New band member...not

I probably feel like a new band member to whoever reads these crazy blogs...but yeah i am the same old bass player levi's been using for the last year and a half. I'm Matt Szkarlat...or 'Kobe' as some of my friends call me (only Levi). So the last months have been different. Transitioning from working full-time to having three weeks off (to 'prepare for school' , to moving to Cambridge (Mexico as Levi put it) for school full-time! So yeah, it's been different, but God's been solid as usual.

The last few weeks more specifically have been VERY different. Kind of got my heart broken, attempting to learn music theory, moving away for the first time (which has lead me to attempt to cook), meeting new musicians, going into major debt, travelling back and forth for different 'gigs'...lots of good stuff. But it's all been a great experience. Having to stretch yourself is never a bad thing i have learned...although it never feels good at the time.


So that's it for today...i have to be up early for a class tomorrow (haven't said that in about two years), then i get to lace up the skates and play some hockey...looking forward to it :)

Peace out dudes.

P.S. The songs sound great :)

A Break From CD Jibberish

Well guys.. It's funny because you've probably only seen one, maybe two, references to the upcoming album release.. But to me it feels like it's all I've been talking about/thinking about for years. So today, I take a break, and I give you a look into the plain old routine that is my life. You must think I'm terribly conceited.. lol But the reality is I don't suspect more than one person reads this thing, and that one person is my mom, (Hi mom :) and it's important to communicate with your mom.. so what's conceited about that? Yeah, I thought so.

So this past week I said goodbye to Stayner Ontario and I moved to Mexico. Actually I moved to Cambridge, but some days it feels like Mexico. Nobody's wearing a sombrero, and it's not very hot, and there aren't many tacos.. but it's not home. My family is somewhere else.. Amanda is somewhere else.. My church is somewhere else.. It's been an adjustment. And you may not know it with my hobby of choice, but I'm a shy dude. I'm hiding in my room like a turtle (I've heard they also hide in their rooms?) and I'm basically just playing guitar and basketball with Matt. For those of you who don't know, Matt is my bassist. He's the little soulful man in the band (He's not that little.. He could probably beat me up..) We have yet to kill each other, but in this cramped space it wont take long. I'm taking resumes for new bassists now ;)

It's nice to be in a place where I need to put a new hat on.. At home I'm a musician. I'm a musician with a pretty girlfriend, and it's easy to let those things define me. Now I'm in a place where everyone's a musician, and no-one knows Amanda. I've got to figure out who I am behind the guitar..
I was talking to a dude yesterday, and yes I said dude (go ninja turtles), and he was talking to me like I had it all together. It almost made me laugh out loud.. There's always something about ourselves we want to change.. I'm the sweatiest man you'll ever meet. It's really embarrassing. And I have a lisp.. And my hands are weird lookin'
If we focus on that stuff we're just never going to be satisfied. I have the perfect Levi image in my head, and I can't ever be that guy. But I believe in God. And I believe He made me just like this. That's enough for me now. It's easy to look confident when you walk around thinking like that. "I'm not ashamed of it, and I don't need to change it. This is me, and in God's own words, "It's good!""

I'm not a biblical scholar y'all. But it breaks my heart hearing someone tell me how ugly they are. Shake off all that junk. Life's too short. I may not have it together, and I certainly don't have all the fans and fame I'm "supposed" to have.. but I've got joy. What else do you need?

Raptors season starts soon. I'm one of the bigger Raptor fans you're ever going to meet and even I'm having a hard time getting excited for this season.. What a year this is going to be..

Back to the cd

CD Release Time :)

Well everyone.. I concede that I am terrible with this website. I don't stay on top of it, I don't keep it fresh, but you know what? Who's perfect? I'm trying with this whole technology thing, but I'm a pen and paper guy. It's going to take a while for me to enjoy sitting in front of my computer, but the conformist in me is determined to try.

That being said.. Hello! It's so wonderful to see you here again. You look about three months older than when we last talked. The band and I have been in cd mode (also known as broke mode). It's more work than we expected, especially putting on the finishing touches, but the cd is set to release this September. Basically, we saw the pained look on the faces of the children knowing that they were about to enter into another year of school and we thought, "Band, how can we bring joy back into the lives of the children?"

