I mean... Happy Halloween! Is it weird to come out with a Christmas record two weeks before Halloween? Is it even weirder to SAY that a Christmas record is coming out two weeks before Halloween and then not really release it? Yes! Weird! And it's all their fault! There was a blip in The system! Our Christmas CD was supposed to release on iTunes this last Tuesday, but it has yet to show up! It should be up any day. So sorry! We will keep you posted and let you know when it FINALLY makes it up to iTunes!

Having an awesome morning! Got up. Read some scripture with my wife. Shot a squirrel. And now blogging at the White Rhino coffee shop. Can you ask for anything more?

We just finished with the first leg of our fall tour. It was amazing! And we can't wait to get in to the rest of it! California! A Christmas tour! We hope to see you all on the road!!!

B

I pulled a stool up to the sushi bar here in the Chattanooga Green
life grocery. Ahi tuna and Avacado. That's what I'm talking about!!!
The sad thing is is that my wife and I just ate... But I couldn't
resist.

Avacado machiato! I would have one of those if they made em!

My girl is getting g her hair cut accross the street, and I am just
taking it all in here in Chattanooga. We played a show here on
Sunday night and decided to hang for a couple days. I LOVE this town!
The mountains. The water. The people. Downtown. It's the perfect
place! Maybe one day we'll live here.

I am very thankful today. Jesus scooped me up with my whole family.
I'm thankful for that! We had chosen our own way, but He wouldn't have
it! He let us see Himself, and our way faded. I'm so thankful.

And for my wife, Beth. . She is ten thousand times more than what I
deserve! She is my best friend. She comforts me. She teaches me. She
blows me away! I am thankful!

And for my co-laborers, I am so grateful! Men and women I trust with
my whole heart. I am thankful!

Sushi. And soup. Soy lattes. Walk bridges. A conversation with my
sweet mom. Fresh air over the Tennessee River. Old brick buildings
with ivy. The perfect Monday night football game over some mello
mushroom. Today I am thankful.

Hello to all,

Well we are one week in to the back to school tour and we are once again becoming acclimated to life on the road. I liken it to jumping into a cold pool when its almost warm enough to swim.

Shane and I are driving again and I am realizing i do not have the energy that I once had but am I okay. It has been fun however and we are excited about what the Lord has for us over the next few weeks. Keep us in your prayers if ya think about it and come see us if we are close.

God Bless and Good Day.
Shane E

And it won't let me post it, because it's not out yet, but we are listening to our new Christmas album Glory in the Highest: A Christmas Record which will release October 14th. We are VERY excited!

Sept 3rd - Fayetteville, AR - University Baptist Church
Sept 9th - Knoxville, TN - FBC Knoxville
Sept 10th - St. Charles, MO - First Baptist Church Harvester
Sept 11th - Louisville, KY - Walnut Street Baptist
Sept 12th - Raven, VA - Raven Assembly of God
Sept 13th - Ft. Wayne, IN - Blackhawk Ministries
Sept 14th - Chattanooga, TN - Community Theater at Memorial Hall

SEE YOU THERE!!!

Hello friends!

We are officially clocking into blog world! We can't tell you how
sorry we are for forsaking interaction with y'all for so long!!! At
some point I think we are embarrassed to begin dialog with you all
because it has been so stinking long since we have been in contact.

These last couple years have been by far the most complicated years of
our lives! They have been wonderful. Trying. Tiring. Full of tears.
Full of grace.

Little Olive Everett was born. I saw my father and hero in this world
off to heaven. I fell in love and married the woman of my dreams. I
have felt my calling in Him maybe for the first time. We wrote,
recorded, and had the grace to preach the good news through our latest
record, Pages. We landed in a few hundred cities accross the states
and Canada. And... Everything in between.

It has been a little bit of a whirlwind to say the least! But WE ARE
BACK! We are committing to keep up with you all who have been such an
unbelievable part of carrying us through these years!

So stay tuned for fresh weekly BLOGS, VIDEO, NEW SONGS, PICS,
RESOURCES!

Thank you all so incredibly much for supporting our music and enabling
us to be a part of taking the gospel to a very needy people!

