Finishing up Marathon

I've spent the past two months working non-stop on finishing up my debut Christian album Marathon since the day we ("we" being my music production and songwriting team known as "thebridge") wrapped up our production work on Lecrae's Gravity album (props to Lecrae, Street Symphony and the whole Reach Records team), dropping September 4th, on which God blessed us to write and produce the song "Higher" featuring the phenomenal Contemporary Christian Music rock band Tenth Avenue North. The songs on my album have all been written, arranged, and produced by thebridge, which for the purposes of Marathon consisted of myself, JayTel, Ty Steez, and Aphillyated, (but also includes my sis, award winning rock singer Sheila Swift and big bro, decorated piano virtuoso Jodi Mayfield) who between us handled the gamut of engineering, writing, vocal arranging, producing, and live musicianship necessary to consistently deliver quality music, and are every bit as sonically diverse as I always envisioned my solo album being.

The album creation process began with a song called "More Like You", a pop/R&B ballad which I envisioned originally as being the first single from the album, but quickly expanded to cover musical ground such as huge praise songs ("Chasing After You") to swagged out ("All You Want Is You") and soulful ballads ("Enough" and "Put Up With Me"). When God gave me the initial vision for the album, it was to cover as much ground as possible, writing songs that were all rooted in the Word of God lyrically, that were irrespective of race, denomination, or musical genre, and sonically and melodically were able to appeal to even those who do not normally listen to Christian based music. The album has become all of that, and so much more than I even forsaw.

As I type this, I am today finishing recording on the last two written songs for Marathon. This has been the culmination of a lifelong dream, one that God did not allow to come true until I got my head together, accepted my call to Pastorship, and realigned my priorities as He always intended (God, Family, Everything Else). I'm thankful for that, because if God had allowed me to achieve this level of success and opportunity back when I signed my first record deal, I would not be here now, but would have followed my own way into what I'm pretty sure would have been destruction and shame. Now, I am not moving until God says move, and am focused on doing only what He would have me to do, and He has been allowing me to find favor with many in positions to help me to accomplish the task He placed before me when He promised years ago to lift me up so that I would be in a better position to lift Him up. I worship God for all that He has done....and I patiently rest in the knowledge that my best, and that of thebridge, is yet to come.

Lecrae's album Gravity drops September 4th, and then the multimedia campaign will begin to launch Marathon, which I anticipate will now drop either 4th quarter 2012 or (most likely) early January to allow us time to effectively market the album and movement. The phenomenal photo and graphic design company PDL Studios is about to begin work on the artwork for the album cover and booklet after our conference call earlier this week, and I'm meeting with video directors now to determine who will shoot the first official video from the album (which I still at this point don't know which song it will be for due to the number of awesome songs on the album to choose from; a wonderful dilemna!)...it doesn't matter how impactful or powerful your music is if noone knows about it, and so we're putting together plans to launch the album first in the public consciousness, and THEN on shelves, iTunes, etc. I can't wait until the totality of the vision God has given us is able to be revealed to everyone, and to have a chance to get out on tour and see the impact that the songs will by then have had on the lives of those who enjoy them, and I give my sincere thanks to all who those have musically contributed to this incredible body of work for the Kingdom....Stay tuned!

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