About the Album

       Story Telling was the first recorded album we made together.  It started while we were travelling the world together as missionaries with The World Race.  We had played together often, and we loved to just jam and make stuff up.  One day while living in a childrens home in the Philippines, Caleb turned to me and said "hey Kyle, can you play this?" and then hummed a melody.  I picked up my guitar and played the melody, then added chords to fill it out more.  Caleb then sang over it and within the hour we had written our first full song; Freedom.  This would start the slew of songs we would write together whenever we both had our guitars out.  Caleb is absolutely a brilliant song writer and making new music came easily to the two of us.  At one point Caleb had writer's block for a few days, he just could not think of words to the jam we had made.  So he decided to write down every word that came to his head and then just sing it unedited, this became the first track on the album; Writer's Block.  Throughout our time travelling the others travelling with us would always tell us we should record an album when we got back, we would reply that it would be cool, but honestly at least for me I thought the prospect a little doubtful.  Caleb and I lived far away from each other in America and I just did not know what my life was going to look like.  We kept writing though, and had tons of fun with it.  Our final day overseas we gave our squad (about 50 people in total) a little concert of most of the songs we had written, and then we left for the U.S.  We kept writing songs even while apart, the song The Upper World was actually written by Caleb about coming home, this song especially resonates with the members of our squad.  At this point I was pretty sure our music would make it out eventually, but still uncertain when.  After getting back to America I went home to Minnesota, and Caleb went to Texas.  The summer following, tragedy would strike.  One of our friends from the squad, a squad that had become family, died.  Her name was Rebekah.  She died in a car accident along side her husband only within a few days of being officially married.  They lived brilliantly, they loved passionately, and they are missed dearly.  The song named after them is written in their honor and in their memory.  

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       Caleb would later move from Texas to Seattle, where he is originally from, and during this move is when we had the opportunity to actually record an album.  Before getting to Seattle Caleb came to Minneapolis where I live.  My good friend Ted generously gave us the opportunity to record in his basement for free, and even said he would mix it for us!  So we recorded all of these songs, as well as the Live Room EP, in a single day.  This would be our gift to our squad, this would also end up being the start of our journey as Convent Bonfires.

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~Kyle