Who Needs a Guitar Hero?

For we are God's workmanship(poetry), created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10

So did you know that you are created in the image of God. His workmanship! I have a better word for you from the Greek it is POEMA! You are God's poetry and he has created good works prepared in advance for you to do! Life doesn't get anymore significant! Let me tell you a story...

So I am standing in line with my friend Tom who use to have a small backward heart. If you are interested you can listen to the ballad of Tom Jones. So now he has a brand new BIG frontward heart. We were at the Waxahachie Balloon Festival when Tom turned to me and said, "Pat you should get a booth for Harps of God at the Red Oak White and Blue Festival and I have a banner that I can make you! So the following Monday morning I called Lauren Whatley,the greatest tourism director in the greatest City of Red Oak Texas and asked her what we needed to do. Lauren told me that we needed to provide a game and I said flippantly off the top of my head "what about Guitar Hero" she said that it would be a "awesome" and that she would come by to play. Later that week she emailed us our slot and position. What number do you think we got? Seven of course. I just chuckled.

So I called my 13 year old son and asked him if we should buy Guitar Hero and if he would play it all week and unlock all the levels. He told me that he thought he could force himself to do it.

We came up with the theme Who needs a Guitar Hero when you can play the real thing. My talented wife came up with these cool t-shirt designs that Tom, Stacy, and Randy made at On Time Designs [ontimedesigns@airmail.net](Insert shameless plug for friend here)




Harps of God would like to give a big "YOU ROCK" to On Time Designs! If you would like to buy the T-shirt for $15.00 just drop us a line.

We asked two of our students Clint and Ethan to come out and play the "Real Thing." I was standing next to a young man who turned to me and said, "I can only play one thing on the guitar but those guys can play anything!" Clint and Ethan would take turns demonstrating how that could play along with Guitar Hero! Thanks guys! I thought I could hear the Angels clapping while you were playing.

So we decided to have a raffle for this cool Epiphone SG screaming cherry candy apple red guitar. (those were some of the descriptions that I heard for some of the boys standing around the table) Shown here with Jesus on the Harps of God's Music Studio Mosaic. Oh this guitar has silky smooth pickups with high that sing and lows that growl. We prayed that this "harp" would end up in the right hands!

So we had the t-shirts, game, banner, guitar, theme, and there was one thing missing! Matching Con's. So we loaded up the family and went to the shoe store! We all got matching red converse except for our youngest who got black. If you knew our family you would understand that this was perfect!

We would also like to thank our friends Wren and Joann for letting us use their canopy, Heidi and Ivan for there table, and Luis and Robin for their back up canopy! Red Oak Rocks with the greatest neighbors!

So we had a great day and made some new friends. Who won the guitar? We talked to his parents and went over his house about 10:30 pm and surprised him!



Russell was only gonna buy two tickets but his dad bought him four tickets. Russell kissed every ticket except the last one! What was the winning ticket? The last one. Moral of the story Russell? Wait to kiss your wife when you are standing at the altar! Sorry I couldn't resist!


Who Needs a Guitar Hero? When You Can Have a God Hero! For my God cares about the dreams of a young man!

Second Chance Rocks Out

Congratulations to Harps of God students Westin, Zack, Russell, and Mason!

Explorer Texas Style

Have you ever woke up and felt compelled to do something spontaneous? When I look at a brand new day it stirs something in me. I have woken up to the sounds of birds singing, dogs barking, and yes even the neighborhood donkey joining in a song as the sun begins to rise. Something musically magical happens every morning and I'm afraid many of us miss it. The animals never miss it!
Saturday May the 3rd was such a morning. I had just finished reading an email from a dad who had just bought a Les Paul Jr. for his fifteen year old daughter. This wasn't just any guitar but was signed by Tab Benoit, the Cajun blues genius. They had just got the guitar and he was wanting to arrange lessons for her. I thought to myself, "this is what legends are made of" What this one man didn't know was that his single act of love was going to be a spark for another father to do the same.
I woke my family and my wife (at my great peril) early for an adventure Texas Style. Where can you find the such an adventure? Just listen deep inside your soul and then watch what happens!

