do it through your help. But also, just one other thing about that before I shift gears into the other topics today, which is going to be about Andrew Peterson, about crowd music, and some other things. I want to let you know, if you go to rickleejames.com/thunder, you can actually find 3 ways that you can donate. All right, there's a new way I added just today. That it's, it's Buy Me a Coffee, and, and you'll read more about that on details. There's actually a way you can text. You can just send a text with the word Thunder to 555-888, and you can donate however little or however much you want to donate towards the album on there. And then there's the Indiegogo page. So we've got 3 different ways to get this made. We're doing great. Our goal is, is in sight. I think with your help we can do this together. We've had places like UTR Media and Good Patron Podcast that have been helping us to promote and tell the world about this. So we're hoping we're gonna make it. And all right, so let me, let me shift gears just a little bit. I talked about Brothers McClurg and being in the studio with them. Well, I'm gonna be with Brothers McClurg at the National Worship Leader Conference this year. They were kind enough to let me come along and kind of stow away as one of their guests because it's going to be at Trevecca Nazarene University, which is my my alma mater. I graduated from Trevecca Nazarene, and it's going to be there in May, and it's going to be a really great time. And if you're a worship leader, I hope you can join us. They have so many different artists this year. The lineup is incredible, everybody from, from new to old. I mean, they've got Matt Maher, they've got Crowder, they've got Michael W. Smith coming, they've got, I think, Brothers McClurg, as I mentioned already. If you go to worshipleader.com, you'll be able to see this long line of people that that they have coming this year. It's going to be a great time. I know our old friend Andrew Ossinga is going to be there. Phil Keggy is going to be there this year. So if you can come and be a part of it, please do that. I'll be recording podcasts at the Worship Leader Conference. I'm still unsure at this point. I've sort of received an invitation to play, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen, just through the song discovery thing that they have. They might have a song discovery stage, but Either way, I'm gonna be there and I'm gonna be recording podcasts with— I'm hoping to do a special Rich Mullins tribute podcast with people like Randy Cox and, and Lowell Alexander, some of Rich's co-writers and people that knew him well. So come to the National Worship Leader Conference in May. You can look it up at Worship Leader Magazine's website. Another thing I want to tell you about, which is more informational, but it's something I'm excited to be a part of— I told you before in this podcast about crowd music. And I don't often do this, but I want to actually refer you to another podcast this week. Now listen to the rest of this one first, because I've got some great things ahead for you today that have to do with Andrew Peterson, our guest from just a couple weeks ago. But many of you know, and you can see this if you go to crowdmusic.com/rickleejames— I'm gonna say that a second time because I want you to visit that— crowdmusic.com/rickleejames. You can join up to a new music service that is still in the pre-launch phase right now, and you can use my promoter number, 337, when you sign up. 337 at crowdmusic.com/RickLeeJames. I've done podcasts with CrowdMusic in the past with David Browning. I've done podcasts that featured some of the great musicians that CrowdMusic is bringing out, and this week they were on the Nashville Access podcast, and I listened to it. It's actually a great show. I'm going to start listening to it more. It's more country music centered, and so if you're not a fan of country music, it may not be that appealing to you. I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of country music, especially these days, but I love this podcast. I really enjoyed it. And they had the owners of CrowdMusic, Mike Castronovo and David Browning, on as their guests this week, and they really got to explain the CrowdMusic model and why it's unique, why it's different in a world of streaming. The thing about CrowdMusic now, there's some chance that I may have my music featured on there in the future, but even that's not a guarantee. But I'm just excited about this and wanted to be a part of it when I heard it because the artists that you're listening to today, if you're listening on Spotify, if you're listening on iTunes like I do, if you listen on streaming services, I love getting music that way, but it's a really— it's a disservice to the artist to listen to their music that way. If you're not buying their music too, if you don't buy the music of people you really enjoy, you're really not supporting the artist, you're not helping more music get made. Case in point being artists on streaming services like Spotify, they'll get about, I think, 0.6% maybe of the streaming sale. The writer actually gets more than the artist does, but the writer doesn't get very much either. And then for most artists, that gets split