A couple of months ago I had the chance to catch up with my friend Justin McRoberts. I hate transcribing interviews, so that’s why you’re just now seeing this interview. I apologize for that, because I’ve really been looking forward to you being able to glean from Justin’s insights. He is an artist who thinks deeply and carefully about what he does and for that we are all better off.

Enjoy:

Were you raised in a musical home?
Kind of. I was raised in a musical neighborhood. My parents were Beatles fans and listened to Elvis and John Denver. We had a lot of John Denver growing up. My father would take me to see the San Francisco Symphony. We didn’t have music playing at all times but my Dad moreso than my Mom, he listened to a lot of classical stuff. I still have some old vinyl from back then. I have a couple of old Stones records.

How did that transition into you picking up a guitar and playing for yourself?
That was mainly a friends thing. The older kids in the neighborhood were big music fans and I was the 12-year old kid hanging out with the 16-year olds who just got their licenses and had cars with really cool stereos. I just learned to love the music that they were listening to. This is when cars with really killer stereo systems were the thing. Lunch time at school and everyone was out in the parking lot surrounding the dude’s car who had the best stereo system. Maybe that’s still the way it is, I don’t know. People would get in cars and drive around just to play music.

That was mostly how I fell in love with music. C.S. Lewis talks about beauty. We admire beauty from a distance but that, really, there is something in us that desires to be beautiful. It’s not just that we have an admiration of it, we desire it for ourselves. So my love for music turned into picking up a guitar and trying to do it.

At what point did you realize that that connection was your life’s calling?
I don’t even know. That was a long progression for me. I picked up a guitar for the first time when I was around 17 or 18. I didn’t write a song until I was around 22. At 24, I was tinkering around and I would play every once in a while at a coffee shop just so that the kids who were in my Young Life club would come. When the option came up to look at this as a more professional thing, I really wasn’t sure, probably for the first year-and-a-half whether this was for me. It was more like: “Why not take a shot at it.” All the stars aligned for me at the time, I didn’t have any responsibilities, I wasn’t paying rent on a six-month lease, I could leave if I needed to. It was something that worked out over the course of time.

Why’d you stay with it?
Because it continued to fit. The more I’ve learned about myself and what I’m good at, and what I have to offer on the whole. In fact, this continues to be the case and I continually realize that music is a part of my larger calling. I guess I’m still working it out to be totally honest. I didn’t have a particular moment of clarity, though I do have them. I get e-mails from people saying that a particular song really touched them and those are affirming moments but I don’t think I’ve had the moment.

How did your relationship with 5 Minute Walk come about and go away?
I was living in Frank Tate’s house. It was myself and 3 other Young Life guys. I think there were five guys in the house. We just hit it of and I played out three or four times a year, something like that. I wasn’t super serious about it and Frank actually said to me, this is how you stay humble, by having people like Frank Tate in your life, Frank said to me: “You know, I don’t really like your music, but I like you and I think you could learn to do this better.” And that’s continued to be the theme of my career I guess. It’s been me that I’m passing along and not just the songs.

That set a tone for 5 Minute Walk and the way they went about doing music. It was about people, relationships, the transference of great things and beautiful messages. It was always relational. It was never just that the song was good enough or that a band was marketable enough. There was always a human element to it. So, even when I went out and Frank put me on that first tour with Five Iron Frenzy! It was me with an acoustic guitar in front of 1,300 kids with Mohawks there to see punk/ska. But Frank’s point was that I had to earn the right to be heard. I had to make the relationships. I’m thankful all the time that that’s how I started off.

Were you raised in a Christian home?
No. My Mother had a dormant faith. I was familiar with her faith to some degree, though I don’t even really know how or why because it wasn’t discussed in the house. My Dad was the pretty traditional young, white American kid who picked himself up out of the dirt and was very self-sufficient. He decided pretty early on in life that the whole God-thing really was for weak people. The irony was that this was the man who ended up ending his own life because he couldn’t deal with the identity shift of no longer being a successful corporate person. So, talk about irony, this is a man talking about how Christianity is for weak people but he didn’t have the strength to deal with his own life.

It wasn’t until that point that my mother’s faith re-entered the picture. I had come to faith through a relationship with a Young Life leader several years before that. Faith wasn’t part of my upbringing. In fact, the opposite was somewhat true. People of faith in our neighborhood were, not necessarily looked down upon by my father, but he didn’t have much place for them.

Tell me about your salvation experience.
I wouldn’t say that I had completely the same mindset as my father in regards to a total disrespect for religion. In fact, I was fascinated by religion. I thought it was interesting. But I really thought it was interesting from more of an anthropological standpoint. I just thought: “That’s really interesting that people are that way.” As a person who considered himself at the time to be rather intellectual, the humbling aspect of it was that I just fell in love with a person’s life. That trumped all of the conclusions I had come to intellectually about God. I just saw this person and the way they lived and tended themselves toward me and it just trumped all the rest of those things. It made me question whether some of those could be true. Suddenly there was something very real about it and that’s the mystery of the faith. There was something of the Person of Christ revealed and I couldn’t ignore it. I had to respond.

