Lars and the Real Girl

My brother told me that Sarah and I needed to see Lars and the Real Girl. We rented it on Itunes and planned to watch it in the next few nights but the Olympics came along and all of the sudden, we were glued to Swimming, Gymnastics, Volleyball, and Track and Field. On our flight back home from New York this last Sunday, we watched part of the movie and then finished it at home that night. It is so worth seeing. It is an amazing picture of a community helping someone bear a burden in such a loving way.

This guy makes me laugh...

My buddy Randy Williams posted a link about this guy a few weeks ago. His name is Joel Berry and he plays a character called Tavin Dillard. He's a filmmaker out in California. Check it out.

Waterfalls

I've always enjoyed being around waterfalls...hiking to them, jumping
off them, swimming under them. I was unable to do any of this around
this waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge.

NYC

Sorry I haven't been posting...in the Big Apple

Pinkberry

I didn't get why people loved this at first but oh do I get it now

Drawing Near

I've been reading a great book my brother recommended called Drawing Near by John Bevere. He is talking about his life in ministry on a church staff and traveling and speaking at churches and conferences when he says, "Over this time I've discovered two major groups within the church, and the gap of their differing thoughts seems to be widening as the Lords coming draws closer. The first are those who seek God for what He can do; while the second seek Him for who he is."

Convicting...I have noticed recently how much I ask the Lord for things and let that kind of prayer dominate my prayer life. I want to be a man who chases after who God is. I want intimacy with Jesus...to really know Him.

On the way to the best Gelato...

Sarah and I went to Italy in May of this last year. I'm no Jeremy Cowart but I was proud of this picture. We were in Florence and had just eaten at this great restaurant. At dinner we met these two girls and one of them was an art student at the Accademia in Florence. Earlier that day, Sarah and I had gone to see the statue of Michelangelo's David and was amazed at how perfect it looked. The student we talked to later that evening said that so many of the students at the Accademia hated that statue because the school put so much pressure on them and it represented something so unattainable. After dinner, the four of us walked several blocks to get some gelato. The route we took to get there took us over the Arno river and I asked if we could stop in the middle of the bridge and take some pictures for a few minutes. This is the best picture of the bunch that I took that evening. The lit up bridge in the background is the Ponte Vecchio.

Story Behind the Song: London

This one is unique in that it is a story behind a song that is not released yet. London is a song that is cut by Brandon Heath on his new record "What If We" that will release this next Tuesday, August 19th. You can preview the song here.
Update: You can now buy London here.

In June of 2005, my sister Laurianne and I drove up to Kentucky for orientation for a trip we were taking to Europe. We were asked by a guy named Martin Allen to help facilitate teaching on a trip called Songwriter's Journey. The purpose of the trip was to study some of the influential writer's in Christianity and to go to the places where they lived and wrote. The hope was to be inspired in the places to write songs based on their teaching. We flew into Rome and went south and studied Benedict, a man who lived in the fourth century and wrote a book called "The Rule". From there, we took a train to Wittenburg, Germany where Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the Castle Church and sparked the Protestant Reformation. There were 6 of us on the trip and our last destination was Oxford, England to study C.S. Lewis. I was dating Sarah and had found time to call her and talk a few times while I was on the trip. We went through London to get to Oxford and when the train pulled into Waterloo Station in London, I was thinking about Sarah and I started singing these lines:

My train pulled into Waterloo
I found myself wishing you
Were here with me in London

We all sat in the middle of Waterloo Station and ate McDonalds and I got out the Minidisc player that I had with me and just sang the idea and the melody into the mic to get the idea down. We toured London and saw all the double-decker buses, Big Ben, and Parliament but I was missing Sarah so much that I couldn't enjoy it all as much as I wanted to. We went on to Oxford and finished the trip well. Laurianne and I were supposed to stay in London for several days after the trip but I was ready to go home. She graciously allowed me to change our tickets to leave the next day.