up between publishers and other things like that. So me, for instance, when you stream one of my songs, I think I get maybe 3 cents, which, I mean, I don't want to complain about that, but it's not like a sale as opposed to you buy a song even through places like Amazon or even on Amazon, I don't get the full amount of that sale. The thing that's different about CrowdMusic, and if you really like to support artists, an artist on CrowdMusic, if they are picked and if their song is chosen, just one song through CrowdMusic, because of their subscription model and the way they do it, they actually pay the artist. And because of their number of subscribers that they have, the minimum that an artist will get paid for being on Crowd is the amount that it takes that an artist would be paid after 33 million premium streams on a platform like Spotify, which is $20,000. If you subscribe to CrowdMusic, you're actually helping an artist through one song get $20,000 worth of sales at this point, at the minimum point, because at this point they have 20,000 subscribers. So you get basically the amount of a sale of one song per their subscribers. By the time they do the official launch of CrowdMusic, it's going to be much more. So what that means is it's actually a lucrative way for about the price that you're paying for a service like Spotify or iTunes or another streaming service, you actually get to support an artist for real, and you actually get to hear exclusive music that you can't hear on Spotify and iTunes and other places because these songs are exclusive through those artists through CrowdMusic. So what I'm asking you to do is go listen to another podcast this week. Go to the Nashville Access podcast. Nashville Access. They have a website online, and I believe they have a discovery page on the Nashville Access website, which is Nashville-Access.com. And they have a weekly show page there, they have different affiliates page, and I think if you search it out, you'll be able to find an artist discovery page through CrowdMusic, and you'll be able to actually see some of the great artists and hear their music. So, and do one other thing Go to Crowd Music's Facebook page and click on it, like it, follow it, because just about every Tuesday night they have one of their artists on to do— I think it's around a, you know, 30 to 40 minute live program. So you get to hear the live music and you get to hear the artists from Crowd, and they are always exceptional. And so that's my recommendation to you this week. Go check out Nashville Access, the podcast. Really good show, really great hosts. They're funny. They're worth listening to. So I think you're going to be in my regular rotation even though I'm not a huge country music fan. But I'm proud of Mike Castronovo and I'm proud of David Browning and what they are doing. And I really hope you'll go and like the CrowdMusic Facebook page. I also have a CrowdMusic page as a promoter and you can go to CrowdMusic— I believe it's facebook.com/crowdmusicrickleejames. I can't remember, I've got too much stuff in my head. But you can look up Rick Lee James through CrowdMusic on Facebook and it'll take you to my promoter promoter page as well. You can learn more about it if you go to crowdmusic.com/rickleejames, use the promoter number 337, you can sign up. And if you get friends to sign up as well, you can actually get money off every month from your subscription for the service. So it's really something worth checking out. They are doing something unique, they're trying something new, and I'm just wishing them all the best. David Browning, I've gotten to know pretty well, and He is just a class act, and he's a brother in Christ, and we want to support CrowdMusic as much as we can. We've talked about before on this show supporting things that are not a ripple in the stream, but things that are actually making a splash, and I truly believe CrowdMusic is doing that. And they are champions for the artists. They're saving the music business, I believe, and I think we're going to see this model maybe popping up more and more based on their example and what they've done, because when something great like this comes along, people start copying it. So, so get on board right now. Right now with crowd music. Alright, well, the thing I wanted to talk about today, and, and this is something that's important, I think, for us to address, because just a couple weeks ago we had Andrew Peterson on our show as our featured guest. And Andrew Peterson has released two great albums. One of them might not quite be released yet, but the one, Resurrection Letters Prologue, is out. If it's not out already, Resurrection Letters Volume 1 will be out very soon. I've listened to both of the albums basically on a loop in my house for the last few weeks. They're amazing. And this past Friday, actually, I was on my way home from the recording studio, and I had stopped overnight in Erie, Pennsylvania to spend the night because I was just too tired to make it all the way home. And that morning I woke up to find out that Andrew Peterson had a new music video for his song "Is He Worthy." and it was beautiful. It's, it's rare that I find a song that is not only beautiful in itself and is just an