How did you become involved with Young Life?
What I said earlier about earning the right to be heard, from Frank’s perspective, is also a Young Life principle. With regards to any story you have to tell, it’s never enough to be impressive. It’s about earning trust with people so that you can challenge and push and lead people only insofar as they trust you and love you and that’s established in relationship.

So, for my involvement with Young Life, this man, from the point when I was 12 years old on, has continued to earn the right to be heard in my life; to tell me hard things, to challenge me and lead me. That has defined the way I approach, really everything, whether my professional relationships or my role as a lay pastor in my own community, whatever it is. It’s always been about earning the right to be heard. I’ve continued to stay connected with Young Life because I really love the mission. I love the philosophy of being where kids are and not being embarrassed to have conversations on that level, all with the sense of the incarnational so that you can lead them long-term in life.

How did you come to be involved with Compassion International?
Through the guys in Caedmon’s Call. I was on tour with Caedmon’s in 2000 or 2001 and the thing I missed about full-time vocational ministry was the day-in, day-out, always knowing what’s going on. When you play music, you’re often there and then gone and you just hope that there’s something lasting. I loved the idea of putting legs to what I was doing, that if someone was moved, they could make a decision right then and there to live differently. I’m not going to be there to hold them to their decision, but this six-year old child writing letters from India, that’s far more accountability than the hair-brained singer/song-writer from California. I loved that. And, the more I know about Compassion and understand God’s heart for the poor, and the power of relationship with poor people, what an enormous impact that has on people.

Being involved so heavily in ministry and performing, do you ever experience the tension between humility and having to sell yourself?
One of the really obvious things over the last 10 years is that who I am when I’m gone; I have to be the same person. Living in the San Francisco area where I do, and the community that I’m a part of, they really don’t care that I’m a singer/song-writer and that I travel around the country doing this. Some like my music, but they’re not at all impressed by me. In that vein, if I have anything that I can pass along, it’s not because I’m impressive or can sell myself, it’s because I’ve earned that right in their lives and there’s a very human transference and that has defined how I’ve approached being on the road.

I didn’t really start off in that direction, but the whole notion of trying to sell myself or an image; that has had to die in order for me to be consistent. I have to be the same person in both contexts. I travel with my wife also and that keeps me from trying to be one person here and another there.

What’s your perspective of the “Christian” market?
I’m still trying to work that out. It seems to get weirder and weirder as time goes on. I went through the phase that every immature jerk does that it’s all crap that we even have Christian bookstores. Well, there’s still some of that that’s true in the back of my mind but I’m no longer as willing to write off the whole thing though I do think there’s something damaging to it. I think drawing lines between where God is and where God isn’t is irresponsible. It does two things: it blanket-states that every record and every lyric on this record that are on this wall in this building has the stamp of biblical, Spirit-guided approval, well, that’s crap.

I’m more nervous about the content of books and music that my people, whether it’s at home or abroad are taking in from the Christian environment than anything from the outside. The fact that there is a Christian marketplace sets us up for some expectations of how God functions and that can be damaging.

You are part of a growing group of artists who 1) have decided to release your music independently rather than through labels and 2) openly work through your faith and art outside of CCM. Can you briefly talk about those two things?
Well, for one thing, just for the standpoint of market functionality, I don’t really need a label. I don’t need a lot of people working for me. If we decided to cut a record right now, we could write 6 or 7 songs today, they’d be pretty bad, but we could record them and have them up and open by tomorrow night where anyone in the world could have access to them. So, for distribution, I don’t need the machinery in the same way that we used to.

Because you don’t need the machinery in the same way you used to, it means that your character, your person and your style don’t have to be molded to a particular format. In the past, you used to have to bend yourself into a particular shape in order to fit into the right machinery that could then get your music out to the people. At this point, you can be who you are, do what you do, write what you write, say what you want to say and the people who are drawn to that are more organically drawn to that because they connect with it, not because it was sold to them.

You see this now when you look at people’s play-lists. When you look at the most played, it might be Johnny Cash followed by Danzig and then David Crowder Band. There’s less division in the way most people are interacting now with media and art. I think it’s more functional than it is philosophical at this point. You don’t need it, so we’re not doing it. I think long-term, we’ll develop an interesting philosophy of what it means, but right now, it’s just that we don’t need it, so why do it?

