So now, the truth can be told: blue sky nine has left the stage… for the last time.

Laura, our vocalist extraordinaire, is getting married and moving on in a new direction with her life, and we couldn’t be happier for her. For the rest of us, it just seemed like a good time to move on and work on new projects. For example, Ethan and Scott will tour India this fall with a new band called the gap theory – click the link to follow us on Twitter.

But that brings blue sky nine, pretty much, to the end of the road.

We’ve had a great run these last 7 years. I’ve lost count of how many gigs we’ve done; hundreds upon hundreds. Air and road miles? Tens of thousands over again. We’ve been in hundreds of campuses and military bases and clubs and concert halls and prisons and we’ve gotten to tour 6 or 7 different countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

In every show along the way, we got to connect with people and take a few steps along with them on their spiritual journeys. And more often than not, those steps were filled with laughter, clapping, singing or dancing. Not a bad thought at all.

Ethan, Dan and I (Scott) were reflecting back about these last few years and about our ceremonious ‘last show’. It’s pretty gratifying – if you saw us play (whether we were playing our own songs or borrowing the material from someone else), you definitely knew you’d just heard blue sky nine. And now that we’re done, that’s a wonderful thing – lots of bands never evolve to a point that they have a sound they can uniquely call their own.

We’re blessed to have gotten to do that, and we’re blessed that you were part of it with us. So, one final time, a heartfelt ‘thanks’ to anyone who laughed, clapped, sang or danced along their spiritual journey with us. We’re praying that you continue to walk that path. To borrow a phrase from the Apostle Paul, we thank God upon every remembrance of you.

- Scott,
for the members of blue sky nine.

These last few weeks, we played shows in an inner-city outreach to homeless people, a show for a residential at-risk youth facility, and a few prisons. At many such shows, we’re able to openly share what we believe about our faith, and about 50 or so people in those shows indicated the desire to grow more in their knowledge of God and spiritual things, which we think is great. We LOVE to see results like that. But…

Not every event results in such keen spiritual interest. And of course, we completely understand that not everyone agrees with us. Since we openly invite commentary, we often get it. Of course, we’d never publish any such feedback if it contained anyone’s personal information, but as you can see, this was submitted anonymously.

So, without further ado, here it is – the strangest comment card we’ve ever received. The transcript is below:

“You believe in what you do not see. What is nothing more than a child’s story. Yet, you do not believe in the man next to you. You show no compassion and you shun and condemn him without understanding his side. You place yourself as righteous because you believe a big blue sky will cover all your dirty little secrets and all is forgiven. I don’t forgive you. In fact, I believe you should pay for your sins as I pay for mine. No one can protect you from me. And I promise that I will come for you. You will pay one way or the other.

Enjoy what I have allowed for you to enjoy. It won’t be long now.”

Can’t please everyone, I guess.

Honestly, I’d have really liked to have talked to this person. I’d have liked to have given them opportunity to feel like they were heard. Something tells me that may not always feel that way.

We just got back from our first tour of the year, doing a bunch of shows in prisons in Florida – here’s an update.

We’re home for a bit, but we’ll be back out on the road in March!

… and it’s been a while since we checked in.

After winding down the 2010 touring with our trip to Romania, and after ducking into the studios to record ‘Macho Grande’, we finally took a bit of a break. Dan and Laura were in Arizona (seperately) visiting friends and family. Adam and Lindsay got married and spent some time on honeymoon, and then in New York (the state, not the city). Ethan and family spent some time in the pacific northwest visiting family for Thanksgiving, and then stayed in Indiana for December. Scott rung in 2011 playing electric guitar in a band (a nice change), working a conference for about 1600 college students in Minneapolis.

So now, it’s 2011 and we’re finally all back together this week. We’ve added some new covers, and we added some old covers, and we continue to write new songs as well. We’ll be hitting the road to play a bunch of prisons in Florida in February, along with some military gigs and a handful of other stuff thrown in.

We’ll kick off the touring season with our only Indianapolis-area tour stop by playing for Pub Theology on January 29th at Joe’s Grille in Fishers, IN. That should be cool.

For the rest of the stuff, keep an eye on the ‘tour’ page for details. See you soon!

