JP104 – Thanks and Goodnight

Well, it’s been a wonderful seven years.

I embarked on this project with Scott Taube and Abe Hege in May 2005. Scott and I have accomplished many things since then, working with a lot of different people in a lot of different places over the years. It is at this time that I feel like I have thoroughly invested everything into Philmont that I am able, both personally and professionally; and it is time for a change.

I told the guys this, and it is the truth: this is absolutely the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to follow through with. Philmont has been my life, more or less, for many years now. We’ve seen and done some amazing things, and met many truly amazing people, none of whom I will soon forget. Thank you to everyone who has watched me play a show, bought a CD, let me stay in your home, given me a ride to some late-night eatery, or anything similarly gracious. I’ve lived moments with Philmont that I know will be on my highlight reel at the end of this life.

All this being said, I am not disappearing from the face of the earth. I will be finishing out the summer with the guys, and my last show will be August 31st at Lifelight Festival in South Dakota [Last year at this festival, as I was driving our bus up to the festival grounds, we got rear-ended and our trailer was demolished! You’re lucky I’m giving you a chance to redeem yourself, South Dakota!] After August, I hope that all of you will continue to follow alongside me in my journeys, as I work on producing other artists’, as well as my own, musical endeavors. I know God’s purpose for me is a musical one, and I don’t plan on straying from that.

On top of that, I will still be very present on the “Facebooks” and the “Twitters”, so let’s keep being friends! And if you want to come to a show to tell me goodbye, or how I’m you’re least favorite member of the band, you still have some time.

Seriously, you’re all the best, and you haven’t heard the last of me or Philmont, so keep your ears peeled. Have a great day.

Josiah Prince

www.twitter.com/josiahp
www.facebook.com/josiah.prince

Tour Wrap-up

Well we’re all piled back into the bus and headed to Nashville then Charlotte. Last night in Davenport, IA was the final show of the acoustic tour. We’re planning on keeping our acoustics on the road so we can still play the occasional unplugged show. Tour was awesome. To review, over the last couple of months, we did acoustic legs in NC, TX and the West Coast then finished up with some IN, MN and IA shows.
A lot of people have asked me if I like playing acoustic more than full band and that’s hard to answer. I like them both for very different reasons. I love the energy of the full band show but it’s nice to break out the acoustics and focus more on arrangement and harmonies.
If you haven’t downloaded it yet, remember that “Rearranged & Unplugged” is available on iTunes and whenever else you buy digital music (including Spotify) so check it out, download it and support us!
Also remember that there’s a video for the Rihanna cover at YouTube.com/Philmont so share that with your friends.

Last night we ended the tour in style at the historic Black Hawk hotel in Davenport, IA. Someone involved with the show had an in there so they were able to get a suite donated! It was amazing! There were TVs in the bathroom mirrors and even a bowling alley in the basement. By far the swankiest place I’ve ever stayed!
Here are some pictures:

I’m so looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight! We’ve got all of April off since Josiah’s getting married and is taking like 3 honeymoons so I’ll get to spend a lot of time writing and (hopefully) enjoying some nice Nashville spring weather.

Be sure to keep an eye out on our Facebook page as we add summer shows- we’ll be busy!

-Scott

Colorblindness, The Hunger Games, Mall of America

What’s up er’body!

We’re currently driving to our show in Morris, MN at the Common Cup Coffee House. We play at 7:00 tonight, so come hang out with us!

For those of you who haven’t heard, I have a story to share with you.
On St. Patrick’s Day (Google the history of this holiday. It’s fascinating) I decided to wear a green shirt of mine, which also happens to be one of my favorite shirts, as to avoid being pinched. It’s a v-neck shirt with small black and dark green stripes. Well after I put it on in the hotel, Josiah makes a comment about how the shirt isn’t green and I disregard it. Well later I’m in a room filled with people in this huge debate over the color of my shirt. Some say it has blue stripes, some say it’s grey or blueish grey, but everyone is telling me that it isn’t green. So finally Scott pulls up a color blindness test on his phone, just to see. And after a few of the tests, while everyone in the room can see shapes or numbers in the pictures that don’t exist to me, it becomes clear that I am quite literally colorblind. With what we’ve diagnosed as a red/green deficiency. Pretty mind-blowing to figure out at 23 years old. Plus knowing now that ever since I bought that shirt and every single time I wore it, I thought I was wearing a green shirt. Our friend Austin actually made a Facebook page about. If you search for Josh Guion Foundation you can view it and “like” it.

