New song: Ghost In A Wedding Dress

It has been quite some time since I posted anything related to my personal music endeavors, so if you’re new here, Hi, I’m Jake and sometimes I write and record some music.

This is a song that has been in the works for well over a year. It’s called “Ghost In A Wedding Dress.” Enjoy.

Ghost In A Wedding Dress (Demo) by jakebouma

Interview with Mike Crawford (Part 2)

The following is Part 2 (Part 1) of an interview with Mike Crawford about his album Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings present Songs from Jacob’s Well, Volumes I & II: Even the Darkness Will Not Be Dark To You. You can read my review of the album here. Mike is the Worship/Arts Pastor at Jacob’s Well, an emerging church in Kansas City, MO. For more information about Jacob’s Well, visit their website or check out this article from the Christian Century.

For the record, all hyperlinks in this interview were provided by Mike, not myself.

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JAKE BOUMA: Is the sound on the album the same sound the worshipers hear on Sundays? What’s standard setup of musicians for a “regular” worship service?

MIKE CRAWFORD: I would say the sound on the album is a bit heavier or edgier than what people would hear on a Sunday. The album is also probably more intricate in a “parts” sort of way. We took the time to hone in on specific parts for the album, whereas on Sundays it’s really more free-flowing. Sundays are definitely more improv, as opposed to the record, which is all very meticulously arranged.

It took me a year to record all the parts with everyone that was involved. It was a great process though. I’d send the musician into the tracking room and have them play along with my basic tracks, just doing what they do on a Sunday. Then we’d both sit and listen to the playback and find the really great parts and follow where they were leading, sometimes with me singing parts to the musicians to help get their parts mapped out, and sometimes with me jumping around to create some energy or excitement or laughter. I especially love the laughter on the record.

We have around 40 people on the worship team. The band is different every week, which keeps the music really fresh. The most common setup is bass, drum kit, electric guitar, piano, female singer and me on acoustic and electric. Sometimes we have violin, sometimes trumpet, sometimes flute. We usually have just one “auxiliary” melody instrument per week. Sometimes the pianists will play glockenspiel too, which I love. We also do more acoustic weeks with dobro, acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, hand percussion, fiddle.

JAKE: When we spoke in person, you told a story about CCLI rejecting one of your songs. Could you tell that story again, while elaborating on the Scriptural basis for much of the lyrics on “Songs from Jacob’s Well”?

MIKE: When I submitted the song The Magnificat, CCLI told me I couldn’t register the song because it was straight from scripture, and that Zondervan or someone had the rights to those words. I didn’t argue the point, but we’ve continued to sing the song and to record the song. The words are so powerful how they are laid out, I just wanted to sing them straight from scripture… Hopefully Mary won’t sue us…

I do access scripture a ton when writing worship music. I just think singing those hymns and psalms that the early church might have sung is a powerful thing. Several of the songs from the record are like this, which I think is why people connect with them. It’s certainly why I connect with them. It also keeps me out of too much doctrinal trouble if I’m staying really close to what the Bible is saying.

One of my favorite “scripture songs” on the record is Horse and Rider. I got this song after reading Walter Brueggemann’s book The Prophetic Imagination. In it, he talks about the first worship song in scripture as being Miriam and Moses’ song after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 15). In one powerful chapter, he paints with painstaking beauty an utterly free God, controlled by nothing, whose character and task is to release the oppressed… release them from an oppressive royal regime that has co-opted and domesticated its gods to control and oppress and support the affluence of the status quo. To then re-read that passage from Exodus 15 in his context (God vs. status quo of empire) made me think, “We really need to be singing things like this.” When we do, we are singing theology. I love how Brueggemann explains the line from verse 18, “The Lord will reign forever and ever”: He says that implicit in that line are the words “…and not Pharoah…” The Lord will reign forever and ever… and not Pharoah! So when when we’re singing “Lord You will reign, Lord You will reign… forever, forever, forever, amen,” it really feels like we’re singing so much more than just “God is so good, He’s so good to me…”

JAKE: Everyone I asked from Jacob’s Well said the best song on the album — if they had to choose just one — is Words to Build A Life On. Admittedly, it’s a favorite of mine. What’s the story behind the song? How did it come to be? Does it have special significance to you?

