RussHutto.com

The Set Up: For a few months we’ve been in the process of readying a new facility for our church offices and rehearsal space. We’re a mobile church so the location we use for Sunday gatherings (movie theater) isn’t available to hold rehearsals in. Our present facility is only business licensed for office use (can’t have anything other than office type stuff in it so says the city), so we’ve been meeting at a small vintage clothing store/cafe for the last few months to hold rehearsals. The owners of the cafe are closing the store so this past week and maybe next week, we were technically out of a rehearsal space.

The Experiment: I decided to take this week (or 2) of what could be a chaotic search for space and try something different. Wednesday night I invited only the vocalists over to my place for rehearsal and dinner.

We sat comfortably around the living room, me with a guitar, and the other vocalists with their voices. We went through our line-up, pausing here and there to laugh and goof off or work on particular harmonies. All in all, it took us about half an hour to go through the line-up.

Before everyone arrived I prepared a simple chicken pot pie that I put in the oven to be baking while we rehearsed. Right as we finished we pulled it out of the oven. My wife and a friend that was over baked cookies from scratch.

We sat down and had a great time together. We looked like one big diverse family around our dining room table, laughing and talking, eating the pot pie (which was pretty good, I might add).

The Results: I could definitely tell that our vocalists enjoyed the entire evening. It was casual and relaxed. We worked specifically on vocal part without ever having to tell the guitar or drummer to quit doodling so we could hear what we were doing. Of course, we missed the full band run through, but it was definitely a refreshing even “quiet” approach to our rehearsal status quo.

The Band will be joining me tonight for Pizza and walk-through. We won’t be using fll instrument set ups. More like acoustic guitars and a snare drum, but I think the casual relaxed atmosphere will do our musicians good in the same way it did for the vocalists.

We’ll get together Sunday morning for full band/vocals run through.

All in all, this is something that I can see us implementing on a regular basis. Not weekly, but maybe once a month. I really enjoyed just “hanging out” with our team outside of the normal rehearsal environment.

What are some ways you mix things up when you feel like things are in a rut?

Are there ever times when you’re forced by circumstances to try something new with your team?

Please share.

…heh, just kidding.

But one of my BIG musical influences is hip hop. Not the watered-down, monotonous drivel that has crept into the mainstream these days, but more of the underground, old school stuff. Ya know, kind of the Dirty South stuff before it became public enough to package it up, slap a label on it and make billions of dollars off of it.

When I was in high school way back in the early 90s I used to “make beats.” That’s right. I was a scrawny, one-hundred-twenty pound mix master. I went to a predominantly black high school and the majority of my friends were up and coming rappers (or so we thought).

I had a Roland W-30, a cool workstation with some great patches and a sampler and I made mad beats. At least that’s what they told me.

When I was around 13 or 14 I got to do my thang in front of about 1500 teens at a youth conference called Ski Invasionin Gatlinburg, TN. I wasn’t coming straight outta compton or anything, but I was pretty well received by hundreds of teenagers who rocked out to concerts from David and The Giants and Rick Cua that weekend. I guess I did well enough to do it again the next year, because I did!

Anyways, back in my teens I really, really enjoyed writing rap lyrics. I think I was pretty good at it too. I wrote a song in 1991 that I continued to perform all the way up until about 2005 (different versions of course). It was always received well.

When I started the last band I was in, Blind Men See, back in 2003, we wrote a bunch of raprock stuff. We eventually wrote more melodic rock stuff, but it’s cool to hear some of our friends that still have our ringtones from back in the day.

I thought I’d share just a little of my musical history today. And along with that I’m including a video of a song that I did as a message series tag-along last year. It’s called Open My Eyes. After that you can take a listen to the Blind Men See version (which is a little more rock-ish).

Now the audio from our first (and only EP) Open My Eyes (copyright 2003 Russ Hutto):

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At House of Joy, the church I serve at currently, we have a very diverse family. Blacks, whites, hispanics. Urban/hip hop flavored stuff really resonates, so I’m able to use my past influences NOW! It’s pretty sweet. We’ll add little rap bridges to songs like Shackles and Jesus is the Best Thing. Fun.

