It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Greenville.  I had a great morning at church, had lunch with some friends, played an CRAZY game of whiffle-ball (which I'm proud to say I won), and just woke up from a little nap.  That's what God created Sundays for, I'm quite sure.  

As we roll through August it becomes evident that summer is slipping away from us.  I'm fine with that.  I love the fall.  I like wearing sweatshirts (that's a useless bit of info for ya).  The cross-country team is back on the campus of Greenville College and were well into our training.  Over the course of the next few months I'll be spending a lot of time focused on cross-country and my work with the school.  The bright side of that is that I love the work, I love the team, I love being able to do what I do.  The down side is that this focus draws me away from music, which you know I'm passionate about.  It all kind of evens out through the year.  I get really busy here for a couple months and then things slow down for a couple months.  

So, here's the "new music update":  both albums I mentioned in the last blog (go read it right now if you haven't...it's ok, go, I'll wait) will hopefully be out early in 2009.  My solo album will be done by the end of November and out by February (cross your fingers),  and the disc with my brothers will hopefully be done and released in time to drop the first single by May.  

CHECK OUT:
Greg Laswell recently released his second album "Three Flights from Alto Nido".  I picked up his last album on a whim and loved it.  The new disc is even stronger than the last.  Laswell is another really cool songwriter who mixes the singer-songwriter vibe with a steady rock sensibility.  He alternately reminds me of Pete Yorn and Jon Foreman (of Switchfoot fame).  I could walk you through all the tracks on the album and tell you the best parts, but I think it's best if you check it out on your own.  Enjoy. 

 Hello to all,

Well, it's mid-July and that must mean it's about time for my annual blog post (ha ha).  For those of you who are regular visitors to the website, you'll notice the new site design.  I'd love to hear what you think about it.  

The past year has been great for me.  For those of you who don't know, I have moved out of Nashville (tear) and taken a job coaching cross-country and track at Greenville College.  You may not be aware of this, but I ran distance all through college and still run a lot now.  I recently finished 17th at the US 25K Championships (that's 15.5 miles) in Grand Rapids, MI.  It was a tough decision to leave Nashville, but in the end I felt like it was a good move for me to have enough time to continue to work on playing and writing music while having a steady income.  The results of the past year will soon be a bit more evident as I am currently working on two new albums.

The first of which is an album I'm doing with two of my older brothers.  Our current lineup looks like this:  Matt Eckberg (guitars/vocals), Jeremy Eckberg (bass), Jonathan Eckberg (guitars/keys/vocals), and Bryan Vickery (drums).  Matt and I have written all the songs and we are trying to finish the recording process in the next few months.  This has been a lot of fun to work on.  It's quite a departure from my usual style but I have loved doing it.  We draw pretty heavily from a lot of late 90's-type pop rock bands such as Toad the Wet Sprocket, Tonic, Verve Pipe, etc.  We don't have a band name or album title set yet (although we've been through several), but I'll keep you updated and let you know when we settle some details.  

The other album is my new solo effort.  This is by far the best JDE disc to date.  It's very stripped down, with a number of songs that are just a guitar or two and a vocal track, but it seems to carry more life than any of the previous projects.  Plus I really feel like this is the first time I've made a real JDE album.  I'm not trying to write or record or sound like anybody else on this record, it's just me being me.  I hope you'll all enjoy listening to it as much as I've enjoyed making it.  It isn't titled yet, but should be released late this fall or early this winter.

Also, for this new blog, I want to give you a head's up on some cool and slightly off-the-beaten path music to check out.  Some will be more obvious than others, but who knows, maybe you find something you'll really get into.  So here you go.

CHECK OUT:
Jakob Dylan (the son of Bob Dylan and former frontman for The Wallflowers) just put out his solo disc called "Seeing Things".  It's a great album.  The recordings are sparse and the writing is tremendous.  I told my dad that this is what an early Bob Dylan record would have sounded like if Bob Dylan could play guitar and sing (that's saying a lot because I'm a HUGE Bob Dylan fan).