When I got home, I had a day down on my calendar to write with Brandon. I don't know that we had good direction for what we were going to write that day but he was in the season of writing for his record so we were trying to write for that. I think we were stumped for ideas so I sang the lines for him that I had written in Waterloo Station in London. I told him about how I felt about missing Sarah while I was there. Brandon is so creative that the song didn't take long to write. It was almost one of those that just fell out of us. Here's the lyric we came up with:

London
written by Brandon Heath and Chad Cates

My train pulled in to Waterloo
I found myself wishing you
Were here with me in London
Standing on the river Thames
Taking photographs Parliament
And old Big Ben was ringing
It’s everything that I imagined it would be
I had no idea that it would feel this empty

Chorus:
Where are you tonight
While I stand here and cry
Watching double-decker buses pass me by
And to tell the truth
It’s all that I can do
To keep from jumping a plane that’s headed home
To you

I took a stroll down abbey road
Tried to peak inside the studio’s
And somewhere along the way I bought you flowers
And I bought a map of the underground
Cause You and I both know I get turned around
I’m so lost without you
It’s everything that I imagined it would be
I had no idea that it would feel this empty

Bridge:
6 long nights and seven days I’ll cross the pond back to the states
I can’t wait

We did a demo for the song and the head of Brandon's record label really loved it and wanted him to cut it. It turned out that the timing just wasn't right for it to go on his first record. I was really excited when he told me that he was cutting it for this new record and when I heard it, I loved it. I hope you love it too.

When we connected to write again for this record that's about to come out, we wrote several new songs together that he has cut. You can check those out as well. They are called "Love Never Fails" and "Trust You".

Rocky Mountain Low

My buddy Craig Monday is a great country writer here in town. Check out one of his songs here. He told me this ridiculous story:

Several months ago, he planned on taking a road trip without really knowing where he was going. He rented a car and drove out of Nashville and he ended up in St Louis. The way he tells the story is that when he got there he met several people and they found out that he was a writer. They asked him to drive up to where they live and do a concert for them in Northwestern Missouri. He said the concert went well and that he sold some CD's but after the show he got in his car and decided to keep driving down to Kansas City. When he got there, he thought to himself, "I've never seen the Rocky Mountains". So....from Kansas City he makes the turn on Interstate 70 for the 600 mile overnight jaunt over to Denver. In the middle of Kansas, he started talking with his girlfriend on the phone. They got into an argument over something and had a heated conversation for a few hours and then an hour and a half into Colorado, his phone died and he didn't have his charger with him.

Picture this...It's 4:30 in the morning. He pulls off on an exit from the interstate gripping the steering wheel tightly because he's angry. He is probably 30 minutes away from the sun coming up behind him and shining it's glorious light on the majestic Rocky Mountains and what does he do?

He says, "I'm not seeing the Rocky Mountains mad". He gets back on the interstate going the opposite way and drives 1100 miles all the way home.

...and never looked back.

Crush

My brother, Jess has the #1 song overall on itunes. It is a new David Archuleta single called Crush. Check it out here.

My Sarah

My wife had a hard day today...so this one is for her.

Sarah Dawn Cates is amazing. She loves the Lord. She is beautiful. As a wife, she loves me so deeply and believes in me. She is a loving daughter, sister, and aunt. She does her job so professionally with purpose and love and has been recognized by the leadership at Belmont in the responsibility she has been given. She is becoming a great golfer and can throw a softball like a bullet...

And I love her.

Story Behind the Song: Disappear

Cut by Bebo Norman on his record "Try". Download from itunes here.

This is my first blog about how a song came into being. Hopefully, it will give perspective and a little more meaning to the song as you listen. My good friend, Tony Wood says that every cut is a miracle and I would agree. I am grateful to be doing this for a living and am trying to make the very most out of the opportunity that's been given to me.

