So I finally joined the bandwagon (because if all my friends jump off a cliff…) and joined Twitter.  I almost cringe writing that.  You see, I’m rather internally conflicted.  Part of me says, “Twitter is dumb.  Who cares about what so-and-so ate for breakfast?”  But another part says, “Hold it, sister; you actually are mildly curious.”  And yet another part says, “It’s a useful social networking tool!…yeah…that’s it…”  So, Twitter: narcissism at its finest or…?  In any event, I did set up a Twitter account, and if you are mildly curious as I am, you can follow me:

www.twitter.com/kim_edw

Now, if I actually use it…well, that’s  a different story and time will tell.

Gosh, April just flew by!  But it was a good month.  I had the privilege of playing at Merge Cafe and the even greater privilege of getting to duet with Jason Thompson.  And Refuge Cafe was a momentous occasion indeed, because I played with a BAND for the first time ever!  (A big thanks to my brother Jason for doing an amazing job on drums/percussion and also to guitarist extraordinaire Anthony Fetterhoff)  I dig the band-feel and it’s been sparking some ideas for future performances and recording.

So, friends, I have been faced with one heckuva writer’s block for the last, ehhh, 6 months or so.  It’s been a scorcher of a dry spell, let me tell you.  It’s frightening to me to feel so uninspired.  But it’s also been a really revealing, really…humbling…past 6 months.  I’ve become very aware that my songwriting isn’t up to the level I want it to be, that I’m a tiny fish in a sea of other singer/songwriters, that I’ve got so much to learn about performing, that, haha, I don’t really know what I’m doing…  I’m realizing that creativity is partially about inspiration but mostly hard work.  I’m realizing that a good song speaks for itself, and like it says in the Hebrew Proverbs, “a man’s gift will make room for him” (Proverbs 18:16, in case you’re interested).   And I’m realizing that without God’s hand in it and on it, it’s all just noise.

And all that has led up to where I’m at now: the pondering stages of working on a new album…”brewing”, if you will.  I think the dry spell is on its way out.  I am discovering that although I’m very much someone who likes her alone time when it comes to songwriting, I also tend to be more creative when I’m around other people.  A group of friends of mine get together every Tuesday night for dinner and fellowship, and lately they’ve been turning into what I call “song-brewing sessions”.  There’s a piano in the house, so it’s an easy way for me test out ideas on my captive audien — I mean, my friends.    It’s not quite writing, yet more than pondering…it’s just brewing.  Like a cuppa tea.  Steeping the teabag of thoughts into my cup of musical hot water.  Ha.

So what has been brewing in my mind lately?  Well, it’s a conglomeration of thoughts and music and books I’m reading and movies I’ve watched.  Too many thoughts to say, but I CAN tell you what music:

Future of Forestry – Traveler EPs
MoZella – Can’t Stop
Ingrid Michaelson
Jon Foreman – Betrayal
Amy Stroup – Hold on to Hope
Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
and a dash of Colbie Callait

And the books I’m reading:

Be My Guest – Conrad Hilton (there was a free copy in the room of the Hilton Garden Inn that I stayed in whilst on the Orlando trip; it’s Conrad Hilton’s [the founder of the Hilton hotels and a really great businessman] autobiography)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy – J.R.R. Tolkien (I think I’m halfway through The Two Towers?)
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Joshua – Bible

And the movies I’ve watched:

Gladiator
500 Days of Summer
The Blindside

Only God knows what’s to come out of all of it.

I have been SO ready for the change in season.  While I do adore hot chocolate and snow and being cozy when baby-it’s-cold-outside, I also love sunshine and warmth and walking outside in 70-degree weather.  After being cooped up indoors for how many months, it’s positively invigorating to be outside and running and breathing in all that fresh air.  Air…does a body good.

Speaking of changes in season, I think another one is around the corner for me, figuratively speaking.  I can only say that I feel “stirred”.  Stirred to write new songs and try new things and record a new project.   Stirred to ponder, plan, and persevere.  Stirred to start a new journey.  My current musical obsessions tend to reflect where I’m presently at in life, and as of late Future of Forestry’s “Set Your Sails” has been pulsing through my veins.  (LISTEN TO IT!!  Such a great song.  Add it to the list of ones I wish I’d written.) “And nothing but moving will do/And it will be alright”…I take it as a gentle nudge to get the sleeves rolled up and get ready for the next chapter…whatever that may be.

Hope you’re enjoying nice, spring weather wherever you are!…and if you’re not, don’t worry, I’ll enjoy it enough for the both of us.

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.