The Isaacs Sing Songs For The Times

Hey Friends,

This is Odie checking in with you. Dad is covered up with some stuff today so I am filling in this morning. I hope you are having a good week. Thanks for stopping by to visit with us.

The Isaacs

We love our family, The Isaacs! They are fantastic people, singers and musicians. The music that they create is phenomenal! Their talent continues to amaze me and blow my mind!

I love to see them perform live. Our paths have not crossed with them in over a year. I have been going into severe withdrawals.😁 I am ready to see them again.

The pandemic changed the Isaacs' touring schedule for a big part of 2020. Like all of us, they were home for an extended period of time. They still worked hard from home! It was fun to catch several of their online performances. You can see some of those concerts on their YouTube channel here.

Songs For The Times

Recently The Isaacs decided to record a new album. It is titled Songs For The Times. They chose some requests from the fans and added a few new songs. It is going to be a "must have" for your music collection! 

We do not have to wait to hear the project. You can watch the whole thing take shape on YouTube. This album is different because they decided to bring their fans along. They allowed fans to be there virtually for the recording of this project. It really was a neat experience. I had a blast watching this recording happen step by step.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the Isaacs work their magic in the studio. Their sound is perfect, but they have worked long and hard to get it that way.  It was good to see their perfection in action. As always they inspire me to work harder on my singing. The Isaacs are awesome!!

You can go back to their archives if you missed their live videos. I think you will enjoy seeing the process. Click here to find their Youtube channel. Please subscribe and turn on your post notifications. That will help you know when they add new content.

For more information about the Songs For The Times, visit The Isaacs' website. Click here to order your copy today. I pre-ordered my copy while they were recording. I am anxiously awaiting my CD in the mail. The CD is now in the duplication phase of the process. Pre-orders will be mailed soon after the Isaacs receive them.

Recording

Have you ever had the opportunity to see an album recorded? I love the entire process from start to finish! We have recorded several times and I am always looking forward to the next time.

I know from experience that recording is hard work. It has been some of the best days of my life. I can also testify to the fact that it can also be stressful. The final project is rewarding and the hard work is worth it.

Thanks for reading. I am off to listen to the Isaacs some more. I will catch you later.

Odie

Vintage View Vednesday Simple Truth May 2006

We are having a wonderful time this week at First Pentecostal Church in London, Kentucky with Pastor Vernon Jarvis and all of his fine folks. They sure deserve better preaching than what they are getting, but they are very gracious about it. We absolutely love being here.

Vintage View Vednesday

Vintage View Vednesday this week takes us back to May of 2006. We were at Hilltop studio near Nashville recording our Simple Truth CD. We love the recording process and being with Ben Isaacs and all of the talented musicians makes it even more fun.

It was a great, great experience. We spent one day tracking the music, about two days on vocals and then a day or two on mixing. We had it mastered later at another studio in Nashville.

We had the Kountry Star fifth wheel then and we parked in an RV park in Goodlettsville. We were there for two full weeks. I think we did the tracking the first week and then rested our voices until we recorded the vocals the second week. 

We had a lot of family fun in the campground and visiting local churches in the Nashville area. We sometimes stay in campgrounds during revivals, but while families are building fires for the evening, we come out in our dress clothes, load up in the car and leave. We get a LOT of funny looks.

It is every once in a while to actually "use" the campground.

We have great memories from these few days of recording. We had a blast. We really, really need to get back into the studio and these pictures make us want to get it done now!

The one and only Aubrey Haynie and Odie

Ben and Odie

Greg Ritchie and Odie



Jason Webb and Odie

Kelly Back and Odie

Kevin Williams and Odie







Steve Chandler

I just realized there are no pictures of me singing on this album. Maybe that's not me on those songs. Some one must have filled in for me.

That is all for today. Thanks for dropping in.

Davy

It Is Time To Prepare For Christmas!

It is time to prepare for Christmas.

