Soteria Music

Yesterday after the evening service at Church, Andrew Chapple came bounding over to me and said that he’d like me to join him on the radio next Sunday morning…on the 7:30AM show!

This is to promote the Christmas at Poldark event and the publication of the Carols in the Cavern CD. However, Radio Cornwall is in Truro about half an hour from Redruth so it’s going to be a really early start for Andrew and I on the 6th December. But on the other-hand we will be wide awake for Church come 10 o’clock! Not only has the Sunday Breakfast show offered to chat with us but we’ve also sent them an advance copy (that means one without the fancy artwork) of the CD and they’ll play a track for everyone to hear. This will be the first time that one of the S:WMD series has got some radio play, it’s quite exciting.

The finished artwork is now visible on the Soteria Music website, and the CD has been sent to the printers. As we’ll be using the “pack-it-yourself” option it means that come early next week (or hopefully the end of this week) we’ll get a few boxes turn up with all the raw materials for a printed CD and we’ll then need to assemble it.

Now it was about this time last year that “DaySpring” came out. That that took about a half-dozen of us most of an evening to put the limited run of 100 copies together. This time round we’ve got the same amount of time, a more pressing deadline, and 1000 copies to make! Oh the pressure! Hee hee. So in the world of pure mathematics we’d need ten times more people. So the plan is over the next week drum up as much support locally as possible and then on Wednesday 9th Dec we completely take over the downstairs room of Redruth Baptist and set up an assembly line. I might need to bring along several mugs of cocca for them all.

My thanks to everyone who’s helped to make this project work; to all the singers, the guys at the mine, the chaps running the paperwork, those who’ll join in the assembly line on the 9th, the local media for promoting it, my good buddy Phil, and of course the Lord Jesus for His mighty blessings on not only the CD but the entire project.

Exciting times aren’t they? God bless you one and all!

Jon Richards

Yesterday I heard three talks in a row at the men’s conference in Scorrier where I’d been asked to play guitar. This was sort of like a mini-“mandate” meeting, lasted all day, and had great speaker, Gareth Bolton, talking on a number of subjects that were important to Christian men.

As if all that wasn’t illuminating enough this morning at Church was excellent too; Tim Bodman, one of the elders gave a tremendous sermon from a real, heart-moved experience he’d been through since coming back from the actual Mandate conference in Belfast a fortnight ago.

A curious perpetual theme has been running all though this weekend and it is the need for holiness in the Christians. Holiness, as we learned yesterday from Gareth stems from the Greek word meaning ‘apart’. And indeed that is true of the Church of Jesus; we must be living a different life from the rest of society. If we aren’t then why would anyone outside the church be interested? They wouldn’t say “Well being a Christian is no different to my life now so why not be one!” they would say “Well being a Christian is no different to my life now so I won’t bother.”

When helping on a youth beach mission back in my teen years a tape was played with a song that said “Christians aren’t super-brave superheroes. They don’t have muscles from their heads to their toes……no they’re just like you and me!” What a load of old tripe! Christians, by definition of the word are like Christ, and Christ was very different to everyone; He was the Son of God! God says that we are to be holy as he is holy. We must be different to everyone then surely?

In some ways I find it no surprise that so many testimonies I hear these days feature bits where God has done something amazing to get peoples attention and bring them round to repentance of sin because we seem to live in a culture of lethargy and complacency.

I began writing this blog entry mid-Sunday afternoon. I then stopped to head of to practice before the evening Church service. So I’m now concluding it at about eleven o’clock Sunday night after visiting my parents before heading home.

But in the meantime, guess what Eddie Fletcher was talking about in his sermon this evening? Yes that’s right. He was taking about the need for holiness! Very curiously he picked up on a bit that Gareth left off the day before. Gareth talked at one point about King David having an affair with Bathsheba and the ensuing antics that followed. In his message tonight Eddie’s chosen passage was the very next bit that follows in this story where Nathan the profit challenges David. All this is in 2 Samuel 11 & 12.

(Tim’s and Eddie’s messages will be available shortly on the RBC website and Gareth’s from the Soteria Music site)

In the prayer time just before the start of the conference on Saturday I prayed that no man would leave the venue quite the same person as his was when he came in. God seems to have expanded that request and thrown open the same message to our entire church community. We must be holy. We must choose to be holy in every waking moment. The phrase WWJD comes to mind again all too easily.

Well it’s been an incredible weekend. Some great messages and a lot of work, but a fantastic time of worshipping our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

God bless you one and all

Jon Richards

If you’ve been in the Christian church in the UK for any period of time you may well of heard about the annual men’s conference in Belfast; The Mandate. The last one of these conferences was last weekend, and this weekend Cornwall has its own version of it!

As getting to Belfast is not the easiest of things to do, some bright sparks suggested we host our own (probably smaller) version down here in the west of the west-country. Tomorrow is the day for it. All the tickets are sold. And guess who’s playing guitar? Further more guess who running technical? Yep; me and Phil Gray! What a surprise.