MIKE: Ah yes, Words To Build A Life On… that song. That song is an enigma to me. I love it and am artistically frustrated by it. It seems to have a life of it’s own. It travels around the country and sends emails to me from places I’ve never been or seen. It tells me of all the people who relate to it and who cry the first time they hear it. It really is a strange one! I also know it will be nearly impossible for me to write another song that impacts people the way that one does, so it frustrates me a bit.

Seriously, I don’t know that I had too much to do with that song. It sprang from a sermon Tim was giving where he was talking about the beatitudes and he wrapped up the message by quoting the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. He was using Eugene Peterson’s translation (The Message) and it reads, “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on.” I thought to myself, “That sounds like a song if I’ve ever heard a song.”

So I was up in my office the next week singing the chorus, asking God how he could make His words “mine”, how I could incorporate them into my life. Then I started singing the beatitudes and adding things that seemed counter intuitive to how we, as people, feel “blessed”. A woman named Deanne Pearson was our administrator at that time and she was in the office next to me. She came to my door and said, “What’s that song you’re singing?” I said, “I don’t know, I’m just messing around with a new one.” She said, “Well, you should keep doing whatever you’re doing, because I’m over in my office crying listening to you.” I guess that was the beginning of the tears… Thanks Deanne for encouraging me to continue on.

I just continued to write and write, piling up words like I was a Bob Dylan impersonator or something. It became very unwieldy — much too long for a proper song. Anyway, we didn’t sing it at church for a long while because I wanted to edit it down, get it to a more manageable length, something that made more sense. A friend of Tim’s, Jason Clark, came to speak at Jacob’s Well one Sunday. We had two services at that time. After the morning gathering, based on his sermon, I knew we had to sing “Words” that night. I didn’t really have time to edit it, so we just sang all the words. The rest, as they say, is history, at least it’s Jacob’s Well history. That song seems to really be important for our community. I’m just glad to have had the time to be in my office dinking around on my guitar when it came.

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Stay tuned for part three of the Mike Crawford interview… it’ll be right here on JakeBouma.com in the next several days!

Interview with Mike Crawford (Part 1)

The following is Part 1 (Part 2) of an interview with Mike Crawford about his album Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings present Songs from Jacob’s Well, Volumes I & II: Even the Darkness Will Not Be Dark To You. You can read my review of the album here. Mike is the Worship/Arts Pastor at Jacob’s Well, an emerging church in Kansas City, MO. For more information about Jacob’s Well, visit their website or check out this article from the Christian Century.

For the record, all hyperlinks in this interview were provided by Mike, not myself.

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JAKE BOUMA: First, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Let’s begin by getting to know you a bit. How did you get into music?

MIKE CRAWFORD: I got into music pretty early. It was probably a combination of a few things that culminated in my playing guitar. My parents were really into Texas Blues… they used to have friends over every Friday night to play dominos, drink wine and then dance till midnight to the “three Kings” — Freddie, Albert & B.B. In addition to my parents’ blues influence, I became obsessed with Elvis the year he died. I had just turned 10 that year. Somehow I got completely obsessed with his music and then all other late 50’s/early 60’s music. My parents took me to a Chuck Berry concert that fall and we sat in the front row — and that was “it” for me; somehow something clicked that night, I knew I had to play guitar. I saved up my allowance and bought an old Silvertone acoustic at a pawn shop and went to the library and got a Mel Bay book of chords. I proceeded to teach myself to play. After a year of persistence, my parents gave me a year or two of guitar lessons.

My sixth grade year, my Aunt Donna gave me The Beatles “White Album” and I was done for again. I fully entered the world of music — most of it through her and my uncle’s record collection — Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison, The Beatles, Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, Elvis Costello, Devo, Tom Petty, B-52s… they were hippies who were also into new wave! Oh yeah, the first “album” I bought was KISS’ Alive II… I joined the KISS army in 5th grade… it was all happening around that period for me… 10, 11, 12. I joined my first “band” in 7th grade — we were called Savage! I have played in some sort of band (mostly) ever since then. I played in a band called The Spin at Baylor University in the late 80’s and then ended up touring the country with that band for 3 years after college.

JAKE: So how did you get involved with Jacob’s Well?

