My Story, My Song
Just over a year ago, I was filmed for an episode of “My Story, My Song” a TV show that comes on the Hope Channel. The episode was aired several times over this past year (2010). It included a 30 minute two-part interview segment followed by a 30 minute segment just featuring music. For the music portions I was joined by my homeboy Evert Nugent who accompanied my singing on the piano.
Below is video of one of the songs from the music segment (“He Looked Beyond My Faults” – Dottie Rambo). Followed by the entire interview portions. Each of the interview portions also conclude with a song. The first one concludes with the original song – “Grateful for You” and the second also ends with an original song entitled “Inseverable Love”. To learn more about my music visit http://adonaimusic.net.
One Small Step For Us…
One giant leap for my gospel music ministry. For the past 3 years whenever someone has asked me where they can learn more about my involvement in singing gospel, I’ve consistently directed to this website (yostevo.com) where I’ve haphazardly maintain a blog of the interesting points in my life that relate to singing gospel music along with other stuff that I find interesting enough to blog about but may serve as uninteresting noise to the visitor who’s focus is on music. However, this unorganized strategy I’ve adopted hasn’t bother me one bit all this time because music ministry hasn’t been much of a personal priority for me. I’ve kinda left my music ministry in the hands of whoever might be interested and show it by inviting me somewhere or asking me to get involved in something. As I think about it, outside of uploading a few video recordings my performances on Youtube, I haven’t otherwise put much effort at all in cultivating or promoting a ministry in music, although I do love very much redeeming the opportunity when it arises to share a song that communicates something of the marvelous person of Christ or of the pleasures and lessons of life His grace has afforded us.
But this disheveled epoch has officially ended with the launch of the Adonai Music. Adonai Music is an idea that comes from two extremely talented and good college buddies of mine Leslie and Marguerite Samuel. Over the summer Leslie invited me to “go to the ant… consider her ways” and then to join them in this independent gospel music venture. After some prayerful consideration I was on board. (more…)
Inseverable Love
“Inseverable” is defined in Stevo’s World Dictionary as “something that can’t be severed” (a game of Scrabble anyone?). “Inseverable Love” is a song I wrote with my buddy Ean in high school, it later became a favorite among the original song repertoire of my high school male vocal group (learn about that here - The Last Chapter Files). Last year I met up with Ean and he hastily recorded to my computer via the “line in” the piano parts to a couple of the songs we wrote in high school, the first one I posted here - An Original Rendition (…alas), “Inseverable Love” is the second and in the track above you’ll hear Ean’s playing along with the vocal parts that I just finished recording. This version of the song is much more to the point than when we originally sang it in a group setting, so it clocks in at just under 3 minutes long.
Like the other songs on this blog that I recorded in my room, expect to hear all the marks of a recording put together by someone who doesn’t have a clue what he is doing – sound distortion, background noise, pops, uneven levels, and a few out of pitch notes (which I guess I really can’t blame on my technical recording naiveté … oh well). Yet my hope is that you’ll get the idea and hopefully be blessed by the message of the song. Here are the lyrics to the chorus:
“If God be for us, who can be against us?
Tell me what might can separate us —
Not height, not depth, nor life or death
can sever the love of Jesus from His people.”
Consolation for a New Year
A little over a year ago when I first downloaded this song I had it on repeat for a couple of days because of how comforting it was to me for whatever reason at that time in my life. I was pleased to find the original accompaniment track also available for purchase, so I snagged it immediately and began learning it myself. The track above is a live recording of my singing at a memorial service of a young man who died this year in his early 40s of an illness. I never knew this man personally, but I do stand at the threshold of a new year with some sorrow because the new year offers no further promise of the comradely I once enjoyed with my good friend Joshua Hodges, a young man in his 20s that also passed away this year.
Other than the loss of Joshua, many other special friends of mine have suffered the loss this year of very important people in their lives. It is my hope that the message of this song can bring comfort in the new year to those who are entering it with some some sorrow or discouragement. Perhaps one of the most significant (and most observable) benefits of faith in God is the comfort He brings to us during our times of sadness and trouble. “Blessed be… the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in trouble, with the comfort with which we are ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abounds in us so our consolation also abounds through Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:3-5)
The original artist who sings this song, David Phelps, has a voice and vocal abilities that perhaps is one of the closest examples we’ll have to angelic singing on this side of eternity.
You can download the original song from iTunes here – http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-voice/id290073485
I would also highly recommend you check out his rendition of “No More Night” by watching it here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vX3HHtytDo
A Joyful Ode to Joy!
