You might not know it (based on the fact that my current playlists have a very high Justin Bieber to non-Bieber ratio) but I was pretty involved in the local music scene in Abilene when I was in high school. Yep, that’s right. I was lead roadie for the ska band “SkaSkank Redemption”, with my long-haired, kilt-wearing boyfriend on the drums and my long-haired, mild-mannered future college roommate on the keyboard. SkaSkank Redemption played at Wylie Baptist Church AND Joe’s Pizza AND the local putt-putt park. You guys, they had mini metal buttons with their name on it. It was pretty serious.

While I was primarily a connesieur of ska music, one band in particular, I did dabble in other genres of local music. I followed a screamo band for a while.  That was short lived.  The general rock genre was always a good one in Abilene. One little band was called Thurber Mingus and Thurber Mingus had a little guy named Tim Palmer and Thurber Mingus once played a song on the roof of the football building at a pep-rally. Everyone freaked out like they were N’Sync or something. You guys, girls swooned.

High school kids are so lame.

Anyway, Tim was the veritable superstar of our school. Everybody loved him. He was a senior when I started high school. Even though I was a lowly freshman, several thousand rungs lower than him in the cutthroat social hierarchy that inevitably develops when you jam two thousand adolescents together, Tim knew my name. Mostly because he was dating (and is now married to) one of my best friend’s older sisters, but still. In my mind, a cool senior knew my name and that was something to write home about. I was not incorrect in my assumption. We even made it into the yearbook. See?

(Dear high school Beth,

He knew everybody’s name. It’s not impressive. Drop it.

Love, adult Beth).

Tim probably doesn’t know this, but he played an important part in me learning how to love like Jesus has asked us too. And, no, I’m not referring to him saying hi to me in the hallways every three weeks when we would pass like ships in the night. He was always surrounded by a posse, but it was the strangest, most disjointed posse ever. Nerds, cheerleaders, band geeks, athletes, student council people, all congregated around him. At a time in my life when my faith felt fragile and abstract, Tim was an concrete example of what it meant to genuinely love people. He didn’t make anyone into a “project”; he met people where they were. It was quite different from the kind of “love” I had seen, say, in my welding class when a good ole’ boy told my friend that he thought it was stupid that she was a Wiccan. (Is telling people “That’s stupid” one of the steps in the Roman Road? I wouldn’t know. Methodists evangelize people by inviting them to a potluck and making them join a church committee.)

Tim writes music now. Even though 90% of what I listen to has a definite “Bieber” feel, I’ve still kept in contact with the local music scene. I blogged about this song by Austin artist Aaron Ivey that is so beautiful and heartfelt, I could just lay my head down on my kitchen counter right now and weep.  There’s something deeply personal about the music of  singer-songwriters that gets lost when songs are autotuned into oblivion and/or a team of music executives decide which song an artist sings based on a listener’s ability to grind to it at a club. (Dear Justin, That last dig wasn’t directed at you, obviously. We’re still BFFs. Love, Beth)

To prove this point to you, I’ve decided to have a Battle of the Bands. The contenders?

First up, Willy and Brit. I just made those nicknames up. I hope they don’t come to my house and punch me in the kidney. Moving on, they’ve come out with a club hit that, at some point in the past,  hit #6 on the Billboard Top 100. It is…typical.  I’ve chosen to show you a clean edit of Scream and Shout, because, well, the cursing isn’t an integral part of the “lyrics”  and the official music video is basically Will.i.am and Britney swinging their arms around with random footage of an iphone floating in water (I could not make that up). In fact, if you just shake your head back and forth while watching this video and every once in a while glance at your iphone, you’ll get a good indication of how interesting the actual music video is.  Let’s listen in:

Next up? Let’s find something from Tim. Firstly, I would like to note that if you google “Timothy Palmer”, you will get a photographer who specializes in Idaho’s rivers OR a Timothy Palmer on youtube who has posted a video entitled “lil main ft lil da thug life mp3”. I would like to clarify that neither of those Timothy Palmers are the Timothy Palmer that I’m talking about now.

I’ll be using the song “Anytime”, which will be on Tim’s new album that he hopes to record sometime soon. This is a rough cut of it, but I chose it precisely because, even in it’s unedited form, I believe it can stand up to Scream and Shout. Lyrics are below.

Anytime

Where do I turn?
And, how do I navigate?
I’ve spent a lifetime searching for love,
But got lost somewhere along the way.

Questions about my heart
And all I ever thought I knew-
Missteps and mistakes,
The wrong turns I take
Have left me feeling further from you.

Chorus:
But
Anytime that I come running after
Anytime I call out your name
Anytime that I hear laughter
I know you’re not
Far away

Verse:
I set out on the narrow way
But wound up in the desert place.
Put my ear to the ground
For a familiar sound
Hoping I would hear you say

Chorus:
That
Anytime that I come running after
Anytime I call out your name
Anytime that I hear laughter
I know you’re not
Far away

Bridge:
And I found treasures in the silence
That I could never find in your words
And I found questions in all the answers I overturned

Chorus:
Anytime that I come running after
Anytime I call out your name
Anytime that I hear laughter
I know you’re not
Far away
You never are
Far away…

Okay.

Let’s discuss the contenders.

Wasn’t that exciting? Didn’t you enjoy me forcing you to spend time with both an over-produced pop song and a raw singer-songwriter ballad?

So, here’s the scoop. One of the coolest things that has come out of this adoption mess is the grassroots support that we have gotten from family and friends. With the internet, people can stay informed and be supportive relatively easy. It’s grassroots love, baby.

Tim will be recording a new album in the near future and he’s going to need some of that grassroots love. To stay in contact with him, you can do any of the following.

• His Kickstarter campaign can be found here.
• Like Timothy Palmer Music on facebook– Tim does posts updates, lyrics, and thought-provoking articles on his page. You can also listen to some of the stuff from his first album, The Breeze, if you click on the “Listen to the Tunes” tab at the top of his page.
• If you need some cool Timothy Palmer gear, you can purchase  screen printed t-shirts, posters, and his first album here.
• For clarification’s sake, this is the real Tim Palmer’s youtube channel which, in addition to some of his music, also has adorable videos of his children. Again, if you come across something that has weird ramblings about Idaho’s rivers or the word thugz in the title, there’s only about a 50/50 chance that it’s referring to Tim, my best best high school friend.

Support the winner of this year’s battle with some grassroots love.

Click. Like. Listen.