MIKE: After that college/post-college phase, I really didn’t play too much music for about seven years. I entered a “desert” period during my late 20’s — doing a job I didn’t enjoy (computer programming) and not really playing much music. I had been living in Kansas City for a couple of years and was discipling a group of guys. Most of them were part of the core group that helped launch Jacob’s Well. They would always bug me about leading worship at Jacob’s, but I was pretty involved at another church, and honestly, had never led worship before. After singing at one of those guy’s wedding, I met Tim Keel. We struck up a fast friendship and a year later I found myself unemployed and seeking a new direction in life. Tim told me he and a few others had been praying for 6 months about asking me to lead worship at Jacob’s Well on a part-time basis. I had been praying for about 7 years for God to move me out of the corporate world and into a vocation involving “music and ministry”. I had no idea what that would be. I also talked to Tim about some ideas I had about starting a recording studio. I also told him about a new band I had formed called Builder. We talked at great length about the reality of the shifts into post-modernity, a new thinking of missional living, a new way of thinking of evangelism, a new way of thinking about lot’s of things! We decided pretty quickly to try to incorporate all of this (worship leading, studio, rock band playing in the local scene) into a full-time position at the church.

We ended up, with the grace of God’s help, fundraising a big chunk of my salary and all the funds necessary to begin work on building and equipping a recording studio. At that time, I was 34 years old, married, with two kids and a third on the way. It really didn’t make much sense to many people as a realistic career move. I mean, most worship leaders are in their twenties and don’t need much to survive. This was going to have to be something very different. I think the church was about 75 people strong when I started. It was definitely a stretch and a risk, both on my part and on the church’s part. I’m so thankful that it’s ended up working out. I can’t think of a better job!

JAKE: “Songs from Jacob’s Well” is unlike any other worship music on the market today. How would you describe the sound of the album? What kind of sound were you aiming to create?

MIKE: I knew I wanted to create something that sounded different than the “Nashville-machine” music that dominates most worship records. Even the best worship records tend to have a sound that is same-ish. I’m not saying those records sound “bad”, in fact most of them have great sounds — huge drums, giant guitars, amazing vocal sounds. They just sort of strike me as being on the dull side.

The music that moves me is more creative, earthy, noisy, old or even more grandiose than what I’d experienced when listening to worship music. I wanted to make a record that I enjoyed listening to.

My reference points for the album were The Beatles’ White Album and Sigor Ros’ takk record. Those records are quite different, but both have elements that really draw me in as a listener. They are also both quite layered and a bit experimental. I also really love jazz and classical music, and I knew I wanted some elements of those types of music melded in, too. In addition, I listen to lots of field recordings or found-sound kinds of recordings. Some of the work of a guitarist named Steve Tibbets has these elements, also a collective called Set Fire To Flames use these kinds of recording techniques. Brian Eno is also a big influence, especially his ambient recordings – Discreet Music, Thursday Afternoon, those kinds of things. Talk Talk’s The Spirit of Eden is another huge touchstone for me, although the JW cd doesn’t sound anything like that record. Another thing that has influenced me over the past few years is the music of Iceland, especially Sigur Ros and múm.

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Click here to continue to Part 2 of the interview »

On Hold

Here’s a video of a new song of mine, “On Hold”. Lyrics below the video.

I said “Get over all your fears
and I will get over myself”
She said “I just need some help”

She said “You’ve got to let me in, ’cause it’s
getting really hard to tell”
I said “You know me all to well”

Hold on
Hold on
Hold on just a little bit longer

And when the sun goes down we will decide
I promise everything will be alright

Review: Mike Crawford, “Songs from Jacob’s Well”

During my time at the Reclaiming Paul conference in Kansas City, I was fortunate to meet Jacob’s Well’s Worship/Arts Pastor, Mike Crawford. Mike and his friends recently released a collection of original worship songs called Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings present Songs from Jacob’s Well, Volumes I & II: Even the Darkness Will Not Be Dark To You. In one of the posts from the conference, I said,

Just as a teaser, I think his album is one of the best worship albums in the past 5 years, if not the best.

After a solid month of listening to Songs from Jacob’s Well, I don’t find that statement to be hyperbolic.

