Track 10 Showcase
Apr 1, 2008

Everlasting King
Jan 31, 2008

Hello all,

    Well this is officially my first blog.  It's not really a life changing experience but it's pretty cool.  We just sent the new Canvas album "Everlasting King" out for duplication.   I'm pretty excited about it being done.  I'm really praying that everyone will be blessed by it.  There have been countless hours that have been put into it and I know that they will all be worth it.  The biggest problem that we ran into in the final stages of the album was the snare drum.  We couldn't get it to cut through the mix the way we wanted to.  Through some long testing with this and that, we finally got it to sit in the mix they way that we wanted.  I'm sure that no one else will care or be able to tell but I figured I would let you know.  :)  Well, that's about it.  Hopefully you will enjoy the new album.  God bless!

Andy 

Canvas En Espanol
Nov 11, 2007

The Next CD
Sep 22, 2007

Thank you to all of you who came out for the Live Recording Night. It was a great night of worship and music and we were so glad to be able to share the music that God has been laying on the hearts of the Canvas Song Writers. Andy Soemo is in the process of mixing the live stuff so we can hopefully have the CD for sale before the holidays hit. Keep checking the website for details on the newest CD, Everlasting King. We are all looking forward to hearing the end product! Thank you again for your support!

Recording
Aug 13, 2007

Well, we are gearing up for our next Canvas worship recording, which will be recorded live on September 16th.  Our group of writers have been working, over this last year, on a number of new songs, many of which we have been singing at Cedar Park as well as at camps and conferences on the road.  We are excited about this next project because we will have 7 writers represented on the project.  A number of those writers have been meeting over the last year in a small group of sorts.  It has been cool seeing many of those songs take shape over the course of time.  If you have some time and would like to be a part of the next recording, come out to Cedar Park church in Bothell, WA on the night of September 16th at 6:00.  We would love to have as many of you as possible come out.  If you have a youth group or small group, you could bring them all out to be a part of it.  Last year we had a number of youth groups from around the state come out. 

One other thing, we updated the resources page and added all the lead sheets from the Choose to Live project.  You can go there and download all the charts from the project for free now. 

Summer Time with Canvas
Jun 7, 2007

That's right Summer is upon us - well at least some days the sun decides to grace us with it's presence here in Seattle. At any rate, the Canvas team is gearing up for the busy summer ahead. If you haven't checked out the calendar of events, you should! On top of getting ready for our second annual Worship Camp, the Canvas Worship Band will be leading worship at 3 other summer camps in July.

We are all excited to be able to spend so much time with the youth around the state and hope that you will be able to join us for some of the worship gatherings and concerts that will be happening. Specifically, if you will be in the Seattle area Friday, July 13th we'd love to have you come and worship with us at Cedar Park. It's going to be a great night of music with the Canvas team and Byword. Byword is one of the guest bands joining us for Worship Camp. If you are involved with the worship for your youth services, or you know someone who is you must check out the Worship Camp page for all of the details for that week. There are some great bands coming in for the late night concerts, incredible musicians ready to show you how to be better on your instrument, time in a professional studio and annointed worship leaders that will all be involved to help train the youth in the Northwest! Don't miss out on Worship Camp this year!

If you are over in the Spokane area, come join the Canvas Team at Coeur d'Alene First Assembly on July 22, or Lake City Community Church July 27-29. We look forward to seeing all of you as we travel around the state this summer!

Canvas at Creation!
May 13, 2007

Thank you to all of you who voted for Canvas at Creation. We made it into the voting contest late...so with nearly 700 votes we just missed the top 10. We appreciate all of the support!

Timullet Shaw
Apr 19, 2007

Alright,

Tim Shaw, one of our guitar players, sent us this sweet picture from highschool and we thought you should all see it.  I don't know if Tim drove a Camero when he was in highschool.  If he didn't he probably wanted to.  Way to send out the vibe Tim.  You Rock. 

Aaron Welk

Equip 2007
Mar 27, 2007

We just finished up our first ever Equip Worship Conference.  It was a great weekend.  We were blessed to have a number of worship leaders and clinicians from around the northwest come and share their experience and insight.  Terry Kelley was our speaker for the general sessions, which you can download on the Podcast Page.  We were also fortunate to have people like Marty Nystrom, Larry London, Scott and Ali Anderson and many others as a part of our clinician team.   We will be posting some of their notes on the Conference Page for download.  The conference was a great time to not only learn and spend time in God's presence, but for people to connect with other local churches and worship leaders from around the Northwest.  We had a number of churches that brought their whole teams.  It was a great opportunity for all of them to get away, bond as a team, and walk through some things to implement at their home churches. 