B

YO.
As most of you know by now, our new CD called "Pages" is going to be out on Tuesday, August 28th. We've been in the studio for months now, putting the finishing touches on the CD, and we're really excited to get to share it with you! For right now, to kinda get things rolling, our friends at our record label have sent the first radio song out to radio stations to start playing. The song is called "We Love You Jesus" (you can check it out in the audio section of our myspace page...it'll be up there for a really short time – so go grab a listen quick!). Now that these radio stations have been given the song, that means you will get to hear it! So, if you have a favorite Christian radio station where you live, give them a call and let them know that you heard the new song on the guys' site, and that you'd love to hear it on the radio! Be sure to not call too much...because we don't want to annoy our ministry friends at the different radio stations, but if you're digging the tune and want to hear it on the radio, of course, let them know! Let us know what you think about the song – we're really excited to finally get to share it with you guys!

PS – we're about to hit the road with our friends David Nassar, Mac Powell (of Third Day), Brian Littrell and Tim Neufield (of Starfield) on the Glory Revealed Tour – it starts in just a couple of days, so come check it out – we'll be playing some of the songs from Glory Revealed with everyone else on stage, and on top of that, we're going to play some new stuff (including "We Love You Jesus") - so come say hi to us out on the road! Tour dates are in the tour section of our page! See you out there!

what are you guys up to?

Boston, MA
A DAY OFF... FINALLY!!!
You heard right kiddos... we finally have a real day off.  Much needed for all of us, especially the Shanes whom have poured sweat, blood, and tears over the whole transportation issue.  We made it safely to Boston with 0, count them - ZERO, problems!  Begis and I slept in (in fact, he is still sleeping, so i have to be uber quiet) while everyone else jumped on the subway to go downtown.  Hopefully they'll have fun, and knowing the group, they will definitely leave their mark on Boston =)

Grove City, OH
The Waiting Game
So we finally had enough problems with the trailer that the Shane's hired on a box-truck and a driver.  Thank you God!  Last nite's load-out went much better because it doesn't have to be as precise as that honkin' trailer when putting in gear.  One slight problem though... the driver got stopped at a weigh station for about two hours because of some sort of fuel registration or sompin that i have no clue about.  So now our load-in at this mega church won't be until 3:30 or so.  Ahhh well.. we're used to it.  Everything's gonna turn out great :-)

White Trash
So two days ago the trailer busted again.  Go figure.  We were going to have a day off in Chicago - a real day off... you know... hotel... sleep... laziness... etc.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  As I wake up, Aaron greets me at my curtain and is like "Bro, you don't even want to know."  So i close my curtain and reopen it 5 min later.  He's still there and proceeds to tell me that somehow the axels have shifted and the wheels are rubbing against the frame of the trailer.  I'm not a trailer expert, but everyone knows that's not good =)

So here we are... parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot with a couple of fast food restaurants and a grocery store nearby... po-dump-ville Winsconsin.  What would have been otherwise a miserable day turned out to be quite fun.  We had "Shane & Shane White Trash Day"  lol.... We went and bought a grill... hot dogs... chips & dip... guns... and wifebeaters!  And we grilled out in the Wal-Mart parking lot... then it got too big and we ran outta room... so we moved it across the street to the park.  Here's the pics:



Bus in the Wal-Mart parking lot - here's where it all started =)

Not a bad price for a grill!

Shane & BJ tryin to put the grill together

We hooked up an ipod to a speaker and had a two-hour U2 tribute.

We had setup two picnic tables by the bus... but then it started to rain a little bit so we hadta get under some trees.  I don't remember if we moved the tables back to where we found them.  Wups!

Yummmmmm... look at all that food =)

Taylor messin around with his gun.  We all got either pistols or uzis.  I got a co2 powered one... lol.  Everybody suddenly became my friend :)

Aaron kickin' around the football

Sarah hangin out waiting for the dogs to be done.

ShaneB documenting his grilling adventures with the camcorder.  I think at this point he was yelling "COME ON DOGS!  HURRY UP!  I WANNA EAT YOU, DOG!"

ShaneE kickin the foosball around... i don't remember who won the game... either him or Joey.  They changed the rules every round.

Food is served!

Don't be jealous!

And in case you were wondering... yes, we still do concerts.  Here's a few snapshots of what i do from my seat in the house.

Bethany on stage.

Bethany singing All I Need or Great Big Mystery.

What it looks like for Arise.

Nice and intimate for the Shane's worship set, beginning with Be Near.

Hope ya enjoyed it!  Gotta go get some grub =)  Be salt!

+stankins

Lincoln, IL
hahahahhha
Stankins here... the Shane's lighting guru.  Story time story time!  And yes, the story involves the Shanes and bus+trailer. So we basically got 35 hours to make a 27 hour drive from Santa Clarita, CA to Waterloo, IA.  Tough drive.  Show @ 7pm... gonna be tough.  About 4am yesterday morning we popped a trailer tire.  No biggie.  It happens. 

