I like John Mayer...

Anyone heard that newer John Mayer single "Say"? I keep hearing it on the radio, (Susan's been on a kick where she's listening to 101.5 The River a lot, which is totally meant for her demographic, I find that slightly humorous), and I just love that song! I've always dug Mayer's stuff which honestly I feel slightly less than manly admitting that, but hey; the dude writes GREAT songs! Also, he's pretty much the Eric Clapton of our generation when it comes to playing guitar. If you don't believe me you need to check out his new live dvd called Where The Light Is, it's literally unbelievable. So yea, anyways, just thought I'd tell you guys that I really like that song.
Ok, what's actually going on is that I tried to buy that song on iTunes just now but my debit card was declined because someone stole my card and the bank had to shut off the card. I wish I could listen to that song now but I'm going to have to wait until I get my new debit card. So for now I'll just talk to all of you...Until my card gets here... Then I'll buy the song... And go listen to it... And finally leave you all alone... I'm rambling aren't I?.. That's what happens when I can't listen to John Mayer when I'd like to... Sometimes I just feel like I need to hear those bluesy pop hooks that run deeper than an infection... Ok I'm definitely less than manly now... I'm just going to be quiet... Shoooosh Mark... (silence)... Should I be embarrassed?.. Anyone other dudes out there like John Mayer that much?.. Are you all too busy crying with laughter or making fun of me to answer?.. Just say what you need to say...

Mark

Meet Sammy...

Hey everyone! I just wanted to take a minute, (well about 8 minutes actually), of your time to introduce you all to my good friend Sammy. Sammy is going out with Sanctus Real on our Fall tour which starts Sept. 4th at Cedar Creek Church in Perrysburg, Ohio just outside of our hometown; Toledo. Sammy's pretty much one of the coolest dudes ever. I'm excited for you all to not only get to know him and see all the joy and love for Jesus that just kind of radiates off him, but I'm also anxious for you to hear his heart for helping those in need! We're out to save Africa and change the world this Fall so come be a part of "WE NEED EACH OTHER" THE TOUR EVENT!!! Check out this video about how God called Sammy into ministry and then check out www.sanctusreal.com to see when the tour is coming to a city near you! Hope to see you all there!
Mark
P.S. If you want to, you can look up Sammy on facebook by searching for Samuel Adebiyi. Drop him a line of encouragement and tell him how excited you are about his ministry after you check out the video. Also, don't forget that Tenth Avenue North & Vota (formerly Casting Pearls) will be on the tour as well! Peace out.

AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

Man! What is my problem!?! My last post was all talking about how it's been too long and that I need to make sure I'm blogging more often and keeping you guys (& girls) up to date on life, blah, blah, blah, and what do I do then? Wait another TWO MONTHS!?! Well if there's anybody out there hanging in there with me and still reading this, please forgive me for absolutely proving that I suck at the whole blogging thing. I'm sorry I've failed you all yet again. I hope you all can find it in your hearts to forgive and forget and be gracious enough to believe in me that I will one day be good at this.
To be honest, when we decided as a band that we were all going to commit to these personal blogs as a part of Sanctus Reality, I knew deep down that I was going to be the slacker at this whole thing. And here in lies the beauty of the blog; like I said in the blogs' original title description, "THE EXTREMELY SCREWY LIFE OF A CHRISTIAN ROCK DRUMMER IN ALL IT'S BRUTALLY HONEST GLORY". I'm going to be brutally honest; I have a hard time staying motivated to do the little things like this. Most of my life I've battled with motivation issues on all sorts of different things. Apparently it's a normal part of my personality type. I've taken two different personality profile tests to better understand myself and how I work with others and unfortunately one of the cons of a character like me is I'm not very motivated to do anything that I'm not extremely interested in. Looking back on my high school career, this definitely proved to be true. I was a horrible student barely passing my classes like Algebra, World History, Anatomy, etc. But then I was a straight A wizard with anything music, I was always at the top of the class in Marching Band, Jazz Band & Orchestra. I could never get myself to stay focused and pay attention in German 101 or to do any homework in that class, but I had absolutely no problem sitting in my bedroom at my drum kit and practicing for six hours a day, literally.
The weird thing is, I need to just remind myself how much I like doing this. Every time I write it proves to be very therapeutic for me and enjoyable. It's definitely not that I'm uninterested or that I don't like doing this, I always end up really enjoying it and I especially love when you all actually respond and leave cool comments. I get all of your comments sent straight to my personal email on my iPhone by the way. If you leave a comment, not only do I read it but I do so probably about five minutes or so after you leave it.
So here's to picking up the blogging torch once again, raising it high and running down the stairs with it! Hopefully I won't crash and burn again. Special thanks by the way to a couple of you who left me comments saying that you were anxious to hear from me again! I appreciate it! It's help with the motivation factor for sure to know that somebody not only reads these but actually likes to. Ok, ta-ta for now!
Mark

