Help Make a CD Based Upon St. Augustine's Confessions

Yes, you read that headline correctly -- today, we're helping to spread the news about a unique Catholic kickstarter campaign aimed at supporting Catholic academic, author, musician and blogger Sam Rocha create a jazz CD project based upon St. Augustine's Confessions.

Sam shares in his own words about the motivation for the project:

LATE TO LOVE is an original concept album. Soul music. Blues, jazz, funk, folk, and gospel. Bill Withers, Jose Feliciano, Stevie Wonder, Wes Montgomery, Ray Charles, and Willie Nelson. Bass, drums, guitar, and vocals.

The chorus of the title track sings, "Late / have I loved you / beauty so old / beauty so new," adapted from Augustine's Confessions. This is the soundtrack of a man seeking redemption through a profession of belated love, told in multiple layers of regret, gratitude, and hope.

The craft of the music is the main priority. It has been composed, and even preliminarily performed, but some of it remains unplanned, waiting to be made and remade when the recording begins. The musicians have been carefully selected for stylistic suitability, musicianship, and, most of all, friendship. My guitar and vocals will be joined by drums, electric and acoustic bass. The sound engineer is also a dear friend; the studio is familiar, warm, and sounds amazing.

The only missing piece right now are the upfront costs. It really is that simple. Everything else is ready. If the goal is met, we will be in the studio the second week of May. If we exceed our goal, we'll have more resources for postproduction.

I believe that soul music is religious, from it's namesake to its powerful and universal effect and affect. We need more soul music. It's gone missing nowadays, in and out of the places where we are used to finding it. We desperately need music that resists easily classification, but accepts all the responsibility and rigor of art and love.

Art that is free to be itself without superficial conditions, with the capacity to disclose something that is as old as it is new, as beautiful as it is true: this is the work that I am asking you to help me carry out.

If you would like to be a part of this very special project, visit the link below. And to further motivate you, here's a taste of Sam's amazing music:

[youtube_sc url=http://youtu.be/SP3TI4t2yQ8]