Introducing StringOverdubs.com
We’re introducing a new service for indie musicians and producers. Follow the link or type StringOverdubs.com into your browser to find out more! We’ll be adding more and more audio samples and photos.
If you’re an artist or know one, why not tweet this, forward it, or share it on facebook?
Yes, We Twitter and Facebook
A simple update about social media:
We love to write blog posts for you to get via email. But we love your email inbox and the space you love for it to have.
We might think of something we want you to know about every other day, but we don’t want to get emails with new blog posts from anyone that much, so we figure you don’t either.
But, if you use Twitter, which even the US Government is figuring out they should use, you can get little tiny updates, notes, opportunities, and niceties when you want them. We’re, uh, tweeting quite a bit now.
Follow blackthornprjct on Twitter.
Also, if you are a Facebook addict like everyone we know and their mom, you might want to become a fan of our page. We’re using it a bit more too these days.
TBP Facebook Musician Page
If this post made no sense to you, I commend you for loving the real and simple things in life. Now go use your flint and steel to build a fire. And say hi to my Dad–that’s probably what he’s doing.
“Too Wonderful” (for our Ellie) - free song!
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Click to download “Too Wonderful” mp3 and lyrics (159)
Inspired by Psalm 139, this is the first song I wrote after the birth of our first daughter, Elizabeth Caroline, whose name means “Beautiful woman consecrated to God.”
I wrote it for her as a mother’s blessing, that she would know her place in the Father’s heart and trust in his goodness.
I wanted to post this as the next song as we are inside 3 weeks until the birth of our second daughter, and my heart is full of joy and anticipation.
–Laurie
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If you like this song why not leave a comment? Please share it with friends; feature it on your facebook, blog, or what-not; and put it on your next mix. If you wish to sow into our ministry or join our partners community, that would be great. If you don’t want to right now, then keep on rockin’ in the free world.
“Too Wonderful” by Laura Elizabeth Thornton & Timothy Floyd Thornton, copyright Bricklayer Music Publishing (ASCAP) 2009, registered with CCLI.
Want to Worship @ 8500 (feet) with us?
We’re playing (and helping to host) a large worship music festival in Divide Colorado on July 19, preceded by a three day gathering with interaction, teaching, fun, and just good connection time with us and many of your other favorite Enter the Worship Circle artists.
Click the poster for more information! The full day of worship music featuring Karla Adolphe, Aaron Strumpel, Ben and Robin Pasley, and more TBA. The gathering is going to be casual and packed with value. You might never get a better chance to revel with and engage us in our hometown…er home mountain…pass…area.
Aaron Strumpel Elephants CD release & concert
There is a bedlam that stirs the soul to beautiful, harmonious, discordant worship and we are a part of it.
Our good buddy Aaron Strumpel has a new album called Elephants. We played with him on it and it stretched us musically beyond what we knew before. It was magnificent and is now available for you and very worth hearing. It’s not light listening (hence the name) but is full of deep, pungent layers and unhindered expression of every kind, all soaked in the scriptures.
Aaron is having a CD release concert on Friday night in Fort Collins, CO at Everyday Joe’s. Laurie and I will be joining many crazy (and I think crazily dressed) friends who will bow, pluck, pound, shake, yell, dance, and sweetly whisper into the microphone as Aaron’s band of supporting pachyderms. Come on out if you’re ready for some crazy Jesus love for the courageously faint of heart.
You can buy a CD at the show, but if you live far away, you can listen and order a first edition on Aaron’s website. Click the image or links above. Here are the show details:
Aaron Strumpel Album Release w/ Listener & Fienix,
Friday, May 1st
Everyday Joe’s
144 S. Mason St.
Fort Collins, CO
7:00pm- 10:00pm
$5
One final note: Gary Adolphe is playing in the band. Wowza.
Reflections on reflections: “Your Glory Falls”
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Discussion of our most recent song for free download. Here are some great quotes on the subject, some of which are referenced in the conversation:
“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
- Romans 8:20-21 (New American Standard Bible)
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
- Galatians 2:20 (New International Version)
“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
“For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.”
“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.”
- C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”
“Your Glory Falls” - Simple Series
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Simple Series #01 Your Glory Falls || $.99 iTunes
“Nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one.”
So said C. S. Lewis, as if he was from the Rocky Mountains.
Thousands of years before, the ancient poet looked up and wrote what we know as the nineteenth song in the book of psalms. He had no trouble gasping at the beauty of the changing sky in one phrase, then in the next contemplating that there is something eternal and pure and beyond those skies–and realizing that his own heart and life needed to reflect it.
Not to be outdone, I wrote this song a fishing season or so back, while waiting to be picked up for a day on the river in Eleven Mile Canyon. It is a true Colorado boy’s song to the Creator. It was inspired by Psalm 19, so I thought I’d include part of that text below so you can see how I used it as a way to enter into my own song of worship.
In the next post/podcast, we’ll talk more about the ancient psalmists’ sun, wind and clouds, and their harmony with my Colorado’s quaking aspen trees and rainbow trout.