Too long, too long, it's just been too long!

Ok so it's been way too long since I wrote anything on here! What can I say, life with two kids has definitely gotten the best of me, (which in my book is fine because my family should get the best of me). But I've neglected you all long enough now. I know you've all been just dying to read a new blog from your good old friend MarkDaDrumma! I know it keeps you up at night with your minds racing! That question! That awful soul twisting question! It's just eating you alive! "WHAT IS GOING ON IN MARK'S LIFE RIGHT NOW!?!"
Well let me paint the picture for; yesterday I went to get a haircut. When the girl finished cutting my hair she handed me a small mirror to look into while the really big mirror was behind me, so I could see the back of my head. I asked immediately if I had a bald spot yet. She asked, "why would you have a bald spot?" I said, "well I turned 30 this year, finally had to get glasses, had a second kid and recently purchased a mini-van. A bald spot is the next step right?"

Introducing Nathaniel Yo-Soon Graalman!!!

YYYEEESSS!!! I haven't been this excited to post a blog in a while and there's not even much to be said about it except; WE HAD OUR BABY!!!
So yesterday morning I woke up in Nashville all ready to go knock out a million interviews in a couple days time for GMA week. I only made it through Monday morning though before my wife Susan called me from her Doctor's appointment and said that they were going to have to do an emergency c-section due to low amniotic fluid. As she was telling me this, us Sanctus guys and our A&R guy Chris York were sitting around a table eating fish taco's in downtown Nashville. I think they all saw the look on my face and knew exactly what was going on because as soon as I said, "huh, guys I gotta go!", Dan immediately jumped up from the table and was like, "I'll drive you to the airport!"
I know the Lord was with me because Dan had me to that airport in about ten minutes flat and there just happened to be a flight leaving for Detroit in 30 minutes that would get me home just two hours before my son was born! Praise God for "making all things work together for the good" huh!?!
So last night on April 21st 2008, my wife Susan and our son Ben and I welcomed our newest family member into the world; Nathaniel Yo-Soon Graalman! He was 6 lbs 10 oz and 20" long. He's healthy and quite a little cutie if I do say so myself! Susan is doing well. Please pray for a speedy healing from the c-section surgery but other than that, she's doing great, Also Ben is being so sweet to his new baby brother. He's pretty excited about this whole thing.
These pic's were taken with my iPhone, so they're not the best quality, but I'll probably be posting some better ones on my facebook and myspace pages sometime soon.
Mark

It's been three years...