Enough about that already, dang.
So, I’ve never been to the Mall of America and I hear it’s a pretty big deal. And this Saturday, the four of us in the Philmont camp have already bought our tickets to watch The Hunger Games in the VIP theater inside of the Mall of America, with extra leg room and super awesome chairs (that I heard recline, but I won’t get my hopes up)! We’ve all finished the trilogy and could not be more stoked on going to see the movie. Unless someone brings me a “Team Gale” t-shirt to the show tonight. Then I’d be more stoked. But seriously, if someone does that, we’d be best bffl’s for life.

That reminds me. “ATM Machine” and “PIN Number” are both redundant. If you say either of those, you’re actually saying, “Automated Teller Machine Machine” and “Personal Identification Number Number.”

This acoustic tour is almost over! Sad face. It’s been so much fun and we got to go to all the ends of the country and make so many new friends, as well as see a bunch of old friends again. But I haven’t been home in almost a month now, so it’ll definitely be nice to see everyone there again. Then I’m going to visit Lauren and spend a few days in Charleston! It’ll be like a vacation from my vacation of a job.

Anywho. If anyone is going to be at the Mall of America tomorrow, come find us and say hi! For everyone else, I’ll see you next week!

Click on my face and follow me on Twitter to keep up with the dumb things I do day-to-day!

JP103 – quick

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^ That was me doing an impression of writing a blog really fast because we have to leave the Caribou Coffee that we are sitting at right now in Wilmar, Minnesota. I have a minute or so, so here we go.

As you now know, we are in Minnesota, where it is cold and dreary out. This is especially bad news for me, because I have been under the weather for the past few days, battling sore throat and cold symptoms. Luckily we had a couple off days for me to rest, but I’m still getting over it, so keep me in prayer so I can sing at these shows!

The big news of the day in the Philmont camp is that we just purchased tickets to see the Hunger Games this weekend! Better yet, we are seeing it at Mall of America since we will be here in Minnesota!! Better YET, we bought tickets for the “VIP theater”, where all the seats have more leg room and there is a private snack bar in the room. Needless to say we are mega-stoked!

Meanwhile, I’ve got a wedding coming up, three weeks from this Saturday. Gonna be a married man! Crazy stuff.

Well, now we really have to leave, so until next time, bye!

Just Left the Coast

It’s about 1am and I’m laying back in my own bed in Nashville enjoying the feeling of my own mattress and reflecting on he west coast leg of our acoustic tour. We had such an amazing time, played some great shows, met a lot of new friends as well as reconnected with some old ones and saw a lot of cool sites.

Typically we travel in a small bus and trailer and it’s very hard to get into cities to explore. Also, we’re usually playing full band shows which require us to load in shortly after lunch thus eating up a good chunk of our day. This trip was different and the late load ins and rental minivan made exploring an option! I took a lot of pictures so instead of telling you what all we saw, I’ll just upload some of my favorite photos from the trip here in this blog post. If you follow me on Instagram, Twitter or Facbook these may be old news to you!

Brittany and I after landing in San Diego. She hates to fly but she was a trooper!

I celebrated my 28th birthday on day 1 of the trip!

Saw the pacific ocean.

My birthday present to me. Done at a shop in downtown L.A.

Rad shot of some boats.

Phoenix was beautiful this time of year. Found this prickly dude during an afternoon stroll.

One of my favorite shows of the tour was this last minute house show in Chandler, AZ.

After Phoenix, in route to Carson City we got bored of driving and decided to find a Geocache in the Mohave Desert! The next person to locate this one will get some Philmont swag!

A view of the snowy mountains from the desert.

During our drive to Carson City it got too snowy to continue so we found ourselves in the ski resort town of Mammoth, CA.

Leaving Carson City we found these historic mining ruins.

We also stopped at Lake Tahoe to climb around and enjoy the views.

You don’t find may restaurants along the winding, mountainous routes so you wind up as some unique little eateries. This was Cooks Station- great garlic fries!

My first time to San Francisco so we had to pay homage to the location from the Full House intro!

Golden Gate Bridge.

The night before flying out we dipped into LA to be tourists one last time. Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

We had a blast! Trips like this make me feel so blessed to be able to do what I do!

Yo!

So we just finished playing our first ever show in Carson City, Nevada! And we all had a blast, so I’m sure it won’t be our last show here. We got to play with our good buddy, Josiah James and some new friends of ours in a band called I Am They. If you’ve never checked out either one of them, you should do yourself a favor and get on that.