There are some pictures from the conference on our Media Page.  They are in the picture section down at the bottom of the page.  Check them out. 

Larry London, our drum clinician, had some poinient thoughts for next years conference - "Next year I would like to see a class on the beauty of pinatas in modern church music and how to handle worship team groupies including a worship team groupie hotline and recovery." 

Anyway, we are planning next years conference and if you missed this year you can sign up on our mailing list to get information on next year as soon as possible.  Also, we have our Worship Camp for students coming up in July.  You can check out the details and register here. 

Encounter
Feb 20, 2007

Hey Everyone

We are getting through winter camp season and have had some great times with a number of students from across the state.  We just got back from our Encounter retreat with the students of Cedar Park Church and Cedar Park Northshore.  Jeff Portman (Northwest Ministry Network Youth Director) came and spoke, focusing on the disciplines of Christian faith and applying those to our daily living.  He and Jay Smith (Student Ministries Pastor at Cedar Park Bothell) were a part of the championship team in the dodge ball tournament.  Jay drafted a stacked team including Jeff Portman & Lightning Arm Sankey.  We, the band, were dethroned as the dodge ball champions of last year, and I am still sore from the loss (both physically and mentally).  I never thought a childhood PE game could cause such fatigue.  Man I love that game.

We are getting ready for our Equip Conference in March here at Cedar Park.  Our heart is to have a conference that deals with some practically things Worship Teams can do to help further the culture of worship in their arena of influence.  It is coming up March 9-10 and you can register on the site here.  There is a group rate for teams of 4 or more. 

We are also getting ready for the summer season right now.  We are going to be out on the road a lot this summer leading worship for a number of camps and what not.  Being out and leading worship is one of the main areas that the Lord has called us to inspire generations to live lives of worship.  We feel blessed to have the opportunity and love forming all the relationships that occur over the summer. 

Peter and I did an interview with the people over at Track 10 just recently and it is up on their site right now.  If you want to check it out go here. 

Canvas New Year
Jan 11, 2007

Hey Everyone,

     This is Aaron Welk signing on the blogging bandwagon.  We hope that you had a great Christmas and New Year.  We had a cool Christmas season with Canvas at Cedar Park.  For Kelly and I it was our first Christmas with little Bella.  She enjoyed it and sends her Christmas/New Years greeting with the attached picture. 

We all love Christmas time and love singing all the carols that are embedded in our brains that time of year.  The funny thing is that you hear all those carols a thousand times, but when we went to play them we had more trouble with those songs than we have with anything else.  I think it is because we only play them once a year.  At times our experience reminded me of that bit that Mr. Bean does at church where he only knows one line to the song.  In any case, there were some memorable moments this season and a couple of them are on the media page in the podcast.  Peter came up with a new version of Hark the Herald Angels We Have Heard On High.  In both our morning services at Cedar Park Bothell he blended the melody from one carol with the words from the other.  It was awesome.  Take a listen to it.  It is pretty funny. 

      Also, Canvas spent the New Year over at New Life Church in Silverdale with Wes Davis and the team.  It was a great night.  It was great to catch up with friends.  We then went over to some friends (the Raleys) and hung out playing their Nintendo Wii .  If you haven't played that thing, it is awesome.  We watched Sarah beat the stuffing out of Andy playing boxing.  We all played a bunch of Tennis. It was really cool.  For those of you that were there, George likes his chicken spicy. 

     In any case, we are all looking forward to this new year with Canvas.  The Lord is continuing to open doors of opportunity and inspire new songs and music.  We just got done spending the weekend up at the studio working on new tunes and spending the night up there with some of our song writers.  There are some great songs taking shape.  It is exciting.  We are working towards a couple new projects including a project with the choir at Cedar Park Bothell and another Canvas worship Project.  We will keep you all up to date with the details on those as they take form. 