So lately I've been thinking about how fast everything seems to be moving these days. I feel like a whole lot of drastic changes started occurring in my life about three years ago and ever since they just seem to keep on coming. I'm sure that most of you reading this are familiar with everything Sanctus Real went through around that time; losing our bass player, close friends getting divorced, our singer's grandmother passed away while he had to be on the road. Finally then, the hardest issue for me personally; on the same day my son Ben was born my Dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Since that time period the crazy changes, both good and bad, have kept coming. Let's see; besides me having my first child and my Dad dying of cancer unexpectedly at the age of 47 (making my Mom a widow at the age of 50), Sanctus Real gets new bass player (Dan Gartley), Sanctus Real puts out third cd called The Face Of Love, Sanctus Real adds a fifth member (Pete Prevost), my sister Patti gets pregnant and has a baby boy named Seth (making me an uncle), Sanctus Real fires management, Sanctus Real hires new management, We go on the Winter Jam tour playing in front of 10-20,000 people a night, We spend all year writing and recording We Need Each Other, Susan and I find out we're pregnant again, Patti gets married to her boyfriend, my Grandma Robinson passes away, I start teaching drum lessons Tuesday nights when I'm home, we go on tour with Steven Curtis Chapman, WNEO comes out, I turn 30, Sanctus Real fires management again (currently manager-less), we go on tour with Third Day, my Grandma Graalman passes away (making me officially Grandparent-less), my other sister Sarah gets engaged (getting married August 31st), Susan and I buy a mini-van (Honda Odyssey) and in less than three weeks my beautiful wife will be giving birth to our second baby; Nathaniel Yo-Soon Graalman. Does that sound like a crazy three years to any else!?! And that's just the major stuff!
So anyways, life is just wild at times and it just seems to be getting wilder all the time any more. But when all is said and done it really just makes me even more thankful that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He's absolutely faithful. When I look back at the last three years of my life I wonder how I haven't just gone crazy and lost my mind in the midst of all this chaos. It must just simply be that God loves me enough to give me the grace to get through all of these major life changes and to come out the other side sensing His presence, resting in His peace and feeling completely confident that He hasn't once left my side. As my Pastor, Bill Herzog, always says; "God is good all the time because that is His nature".
I think what really got me thinking about these things this week though was Saturday. You see this past Saturday was April 5th, the anniversary of my Dad's death. Three years ago April 5th was a Tuesday night and on that Tuesday night at 10:15 p.m. EST my Dad, Mark S. Graalman Sr. went to Heaven to be with Jesus forever. I guess I've just been thinking about him a lot lately and thinking about how much he's missed, although, maybe he hasn't missed anything? Maybe he can see everything that's going on down here? I'm not sure how that works, but I can think of a couple scriptures that would suggest maybe that people in Heaven are watching us and cheering us on in a sense. I don't know.
Well in memory of my Dad, here are some pic's of him: You see, he had some unique hobbies. At the age of 13 he started getting into Amateur Radio and played around with that stuff all his life. His call letters were WB8JKR. He was also into "Tesla Coils". The one pictured here was the biggest one he ever built. He called it Pandora. It shot lighting bolts over 8' long! Yea, our neighbors thought he was nuts! He definitely was a bit of a mad scientist. He was kind of an electronics genius who could pretty much build or fix anything. He played guitar when he was a kid and then picked it back up later on in life just because it was something he always wished he'd gotten good at. Lastly, here's a couple pic's of him holding Ben. He got two months with Ben, (February 4th to April 5th '05'), before he would be forced to leave us but as he himself said, "Heaven means never having to say goodbye".
I miss you Dad. I love you.

Lovin' Louisiana!

Well we are in Monroe, La. today, as the Third Day tour continues. I think this is show #8. Revive is on stage right now warmin' 'em up real good. We've had a couple great days off in St. Louis where we hooked up with the December Radio guys and thoroughly enjoyed some Macaroni Grill together! Good times. We hung out in a couple malls, saw a movie, kicked December Radio's tail in a couple games of bowling. You know, the usual. Ok so we didn't actually beat December Radio at bowling. We split the teams up so it wasn't band against band, but if it had been DR vs. SR, Sanctus would have prevailed for sure.
Alright, due to lack of time before we played I was forced to put my lil' blog on hold and finish it later. So now the show is completely over. It was a great night. Fun crowd to play for here in Louisiana, but the best part came at the end of the night.
You see some of the locals decided they were going boil us up a big ol' tub of cajun crawfish! I've got to be honest, being a white dude from Northern Ohio, I didn't really know what to think about it at first. The sight and smell of those things almost talked me out of trying them, but I'm glad I got past that and gave them a shot because cajun crawfish are officially amazing in my book! Basically you grab the crawfish by it's head and it's tail and you twist it in half. You throw the head away and suck the meat out of the tail. Now in Louisiana they boil the crawfish in these special cajun spices that make it quite spicy but yet really tasty! Definitely good stuff.
Tomorrow we play in Metairie which is right outside of New Orleans, so who knows, maybe we'll get some more cajun goodness tomorrow. I surely hope so.