Tomorrow we’re making the drive from Nevada up to Northern California. We have a show in Oakhurst tomorrow night, then Antioch on Friday, and then we’ll be playing in San Jose on Saturday. Then we’ll be making the long drive back down to San Diego where we’ll return our sweet rental mini van and board our flight back to Nashville. This has been a rad little acoustic tour and I’ll be sad to see it come to a close.

So yesterday we experienced two completely different climates.. We woke up and started the drive to NV, most of which was through deserts (which I love to ride through). The weather in this part of California was in the low 80°s and incredibly windy. Then once we started driving through mountains and climbing altitude, the temperature dropped and the snow started falling. We ended up having to get chains for our tires and staying the night in Mammoth, CA. All in the same day! I didn’t pack diverse enough.

I don’t know how many of you are into Geocaching, but my mom just recently introduced it to me at home and we’ve gone out and found a few and it’s a good time! Well we in Philmont decided that if we have an off day where we’re just driving to the next city that we would start looking for these Geocaches. Yesterday we found our first one! It was somewhere in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and so much fun to hunt down. It was crazy windy outside, but eventually Scott spotted it in some of the sagebrush. We took a couple of trinkets and left a few pieces of Philmont merchandise for the next passerby to sift through. So if you’re into Geocaching, who knows, maybe you’ll get some free Philmont merch out of it!

Uggh well it’s late and I’ve just kind of been rambling at you for a while now. Here’s some pictures of some of our escapades from the last couple of days!

Thanks for reading! See you next week

JP102 – Left Coast Envy

Hey folks! I am in snowy Mammoth Lake, California right now. Which is only interesting because I woke up in sunny Phoenix, AZ yesterday morning. It is 14 degrees outside now, whereas yesterday was shorts/flip-flop weather in Arizona. Today our show is in Carson City, Nevada, where we will be reunited with our pal (and my name-twin) Josiah James! Also at the show will be the band I Am They, who we have not met before, but are looking forward to it!

So we spent a couple of days in Phoenix hanging out with some great friends. A little backstory: In January 2009, Philmont took its first trip to the West Coast, in our brand new bus Burnie, to play at RageFest in Phoenix, and subsequently begin the Out of Control tour with Capital Lights and A Rotterdam November. We ended up spending a lot of time in the Phoenix area that month, and made a lot of friends in the process. It’s always great to get back out there and hang with all those peeps whenever we can.

So while we were in Phoenix this time, we played an acoustic house show (all these shows have been acoustic of late, ICYF [ <--abbreviation for "In Case You Forgot", to save space]) at the Van de Kamp family's house, where we were staying. We got their backyard all set up with chairs, blankets, lights, candles, and a fire pit, and hoped for the best. It ended up being one of the most fun shows of 2012 thus far! Had about 50 people in that backyard, singing along and having a good time. And if I'm correct (and I sometimes am), we played our longest set in Philmont history that night. I believe it was 20 songs – this included 4 brand new tunes, 4 cover songs, some requests, and of course our normal slew of Philmont classics (ha!) It was really great.

On the home front, I have five more Saturdays as a free man! My wedding day is fast approaching, and, as you might imagine, I have a diverse cocktail of feelings buzzing around – mostly excitement though. I was thinking the other day, that I haven't had a major life change like this since I moved away to college in 2005. And even that wasn't as drastic of a shift, because I still didn't have many responsibilities, and I came home every weekend. So yeah, I'm a little apprehensive, but totally stoked. My fiancée is the bomb.

Have a great week, and don't forget to floss!

Three Songs to Buy on iTunes This Week:
1. "Poison" by Shiny Toy Guns

2. "Nothing But Our Love" by Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.

3. "You Can Do Better Than Me" by Death Cab for Cutie

You See Flowers in These Weeds

Hello world!
I’m in AZ right now sitting in the shade and soaking in this beautiful weather! We’re well into the left-coast leg of our acoustic tour and it’s been a blast so far. There’s plenty to chat about but I don’t want to gobble up all the blog content and leave the other dudes with nothing to talk about so I’m gonna talk about my new tattoo.
I got my first tattoo years ago in Nashville when we were traveling through on one of Philmont’s first tours. It was a great bonding experience and something I’ll remember forever. Since then I’ve really wanted to get more but they’re expensive and I’m a baller on a budget so I’ve always used the money on other silly little things like paying bills, feeding myself and putting gas in the car!

My birthday was on the first of this month so I had some cash in my pocket and a morning free while we were in L.A. so I decided it was time for #2.

