Paul Demer

You made us stewards
Of your very own
Of earth and of sky
And all the fragile life between
To darkened depths of oceans
All creation you claim
You are Lord, our Lord
Lovely is your name.
How lovely is your name
over all the earth.

Happy Earth Day. 🌍

Celebrating 14 months of this little wonder-filled wandering, at-every-stranger-waving, spotlight-smiling, salmon-eating, mullet-sporting, drumset-dancing, “Jesus Storybook Bible”-page-flipping gift from the Lord today. 🪴

Hi friends,

Happy first day of spring.

You might remember that in August last year my friend David Belt and I released a song together called "Do It Again (Psalm 85)." We originally wrote the song for a compilation record for the indie worship music project Cardiphonia.

David and I have always enjoyed hanging out but realized through making this song that we also love writing and producing music together. So we made another song called "All I've Got is This Thanksgiving." And we liked that one enough that we decided to make this collaboration official and came up with the band name Casa Linda.

We named the band after David's neighborhood here in East Dallas (he and his family live about 5 min from my family). Casa Linda also means "beautiful house" in Spanish. David does have a beautiful house, and we do most of our recording over there (after dinner is had and kids are asleep), but we mainly like the name as a reference to the Church. It's beautiful, it's broken, it's fragmented, but it has been a home to us both.

"All I've Got is this Thanksgiving" is a simple devotional worship song David started writing one humid Texas night, and I helped him write the second verse. Then we just started jamming. If you make it to the end you'll hear a dueling guitar solo. Cause why not? This is a side project and we're just having fun, enjoying our friendship and the joy of music.

One of our house rules for the project is that, at this point at least, we don't want to spend money on it. So we're doing everything in house. Writing, producing, mixing, mastering, artwork, photography (shout out to Trish for taking the promo photos while holding our one-year-old daughter. Lots of DIY work on this house.

I'd love to hear what you think of the new song / band. I'm still hard at work on my next solo album (which I've been sharing snippets of on my Patreon) but, in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this side project.

Peace,

Paul

“I’m busy planting trees
Whose shade I’ll never see”

A belated new year update… In 2025 I produced songs and played concerts and led music at church. But, most significantly, I became a dad, and Trisha became a mom, and now we have an 1-year-old daughter who is changing us and our lives daily.

I wrote a song each month last year and most of them are about becoming a new parent in all its joy and complexity. There’s one song that starts with “I wipe the spit-up off your face . . .” Many are lullabies. One compares the sound of a second-hand Cuisinart coffee grinder to the early morning cries of a newborn. In some way all the songs reflect on my Father in Heaven as I try to figure out what it might mean to be a father here on earth.

I’ve been starting to record some of these songs, during nap times and in the evenings. My ambition is limited by the gift of this season but I hope to share them with you sometime later this year. These songs have been helping me mark this time and pay better attention to its passing, and I hope they might serve some other fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, etc. Life, especially its bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived, wonder-filled beginning, is worth considering.

I’m posting early versions of the songs on Patreon if you’d like to follow along with my process and get a sneak peak. It’s $5/month which I know isn’t for everyone but, for those of y’all who have had a special connection with my music and want to dig a little deeper, I offer this space for connecting and for the vulnerability of sharing unfinished work. Link in comments.

Peace,

Paul