I have been writing for a publishing company called Brentwood Benson for almost 7 years. In the second year of my deal, I asked my publisher if I he would fly my out to Los Angeles to write with my brother Jess. Jess had been signed to Brentwood Benson for 3 years prior to me signing a publishing deal. When his deal was up, he felt called out to California to write pop music. He moved out there knowing very few people. He lived in a room in Santa Monica that felt like it was the size of a shoe box. I think it was a converted one-car garage with a bathroom added on. If you know my brother, he is a people person. He loves people so well. This was true of that season but I remember him being really lonely and down when I flew out there. I went with the expectation that we would take several days and try to write together. It turned into a trip that would only produce one song. It became more about loving my brother in the place where he was than about working. The one afternoon that we did write, we wrote this lyric:

Disappear
written by Jess Cates and Chad Cates

On a day like this
I want to crawl beneath a rock
A million miles from the world
The noise the commotion
That never seems to stop
On a day like this
I want to run from the routine
Away from the daily grind
That can suck the life
Right out of me
I only know of one place
I can run to

Chorus:
I want to hide in You
The Way, The Life, The Truth
And I can disappear
And love is all there is to see
Coming out of me
And You become clear
As I disappear

I don’t want to care
About earthly things
Be caught up in all the lies
That trick my eyes
That say its all about me
I’m so tired of it being about me

Bridge:
I would rather be a castaway
Separated from the Human Race
If I don’t bring you Glory
©2004 New Spring Publishing, Inc/ASCAP, Right Bank Music Inc./My Getaway Driver Music/ASCAP

Looking back, it has always been interesting to me that this song is a great picture of what was going on with Jess out there during that trip. When I got back to Nashville, I was almost apologetic to my publisher because they had paid for the trip and I only had one song to turn in and honestly, I didn't know how commercial it was. We ended up doing a demo in a female key and my sister, Laurianne sang the demo(and sang it great I might add). It may have been pitched to other artists around the time that the demo got done but I am not really sure.

I played the song for my good friend, Brandon Heath and he loved it. This was during the season that he was mainly doing Young Life Camps. He is good friends with Bebo and was the one that played it for him for the first time. It was so encouraging to get a song on songwriter's record and even more encouraging for him to single the song to radio. It went #1 during October of 2004.

Sounds Game

Enjoying a Sounds Game from the Judge Beans skybox. We are celebrating
Mike Bannon's graduation from graduate school.

Friday Fun with the Tooth Fairy

This made me laugh...check this out.

A Father's heart and a Child's joy

This is my brother Jess and my niece Lily. They sent this picture to us over email and when I opened it, I started tearing up. It feels like such a great metaphor for Jesus love for us.

Don't Look Down

I was sitting at breakfast this morning with one of the community group pastors from my church. We talked about life for a little while and then he transitioned into a conversation about our community group. Sarah and I lead a group at Fellowship Bible Church in Brentwood, TN. A few months ago, we were asked to give the members of our group a survey about the strengths and weaknesses of our group as a whole. We gave the survey one night at our gathering and told them to fill it out and then put it in an envelope all while Sarah and I stood awkwardly out on the back porch while they filled them out. I neglected to tell them that we wouldn't be reading the surveys so they filled them out and gave the strengths and weaknesses but also including funny trivial things like "we should have different chips with Taco salad" or "not enough Goat Cheese salads". As you can tell, we eat a lot of salads in our group. This morning was the first time that I heard this feedback. Doug, the community group pastor did a great job of setting it up by asking me what I thought we did well on in community and what I felt like we could do better. After I communicated those things, he reached for a folder and pulled out the results of the survey. I was a little nervous when he started reading the results but everything was, for the most part really encouraging.

Doug started talking about a book that he had read called "Walking the small group tightrope" and this was something that really stuck out to me this morning. The premise is that there is this tightrope between truth and caring. This gets played out in relationships in that to care without truth isn't really caring and that truth without care is legalism. I have spent time on either end of this line and looking back, it seems that the gospel of love gets played out the most effectively somewhere out there in the middle. It can be a scary step but love calls you onto the tightrope.

