One to Watch: Ryan Corn Music

A few weeks ago, I was busily lining up artist interviews for the WFRN Friend Fest that happened the weekend of June 21st-22nd, 2013. In the process of setting up an interview with Curb Record’s Oswald Brothers Band (OBB) management, I learned that another one of the label’s up and coming artists by the name of Ryan Corn would also be appearing at the festival.

“Check out Ryan’s website and let me know if you want to set up an interview with him,” Ryan’s manager very graciously offered.

Since I did not recall never hearing of Ryan Corn before, I texted my friend and assistant Sarah the website info and asked her to check out his page to see what she thought. If we both thought it was a worthwhile endeavor, we’d figure out a way to fit Ryan into our Saturday schedule.

In less than 10 seconds of listening to the song ‘Burst’, an artist I had never heard of before went from being completely off my radar to being the one to watch in 2014. I didn’t even need to listen to the second song on the website, ‘Wonderful Things’ to confirm my initial suspicions that Ryan Corn is an amazing new talent (but I listened to it anyway…and guess what? It was the most wonderful thing I’ve heard from a brand new to me artist this year!)

Sarah was in complete and total agreement.

Ryan, who was signed to Curb last September, says that “God’s really been opening doors in the past year, and I’m just trying to figure out where I need to be and what I need to do.” While Ryan came to the label with many of his own songs already written, he was able to do some co-writing for his upcoming full length project which will hopefully be released in 2014.

What I liked immediately about Ryan’s song ‘Burst’ was its light, almost whimsical quality that pairs superbly with the song’s lyrical ingenuity. Ryan admits that he has a penchant for organic, true acoustically-driven sounds and I would wholeheartedly agree that he seems to have a way of seamlessly weaving together folk and pop into something really unexpected and special.

When you take all of these elements together, what you’ll find is the fresh, appealingly unique sound that is distinctly Ryan Corn.

So, if you are one of the countless folks who e-mail me on a regular basis wanting to know who the next big thing in Christian music is going to be, I would definitely say to you that Ryan Corn is one to keep an eye on. To get a head start on the crowd by becoming a fan of Ryan’s today, and to check out the songs ‘Burst’ and ‘Wonderful Things’, head over to his website, http://www.RyanCornMusic.com; and as always, keep up to date with Spin: the Blog by getting social with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr or by signing up to receive new posts by e-mail. We will be sure to keep you posted on any new Ryan Corn news as it becomes available!

Phil Joel Launches deliberateKids Kickstarter Campaign

These days, you just can’t escape the constant barrage of worldly messages that come at us from all sides during most of our waking hours.  From the TV to the internet to the newspaper, billions of dollars are spent every year crafting eye popping, shock and awe advertisements meant to draw our attention and pique our interest in buying some product we probably don’t even need anyway.  Even grocery carts and the sides of city buses compete for our attention, projecting provocative images and offensive content.

As a parent, how do you prepare your child to filter out the junk of this world that seems to be almost everywhere?  What can be done to guard the young hearts and protect the minds that have been entrusted to us from all the ugliness in the world?

Phil Joel, a former 14 year member of the Christian rock group the Newsboys and the founder of the deliberatePeople movement, has a simple but innovative idea to combat these very things.

DeliberateKids is a children’s music project that Joel, together with his wife Heather, originally created after becoming parents to their two children.  “There’s a lot of kids music out there,” said Joel with his trademark New Zealand accent, “but much of it is very, very old.  I wanted to create something rockin’, catchy, and super fun that would pour God’s truth into the hearts of kids everywhere.”

The original deliberateKids 1 & 2 were recorded and distributed thru a deal with a record label, and that deal officially came to end recently, said Joel in an interview at the WFRN Friend Fest on Saturday, June 22^nd, 2013.  Now that the rights have been returned to the Joel family from the label, they are anxious to relaunch deliberateKids and “get this music back into the minivans and living rooms all over the country,” Joel said with a smile.

While Joel is passionate about getting the music back out to families, obtaining the financial backing for a grassroots project such as this one has proved rather challenging.  “A lot of people don’t realize that to do things the right way, it can get rather expensive to license your songs, pay out royalties, manufacture the CDs and so on,” said Joel,  “but it is important to us that we do this the right way.”

This is why the Joels have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the $15,000 needed to manufacture the project.  Currently, the campaign is a little over 50% funded with 3 weeks remaining in the campaign.  Project backers can donate as little as $1 or more than $3,500 with incentives ranging from a 5 song digital download sampler of the CD to a visit from Phil Joel to your church on Sunday morning.

