Available Now: The Early Years | Remastered B-Sides & Demos Vol. 1

Newly Remastered Recordings of My Demos and B-Sides from 1999-2004

Available Now Wherever You Get Music

I’m really grateful to my friend, Brandon Shattuck, who recently remastered a bunch of old recordings from the About A Boy project and my Debut (Josh Bales) project.

If you’re new to my music (in the past ten years), these twenty or so songs will be new to you! They are no-frills demos- limited production up-close recording quality and, now, remastered for balance and up-to-date levels that fit with streaming services.

This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It addresses one of the most frequent emails I get from you: “Josh, where can I listen to your first two albums? Are they available online?” So, I’m really excited to get these songs back up and available to you.

They will be released in January 2024 and February 2024 as TWO volumes with about ten songs each. Vol. 1 is a collection of pop oriented songs and Vol. 2 is a collection of Christian/Gospel material.

Volume 1 is set to release on my birthday, January 29th, with a preorder date of January 12th on iTunes. These will be available where ever you get your music these days.

Josh

Podcast Interview Part 2 : A Follow Up Conversation

Sunday Homily : The Exodus Event, Israel's Deliverance & Ours

2020 Video Series, #2 "Blest Are The Pure In Heart"

When the COVID-19 pandemic began to shut things down this past Spring, many of my scheduled events were canceled or moved online and, as a result, I recorded a lot of videos of songs I would have performed in person. I’ve been meaning to add them all here, at the website, and finally got around to doing it!

Christianity, Tech, & Grief in our Viral Moment

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST WRITTEN FOR AND PUBLISHED BY BREAKPOINT.

For the past two weeks, my church in Orlando has been, like many churches around the world, hard at work responding to the coronavirus crisis:

How will we care for those effected by the virus? How will we continue our worshiping life, carry on leadership meetings, and handle a possible loss of financial support?

One of the tools helping us answer these questions has been technology. In fact, technology has been one of the only tools available to us in a time when local officials have asked us to stay home. So, we began livestreaming our liturgies and communicating daily with our congregation through emails and social media platforms. This has given all of us comfort and a needed (albeit disembodied and virtual) sense of connectedness during the uncertainty of this pandemic.

But I have to make a confession. A quiet unease has been lurking in my soul with every virtual worship service I participate in. It’s a dissonance between the reality of the global pandemic and my (subconscious?) attempts, via technology, to keep my life as “normal” as possible, in the realms where such false normalcy is possible: my emotions, my relationships, and my spiritual life.

“The six feet of physical distance between me and the person in line at the grocery store, not to mention the empty streets and closed businesses in my city, confronts me with this reality.”

Let me explain.

Physically speaking, the truth of the tragedy facing our world is unavoidable: the entire globe has ceased to function. The six feet of physical distance between me and the person in line at the grocery store, not to mention the empty streets and closed businesses in my city, confronts me with this reality.

But, if I so choose, with technology, I can leave this bleak physical existence and, thanks to emotion-numbing Netflix series, small group Facetime hang outs, and live-streamed worship, live relatively the same life I had before this whole thing started. Pandemic who?

Let me be clear. Technology isn’t the enemy. I’m no Luddite. I’ve read recent articles addressing these issues that sound, to my pastoral ears, unsafe on the one hand, or grumpy on the other. I’d prefer to avoid both postures, if possible. I believe technology is great until it becomes, like any gift of God, one more creative way we avoid the frailty of our humanity and the hunger of our souls; that is, our need for God.

But our use of technology the past few weeks has come dangerously close to the story of Job whose friends repeatedly offered him cheap answers to the question of the overwhelming tragedy that had beset his life. Such answers were no doubt attractive options for Job in ending the tension he lived between a God who claimed to be good and the unspeakable tragedy that God allowed. (In the end, even God Himself refused to give Job explanations for the evil he had endured, opting instead to remind Job of the trustworthiness of His own authoritative identity as God, the maker of heaven, earth, and every mystery in between.)

Aren’t Christians people who tell the truth, as best we can, according to God’s word, about ourselves, our world, and about God? To lose this calling is to lose ourselves and our mission, right? This was the kind of prophetic calling that Flannery O’Connor embraced. She awakened readers to their universal need for God’s grace by refusing to shield them from the violence and grotesque brokenness of a world in need of a savior. In the face of Covid-19, I believe this is now our calling, too.