Tell me about some of the push-back you’ve received from doing a covers project.
From a shepherding perspective, if we’re going to be protective of and strategically guiding our people into engagement with the grander culture around us, and even the Trent Reznors of the world, no one questions: “Oh, really?! I didn’t know Trent Reznor was angry at God!” We know where Reznor is coming from. But if we have that much discernment about the music “outside of us,” we should at least have that same level of discernment with the songs we are teaching our people to sing. There are many extremely popular that are just setting people up for a particular type of engagement with God and people are going to be really disappointed ten years down the road when they realize they’ve been living out of this weird emotional expectation from God.

Why are we as Modern, American Christians so bad at this practice of discernment? Why do we practice discernment in “one direction”?
I don’t really know. The cheap and easy answer is because it’s not a discipleship culture. Because of that, we have to trust a certain level of institutional decision-making in which we either trust or mistrust a marketplace so you either trust the “Christian” marketplace or you mistrust the “Christian” marketplace and the same applies to the larger marketplace. All of this is opposed to nuanced engagement with an individual artist or an individual song guided by someone.

We might even say that discernment has become a point-of-purchase decision. It’s become a sales-thing. Anything that comes with this particular branding on it: “Christian market,” it’s now in and we’re willing to put it on display.

How can pastors do better at training their people in discernment?
I think that has more to do with the person who is pastoring. In other words, that type of cultural engagement is a large enough shift that either you’re that type of person who has lived into that type of discipline over the long haul or you’re not. There’s always the danger of trying to be a person who is going to learn this cultural engagement from a more functional standpoint just to get the job done as opposed to: “I really do recognize something of the sovereign presence of God in the larger culture and I recognize my duty as a person, not just the pastor, to point out where God is in the world around me for the benefit of those who are blinded to that.

There are folks who are naturally that way, but, and this is a big, sweeping generalization, the type of personality, the type of machinery that develops a type of personality in which we find the term “pastor” being developed, that’s not the type of person we’re developing in the pastoral role. We’re, oftentimes, talking about people who are trained to run churches in the way that you would run an organization and not in the way that you would shepherd and guide a people.

I don’t even know if that’s a fair question to ask about the larger pastoral culture because what you’re asking is not church culture as we know it.

But should it be?
I think so.

How do we get there?
Start over. Well, maybe more like this; not even starting over because that’s way too simple. Giving people who have that sense of vision, and this is part of what I’m trying to do with my covers project; that sense of the presence of God in their everyday; the pop radio they listen to and the lines that are normally drawn between the “Christian” marketplace and the “blah blah blah,” the people who already see the world that way, to empower them and equip them and free them to say “That is a vision that God has given you that you have a responsibility to.” We need people to understand, that doesn’t put you on the outskirts of “Christian culture,” it makes you a bridge between people who have been blinded one way and people who have been blinded in another.

So, for example, Trent Rezner needs to know and be told and encouraged: “Did you know that there are things that you have written that are reflective of the principles of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Did you know that?” Who is telling that to Trent Reznor? In the same way, people who live on the other side of things, who often times feel like they have a grip on the shape of the kingdom of God, need to be encouraged to see that in Trent Reznor. Some people live in that space, where they actually see those things. I see this pervasive, enormous, grand, sweeping activity of God. That’s not a role that often affirmed by many Christians. We don’t create culture around those people. It’s harder to sell I guess.

So are you saying that it’s not always an issue of discernment but of how we define “sacred” vs. “secular?” Which I guess could still be defined as discernment.
Absolutely. Alexander Schmemann wrote one of my favorite books For The Life of The World. He’s an orthodox theologian and he writes, I’m going to get this quote somewhat wrong, but you’ll at least get the gist of it: “The world is a fallen world in part because we have abandoned the idea that God is all in all. We’ve embraced the all-encompassing secularism that desires to steal the world away from God.” We’ve come to believe that the activity of God takes place in this idea we call “sacred” versus the “rest of the world,” which we don’t just call “secular,” but in many contexts, we call profane. The result is that what is “sacred” is very small; it takes place in a very particular time. This is much the same way we look at the hour we spend together on Sunday morning and then the hundreds upon hundreds of hours that happen in between.

Sacred hour: profane life. So Schmemann writes about undoing these things and that’s a long process. But I do think that there are many of us who do see the world this way. In fact, I would go so far as to say, and this is part of what Schmemann does in his first few chapters: the line between the sacred and the secular is not a line that was drawn by people who live on the profane side of the line. It’s a line that we drew in a very protectionist sense, thinking that we need to make sure that our people don’t or that we need to keep clean from this or that. We drew the line. And then we drew a further line and a further line.

I would go so far as to say that, and this is a theological statement, but I’d be shocked to find that there are really that many people in the world who have no sense whatsoever of a sense of mystery. Michael Frost tells stories about, and yes, this is a little on the cheesy side, but he says that if you ask people if they’re religious, no one says that they are. People who go to church regularly don’t even want to say that they’re religious people. But, Frost points out, if you ask people if they’ve had a religious experience, that’s a different question for most people. Over and over again, people admit that, of course, they’ve had a religious experience.