In about an hours time the band and crew will assemble to rig up, sound check and practice at the Crossroads Hotel ahead of the conference going live in the morning.

I’m a little nervous. For all of the gigs and services I’ve played at in my time; I’ve never played a day conference. Still in the words of the great Captain Spock “For everything there is a first time lieutenant.”

In other news, Andrew Chapple (Elder, Redruth Baptist) has been on the email to me this afternoon and it turns out the Radio Cornwall want him to do a plug for the charity fund-raising Poldark Mine event that’s coming up on the 12th Dec, and they want to play the CD we’ve made for it “Carols in the Cavern”! Whooo! Finally after years of work the radio want to play something Phil and I have produced!

Well I better get a move on to the practice.

But there is one question still in the back of my mind; do I play the electro-acoustic or the Stratocaster? Let me know what you think, answers on a postcard!

God bless

Jon Richards

Finally I’ve got around to making my own copy of “Beautiful Horizon” (BRCD016). This is Rose Grigg’s latest collection recorded last summer and released onto soteriamusic.co.uk as a ‘download-only’ album.
Obviously Rose herself got the original release candidate disc, and one chap I know asked for a copy as he didn’t have internet. The curious thing is that I never made a copy for me.

In my office at S:WMD, I have a copy of every single BRCD that has ever been made; from the exceptionally rough first few to the rather more polished one we are now putting out. However it was only yesterday that I was reorganising my large CD collection (and that obviously included all the BRCDs) and while I was re-stacking the discs in their numerical order I just noticed that the numbers stopped at 15 and here we are about to release number 17. So where was number 16? Oh dear I forgot to ever make a copy!

With that in mind I burned a new copy and just today I’ve got some covers on it. Later on it will take pride of place in my collection rack as the ‘latest release’, if only for a short while before it is replaced by “Carols in the Cavern” at Christmas.

Still while I have it here I think I’ll give it another listen….

Jon Richards

Finally, I now have the full release candidate disc for the “Carols in the Cavern” Christmas album! Whooo!

Just to explain that means that the first prototype disc of the new album, minus artwork and labeling but all the final tracks, has now been made.

Yesterday, Phil, myself and Merton Gray assembled and recorded the reading tracks. Our prayers are with Mike Thompson (Mike was going to be one of the readers for us) at this time as he is recovering from a bad chest infection. I then took the tracks back to S:WMD and mastered them. After this, I then did what they used to do on the “Um Bongo” adverts; I ’stuck it with the others’ and assembled the entire CD. I think it sounds good to.

Our final finishing tweek idea was to add a short reprise at the end so watch out for that!

My thanks to everyone who’s worked on this project.

God bless you one and all.

Jon Richards

P.S. Some free samples of the songs are now available on the main soteriamusic site.

Finally we have done it! Phil Gray and I have just completed the mastering and arranging of all eight singing tracks for the “Carols in the Cavern” CD. The songs are now at their full Christmassy-glowing standard and we are now going on with the next phase…

That next phase involves recording the reading tracks which is scheduled for Friday and designing all the covers and disc surface. Phil has completed his rough design for the CD cover which can now be found on the WMD site and is working on the final, high-res version as we speak. I’m assured the final version will be bold, dynamic and yet still have a warm, Christmas feel about it.

The CD’s page on the website now lists the finalised track order so now you can see exactly what songs to expect. Hopefully we will have some free sample downloads available shortly. However the “behind-the-scenes” pictures are now completed in the Image Gallery for your delectation.

Just by way of interest, did anybody see the choir featured in last week’s West Briton newspaper?

Phil and I have been absolutely over-whelmed with this project. A task that would normally have taken a year to get done is actually running ahead of schedule in it two month time-frame. Our thanks to our Lord Jesus for enabling so many things to make all this happen.

May God bless you all.

Jon Richards

Exec-Producer

Soteria:WMD

Hi,

Last night the final recording of the singing for the “Carols In The Cavern” CD took place in Poldark Mine. The last four carols, which included old favorites like “While Shepherds Watch”, were sung beautifully by the Redruth Baptist Chamber Choir and captured in the natural and haunting ambiance of the Holman Cavern!

Everyone was belightfully happy and to mark the joint birthdays of our photographer and our sound tech the choir gave up two rousing rounds of “Happy Birthday”.

The next phase includes recording the readings and mastering the whole CD.

Our thanks to the guys at Poldark for letting us in and of couse lending us all hard-hats! And of course a big thank you to everyone who’s joined in with the singing; Helen Allwright, Kitty Hill, Sarah Thompson, Ann Chapple, Sandra Richards, Jane Gray, Brian Edgeler, Derek Bartlett, Darren Osborne, and Tim Bodman. Photos of the group singing will be issued shortly on the image gallery. Thanks also to Clive Richards for taking all the pictures.

We’ll keep you all posted for progress updates.

Happy bonfire night in two days time.

God bless

Jon Richards