What is/are some little known area(s) of influence from your past that most people wouldn’t guess about you if they met you now, that play a big part in who you are and what you do today?

Saturday night, I playd a gig at Buffington’s Vintage here in Valdosta. It went well.

I was actually the opening act for a duo that played a bunch of fun cowboy and country-ish tunes complete with jammin’ harmonica.

Here’s my setlist:

1. Everyday (Hillsongs)
2. You’re Love Oh, Lord (Third Day)
3. Rhythm (Russ Hutto)
4. Drowning (Russ Hutto)
5. Evidence (Billy Hutto)
6. Every Creature (Russ Hutto)

With the exception of Drowning, all of the songs I did were pretty straight forward worship tunes. Even though this was more of  performance oriented atmosphere, it was so obvious that when Jesus is lifted up the “air” changes.

I brought a pretty good sized crowd with me, and most sang along with me on songs they knew. The atmosphere became “sweeter” as we journeyed through my short setlist. At the last song, there was a charge in the air and it was almost awkward to just stop.

When the headliners got up you could tell they were feeling a bit awkward about diving into their setlist of non-worship tunes. It wasn’t because I said anything churchy or spiritual even. I just sang to Jesus.

As the lead guy talked it was apparent that they were Believers, but he talked for about 5 minutes attempting to justify their “having fun” set. That it was God’s music ultimately and that we as Believers should take some time to just have some fun.

Now, just so you know, I have no problem with “fun” music. In fact, I play plenty of covers from time to time, I just picked a mostly worship tune setlist this gig. My question is, and I really love to get a whole bunch of discussion on this one, is:

Keeping in mind that I really didn’t do anything preachy or overspiritual, I just sang some God-oriented songs with passion…

Why do you think the leader of the other band felt like he had to justify singing songs that weren’t spiritual?

I’m laying in bed, trying to wake up, blogging from my phone.

Today, I’m headed to the National Worship Leader Conference in Austin, Texas with a good blogging friend of mine, Fred McKinnon.

Got to meet his family last night. I’m staying at Fred’s here in Saint Simon’s Island, GA before we head to the airport this morning. It was a privilege to meet the kids. They’re awesome! Thanks, Fred!

I’m looking forward to a good time learning and hanging out with other worship leaders and possibly meeting some other blog friends and seeing some faces to go with some of the forum friends from The Worship Community.

I’ll be blogging about my experiences, and of course I’ll be twittering along the way: @russhutto. You can also follow Fred @fmckinnon.

Psalm 57:8-11 … ok ok, so I didn’t awaken the dawn this morning, but I’m excited to wake up another day to say “Be exalted Oh God, above the heavens, let your glory cover all the earth!”

Friday: Got my hands on a new smart phone. I’ve been wanting one for a real long time. I’ve got an old PDA that I really used a lot back in the day, and so I’ve been itching to get an iPhone or something similar in a phone model.

I decided to pass on the iPhone (even though I really want one), because I just bought a Nano for christmas, so I needed more of a work/office phone. I got the HTC Touch PPC6800. I’m enjoying learning about all the new features available, and excited about integrating it into my scheduling and planning for the church.

Saturday: My wife and I ran our very first 5K in Jesup, GA. It was a blast. Very hard, but fun. We hadn’t really trained much, so we had to alternate between running and walking. But we crossed the finish line together, had a good time enjoying the beautiful weather, and accomplished a goal we had set together. We finished in 41:51. I got second in my age group. She got third in hers. Don’t tell anyone, but there were only 2 in my age group!

Anyways, we knew going in that we’d be near the back of the pack, but we decided to use this first race as a low bar. We’re going to be running another one in May. We’ve decided to integrate 5ks into our life every other month or so.

Sunday: Services went well. I was on drums. Guitar player’s amp died during last song so that was fun. All in all we executed nicely, except for some minor vocal harmonies that weren’t 100%, but I’m really proud of my vocalists. They’ve been working hard to get their parts each week.

How was your weekend?