So, here’s a quick ‘year-in-review’ video with our new instrumental, ‘Macho Grande’. We’ve been doing this song on tour, and we now that we’re home, we ducked into a studio at Ball State University to record it. Thanks TONS to Keynote Summer Project veterans Trevor Junga and Nathan Shew, who helped out immensely with the whole process (and made it a ton of fun!)

(Laura, by the way, is behind the camera… that’s why you don’t see her.)

We’re back from Romania, and that wraps the touring year for us. Maybe at some point I’ll get some stats for the entire 2010 tour, but for the Romania tour, here’s what we did:

– Played 11 shows (plus one ‘unplugged’ session for college students)
– Saw 8 cities
– Drove over 1200 road miles
– Flew 11,000 air miles
– Made hundreds of new friends/fans
– Gave our concert hosts a TON of work to do as they follow up with people who attended our concerts that indicated that they want more contact from their ministries, or who want to talk more about spiritual things.

Our most heartfelt thanks to the Romanian staff who worked so hard to bring us in and plan the tour. And of course, huge thanks to Samy, Adi and Marian (our tour crew – the 3 hardest-working guys in Romania), who had to put up with us night and day for two weeks straight!

Now, we’re taking some down time to wrap up the year (even for a rock band, there’s paperwork). We’ll record some music, and write some more music, and think up more ways to be creative with other people’s music. And Adam will get married here soon…

So, just because we’re off the road for a while, it doesn’t mean we’re not busy! We’ll hopefully get some new music and video stuff up here in the next month or so…

So, we’re past the halfway point of the Romanian tour. The people here have been extremely gracious and accomodating, and this is simply a beautiful country. And yeah… Dracula’s from here too, but he wasn’t a vampire. That whole thing is Bram Stoker’s fault.

We’ve played in Bucharest, Brasov, Bacau, Iasi, Suceava, and just finished a show tonight in Cluj Napoca. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the cities – there’s cool old stuff just laying around over here.

The really cool thing is that all of our concert hosts are very happy with the audience turnout and with our work, which means they’ll be having lots of conversations with people about spiritual things. And that’s exactly the kind of aftermath we want our tour to leave, so we’re pretty thrilled.

Well… thrilled, and tired. We’ll play another show in Cluj tomorrow night, then we head to Timisoara for two shows, then a final show in Ploiesti before heading back to Bucharest on the 24th. My guess is that we’ll sleep once we’re back in the U.S.

More later!

we’ve been getting some press lately.

The Westfield Current, the local newspaper for the town where we’re based outside of Indianapolis, ran a cover story about us. That’s the cover (click to enlarge it); here’s a link to a PDF file of the article:
Westfield Current Article

Also, last month, a magazine called ‘Worldwide Challenge’ ran a story about us; here are links to the online version of the story:
Worldwide Challenge Article
Worldwide Challenge Photos

We’re glad… both magazines did a great job telling our story (and we’re a bit partial to story-tellers…)

Right now we’re on I-70 coming home from doing some shows in prisons in Kansas – tons of love to chaplains Bailey, Harris and Drake for getting us in… and out. Also, to all of our friends on the inside at Ellsworth Correctional (Cedric, Randall, Scott, Allen, Tyler, Randy, Joseph, and others), thanks! You’re free where it counts.

Next weekend, we’ll hit Ft. Knox in Kentucky and play for several hundred guys in basic there… that’s always a blast!

And then, we head to Romania! We’re actually doing a handful of shows that don’t appear on this schedule, but here’s the promo piece for the ‘public’ Romanian tour. Thousands of these are making the rounds in Romanian cities as I write this… (click it to enlarge)

So, yeah. Great stuff ahead!

We just got back home from 3 weeks on tour out west. We played a big back-to-school BBQ at Iowa State; we played a bunch of colleges in Colorado and Arizona, and played as part of an outreach at a women’s homeless shelter in Phoenix. Making homeless women laugh, smile, dance and sing is always a great time.

So, thanks to all who came out and caught our shows – we had a blast!

And along the way, we almost ran over the President of Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado (if you believe HIS version of the story…). Our sound board got hit by lawn sprinklers while playing in the quad on 2 different campuses. We broke 2 leaf springs on the trailer on the way back home and contributed $535 to the truck-repair industry in Arizona.

And… we saw about 1500 miles of Route 66 on the way home from Prescott, AZ to Indy.

Next stop, some prisons in Kansas next week, then Ft. Knox on October 3rd, and then… Romania!