I'm listening to the unmastered tracks of the just-recorded, yet-to-be-released Pallbearer sophomore album which my son Joseph emailed me several days ago. As I listen, I'm carried back to the early 70s, watching Leslie West and Mountain, Black Sabbath and many other bands which I appreciated as a musician growing up in those times.

Nowadays, there are lots of soccer (baseball, football) Dads out there. I see them when I go to my grandkids' games. Every one of these Dads is doing his best to coach his son or daughter in the nuances of the sport.

In our home, when Joe was growing up, rather than the nuances of this or that sport, it was the nuances of Beethoven, or Zawinul, or Steely Dan, or Omartian. I tried to give Joe a very broad sweep of music. Though his genre is metal, I hear elements of all that we listened to and talked about in these roaring songs!

As a Dad -- and I'm sure as many "soccer Dads" -- it is refreshing to listen to the fruit of those labors and to know that it "took".

It's not that I didn't have any "laurels" of my own, but maybe it is more like Archie Manning, who can see the nuances of leading a football team to championships. It is great to see that those things are being lived out in my son, to a greater degree than I experienced in my own day.

"Teach your children well..." as CSNY sang. Enjoy the times when that is carried on in your children!

I will get to the title of my post in a minute.  First...

- Follow-up to my fishing adventure.  After the first evening and next morning in Poudre, I didn't have a single bite (!) until the last morning when we fished our way out of the canyon.  There was a man fishing at one of our holes along the way who was just leaving and had caught a number of very nice browns.  This kind stranger gave Sid and I each a lure that he was having success with and we proceeded to land about a half-dozen each of very, very nice browns.  That was a pleasant ending to this year's fishing excursion.

- I have to make another comment about the LefsetzLetter.  I have really appreciated his observations about changes in the music industry.  If you are interested, Google it and sign up.  Very interesting reads.

- I will be working Monday and Tuesday this week then driving to Nashville for the annual Songposium event.  I signed up for 5 classes that fall on Thursday and Friday -- three of them with songwriter Pat Pattison from Berklee College of Music.  Looking forward to that.  I will be staying upstairs from the Commodore, so Wednesday and Thursday evenings I will get to listen in on a number of songwriter performances.  I will also get an hour at Brett Manning Studios to get some vocal coaching.  An action packed three days.

- On that note, the post title, like I promised.  I am standing up a new site called SongsAboutUs (thank you, Trace Adkins) that will deal with how a believer in Jesus can interface with the arts world -- with a specific focus on music.  It is barely in its infancy but I hope to be providing some good content and things to think about.  Oh, yes, the post title.  A few years ago I wrote a ballad called "Stranger on Mars Hill" which was a retelling of the apostle Paul's visit to Athens found in Acts 17.  You could say that SongsAboutUs is a re-visit to the same idea.  Even though God is a staple in country music, sometimes I wonder if it is not like Athens, where the "Unknown God" is where Paul had to start with telling God's story anew.

Hi.  Writing from Colorado tonight.  Trout fishing has been a little unproductive so far.  My brother, Sid, and myself fished for a couple of hours after arriving here yesterday afternoon.  We each caught one.  Today Sid caught two and I caught one.  Hopefully the rest of the week will be a little better.

Songwriters are understandably concerned about getting paid for their craft when their work is used by artists in various forms of media.  Digital media -- the legitimate kinds like Amazon and iTunes or illegitimate kinds like the former Napster and other file-sharing sites -- have caused a sea change in the music industry that has resulted in a tremendous loss of staff songwriting jobs, closing of publisher offices, etc.  A recent posting on the LefsitzLetter focuses on the changing nature of the music business.  I found this quite interesting:

"The major labels and in most cases the big promoters are built for a business that doesn't exist anymore.  It's falling of its own weight.  A new business is being born, of small acts that may never achieve world domination, but satiate hard core fans and then die.  Or live.  Depending on the perseverance and tenacity of the players. They're performing for the love of it.  They see their fans as equals.  And the fans don't look like reality TV stars, but regular people.

In other words, music is leading the way once again.

In an era when movies are unwatchable bloated behemoths made for worldwide consumption by people who in many cases don't even speak English, when big time TV is all about the lowest common denominator, reality shows featuring nitwits who will do anything for money, music is about emotion, expression, unfiltered, from the performer directly to the fan.

Anybody who says the Internet revolution killed music is invested in the old ways.  There's a vibrant scene.  Being built by people who those in power won't give a chance.  There's a burgeoning audience.  It may be incomprehensible to oldsters, but the youngsters understand."

This really explains the Taylor Swift phenomenon.  Her career is built on going directly to her audience.  She has done this masterfully.  She is far ahead of the curve.  Other artists have picked up on it, like Lady Antebellum.  They understand the mindset of social networking and are going with the wave rather than resisting it.