The answer.. Would You Go by the Levi denBok Band. Now I'm not saying that this album is going to make all your troubles go away, but look how much Matt Damon enjoyed it.. We've done studies and proven that buying/listening to this album will increase your quality of life by 15%. Now I don't want to brag, but when you compare that to the 3% increase caused by a job promotion, or the 7% caused by the bearing of your first child, you begin to see what a significant joy this album is really bringing. We've infused the mellowness of a moment of worship with the swagger of Kobe Bryant, and we've come up with something that's going to change your life.

Don't do it for yourself. Do it for your cd player. Look at the junk you've been putting in there recently.. Miley Cyrus? I mean really? Listen, like our music or not, at least it's local. :)

The album will be going for $15 a pop. I know what you're thinking.. "$15? Did he say $15?" This isn't just an album. This is a life investment. Also, it's a long album and I promise you'll get your money's worth.

Thank you for listening to my sarcasm. I spent too much time in the sun today.

Levi

ps. I'm going to be running through the songs in the album over the next couple of weeks. Posting lyrics and letting you know the story behind them. Why not right?

Raking in the Wind

First off, I need to say that I've been the biggest Raptor fan for three years now, and I've never been as upset with them as I am now after that game in Chicago. I will also follow that up with the acknowledgement that very few of you care about the Raptors or are aware of how important that game was.. I just needed to let you know. I am a broken man today :(


So I just got off my radio interview with life and I didn't say anything that could be misinterpreted or possibly offensive, so that in itself is a victory. I have a disease called "footinyomouth-anitus" and it leads me to say some pretty amazing things, but today it was on vacation, and I'm thanking God for that.


This brings me to my epiphany. The other day my mom asks me to rake the lawn, and being the wonderful son that I am, I got right on out there and started raking. But as I'm raking I notice that it's actually ridiculously windy outside. So I'm moving the leaves from where they were, but the wind is just scooping them up and putting them somewhere else.
"This looks a lot like my life" I thought to myself. And seriously, it does. Life is like raking in the wind. You see this chaos you've got going on in your life, and you think, "I'm going to make this into a neat little pile here, and make this into a neat little pile here.." But the wind will have none of that. If you want to move some stuff around than that's fine, but don't think for a second that you're going to decide how this will look in the end. And so God starts blowing on my plans, and starts making them look a little more like the plans that He had for me in the beginning.


So for this reason I will never rake a lawn again. Too much thinking.. I'm downright exhausted.. Also, does anyone know when the next season of the Office will be out on dvd? I'm starving here.
Obey your parents. This is my lesson for the day ;) Also, One Tribe is this Thursday (the 15th) at 7 pm @ Clearview Community Church in Stayner. Check it out.

Levi

Todays Adventure

Wow, I feel like I just put a blog up yesterday..
I think sometimes you just need to take a look at what your intentions were to decide whether something was a good idea or not. These are the latest words of wisdom that my wonderful girlfriend has taught me. As it turns out, sometimes I'm quick to speak and slow to contemplate. I'm gonna work on that.


So I've been drinking a tonne of coffee lately, (and if you know me than you know this is weird because I hate the stuff) just because the world is making me drink it. McDonalds was offering it for free, and it's not as if I'm going to walk into a restaurant and say no to something that doesn't cost me a penny.. and now Tim's is dishing out free cars so what am I going to do? Sip my iced cap while Matt, Drew and Trevor are zipping around in their free cars with their free donuts? I doubt it.
The thing is, I can't for the life of me seem to win anything.. Which brings me to my story.

Once upon a time I was picking a girl up from work. We'll call her Amanda. So I thought it would be sweet to pick her up a coffee on my way in. (also if I buy her a coffee I can justify buying two coffees thus multiplying my chances of winning by two) So I'm in the store and I think to myself, "Self, I never win with the larges." and I envisioned the Tim Hortons winning cup guy picking the winning cups and laughing, "I'll put it on a medium cup! They'll never buy the medium cup!"
"He thinks he's so smart.." I murmered to myself before proceeding to buy two medium coffees. That'll show him...

As we're leaving she has to shuffle the seat before entering because I just spent TWO and a HALF HOURS getting my tires changed and they were now taking up all the space in the car. We take off down the street and I hear something fall on my car.
"Ohh man!" I hear her exclaim. "I left my coffee on the car!" I give her mine, because she likes coffee, I hate coffee, and all I want is a free car. It's a loser, and now I'm going crazy, because I was so sure I had bought a winner and we had left that cup just sitting on the street..

