One of our hot spots in Switzerland was the picturesque town of Zug, where I played in some exclusive restaurants, in one of which I got to meet an older, retired Swedish scientist one evening, who became a close friend of ours, and for whom I wrote this song...
MP3Although we were living in Switzerland at that time, this song wasn't particularly about Switzerland, but also based on experiences we had made in Germany, and how in general, society was pretty screwed up. It's a subject I'm still not through with, although I usually find different ways to put it these days...
MP3 LyricsBack in
I had always been intrigued by that Scripture about the veil...
Unfortunately, life as a missionary isn't always clear-cut and easy, and it's not like "We're the good guys, and they're the bad guys, and we're going to try to make'em good," but it's more complicated. We're all sinners, even if we're saved (if you don't believe that, you're kidding yourself) and the Devil can get ahold of each one of us sometimes in a weak moment. And so we have battles even with our fellow soldiers and brothers in arms sometimes.
This one was written in
It's during those battles you learn how to stand up and speak up for your convictions. You can't just let people push you around all the time.
Of course, the song also talks about having the guts to love someone even when that someone may be a questionable match for you, or even if people may not approve of your relationship... Just bits and pieces of experiences and lessons I had gleaned along life's road up until that point...
MP3 LyricsSometimes a melody keeps haunting you until finally a song comes out of it. I had always been more of a pacifist, but I was coming to the point of realization that life for the Lord is a battle field, and you've got to be a soldier and a warrior for Him sometimes...
Also, the "river" theme is one that has kept coming back to me throughout my life... You've just got to let it flow, man; let it flow!
MP3 LyricsBy this time I was father of two children an we were living in a French Swiss town called Bex, getting ready to go to
MP3Our trips into the East Bloc countries were financed by busking trips to Switzerland. Switzerland is a beautiful country, but the people there can be a little tough sometimes. This song describes some of my impressions of trying to bring my message to the Swiss people in the restaurants we were playing in during that time...
MP3 LyricsAfter having tried our hand at promoting our radio show "Musica con Vida" throughout the south of Argentina (through which I had gotten to know my wife, who was now working on the same team as I was), it was soon time for changes again, and this time we wanted to pioneer Eastern Europe (that was before the wall came down!). One of our first stops was Budapest, where we sang for the East German hippies in the park.
We were living in a trailer, and there on the campground in Budapest this song came to me, about what happens when you let Jesus into your life!
MP3Based on the same lick and tuning as "You," basically. I had started writing this tune years earlier, when I was maybe 16, but only got it done a few years later, probably by the time I was back in Europe, where we were trying to turn the East Bloc right-side up for Jesus...
Again, the theme is freedom. Perhaps a concept we'll never really fully grasp until the events of which the song tells will have come to pass...
MP3 LyricsSong based on a riff that Tom (of "Elixir") originally came up with and I complimented with a melody and some lyrics during the Congreso commune time.
MP3 LyricsI remember starting to write this one back in Mendoza, in front of the "Bodega del 900," there I was booked to play a few times on my own, after "Silver Lining" broke up. It was probably one of the first songs I got in which it's Jesus Who's speaking to the listener... I've since learned to accept it as part of my mission in life to get people to listen up to "What Jesus has to Say."
MP3 (newer version)...was actually first written in Spanish, and only much later, in Europe, translated into English. By the time I wrote it i was living in a large commune of mostly young people in the Congreso district of Buenos Aires, where I was having the time of my life, and where I also met my future wife.
We were witnessing up a storm there, and had meetings, house churches and parties every week, and lots of people decided to follow Jesus. It was a special time, and you really felt privileged, like an Ambassador for Jesus, our "Space King" (an idea based on a pamphlet comparing Jesus to a Space Prince Who came to earth) helping others to find their way to that great heavenly Country as well...
A little while later I moved into Tom's house, which is where I wrote "King of Love." Having played for all those rich people for a while, and seeing how unhappy they were still in spite of having everything going for them got me to write this song about the only One Who has the answer and can really set people free from the chains that have the strongest holds on us; our own desires and passions...
