Festival at Sandpoint

What a great year at the Ivan and Alyosha were shockingly great. The buzz around town continues to include their name. Darren Smith was incredible as well. His new record, Boomtown, is really growing on me and I anticipate it'll be a staple for a while.

Rodney Crowell headlined the second Saturday - the country night. I was completely unprepared for the amazing show that night. As soon as I arrived at the grounds and heard the band warming up, I was in love. Jedd Hughes's tone and playing washed over me like a warm buzz - I was entranced. I had a chance to speak with him later when he admitted that the warm up was "just messing about" and I knew I was in for a treat. Rodney's songs and leadership of the band were masterful on so many levels. He's probably forgotten more great lines than I'll ever write. Keio Stroud was as solid as an old steam engine on the drums and Allison Prestwood's bass tone and licks were incredible as well. She wasn't flashy, that would have been out of place. She knew just where to fill, just where to lay back, and just where to rock the hell out of the low end.

I got to hang out with Jedd and Keio a bit after the show. I don't normally get star-struck, but I felt like a bumbling fool later that evening as I replayed the conversations. They were both very nice and all I could do was keep gushing about how great the show was. Sure it was embarrassing, but let that be a lesson to you all. If you ever get a chance to see any of these incredible artists either solo or together, don't miss it. You'll be in for a treat.

I'm taking part of Feel The Hunger day today. I'm voluntarily eating only 1/2 cup of rice today, to get a feel for what it would be like to live undernourished.

Check out the website here: Feel the Hunger

You can also read an article in the Daily Bee where I was interviewed, here.

And here's a photo I took on the streets of Kampala. These two boys stopped me as I was walking and asked to have their picture taken. You can click on the photo to see other Uganda photos in my Flickr stream.

I Don't Consider Myself a Bitter Person, But I Love This Poster

Streamline Your Business and Personal Life

As of Monday, there is a new application available via the GoogleApps marketplace. It was developed by Viewpath and is an incredible tool for organizing and managing any type of project - from enterprise level technical and industrial projects, to planning the next family camping trip.

I am currently using this software to plan the Wings Over Sandpoint fly-in for the airport. It's really a great tool to organize what needs to happen and who's responsible for each item.

Check it out at viepath3.appspot.com. You can simply sign in with your Google account. And please feel free to leave some feedback for this great application.

If you have questions about how it works or how to use it, please feel free to comment here on my blog and I'll help you out.

Raffle Ticket, Anyone?

Paddy bought a donkey from a farmer for £100.

The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day he drove up and said, 'Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey's died.'

Paddy replied, 'Well then just give me my money back.'

The farmer said, 'Can't do that. I've already spent it.'

Paddy said, 'OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.'

The farmer asked, 'What are you going to do with him?'

Paddy said, 'I'm going to raffle him off.'

The farmer said, 'You can't raffle a dead donkey!'

Paddy said, 'Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead.'

A month later, the farmer met up with Paddy and asked, 'What happened with that dead donkey?'

Paddy said, 'I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two pounds apiece and made a profit of £898'

The farmer said, 'Didn't anyone complain?'

Paddy said, 'Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two pounds back.'

Bettter Off Drunk or Stoned Than Texting While Driving

It turns out that texting while driving is the new most-dangerous activity to indulge in behind the wheel. Read about it here.

Last week, I got the opportunity to work with Charles Manning of Playxpert and Melissa Burns of Mobility PR to create a video demo for a new smart phone app to help curtail texting while driving, called TextArrest . The app is being showcased this week at CTIA in Las Vegas.

I'm a huge fan of this app because it is highly customizable (like, really impressive), is very simple to use, and is designed to encourage accountability and conversation within a family.

Here's an article about TextArrest.

I've Got a Song in a Contest

As an artist on Reverbnation.com, I had the opportunity to submit a song for Windows 7 download contest. There is a lot of great music available through this promotion and you can download it all for free! Yipee!!

Please download my song, "i for inconsequential" and help me win the competition.

Also, if you like my music, go to http://justinlandis.com and sign up for my mailing list there. I've got some shows coming up and more music to download and it's all available on my website.

2009 Day of Service Video

I finally finished editing the video footage from the 2009 Day of Service. Here's the result:

Find more videos like this on Cedar Hills Church

CHC Beach Baptism 2009

Last Sunday afternoon, a bunch of folks from Cedar Hills Church got baptised at the city beach in Sandpoint, ID. I filmed the baptisms, and cut them together with some music. Here they are.

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If You Schedule It, It Will Happen

I go through cycles where I am very into writing, playing, and producing music, and times when i don't even touch a guitar for weeks. After hearing the recording of our radio performance, I was positively motivated. I called Bruce Bishop the next day to set up a recording date. Unfortunately, he was even more ambitious than I and I had to postpone his first suggestion by a week.

All that to say that I'll be in the studio on May 30th. My goal is to get 4 to 5 songs recorded, so that I can have an ep to peddle and a good recording to help get more gigs.

I haven't heard anything from Dyno yet but I'm hoping I'll be able to get her to listen to me soon and get a date at the Festival at Sandpoint. It feels ambitious, but It's definitely doable. It's just a matter of finding a good fit for me.

In the meantime, I've got several shows lined up which can be found at http://justinlandis.com.