We go through our night as usual, help with the youth group, watch the marriage ref (Jimmy Falon was hilarious!), and then I proceed to take her home. But as if through some kind of mind reading power she could sense my uneasiness with leaving that cup behind. My motto, "No cup left behind." So she turns to me and sais ever so sweetly, "Would you like to go back and find that cup?"

We pulled back into the parking lot and retraced our steps. I backed out, pulled onto the street, but we just couldn't see it. Amanda happened to notice a car parked on the side of the road that wasn't there earlier. Low and behold, behind the right rear tire there was a medium Tim Horton's coffee cup. The rim was still unrrrrolled. Surely any passerby would have seen the cup and thought, "It's already been rolled up." 99 times out of 100 they would have been right. But not this fateful night. They had walked right past this potential goldmine all day long.. If only they knew that that cup they had walked by was in tact and ready for rrrolling.

Needless to say after all of that it was a loser..

I'll see you in line tommorow at Tim's. This time I'm buying a large

-Levi

We should have thought this one through...

So a few of us got together to watch Team Canada vs the United States, and just before the 3rd period starts, Levi announces that he bought some hot peppers for Matt and I to eat. I thought he was just kidding, but then he pulled out a bag with 2 little orange peppers.

You may be wondering why in the world we would even think about eating them... but you have to understand that Matt and I are stupid...

That and we both feel the need to express publicly how we are better than each other at eating spicy food.

I had never seen these peppers before.. so I had no idea what I was getting into. I had tried a small piece of the skin, and had determined that it really wasn't bad at all.

I was very very wrong.



Turns out there were Habanero peppers, which are possible the hottest pepper in the world... If you're bored and want to laugh pretty hard, do a quick youtube search of people eating them.

After watching a few videos, I think Matt and I handled ourselves pretty well.
Round 1 was a draw.

Air Raid!

So we just finished a nice little week of music and I've found myself with some stories to tell.

First off, thanks to everyone who came out and heard us at AirRaid. We had a great time! I love seeing familiar faces when we're out playing at different places. ..Nice rhyme..

This photo was taken outside the AirRaid venue. They brought the bat signal! ..He still didn't come..

So if you weren't there let me fill you in. AirRaid is a concert put on by Life 100.3 every year and they always showcase fun and exciting bands while giving local bands a shot on stage. This year it was Group1Crew. I was really looking forward to spending time with them backstage and getting to know some of the ins and outs of the business.

I didn't get to say a word to them because they got themselves a seperate backstage room and ate dinner on their own.

Lesson 1. If I ever make it big, I will never be too big to eat dinner with the locals and laugh with them. Never.

But we got to spend time with two other local bands- The Light Division and To Tell

The Light Division- Heavy band! They play a much rockier style than we do and they play it well. We've done a couple shows with them and everytime I see them walk in I get a warm fuzzy feeling. They're really nice guys and they're fun to work with. Their merch table had a lot more fans hanging around than ours...

Who needs fans ;)

To Tell- These guys are out of London, and they're amassing a lot of playing experience. They opened for Sanctus Real the night before AirRaid. I ate sweet chili heat doritos and watched the opening ceremony of the olympics the night before AirRaid.. Wouldn't trade it for the world. I love doritos. The frontman plays piano like you wouldn't believe, and their fun sound fit the AirRaid bill perfectly. Their band is also really easy to get along with. All in all it was a fun backstage.

Now if you know anything about our style, you'd know that AirRaid is not our average venue. We really needed to pull some magic out of our sleeves to try and keep the energy in the room when we took to the stage. We always pray before we play, and boy did we put our time in before AirRaid. It was a stretching experience but it was so much fun.

We all looked like we'd never played a show before when AJ came up and told us we were on in five minutes. He escorted us down through the crowd and they were screaming and clapping.. it was a different night than we're used to. It did wonders for our ego though.

Anyways, great night, great friends, great fans and thanks again for following us.

On a seperate note, last night was OneTribe and it was amazing! God is so good and He's always doing something exciting at OneTribe it seems. You want to find the heart of our band? Come out to OneTribe.