There is something to the way that we communicate internally about the activity of God and a vision for the activity of God that disregards the pervasiveness of a globe full of God’s people. They’re still His folks, having encounters with God over and over again. So, one of the central texts for me with the covers project is Phillip’s encounter with the Eunuch. Are we willing to go near the chariot and stay near the chariot?

Phillip is told by the Spirit of the Lord to go South. He’s just given a direction. I think there’s something to that, though I haven’t completely sussed it out yet; he doesn’t even have a particular destination. There’s something very open to it; he’s just told to go South. There are no preconceived notions to the story. On his way South, he runs into; he sees, across the way, a chariot with an Ethiopian Eunuch in it. We don’t really know how he knew from a distance that the man is a eunuch, which is one of the great mysteries of the Bible.

When he sees the chariot, the Spirit of the Lord speaks to him and says: “Go to the chariot and stay near it.” I just love the particular words: “Go.” “Stay.” Near.” He doesn’t go and deliver a message, he goes and stays near. As he does, he hears this Ethiopian eunuch, someone pretty culturally distant and removed from Phillip culturally, reading the words of sacred Scripture, he’s reading Isaiah. And in particular, he’s reading a section of Isaiah that foretold the life and death of the one Phillip had come to know as the resurrected Christ. It’s not a sidenote but something I pull from the story: the Word of God was not something Phillip was carrying around with him to drop off, it was something that was already present in this place before he arrived. So he asks the Ethiopian if he understands what he is reading. The Ethiopian asks how he can understand unless someone explains it to him. Then the Ethiopian asks him to get into the chariot. So we’ve moved past “Go to,” “Stay Near,” to “Get In.” It’s not until he’s in the chariot, with his feet off the ground, with his story, his life fully entwined with this man, wherever this man is going in his chariot, that’s where Phillip is headed. Their stories have collided now and they then, in that context, turn the conversation to The Story that is being played out already in both of their stories on two different cultural planes.

Part of where I’m going is this: it’s not until we’re willing to intentionally; in the same way we’ve intentionally divided and intentionally judged others, we must intentionally engage and listen to the books that are popular or the music that is popular around us. Only then will we go near the chariot, will we stay near the chariot, will we get in the chariot.

So how does all of this translate into you doing a project of cover songs most people would not expect from a “Christian” artist?
I grew up hearing these songs and in them I recognize something key, something beautiful, something reflective of the Kingdom, in the way these songs are written and in their beauty. They made me wonder: “Can it be enough for us that this is a beautiful piece?” Even in terms of lyrical content, whether it’s Reznor writing very clearly about what he sees as this deathly potent relationship between power and divinity/religion or Aimee Mann talking about what it means to be saved and the very relational nature of being rescued by simply being known by someone.

These, of course, are not fully developed; you wouldn’t want them to be the centerpiece of someone’s life, but can we hear something really profound about the nature of salvation in these songs? Can we hear something profound about someone’s rage against a world that abuses power? I would finish that by saying that, it strikes me that if we can’t, if we’re honestly willing to draw a line and say that God is not present in these works, then that says more about our understanding of God than it does about the larger culture. We are saying that there are places God won’t go and I simply don’t believe that.

I grew up loving The Smiths. Why choose one of their songs?
It was this sick, sick sadness. But not of Morrissey. The thing, every time for me, was these deeply sad, pathetic, awful, depressing lyrics set against this jangly, beautiful, bright guitar. In terms of a person’s experience of life, Makoto Fujimara talks about sadness in that there is an aspect of sadness that the Japanese recognize as “the beautiful sadness.” “The Beautiful Sadness” is a perfect way to describe The Smiths.

As an adolescent growing up and having all these experiences, like being in love with someone you cannot possibly be with and then the breakup and the so on; there’s something there, you weren’t just busted up, there was something beautiful and cathartic about how jacked up your life was. The Smiths really captured that. They tapped into that and, in many ways, redeemed that aspect of my life. It wasn’t just a bad day, this was part of life; there is something good about sadness. There can be something beautiful about sadness. There’s poetry in it. I don’t know what I would have done without The Smiths or The Cure. They made my sadness beautiful.

Do you have a typical songwriting process?
I do. I write snippets. I have a folder called “snippets” on my computer. That’s not true. It’s actually called “McSnippets,” because that’s dumber. I do write bits of songs, whether it’s something more thematic and then come back around and listen through every once in a while. Then, at some point, I’ll set some time to stretch those a bit. Then I leave that for a while then come back and stretch it again and then make a decision. Then I go away for a few days with a guitar and a computer and try to finish some songs and that’s about as much process as I have. Maybe I’d be a better songwriter if I had more of a disciplined approach but I very rarely force myself to finish songs.