Justin Sams designed it for me. It’s a dandelion with the roots running into the words, “You See Flowers in These Weeds”.
That’s a lyric from one of my favorite songs of all times- “Dandelions” by Five Iron Frenzy.
They’re a ska band (who, after a 10 year hiatus, are about to release a new album in 2013!)
It’s a beautiful song about how God sees us as something beautiful when it’s just as easy to look at us as ugly weeds.
If you’re not familiar with the band or the song check them out on the Google machine!

I’m also interested in hearing your opinions on tattoos on Christians. I know some people are for them and some are against them.
What are your thoughts?

Yo!

So we’re hanging out in sunny California this week! Except that it’s night time right now..

Anyway. We flew into San Diego from Nashville yesterday morning and we’re going to be out here for a couple of weeks! We so incredibly excited.

We started off the day today driving to a local comic book store to film some bits for Real Videos and then drove to a different location to film an episode of G-Rock that we’ll be hosting! If you guys watch either of those programs than keep an eye out for us sometime in the near future!

Tonight we played our second show on this acoustic tour and it was in a C28 store inside of a mall! It was my first time playing and in-store show and it was a pretty good time. Everyone who worked there was super nice and accommodating. Thanks for having us, C28! Hopefully we’ll be able to do something like that again.

Sorry my blog is so late! I’ll have another one for you by Tuesday.

Wabbit Season…Duck Season…Wabbit Season…

I have a confession to make. When I was a kid (and used to naturally wake up early) I would sneak downstairs on Sunday morning and turn on cartoons with the volume so low that I had to be inches away from the screen in order to hear what was going on. This was all in the hopes that my parents would sleep through church and I could stay in my PJs until lunch. Did anyone else do this?
That has nothing to do with what I wanted to talk about in my blog but it came to mind and made me chuckle so I thought I’d share.

However, my blog does involve cartoons (so there’s the link). I’m not talking about the cartoons that are on TV now- though I do love a good Spongebob marathon- but the cartoons that were on when I was a kid. I’m talking about Looney Toons, Tom & Jerry, Roadrunner and Coyote– the classics. The main difference between those cartoons and the cartoons you’ll find today is that the old ones showed things that would never fly now-a-days. There was violence, hunting, cats eating mice, smoking and the occasional drunk Tom Cat hiccuping and stumbling around after falling into a barrel of booze (clearly labeled X-X-X). It was all in good fun but they eventually got pushed off of the air because kids are impressionable and the fear is that we would start to emulate what we saw on the screen whilst quietly avoiding church.

You may expect my stance on this issue to be something along the lines of, “That stuff won’t effect what kids think. Surely they can draw the line between fact and fantasy!” I can’t honestly say that though. As a kid who tried to parachute off the jungle gym with only the aid of a plastic grocery bag I clearly lacked a grasp on that line. In the cartoons the characters would go underwater using a regular drinking straw as a snorkel. Guess what? I had a pool growing up and that crap did not work! Turns out that a ten-year-old’s lungs need more oxygen than even the thickest Wendy’s straw can provide. Ever put a bike pump in your mouth? I did. And as you may have guessed not only did it not inflate me but it left a terrible aftertaste. I’m just lucky no one ever pointed a gun at me as a child because I probably would have stuck my finger in the barrel, taken another bite of a readily available carrot and said, “What’s up doc?” knowing that once the perp pulled the trigger the gun would surely backfire in his face.

All this to say that YES people are impressionable. In addition it seems the younger people are the more they absorb. The other night Brittany and I went to dinner with my brother and his toddler, Talan. Before giving Talan my lemon (which that weird little kid loves to eat) I used my straw to dig out the seeds. When I handed it over the first thing he did was pick up a straw and start to mimic me.

We all look up to other people whether it be a parent, an older brother, a friend maybe a professional athlete or, heck I’ll say it, a musician. And like it or not- there’s always someone looking up to you, following your example picking up a straw for no other reason than just because it’s what you did. So often you won’t even know you’re having an effect on a person. It’s kind of a scary position to be in! Especially no-a-days with all of your followers on Twitter and Facebook—everyone has access to what you’re doing and saying even when you’re not face to face.

I want to challenge you all to keep that in mind this next week. What kind of role model do you want to be? You don’t have to be a Superbowl winning quarterback or a crazy cartoon rabbit to have a huge effect on someone else but it’s ultimately up to you whether you’re going to make it a positive one or a negative one.
Just some food for thought.