Blue Skies

Here we are - the Monday before Christmas! Yesterday we had our Christmas Music program here at Peakland UMC. Everything went really well and we had a pretty full sanctuary. I saw some old friends and some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, including our former associate Emma! If you missed the program, or if you were here and just would like to experience it again, the program was live-streamed on Youtube and Facebook. On Youtube, just search for Peakland UMC, and on Facebook, we are @peakumchurch. A special treat for me was my flugelhorn friend Lynn Nash and his wife Katie coming to the program. Lynn and I did our album version of Silent Night and then we played What Child Is this with the choir and our guest bassist Russ Hovda. Which leads me to todays Music Monday. It’s the last cut on the album and perhaps, from an orchestration standpoint, my favorite song on the album. I don’t usually do a lot of orchestration work on our projects we do together, but this medley of White Christmas and I’ll Be Home for

It’s Music Monday for December 11, 2023 https://on.soundcloud.com/e8CPT https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4 Today’s Music Monday is going to feature my son, Matt, on the bass guitar in another of my Christmas Album songs - Ding Dong Merrily On High. This song is not nearly as popular as a lot of other Christmas songs, but I picked it for a reason - playing 4 and 4. Ok, haha, what does that mean. Well, here’s the slighter longer explanation. Years ago I played piano and occasionally trombone in s Big Band in the Lynchburg, Va area. Sometimes I would sub on piano for another group that played fairly regularly at the Green Briar Resort, in West Va. And I had several smaller groups - mostly trios, quartets or quintets I would play in here locally. This was all Big Band or light Jazz music. That’s where I learned the concept of 4 and 4. We would play a song and maybe on the 2nd or third time through, we would each take turns playing a solo - for 4 measures. So we woul

From the We Need A Little Christmas Album, this is the title cut!

Song Only Series - NO Narrative

This is the Monday I’ve been waiting for! It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving Day, 2023! And the Christmas Album, “We Need A Little Christmas” is finally available! We are making this 10 song Christmas project available online via Facebook, Soundcloud, my website and Youtube. There are links in the description, but here is a quick synopsis of what to expect from the various venues. Facebook will have some of the songs from the album as Music Mondays through the holidays. Soundcloud will have all 10 songs, in a playlist, as individual songs as well as one track that contains all 10 songs. On Youtube, there will be the individual songs set against my flugelhorn friend and partner in this endeavor, Lynn Nash’s outdoor fireplace that he and his wife, Katie, decorated. And there will be one track, that will have all 10 songs, again set with the outdoor fireplace as the backdrop. Ideal for those of you that have a way to show Youtube videos on your TV at home! So here is the first song on our Christmas Album

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

From the 2023 Christmas Album - "We Need A Little Christmas" Linwood Campbell and Lynn Nash. linwoodcampbell.com Here's the "Fireplace Edition" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEjER1AAA4_b1hZvhmS9NDFSvPND6DVU4

Song Only, No Narrative

The was frost on the pumpkin this morning! And that has absolutely nothing to do with Music Monday. It’s the 13th of November, 2023. A lot of things are happening - the Christmas program at the church is just a little over a month away, and I still have songs to write supplemental charts for, and practicing to do. The Christmas project Lynn Nash and I have will be released 2 weeks from today! Lynn sent me some really nice videos of his outdoor fireplace that I will use as a backdrop for the video versions of our project. More on that another day. This will be the last normal (whatever that means) Music Monday through the end of the year. Next week I will be in serious prep mode for the upcoming Christmas season music. The following week, I will start the Christmas Season of Music Monday’s that will feature different songs from the Christmas Project Lynn and I are releasing. While the whole album will be available online on Monday the 27th, I will be using various songs through the month of December fro

Song Only - No Narration

It’s Monday, the 6th of November. Good Grief, where did this year go to? I was looking through my files yesterday, trying to decide what to offer for today’s Music Monday. I ran across this arrangement thatLyn Nash and I did a few months back and, honestly, had totally forgotten about - I bet he has too! We’ve spend so much time working on our Christmas project, that everything else kinda gets lost sometimes. Speaking of the Christmas project, it will be released in just a few short weeks - the Monday after Thanksgiving to be exact. More on that in a future Music Monday. This arrangement is a quiet - laid back if you will. The song itself is certainly not a in your face kinda song, but I like this interpretation especially. Nash provides an excellent solo line with his flugelhorn. AS a side note, we started recording together, I think, in 2016 - all of it long distance as he lives in Hickory NC, and I’m here in Lynchburg, VA. It’s truly amazing what technology allows us to do. So here’s our rendition

Song Only - No Narrative