This post appears in the July 21 version of Campus America’s “Unbroken Voice.” For more info, visit www.campusamerica.org
I feel like it’s inappropriate to start any type of update anymore with a description of “how busy I’ve been.” After all, everyone seems to be stuck in some kind of lifestyle of hyper-distraction, if for no other reason than to survive in the midst of the world’s greatest-ever information overload. One of the things I’m doing on the side right now is teaching English as a second language in Boston’s Chinatown, and this morning I found myself adding the word “overwhelmed” to my students’ vocabulary. I figure they’ll end up using that one a time or two in the days and years ahead.
It’s into this context that I’m releasing a new album in partnership with Campus America. In-between sentences right now I’m finalizing shipping costs, artwork, and distribution plans for “Moratorium,” to be released (God-willing) August 1. With a deep awareness of the vast multitudes of data, images, and words clamoring for our attention, especially as college students, the thought of “adding to the noise” (props Jon Foreman) is both vulnerable and intimidating for an artist of any kind. The album is intentionally entitled “Moratorium” for this reason.
I like to think of this collection of songs as a pause in the midst of the madness… a sort of deep sigh around a well-balanced meal: Some of these tunes began years ago, alone in my bedroom while wrestling through some crazy suggestion of Jesus, like “If you’d like to live, then you should consider dying…” Some of them were pieced together in recent years with my family of friends at the KC Boiler Room during lengthy times of waiting on God. Others were inspired in the wake of the Campus America tsunami (the good kind of tsunami, mind you). This album is a series of questions, declarations, and desires that ultimately collides into some sort of attempt to bring a smile to God and consequently, over our ongoing chapter in His Story.
I’m indeed very stoked to share the album with one and all, and to hopefully give some collective language to our shared and much-needed moratorium.
Visit my “Music” page for a taste-test.
Nathan Chud 