amazing work of art, but then the music video comes along with it and it in itself is also this amazing work of art. And to be honest, I listened to it a lot on my way home that day. I listened to it when I got home. I, I noticed at the end of the first day, I think on YouTube they had like 77,000 views, and I don't know, I was probably, you know, 10 of those because I listened so many times through YouTube. I just found it to be a beautiful video. And then I think it was early this week I saw on Facebook a post from Andrew Peterson offering an apology. And, and the— it was this blog post on the rabbitroom.com, rabbitroom.com, if you want to go see it. And the title is Waking Up to Is He Worthy? An apology. And I felt like it was important because I had, you know, I'm guilty of this same thing that he's going to talk about in this letter. I wanted to read at least some of it to you today from this blog because having gotten to know Andrew a little bit over the years and having him especially on this last podcast, I think we all heard his heart. And the intention was that he would bring glory to God through this song, that we would point out to the one who is worthy and not have attention taken away from that. Well, we are in a time where the church needs to confront some things like race and race problems that are going on. And I even ran into this in some of my music videos. My last two music videos I made, I was very intentional that the people that I had in it were not just white people. I wanted diversity, especially on the song The Invitation. And, and thankfully I was able to work that out. But if I hadn't done some thinking ahead about that, it would would have been difficult, and it probably would have just ended up being a bunch of white people again, like often it is in the Christian music business in many ways. Well, this is sort of what this is about with Andrew Peterson. So I'm going to read at least some of his blog post just to share his heart. I felt like it was important to do this today because he is a friend of the show, and he has been such, such a friend and somebody who I just trust his heart. And he's so influential in the music business, and I wanted you to hear his heart about this music video. Because, I don't know, maybe he didn't even need to offer this apology because I don't know if everybody took it the way that he did, but he took the burden of an apology upon himself because his heart is just that tuned in to the Holy Spirit's leading. So I applaud him for this. And this is from his blog post, "Waking Up to Is He Worthy? An Apology." The only way to really learn something is to screw up. A few days ago, with the help of the good people at the Gospel Coalition, I released a music video for a song called "Is He Worthy?" and just hours later I was sitting in my office with tears in my eyes. Not the good kind of tears. Among the very kind comments on social media were some painfully negative ones pointing out that there was a conspicuous lack of racial diversity in the video. Someone actually said, "Man, that's a lot of white people in one video." Others said they wouldn't or couldn't share it with friends of color because it would cause them pain. The irony was that the song is based on one of the most gloriously inclusive passages in scripture, Revelation 5, which says, "From every people and tribe, every nation and tongue, he has made a kingdom of priests to God to reign with the Son." The camera swings past all the white faces just before I sing that line, This is the very definition of painfully ironic. What was meant to be a video drawing attention to the glory of Jesus, one that opened the door for all people to praise Him, had become for some a source of grief. I immediately thought of some friends of mine and wondered if I had unintentionally hurt them. I called them and my worst fears were confirmed. They were very encouraging even as they helped me understand what it was like for them to watch the video and in the end we cried and prayed together on the phone. The shoot, directed by Max Hsu, who is awesome, was crazy. We relied on an open casting call for volunteers to fill the chapel, but for some reason only half of them showed. It wasn't until the fourth or fifth chaotic take, with string players, choir members, lighting crew, camera crew, and congregation rushing to and fro, that I realized there were only white people in the room, other than the director, of course. It's not all that unusual for people of color to come to my shows, so I was surprised that none were there that night. I mentioned it to someone, but things were so hectic that the next thing you know, Asu had called for the next take. Honestly, the lack of diversity didn't occur to us again until the day of the release when I read the comments. If I could go back in time, I would tell Andrew of a month ago, "Don't assume. Make sure that this video is a true reflection of the Kingdom. Make sure it paints a glorious picture of the promise in Revelation that every people, tribe, nation, and tongue will sing of the worthiness of Christ, the Lamb who was slain to free the captives. Think about the subtext, about what this video will say wordlessly to your friends of color. I didn't, and