Bass and drums

Last night I was attending a really nice concert with Swedish singer Jonas Sandwall. Guess who played the bass and drums?! I can say they were, as always, very good! :)

The perfect sound!

A Praise Unit concert is sometimes a pretty big project for the sound engineer. The singers love to move all over the stage, three of the musicians have their own laptops connected to the sound system, we have a lot of extra small mixer boards on the stage, and we need three solo mics on top of all the other vocal mics. So there are a lot of things to coordinate to get the Praise Unit sound. And still, sometimes, it is too loud or too edgy or too blurry or whatever, for some people's ears. So sometimes I get the question "can you make it simpler?", and of course we can. There are always ways to make things simpler, and I love simplicity too! I love it when my singers sing accapella without microphones, I love it when Kristian is jamming on the piano in the hallway and I love it when we practice our songs in the tour bus. But for me it is also important to praise God in the best way I can, and I can do that together with the rest of Praise Unit. We try our best when we rehearse the music, when we do our dance moves, when we select clothes and we work with the techniques for the sound. So that everything together becomes a statement of worship -the Praise Unit way to praise God! It IS the perfect sound, because it glorifies God, but it is not better than the simple ways to praise Him! It is just how we love to do it!

Having fun in Düsseldorf

It's such a blessing to be on tour with Praise Unit! We get to meet so many interesting people, see beautiful cities and towns, try new food, have tons of fun together and we get to introduce God to people. I am truly thankful that I get to be a part of it all! On this tour we had a short stop in Düsseldorf, during which almost all of us went into a music store. The store turned into a playground for young adults and everywhere you looked there was a PU-member singing or trying out an instrument. I can only guess what the rest of the costumers must have thought, but I think that you can tell from this little video how much we all love music. And hopefully we didn't disturb anyone...!

Five pics

Der busfahrer!!! The man, the myth, the legend! All stories you have heard about him are true! Thomas is not only "der busfahrer", but also one of the tenors on stage. The tenors were called "the cute one, the funny one, and the mad one". Guess which one Thomas was?

This is Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. On the more trivial side Lotta and Felicia both ordered coffee with milk this day, drank almost the whole thing, and finally realized "hey, this is just milk, no coffee!!!" In this picture Lotta is holding her cup and the others are tasting it to see if there is any coffee taste at all in there.

We did not do much sight-seeing in Berlin, but we passed Brandenburger Tor. Germany has such a turbulent history, and many parts are scary, but maybe all the things that happened in the past are a reason why Germans today are so nice and easy to be with?

Gospel Swingers of Bremen. Great singers and very nice people! This picture is from the after party.

We spent one night in Hamburg. No concert there, but we had time to pray, sleep, play games and just have a good time. Our good friend Rainer got the place for us.

Praise Unit influences

While driving on the autobahn Praise Unit had a music quiz in the bus. Everybody selected five songs from their phones or mp3-players, played them in the bus speakers and asked one question for each song. As it turned out it was all kinds of songs and the questions were very tricky. At the end of the tour I was thinking about how diverse our taste in music was. It was so many styles, and all of us come together in one group under the name Praise Unit to praise God. Does it work? Not only does it work, but it's the whole point of our group. We have no wish to limit our music to one style, whether it be gospel, soul, funk, rock, r'n'b, pop or whatever else. We simply wish to be honest and completely dedicated in every song we minister through. And it feels good!

My father

One of the songs we did at almost every venue on the last tour was "My father", a song about the relationship between me and God as father and child. Since my wife is in Cambodia right now I am a single parent for a week and a half, and I have many opportunities to reflect upon the parent/child relationship. Yesterday my youngest daughter got in an accident when she was in a playground, and we had to wait four hours at the hospital before the doctor finally put a cask on her arm. During those four hours she was sometimes just crying, but sometimes blaming me for all the pain she felt (since I was the one who brought her to the playground). but I could not stop caring for her, loving her and wanting the best for her.

"When she runs from me I don't let go
She needs me more than she pretends to know
'Cause she is still my child!"
(Paraphrasing "My father" from "The mission field" CD)

Live from Kassel: Can't Get You Out Of My Mind