Beekin - All That's Left Behind CD - Releases January 19, 2010

I never thought this day would come.  This project is over 5 yrs in the making.  Yeah, 5 years…unbelievable (at least we’re not Guns N Roses).

I have to say that part of me is relieved to finally have something to hold in my hand.  Something that is a product of the blood, sweat and tears of a calling placed on my heart almost 10 years ago.
Sometimes, God’s timing is the hardest thing to wait on, but in the end, you come to realize it is SOOO worth it.To give you the full understanding of the blood, sweat and tears, you have to go back to when it all started.

In Spring of 2004, Beekin was approached by a man named Andy Johnson of Hearken Studios.  Andy wanted Beekin to attend a showcase conference he was putting on to showcase talent in front of music industry professionals.  Andy also said he was interested in talking with us after the conference about helping us fund a new project for Beekin.  After much prayer, Beekin decided to attend the event.
A month or so later, another person named Mike Thompson of Ivory Tower Realizations met with me and Fletch (bassist) to discuss possibly helping us record a new project for Beekin.  Thompson was a Houston based producer that was up and coming and had various awards and accolades under his belt.  We told him that we were going to a showcase in July, meeting with a person about funding a new project and we would get back with him after the conference.

After the conference, and meeting with Andy and then again with Thompson (as well as a few phone conferences between us all), we came to an agreement to have Thompson record 3 songs that would be funded by Andy and if they turned out well, then Andy would green light a whole project.
In October of 2004, Beekin began working with Thompson to review song material, craft new songs, whatever it took for the 3 song demo we were doing for Andy.  From those sessions was born, “Take Everything”, “Day In The Life” and “Blindsided”.  After cutting some rough acoustic demos for Andy’s approval, Beekin went into the studio in January 2005 to lay down tracks for the 3 new songs.  When production was completed, we were left with 3 amazing songs and a green light from Andy to do an entire project.

As we entered the next reviewing/writing process for some more songs for this project, we hit a wall with one of our guitarists leaving the group due to creative differences.  About a month later we got a new guitarist so we were back on track and writing and getting ready to record.
But before we recorded, we had to attend another showcase by Hearken Studios called The Connection.  This time it was in Nashville, TN (see, we were still a Houston band at the time).  So in May of 2005, we headed out to Nashville for this showcase, played a couple of our NEW songs there and really blew the crowd away.  So much so that Kyle Fenton of Kyle Fenton Promotions (radio promoter) approached us and wanted to know if we were working with anyone for radio.  We were not and we set up a time to talk and discuss with him all that he could do.  Of course we held off until we were close to finishing the project because we didn’t want to release a single and not have a project in hand to sell to people.
When we got home, we hit the studio and nailed down the next 4 tracks for the album.

Then a turn of events came crashing down on us which made things hard to deal with.  The first was a changing of Beekin members and the second was Andy not holding to his promise to us.  Turns out that during all this time we were writing and recording, our producer (Mike Thompson) was footing the bill for any studio work and his own time.  He was doing it to keep the timeline running smoothly while Andy was supposed to be sending money.  Andy threw us some lines about having to get some other projects finished to free up his cash in order to pay and that we shouldn’t stop, but keep going, because money was coming soon.  So we did mix down and ready those new 4 songs but at this point, Thompson wasn’t going to move forward because he hadn’t seen his money yet.  He was also working with 2 other artists for Andy and Hearken Studios and was owed money for those.
Since we were breaking in new musicians, we decided this would be a good time to focus on shows and do some promotion and break in the new songs live to get people wanting to buy the new CD.

Beekin started playing shows (which turned out to be really solid).  We didn’t play a LOT of shows like we had in the past, but these shows were of some caliber.  In the next 2 short months, we played the same stage (not just at the same festivals or shows, and not on some side stage, but on the same stage on the same day…hehe) as Skillet, Seventh Day Slumber, The Lads, ZoeGirl, Jump5, Shaun Groves, Paul Coleman, The Swift and we even opened for the OC Supertones when they played SE Texas on their farewell tour (yea, we played at like 9:30 and they went on right after us).  It was great and when combined with the new music, the new adoration from fans, and the new adoration from the industry (we were discussing tour financing, radio promotion and our CD distribution), it was a recipe for disaster, spiritual disaster.

In October of 2005, after a long run of some good shows, Beekin sat down to have a meeting.  I wanted to discuss how we approach the incoming flood of good things happening as well as bumping up our shows from 8-12x a month to 16-20x a month and eventually do it as full time jobs.  Some of the other guys wanted to discuss playing only a couple times a month and also how I was too “career” focused and that needed to change.  After having what I thought to be a good meeting and discussing everything, the next day, one of our guitarists emailed me to tell me he was leaving the band because it he felt it wasn’t a good place for him to be at the time.  Our drummer followed suit and left with him.  Fletch (due to his busy schedule of a full time job, full time school, family and Beekin) decided it would be a good time for him to step down as well.  Our other guitarist hung around as long as he could but after about 3 months, he decided to head back to school and go to Seminary.
There I sat all alone holding the broken shards of what was supposed to be my calling.  I cried out to God for months.  I tried to put more people in place, but it wasn’t in His will for that time.  It was time for me to go to sleep and hibernate.