The first thing you’ll notice after popping in the first disc (it’s a 2-disc set) is that Songs from Jacob’s Well is a worship album unlike anything you’ve ever heard. It’s an undeniable deviation from the the hyper-produced CCM worship that sells like hot-cakes these days, and this is its very strength. One of the first questions people usually ask when you tell them about a new band or album is “Who does it sound like?” and my reply in regards to Songs from Jacob’s Well usually goes something like, “Well, it’s like Copeland, The Decemberists, and David Crowder Band (of the A Collision variety) got together and made an indie worship album.” A beautiful worship album.

Every track in the collection is an experience in itself. Singing lead vocals, Mike is accompanied by a female who sings unexpected, charming harmonies. Although a track may begin unassumingly, with a standard pop-rock feel — like “I Know the Plans” on disc two — it ends up with a chorus of brass bellowing behind a buzzing guitars and a driving beat. Heck, in “Words to Build A Life On,” a female opera singer makes a cameo, and somehow it works. Songs from Jacob’s Well is a tapestry, crafted with layer upon layer of pure musical beauty.

Although the style of the music is idiosyncratic, the lyrical subject matter of the songs are straight out of the Bible, sometimes even word-for-word. For example, the song “Magnificat” is simply the text of Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), with some phrases repeated here and there, set to music. This is nothing new, I know, but it’s actually kind of rare in contemporary worship music these days, and — best of all — it doesn’t come off as cheesy. It’s honest and vulnerable.

The final song, “Words to Build A Life On”, is worth the price of the whole album. Again, I use no irony or hyperbole when I say it may be one of the single greatest worship songs ever written.¹ I shed tears the first time I listened to the eight-minute track, and have many times since. The song is epic. Musically, lyrically, spiritually, and emotionally. If you don’t own the album, take time to read the lyrics to this song — it will speak to you directly, I promise. Also, it’s the only worship song I’ve ever heard that uses the word “freaking” (and uses it well, I might add).

Bottom line: Buy this album immediately. If you’re a worship leader, try to buy it sooner than immediately. I could go on and on about Song’s from Jacob’s Well, but it will do you better to just experience it yourself. Go ahead and listen to a few of the songs on Mike’s MySpace page.

P.S. I had the opportunity to interview Mike about his personal story, Songs from Jacob’s Well, and some other things, and the interview will appear on this blog in several parts during the next week. Keep your eyes out!

1. Please keep in mind that this statement is entirely subjective. ↩

Check me out on 99.5 FM’s “Local Beat”

A couple of notes regarding my musical endeavors.

The first is that my song “Stuck In My Heart” will be playing on the radio! If you live in the Des Moines area, listen to Local Beat on Pulse 99.5 this Saturday from 9-10pm to hear the tune. Then be sure to visit their MySpace page and leave a comment telling them how much you love the song.

“Stuck In My Heart” has supposedly received airplay in the past, but that has never been confirmed nor denied. So… Des Moines, prepare for audio ecstasy as the silky smooth pop sound of Jake Bouma graces your ears for the very first time. I kid, I kid.

Second (and also for those in the Des Moines area), I’m playing a show at the House of Bricks next Friday, June 13. I’ll be playing for a half-hour sometime between 5 and 9pm, and my buddy Mike Lang will be joining me. The show features Plan to Pull Through, Final Warning, Silent Creek, Johnny Anderson, and 5150. Tickets are $10 at the door, or $7 if you pre-order them from me. If you would like to pre-order, leave a comment on this post, and we’ll get everything set up.

Here’s the Facebook event listing for the show; RSVP if you plan on attending. Support myself and other local musicians!

How to move your iTunes music library from a PC to a Mac without losing metadata (ratings, play counts, album art, etc.)

I spent the better part of yesterday trying to load my iTunes library on my new MacBook Pro. I was bound and determined NOT to lose all of the metadata associated with my music — star ratings, play counts, playlists, album art, etc. Call me superficial, but I just didn’t want to lose all of that information; information that has been compiled for 3,300+ audio files over the last three years.

Anyway, I eventually got it all figured out, but I thought I’d pass along what I learned. The tutorial below will help you if you DON’T let iTunes manage your Music folder (you can check this setting in Preferences → Advanced → General) and you’re moving from a PC to a Mac. If you don’t mind letting iTunes manage your music, there are easier ways to make the transfer.

I followed this tutorial for the most part, but I got hung up towards the end of the process. So I paraphrased and edited that tutorial to help out people like me (and, presumably, you) who want to switch from a PC to a Mac.

