Music and Stories from Art Wheeler
The song Seven Times Seven Times Seventy-seven is based on The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18. The title of the song comes from Jesus response to a question from Peter. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven …
Continue reading “Writing Seven Times Seven Times Seventy-Seven”
I wanted to try something new with my video for Wrestle With the Angels. If you have watched it, you will see that I am singing the song in front of a television that is shows a professional wrestling program. You might notice that the video on the television looks like it is sped up. My …
My song Neighbor is one of the most complex projects from my album Speaking in Tongues. It has five vocal parts that I overdubbed 4 times each during the recording. I wanted to put together a video for this song that would feature me singing each of the parts. I searched for easy to use software that would …
I grew up listening to comedy albums. I listened to them enough to have some comedian’s routines memorized. It would be hard to not be influenced by some of these routines even when they weren’t the most spiritual stories. Here are three songs that I can site direct influences from comedy routines.
For many of my songs, I try and go against the grain of normal thinking about familiar Bible Stories. The idea for A Cave in Bethlehem came from the fact that many of the stables in the region where Jesus was born were caves instead of the wooden structures we see in modern nativity scenes. I also …
My pastor was preaching a sermon about Pentecost. He was discussing speaking in tongues. My mind tends to drift during some sermons and this was one of those times. I began thinking of how the concept of speaking in tongues is different in the story from Acts than it is in later parts of scripture …
Several years ago, I wrote a song called The Belly of the Whale. It was based on the familiar story from the first three chapters of the book of Jonah. In the story, Jonah is called to preach to the people of Nineveh, he runs away from God, is swallow by a whale, is spit up …
Continue reading “Writing Crusin’ for a Brusin’ – The Jonah Songs”
My song Neighbor is based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. The song has 5 verses and each verse has its own melody. It works like a round. Each verse gives voice to a different person related to the parable.
Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.” -Exodus 15:21 This verse of scripture is identified at Mariam’s Song in most of my Bibles. The verses prior to it in Exodus 15 are identified as Moses Song. Moses Song is an account of crossing …
I decided that I wanted to write a song about the Bible verse, “the lion will lie down with the lamb.” It turns out that this is one of those things everyone thinks is in the Bible but its not. The closest thing to this is in the eleventh chapter of the book of Isaiah. …
Continue reading “Writing Isaiah 11 – The Lion and the Lamb”