Singer – Songwriter – Counselor
Last night was so sweet! We had a turnout of 70+ friends and family from our community to the release party at Joyful Noise Music Center for Your Love Comes After Me! We sang a couple of worship songs and then I performed a mini concert of 3 songs from the EP. I think people really enjoyed ‘It Is Well’ (great singing voices from everybody) and ‘Kingdom Come.’ I also did the title track, ‘Your Love Comes After Me.’ And of course, I have to admit, everyone singing happy birthday to me was pretty darn sweet! I was proud to show off my beautiful family. I couldn’t have done it without them and or course not without my Heavenly Father who has been leading every step of the way!
The food was great and we had some giveaways of t-shirts, thumb drives with the title track/digital album and CD’s. I am almost to the end of my first stash of 100 CDs. I need to place another order this week! An added blessing at the end was a gift from the Joyful Noise Music Center (John Mangiameli) who decided to bless me with a music stand to cross off my wish list so I can have what I need to perform at other venues around the community. I still have the need of a keyboard and monitor on my wish list (I’ve been borrowing the keyboard from my church worship leader, Dave).
Thank you everyone for supporting this ministry and my songwriting! I know I am so blessed and God is so good no matter what comes my way!
Let me know what your favorite song is from the album!
Blessings to you all!
Love,
Jen
I am very excited to announce the debut release of my EP, Your Love Comes After Me. You can get it here on iTunes, at Amazon or Indieheaven. You can also sample and purchase individual songs digitally or purchase the physical CD right here on my website Store or Downloads page!
Saturday, September 15 at 6:30 p.m. I will be celebrating the release of the new album which will be hosted by Joyful Noise Music Center (next to the Good Book and Hurricane Coffee) in downtown Sequim, 118 W. Washington Street. Come on down for some great worship music, food, cake and freebie giveaways if you are in the area! Oh yeah, and you can purchase your CD directly from me!
SPREAD THE WORD! 🙂
I am very excited to announce that My Heart’s Desire, co-write with Ed Kerr (featuring Leann Albrecht) is circulating this week on Eric Copeland’s Creative Soul Records, New Music Week, out of Nashville, TN. This song will also be featured on my new EP Your Love Comes After Me which will be released in the next few weeks! Have a listen! Blessings, Jen
I’ve been a bit slow on my blogs lately, but its been for a good reason: things have been getting very busy here at Jen Haugland Music! My husband and I have just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary (a major milestone and miracle for us for anyone who knows our testimony)! We took a little vacation time away at the beautiful Ponte Vineyard & Winery in Temecula, CA and I am now on the countdown to finishing my EP! I will be tracking vocals in studio with Matt Kees, my producer, on this Thursday and the final mastering should be finished by the end of the month. Sheri Gould has been working with me on vocals to help me be at my best for this day! I am so thankful for her!
Another exciting thing that just was completed, was my new logo for Jen Haugland Music. I love it’s versatility. I can change where I place the text, tag line and change background colors to to match any medium I am using it with. My friend Shaun did a really nice job on it! A friend from church who saw it said, “Jen, it is so you!” Perfect! That’s what I wanted!
My graphic designers for the album art are busy at it. A joint effort between my two beautiful daughters, Jessica & Rachel, who insisted this needed to be a family project. They are pretty talented too and can get the job done! We have some great photos to work with from our photo shoot (done by my daughter Jessica as well). In fact, the current photos on the website here were done by my other daughter Rachel.
There is also a Release Party in the works for the new EP in September, so I will keep you posted on that as well! You will ALL be invited! My local Christian Bookstore is working with me on the details! It’s all coming down to the wire and I can’t believe it is finally happening! My first album! Yea!!!
Blessings to you all!
Love,
Jen
My friend Gerod Bass, who is a worship pastor at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Tacoma, WA and I met through the Christian Musician Summit a little over a year ago. We started listening to each others ideas for songs and decided this last winter to get together and do some songwriting together. We hit it off well.
Gerod had a beautiful anthem-like worship song that he was working on and I joined him on the co-write with it. The song has turned out so nice and is a great call to the church to “go” and “be” because our time is short. The song is in production at this time with our friend and producer Matt Kees. It is also the title track and name of Gerod’s new EP that will be out by the end of this summer. I will have a similar, but slightly different arrangement on my new EP also out by the end of the summer. The cool thing about this song is that Gerod has been playing it for his church there in Tacoma and it has been getting received well by the congregation. Let’s hope it “moves” the church!
Gerod will also be debuting Kingdom Come during the worship time for an upcoming Northwest District 63rd Convention of the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR this week/end June 21 -23. About 700 leaders will have the chance to hear and worship to it!
