This page describes Colin’s musical history.
1995-2001: Thirteen to Eighteen
Growing up, I never thought that I would ever decided to play any musical instruments. I spent all my free time playing sports and having a social life and viewed music as kind of a silly, geeky pursuit. When I became interested in rock music and the Smashing Pumpkins at thirteen, and a couple of my friends started learning guitar. I decided to give it a try.
Myself (16), with friends (from left) Jason, Matt, Gabe and David playing at our high school talent show in 1999.
Throughout high school, I formed various groups and arrangements with my friends and began to dabble around in other instruments like bass and drums. We played in talent shows and in local coffee houses – in one of these, the Mirage in Junction City, I met my future wife, Sadie.
At the time, music was more about having fun with my friends and learning to create – the equivalent of a few kids at a table with blocks trying to all work on something. I also joined a local church at this time and found myself leading worship when I was seventeen. I eventually bought my first recording gear, a four track, and later a digital eight-track. I also bought my first two electric guitars – both of which I still have and regularly use.
Tyke and myself spending time in his studio (1999)
For many of these years, I was heavily involved with an older friend named Tyke, who was perhaps my greatest musical influence to date. For all intents and purposes, my time spent with him transformed me into an actual musician – teaching me the physics of sound, the nature of music and really mentoring me in my songwriting, recording and musical development. We made two albums together, one of Smashing Pumpkins covers, and the other of original material co-written.
Towards the end of my time in high school, I spent a lot of time making music with Sadie’s good friend Allison – whom I played music with in church, and in another project up until our move to England. We ended up winning the talent show our senior year, and were put on tour to the other high schools in our league. Allison taught me a lot about how to improve my singing, and about putting worship into music.
2002-2003: August Falling
As soon as I moved into my own apartment at the start of my four years at the University of Oregon, I had to form new musical relationships and rely at lot more on myself and my own research and listening skills to improve my sound. The first thing I did was create a name for my musical projects, “August Falling.” I had my own studio apartment that was removed from the rest of the house where it was situated – an ideal place to work on music.
Myself at age 18.
I managed to meet a couple of guys from the local mega-church who were willing to help me out on drums and bass. We put together several demos for various festivals and venues, but it never really clicked. Nevertheless, I just used the name for ever as I continued to write music for a rock band.
2002-2003-???: The Sub-Alpha Project
I also started working with my good friend Erik on the side. We called our occasional get-togethers the “Sub-Alpha Project.” The project was (is) intended to be a musical mistress, which we go back to whenever we don’t have a more permanent musical project going on.
The Sub-Alpha Project included a lot of music mockery. This album cover for "People" was worked up by Eric.
I am still very proud of the music that came out of this project. Erik and I wrote a concept album based off of about every spy cliché we could think of. The story follows a spy at the top of his game who becomes disillusioned after the death of someone close. He then gets put in “spy retirement” – where they taint the water of the inmates to cause them to forget all of the horrible things they have seen. What I love most about this work is that we recorded it in four sixteen hour days. The album was an experience in and of itself and is reproduced here.
We began work on a second album – rather than a strict concept album, where the songs work together to tell a story, we chose to do a themed album called People – the idea being to have individual songs telling single stories of various characters. The album remains unfinished, but several half-recording still survive. These songs are uploaded here.
2003-2005: Sola Fide
One of the teams I was leading at Calvary Chapel began to develop into a cohesive unit. We began doing a lot with the arrangements every Sunday. Myself and Josh Lillie began to write a couple of songs together. This was another great opportunity for me to learn a completely different way of playing and writing – as Josh grew up playing old country, bluegrass, classic rock and Christian music with his father. He taught me a lot about playing these genres, and much of this is still in my music today. Josh also was an excellent lyricist, able to put complicated themes and feelings into words and word-pictures that were easily communicated.
Promo photo from Sola Fide. Like many Christian bands at the time, we staggered our distance from the camera, thinking it was pretty hip.
Eventually we approached the rest of the worship team with these songs and Alli Long (“Lenhard” at the time) and Tim Collins were willing to join up with us and try and record them. We worked out about ten songs with my recording equipment, but we ultimately felt that the songs could be improved as well as the performance.
We also played these songs live several times: in our own church, for community events as well as a trip up to Hood River, Oregon for a show (which was somewhat awkward, as the other bands played hard-core and punk).
During the summer of 2004, within three months, three bandmembers (Josh, Alli and myself) all got married. This created a new set of priorities and commitments for each of us, and resulted in the more ambitious aspect of the band (recording, playing live, etc.. to taper off over the next year). We still managed to play together occasionally as part of the regular worship, but in general, it was not realistic to keep the band going in light of our new family priorities and regular worship duties. Some of the music that came out of this effort is here.
2005-2007: Cinnamon Joe
John Blunk and myself from Cinnamon Joe playing at the Under the Bridge Benefit Concert.
I took a little time off after Sola Fide puttered out in order to finish up college, look for a new job and enjoy my first year of marriage. By this time, I was really missing rock music, where my musical interest had started and which I felt regrets about not really achieving much in the way of an actual rock band. I had been writing rock songs on the side since 2002 and had no outlet for them.
A flyer for a show at the downtown lounge. John Blunk made this - he did quite a bit of the graphic work for the band.
Fortunately, a work colleague of mine, Phil Kulak, and I began to become friends and Phil mentioned that he was a drummer. Phil had been playing around with another guy, Christman (whom we all called Xman) every week or so. He invited me along to come and play and it was very enjoyable. Xman was the best guitarist I had played with up until this point, he could sing, and Phil was a great rock-drummer. We decided it would be fun to play regularly and put out an ad for a bass player.