1. Transfer all of your music from the PC to the Mac.

Don’t delete anything — you want all of the same files on both the PC and the Mac. There are lots of ways to transfer your files documented elsewhere, so I won’t cover that here.

It will make things easier if you try to replicate the folder structure on your Mac that you had on your PC. For example, on my PC I had a folder located in D:/Music/ and within the “Music folder” were four sub-folders: “Downloads” (D:/Music/Downloads/), “Full Albums”, “Single mp3s”, and “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)”. When I copied the music to my Mac, I kept the same folder structure, within my new music folder: /Users/jakebouma/Music/. More on this later.

2. Check for up-to-date software.

Make sure that both machines are running the most current version of iTunes. Might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important.

3. Find and transfer “iTunes Music Library.xml”

On your PC, locate a file called “iTunes Music Library.xml”. By default in Windows, iTunes will place this file in the “My Music” folder. For example, C:/Documents and Settings/Jake/My Documents/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml. If you’re having trouble finding the file, just perform a search.

Making sure that this file is not deleted, transfer it from your PC to your Mac. You can do this many ways, including using a USB drive; I emailed the file to myself.

4. Open “iTunes Music Library.xml” on the Mac.

Using a text editor like TextWrangler (all screenshots will be of this application), open the iTunes Library.xml that you just transferred to the Mac. You can do this by holding ⌘command and clicking on the file.



The next step is where retaining the basic file structure from PC to Mac (Step 1) comes in handy. This file, iTunes Music Library.xml, contains ALL of the metadata associated with the music in your iTunes library (ratings, play counts, album art, etc.), including where it is located on your hard drive. All you need to do is change the file locations in this file to reflect their new location on the Mac to keep all of this vital metadata intact.

Rather than editing this file by hand, which would take hours and hours, you’re going to use the “Find” and “Replace All” function.

5. Find and replace.

First, you need to find the “Location” line of a file. This is the line that tells iTunes where to find the file with which it associates the metadata. In Step 1, I mentioned that one of my folders was called “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)”. iTunes recognizes this file as located at file://localhost/D:/Owned%20Albums%20(mp3%20backup). The %20s denote the use of spaces.



Because all of the files in “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)” on my PC now reside in a similar folder called “Owned Albums (mp3 backup)” on my Mac, all i have to do is change the beginning of the file locations.

Highlight the beginning of the file location, and copy it (⌘command + C). In TextWrangler, click Search → Find or press ⌘command + F to open the “Find & Replace” pane. In the top “Search For” box, paste the text you highlighted (⌘command + V). In the bottom “Replace With” box, enter the beginning of the file location on your Mac. (To find the location of a file on your mac, just ⌘command + click the file, and choose “Get Info”. The location is the line that says “Where”.) Make sure that you add file://localhost/ before the location of the Mac file in the “Replace With” box, or iTunes won’t be able to find your files. Here’s what it should look like (click the image for larger file):



Make sure the “Start at Top” box is checked, and then click the “Replace All” button on the right side.



Voilà! Repeat this as necessary for the number of folders you have. Save this file.

6. Copy and replace “iTunes Music Library.xml”.

Make sure that iTunes is closed and locate the iTunes folder on your Mac. Mine is in Users/jakebouma/Music/iTunes. If you have never opened iTunes on your Mac, there won’t be any files here. If you have, there will be two files: iTunes Music Library.xml (not the one you just edited) and iTunes Library.



Copy and replace the iTunes Music Library.xml in this folder with the iTunes Music Library.xml that you just edited in Step 5. Do not open iTunes yet.

7. Manually corrupt the “iTunes Library” file.

Use a text editor such as TextWrangler to open the iTunes Library file (not the .xml file — see the image in Step 6). Select all of the text (⌘command + A) and delete it. The file should now be blank, with zero characters in it; save it (⌘command + S). iTunes Library’s filesize should now be zero KB (This is important, because some text editors — e.g. UltraEdit — may append invisible characters to the beginning of the file).

If this file is corrupted, which is what the above paragraph details, iTunes will default to iTunes Music Library.xml for all of its information. iTunes will automatically rebuild this file itself, so it’s okay to corrupt it for now.

