Tomorrow morning I will get in the car and, rather than heading to work, I will embark on one of my signature crazy-man concert road trips. Previous editions of the road trips have taken me to Chicago and Nashville… this time I’m heading west, to Omaha. The goal this time: the kickoff concert of the 2008 Behold the Lamb of God Christmas tour, featuring Andrew Peterson and friends.

My current plans are to leave Cedar Rapids first thing in the morning, meet Curt McLey for lunch in Elkhorn (suburban Omaha) around 11:30, and then head over to the church where the concert will take place. It will be good to catch up a bit with the gang of musicians who make up this tour – Andy Osenga, Andy Gullahorn, Jill Phillips, Ben Shive… talented songwriters and musicians, all… and when you put them all on the same stage… amazing things happen. The concert is at 7 pm and then it’s just 4 short hours on I-80 back home. Good times.

If you haven’t heard Behold the Lamb before, you should go buy yourself a copy from the Rabbit Room store. Best Christmas album I own, hands down. I’ll be bleary-eyed and saddle sore come Wednesday morning, but it will definitely have been worth it. Hopefully I’ll have some good pictures to post when I get back. Only 18 more hours to wait…

Tomorrow is June 17, 2008. Tomorrow, two records that I have long anticipated will be released and find their way into my hands: Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, or Death and all His Friends, and Ben Shive’s The Ill-Tempered Klavier. An odd pairing, you ask? Not so fast. Let’s compare for a minute.

Coldplay: has a drummer named Will.
Ben Shive: has played on a record with a drummer named Will.

Coldplay: Lead singer Chris Martin has children with unusual Biblical names like Apple and Moses.
Ben Shive: Has children with unusual Biblical names like Ezra and Jude.

Coldplay: Lots of piano-driven songs.
Ben Shive: The dude was born with a piano already attached to his fingers.

Coldplay: Song on first record called Daylight
Ben Shive: Song on first record called She Is The Rising Sun.

Coldplay: Two band members had cameos in the movie Shaun of the Dead
Ben Shive: Has appearances in many Andy Gullahorn-directed short films.

Coldplay: New record available for $10 tomorrow at Best Buy and Target.
Ben Shive: New record available for $10 tomorrow at the Rabbit Room Store.

Eerie how the similarities stack up, isn’t it?

The bigger question to me is this: a year from now, which one of these records will have gotten more play on my iPod? If I were to hazard a guess… it won’t be the band with the leader who shares my name and birth month; it’ll be the guy with whom I went to Best Buy last time he was in town. Guess we’ll find out.

First up, I’m having to work on my terminology. Don’t call it an “album” – apparently the cool term for a new multi-song recording is a “record”. Kinda takes you back to the days of the LP, doesn’t it? But that’s not really the point of this post.

Here’s the point: Ben Shive is putting out a record next month. Who is Ben Shive, you ask? Well, he’s the guy that I look up to the most of any pianist/musician of my acquaintance. Ben has extensively toured with and written for Andrew Peterson, which is how I first got to know Ben. He’s an unassuming guy, so much so that it’s darn near impossible to get him to perform any of his own stuff. He’s been hinting about a record for a couple of years now, and when I drove him around a couple of months ago (before an AP concert here in Cedar Rapids) I asked about it, and was excited to hear that he was planning on it coming out this year.

So now the announcement is finally here. Ben Shive’s The Ill-Tempered Klavier (a brilliant musical joke/reference, surely P.D.Q. Bach must have used that somewhere?) is available from rabbitroom.com for pre-order today. It’ll be a digital download for now, though Andrew noted that he might be printing some real disks later in the year. Ben, I’d love to have a real disk, so print some, eh?

My list of must-buy records for this year has grown by one… and then immediately shortened, I guess, since I went and pre-ordered it this morning. I can’t wait.