With Us

14 Aug, 2008  2 Comments

My dear wife of 22 years, Cheryl is a gifted writer, poet, and is much wiser than I:) She recently started to write down her thoughts for the day on her blog on Beliefnet.com. I thought I would share this with my readers, it is a wonderful reminder of our relationship with God. Thanks hunny!

With Us, by Cheryl Mohr
For years I have focused on the idea of the human ability to create as being a primary example of what it means to be made in the image of God. Perhaps because I am a creative person. Or perhaps because I have spent these years avoiding a more intimate truth. Last night, a very creative person helped to open my eyes, and my heart. My seven year old daughter and I had the quiet pleasure of attending a concert given by Christian recording artist and author Michael Card. As he skillfully, passionately, and humbly journeyed through the pages of scripture via his songs, I became aware of a theme. God is always seeking us out, always finding ways to be with us. This, of course, expresses itself most profoundly in the Incarnation. Emmanuel; God With Us.

With my daughter restlessly leaning on me during the concert, picking at the rubber on her sneaker, a flood of memories washed over me as gentle music filled the air. Memories of my sons, now teenagers, making all sorts of suggestions of things they’d like to do, places to go. My daughter requesting to ride along for even the shortest jaunt to the store, always asking if there’s something she can do to help. Almost eighteen years filled with echoes of “will you play with me?”. It became so clear to me last night, just how much children are like God, and why we must once again become like them in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s their inherent sense of relationality, their authentic desire to be with us, so much so that they will create all manner of circumstances to draw us in. In our own children we have a daily reminder of Emmanuel, a daily reminder of what the image of God looks like.

But how often do we dismiss their ideas, their company, their assistance, as being impractical or unnecessary, or an outright nuisance? How often to we allow our own busyness to preoccupy us? How often are we simply numb and self absorbed? And isn’t the same true in our dealings with God? We’re too busy, too tired, just sitting there in prayer is impractical. It’s almost as if we have a knee-jerk tendency to flee from Love’s pursuit, to avoid those who seek to engage us in genuine intimacy. It’s a vicious circle. In our own experiences of rejection, we build protective barriers around our hearts, and in doing so we inadvertently reject the Love that is so near to us, waiting and hoping to be with us. The Love of God. The Love of our children. The Love of one another. We feel unworthy to receive, and so we fail to give.

I am thankful that each new day holds opportunities to heal our wounds and open our hearts, if we will submit ourselves to the transforming power of God’s Love. Our eyes likewise may be opened to the beautiful truth of the intimacy of God, the God who is ever seeking to be with us, persistent as a child. The God who has given us the gift of one another that we might understand what Love is.

Everliving and Everloving God, You who are the Heartbeat of all creation, heal our wounded hearts that we might welcome Love when it pursues us, and bring our souls out of self-imposed isolation that we might pursue Love, in the sharing of our lives with one another and in service to Jesus, our Emmanuel. ~Amen

Busy, Busy, Busy!

12 Aug, 2008  1 Comment

Wow, I feel like such a lazy bum not blogging for over a week. I have a good excuse. Last week, I travelled to Estes Park, CO for the 34th and last GMA Music in the Rockies event. I had an excellent time, it is so beautiful there! Highs in the 70’s, showers and rainbows almost every day, and lots of great fellowship with my friends, Tom Jackson the world famous live performance coach, Barry Devorzon, who is the brains behind the program Masterwriter (an incredible program for PC and mac that EVERY songwriter should own!) and composer of the #1 hits, Nadia’s Theme, and the theme song from S.W.A.T. I also hung out with Christine Jones, who is general council for Go Daddy and an artist manager. Christine is a great gal and alot of fun to be around! Also had some time with Morgan Cryar and Brett Manning from Singing Success. Brett is world famous and trains many of the top stars of Country and CCM, like Taylor Swift and others.

I also spent a ton of time with a great friend, Larry French. Larry has been going to the Music in the Rockies for the past 10 years and has developed quite the reputation for praying for attendees and industry people. That is how I met Larry, he came up to me at Estes Park 5 years ago and prayed for me. From that point on, he was my friend! Larry was kind enough to pick me up from the Denver airport and take me back. In exchange, I had an extra bed in my room and a free meal ticket. I love it when there is mutual benefit and partnership! Larry had planned on spending the week in his van eating homemade chocolate chip cookies. God always provides when we serve others!