Who are some of the artists who have influenced you?
Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket. He’s my guy among guys. I like the way he writes. There’s some variance in his styles and most of the time I like what he’s writing about. Tom Waits in the last few years. I liked him in the past but I’ve really grown to appreciate him recently. He’s sort of; and this is probably sac-religious on several fronts, but I’m not a huge Bob Dylan fan; I don’t dislike him but I don’t have the great love for him that people do. I admire Dylan but from a songwriter’s perspective, Tom Waits serves that for me.

What’s next?
I always have too many ideas.

• Visit Justin McRoberts’ official website

Songs of Water releases their second album “The Sea Has Spoken” today. The band plays largely instrumental music and has played with Ricky Skaggs among others. We recently spoke with band member/percussionist/hammer dulcermist, Stephen Roach, who also has a solo album out called “Closer to the Burning.” Stephen shares his background and his future, along with thoughts on instrumental music.

Were you raised in a musical home

Yes. Both sides of my family are musical, they’re all bluegrass musicians. My Dad is a third generation fiddle player. I definitely grew up around music. I didn’t always follow the same musical path as maybe my Dad and all my cousins did, but I actually did end up doing some bluegrass style music.

How did you first start playing music?

I don’t remember not playing music. I think I asked for my first drum set when I was five, so it’s just always been a part of me.

When did you begin to feel that music might be your life’s calling?

Probably not too long after that. I remember times when I was like eight-years old, I would take every chair in our house and set them up in our dining area like a concert hall and force my family to watch me bang on things. I think I even sold them tickets, so I had a marketing thing going on too.

When did you start writing music?

I started writing pretty seriously at a very young age, maybe around 12. I wrote a lot of lyrics, a lot of poetry and eventually started composing with other people.

How did you pick up the hammer dulcimer?

Percussion instruments are some of the primary things that I play, it just made sense for me. I was an easy leap because I had started doing a lot of drums and percussion work at an early age. Then when I started learning guitar and more things about melody and composition, the dulcimer was kind of the bridge between the two worlds. It is a percussion instrument, but it’s also kind of the great-grandfather of the piano. I just had this feeling, or maybe intuition that if I got this instrument, I would know how to play it. I went out and found one and just started playing it. I didn’t have any lessons or anything.

Were you raised in a Christian home?

I wasn’t raised in church, that’s probably an easier answer. I didn’t go to church growing up and didn’t really want anything to do with it. I did have some spiritual encounters early on in life but my experience of church at that time was just that it was a boring place full of moral codes. There wasn’t a lot of life there.

Would you mind sharing a bit about your salvation experience?

Sure. I don’t know that I can narrow it down to one particular time. Like I said, when I was around ten, I did have a pretty tremendous encounter with the presence of God. I knew that that was real and I pursued that for a while on my own, even at the young age of 10-12. When I really didn’t find any life in the church at that point, I began to search out other spiritual paths. For a lot of my teenage years, I spent a lot of time studying things like Buddhism and New Age philosophy and even occultic stuff, pretty much a smorgasbord of spiritual experience. Something real had been awakened in my heart when I was young, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. After a while, I got pretty heavily into Native American religion and even the drug experiences that go with that.

There came a point much later, after I experimented with all those things when, I didn’t even know to call God “God” at that point, the Native Americans referred to God as “The Great Spirit,” so I just said “Great Spirit, show me who you are and show me if you have a purpose for my life.” When I did that, Jesus was the only one who started talking. I told myself that if I was really as opened minded as I said I was, I owed it to myself to look into this again. Jesus hasn’t stopped talking and that was 12 years ago.

How does your faith influence your music?

Faith influences everything I do. I don’t see Songs of Water as any different than what I do when I lead worship on a Sunday morning. It all comes from the same place in me. It’s just different expressions. I think music in general, whether it’s acknowledged or not, is a powerful spiritual force. For me, my music is just an overflow of the deep things that I experience.

The more connected I get with the Creator, the more creative I become. I used to have this fear that if I quit doing drugs or if I was no longer depressed about life, I was going to lose all of my creativity because that was the source that I drew from. It was a real scary thing for me to undergo some of the transformation that happens when you encounter the Creator, but I found that over time, the closer I got to the Creator, the One who created everything, I began to create things I never imagined I could create prior to that relationship.

How does faith impact my art? It makes me ravenous to get to know God on a much deeper level. Because the deeper I go in that relationship, the more I get shocked at the creativity that comes out of my own life.

What’s the relationship between your solo output and music made as Songs of Water?

The solo stuff that I do is primarily geared toward people of like mind in the Christian faith. Lyrically, I deal a lot with topics about my faith and the journey of faith.

Do you have a typical songwriting process?

