This is now my sixth (or ninth depending on how you count) scripture song project since my wife, Laurie, and I started recording scripture songs in 1987. Most of the melodies for this CD were composed on a little mini-cassette recorder between 2003 and 2004. In fact, that’s how I did my morning devotions. I’d see a text that I thought I ought to memorize, and then I’d just start trying to sing it (softly so as not to wake anyone up) into the tape recorder a little bit at a time until I felt like the song was finished. After I composed about an hour’s worth of songs over a number of months, I thought, well, I’d better see if I can figure out how to play them on my guitar! Fortunately, most of them came out all right, although I did have to tinker and re-write some.

Although, obviously, I like all the songs on this CD or I wouldn’t have included them, one of the songs that stands out in my mind is The King of the North. That’s one of the few I composed with my guitar. It’s one of those songs that just sort of wrote itself. Most of the time when I write a scripture song, I just sort of let the text take the melody where ever it wants to go, and seldom does it come out in a standard ABA or verse, chorus, verse pattern, but this one did. I mean it doesn’t have a chorus per se, but it definitely has an ABA pattern that’s very singable. I also really like Seventy Weeks and the other two songs from Daniel, At That Time and The Little Horn. I haven’t heard many scripture songs out of Daniel, so I thought I’d contribute a few.

I also like how For By Grace Are Ye Saved came out. A lot of people focus on the first part of that text, but I think it’s important to balance it out by including the part about how we’re saved “unto good works.” It’s true that we’re not saved by our works, but we are saved so we can do good works.

David Boatwright, a former neighbor of mine, contributed the title song, Search The Scriptures. I thought that was a great title for a scripture song album!

Another friend of mine, Carl Brewer, helped me with the idea for the album cover (CD insert). The only thing I changed, was that instead of me sitting there just reading a bible, I thought it would be kind of appropriate for me to be using the Bible as a sort of music book from which I am learning songs that I can hide in my heart. Don’t you think the search engine on top was a nice touch? Thanks Carl.

By the way, Carl was also my recording engineer. What a team we are! He’s practically deaf, and I’m nearly blind! We had to balance his need to hear with the fact that we couldn’t have his hearing aide “screaming” while we were recording! One way we tried to compensate for that is that I tried to sit in relation to the light, which I needed to read my music, so that he could read my lips if I ever needed to communicate something to him. Over the six months we worked together on this project and two others, we’ve gotten pretty good at it.

Incidently, for those of who may be wondering why Laurie isn’t on this project, she’s been working as an LPN on night shift, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., so she has little opportunity to be available for recording when we’re both awake at the same time in the same place and at home. Since recording has never been one of her favorite “chores,” and since we wanted to get this project done sooner rather than much later, she asked if she could sit this one out. I’m hoping she’ll be available for the next project.

As with our other projects, we hope this one will be a blessing to you as well as an effective tool for helping you hide Gods Word in your hearts.

The titles and scripture references of the songs on this project are as follows:

to order.

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