Meantime, if this song gets to you, make it a prelude to an hour on the porch with a nice beverage and a copy of “The Weight of Glory” by C. S. Lewis. If the nearest porch looks to a place where created things have been suppressed, a potted plant will do. But don’t just look at creation. Listen to her song, for as Lewis observed, “we are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.”
from Psalm 19:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
Who can discern his errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then will I be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
and from Psalm 135:
The LORD does whatever pleases him,
in the heavens and on the earth,
in the seas and all their depths.
He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth;
he sends lightning with the rain
and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
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If you like this song why not leave a comment? Please share it with friends; feature it on your facebook, blog, or what-not; and put it on your next mix. If you wish to make a donation or join our partners community, that would be great. If you don’t want to right now, then keep on rockin’ in the free world.
“Your Glory Falls” by Timothy Floyd Thornton copyright Bricklayer Music Publishing (ASCAP) 2009, registered with CCLI.
Speak To Me 2: the Wal-Mart story continued
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As soon as I asked the question, “I need to hear it from you. How do you see me?” I started to receive the answer. Sometimes when I ask the Father things, I don’t hear anything–the answers come more gradually, or sometimes seemingly not at all. But on this night, my head was immediately full of phrases and scriptures. I heard, “You are a princess.” I heard, “You are part of my royal priesthood. You wear a beautiful crown.” I heard, “You are my daughter.” I could barely see the light turn green through my tears for me to pull out of the dark parking lot and head toward home.
As I drove, these phrases rolled around in my head and it occurred to me that not one of these beautiful things had to do with how I perform, what I could do, and whether or not I’m doing well. They were all about who I am. The Father was telling who I am to him. How he sees me.
After putting Ellie to bed that night, I excused myself to my bedroom for some more reflection and I opened my Bible to Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon is one of those books I generally don’t think much about, to be honest. It’s a book my first college roommate once said that she wouldn’t let herself read until after she was married. It’s a book that I associate with weddings, and that I’ve heard is allegorical to Christ and his Church, the Bride. But I felt drawn to it; I couldn’t stay away from it.
And eventually I got to Chapter 4, which is the blush-worthy chapter all about the parts of a woman’s body. It’s also the chapter that has this verse, which is the one that brought the tears all over again: “All beautiful you are my darling, there is no flaw in you.” There I was, sprawled out on my bed, sobbing, listening to these verses as from a Father to his daughter, as from the Creator to his created thing. He didn’t make any mistakes when he made me. He didn’t do anything wrong. His hands didn’t slip and accidentally make a part of my personality kind of messed up. I’m perfect. And he wouldn’t change a thing.
The story of the restoration of me continues. I don’t have to try to be anyone else because I’m exactly who he made me to be. I don’t have to strive to prove my worth, because all he does is love me and there is no bar or standard to live up to in order to receive that love. I don’t have to shrink back, because I carry everything I need inside me. Christ in me is redeeming all that the enemy has tried to twist and distort and hold under his thumb; Christ in me is revealing and returning what has been robbed, broken, or lost; Christ in me is restoring me to the woman I was originally and perfectly created to be.
“Speak To Me” - free song!
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Click to download “Speak to Me” mp3 (262)
Some who know me (Laurie) know that in my mommy-hood I go to Wal-Mart to be alone. Oh yes. Wal-Mart. On this particular night I went to Wal-Mart because of that thing… That feeling that makes me want to call everyone I know for some “you’re the most awesome person in the universe” encouragement that my black hole of need tells me I must have.
But, in the spirit of this current season of taking charge of that need and not succumbing to it, I escaped. Not to the beautiful rivers that run just outside town or to one of the hiking trails that I can access just a few blocks away, but to Wal-Mart, the place I go to be alone.
I finished my trip empty-handed. I didn’t buy anything except more time with myself and my self-doubt. It was one of those nights when those voices were particularly loud in my ears, lying to me about who I am, how I behave. And I just kept getting more and more tired of being myself and not someone else who might have it more together than I do.
As I got in the car and pulled out of the parking lot, I cried to the Father out loud: “I can hear everybody else’s voice but yours. My head is so full that I can’t sort through what’s true and what’s not. I’m tired of being so concerned with others’ and my own expectations and opinions of me.” I asked the Lord to get everybody’s voice, including my own, out of my head. “I need to hear it from you. . .who am I to you? How do you see me?”
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If you like this song why not leave a comment? Please share it with friends; feature it on your facebook, blog, or what-not; and put it on your next mix. If you wish to make a donation or join our partners community, that would be great. If you don’t want to right now, then keep on rockin’ in the free world.
“Speak to Me” by Laura Elizabeth Thornton copyright Bricklayer Music Publishing (ASCAP) 2009, registered with CCLI.
Hibernation is over
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Tim talks on this podcast about plans to open The Blackthorn Project creative process to you by releasing bi-weekly digital downloads of special pre-release versions of not a few, but every new song! These songs will appear on the podcast about every two weeks and will be available on theblackthornproject.com for free download as soon as they’re up.
Get ready. “Speak to Me” will be released in just a few days!
