If you're like me, you'll like these things: 

Singing With The Corner Flag (your in-depth World Cup soccer blog curated by none other than Erik C. Kriebel himself).

"Job Vs. Vocation." The continuing series from The Art of Manliness. 

May always finds a way to be full of stuff to do. Athens is always buzzing during the first half of the month with thousands of people graduating, followed by hundreds of high school students graduating in the second half, so maybe that's part of it. I always intend to take things a bit easier in May, but that never seems to work out according to plan. Nevertheless, here's a quick roundup of the comings and goings around here.

On May 7th, I had the distinct pleasure of being part of the fun at this year's 500 Songs for Kids fundraiser with the Warm Fuzzies. We had the opportunity to put our own spin on Buddy Holly's classic, "Peggy Sue," and we seized that opportunity. And by that, I mean we all bought gigantic "Buddy Holly-esque" glasses and put on ties. If you're not familiar with what Josh Rifkind is doing with 500 Songs, I'd encourage you to take a moment and check it out. What's not to like about musicians going into children's hospitals and playing music? Medicine is really only one kind of medicine, you know.

This year marked my third time participating, and it was by far the most fun song we've gotten yet. I also think Laura should forego all keyboard stands in the future and just sit on a park bench or something like in this photo. She's so rock n' roll she doesn't even need support.

A few days after the Fuzzies destroyed Buddy Holly's legacy, I went and rocked out at First Presbyterian Weekday School here in Athens with my daughter Molly's class at their end-of-the-year party. As you can see, everyone is enjoying my musical stylings, except perhaps for that one little girl looking at the camera. She's not feeling it, I'm afraid. We nearly tore the roof off the joint with our scorchin' versions of "Farmer in the Dale" and "I'm A Little Teapot," and while no mosh pit broke out, one child did have to go to the bathroom.

My good friend (and former Rebuilt artist) Micah Dalton is getting ready to release his new EP (recorded by my good friend and former Rebuilt artist Paul Reeves) called Gathered 'Round The Greasefire pretty soon, and I've really enjoyed listening to it. Micah just gets better and better. He was kind enough to drop by for a few minutes to bring me a copy and to listen patiently as Molly talked his ear off. She's good at that. 

Check it out at www.micahdalton.com.

So there's your quick photo roundup. 

In some sad news, my great friend Parks lost a niece and a sister within a span of days, and I was glad to be able to drive up to Chattanooga to Marie's visitation with some old friends. There is no easy, friends, only harder and harder. And it's supposed to be that way because it gets harder and harder because you're loving deeper and deeper. My heart hurts for the Carpenter family, and we'll continue to pray that they will find rest and peace (and comfort) in the days ahead.

That's it for now.

Here we have a show poster I designed for my good friend Adam Klein (GO LISTEN TO HIS MUSIC RIGHT NOW!). In addition to being a world traveler (he's been everywhere) and one heck of a storytelling songwriter, Adam also runs an indie here in Athens called Cowboy Angel Music. Good stuff.

The label is releasing Nutria's new record on June 3rd at the 40 Watt, and Adam's playing, too, so if you find yourself near Athens and looking for something awesome to do, consider your search over.

Adam gave me the freedom to just run with whatever I wanted, and after chasing a few rabbits, I came up with this. The label's aesthetic is vintage and well-worn, but it's stlll fun (especially Nutria's stuff), so the old rollercoaster seemed to fit the bill. 

Makes me kind of want funnel cake.

Kind of.

Here are a couple of album designs I've worked on recently (and had a blast doing, I might add). The first one is for Atlanta songwriter Jeff Delbridge's upcoming digital release, Endless Ocean, which has an absolute ton of REAL symphonic strings all over the place. If you like the Amelie soundtrack (or Sufjan Stevens or Elliot Smith), then you'll do well to give this a listen on your favorite digital retailer when it's up. Jeff had Hassel Weems shoot some photos at the Chattanooga Aquarium and wanted to use those as a basis for the design, so that's what I did. Good stuff. http://www.jeffdelbridge.com