“Every day, we receive calls or e-mails from people who want to know where to buy deliberateKids,” said Joel.  “It’s rather frustrating to tell them they can’t buy it because it’s nowhere to be found at the moment.  This Kickstarter campaign can change that.”

Notable fans (and parents)  of deliberateKids include tobyMac, Jeremy and Adie Camp, Matthew and Emily West, Peter Furler, Jon and Sherry Rivers, Patsy Clairmont, and comedian Bob Smiley.  Of the deliberateKids CDs, Matthew West has said “Our children love the deliberateKids music! God has uniquely gifted Phil and Heather with the ability to write songs that are fun, entertaining, and filled with the hope and the joy that we find in God’s promises. We tell all of our friends about dKids because we know parents need to be armed with tools like this as a way of filling our children’s hearts with the positive message of the hope we have in Christ!”

Ultimately, Joel hopes to expand the deliberateKids family to include daily devotionals for middle schoolers, family tool books, VBS materials, Sunday School curriculum, music videos, and perhaps even a deliberateKids 3.

For more information about this project, visit www.PhilJoel.com or click here to visit the deliberateKids Kickstarter page.

 

 

 

In addition to his work with deliberateKids and deliberatePeople, Phil Joel is also a solo artist and his projects are available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon. 

Finding Favour Releases Video For New Single

I recently shared with y’all my review of Finding Favour’s self-titled debut project right here on Spin: the Blog.  You may recall reading about it because the project was SO GOOD my friend Jill, my niece Alyssa, and Jon all stole either expensive Apple products containing the tracks or the CD itself from me.  (In other news, since that posting I’ve been able to recover my iShuffle from Jill and my iTouch from Alyssa.  Jon, ahem, still waiting to get back that CD.)

One of my favorite songs on the EP was a track called ‘Shake the World’.’  While strolling thru the Twitterverse just now, I saw that Finding Favour had posted a video to their new single over on YouTube.  As fast as my WiFi speed could carry me, I sped over to YouTube to find out which song it would be, and was super happy to learn that the new single is ‘Shake the World!’

Mark my words, folks, this song is going to be BIG!

‘Shake the World’ has that perfect summer vibe to it, know what I mean?  A positive message and great music that makes you want to roll all the windows down on your car while you drive around town changing the world one smile and wave at a time.  (OK, so that might work for me here in Small Town, Indiana….in larger metropolitan areas, you might want to come up with a different approach!)

You can check out the video below, which, by the way, I love, and be sure to spread the word…Finding Favour is about to Shake the World!

 

PS–If you are in my neck of the woods in Northern Indiana, you can actually go SEE Finding Favour (most likely) perform this song LIVE next week at the WFRN Friend Fest at Amish Acres in Indiana!  They will be there on Saturday June 22nd, 2013 (don’t have a stage time yet, will keep you posted!)  

 

Song of the Week: Building 429’s We Won’t Be Shaken

I’ve been hearing Building 429’s ‘We Won’t Be Shaken’ a lot on the radio lately, which makes me super happy! I LOVE this song, and I love Building 429. I was blessed to see them in concert a couple of times in 2012, and they are completely awesome! I’ve been rocking Building 429 tunes since 2005’s Space in Between Us, and I’m so pleased that they are experiencing a resurgence of sorts in the popularity of their music on Christian radio and out on tour. Jason Roy, Building 429’s lead singer, is one of my all-time favorites; I adore his distinctive, truly authentic voice (come to think of it, one of the best blogs I read in all of 2012 was written by Roy about his voice. You can read it by clicking here.) I also love his blog, http://www.JRoyMusic.com, where he shares stories about his faith, his life on the road, and life with his family.

Building 429 is currently out on the “Give Me Jesus” tour with the Rhett Walker Band, Finding Favour, and Carlos Whittaker. If you are in Northeast Indiana/Southeast Michigan/Northwest Ohio, you should definitely make plans to see Building 429 when they hit the WFRN Friend Fest in Nappannee, Indiana on June 21-22nd, 2013. You can also pre-order the band’s upcoming release on their website, http://www.building429.com, which is due out on June 4th, 2013.

So, without further ado…here’s the official video for my song pick for the week of April 8th, 2013: We Won’t Be Shaken!

Building 429 Releases Lyric Video for ‘We Won’t Be Shaken’

Building 429 recently released an all-new lyric video for the song ‘We Won’t Be Shaken’.  The song is the lead off of the similarly titled album from the group due out on June 4th ,2013.

