Prayer Request

Friends, 

Please keep a friend of Orin's in prayer, Frank Quinn, OP.  Frank until recently was a prof at Aquinas Institute, and while Orin never had him formally in class, many of my friends did, and he helped a great deal on a couple projects of mine.  He was for many years a leading liturgical voice in America and the English-speaking world.

He is reportedly near death, please keep him and all who know and love him in prayer.  Thanks.

Congratulations Joia!

Oddwalk Friend Joia Farmer (wife of Brad, as in Brad and Gene of Apex Ministries) has co-written with Matt Miller the 2009 NCYC Theme Song!  Their version of Christ Reigns is featured in the 2009 NCYC promo video, posted here (sorry, we can't embed it).

Way to go!

Yogi Bear is also a friend of mine

While we're on the topic of who are friends of ours, here's Mike Patin at the Shrine Youth Day leading folks in singing about his friend Yogi Bear:

Shrine Youth Day Pics

Here are a couple pics from the Shrine's Youth Day Celebration the end of September:

Orin, who was also singing in a choral concert Sunday, wore his tuxedo for a special performance of "Just Because You Can."

Mike Patin joins in a performance of "Jesus is My Friend" - coincidentally, our YouTube video of that song (a different performance) is now well over 5,500 views, and is being viewed more often than ever, now one view every 5.5 minutes...  Sheesh.

Orin's new favorite keytar action shot.

Notice how the pants are completely unripped.

For more photos, visit our facebook group page, where Erin B has uploaded a number of shots from the weekend.  Thanks to all Happy Shriney People for a great weekend!

We may end up using this line

Another post thanks to Mike Patin! We had already noticed the comic strip Toothpaste for Dinner, mostly becuase of this keytar-themed panel:

Today Mike alerted us to this recent panel, below.  The band looks vaguely familiar, and we may have to start using that line at our appearances:

Not Quite Twins

So, Orin's wife Erin and co-worker Erin wore nearly the same outfit today, right down to their eyeglasses.  And they didn't even call each other ahead of time.

No word on why they chose to pose with lemonade mix.

"A Brushfire Movement"

The National Catholic Reporter has an interesting article out right now about contemporary Catholic music, where it comes from, how it's used, false dichotomies in liturgical music, etc.  While largely about Matt Maher (pictured), it briefly mentions several other artists, including Oddwalk friend and fellow GIA artist Paul Melley.

Check it out!

Bravo!

This past Saturday, seventy (or so) high school students took the stage at the Shrine Ampitheatre for the Youth Sing Praise performance of Lost and Found. They did not disappoint. It was evident that the long week of auditions, rehearsals, and prayer paid off. Congratulations to all involved. Here are a few pictures from the performance (thanks to Marianne Cline for the first three. Thanks to snowsyouthministry.org for the rest):

As we've mentioned before, Orin and Erin were also part of the week. Orin served as the Prayer Coordinator. Here are a couple of pictures highlighting some of the prayer and environment:

Erin's role for YSP was to direct the Helper's Team. Since there is a lot the Helper's Team does and there weren't really any good pictures that could illustrate her work, I chose this one:

Congratulations, again, to all those who worked to make Youth Sing Praise 2008 a tremendous success!

Paul Melley On The News!

Oddwalk friend, and fellow GIA composer Paul Melley, was recently featured in a news story on New England Cable News (NECN). The story highlights Paul's ministry, specifically the opportunity he has to share his music at the International World Youth Day event in Sydney, Australia next month. Here's the report:

Paul is a tremendously talented musician who plays several instruments, including piano, guitar, and saxophone. His debut CD with GIA entitled, Humbled (pictured below), was released last summer.

Orin and I have had the opportunity to hear and play much of Paul's music and have witnessed, first-hand, his ability to touch people's hearts. When he's not jet-setting around the world, Paul serves as the Director of Liturgical Music and is the Assistant Chaplain at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.

If you're interested in checking out some of his music, click here.

'08 YSP Update...sort of

Here are a few pictures taken from the first couple of days at Youth Sing Praise. Since I (Shannon) am not actually at YSP this year, I have no frame of reference for these pictures, so I'll just take a guess as to what's happening in them:

This one's pretty obvious, although it wouldn't be hard (with Photoshop) to erase what's actually on the card and write something else. We could change it to read "Oddwalk is awesome!" or "I love my husband, even when he rips his pants wide open on stage in front of several hundred middle school students".

Here, Orin tries to convince a fellow YSP staffer that his degree in Folklore and Mythology has truly been the secret ingredient for his rise to rock stardom.

After careful review of the manual, Brad and Melissa are horrified to discover that YSP actually stands for "Youth Shaving Platypi". So that's why they're always trying to sneak off. Who knew?

