Today I checked my cd inventory and realized that I have 20 cds left…which means that 200+ people have the cd, and that’s not counting all the digital sales (iTunes, Amazon.com, etc.)…which means that I’ll have to look into ordering some more cds soon…which means a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you, friends!  Thank you so much for coming out to the shows, for buying the cd and downloading it online, for telling your friends about it, for supporting me and the songs.  I sure do appreciate you!!

So I recently got back from a wonderful gig in Orlando, Florida!  It was heavenly.  70-degree weather, sunshine, palm trees…a very nice change from the snowy, dreary, leafless trees of Pennsylvania in winter, to say the least.  I had the great pleasure of playing at Harvest Korean Presbyterian Church Orlando (say THAT five times fast) and really enjoyed hanging out and making new friends.  They are really a sweet group of people there…if you’re ever in the Orlando area, I highly recommend stopping by!

Here are some pics of the weekend, thanks to Jak Lee Photography:

I’m undoubtedly in deep story-telling mode…

I think I’m singing the word “I”??  Maybe?

I’m really Italian in spirit…hence the reason I often talk with my hands.

It really was a great weekend all around, complete with alligators in a pond by the hotel, a visit to the Holy Land Experience, first time singing karaoke (Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World”, anyone?), and a nail-biter of a NFC Championship game (poor Brett Favre).  I have to give a big shout-out to Hyunsuk Kim for arranging everything…this man was SUCH a gracious host.  And a big thank you to Pastor DL and the fine folks at Harvest for letting me share my tunes with them.

Much love to ya….and happy Groundhog’s Day! (my favorite most pointless holiday ever!)

Truth be told, it wasn’t my favorite Christmas carol.  Every time I have heard it, all I heard was a bouncy, annoying, perky song…something about harks…something about angels…and glory…blah blah blah… But as I flipped through the hymnal to look for lyrically rich carols,  Hark jumped out at me.  I had never taken the time to read the lyrics before:

Hark the herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ by highest heav’n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris’n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more should die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

I think these lyrics stuck out to me more than others because they focus not only on the incarnation, but the whole purpose for the incarnation.  I love the richness of the words, the beauty, the theology, everything.  ( My personal favorite is the third verse!)  And so, I decided, if I’m going to record a Christmas carol, I want to do this one…because, to me, it captures the essence of why we celebrate Christmas more than any other carol I know.

And then, I thought, well, if I’m going to record Hark, I want to arrange it in such a way that the words are prominent.  So I chose to slow down the tempo and tried to emphasize the lyrics as much as possible.  I wanted an “epic” feel to the song, and with Tim Yenca’s (of Valley Recording) help, I think we accomplished it.  I know, it’s a bit different; it’s not my usual sound.   But I sincerely hope it makes you cock your head in deep thought as you process the words.

Thank you to: Tim Yenca & Valley Recording…for Tim’s hard work and his sweet guitar-playing (seriously, it makes me wish the song was longer just so I could hear more guitar solos) and his general, overall awesomeness.  And a big thanks to Cathy Yenca for lending her ethereal tones to the background vocals…and for letting me borrow Tim for recording!

Thank you to Charles Wesley for penning such beautiful, meaningful lyrics.  And thank you to Felix Mendelssohn for the music…even if I did find it annoyingly perky initially. 

And an eternal thank You to Jesus…for being “born that man no more should die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth”…

Merry Christmas, friends.

Just writing a quick little update before I head to bed. Life is going swell! I had a lovely weekend spent with lovely people at a lovely wedding. My dear friends Ryan and Danielle tied the knot on Sunday and the wedding was beautiful! They had asked me to write a song for their ceremony, and thankfully I had already been working on a wedding song. So “No Other” got it’s official debut on Sunday! Woohoo! But as much fun as it was writing and singing the song, it paled in comparison to the joy of witnessing two of my favorite people exchange vows and become husband and wife.

“Mawwiage…mawwiage is wot bwings us togedda today…that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dweam…” Truer words were never spoken!