I regret that. Because I believe God works all things for the good of his people, I have to trust that though I am small potatoes in the music world— by the way, I disagree with that— my misstep with this video will lead the church to good conversations, better understanding, humility, and love and forgiveness between everyone affected by it. My prayer on the morning of the whole thing started was, please Lord, Don't let my mistake detract from the point of the song, which is to give voice to the truth of the gospel, to invite many into the joy of singing about the beauty of who Jesus is and what he's done. But really, that's merely my intention for the song. God's intention may be broader and better. His intention may be to use my lack of wisdom and foresight to open doors for reconciliation, repentance, healing, and mercy. As my friend said on the phone yesterday, a hundred deaths, a million resurrections. So the, the post goes on for a bit longer than that. So again, I encourage you to go and look up the post on rabbitroom.com, Waking Up to Is He Worthy? An Apology. I want to say on behalf of all of us white people, you know, I, I probably— I know I didn't even notice it at first, and I watched that video again and again and again And now that I see it, I get it. I understand that. And as I've said before, I've tried to be conscious of that in my own music videos. But let me say on, you know, one small defense of it too. It is a very hectic thing when you're making a music video, and you do have to work with the people that show up. And so I can understand both sides. I can understand where Andrew's coming from. I understand how hectic it is. But I also understand that the Kingdom of God is so great, we can't afford to leave anyone out in a video like this. Now that I watch it, it does stand out to me, but I don't think Andrew meant anything malicious by it. And I just appreciate his apology so much. And, and I really, I really think that, that this will open up some conversations for the better. I really hope that's the case, and I pray that that God will, will just use this to help us learn from these things. I think that conversations are so important that we have together on race. I also want to make sort of a plug for these two albums one more time: Resurrection Letters: The Prologue and Resurrection Letters: Volume 1. We are using them at Easter Sunday at our church, and probably we're going to be using them a little bit in our Tenebrae service as well. But I know we're doing two songs on Sunday morning, and we are going going to be showing that video of Is He Worthy? And it's— it'll be a smart thing of us to actually do sort of a preface to that as well, which we plan on doing on Easter Sunday morning, to remind everyone that even in our predominantly white congregation, we need to be aware as we watch this video, as we have these conversations, that the kingdom of God is much broader than what we can ever portray on any sort of video. I think that it's something we need to strive for. We're probably never going to get it perfect, But man, what a beautiful thing that we can begin having these conversations, that we can continue rather having these conversations. And I think half the battle is just that we are learning to listen more, that we're learning to stop and listen, and that when things like this happen, we are grieved by them, but that hopefully we can walk through it together, learn from the mistake, and, and go on to the next thing. All this being said, it is a beautiful video. I just showed it to my pastor for the first time this morning, and it brought him to tears, and both of us are kind of sitting in the office at church just kind of weeping through it together because there is a clear message of the gospel in this song and it is true that he is worthy. And so I hope that this won't detract in the long run. I think I know Andrew's heart on this and all the people who worked to put this together. I think their heart was in the right place. God help us to learn in the future to have these kinds of conversations And all that being said, what I meant to say when I told you we were using the music in our church, I want to let you know you can go to the Rabbit Room store and get the sheet music for every single song on both the Prologue and Resurrection Letters Volume 1 for only $20. Okay, that's an amazing deal to get that much sheet music. I know of places that I go online sometimes as a music pastor, and it's almost that much for one song. And they are generously giving you every single song from both albums for only $20. Even if you're going to only use 1 or 2 songs, it is so worth it to have that music. So I just want to make that quick plug for Rabbit Room. And if you'll go to rabbitroom.com, take some time. If you're somebody who wants the music to this, buy it there. Buy it, because it's not on CCLI or anywhere else that worship leaders often use. And it really is a great tool, and you're supporting a great ministry. I really believe in the Rabbit Room. I really believe in Andrew Peterson. And all the artists that are connected there. They are really doing a lot of great things for the kingdom of God, and we want to help them with that effort in any way that we