Why do I say it is time to prepare for Christmas in the middle of October? Well, Odie's birthday is now behind us so it is time to move on to the next big holiday. I am not talking about Halloween or Thanksgiving. I am talking about Christmas. When we lived in a sticks and bricks home as opposed to an RV, Odie always insisted that the Christmas decorations be in place in time for her birthday. Nearly all of Odie's birthday pictures include Christmas decorations. It is true!

We do not have much room for Christmas decorations in the BoggsMobile but Kelly Jo did make sure we had a small tree in place in order for Odie to celebrate her birthday with peace of mind.

I did say small, right?

So with the Christmas tree in place, Odie had a wonderful birthday filled with good food, a great church service and birthday wishes from friends and family from all over the country. Thank you for the texts, calls, emails and comments. You made Odie's birthday special and I appreciate you for it.

Now that we are past her birthday can you believe that Christmas is upon us already? How in the world will we ever be ready for Christmas with just under 2 1/2 months to prepare?  What can we do to get in the Christmas spirit? Lo and Behold we happen to have just the thing you need to put you and your family in the proper Christmas spirit.

Our Christmas themed CD.

We happen to have a few of these CDs left over from last year. Once their gone they are going to be gone forever. (Until I order some more. Lol)



CDs also make great stocking stuffers especially if you have square feet. Go ahead and order several hundred copies for all of your closest friends, neighbors and strangers at Walmart.

The CD's title is He Came - The Gospel of Christmas. We recorded 9 tracks. It has 8 songs and a short gospel sermon. I have described it as a CD with a Christmas theme rather than a pure Christmas CD. 

You can listen to some sample clips of He Came and order it HERE. The lyrics and liner notes for this CD and all of our CDs including those that are currently not in print can be found the Our CDs and Lyrics page.

Here is the song list.

I Could Not Come To You

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen - Instrumental

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

(Yes, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" is on there twice. Once as and instrumental and once with vocals. There is a small story behind that and  I share it on the liner notes. You can access the lyrics and liner notes HERE.)

Until He Came

Three Faithful Heralds

Long Time Comin'

Getting Ready For A Baby

He Came - The Gospel of Christmas - Sermon

He Came To Me

Get Ready for Christmas

Next week is Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here before you know it. What? Christmas already? Lo and Behold we happen to have just the thing you need to put you and your family in the proper Christmas spirit.

Our Christmas themed CD.

These things make great stocking stuffers especially if you have square feet. I hope you will order several hundred copies for all of your closest friends, neighbors and strangers at Walmart.

You can order our Christmas themed CD online HERE. Help us out because it would be really awesome to move a few million hundred of these in the next few weeks.

The CD's title is He Came - The Gospel of Christmas. We recorded 9 tracks. It has 8 songs and a short gospel sermon. I have described it as a CD with a Christmas theme rather than a pure Christmas CD. 

Here is the song list.

I Could Not Come To You

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen - Instrumental

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

(Yes, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" is on there twice. Once as and instrumental and once with vocals. There is a small story behind that and  I share it on the liner notes)

Until He Came

Three Faithful Heralds

Long Time Comin'

Getting Ready For A Baby

He Came - The Gospel of Christmas - Sermon

He Came To Me

Now Order Our New CD Online - He Came - The Gospel of Christmas

He Came - The Gospel of Christmas

Thanks to Dr. J, Bro. David Johnston of DRJ Website Designs, you can now order our new CD from our website. I sincerely hope you will order several hundred copies for you and your closest friends. You better hurry because these things are flying off the shelves faster than Christmas snow cones in Alaska.

We are getting good reports on the CD and we hope it will be a blessing to all that hear it. I was very hesitant to put the sermon track on the project but so far I have had nothing but positive feedback. The reason for that may be politeness but real feelings have a way of rising to the surface. I will know more about the quality of that decision as time rocks on.

I really want the message of the Gospel to be heard. We have already given a bunch of these CDs away as a witnessing tool and I have plans to strategically give many more away. Of course the more we sell the more we can give away. Funny how it works that way.

