Music…

My whole day today has had music poured over it non-stop. There’s a lot going on right now that excites me.

Adele’s 21 continues to DESTROY on the album sales chart. Still selling 100,000 copies A WEEK since it’s Feb 11, 2011 release. That’s just in the USA. Last week, as usual, she had the #1 album moving 123,000 units. The #2 release was Drake’s Take Care album which sold 43,000 copies. A respectable amount in this climate, but nowhere near Adele. It’s truly a phenomenon.

What I love about Adele is that she is real. It’s that simple. No auto-tune, no studio tricks, no marketing stunts. Just authentic, heartfelt performances. While the music industry continues to push the latest sexed out singing cheerleader, Adele is trumping their best efforts. Beating them badly in fact. They wonder why no one is interested in their processed, disposable novelty acts.. I hope that there are more Adele quality artists out there that we’ll be hearing from soon.

I was able to attend WinterJam tonight in Evansville, Indiana. For those uninformed, WinterJam is a multi-artist tour that doesn’t do tickets; they charge a suggested 10 dollar offering at the door. They typically fill the building… and I do believe that tonight’s show was the newly opened Ford Center’s first “sell out”. It was great to see some friends that I hadn’t seen in awhile and even my sometimes jaded self really enjoyed the show all around. Pete Furler is sounding great with a solo band with some old friends. I met Kari Jobe who I had worked with but never met face to face. To sum it up, all the artists that I saw were great at what they do.

But the OMG of the night was Skillet.

It was the first time I had seen Skillet since they became a “mega-band”. I was rocked! Watching them pour themselves into the show (along with a healthy dose of old school pyro to keep you energized) was inspiring to me. I consider it a sincere honor that vocalist John Cooper is a Guardian fan and he’s doing things at a level that we never came close to. No doubt there is someone in tomorrow’s next big thing watching them on tour right now and feeling that call to “get it done”! It certainly hammered down my thought that Guardian next record needs to be an absolute stellar album. We owe that to the audience and to ourselves. We owe that to God.

Anyway, it’s after 3:00 am, I had some work to get done from my “sick day” yesterday. It’s time to unplug.

Good night friends!

Let’s be a light!

jamie