I wasn’t planning on going to Estes Park, but through the help of my friends over at “Christian Radio Weekly,” they helped me by taking care of room and board. I manned their booth for them and shared all about their excellent program to help Christian independent artists get their music onto Christian radio. This traditionally has been a hard nut to crack, but I am seeing more and more stations opening up their playlists to indie artists! Check out a Video Interview I conducted with Christian Radio Weekly president Dave Koch. Dave explains the mission behind CRW and how both CRW and Indieheaven are changing the CCM industry. Exciting times!

Even though attendance at the event was not great at the event, there were quite a few divine appointments throughout the week. There was one artist who was in tears at my booth after I shared with her that she was “good enough.” Many artists and songwriters attend these events to see if they are good enough in the industry eyes. I do my best to explain how it all works, and not to worry about the industry so much. Sing, play and write because you LOVE IT, and if you do it WELL, others will come along on the joy ride with you! I told that to many up there at Estes. Others were appreciative of the info at my booth and excited about what I am doing with Indieheaven. Several artists I met up there have already signed up with us!

I am always very impressed with how the GMA does their events, I know firsthand how difficult it is to produce a conference, having done my own CIA Summit for the past 5 years. My event pales to theirs, as far as complexity and scope. I have learned to keep my conference simple. Everyone is in the same room, hearing the same seminars, and the light bulbs all go off at the same time. You should see the light as attendees discover what it truly means to be discovered! It isn’t about breaking in to me, it’s about breaking out of the mindset that the only way God can use you is in the CCM industry.

Not knocking the GMA, because for a long time, the focus of their event was to discover the next big thing in CCM. This year, they did discover a young gal who I thought was great. I can’t recall her name, but she was excellent! So, we shall see what John Mays and Centricity Records does with the developmental deal they awarded her. It was cute, when she heard her name called, she broke out in tears. You would have thought she was just named Miss Universe. It was a special moment for her, so God bless her on her journey!

Well, that brings everyone up to speed on what I have been doing lately. I tried my best to keep up with everything the past 10 days, but if I do not spend every waking hour of every day serving our members of Indieheaven, I fall woefully behind and have to work double time to catch up.

Here’s a few pics of the trip back to Boulder, CO from Estes Park. Larry took me on the “scenic” route. Heck, every road there is the scenic route!


Here’s me in front of Long’s Peak, which is about 14,200 feet!


Larry in front of Longs Peak


Here’s me inside a rock with a hole cut by water


Boulder Creek Waterfall


Larry walking back from Boulder Creek Waterfall

Buy a song, help a family

4 Aug, 2008  No Comment

We’re partnering with one of our Indieheaven members, Brad Reynolds to help a family in need. Please read.

Hi everyone, this is Brad Reynolds, this message is not a forward, but I sincerely hope it becomes one because there is a huge opportunity to make a difference in a friend’s life? so please be encouraged to send this to everyone you know…

On Tuesday June 17th, 2008 around 11 AM, a man entered the Tip Top Hair Salon on Lebanon Rd in Hermitage, TN and fired 5 shots from a .22 caliber pistol into the body of a 24 year old stylist and mother of two as she pleaded for her life. Then, after ignoring her cries for mercy and believing his mission to kill her had been accomplished, the gunman turned the pistol on himself and ended his own life.

Alicia Garcia had been working at Tip Top for about 6 months as a stylist. My stylist, Nancy, works in the chair right next to her. Fortunately Nancy was off that day. Since Nancy and Alicia were friends and worked so closely together, I got to know Alicia a little bit. Every few weeks when I would get my hair cut, we would all catch up on life through the typical casual salon chit-chat.

The last time I went in was about 1 week before the incident. I noticed Alicia was not working that day and when I asked, Nancy let me know that she was off because she was getting an ‘order of protection’ against her husband. One week later we found out how badly she needed it.

