Until We're Kings - New Project!

It’s true!

Until We’re Kings is set to record the full-length follow up to the debut EP, “Heirs”.

THE PLAN

As of right now we are set to head out to Washington DC in June to record with producer Justin Long (Straylight Run, US Royalty, the Narrative) at his studio, The Powder Mill (thepowedermillstudio.com). Justin produced the last UWK album and we’re excited that he’s on board for the new project as well.

The music for this new album will revolve around songs that have been written at Community Gospel Church to go along what God has been teaching us through the Word. As Pastor Jordan has lead us through teaching series’ we’ve constructed these songs to speak to the heart of those messages. It has been a very cool experience to have our own music, to sing in our own words, what we are going through as a local body of believers. So, for the next step we want to put this music together in a way that allows us to pass this music on to other churches, worship leaders, pastors, and ministries so that, hopefully, we can provide one more tool for God to use in communicating the life-changing truth and beauty of faith in Jesus Christ.

THE PLEA

Unfortunately, the recording process is not cheap. We are looking at putting together this entire project (recording, mixing, mastering, pressing CD’s – EVERYTHING) for $7,000. This is relatively inexpensive for a recording process, but its still a pricey adventure. So we need your help.

This is your chance to be a part of this new recording. Starting on Monday we will have a page set up on kickstarter.com. Through this page you can pledge to help us make this project a reality. We have different levels of support that you can offer and with each level there are specific rewards that you can take advantage of.

For example, if you pledge $15 to the project then you will receive an autographed copy of the CD before it is officially released. If you pledge $75 you receive the CD, a bonus collection of music, your name in the liner notes, and a couple of digital downloads of the album that you can give away as gifts to anyone you want. We will accept any level of assistance you want to give from $15 to funding the whole project (if you want to pledge $7,000 we’ll come up with some really special way to thank you.). You can think of this as a pre-order of sorts.

Here’s the deal: you will only be responsible for your pledge if we raise the whole amount. If we collect $6,999 in pledges then we collect nothing. This is an all or nothing venture. So your help would be greatly appreciated in two ways: financial support to the project; and spread the word to anyone you can.

We are tremendously excited to get this music recorded and put into your hands. We want to thank you in advance for helping to make this happen. We love you all and hope we can work together in this new venture.

God bless!

- Jonathan

Sunday Setlist / 9.26.10

Here's the setlist from the 9:00am service at Highland Community Church:


Heirs [G] (Muck/Eckberg)
       Welcome & Announcements
       Special Presentation - the Shoe Man
       Offering
Hallelujah to My King [E] (Baloche)
       Scripture Reading - Job 1:6-22
It Is Well With My Soul [A] (Spafford)
Song of the Redeemed [A] (Hall)
        Message - Habakkuk 3:16-18
You Never Let Go [A] (Redman)
        Dismiss


THE BAND:
Jonathan David Eckberg - guitar/vocals


NOTES:
After being out of town for work last week and spending Sunday morning at my dad's church in Erie, Illinois, it was great to be back with my church family!  Due to  schedules of the band I led solo this week.  Things were a little rough getting going this morning, it was cold and wet outside and it seemed like we all were dragging.  But once we got the morning rolling the congregation came around and it turned out to be a great day of worship and hearing GOD's word.  It never ceases to amaze me how on the days when I don't see how GOD's going to get anything done, He works in incredible ways.  Cool stuff.


THE SONGS:
Heirs - This is a song from the forthcoming Until We're Kings EP, "Heirs".  It's a fun tune that is taken from Romans.  I love using it as an opening song as a reminder that we don't come into the presence of GOD as a people defeated by the world and run ragged from the busyness of life, but we come before Him as co-heirs with Christ.  We stand before GOD as his children who will one day share in the riches of His kingdom and see His glory in full. 


Hallelujah to My King - After a presentation from the Shoe Man - he sells old shoes overseas by the pound and uses the money to dig wells in Kenya - I was glad that we were doing this song after hearing one of the ways that GOD is at work in the world both in our own neighborhood and around the world.  This Paul Baloche song is one of my favorite worship tunes at the moment.  It's so good theologically.  To sing of the greatness, sweetness, goodness and peace of Jesus Christ through our trials with the promise of seeing His face as the saints sing "Hallelujah, what a Savior / I owe everything to Him - Hallelujah, what a Savior / Hallelujah to my King!"  If you don't do this song I would encourage you to work it into your list, it's fantastic.


It is Well with My Soul - We did four verses of a straight forward version of this song.  Coming from hearing the Word in Job and knowing that we were moving into a message of "unprosperity" (the idea that GOD never promises us worldly comfort and riches - but only peace and blessing in Him), it worked well.


Song of the Redeemed - We used the ending tag from this song as a reminder that although live can be difficult we are taken care of by the GOD of the universe (from "It is Well with My Soul").  We are His and His alone.  All else in the world is worthless, so we have no concern if we lose all our worldly possessions.  The tag in the song simply says "We are Yours" over and over again.  It gave me chills to pull back from the mic and hear our people singing together - "We are Yours, We are Yours, We are Yours" - absolutely beautiful.


You Never Let Go - This seems to be one of our "go-to" songs.  It's another tune that is just so theologically sound and speaks volumes of the peace and blessings of Christ apart from health, wealth, and prosperity on this earth.  


To see what other congregations are singing visit theworshipcommunity.org and this weeks Sunday Setlists.

Until We're Kings - "Heirs"

I was extremely excited to get my hands on the final mixes of the new Until We're Kings worship EP, "Heirs" yesterday.  It's been a four month process from the start of recording to where we are now.

For those who are not familiar with Until We're Kings (which is 99.9% of you), here's a little background:   It's a worship project I was fortunate to be a part of with my buddy Jordan Muck, who is the Associate/Youth Pastor at Community Gospel Church in Bremen, IN.  Jordan and I had a few songs laying around and we worked up a couple new ones together and decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and throw them down for posterity-sake.  Jordan called in his college roommate Justin Long, who now works out of Washington, D.C., to come to southern Illinois for a week in late March to produce the songs for us.  We then enlisted the help of Cory Done to play percussion.  Cory played with us on the worship team at Highland Community Church, so he was an easy pick (the dude is a fantastic musician, he's like a machine on the drums).  On top of that we convinced Jordan's wife, Bethany, to help us out by laying down some vocals, which was crazy impressive as she was like 6+ months pregnant at the time.  Once the songs got back to DC we got even more vocal help from Anna Long and Jessica Long.

We spent a solid week doing basic tracking and vocals.  Then Justin took the tracks back to the Powder Mill (his studio in DC) and cleaned them up by adding some more piano/synth/bass/vocal/etc. parts to the songs.  That was followed by Justin and I passing tracks back and forth over the internet for me to put some finishing touches on some guitars, piano, and vocal tracks at Papa's Place Studio (Erie, IL).  Now he has finished with the mixing process.

Next step for us is to have the mastering done by Mike Kalajian (30/30 Club Studio) and the actual production of the disc and we should be ready to roll this puppy out.  Our goal is to have the physical copies of this 6-song EP ready for sale by October 1, with digital copies available on iTunes soon after.

In honor of the impending release here is a video of me leading worship through the title track of the "Heirs" EP.  Enjoy.

Until We're Kings.

-jde