For me, I usually sit down and a lot of the personal songs I write, I just sit down and play and a lot of times, things just emerge and then I craft them over time. A lot of times, I’ll add poetic fragments I’ve written along the way. I usually experiment with interpreting songs on different instruments. I have a tenor banjo that I like to write on a lot. With the band though, everyone in the band is a songwriter so one of us will come up with an idea and we’ll experiment with it on different instruments. We love to improvise and just see what comes out of it. A lot of times, it just seems like the music will have a particular way that it wants to go. It’s almost like we spend more time listening than writing. When the piece is finished, we often look back and just say “Wow, this is so much bigger than what we had envisioned!”

Why separate your musical output into these two different expressions?

One is a collaborative effort and one is just strictly my own writing. It’s really just the collaborative effort that makes the difference for me. I love writing with the band. You come up with some pretty interesting things when you get six different heads together from six different perspectives all putting parts together. The music I write on my own is a lot more personal. But then again, the two lyrical songs on the new Songs of Water album are songs I wrote myself.

Is the instrumental music a different experience for you?

I love playing instrumental music. Sometimes, there are just things in the heart, imagination or spirit that you just can’t express with the limitations of words. I love language, I love poetry, word imagery, but there comes a point when you’re limited by the strict definition of the words that you choose. With instrumental music, you’re not inhibited by those limitations. I can express something of the depth of my thought process and experience through instrumental music in a way that can reach out to a broader audience rather than just someone who may understand my dialect.

I see music as another form of language. You understand the words that I’m saying right now because you’ve been taught that certain combinations of sounds mean certain things, so when I say certain things, a certain understanding comes to you but I’m just releasing sound. The same thing is true when I pick up the dulcimer or playing one of my percussion instruments, it’s just another form of communication. It’s another language. The thoughtful listener can really pick up on what’s being communicated even without words.

Do you find that people sometimes expect lyrics but that they’re not disappointed when they’re not there?

Yes, I think there can be a certain expectation for lyrics. Our first album was completely instrumental and for people who were familiar with my own music, that was bizarre but it’s been really well received. The thing I enjoy doing about instrumental music is the cinematic quality. Even though there’s not a lyric there, it still tells a story. It just takes a little switch in mindset but in many ways, once you get there, it can be more liberating than the traditional verse chorus verse lyrical model.

Why include lyrical songs on the new album?

We’re really coming to a place where we’re finding our own sound and we’ve matured a lot as a band. It is a step towards integrated some of the other stuff I’ve done in my solo work with what the band has been doing. I just had these songs that didn’t necessarily fit with the format of my other solo stuff but they weren’t instrumental either so we just began to play with them and add our sound to them. We’ve actually got some other songs with lyrics that we do that aren’t even on the album. Molly and Luke both sing as well.

How does improvisation work for you as a band?

It’s incredible. It’s all based on relationship. Most of us have been playing together so long, we’re starting to learn one another musically. Everybody is so well-versed on so many different instruments, it’s a lot about restraint and listening for us. We prefer one another musically, waiting for someone to step forward and as they do, we support them. When they’re done speaking with their instrument, with what they have to say, somebody else will come forward and say something until we’ve said what we have to say and we move on. It’s kind of like live art. We don’t always know where it’s going to end up. It’s risky, it’s adventurous, but it’s fun.

How did the band come together?

The band started back in 2002 with myself, Jason Windsor, who is one of the co-writers, along with Marta, the violinist, the three of us began playing together. Jason and I roomed together for a while. We just wrote a lot of music and I had this idea of wanting to do an instrumental album so we produced the album and then the band sort of formed out of that. We knew we had struck on something different, something that really got our creative attention. I just said “Let’s call the album Songs of Water” and after that, as we began playing shows, the band just sort of became Songs of Water.

Where did that phrase “Songs of Water” come from?

It came from a scrap of poetry that I wrote at some point. I don’t even remember the context now. I just knew the term “Songs of Water” was intriguing. It describes the music on multiple levels. For one, it has a flow and spontaneity but at the same time, from a more scientific perspective, the human body is primarily made of water. Of course, over time, the phrase has come to mean more to us. You can drink a glass of water to survive, or a tsunami can destroy a nation. The music we play can have that same ability. It can be a very soothing classical piece, or it may be a really cataclysmic percussion piece the next moment.

For those not familiar with your music, how might you describe what you do?

Definitely cinematic but it’s more earthy. It’s folky, it’s earthy and we draw influences from all sorts of cultures all over the world. I’ve studied West African music and I’m currently a student of classical Indian music. Luke is an amazing bluegrass musician and Marta has been in the symphony for 25 years. Her and Sarah both are classically trained. It’s really broad and none of us really listen to the same music. So maybe I would say it’s cinematic world folk music.

How would you describe the progression of the band from the first album to the new one?

The first album was released in 2004, so we’ve had quite a few years to develop since then. We’ve also added members to the band in the meantime who also serve as co-writers. They just bring so much to the table as far as the songwriting they’re contributing. We’ve developed over time. The first album was kind of a seed and this one is certainly more mature than the first one. I think it’s just the natural development over the years and a lot of hard work.

