Carolyn Arends News Blog

Parting is such sweet sorrow. CAROLYNARENDS.COM/NEWSBLOG, thou hast served me well. But in just a few short hours I shall bid thee adieu, because, well, I found a new blog. You’ll live on in my memory (and website archives). But this is goodbye.

Visit www.carolynarends.com to visit the new blog. It’s just a few hours away now.

See you soon,
Carolyn

Hey Everyone — my review of Where The Wild Things Are is up at CT’s move site. In a nutshell: “Exquisitely rendered but pervasively dark, Spike Jonze’s take on the classic kids’ book is a story about childhood that might be too disturbing for children.”

Peace!
CA

Ok, as I explained in tweets yesterday, we’ve just sent up an official Facebook “Musician” page, called, originally enough, “Carolyn Arends”.

Many of you very obligingly tried to go join said page, only to find getting there via normal Facebook methods is quite confusing. So, try this — and let me know if it works!!

Here’s my original note about the new page:

Carolyn Arends
Welcome to the Carolyn Arends Musician Page. I was quite happy with my Carolyn Arends Human Page, but it turns out you can’t add audio or the like to a regular profile, and thus we’ve had to go “all Hollywood” and do a fan page. … Can you please do me a favour and become a fan? Otherwise I will be so lonely over here.

As soon as we get our official “facebook verification” (I think my retinas have to be scanned or something) we’ll be previewing audio from my forthcoming project here. That should be within the next 48 hours.

Meanwhile, anything you can do to spruce up this here page would be deeply appreciated. Got a pic/video/anecdote? Post it here. Got chocolate? Send it to my house.

Many Thanks!
CA

In all the excitement surrounding the impending release of my new CD, I forgot to post here that my new CT column is up over at the Wrestling with Angels blog. There’s already a bit of conversation surrounding it (on both my blog and CT’s site) — love that! Join in!

In related news, Christianity Today just extended my writing contract for another year, so there will be more of these to come. Let me know if you have any topic ideas!

Peace to you,
Carolyn

2 Brand New Songs (from forthcoming CD, LOVE WAS HERE FIRST) over at MYSPACE.COM/CAROLYNARENDS

There comes a time when the baby songs you have nurtured must stretch their wings and fly out into the big beautiful world on their own. Or something like that. The thing is, I’ve been blogging and tweeting and scrapbooking and sharing pictures about my new cd (LOVE WAS HERE FIRST) for some time now, but it’s time for you to HEAR THE MUSIC.

In mere days we’ll have a brand new website up and rocking with lots of new media-sharing features, but with the release date only 1 week away we just couldn’t stand it anymore. So we have DEBUTED two new tracks over at MYSPACE.COM/CAROLYNARENDS .

Please head on over there and check it out — and then let me know what you think of my babies. (No pressure!)

The album releases October 20; you can order it now here.

Hope you like it!

Grace and peace,

Carolyn

This is just a quick post to say things are all abuzz here as we careen toward the release of my 10th disc: LOVE WAS HERE FIRST. I hand delivered the last element to the manufacturing plant yesterday (October 7th) at 1:14pm, and despite the unprecedentedly (is that a word?) quick turn around we are still on track for our OCTOBER 20 release. I can’t WAIT to get the music into your hands, and hear what you think.

Here’s some other news:

- ARTWORK SNEAK PEEK: I’m so thrilled with the album’s cover, which was obtained through the creative brilliance of graffiti artist John Drager (in Montreal) and designer Brian Kauste (in Winnipeg). You can see some of the package on my FACEBOOK page. There are also some snaps from the making of the album on twitpic.

- ENHANCED CD WITH CHORD CHARTS: We get lots of requests for guitar chords, so we decided to include them on LOVE WAS HERE FIRST. If you’re the playing type, you’ll be able to insert the disc into your computer and up will pop a shiny pdf file (OK, pdf files aren’t shiny, but there will be a certain glow) containing charts for all the songs. I really laboured over getting the chord diagrams exactly right, so even if you don’t end up using them, write me and tell me you did, OK? (And all you piano and oboe (?) players out there — I made sure to include non-capo charts just for you!)

- COVENANT AWARDS: Despite a quiet year last year (musically speaking) I’m up for FEMALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR. I am also CO-HOSTING THE SHOW (in Calgary on October 23rd) with the visionary and affable ARLEN SALTE. The show will include (among many, many cool things — you should see the line-up!) my own performance of I AM A SOUL off the new recording. I’ll also be sitting on a songwriting panel earlier in the day. That should be one busy day!

- CENTRE STREET CHURCH (Calgary) WITH ORCHESTRA!: Later that weekend I will be performing all 4 services at Centre Street Church. Centre Street is rather legendary in Canada and we (that would be Spencer and me) are so looking forward to worshiping with them. Plus (and this is a big plus!) their orchestrator Elmer Riegel is scoring 3 of my songs for his choir and orchestra — I can’t wait! (The choir and orchestra will be playing and singing in the 2 Sunday morning services only.) We’ll be performing “Seize the Day” and then 2 songs from the new project: “Nothing Can Separate” and “Never Say Goodbye” in the Sunday morning services, and doing a duo set of performance and worship songs in the Saturday and Sunday evening services.

- NEW WEBSITE COMING: Our webgenius Rose and I are actively imagineering (with apologies to Walt Disney) a new site and hope to have updates for you very soon.

OK — that’s enough news for now. Because, in other news, the Arends got a new dog, and he needs to go outside …

Peace!
Carolyn

We’re working madly to finish up LOVE WAS HERE FIRST — which will be my 10th CD and, I do believe, a pretty accurate document of what’s on my heart and mind these days. We’ve just launched a pre-release site today, and if you chose to order in advance, you’ll actually help us finish things up. I was trying to think of someway to say “thank you” to the folks who support us and we decided to include the names of everyone who pre-orders in the liner notes. Wacky eh?! Hope you think it’s as fun as we do.

You can pre-order here. I hope you will!

Thanks,
Carolyn

My August CT column is now online — as always, would love to hear what you think!

Bessings!

CA

Hi All! It’s very hectic here in Arendsland, but in the midst of the craziness I forgot to mention that I did a 40 minute radio interview with Chris Fabry on Moody Radio. He had read my CT column about the importance of The Arts (even — especially — in tough economic times) and we had a grand old time chatting about all sorts of things loosely connected to creativity and the Creator. We even took calls and email from around the nation. You can listen to it here.

I came out of our conversation remembering how essential it is that we intentionally feed our souls — so please, look at or listen to something beautiful today!
Carolyn

Greetings,

My review of the new weeper My Sister’s Keeper is now online.  I also had the privilege of being a guest blogger on her.meneutics, exploring one of the issues the film raises.  Have you read the book?  Are you going to see the film?  I’m intrigued to hear how either version of the story resonates with you …

My review is here.

My her.meneutics blog post is here.

Peace,

Carolyn