MP3 LyricsThe winds of change had blown me to Buenos Aíres, where I was living with a Christian couple from Switzerland that I had briefly met a year before near Appenzell in SwItzerland. Mary was a really good musician, and together with her and an American fellow named Tom Walk we formed the trio "Elixir" there & played the clubs and on high society parties is Buenos Aíres.
There in our little house in the suburb of Acassusso I wrote this love song to the Lord...
Song that came to me walking the streets of Mendoza... Man, that Jasmin scented air could really get you inspired and get your mind going. It's sort of a prophetic song about the God's coming Kingdom as foretold in the Bible.
Written in a hotel room in Argentina, around 1982, at a pretty low point in my life (having just been kicked out of the band I was playing in, called "Silver Lining") when I needed the comfort of The Comforter. Back then I hardly knew what I was talking about... "Anthems sweet, prophecies..." Only many years later I would experience the privilege of being able to avail myself of the gift of prophecy and really hearing the Lord's voice when I wouldn't know what to do. But it was well worth the wait.
Based on the Verse in Revelation where Jesus says, "Behold (means, "Look!") - I stand that the door (of your heart) and knock, If anybody will hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with Me (in Heaven)." Somebody just had to make a song out of that!
This probably also happened in the French part of Switzerland, or perhaps I only finished it a few months later in Chile or Argentina, which is where I played it to people for the first time...
I liked that line from a Bible verse somewhere in the Old Testament, and so one night (in 1981), after a restaurant busking tour through Lausanne, Switzerland, I jotted down this song...
mp3 LyricsBased on a prophecy received by one of God's prophets of this time of the End in which we're living, a time during which the enemies of the true people of God have grown more powerful than ever before in the history of the world, and yet nonetleless they won't be able to stop the Kingdom of God from conquering theirs any more than they can stop the rain.
After Fuengirola I traveled up to Southern Germany & Switzerland where I wrote this song. I still remember one of the first times I tried it out on a street in Munich or so... only to find out that busking on the streets wasn't really my thing...
A pretty simple song, but freedom still remains one of my favorite themes. As I often joke these days, "If freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, then the free people must be living elsewhere." The cool thing is, Jesus can really set you free!
MP3 LyricsWell, to make a long story short, Shalom was already taken, and so eventually I left that little Gypsy caravan and moved in with a small Christian commune in the Spanish town of Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol. My former busking partner Phil and I had tried without any success to find some places to play there, so I was pretty desperate the first night I went out, trying to contribute my share for the rent of my new home. Remember that verse, "Prove Me now, if I will not open the windows of Heaven and pour forth such a blessing that there will not be room enough to hold it?" Well, that's how it was. At the end of the night, my pockets were nearly bursting with cash, and I brought home 15 times the amount that I needed.
There is a God, and He loves me.
His second sign to show me that was Judith, a girl about my age I met one night in one of the bars where I played, and that I also wound up falling head over heels in love with (sort of a chronic disease at age 17...), and for whom I wrote this song. She didn't heed the call, though, and so I continued following Jesus as a single a few months later...
We were traveling along the coast of Spain in caravans & mobile homes during that time, and I wrote this one sitting in Shalom's caravan, remembering the tough years I just had behind me in what we call "the System," or Jesus used to call "the world." I only recorded it in a simple fashion much later, but it seems to be a (relatively) big hit of ours on Tangle (what used to be Godtube).
The oldest song that's available in a half-way decent recording on one of my mostly homegrown productions is this tune based on a lick in a G-Tuning (both E bass and A strings to G) I was shown by the piano player of the first band I ever played in at the age of 13. I was by far the youngest member of the band, and the front man was twice my age. In 1980, at the age of 17 I was traveling through Spain with an American fellow musician and his wife, and working on a melody to accompany that lick, and some lyrics to it. At first I tried to interpret it as a love song for a girl (I was badly in love with a girl named Shalom at that time), but later realized that no one fit that perfect description, except Jesus, or God Himself, so I added the last verse to make it clear that this was a love song dedicated to the living God.
