I am pleased to announce the release of my third full-length album. In many ways, this space opera worship album has been developing in my mind for the last year. But all of it was suddenly made alive when our dear friend Sarah Hollis visited from Florida in January of this year. During the week’s visit, the two of us found ourselves in my studio discovering chord progressions and recording her piano’d movements. Sarah has a quality in her songwriting that is immensely pure and authentic. From the first time I saw her play, over a decade ago, I could see the beginnings of raw, perfect talent. Like her personality, her music is different, daring, and violent—though hidden under a soft exterior; when one hears her create, they feel those things come out. I am grateful that her compositions find a way to align with my own, yet differ enough, with ideas I never would have discovered myself. In the brief moment of composition, my music-soul came alive, and I was hard pressed to stop myself for several weeks from vomiting menagerie ideas I had compounded in the months prior.
My first album was a cathartic experience, full of anger, betrayal and hurt; the second, a fearful attempt to trust Jesus in the wilderness. At its heart, this third piece is a worship album; It is what I’ve had in my soul all along, yet couldn’t express until now. I knew that space would be the major theme throughout it; a place that consumes the majority of our universe, yet we know little of, misunderstand most of what we know, and have nearly naught capability of discovering its vastness. But the heavens declare God’s glory, and we have uncovered that the planets and stars are rejoicing in melody, and theirs together make a strange and foreign song. My attempt was to portray, through human weakness, an image of that beautiful madness.
I knew that this time around I would resort to covering worship songs, unlike previous albums. This, to me, was a necessity. For one, to honor the beautiful songwriting of generations before me, and secondly, because these songs specifically have taken me to the heavens several times before. Martin Smith’s “Come Holy Spirit” is a perfect example of raw, emotional words and melody that emulate what the angels must be singing in the third heaven. “Our Father”, made widely known by Bethel Church, continues this theme, though for me personally, has taken my imagination into other worlds, drawn by the Holy Spirit, and ripped from comfort and accessibility. Bien is a rich and talented band out of Nashville that has blessed me for the past few years; their song “Happy to be Alive” is exactly what the world needs right now—a jovial reminder that we are alive in Christ and that is a happy thing. Their song in my album is very specific to follow Perelandra, which to this day remains my favorite book ever written, full of hope, joy, beauty, terror, love, and redemption. Finally, I wanted to incorporate “To Him Who Sits on the Throne” because of its history in the church and, specifically, my life. A song that I sang as a boy playing in the garage or backyard; to this day I keep safe a small piece of shriveled, worn and yellowed parchment of the chord chart scribbled down by my father’s hand before he played it on cornet in the church band with Ray Goolsby leading.
My fascination with space has always been at the underbelly of my upbringing with a father that worked on rockets at Cape Canaveral for three decades. But my baptism into its fascination was, and forever will be, stirred on by C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. I could not tolerate the thought of composing themes of space without incorporating Lewis’ story of Ransom and the Field of Arbol. Therefore, every ounce of this album is riddled by it; Malacandra, Perelandra, our Silent Planet; even Oyarsa and Glundandra (Jupiter’s Song)—a piece that I attempted to incorporate the violent reverberation of Jupiter’s bombastic melody under a song of glory to God.
It is one thing to express oneself’s worship and admiration to God—something that is holy and reverent regardless of the outcome, as long as it is honest and passionate. It is entirely different, and terrifying in its own right, to attempt the expression of another man’s great work; one of which I hold so esteemed. But the future is not for the fainthearted; it is for the brave.
To tell the tales I wanted to share, I knew my wife Carlia must take front and center on the microphone. Her voice’s ability to express power and vulnerability is unmatched. There wasn’t room for error in my mind, and though I love singing with all my heart, I knew that it would fail to capture what was paramount to me. For that, I am grateful to the Lord for giving me a bride with as much talent and humility as my wife; a woman that has decades of experience, training and talent behind her, yet can take the simplest suggestion with gracious aplomb and bloom it into a glorious treasure.
Therefore, after all of this, these wild and bizarre compositions, I am pleased and dedicated to releasing, in hopes that any and but one could find hope, joy, laughter, sorrow, and praise to the God of our universe and His heavenly realm.
This Place Called Earth is Not our Home. We are but renters and stewards of a land that has been pushing us from its womb since the day of our conception. Far into the heavens we must go; and nothing else matters but that journey onward across stars and galaxies into the Creator’s arms.
Releasing March 26th, 2024. Preorder available at https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/keithgalderman/this-place-called-earth-is-not-our-home-2
Keith G. Alderman 