You mentioned that early on in life you didn’t feel like there was much life in the church. Has your perception changed?

Yes, in a lot of ways it really has but in all fairness, back then I was 10 years old and I lived in a little tobacco town in the middle of nowhere. There were probably more cows there than people. My worldview on that was probably not the most acute. It just had to become real in my own experience. I remember that, one of the first times I walked back into a church after so many years away, I found myself walking from the back of the church to the front on top of the pews. I just didn’t know the way things worked!

For me now, with music and worship music in particular, being such a thriving part of the church culture, that to me is where I’m finding a lot of life. There is a growing group of young, creative people who are not going to just write or rehash the same sounds and the same things that have been done for so many years prior. They’re wanting to express their personal conviction of God through their art and music and for me, there’s a lot of life in that. Like I said earlier, it’s just another form of communication. I love what I’m seeing but I think that in a lot of ways, the church has a long ways to go creatively. I think that it should be one of , if not the most creative force on earth.

Why is it not?

I would say the primary hindrance is fear. I think that more and more people are realizing that authenticity cannot be replaced by anything. The world is hungry to see something authentic. We’re done with the hype, we’re done with the slick expressions. The world really wants to see something real no matter where that comes from. I think it’s an opportunity for the Church to really become who She’s created to be. Music and art are wonderful vehicles to express that authentic devotion. I could care less about religion, to be honest, but I long for the reality of the presence of God. If I can encounter that presence and that person, then I think the rest kind of falls into place.

What can churches do to help foster communities of creativity?

I think that one thing churches could do would be allow their musicians and artists to create their own work rather than just being bound to playing songs that everyone is familiar with. Music is contextual and congregational music must be treated that way but even in the Bible, even with David, there are hundreds of different sorts of songs and some of them aren’t very pretty and not all of them are uplifting and I think that just having the freedom of creative exploration and not being afraid if something looks really wacky.

What’s next?

I’m really excited to see where the CD with Songs of Water goes. We’ve already had a real exciting reception even though it’s just now being released. We’re always writing new music and for me personally, I’m working on several books of poetry and I’m working on recording some of my own music. We’d really like to start playing out some more and see where it goes. We love playing theaters and this music really comes alive in that setting so we’re shooting for some venues like that. I’m excited. I think there’s a lot of good things coming.

Here is Songs of Water in 2007 performing their song “Tempest:”

 

• Visit the Songs of Water official website
• Visit Stephen Roach’s official website

Special thanks to Jenelle D’Alessandro for her wonderful transcription help!

Ben and Vesper are a married couple who also happen to record together as Ben + Vesper for Sounds Familyre, you know the Holiday at the Sea/Habañero Hour favorite record label of Daniel Smith. The couple recently recently released an EP called LuvInIdleness, and I recently caught up with them to find out about how their faith affects their art, their relationship with Sufjan Stevens and what’s next:

A question you probably get asked a lot is about being married and being in a band together. Does that present any challenges? Is it great?

B: We love it. It comes really natural to us because that’s sort of the context in which we met. That’s always been the way we worked together.

V: I guess I realized recently that it’s actually been the best thing for our marriage.

How so?

V: It’s brought us together time-wise. We’ve always spent a lot of time together because we work at home, but I think it just created an understanding between us artistically. It added another level to our relationship.

We found that when we had to communicate on an artistic level, it helped our communication on an every-day level. It brought us to a common ground, to a place of being flexible in understanding one-another, but also to really challenge each other and try to bring out the best in each other. It’s really worked both ways, it’s stretched us in our marriage towards a healthy direction, as well. For us, it’s just always been a part of our relationship.

Did you meet through music?

V: We met kind of on a fluke. We were playing at the same music festival which wasn’t really a festival, there were about 5 people in the audience, and most of them were playing that day.

B: It was an outdoor festival. The stage was the size of Woodstock. It was giant, the biggest stage I’ve ever seen, let alone played on.

V: The whole attendance could have sat on the stage, easily. It was very uncomfortable.

B: It was “the stage that was set for our first meeting.”

V: Something went off in me as soon as I saw Ben, and I knew I was going to marry him. But it was another year and a half before we started dating. I think because neither of us were interested in casual dating at all. Yes, it was a long, excruciating year and a half of pining.

But you were both doing music prior to meeting.

B: We were in separate bands.

How was the transition then to doing music together?

V: We’d always played music together, even when we were just friends because we clicked so closely. Ben was doing a folk-duo, Simon and Garfunkel-type duo. I was just doing my own folky thing. It was really kind of easy to sit in on each other’s stuff. We played together a little bit.