What if this pandemic is offering us as Christians an opportunity to show the world not how to avoid human pain, but how to process it with honesty, endurance, sacrifice, Christ-like compassion, and most importantly, the hope of eternal life offered in Jesus Christ?

Normally, in these articles, my thoughts would end here. If you’ve had your fill, stop now! If, on the other hand, you want one (admittedly technology-addicted person’s) practical suggestion for moving into the days ahead, read on. It’s actually just one word.

“Grieve because, “Jesus wept.” This verse of Scripture, infamous for its brevity, is a profound statement about dealing with tragedy honestly as the beloved people of God.”

Grieve.

Grieve because the overwhelming presence of laments in the book of Psalms, more than any other genre, are instructive for us in all times of life, but especially during a global human crisis. Psalm 4, for instance, is a Psalm of Lament prayed in the liturgy of Compline right before sleep.

Grieve because, “Jesus wept.” This verse of Scripture, infamous for its brevity, is a profound statement about dealing with tragedy honestly as the beloved people of God. Be sure to read the context of the verse- that wonderfully moving story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Incidentally (providentially) this was the gospel story assigned to be read in many churches all around the world this past Sunday, March 29th!

Finally, grieve because sadness is what healthy humans do with tragedy in a fallen world. Grieving evil will actually move you toward sanity, toward healthy relationships, and toward intimacy with God.

I’ll leave you with these encouraging words from author, Mike Mason, in his work, Practicing the Presence of People, about the nature of grief:

Sadness signals change…It is an intermediate emotion, a feeling that is going somewhere. Like a seventh or a ninth chord in music, it is rich in subtle tones that tend toward resolution, lean toward home. This is what distinguishes sadness from moroseness, self-pity, or depression, all of which have a feeling of stuckness. Sadness is always in motion in the backfield. You will know the real thing by this sense of movement toward happiness. In photographs, crying and laughing are hard to tell apart.

Sadness is like that moment in a rainstorm when the rain has not yet stopped, but there is a perceptible brightening, and there comes that subtle change in the atmosphere signifying the imminence of a rainbow. Sadness is hopeful. Anger feels hard in the body, fear feels alien, and depression is like a dull poison. But sadness is at home in flesh and blood. It is a soft and relaxed presence, a comfortable garment for the heart.

Desire: Longing For God in the Aches of Our Hearts

This article was first written for and published by BreakPoint.

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for…

– Catechism of the Catholic Church

When I was a kid, the day after Christmas sent me into an existential crisis. When I was in high-school, I felt a loneliness I’ve never forgotten. When I was in college, I fell in love but that love was not returned. And at some point in my twenties, when the pressures of adulthood mounted, I grieved the loss of youth.

Longing. Desire. If there’s one subject discussed more than any other in my office as a therapist and pastor, it’s this. My clients and parishioners don’t use these words, exactly, but you can hear it in their stories:

“I wish my Dad had been a different man.” 

“I wish she would marry me.” 

“I wish I didn’t have to feel this grief.” 

“I wish God would tell me why.” 

“I wish I could find work that makes me happy.”

I can remember my own awakening to desire and longing in college, when I heard for the first time Saint Augustine’s line: “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” Not long after, I read this from C.S. Lewis:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Longing. It’s that ache in the belly felt by every human being at some point in life. It’s as unavoidable as growing old. And perhaps, for precisely this reason, rather than ignoring it, denying it, demonizing it, or giving into it undiscerningly, we should pay attention to it. According to John Eldredge (who has done much work on this topic), “How you handle your heart’s desire will in great measure determine what becomes of your life.”

Perhaps not knowing what else to do with my own longing, I wrote a song about it. Here’s the lyric of the chorus:

All our longings- they’re like sacred signs. And they point us to the God behind them all. That’s why sadness, and every sweet romance- that’s why sunsets always make us homesick.

“Homesick” is a song, a story, about two people who confront their longing and find, underneath it, a holy fire, God’s fingerprints.

The man in verse one has a sex addiction. He is drowning in shame. What if he could know that, lurking beneath his depravity is actually a longing for intimacy, placed there by God, pure, innocent, beautiful, and full of dignity?