Check out sample tracks HERE.

Davy

Youth Service in Wichita

Long Travel Day - Atwater, California to Washington, Illinois

The Green Machine was right where we left it at the Holiday Inn Express close to the St. Louis Airport. We landed about 8:30 and rolled into the Holiday Inn about 9:30. It was nice to see the Green Machine was safe and sound.

Our flights were great and our connection in Minneapolis could not have been better. Often times we are running through the airport dragging luggage and pushing Odie in her wheelchair. We only had about 56 minutes so we were prepared to run.

We deplaned at gate F6 and then turned around and boarded at F6 about 20 minutes later. It does not get much better than that!

We decided to rest for a while since the motel bill was already paid and they had a room available. We reserved the room through their Park, Sleep and Fly program and saved about $30 over the cheapest airport parking. Technically we did Park, Fly and Sleep but it all works out the same. It was a nice neighborhood to park the car and I was able to park it front and center.

We laid down across the bed for about 5 hours and I actually slept pretty good about 4 hours. We loaded everything in the Green Machine and drove to the BoggsMobile in Washington, Illinois. We stopped for gas in Missouri (Much Cheaper than Illinois) and a quick meal on the road and arrived at the bus about 8:20.

The BoggsMobile and tent trailer were in great shape, Praise God! I loaded  CDs that had arrived by FedEx in the trailer and Kelly Jo and the girls unpacked luggage in the bus. After all of that they worked on packaging CD pre-orders. They just finished about midnight. Everybody should receive their CDs in no more than a week. Individual CDs will mail first class and boxes will go media mail. Let us know when you receive them if you will.

Thursday morning we start our zigzag journey toward Dunseith, North Dakota. We hope to stop in the Wisconsin Dell area Thursday night but I do not have any campground reservations. We will see what happens.

Time for bed now. This may be one of those days that climbing into my own bed feels so good that I may roll back out on the floor and climb in again.

 God bless you all.

Davy

He Came - The Gospel of Christmas Has Arrived

I posted late last night about Tent Revival and Vandalism.

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Our new CD, He Came - The Gospel of Christmas has arrived early. We recieved them today. We were hoping it would but we knew it could be a few more weeks. We are thrilled to have them early. 

We had one box shipped to us in California, a couple of boxes shipped to Ohio and a bunch to the BoggsMobile in Illinois. I hope I have way underestimated the demand for this new CD. Lol

We could only have one box shipped way out here in the short time span that we are going to be here. So we will ship the pre-orders next week from Illinois. We will ship from here the CD that Jennifer Blevins won here on the blog by guessing the correct CD cover. We will get that into the mail tomorrow.

Hurry! Get yours while supplies last. We WILL NOT be ordering anymore. (Until we need some) So get them while you can. They won't last long.  Lol.

Davy

The Winner of Our New CD

Julie Stephens from Calotype Photography designed several covers for our new CD. They were all good but one of them really stood out for us. We posted a contest last week giving readers a chance to guess which cover we had chosen and win a free CD. We had decided on #4 and six commenters guessed the CD cover that we had chosen.

We need to do these contests more often. The pictures of Odie drawing names is worth the price of admission. She is hilarious. She wants to make sure it is plainly evident that she is not peeking. Can you tell if she is peeking or not?

And the winner is Jennifer Blevins!

Jennifer, send us an email with your mailing address and we will send you our new CD, He Came - The Gospel of Christmas as soon we get them in.

If anybody would like to pre-order you can find out how to do that HERE.

Thanks for everything, friends!

Davy

davykellyandodie@gmail.com

The Winner is?

Thank you for all of the comments about our CD Cover Design. Your participation makes it fun!

We had guesses for every cover but #1. I am sure that #1 feels like a dork. I think you looked great #1. Keep your head up, pal.

Julie did a great job on all of them but the cover we chose is #4.


 Out of 20 guesses, 6 of you chose #4 as well.

We will put the names of all the correct guessers in a hat and Odie will scientifically draw out the winning name.