The second design is for our good friend from Melbourne, Australia, Levi McGrath, and his new album, Children of War. If you were up on the old Rebuilt Records podcast (still available on iTunes, I think), you would recognize Levi from the podcast I did with the wonderful Mark & Niki Tulk from Small House Records (now Small House Creative here in America... and right down the street from me, to be exact), the label which releases Levi's records. Levi got to come back to the US to record vocals last Fall at RoomFiftyThree (Mark's new studio here in Athens), and I was blown away by some of the photos he took on a recent trip to Uganda (on which the album's music and design are based). Levi has some pretty heartbreaking stories about children soldiers, and his heart for them is pretty inspiring. I encourage you to check out Levi's music online at http://www.levimcgrath.com and read more about his adventures in Africa and elsewhere. He's also quite handsome. There, I said it.

Thanks for letting me be a part of your art, fellas.

In large part, my last year or so has been about resetting my priorities, or perhaps more likely, correcting them. Through conscious effort, I have tried to keep my family above my work (read: "the things I do"), and this can be somewhat of a challenge considering I have more jobs than I have family members. In some ways, I have found it very hard to "reprogram" the way I live my life.

In all cases, I have found the difficulties well worth the trouble. This picture is a great example of why.

"Eternal life has nothing to do with time."

This is from today's My Utmost For His Highest entry, and it was one of those little "flip the light switch" moments for me. I guess I've always really only considered "eternal" life in a linear way, but here Chambers is speaking of it more in terms of "endless." You know, like a well that never runs out of water.

It's not really about the length of life; it's the depth. We can never use up all the life; the Spirit is has no end.

Today, I'm in Clermont, FL doing some music and hanging out with J.Rich and Jeremy Ezell. It's good times.

But a couple of days ago we had Easter, and that's really what this post is about.

Perhaps for the first year ever, I did not go to an Easter service with either my family or my wife's family; we actually went to our own church. And on this particular Sunday morning, our church welcomed Adam Lambert from Jewish Believers in Jesus to walk us through a passover seder and to illustrate how Jesus brought passover (deliverance, redemption, restoration, forgiveness) to it's absolute fulfillment.

We took communion with unleavened bread, and as I did, I felt within my own heart a smallish voice say to me, "It is done! All is well! All is new!"

And I thought of our friend Mike Sweeney.

And I thought of my father in-law and my sweet mother in-law who would have celebrated their 40th anniversary this Easter morning.

And I could not stop weeping because in that moment both the pain of loss and the triumph of the resurrection became very, very real to me. 

It is done. 

All is well.

All is new.

I cannot tell you how I cling to these words. And even as my heart is heavy, I rejoice that all has been made right again. In fact, it's probably because I feel the loss that I rejoice all the more. 

I'm getting older, and this is getting harder. But this...this is what Easter is all about: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mikesweeney/journal

Here's a summary of a really long blog post that I wrote but deleted for being too long:

- I am made to make stuff. 

- I create because I am a creation in the image of a Creator, and my DNA compels me to imitate that creative process.

- Though they are not all that different, I have always treated visual art and music very differently in terms of the creative process. 

- Visual art was about exploration and play and was process-driven; music was about performance and coolness and was product-driven.

- This has been an obvious (but completely earth-shattering) revelation to me.

- I have never considered with visual art that it's wrong when I don't know what I'm doing ahead of time. It's really just about making stuff. And while much of it hasn't been anything special; a few things (like my one-man seesaw; or, as I call it, the "Mee-Saw") were pretty decent. But the end result was not something I had a grip on at the outset.

- Music making has been the opposite. I am paralyzed when I sit down to write or record. There are decisions to make, and they must be the right ones. I must adhere to some rules that may or may not really exist, at least to me. Rules about how things should sound or what-instrument-goes-where-in-a-song. 

- I used to play guitar in my room for hours, recording into the tiny mic input of a boombox while trying to figure out how to record the sound of my guitar amp being played through a box fan without recording all the fan noise, too. I failed at that, by the way. Now I tend to want to write some chords and verses and map the whole thing out before I even play a note.

- That last sentence shows me how off I've been. Music is inherently mathematical, so yeah, there are some things any good musician needs to know. Things like what-chords-are-in-the-key-of-A. But...

I'm just saying that the concept of exploration and play is in there, too. And that my DNA is telling me not to ignore it anymore.