I’m  sitting in my living room, half-watching Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, enjoying the cool autumn air spilling in from the open windows, and, obviously, writing to you.   Won’t lie, I’m rather distracted as I write this…blame it on Stanley Kubrick.  He made 2001 just slow enough for me to want to multitask and yet just interesting enough for me to forget what I’m typing and……

See?  It’s probably been about 10 minutes since I typed that last sentence.  Anyways.  I recently returned from a wonderful 2-week trip to Dallas filled (and I mean filled) with friends and music and more friends.  I played my first official “show” at White Rock Coffee…first time to play at a non-church-related event, and it was also my first full set. What a blast that was!  I can’t even express how much fun I had.  And then I had the honor of playing a small set at the first-ever Walk the Light Festival at The Venue, a rather cool, best-kept-secret kind of  place in Forney, Texas.  Walk the Light is really a great event that involves all sorts of artists (dancers, painters, musicians, etc) while also benefiting a charity…here’s hoping it’s the first WTL Festival of many!

Hmmm...speaking of shows….there’s another one this Saturday night at the Banana Factory in Bethlehem, PA!  Check out the events for more info. (End of shameless plug)

It’s officially fall, my favorite time of year!  Having lived in Texas for a while, it’ll be my first autumn in the northeast in 3 years and I am so excited.  Sweater weather, red and gold leaves, being indoors and cozy, being outdoors and bundling up, hot tea, soup, pumpkin patches, rows of cornstalks, brown-paper packages tied up with string…haha…  And there’s something about fall that somehow makes me feel more productive.  Maybe I just associate fall with the start of school, when you are forced to kiss lazy, crazy summer days good-bye and shake hands with a new school year and books and homework and coax the brain to think academically again.  This is only my 2nd year of not starting school in the fall, and for me it still teeters on the edge of surreal and absolutely delightful.  Yes, I have quite fallen in love with fall.

I’m looking forward to the next few months…I’m hoping they will be peppered splattered with inspiration, clever rhymes, writing, recording…and truth.  I’ve been thinking a lot about truth lately.  The necessity of truth, the risk of truth, the tangibility of truth…truth and art, truth IN art…just the very concept that there is a thing such as “the truth”.  We may not like it, we may not accept it, but it’s there.  It exists.  I love that Jesus says that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  I had read that sentence many times…but it wasn’t until the other day as I was ruminating on all this that I suddenly remembered that Jesus is…the Truth.  Someone once said, “All truth is God’s truth.”  I think so…the truth is the Truth.

Hmmm…apparently fall also makes me very thoughtful.

Well, friends, I had better sign off.  This entire blurb of a post is the product of roughly 3 hours.  (Stanley Kubrick, I hold you partially responsible.)  Have a wonderful day, enjoy the season wherever you are (literally and figuratively)…and if you understand the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey…let me know.

To be perfectly honest, I’m ready for a site design change.  Are you?  Yeah, I thought so.  Unfortunately, I am not tech-saavy, so I must rely on the help of others (add “br” to “others” and that’s what it actually is).  The problem is, I have ideas that I have no clue how to communicate into website-speak.  I resort to looking at other people’s websites, showing them to ma crew with pointing and gesturing and mumbling, “Look, isn’t that homepage pretty?  Like, the font right *there* is pretty cool…and I like how the little menu buttons swish…oh, that’s flash, you say?  Well, look at how this part looks so polished and shiny…and…yes.  That’s what I want on my site!”  (A lot head-scratching and staring ensues.)

To all you fine Texas folk:  I will be playing with Laura Allen and friends at “The Venue” in Forney, TX, (yes, that’s the name of the place) on September 12 at 8 pm-ish!

So the moral of the story iiiiiis: be looking for changes on this site.  And come to the show.

So yes, July IS upon us, and I can barely believe it!  The EP has been out and about for a little over a month now.  Thanks to all you fine folk who bought it so far!  I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

I am not a super-frequent, every-week kind of blogger (as you can tell).  Nor do I twitter.  (I have successfully avoided that bandwagon thus far.)  However, I do enjoy reading blogs and occasionally I will check other people’s twitters.  I love reading Brooke Fraser’s blog and Bethany Dillon’s blog…and even…once in a while…yes…Taylor Swift’s.  (Confession: I am a Taylor Swift fan.  There.  I said it.  Out loud.  For the longest time I denied liking her music because I deemed her to be “too country/pop/teenybopper” for my tastes.  Buuuuut…I can’t deny that she’s a really good songwriter and her music is fun and catchier than all get out.  And yes, if her songs come on the radio, I do turn them up and sing along…call it a guilty pleasure.)  Anyways.  Check them out.  They’re pretty amusing (to me, at least).