The woman in verse two has lived, faithfully, in a lifeless marriage. Her attention to the longing in her heart for a better marriage or a different marriage is an act of faith. Romantic desire says, “Leave.” But God-given desire says, “Stay. Let your longing be an act of faith to the God who hates divorce.”

And so, her tears become tears of faith. Who knows, maybe God will fulfill her longing but, in the meantime, I imagine Him wrapping His arms around His brave, grieving daughter. She has confronted the very desire that He gave her and released it back to Him.

All our longings- they’re like sacred signs. And they point us to the God behind them all. That’s why laughter, and every moonlight kiss- that’s why silence always makes us homesick.

“Homesick” was a difficult song to write. My goal in writing it was to deepen my own awareness of the truth that, beneath the depravity of my human nature- beneath the loneliness, beneath the unrequited love, beneath it all- is a God-given dignity, one that, when finally restored, will be nothing less than the divine destiny for which I was created. Don’t hate your desire. Bring it to Jesus and let him refine it or fulfill it.

The Chaos Of Christmas

This article was first written for and published by BreakPoint.

Have you ever noticed how in the Christmas movies that they always seem to involve Christmas in chaos? For Charlie Brown, it’s commercialism. For George Bailey, it’s financial ruin. For Chevy Chase, it’s cousin Eddie and a violent, loose, squirrel.

Vanity Fair observed a few years ago out that it was Ralphie with his Red Ryder BB Gun and dysfunctional family in 1983 that upended the sentimental old order of Christmas movies by showing something every family could recognize, but I think the connection between chaos and Christmas goes back earlier than that . . . way earlier.

Songwriter Andrew Peterson describes the chaos poignantly:

It was not a silent night. There was blood on the ground. 

You could hear a woman cry in the alley ways that night 

on the streets of David’s town. 

And the stable wasn’t clean. The cobblestones were cold. 

And little Mary full of grace with tears upon her face, 

had no mother’s hand to hold.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the chaos of the very first Christmas included a shameful public scandal, frightening visits from other-worldly messengers, a harrowing escape from a maniacal and murderous politician, and a birthing room would have made Motel 6 look like a resort.

Matthew tells us, “When Mary had been engaged to Joseph, before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit…”

It’s easy to read this story and forget that, for Joseph, as it would be for any unsuspecting husband in the months before his honeymoon, the news of Mary’s pregnancy meant betrayal at the deepest level. It meant, most likely, the loss of his future plans- a life together with Mary and whatever family they may have had. It also meant the end of a mutual financial arrangement between the couple’s two families.

Matthew goes on: “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” 

More than just a story of personal betrayal, this unplanned (and inexplicable) pregnancy before marriage meant, in those days and in that culture, almost the certain punishment of death for Mary. Scholars point out that Joseph would have been within his rights according to contemporary customs to turn Mary in and let her face this punishment.

Are you feeling the “Christmas spirit” yet?

The chaos keeps coming:

An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife…She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

In other words, God is asking Joseph to let go of what most men in that culture valued most: the continuation of one’s own family lineage through the natural birth and naming of a firstborn son.

Joseph’s chaos included losing this dream, too.

On the third Sunday of Advent each year, my church prays a famous prayer used by Christians in worship since the 700s A.D.

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us . . .

When I think of the chaos of Mary and Joseph’s Christmas, and our own, I’m tempted to qualify the petition with something like:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us . . .  but not with a job loss, Lord! Don’t come among us with that. And please don’t come among us with a trip to the hospital or a family argument…

The Church has long pointed to Joseph as a model Christian father, and rightly so, because Saint Matthew concludes Joseph’s story like this:

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him…

In other words, instead of quietly dismissing Mary, which could have been Joseph’s otherwise reasonable attempt to avoid the chaos, suffering, and disruption, he obeyed God.

Maybe the reason we all connect with the chaos of Christmas specials is because they shine a light on the fundamental- but unsentimental- truth that our salvation appeared with suffering, that divinity arrived with disruption, and that Christmas came, all those years ago, in the midst of chaos.

This year, instead of quietly dismissing the chaos, suffering, and disruptions, what if we engaged it with faith and obedience, trusting that God’s disruptive activity in our lives will lead, like it did for Joseph, to the welcoming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

A few years ago, I recorded an arrangement of Joy to The World that sought to capture the juxtaposition of the joy and chaos of Christmas. You can check it out below.