Quality music that all can appreciate.
Singing in LA
My Tribute:
He Loved Me With The Cross:
The month of May this year was quite an eventful one for me. I paid my first visit to Jamaica to celebrate the union of two college friends (one of the two I’ve known since grade school. I mentioned a bit about them here: http://yostevo.com/blog/?p=54 ). After returning from my exciting caribbean excursion with old friends, I again repacked my bags a week later and made a trip north to my former place of abode in Washington State, where I again participated in the marriage ceremony of two other good friends of mine. Before the month was done I also manage to hit the quarter century milestone in years of life (I now have one year to figure out how I can prevent the aging processes from continuing and thus effectively freeze age at 25 for the rest of my life. I’ll certainly accept any ideas/help I can get to accomplish this).
The month of May also happened to be a busy time at work as well. Beyond having to meet a couple project deadlines, as I could while I was around I participated in a prophecy seminar effort that the non-profit ministry I work for was hosting in downtown Los Angeles during the entire the month of May. The series was well attended and well received throughout, and it turned out to be quite an exiting and successful endeavor overall. Beside featuring logically sequenced and riveting Bible prophecy presentations, each night of the meetings also featured musical selections from various musicians and vocalists, and I found it pretty awesome when I was asked for a few nights to be among those vocalists that provided a number to open up the lecture. I ended up providing five songs on four different nights in this way during the course of the campaign. On a few nights they managed digitally capture a recording of some of my performances. My boss (our executive creative director) was nice enough to rummage through the clips and fix up the audio files that contained my performances. I’ve posted above a couple of the tracks he gave me. They’re entitled “My Tribute” and He Loved Me With The Cross” respectively.
An Original Rendition (…alas)
Once again my blog has seen another drought, this time the reason being that since my last post till this one I have relocated from Spokane, Washington to Simi Valley, California (a 1,200 mile trek), and I am now settled in and starting to make my self at home in my new habitat. Thus once again to make up for my blogging neglect I have sought to share something new in this latest post.
If you’ve visited before you’ve probably noticed one of a continuing series of posts containing great songs that I have sung and have been obtained by way of a “5 finger discount” from another popular artist. I’ve entitled them the “Bootleg Renditions” which is now three parts in. You can learn more about them here – Part 1, Part 2, Part3. While my bootlegging ways have by no means come to an end, I think its about time I shared another one of the 15 songs I have both co-authored and performed during my high school and college years (I wrote about this briefly in my “About” page and in my post “The Last Chapter Files”). The song I’m sharing with you this time is entitled “Grateful For You” and actually has a bit of history behind it. (more…)
Bootleg Renditions: Prt 3 – A Christmas Carol
Song Title: O Holy Night
Original Artist: Mariah Carey
For the third episode in my “Bootleg Renditions” saga I’ve recorded an adaptation of a very popular – and my favorite – Christmas carol. This particular arrangement was made popular by Mariah Carey. Since I’ve sung this selection quite a few times I was able to record it through in just one take. Hope you enjoy it. Merry Christmas!
You can purchase the original song from Mariah Carey’s Christmas album off of Amazon.com by clicking this link – http://tinyurl.com/7grk9h.
Bootleg Renditions: Part 2 – Sista Songs
Song Title: No Greater Love
Original Artist: Rachael Lampa
Well I’m back at stealing people’s music once again… well, not really. You can read what this experiment is really all about in my first installment of the bootleg series: http://yostevo.com/blog/?p=28.
As you may notice I’m doing something a bit different with this selection in that I am here singing a song originally made popular by a female contemporary Christian artist. While I recognize that such a thing is not a ground breaking first in the popular music realm, when I originally sang this selection at my church it was a first for me. Before I did I actually asked a friend from church what she thought of me performing a piece among an audience that would most likely recognize it as being synonymous with an artist that was of a different gender than my own. I can’t remember all she said but her reply did include scoffing me for even raising an issue that no one will even care about. So perhaps by just raising the topic in this post I’ve already blown the deal out of proportion. Well now that you are my audience, you can decide, but in the time being here are a few fast facts:
(more…)
The Holy City
This summer I was invited to sing to close out the Upper Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventist camp-meeting at Walla Walla University. It was my first time in the city of Walla Walla and the campus was pretty nice. The song I chose was the Holy City (Jerusalem), and its becoming another one of my favorites to sing because I like the fact that it challenges my range a bit but not too much, and because of its powerful message of hope and promise afforded us by the life of Christ.