     Finally, just a thought to leave you with.  At this time of year we are all thinking of new beginnings and fresh starts.  I was thinking a couple of days ago that for many now is the time that we have the opportunity to be the person that we hoped, but failed, to be in the past.  It is a chance for a new beginning.  Then it donned on me that with Christ we have that opportunity at any moment.  At any time I can call on his grace to be a different person and rely on him for the power to make it happen.  It can even be the person that I've always dreamed of being but have fallen short of being.  As long as I keep coming back to him after each mistake and strive to let him change those shortcomings, I have the opportunity to be that person I've dreamt of being.  Right now, with his grace, I can be that person.  I hope that is encouraging and that you take the Lord up on that deal, because it is a screamin one. 

Happy New Year from all of us at Canvas

Disarming Pictures
Dec 13, 2006

Well after my first attempt at a blog I received my very first response to it from none other than my beautiful mother.  After pointing out a few spelling errors on the web site (once a teacher, always a teacher!) she let me know what she thought about the picture attached to my last blog.  She writes:

Dear Peter,  

A very nice first blog!  Very cool!  Anyway, it was a great piece of writing, and I'll look forward to reading future blogs.  The picture is a little disarming.  I didn't think it was you at first.  I vote for a new picture!    

Lots of love,   Mom

That picture was taken at a junior high camp a couple years ago where I was the camp speaker.  A couple of junior high girls took one look at my hair and asked if they could straighten it.  That picture is the result of a two hour fight with a straightening iron.  My mom doesn't know me with straight hair...she knows me with my curly locks and since I am into that whole honor your parents bit, I am giving her what she wants...a new picture.

Love ya mom and I love the curls you and dad gave me!

-Peter

Blogging Rookie
Dec 12, 2006

So the other day I wanted to send out a note to all my friends.  I thought email seems so overdone...a letter seems so old school...and a phone call, well that's just too much work.  So I heard about this cutting edge technology that allows people to communicate in new and refreshing ways called a blog.  Then I found out it's nothing but an online diary for tech savvy people who don't want to refer to a notebook in the second person and would rather eliminate the risk of their sixth grade little brother sneaking in and reading their secret desires or semi-morbid thoughts.  Since I have countless journals that only have the first seven-and-a-half pages used in them and since I was that sixth grade little brother, I decided that maybe blogging was the thing for me.  So here I am...a blogging rookie.  And let me tell you...it's everything I thought it would be and so much more.  I am already planning my blogging retreat where I invite three of my closest friends and we all sit in the same room staring at our own laptops writing blogs, reading blogs, reading each others blogs and never saying a word to one another the entire time.  It should be invigorating. 

Some of you might ask how is it that I have never written a blog...well...it's simple.  This is a year of firsts for me.  Let me begin with the fact that I have 38 days left of what we call the twenties.  That's right...I turn 30 next month!  That means things like technology will only become something that faithfully drifts further and further out of my grasp.  So not only will I write a blog 5 years after they are popular, I will probably be resigned to things like flashing clocks on VCRs (a VCR is something that used to play stuff called tape that projected movies and low budget workout videos and such...) and cell phones that still have the T-mobile ring tone set as the default.  It's all down hill from here.  And all of you other guys my age who think you won't slip into the half analog-half digital abyss I am describing, just let it go...you're getting old too and no amount of power user skills will grow back that receding hairline or thin out that rug on your back.  We are doomed to be the generation that brought this world Vanilla Ice and Windows 98.

The coolest "first" of the year is the fact that my wife and I are going to have a baby.  We are so excited to become parents for the first time!  However, I have been told that I will be getting the least amount of sleep of my life in just a few short months.  So if it weren't hard enough to keep up with technology now, how can I make it happen when I start finding baby bibs in my coat sleeves and find myself drinking my Dr. Pepper from a sippy cup?  There is no way I am going to be able to keep up with i-Pod Galaxy and OS X Bobcat.  I am just going to embrace the fact that I am going to be one of those guys who has never changed the radio presets on my car stereo and still looks for my favorite Young MC hits on Napster. 

For now, I'll just try and be the best husband and dad that I can be.  I will also try to walk in humility when my kids roll their eyes at me for not getting something that comes second nature to them.  After all...won't the world soon look like a scene from Back to the Future 2...Delorean and all.  "Great Scott!"

If all else fails maybe I could try being an elf?  Merry Christmas!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?userid=b825da2331c5a37d4b4b5eaG20061211

"I forgot to give you a hug!"

 -Peter