I will let you know the winner on Thursday. Thanks again for your participation. If the rest of the millions of readers would like to have the new CD you can learn how to pre-order HERE.

Davy

CD Cover Design

Yesterday I posted about our pictures for the CD from Imprints Photography by dee. She did a super job with the subjects she had to deal with and we appreciate it so much. We had to have good pictures in a short  amount of time and Dee came through.

But that is only the first very important crucial step in the process.

The second step is to translate those pictures into some kind of workable design. The cover needs to look sharp, catch the eye, contain the right information without being crowded, sell a million CDs and hopefully have a little fun in the process! (Selling a million CDs would probably be pretty fun.)

All of that is way above our pay grade. So what to do? The only thing a person could do is turn to the resident expert in all things photography and design, Julie Stephens from Calotype Photography in Neosho, Missouri.

For all the reasons I explained yesterday, we were working against an impossibly tight schedule but thankfully Julie waved her wand and made it all work some how and some way. In just a little while she was sending us amazing creations and we were staring in wonder at what she had done.

Folks, I am not exaggerating when I say that Julie Stephens is one of the most gifted and talented persons I know. She has applied herself to learning her craft and she has learned it well. I am sure she might object to all of this praise but I am trying to convey much more that mere flattery. She really is that good.

It is true that we consider Julie and her husband John as very good friends. They are dear to us and we love and appreciate them so much. We love preaching revivals in their home church and love getting to spend time with them in and out of church.

But these compliments are more than blind friendship. Julie really is awesome. Thank you, Julie, for putting your heart into what you do. It really comes through in your work and we get to benefit from it. 

I am going to post a few examples of ideas that Julie came up with. None of these are a completed project but they offer ideas of what can be done. To my eye every one of them would work perfectly on our new CD. Like I said, Julie is awesome. Visit the website of Calotype Photography and see for yourself.

One of these below is the design that we chose for the CD cover. It has some slight changes but it is very, very close to the one we sent to the printer. Can you guess which one we chose? What is your favorite? I feel a contest coming on. You ready for a contest?

If you choose the correct design for our new CD cover I will put your name into a hat, have Odie draw out a winner and send you one of the very first new CDs we receive. (We should have them by August 1st at the latest.) You must make your selection in the comments below this blog in the next 3-4 days to be eligible to win.

Now, a few of our regular readers have already seen the design we chose. Sorry, you can not win but you will probably end up with a free CD anyway.

Well, what are you waiting for? Start guessing. 

Davy

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Pictures For Our New CD

We really let this picture thing get right down to the wire. We should have taken these a few months ago but we could not seem to pull all the elements together. One of those elements was finding the right photographer that was located in the area we happened to be in that week and that actually had time available to us. That was a challenge.

Odie and Kelly Jo searched high and low until we were right down to the wire. I mean they literally found the right person and made the appointment 48 hours before the shoot. The day of the shoot was the absolute final day that pictures could be taken and that was only if the photographer was willing to process the pictures in 24 hours. No pressure, right?

They finally found Dee at Imprints Photography by dee. She was willing to squeeze us in and work with our crazy schedule. She is located in the country between Lebanon and Mason, Ohio and has a beautiful place for pictures. She has a studio and awesome outdoor "Mini Locations" at her home and at an old farm right down the street.

An iPhone picture of the old barns nearby Imprints Photography by dee.

Dee was a pleasure to work with and made us feel completely comfortable. She takes her time and customizes each shoot to the customer's needs. The only limit we had that day was the storm that was brewing in the west. We had to scrap the last location when the wind picked up and we gathered all of our things and her equipment just in time to escape the deluge.

She already had enough material and in less than 24 hours we were viewing and choosing pictures. Thanks Dee for pulling it off right on time. We appreciate your extra effort very much.

Below are a few samples of Dee's work. It can not be easy trying to make the fat guy look natural with these two beautiful women, but Dee did pretty good!

I hope you enjoy.

Davy