Except our trailer is so honkin' heavy that they have to use 2 hydraulic jacks to jack up the trailer.  Well they get the tire on, and Joey (drummer) begins to let his jack down, and he keeps twisting and twisting the knob to let it down and nothing happens.  He tells Shane E "it's not goin down" and E is like "Oh bro! I haven't let mine down yet, here we go!"  And as Shane E lets his down the trailer catches on Joey's jack, shoots out the retaining screw, and sprays hydraulic fluid all in his eyes, his mouth, his clothes... i mean everywhere!  hahahhahahahha... so that's 4amish.

Fast-forward a few hours to about 12:30pm.  We're now an hour or so behind schedule because of the flat tire plus the bus overheated again.  So Shane B is now driving his shift and some trucker pulls up next to him and starts flailing his arms.  Obviously this is the international sign that something is jacked up with your vehicle and you need to pull over.  So he proceeds to pull our 80ft bus/trailer-combo over and inspects the trailer again to see that another tire has popped.  And out of the corner of his eye he sees smoke about a 1/2 mile back.  We quickly put two and two together and figure out that somehow our tire has flung itself into a field and started a brush fire. 

B jumps on the bus, grabs a couple of the guys, and they all run down the road with flip-flops on with a single fire extinguisher.  They arrive at the scene and Shane B fires the extinguisher... and poooooof!!!!!  One little puff and it's done!  lol  So now they're stomping out this fire with their sandals and pounding it with the extinguished fire extinguisher =)

Finally some other cars stopped by to us rednecks put the fire out help out. So about a 20ft circle burns... and the guys finally make the trek back to the bus.

And they continue to walk...

And they keep walking...

So we get back to the bus and Shane E has woken up and started working on the trailer... again.  And it's not looking good.  Thankfully we have another spare tire left.  Unfortunately, Shane B drug the trailer for at least a mile or two while the tire was flat and it totally trashed the undercarriage of the trailer.  And then we begin piecing together the grass fire and what caused it.

Because the trailer was dragged down the highway for a while, it ripped off some of the springs underneath the trailer... some of which were projected into the field and caused the fire.

And we're still sitting on the side or the road.

But everyone seems to be in high spirits.  BJ is great with the air impact wrench.

So now Shane E has come up with a brilliant plan to fix the trailer until the next exit.  But guess where the spare tire is? =)  You guessed it.

And this is the plan to get us to the next exit.  A RATCHET STRAP!!!  Shane E has rigged up a RATCHET STRAP to hold the springs to the axel to the frame.

And this is what it looks like.  To the left, what it's supposed to look like. To the right, Shane E's contraption
..
So by this time the Iowa DPS has shown up to check out the situation.  He escorts us to the next exit and we find a truck stop that has a shop.  They can't help us but send us to a U-haul place on the other side of town.  We manage to hobble over there and somehow 30 youth and college kids showed up to help us move gear.

Unbelievable... these people were like ants!  They were all over the place and pushin gear here and there and everywhere.  Talkin about a blessing!  So we load all the gear into the Uhaul and send it off to the show.  We take the trailer by some redneck welder's shop (his name is Dave) and he says he's gonna hafta keep it for a day.  Dave likes to use the f-word a lot.  We get to the venue at about 6:20, loadin the COMPLETE sound and lighting rig, and we open doors at 7:45 and have a show at 8:05.  What a crazy day.  But it didn't stop there, oh no.  

The first U-haul was wayyyyyy overloaded.  Such that the brakes were not too effective.  So we hadta get up at 8am this morning and get ANOTHER U-haul and split up the load.  So we got to the show today at about 3:30pm and did a show at 8pm again.

I love my job =)  Be Salt!

+Stankins

drama! drama! drama! Here we go... we were on the way to Phoenix
(which was AMAZING) when Gina (that is the name of the brain of our
bus... or the bus in general) started to overheat. We barely made it
there to drop off the trailer so the crew could set up and we could take Gina into a random bus shop. She wasn't fixable...so we had to press on to California with a wounded Gina. She got a second wind and made it over the hill to San Jose! After San Jose, we were off to Santa Clarita. We absolutely LOVE the west coast!

We then, because of my fantastic routing skills, had about 30 hours to
make a 30 hour trip to Waterloo, Iowa. We finished the show in Santa
Clarita, loaded up (muy pronto)...then headed east. Shane E is the night driver, and I am the day driver. All is good. We didn't stop until Kansas! Then...some more drama.