In addition, a few members of a high school youth worship team from Golden Hills Community Church in Brentwood, CA just spent the weekend with us as our family was one of many host homes this weekend while the Power & Light team performed and shared Christ in song and dance with us on Sunday. We had a great time. I was able to share Kingdom Come with my captive audience, Kieth & Patty Morgan (leaders of Power & Light), and after they heard it, they said they would like to take the song down to their church where their son is the Worship Pastor there. I contacted Gerod and he agreed to send it out early. I quickly pulled together Gerod’s current draft demo of the song and 3 different chord charts to send back with the Morgan’s. This will give the opportunity for over 4,000 congregants to hear our song that we co-wrote. Would you please pray along with us (Gerod and I) that this song will be a blessing to the hearts of those who hear it and that the greater church will respond to the message we are speaking in it? Thank you so much in advance for this! We are so excited to see what God will do through this song!
Be watching for the release of this song on both of our upcoming EPs and as well on our music sites. Stay tuned for more news updates on it as it gets completed! I promise I will share it with you!
Blessings to you in Christ,
Jen
That night we stayed up late and we all gathered around the campfire. We worshiped our hearts out under the dark night sky to our Heavenly Father above and it was so beautiful. We thought surely God was glorified in His creation that night by us. After we worshiped we each shared a song we had written. It was incredible to hear all the talent that came from each songwriter. I learned a lot about the heart of each writer that night.
But nothing was more beautiful than our final morning together. Cindy gave us a gift of scripture to go and silently meditate on for 30 minutes. It is an understatement to say that the scripture each person received, ministered directly to his/her heart as if it were meant to be. God is so intentional! Afterwards we had a sweet time of worship in that upper room and then tears flowed as we shared what scripture we had received and what it meant to us in our lives at this time. Beautiful, beautiful hearts… and these are the hearts that will write the songs.
Thank you, Cindy, for a precious weekend of investing in us! We have started off your intensives with a new template… and as one of my new friends said this weekend, “until we meet again…”
Our longest day was Saturday. We talked about the Big Idea and saying 1 thing and 1 thing only in our songs. We experienced two more opportunities of songwriting in groups of 3 or 4 to focus and write within a select amount of time around a theme. Probably the most grueling (and possibly because it was our third time that weekend) was the afternoon/evening session with special guest and gifted songwriter Sam Mizell. Sam critiqued our first round of our songwriting and then sent us off to make our changes. An hour later we had to come back and present our re-writes.
Sam was generous to come around and give us feedback even in our working groups, which gave us a lot of real-time feedback to work with. Not all of
his comments were easy to hear, but we were also stretched beyond the status quo as he challenged us to go beyond and consider the obscure. He pointed out hooks and themes that took our songs to different levels than we thought before. Sam has written for numerous artists, has a Grammy nomination and many Dove awards. We figured he knew what he was talking about! 🙂 Cindy wanted us to understand the importance of our words and that every one of them should be chosen strategically. We only have 3-4 minutes to convey our thoughts in a song so we need to make our words few as more words have less meaning. (continued in Part III)
I thought I would share about my weekend as I have finally recovered from it. There really aren’t a lot of words to describe it as it was beyond describable at times. But this last weekend 24 songwriters gathered from all over the country, including Canada, to attend a Cindy Wilt Colville Songwriting Intensive Retreat at Deer Run Retreat Center south of Nashville. Even though we all willingly went it was as if we were all happy little atoms gathering around, until we collided into each other in close quarters of the retreat center like atoms that bind together to make new molecules and then those molecules come together to form new elements… or for this purpose…new songs!
We were challenged in new ways as songwriters and in how to learn to work with other writers that had different perspectives, styles and skills of songwriting. Some were blessed enough to already have cuts by major recording artists, open for other artists in concert, perform in ministries, etc. Many were worship leaders in their own churches and others still seeking direction. But what we all had in common was our faith in Christ and to become better songwriters.
Here are a few highlights that made it so special:
Friday night we had dinner together, settled into our rooms and had our first lecture. Cindy’s theme for the conference focused around Psalm 45:1 “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.” (ESV) We learned that the word of God really needs to be our wellspring in songwriting. We addressed creativity, what gives our song breath and being a songwriter in community. We were placed in our first small groups to songwrite from an idea or theme. For most of us it was a first time to come together in a group co-write. That night we went to bed wondering what the rest of the weekend would hold for us. It was our weekend for having “margin in our lives.” (continued under Part II)
Jen Haugland 
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