We left Dallas bound for Austin at 7:02 am. Sly and Family Stone, Cheryl Crowe's greatest, and Switchfoot were loaded in the player. Momma sang "all I wanna do is have some fun" with Cheryl and the kids sang "Gone" along with Switchfoot, and I grooved to the greatest bass player who turned the grave into a groove and let the funk out, Larry Graham. Along the way we stopped for a kolache in West, Texas and bound for a restaurant that we couldn't remember the name nor did we remember how to get there. We saw this cool Chevy truck along the way and eventually arrived at Kerby Lane on Guadalupe. No name and no directions and we got there! Do you want to taste breakfast heaven? Go to Kerby lane for Gingerbread pancakes, Eggs Francisco, and the portobello Omelet. Our host was kind enough to give me a discount off this cool Kerby Lane bowling shirt and we told him we were on a quest to find an Explorer for my little Girl. He told us that we had to go to South Austin Music and that this was where Stevie Ray Vaughan had purchased some guitars. Our host also told us that he played many instruments and that he grew up in a family where his father and mother were music teachers. His father taught guitar and his mother taught violin! I handed him one of our Harps of God cards and just smiled. Just a side blues note... the father that bought his daughter the guitar at the beginning of this story is a HUGE Stevie fan...and so are we. So we finished breakfast and headed for South Austin Music. We have never been in a more friendly music store. We were greeted by Bill and told him we were looking for and Explorer. Bill helped my 5 year old plug an electric mandolin into an amp and is also very knowledgeable about guitars. He didn't miss a beat, not pun intended, when asked about what guitar Buddy Miller played. Bill said, "a Wandre" (Just a side note Buddy's Universal Horse of Prayer is one of the best Cd's of all time and I think Buddy is from Lubbock and Julie is from Waxahachie, therefore making the Texas connection) Bill the owner of South Austin music asked us if we wanted to buy some raffle tickets for this cool Eastwood Stormbird. Bill made sure he could read our email address on my little girls raffle tickets and introduced us to his black lab, Sam Jr. I bought a SAM hat for my daughter and then Bill gave me a SAM T-shirt. I have never been in a more friendly store...Out of all the music stores I have been in in my lifetime this is the store you should buy from! We continued on our journey looking for an explorer but to no avail. However, we ate at Rudy's Bar-B-Que in Waco and we bought a Ducati 748 Motorcycle (1/12 scale) and we ended our journey at the Texas Musicians Museum in Hillsboro, Texas. This is a must stop if you are interested in Texas Music. TK and his lovely wife will guide you eloquently through the legend of the Big Bopper and other various Texas musicians. Bryan, Bill, Bill, Kerby Lane, Rudy's, and TK we would like to thank all of you for making our family road trip so magical. Well I gotta go. We are having biscuits with chocolate pudding topped with melted butter for breakfast. I will save that story for another blog sometime.

My Most Beautiful Music Moments have been in a Church

C.S. Lewis wrote, "The case for abolishing all Church Music whatever thus seems to me far stronger that the case for abolishing the difficult work of the trained choir and retaining the lusty roar of the congregation. Whatever doubts I feel about the spiritual value of the first I feel at least equally about the spiritual value of the second. The first and most solid conclusion which (for me) emerges is that both musical parties, the High Brows and the Low, assume far too easily the spiritual value of the music they want. Neither the greatest excellence of a trained performance from the choir, not the heartiest and most enthusiastic bellowing from the pews, must be taken to signify that any specifically religious activity is going on. It may be SO, or it may NOT. Yet the main sense of Christendom, reformed and unreformed, would be against us if we tried to banish music from the Church. It remains to suggest, very tentatively, the ways in which it can really be PLEASING to GOD or to help to SAVE THE SOULS of men. There are two musical situations on which I think we can be confident that a blessing rests. One is where a priest or an organist, himself of trained and delicate taste, humbly and charitably sacrifices his own (aesthetically right) desires and gives the people humbler and coarser fare than he would wish, in belief (even, as it may be, the erroneous belief) that he can thus bring them to God. The other is where the stupid and unmusical layman humbly and patiently, and above all silently, listens to music which he cannot, or cannot fully, appreciate, in the belief that it somehow glorifies God, and that if it doesn't edify him this must be his own defect. Neither such a High Brow nor such a Low Brow can be far out of the way. To both, Church Music will have been a means of grace; not the music they have liked, but the music they have disliked. They have both offered, sacrificed, their taste in the fullest sense. But where the opposite situation arises, where the musician is filled with pride of skill or the virus of emulation and looks with contempt on the unappreciative congregation, or where the unmusical, complacently entrenched in their own ignorance and conservatism, look with the restless and resentful hostility of an inferiority complex on all who try to improve their taste-there, we may be sure, all that both offer is unblessed and the spirit that moves them is NOT the HOLY GHOST."

Two of the most beautiful musically blessed moments that I have heard took place in church. One was from my friend who is tone deaf. I was behind him one service and God graced me to hear his heart. It made me weep.

The other, was when a young man, who stuttered and was extremely shy, stood up in our church and sang the hymn "Less of Me and More of Thee" acappella while the kids in front of me heckled him.

I think C.S. Lewis said it perfectly, "For all our offerings, whether of music or martyrdom, are like the intrinsically worthless present of a child, which a father values indeed, but he values only for the intention."

Big Beats and Happy Feet

Our drum teacher(Miguel) with one of his students after two weeks. Miguel is also a very fine harp(guitar) player. Miguel started teaching for Harps of God. He is also a very fine songwriter and his melodies soar like angels!

You are never to old to learn!

I have to tell you about someone truly inspirational. He is Dr. Hacker. Dr. Bruce Hacker began taking guitar lessons this past week. He is also taking art lessons. Dr. Hacker is 70 years young and left our studio playing Jesus Loves Me. Dr. Hacker learned it faster and better than any of my other students of any age! Dr. Hacker is also a contributing writer to magazines concerning women's health.