During Beekin’s hibernation, God revealed to me that we had the music and we had the marketing down, but there were 2 things that we did not and it was why he couldn’t continue using us.  Turns out, being called to “ministry” means you have to MINISTER to people.  I was so focused on the career part, that I never took much time to develop the ministry part of Beekin.  Also turns out that I had this little (actually BIG) thing in my life called sin and this sin was prohibiting God from using me and Beekin.  In April of 2006, my marriage was on the end of it’s last leg.  I had put so much of my time and effort into Beekin that I neglected to really focus on the needs of my wife and family.  When my wife told me she didn’t think she loved me and when she told me why, I KNEW it was because of that “sin” that God was referring to.  Not caring about anything but my family, I confessed everything to my wife.  My 18 yr struggle with an addiction, my complete and utter love for her and the kids and my ability to put everything down until my marriage was back on top.  At that point, nothing mattered, but I can’t begin to express how relieving it was to confess my sin to her and to begin working on being completely free from it.
Later that year, I got offered a job in Nashville and with no job or band holding me down, I took it and we moved from Houston to Nashville.  By early 2007, after much praying, I came to realize that God had let me go through all that “hell” in order for me to see that without him is a VERY lonely place and without him in our lives, we’d all be spinning out of control.  I also realized that when I became a Christian, he had called me to music and ministry.  Music was in my blood.  I can feel it living in me and it was the only way I wanted to express my love for my savior.  I knew at that point that I couldn’t give up music, but I was definitely okay with it just being a weekend thing and not a full time thing (in his timing…if ever).

I decided to tell God I would sit back and wait for his command to move.  In the meantime I focused on my life, my family and more and in May of 2007, I got contacted by Jim, a guitarist.  He saw my post on BandMix.com from a long while back and was wondering if we were still looking for a guitarist.  I told him yes and we met over a meal.  We talked, I explained our history, our current situation and how ministry was the most important thing and he decided to hang around and give it a shot.  We focused on learning all the music together and really just playing it acoustically (because it was about the ministy, not about getting a band together and becoming rock stars).  After a while, we met Benny who joined us in playing bass and by early 2008, we were working with a drummer and playing once a month.

In the fall of 2008, I contacted Thompson about finishing this CD project.  Turns out in early 2008, I found out that Andy Johnson of Hearken Studios had borrowed a hundred thousand dollars from a friend to pay off business debt and didn’t, and then sold off that same business to the same friend who had to turn around and pay off said business debt.  After digging deeper, it turned out that Beekin was 1 of 15 documented people that Andy had promised to help, send money to, etc and never did.  One band almost broke up because of it and had to sell their bus just to pay for their project because Andy bounced a check to their producer.  Needless to say, I knew that Andy Johnson was never going to pay Mike Thompson, so I went to Thompson and we worked out a deal to finish the CD and get him paid for all the money that Andy promised and never paid.
In December of 2008, Jim, Benny and I went down to Houston into Thompson’s new studio and finished recording the 3 remaining songs to finish off the CD.
It took almost another year to get the mixing done, get it mastered and put it in to a CD that you, our fans, could purchase on our site and at our shows.

January 19, 2010 will come and go and we’ll sell this CD and if we’re lucky (by lucky I mean blessed by God), we’ll get to do another project and we’ll move on from here.  But I thought this story was important to tell because I’ve learned a lot in the 5 yrs I’ve been on this road.
1. If you’re called to ministry and you have sin in your life, CONFESS IT.  The sooner, the better so you can move on to the things that God has for you (it won’t hurt as bad as you may think).
2. Wait on God.  I can’t express this enough because God has a perfect plan, perfect decisions that need to be executed at the right time.
3. Do not think because you don’t get what you want in your ministry that it wasn’t God’s will (actually, more than likey, that’s prolly true…haha), but that God has his own plan and he sees the bigger picture.
4. I learned that my first ministry is to my wife and then my kids.  If I can’t love and bless them, then how can I love and bless others?

Ministry is not for the weak of heart.  You must confess your sin to God and to the ones who truly love you.  You must be willing to do what God asks (even if it sounds impossible) and you must be willing to set yourself aside.  Once you do this, let God take the wheel and just be a tool that he can use, you WILL find joy in all things (btw…don’t confuse joy with happiness…following God is about being holy, not being happy).

God bless