It's 5:00 in the am, and Shane E sees a firework display in the rear
view mirror. We had a flat and the remains of the tire were letting us
know. So our drummer Joey and E were the 5:00 am pit crew. They
changed the tire only to get to the crux of the event. Needless to say, Joey got an oil shower in the face from the jack... AWESOME!

So now it's about 11:00 am we are about an hour late to Waterloo (not
bad considering), when a friendly man drove up next to the bus and started shouting and pointing. So I pulled over on the side of the freeway. We had a flat...another one. To make things more exciting, some steel that had fallen off the trailer, because of the flat, had started a brush fire on the side of the road. So our trailer is mangled on the side of the road, but I had a serious jog to do to put out a fire. I grabbed our fire extinguisher and started hauling in my driving flops. The closer I got, the more flames I saw, and the faster I flopped toward the fire. I got there only to get a small puff out of an empty fire extinguisher.
aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!
I started beating the fire with it. I don't think I made a dent
until a car load of college students helped me stomp it out.

So the walk back the bus was as a firefighter...pretty cool. Only to
find the trailer in shambles...one of our axels was barely hanging
on. E, the mechanic, was operating. Keep in mind that before all
this happened, we were late!

It's funny, because Shane and I don't even stress anymore...we have had what seems like hundreds of these days full of drama with God's faithfulness holding it together...We've never missed a show before...if you only knew how much of a mess we are (and Gina), you would be shouting Halleluia because of His power to save. The Lord's determination to move in the hearts of man.

We have what seems to be an unfixable trailer full of sound and 20 more
concerts ahead...with our hands in the air going "can't wait to see
how this works out." We made it to a nearby truck stop, then to
nearby U-haul, where, somehow, there were 30 people WAITING for us to
get there to help move ALL the sound equipment from the trailer to a
U-haul truck. We left the trailer in Ames, IA with a fix it man, and
drove the bus and U-haul on to Waterloo. We got there at 6:00... set up the ENTIRE system and lights in time for the show at 8:00 unbelievable! To the praise of His glorious grace!!!! stay tuned
for more drama tomorrow!

b

Hey there fellow bloggers! Here are some God thoughts I have been having lately… they kind of scare me to death… hope they scare you too. Shane b





But the stadium was full, Lord,
Of young and old!
And I wrote an anthem that took us to gold!
But the gold started changing when all the "hurray"
Was put through the fire as stubble and hay.

Truly what cannot be measured in this life will be my measure before Him. The unseen surviving the fire. The lowest parts of me. The hidden parts. What's done in secret. Why is it so hard to labor in the unseen? To spend my costly time there? The time i could be spending on my space. Or tv. Or chasing whatever ambition that I have convinced myself is worthy in the moment.

And what will it take for me to realize that this place is not vain! That the unseen before God is a place of accomplishment. A place of reward. That my greatest accomplishments in life aren't the ones that are praised the most, or the ones that make me feel the best about myself. They are not the ones that are the flashiest, or the ones that get me to the top of the Christian food chain. They are not the ones that put more people in the seats. Or product on the shelf…

They are not even seen.

"But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you (mat 6:6)."

"But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face
so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you (Mat 6:17-18)


Oh NO! What could this mean! Could this be true of the invisible? What a sobering thought as I read this text today. That I could be spending most of my time laboring on a structure. A giant wooden statue for all the world to see. Oh, it doesn't look wooden! It's shiny! And painted gold! My statue is tall and pretty and godly… and flammable. It is seen. And it will burn.

I understand that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works… that people might see them and praise our Father in heaven. But if these works turn in to our delight. If they turn in to our statue…

Mercy God! Won't you cause my heart to be low today. To delight in the opportunity to share in Your meekness. To be satisfied by faith in Your approval alone. Thank you for Jesus who redeems my idol tendencies and sanctifies my fallen nature. Even my failure to drink from the fountain of living water… this heart so prone to be satisfied with the lie of broken cisterns. Grant me the faith to measure my successes by Your Word alone. And to shun the the measuring rods of this day. Lord, carve out pathways of righteousness in my heart. Beaten down path ways that are full of imperishable labor that lasts. Surviving the fire. Lord, grant me a love for the unseen. In the might Name of jesus, amen.


1 Cor 26-29
26For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;

27but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,

28and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are,

29so that no man may boast before God.

30But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,

31so that, just as it is written, "LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD."