I found this photo from my time at the Aashrum when we were tracking the Outloud EPand suddenly missed being there and being in a studio for that matter. To be honest I miss playing my guitar too; I used to play every single day, sometimes for hours, now I’m lucky if I pick one up more than once a week. I’ve hidden behind the excuse of “life happens” for too long in regards to writing, It’s time to start writing again. I think it was supposed to happen this way, to go through the metaphorical dessert of musical creativity to give me the overwhelming desire to begin again. To anyone who considers themselves a musician in The Church; I give you this piece of advice:

INPUT= OUTPUT. that’s it, it’s simple. We are endowed with the creativity of The Creator, but in order to be effective for the Kingdom, we must tap into Him daily, otherwise we’re wasting our time, and we’re wasting the time of those we have been entrusted to lead.

So create, but only after you’ve taken time to input.

Not sure what to think of this…

Here’s a list of some of the gear our guitarists use:

AMPS

Fender Blues Jr.

Fender DeVille

Divided by 13

Egnater

Marshall

Vox AC30/AC15 handwired

Orange

GUITARS

Fender Stratocaster

Fender Tele

Gibson Les Paul

Gretsch

PEDALS

Drives/Distortion

Fulltone Fulldrive 2

Fulltone OCD

TS 808

Boss Blues Driver

Delays

Boss DD20

EHX Memory Man

Line 6 DL4

Comp’s

Barber TonePress

Keeley 2-knob

Keeley 4-knob

Boss C3

So what about your church?

If you’re an artist/creative than you know that sometimes there’s nothing more important than seeing your ideas/concepts come to life. To know that all of you and your teams hard work, from brainstorming to finished product, has paid off is one of the many rewards of hard work and dedication to an creative idea; this was the case last week when we were in a creative meeting and we were brainstorming ideas for a talk on “the naked truth about sex”.

Realizing that this is a middle school series we knew that there was only so far we could “push the envelope” with how suggestive we were with a sex theme; regardless we wanted to go for something that accomplished 2 key things:

1. Attention: we wanted to grab the students attention and direct it towards the stage/screens to prepare them for the talk.

2. Rememberability: is that even a word? Regardless, we wanted this piece to be one that students wouldn’t soon forget.

So we called our stage/set director and asked to borrow 2 mannequins, (cuz what church doesn’t keep mannequins around?). We then headed to our middle school director Josh Isenhardt’s house because his wife Amanda is a professional photographer and they had everything we needed to make this shoot awesome. The clothing came from my wife and I’s closet, and we had lots of help from Adam and intern Ryan dressing and positioning our “couple”. The photo’s were taken with a Canon 5D, edited in Light Room and the entire project came together in Adobe Premier.

for our team it wasn’t just about pushing the limits of what we could do, or go for a “wow factor”. We are endowed with creativity from The Creator, and we desperately want to use it, and feel a responsibility to do so.

So what about you? What’s your teams creative process? Come up with anything cool lately?

Ten years ago today my wife Rachel and I started dating. I can still remember it as if it were yesterday:

I tagged along with Rachel and her friend to see Scary Movie 4 (ha!). I don’t think she had any idea how I felt about her until during the movie I reached over and held her hand (give me a break I was 17). Fast forward Ten years and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect person to spend my life with. Here are just a few things about her that I’m consistently blow away by.

Her Beauty

She’s beautiful inside and out, one of the kindest most truly-beautiful people I know

Her quest for adventure

Not many girls will put on a helmet from the 70’s and go charging through the woods on an ATV, she loves it. We have fun.

She is a mother in every sense of the word

She loves being a mom, and is an absolutely incredible one. On top of working twelve-hour shifts at Childrens Hospital in Detroit she carries the responsibility of being an incredible mom to Emery. she loves our beautiful daughter and lives to see her loved and provided for. I couldn’t be more proud of her.

It’s true

Wedding anniversaries are special for their own reasons, but to be able to say at 27 that I have dated my wife for ten years is incredible, and I’m so lucky to have married my high school sweetheart. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Thank you Lord for providing me with the perfect best friend to spend my days, weeks, months and years with.

Iloveyourachel.

If you didn’t already know then let me be the first to tell you that the Outloud EP is available on Bandcamp! If you don’t know what Bandcamp is listen up. Bandcamp is a free service to musicians that allows you to host and stream your music and sell it. The best part about it is that all the money charged for music goes directly to the artist. The best part about it is that you can stream the entire EP for FREE! So if you haven’t already purchased your copy, or if you’d just like to take a listen… head on over

In Jesus’ Name from Josh Collesano on Vimeo.

Crazy to think think about isn’t it?

Hey everybody, working on launching the new joshcollesano.com so if things here look a little weird, now you know.

thanks