Okay, what was I saying?!?!  Sorry this is such a scattered blog.  Alright.  So, anyways, sometimes I go through phases of really liking an artist and admiring their songwriting and whatnot, so much so that I start comparing theirs with my own, and then I get really bummed.  Case in point: currently, Taylor Swift.  I think it’s because a few days ago I caught her music video for “You Belong With Me“…and realized that the “unrequited love” theme is much like the theme in my own “It Was Me“.  It’s “It Was Me” minus New York City, plus a cute, oh-so-relatable high school scenario.  I really like “You Belong With Me”.  It’s catchy, fun, catchy, tells a good story…and did I say catchy?  So, for the past few days, I was feeling like “It Was Me” was not-so-great and, well, kind of boring and bland in comparison.  Which got me thinking that perhaps I need to tweak my overall style a bit.

And then I realized that this is just another phase.  You see, I have my moments of wanting to change everything and only write deep, significant, if-the-Anthropologie-store-were-a-music-style-it-would-be-this, Brooke Fraser-esque kind of songs.  And then I have my moments of wanting to write the sweet, folksy-but-not-too-folksy, spiritually uplifting Bethany Dillon-ish songs.  And now, the fun, catchy, blast-it-in-my-radio-while-driving-on-a-summer-day songs of Taylor Swift.  Moments where I wish I was more artistic, more descriptive, more metaphorical, more straight-forward, cleverer, vaguer, clearer, quirkier, poppier, rockier, acoustic-ier…

Now, please realize that I do occasionally ok, pretty often, try to write songs in the different styles of artists that I like.  I think it’s a good exercise.  It helps diversify me as a writer.  In fact, I think it helps me develop my own style (which, honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what that is) by fleshing out what I do and don’t like about certain genres while still tending to have hints of “me” peppered throughout it anyways.  (Wow.  Run-on sentence, anyone?) It’s also fun, and I enjoy a challenge like that.

The point is this: I can try to write in a different style for songwriting exercises and for my own amusement.  But I cannot, nor should I, be a different style because it’s what catches my ear at that moment or because I sillily compare myself to other people.  The whole reason why I like Brooke Fraser, Bethany Dillon, and Taylor Swift (and others) in the first place is because they are uniquely them.  They each fill a musical niche for me.  I am not Brooke Fraser.  I am not Bethany Dillon.  I am not Taylor Swift.  I am not Regina Spektor (she’s another fave of mine, too.).  I am not Chris Martin (I dig him, too).  I am just….me.  Kim Edwards.  Me.  Whatever that is, I am it.  Lacking or full, I am she.  Me.

So, I guess I really shouldn’t be bummed about “It Was Me”.  Hone my songwriting skills?  Definitely.  Wish I was someone else?  Nah.  Whatever gifts/skills God wired into me, I am pretty sure He meant them to form me, not to form me into {insert artist name here}.

So that’s my epiphany for the week.  “That’s it?!?” you say.  “That’s what I read 800-some words for?!?”  Yep.  Pretty much.  Kudos to you for reading all this.  Go grab yourself a cookie.  You earned it. 

P.S.  I think this post has the most links I’ve ever inserted into a post.  In case you were anxiously wondering about that.

I thought so.

I just wanted to let you know that the EP is now available on iTunes!! YAY!!! It’s also available on Amazon.com, Napster, Lala, GreatIndieMusic, Tradebit, Spotify, and Didiom…and of course, on cdbaby.com, too. (By the way…Cdbaby.com, iTunes, and Amazon all have ‘write-a-review’ options on their sites…hint, hint, nudge, nudge, wink, wink… )

Thank you soooo much to everyone who’s bought/downloaded the album so far. I just sent CD Baby more cds because they already ran out of stock and have a waiting list, which is a BEAUTIFUL thing!! So THANK YOU!!!

And one more piece of great news: a few songs from the EP are getting some airplay on He’s Alive Radio based out of Grantsville, Maryland!!    God never ceases to amaze me…He opens up these doors that I had no idea even existed!!