The Force is Strong

In the past few days since I have started this blog, there have been several times Sarah has suggested some things for me to write about. We were talking last night before we went to sleep and she started rattling off some great ideas. At the end of her list, I said "That's some good fodder". There was this pause and then in a low voice I said...

"Luke, I am Your Fodder"

Down with the Critic

This is going to sound so stupid and obvious but I absolutely LOVE music and more specifically I LOVE a great song. The only reason I say this is because for the past few years I have made the statement “I hate music” and a part of me really mourns when I say it.

Back Story:
My mom and dad traveled while I was growing up doing concerts in churches and at conferences. Dad was and is a great writer and mom still has a mesmerizing voice. Their ability to weave the story of struggle and redemption in their songs was a gift that truly connected with people. Even as a little boy, I watched people approach my mom and dad after concerts with a sense of gratitude and joy as if they had truly been ministered to. We all listened to a lot of music growing up. I remember getting a “jam box” for Christmas when I was 9 and I could record Casey Kasem’s top 40 on cassette tapes. It felt like a whole new world was opened up. I started buying cassettes when my brother and I got into breakdancing…yes…breakdancing. We bought the soundtrack to “Breakin”, a Whodini record called "Escape" and for some reason as I am typing this, “Basketball” by Curtis Blow popped into my head. We even had our own vinyl breakdance mat that we could lay in the floor next to our bunk-beds so we could do back spins and keep trying to do the windmill like Turbo and Ozone(characters in Breakin’). So music in our house growing up ranged from Hip Hop to Kenny Rogers to REO Speedwagon. I Loved music. We had a Grand Piano in the house and I would always hop up on the bench beside my dad and try to just hit all the keys I could while he was playing. Music was always encouraged and was simply a way of life growing up in the Cates household. I could tell a lot more family musical stories but I’ll save those for later.

I have spent the past 7 years writing songs professionally and feel really blessed by doing what I love for a living. However, this occupation has at times turned me into someone I don’t like: A critic. While being a critic can help you find the better song when you are chasing it down in the room, it can also steal your joy when listening to music. It makes you less inspired when a song feels bailed out. It makes you mad when a writer(often me) misses something so obvious in a lyric or a melody. Sometimes it keeps you from engaging the Lord on a Sunday morning during the singing part of worship because you are critiquing a song. The critic makes you feel prideful and ugly and can steal your love for music.

So...down with the critic…I Love Music.

Directions...

I’m throwing around some ideas for this blog. I think I am somewhat interested in telling some of the stories behind some of my songs that have been cut. I may get to a few of these soon.

Rooftop

I may be the most blessed guy on the planet. After my birthday party tonight(which was amazing), my wife and I were sitting around with some friends. We hadn’t cleaned up everything yet from the party but we were just sitting there enjoying one another’s company. There were 8 of us on the roof of this studio down on music row. The temperature outside was the kind of temperature you don’t notice. Perfect. My amazing wife proceeds to ask me some questions in front of everyone about my hopes and fears for this next year and then she asked everyone in the circle to say what they loved about me. They all went around the circle and blessed me by saying the good things they saw in me and what they hoped for me during this next year. I say all this to encourage you to find time to speak words of life over the people around you. From my own experience this evening, it is so life giving and meaningful.

Good Morning Halfway to 70

I am grateful this morning...grateful for this life and for the next...grateful for a church that I love...grateful to be writing songs for a living...grateful for good health...grateful for my wife baking me a cake before church for my birthday party tonight.

Grateful for you.

Chad

My wife

This is my wife Sarah. She's beautiful, brilliant, and so talented.
And she loves me. I AM the luckiest.

The last day of 34...

So here it begins...I'm turning 35 tomorrow and this is my first blog.  With growing older comes the desire to leave something important behind...a legacy so to speak.  If I could flash forward to the last day of my life and look back on this season and the time in between, it would make me smile knowing that it had been about LOVE...loving my wife, loving my family, loving the people around me with the LOVE that Jesus has given to me...because on the day after my last day, LOVE will be the only thing that mattered, the only thing worth chasing.

I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow.  

Love,

Chad