I am LOVING this song…give it a listen and let me know what you think!  (PS–If you’re in Indiana, be sure to plan now to check out Building 429 at the WFRN Friend Fest in Nappannee  June 21st and 22nd, 2013.)

http://www.wfrnfriendfest.com/

The complete line up for the WFRN Friend Fest was announced this morning and it’s spectacular!  I didn’t think WFRN could top last year, and I for sure didn’t think the line-up could possibly get much better after hearing the line-up of stellar headliners planned.  I love it when I’m wrong!  Here’s a complete breakdown of who’s coming…I think you’ll see many of my favorites on this list!

1. TobyMac
2. Matthew West
3. Building 429
4. Peter Furler
5. Big Daddy Weave
6. Kari Jobe
7. Jamie Grace
8. for King & Country (YESSS!!!)
9. Rhett Walker Band
10. Moriah Peters
11. Finding Favour
12. Hyland (Yay!)
13. The Neverclaim
14. Mosteller

Seriously, the WFRN Fest was my favorite festival I went to last year for a lot of reasons.  Amish Acres is beautiful, the whole thing was incredibly well-run, and the food and beverages were the cheapest I’ve seen anywhere.  (Need I mention they had David Crowder, Casting Crowns, Tenth Avenue North, Sanctus Real, and the Sidewalk Prophets in the line-up?)

I’ve already put in on my calendar for 2013 and bought my $29 two-day pass…you should too!

New Music Monday: Hyland’s Finding Our Way

 

I’m so excited to share with you my pick for this week’s New Music Monday:  Minnesota based Christian rock/pop group, Hyland, and their sophomore release, ‘Finding Our Way’, which was released on 10/22/2012.  Now, you may not have heard much about the group Hyland…yet.  I think it’s only a matter of time before these guys take off in a big way in the world of music!

This past summer, I happened upon the band Hyland playing at the WFRN Friend Fest.  I never really intended to see them play; come to think of it, I’m not even sure I had heard of Hyland prior to the WFRN Friend Fest.  After seeing them play once, however, I was a fan.  The Hyland guys put on an energetic, rollicking show that, in my opinion, should have put some of the big name acts appearing at the two day festival to shame.  I made a point to see them at Fandana Fest at Huntington University in August, and they were even better than the first time I had seen them; but, I digress.

This post is actually about the follow-up to Hyland’s awesome first full length CD, ‘Weights & Measures’ (which, by the way, if you don’t have, you totally don’t know what you’re missing out on!  Go get it right now!)  If I’m being honest here, I wasn’t really sure how ‘Finding Our Way’ was going to be able to measure up to ‘Weights & Measures’, but I’m here to tell you I was very pleasantly surprised!  Not only did Hyland follow-up ‘Weights & Measures’ in grand style, they showed impressive evolution stylistically in both the progression of their lyrics and music.

One of the things I like the best about Hyland is that they are fantastically talented storytellers.  Every song is like a little vignette set to music, however, only a portion of the song is told thru the words; a significant part of the song is told solely thru the range of emotion in lead singer Jon Lewis’ voice and the varying ways the band chooses to arrange the music.  I think this is especially evident in the songs “Power & Love” and “Work In Progress” on the ‘Finding Our Way’ album.

The other two standout songs on ‘Finding Our Way’, in my opinion, are the current single, “Beauty in the Broken”, and “Well Done”.  “Beauty in the Broken” is just an all around outstanding song.  I absolutely love it!  Easily one of my favorite songs of 2012.  Easily.

As for “Well Done”…I don’t normally tear up over a first listen of a song.  I may cry at the end of movies about dogs, but I don’t generally cry over songs, but “Well Done” had me tearing up big time.  There’s just a very emotionally riveting, vulnerable rawness when you put together these lyrics, Lewis’ voice and  the accompanying music that is just really, really special.  I loved “Well Done”, and thought it was a completely well done song.  (Side note:  I made everyone I know listen to this one today, and quite predictably, they all had the same reaction I did!)

Right now, Hyland is out on the Believer tour with headliners Kutless, Fireflight, and the Rhett Walker Band.  Not too shabby if you ask me!  I’m pretty optimistic since they’re hanging out with the likes of Kutless that they will pick up quite a few new fans out on the road this fall.  That would be a really good thing!  If you’re in my neck of the woods in Northeast Indiana, you can go check out the Believer tour  featuring Kutless, Fireflight, the Rhett Walker Band, and Hyland this coming Friday, October 26th at 7 pm at the Grand Horizon Center in Elkhart.  This is probably going to be the best concert to hit Elkhart all year, so don’t miss it!