8. Open iTunes and let it do its thing.

A prompt with a progress bar will come up — iTunes is rebuilding your library. Depending on how powerful your computer is and the size of your music library, this may take a while. When this ends, iTunes will come up with a message saying that the library file was corrupted/damaged and it tried to rebuild things for you. Press “OK” and iTunes will finally launch.

9. Tidy up.

After you’ve made sure that all of your metadata is intact and the files play correctly, you’ll probably want to tidy things up a bit now, such as reformatting your columns in the library and all the playlists and setting the Preferences as you’d like them.

I don’t subscribe to a whole lot of podcasts, so I just went to the iTunes Store and re-subscribed to them all. If you want to keep past episodes, follow the instructions here.

That’s it! You’re done!

10. Reformat your iPod (optional).

If you have an iPod and it was set up on your PC, the iTunes on your Mac will say “Only Macintosh-formatted iPods can be updated” when you plug in your iPod. Your iPod will still sync properly with this message, it just won’t download any new iPod software that Apple releases. To fix this, click “Restore” and iTunes will automatically reformat your iPod for your Mac and re-sync all of your music.

Phwew! Please leave comments if you have any questions or if something was unclear. I wrote this to save people the headache I went through.

Ben Folds, Undeclared, and ICCA

It’s no secret that I have many unnecessary and un-useful skills. It once prompted my friend Brandon to call me the “king of party tricks”. One of these skills is vocal percussion. I’ve spent a lot of time (too much?) since my freshman year of high school perfecting the art of mimicking a drum set with my mouth.

In college, I sang and did vocal percussion in a group called Undeclared. There’s a competition for college a cappella groups called the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) that’s kind of like the a cappella version of the NCAA basketball tournament. We competed three times while I was there, and this past weekend I had the opportunity to emcee a quarterfinal that was held on the Luther campus. It was an incredibly fun time interacting with the audience inbetween groups and meeting many of the performers. I even got to perform a song with Undeclared during their showcase (they compete this weekend in St. Louis).

Anyway, Ben Folds is performing at Luther on March 3, and Undeclared has the honor of opening for him. I was asked to come up and do vocal percussion with the group, and I’m totally excited. Although it’s unconfirmed right now, I heard Mr. Folds will even be joining us for a song.

Click below to hear Undeclared perform a song called “Florida” in which I do vocal percussion. My friend Mike Lang is singing (he plays bass and sings backup vocals on my album). And if you’re so inclined, check out this video on YouTube of us performing “Over My Head (Cable Car)” which I arranged.

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3 fantastic and totally unrelated videos

Super Bowl factoid video, courtesy of GOOD Magazine.

Barack Obama’s goosebump-inducing “Yes We Can” speech in music video format, with musicians and celebrities (including a cameo by “Michael” from LOST. So that’s where he went…).

Jason Mraz in France. It takes a minute, but hang tight… it’s strangely inspiring.

Dying Stars reviews

Last week I blogged that I would give away twenty free copies of my Dying Stars EP, and it got such a good response that I upped it to thirty.

Since then, a couple of people who received free copies have posted reviews on their blogs, which I thought I’d share here.

Ben at openswitch says:

I must say, I really like it.

I’ve been becoming increasingly disenchanted with today’s mass produced music. Dying Stars is decidedly not mass produced. It’s just a guy and his guitar (for the most part) singing lyrics that actually mean something to him. Imagine that.

As you’re listening to the album you hear the slight fluctuations in his voice. Sometimes a note is just the slightest bit off. But that, to me, lends credibility. Besides, we all know that mainstream musical performers have their voice run through filters, equalizers and other equipment during production. It’s a breath of fresh air to hear an artist who puts out a clean, honest product.

Jake Bouma isn’t trying to fool anyone with a facade. He’s just writing music and performing it in an effort to lift up another human being. Good album.

Headphonaught chimes in as well:

Expressive. Free. These are the words that come to mind as I listen to songs like the opener “Stuck in my heart” and “last time” >> fiery and spirited performances of self-penned material… love songs for today that drip with sentimentality and ache with real life. The EP shows promise… and I look forward to following Jake’s progress.

If you received a free copy, I’d love a quick review on your blog… but certainly don’t feel obligated. Also, if you can, give it a review on iTunes (link opens in iTunes).

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