The ad was answered by a bassist who was currently playing Eastern European folk music who had moved into the area from Chicago. John Blunk was extremely talented with anything that made low tones and he had several creative instruments (including a stick) and wrote bass parts that were complex and interesting.
With Cinnamon Joe at Diablo's Downtown Lounge. My wearing hats on stage was a small point of contention with the band at times.
We played several shows around town and decided to record an album. We signed on with a very talented producer (now on to bigger things) and signed up to get out a quick album – hopefully a month or two. We ended up spending more than a year on the album. It was a trying time for the band – there was growing disagreement about the way things should be worked out. Phil ended up leaving the band just before the album finally came out. My agreement with this action is probably the most regrettable and shameful thing I have ever done in my time as a musician – and I have done a lot of stupid stuff.
The band didn’t last much longer. We played a couple more shows with a new drummer and the band finished shortly after finally releasing the album. Really it was a full on rock and roll experience, none of which I would trade. I haven’t played rock music since and I miss it sorely – despite the higher propensity for drama.
2007: Cannibal Friday
A promo shot we made for the band. John, myself and Will.
After Cinnamon Joe fell apart, John Blunk and I decided we’d like to continue on – but possibly switch the music up a little bit. We decided to work out some acoustic arrangements. For a little while, Will (who drummed briefly for Cinnamon Joe) joined us. Though John and I had a great time together, eventually the project lost momentum and, kind of like Sub-Alpha, other projects took priority. John joined a band called Moonfleet and I wanted to focus my effort on getting a worship album out. This became a priority as I began plans for an ambitious move to the UK for my postgrad work – and I was unsure of how much time in the future I would have for music.
2007: Light Burden
The cover of "Culture Slave"
Really, it was not since my work with the Sub-Alpha Project that I had put together any studio material that I was pleased with. Cinnamon Joe’s album The Adventures Of… was decent musically, but it had a lot of baggage. Phil’s drumming reminded me of my regrets and the album seemed to have a lot of the tension from the year and months of trying to get it completed. While I appreciate the album as a whole, I decided to use the studio work from Cinnamon Joe to put together my own collection of rock music called Culture Slave. This music is available here.
Once this was completed, I set out to work on refocussing myself for what I figured was a last plunge into music before my move. I wanted to put together some of the worship songs I had been tinkering with over the past eight years as an offering to God. I actually considered working hard on the album and then literally, upon completion, deleting the entire thing as a sort of “burnt offering.” However, this did not seem in line with 1 Corinthians 12:7: “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.”
I released Light Burden in October of 2007, figuring it might be my last work. I was surprised how well it sold – I made back my investment in the album and then some. I also released the album for free digitally, in line with my own philosophy about the nature of worship music.
2008: Honour
When I finished Light Burden, I expected to take a deep breath to reassess my own ability to prioritise my music. However, I found myself energized by the album, and more music kept pouring out and a struggled to put it all down in demo form. Making things worse, was a desire to expand the instruments in the music to one I could not play – woodwinds, strings, brass and so on. I picked up some of the best orchestral software available and began to put scores in the music.
The cover for Honour.
I realized that I was rapidly approaching enough material for an album – easily. However, it was also getting near the date for our move. I thought it would be a reasonable service to my church to finish the album in time and release it to them at no cost – which I was able to do two weeks before we left. Many gave generously anyway, and again I made back the cost of the CD.
1999-2008: Leading Worship at Calvary Chapel
Throughout all of this, I had committed myself to leading the worship at Calvary Chapel. It took a lot of work – as I led every Wednesday night and most Sundays. I always had to prioritise worship through my entire personal musical endeavours – practically and spiritually. This meant prioritising Wednesday night for a service, a Thursday night for practice and half of Sunday. I had to do this in spite of what my other projects demanded. But more importantly, my lifestyle and attitude had to remain spiritually disciplined and focussed on God.
Leading worship gave me the opportunity to play with a lot of different musicians of varying ages and ability – from all kinds of backgrounds. It provided some of my favourite ongoing experiences – playing on Wednesday night with Allison, for example, was always a precious time for me – just guitar, piano and a male and female voice worshipping God.
Sunday mornings were often a lot more fun – we had a full band, very capable of constantly pushing the songs that we did over and over, and willing to learn new music. I had the privilege of playing many Sundays with David Nevue, a great pianist and composer. David continues to be a huge inspiration to me. David came into Calvary Chapel as an established musician in his own right – authoring a book, been in the Wall Street Journal and sells hundreds of CDs a month. Yet, he came in with such humility and grace. He had every right to probably dictate to all of us how we should do worship – but he was always yielded to what would serve the music best at the time. I can still learn a lot from David.
2008-present: Leading Worship at Grace Church
After moving to the United Kingdom, Sadie and I came to settle in at our new church – Grace Church. What a refreshing, incredible experience this has been for us. Currently, under my pastor Nathan, I oversee the worship at Grace Church. It’s been an incredible and wonderful experience in growing and learning more about worship. This has included the resources and teachings from those in Sovereign Grace Ministries, who insist on a passionate orthodoxy of worship – worship which is stimulated and informed by biblical truth.
The pragmatics of these relationships has led to several wonderful opportunities for music. This includes producing Grace Church’s Ephesians Project – a series of songs which helps Christians memorise scripture. In addition, many of the talented musicians in church have been willing to contribute performances for my next album: Wisdom, Madness and Folly which I expect will be out sometime in 2010.