"Daddy...Will You Be At My Wedding?"

This past Saturday, the Cerneka family attended the wedding of friends, Kim Gross and Josh Pierce. Since Erin and Shannon were singing, they were invited to the rehearsal on Friday night.

At some point in the rehearsal, the bride-to-be was nice enough to give the increasingly-restless Madeleine a small veil and bouquet of flowers to play with. Upon receiving these gifts, Madeleine quickly took Noah by the hand and started dragging him around the church, marching him down the aisle several times. Below are a few of pictures from the "ceremony". The woman in the picture is our good friend, Kay:

A More Different "Christ Reigns" - Let the Smack-Talking Begin!

Via the blog, a few posts down, we received a note from a composer of another entry into the NCYC 2009 Theme Song contest.  You can listen to Greg's entry here - it has a nice, Irish-ish melody and thoughtful lyrics.  Visit his blog here or his main site here.

Coincidentally, Greg has written some music and a chapter of a book waiting to be published by...  GIA, the same folks we worked with for our latest CD and the forthcoming songbooks and octavos.

A reminder that you can listen to our entry, "Christ Regins" on the pOddcast, available in the gcast window in the blog sidebar, or over at our main site.

And since Greg extended a similar invitation (in good humor, certainly) to his readers, let us make this offer to ours: 

So now, our dear readers, you can judge for yourselves who should win this contest: us, or our new internet friend Greg (or presumably the many other dozens of entries...).  May the best man (or woman, right Joia?) win! (Feel free to inundate our competitor’s blog with smack talk comments.)

More on our Friend David

Our friend David (whom we've blogged about before) has been studying in Rome for a couple years as he prepares to be a priest for the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.  Here, he's featured in the USA OMI's most recent newsletter.  Click the graphic to read or to see the photo more closely.

Theo in New York

If you've been around Oddwalk long enough, you've probably seen us with our friend Theo Harden playing bass. Theo is one of the best musicians we know and we never hesitate to give him a solo during one of our shows. While I can't find a picture of Theo, here's a cool YouTube video of our man making things up off the top of head:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1X4OnkJ23lg&feature=related

Recently, Theo moved to New York City as part of a band that is trying to "make it big". The band supports an artist named Zack Weber. If you're interested in following what Theo's up to, click here:

http://www.myspace.com/zackweber

We're very excited for Theo and wish him the best of luck!

Congrats!

Oddwalk friends Sarah Bauer (featured on "Walk Away Different") and Chris Sansone just got married!  Here a pic of them at the reception with another Odd-Friend, Joia Farmer.

Just Because: Real Life Examples

A couple weeks ago, our friends at Popple did at event at Shannon's parish in Jeff City, MO. They sent us this picture a couple days later, that they had found online:


It reminded Orin of a similar scenario from his growing up. Visiting his family over the weekend, he dug out a newspaper clipping from the Summer of 1993:


As silly as it is, "Just Because You Can" does have some real-life implications, folks.

You know you are a youth minister when…

From Oddwalk friend Cribbly:

You know you are a youth minister when…

You get an email from a high school senior asking you to write a letter of recommendation.

But this request is by far the most amusing one I have ever received.

“…you just need to write about who I am as a person. Suave. Dangerous. Sanitary.”

Scenes from a Rippin' Keytar Solo, etc.

Thanks to Erin B (at the Shrine) for the pics. We've only posted a few of them here - none of them, unfortunately, capture the essence of the event in its fullest glory.

Perhaps this was the moment of truth, though Shannon says it happened long before this part of the big solo. Observe the amusement of the drummer, Joe, and the young man in black.

Even while striking the final pose, the damage isn't too noticeable.

The next day, Dakota (owner of the well-worn Oddwalk shirt) from Teen Team plays a little air keytar. Really, it's an inflatable keytar.

Oddwalk assists Short Circuit Entertainment at the dance. I'm not sure the "Belly-Rub" is going to catch on though.

Mary's Got My Back

Saturday and Sunday this weekend are the two days that make up the Shrine's Youth Day Celebration. One of the keynoters this year is Sarah Bauer, who is also featured on Oddwalk's Soon-to-be-released CD, "Walk Away Different."

One of her more popular songs is "Mary's Got My Back" - and singing that song at the Shrine amphitheater, she certainly does!


PS - We'll have another quite interesting post soon about a rippin' keytar solo this weekend (with pictures!) - so stay tuned!

Ahh! My Bubble!

Tonight, Shannon had a youth ministry event in his parish called Prayer, Praise, and Drumsticks (the ice cream). It's a regularly meeting group that spends time in prayer and fellowship.

Once the program ended, they invaded his bubble and snapped a few pictures. Here's one of the better ones: