Liner notes · Camp Songs, Vol. 1

Twenty-two songs, one fire, and nobody in a hurry.

Camp Songs, Vol. 1 (2014) is our only live record — recorded, like all eight, across a single weekend and in a single key, except this time the weekend was a summer retreat and the key was C because C is the friendliest key to sing outdoors. There are twenty-two tracks on it, caught around the fire at Camp Pinecrest, up the mountain at Lake Arrowhead, on whatever recorder somebody had going in a canvas chair. We could not read you all twenty-two at the potluck before the decaf went cold, so here is a representative handful — the ones we'd cue up first if you brought a chair, pulled it close to the coals, and stayed until the last one went gray.

• ✚Track 1 · "Round the Fire" — The opening singalong, and the whole record in miniature: a round, which is the friendliest shape a song can take, because a round has no soloist and no last word. One side of the fire starts, the far side comes in a beat behind, and by the third time through nobody can say who began it. That is rather the point.
• ✚Track 4 · "Marshmallow Grace" — On the mercy of the second marshmallow, which nobody earned and everybody got. Brother Wesley burned his on purpose, which he says is a picture of something. We have decided to let him have it.
• ✚Track 7 · "Pass It On" — Our cover of the old camp standard, and the reason the record exists. You know the one: it only takes a spark. We did not improve it. You cannot improve it. We simply passed it on, the way it was passed to us, around a fire that was passed to us too.
• ✚Track 9 · "Cold Lake, Warm Coals" — For the two temperatures of a mountain evening, and the gladness of needing both. The lake humbles you at noon; the fire keeps you at nine. A day is more honest when it has held you at both ends.
• ✚Track 12 · "Everybody Knows the Chorus" — On the songs so worn they need no hymnal. There is a kind of belonging that does not test you at the door; it just hands you the chorus and trusts you to have it. Most of the best things at camp were like that.
• ✚Track 16 · "Whoever Was Awake" — Recorded past midnight, with the count dwindling as the chairs emptied and the little ones were carried off to bed. It is the quietest track and our favorite, because worship does not need a full room; it needs whoever was awake, and it counts the same.
• ✚Track 19 · "Smoke Goes Up Like a Small Amen" — On the prayer you do not have to say out loud, because the fire is saying it for you, straight up into the pines. Some amens are visible. This is one of them.
• ✚Track 22 · "Till the Last Coal's Gray" — The closing benediction, and the only instruction the whole record gives: do not leave while there is still light in it. Fold the chairs when the fire says to, not before. Then a little longer. Then carry the song home in the minivan.

Album devotional · Camp Songs, Vol. 1 (2014). Bring a folding chair, and pull it close to the fire. And yes — Volume 2 is in eternal preparation, and will be, we suspect, right up until the Lord Himself hums the downbeat. We are in no hurry. Neither, apparently, is Volume 2.