Alicia miraculously survived the gunshot wounds…despite getting hit in the chest and neck. She was in critical condition for a few days but has since been released and is making an amazing recovery. However being a self employed stylist, she has no insurance for herself or her two young sons.

Here is how we can help…
A few years ago I wrote a song with my friend Jamie Prosser and my brother Matt Reynolds called ‘The Diary’. This song is based on a woman who is trapped in an abusive relationship and it is written as though the woman’s diary is telling the story. Alicia’s incident brings this very real issue close to home and gives this song renewed meaning as an important reminder regarding the dangers of domestic violence in our society.

In an effort to help raise some funds for Alicia Garcia and her kids, we have produced a recording of ‘The Diary’ and are now making it available for purchase. Shortly after I heard about the incident with Alicia, I spoke with some very talented friends in the music industry to see if we could put this song together. The responses I received were overwhelming. They didn’t ask for any money or any recognition, but I want to offer a special thanks to Felicity Combs from the group The Sum for singing the song and playing the piano, to Chris Combs for his engineering, to Joe West and Cord Phillips at Gasoline Productions in Nashville for engineering, mixing, and mastering, and to Keith Mohr from Indieheaven for helping get the word out and setting up the page to facilitate the download. The song is now posted on my Indieheaven page. Downloads are $3 and are available here:

http://www.indieheaven.com/artists/bradreynolds

Every dime earned from the digital downloads of ‘The Diary’ will be donated to The Alicia Garcia & Children’s Trust Fund sponsored by Pinnacle Bank in TN. If you would like to donate directly to Pinnacle Bank for The Alicia Garcia & Children’s Trust Fund, donations can be made in person at any Middle TN Pinnacle Bank location or sent via US postal service, there is currently no online access to do this. To find a location visit http://www.pnfp.com/about_pinnacle/locations/default.aspx .

If you wish to mail a check directly to Pinnacle Bank please send it to the following address:

Pinnacle Bank
211 Commerce St
Suite 300
Nashville, TN 37201

Make checks payable to ‘The Alicia Garcia and Children’s Trust Fund’

Please help me get the word out and let’s raise enough money for Alicia and her 2 sons to ’start a new page’ in their lives. Once enough money has been raised to help the family get back on their feet, any additional funds will be given to a reputable organization (to be named later) that supports victims of domestic violence.

I would ask that you also pray for the family of Chris Garcia, the husband. Even though his actions were dreadful, there are still family members, including his two sons, that lost someone they loved very much.

Here are a couple of the news links related to the story…
http://www.newschannel5.com/global/story.asp?s=8512971
http://www.wsmv.com/news/16631536/detail.html?rss=nash&psp=news
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080728/NEWS01/807280345/1001/RSS01

Interviewed by Music Business Radio

30 Jul, 2008  No Comment

Yesterday, I headed down to Lightning 100 studios in Nashville to be interviewed by David Hooper for a show he produces called “Music Business Radio.” I had a great time, I mean, who doesn’t love to talk about themselves and what they are doing! Check out the blog David wrote about my interview Here.

David Hooper is legendary in the music consulting/guru circles, he writes all kinds of materials for indie artists who are in the mainstream music field. Check out his site at: MusicMarketing.com I love what David teaches indies, we say basically the same things, but I don’t usually use cuss words. (although I’d like to at times:)

David, Gary (the producer) and Dan (the engineer) made me feel right at home in the studio.
We discussed what’s happening in the Christian Music industry, how indies can make it, my thoughts on subjects I have blogged about here on my Indieheaven blog, what I’m doing on Indieheaven and our business model. They seemed impressed with what I was doing on Indieheaven. I guess I’m so close to it I don’t see what is so revolutionary about it, other than we have made a way to make a living off of serving independent musicians. I guess that’s a toughy for others. We do it by providing impeccable service to our Indieheaven members and being honest and truthful about where they are at in their music and having a genuine care for their careers.

I thought the interview went very well and was quite pleased with what came out of my mouth. Sometimes, I have no idea what I’m saying, so it will be good for me to listen to the show when it is available in about 2 months. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when you can check it out. Thanks again David, Gary and Dan for having me in, and for being so gracious to this little Christian guy:)


Dan, David, Myself, and Gary