Eric is coming to the Midwest!
Get out and support EP if you live in the area; if, like me, you don’t, ping your friends who do!
Eric Peters:
Randall Goodgame:
Boy, we’ve taken a bit of a vacation from this. But here we are with dates:
Not only do we have news that Eric’s released the title track free to download, but we have a two-part interview from Save the Setlist with Eric about the record, songwriting, etc.
Do you have Chrome yet? What do you think of it?
Want to hear a track off the new Eric Peters record! Go!
A two-fer of EP news: EP writes about the mixing process [one that fascinates me personally] and then announces that pre-orders of Chrome are now available. There is still time to be a patron of the album, and if you choose that route, you’ll get your two signed pre-orders two weeks before everyone else, on August 11th.
I’ll make you click through to read the possibly-controversial lyrics Eric wrote, but I want to quote his discussion of them after the fact:
These are potentially expensive words. I see how they could easily be misinterpreted or taken out of context without knowing the story’s backdrop. Hence, they may be expensive in that customers might want their money back after purchasing a “christian” album expressing such sentiments. I have no idea how the song will be received, as it is hopefully as honest in its narration as the true story on which it is based. The reality of humanity is that we owe to grace as great debtors. In our worst moments, we curse the blessing of our own skin, our own breathing in and out, the universe and Maker alike. In our best moments, we remain desperately in need of that which is beyond our frailty or capacity to bring anything good to the Mercy Table. I struggled for weeks, in the process of writing it, to allow the main character the red-blooded freedom to tell God, “I hated you that day.” That is not the sort of cheap, plastic, pre-fab line that floats easily upon the waters of this industry. I am trying to be as honest as I can, since I so personally and closely related to the story of my friend’s losing and losing, while in the midst of such tremendous anger, hostility towards God, loss of income and business, found himself spewing those very words with all the venom and bile his hard, tired heart could muster. And in the process, God still showed up with all the mercy and hope He ever possessed.
The emphasis is Eric’s, but that’s where I would’ve put it, too. I personally have written before about what doubt is to us as Christians, but I don’t think that writing about sinful things is, in and of itself, sinful. After all, Christianity teaches [or at least it should] that we are sinners, broken and needy. If we learn this through anything other than our own foibles with sin, we learn it through others’ experiences—and I have the feeling that this kind of song that Eric’s talking about, while it might be hard to hear, is what we need to hear. The lyrics he quoted struck within me ways that I’ve felt at dark hours, and it’s important to know that others have felt that way and moved on from there to right thinking and living. Not that any of us have attained all this…
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