can. So please, please support. Please do that. And, and I'm going to close the podcast today, and I want to— again, I'll probably apologize again in just a second, but I want to apologize. I'm going to end it on a bit of a sad note today because because we are in a time of tragedy once again in our nation. There's been school shootings again. There have been these bombs that have been going off in Austin. There are more things that I'm sure we aren't even aware of. And yesterday— I want to apologize, but this is just something I needed to share from my heart. I'm feeling the strain of this in many ways, and sometimes the only way I can do it is to write out prayers. And I thought maybe some of you would feel this as well. I wanted to close with a prayer today. It's a heavy prayer that's on my heart. It's a prayer that is biting in some ways, but while I don't think laws can change the heart of men, and while I don't think necessarily certain programs and certain restrictions will actually solve the problem, I think the fact that if we would see people actually trying to solve the problem problem, whether it be officials trying to pass some new laws or different things about— whether it be gun control or whether it be with ways to kind of protect schools and make things safer. I feel like in many ways they are slaves to lobbyists in Washington. Many of us in our hometowns are slaves to it, and we've allowed Facebook to take over, and we've allowed our news outlets to speak for us instead of the gospel. And I'm so frustrated by it, and maybe you are too. And so I offer this prayer because I— every day I see people in our congregations, I see people on social media, I see people across the country who have bought into the lie that their party is God's party and that they have for some reason given up the gospel voice for the voice of the Republicans or the voice of the Democrats. Democrats, or the voice of whatever Fox News says is appropriate, or whatever CNN says is right. And that's not the gospel. Those things are not the kingdom. Every now and then, on a rare occasion, they might intersect with some similar things, but they are not the gospel. And to give ourselves completely over to those things is idolatry. And this shooting thing, I don't know what's gotta be done, but we need to try something. I'm tired of hearing about another school shooting. I have a wife who is a teacher. I have a son who is in school, and I don't want to hear about them being reported one of these days because they were in a school shooting. It's already happened right here in Springfield, the school right behind our church. There's been a child that came to school, I think was 6 years old, with a loaded handgun in his bag. Something has to change here. And we have made idols of rights, we've made idols of America, we've made idols of the Constitution, and to be frank with you, my friends, who I love so much, thank you for listening, please keep listening after this, it's idolatry, and we're gonna face the judgment of God because of it. So I offer this prayer in closing today. When it comes to apologies, we're kind of going the gamut from very happy at the beginning of the show, to an apology, to something kind of heavy at the end, and I don't know if that's the right way to do it, but it's the way we're gonna do it today. This is my prayer I wrote down yesterday: Lord Jesus, there has been another school shooting today in Maryland. God, we are going to offer thoughts and prayers once again, but God, if we are unwilling to make needed changes, then just ignore these thoughts and prayers that we offer, because we will be offering them again in a couple of days when the next act of violence happens due to our unwillingness to do anything except offer thoughts and prayers. We know prayer changes things, but we also know that prayer doesn't change you, oh Lord, but it is supposed to change us by forming us into disciples. But those of us who live in the United States of America seem unwilling to change. We have rights, you know, Lord. So Lord, hear our prayers, but you should probably just ignore them since we seem to be unwilling to change. We don't deserve your generosity. We pray this in the name of Jesus, whom we love much less than our guns, our laws, and our political parties. It's sad, Lord, but it's true. We love those things more than you, it seems. We pray this in the name of Jesus, whose commandments we ignore so that we can be patriotic Americans who worship our rights as though they came down the mountain with Moses. We pray this in the name of Jesus, whom we don't really pray to at all because we don't believe you are as mighty to save as our guns are. We pray this in the name of Jesus, who died for us, lived for us, and showed us the way of the gospel, which we ignore every day so that we can be loyal Democrats and Republicans, loyal watchers of CNN and Fox News, Loyal Americans. God, forgive us. Help us to be disciples rather than patriots. Help us to be people who live out the gospel in this world. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head this week. God bless you. Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency. That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.