When we got married I was mostly doing the most active song-writing and performing. But Ben would accompany me. We’ve always done this together but the difference was that this project–meaning Ben + Vesper–is that it started when I was just about to have our 2^nd child and I really wasn’t finding time at all to do our music. So Ben conceived of this project as a way to give me a chance to sing without a whole lot of preparation or intense work. We conceived of this just originally just being Ben playing electric guitar and the both of us just singing in unison. Quite a different sound than it wound up being.

For those who might not have heard you, how would you describe your music?

V: That’s the question every musician hates.

But every interviewer loves to ask.

V: Someday we’re actually going to craft an answer to that question.

B: Well, the closest, in terms of our latest EP, the closest we’ve come in describing it in words is: if you watch the movie Xanadu then right after that watch a video production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

V: An amateur production, you mean?

B: Any. And then you go to sleep. The soundtrack to your dreams, after watching these two movies, will be LuvInIdleness, our latest EP. That’s the best we can do.

V: Or I guess you can call it ‘indie pop.’

Do you have a typical song-writing process?

B: It’s pretty straight forward for this project. I start with the words and then craft the melody, and then the basic guitar or accompaniment around the melody. It’s really always in that order. I just find that any songs that pushes me to create the melody that is “the truest” to the words and the concepts that I want to convey. Then I’ll bring it to Vesper and she’ll write all of her parts, all of her harmonies. And then once we have it at that stage, then it depends on the tour, on who we’re recording with. They will bring their stuff to the table. We really enjoy that part of the process, because depending on who you’re playing with, you give them time and the music will mutate and transform into something completely different. That’s what we love to be surprised about. That‘s sort of been the process for the past 3 albums that we’ve done.

How did the relationship with Daniel Smith and Sounds Familyre come about?

B: That came about probably 10 years ago.

V: It came about through Sufjan because we used to hold a house concert series in our home. And we had a lot of different types of songwriters come through. So I was doing an interview on a radio station about my music, because that’s what I was doing at the time, and the DJ after we were done just handed me a CD and said, “Hey check out this guy, Sufjan Stevens.” It was his self-produced record called “A Sun Came.” It had just come out. So, I really enjoyed it, and I thought he’d be really interesting to have at a house concert. He had never played his music live before. We actually just found the photos of that concert. We have these historic photos. He just showed up with his banjo and just kind of winged it. And, I think it was maybe a year and a half later that “Seven Swans” came out. Through him I think we went to one of the shows and met Daniel. Or maybe he had submitted some stuff from Sounds Familyre for a different project he was doing. But it was all through that that we had this relationship with them and, like I said, when Ben first conceived of this project he really felt like this would be something he wanted to submit to Sounds Familyre. So I think this whole process between–he took a week to write the song, we recorded the demos in a day, I had the baby, and the next week we had a record deal.

Did having children affect your artistic outlook?

B: Definitely. Absolutely. We are always very quick to say that when had our first child that’s when our artistic endeavors really became more focused. There’s sort of a common eye-line that lifted off. We found a completely new inspiration when we had our first child. And then our second child, it just increased. Our children have really blessed our efforts because they really just provided a new framework for us to write and to perform. There are just as typical challenges now as when we didn’t have kids, but in terms of a life-style, we really enjoy doing music and art as a family. So, we’ve really found it to be a symbiotic relationship: parenting and producing art.

Vesper, you do visual art also, right?

V: We both do. We both have degrees in art.

Is the creative process similar for the different mediums? How do they relate to one another, or do they?

V: I think they definitely relate to each other. I think it’s also interesting because Ben and I have very different approaches to our artwork. He’s much more an expressionist kind of painter. I’m an illustrator. So, what I do is a lot more of straight-forward communication. You better get it within the first 10 seconds, or I haven’t done my job. Whereas, his work is much more layered and nuanced, in terms of the communicating meaning aspect. I think that our song-writing is very similar to that, too. My songs are much more straight-forward, trying to tell a story or really craft an image for you that means you should really get it on the first hearing. There’s not much…it’s more in the folk tradition. Ben’s is much more…he really experiments with the way words sound together. It’s a much more experimental style of writing, I think.

B: I think it’s just that I want to, in m y writing, just appeal a little more to the subconscious level, rather than telling the story in a didactic way, but telling it more in a way that draws out the listener. Even if the meaning of the song isn’t apparent on the first listen. I think Vesper’s right in that that’s much more of the way I paint, visually. But they definitely work together. Whenever I am painting, I’m a better song-writer. When I’m not painting I think my songs suffer. So it’s really important for us to be doing different aspects of art at the same time.

V: I also think that one interesting thing has been how we’ve cross-pollinated. We did much different artwork before we got together. So my work now takes on a lot more expression and Ben can definitely take out the double “o” brush now and add at a lot of detail. We’re actually sitting in front of a painting that Ben did and it is a very literal painting of a horse on a very, very detailed grass. It looks like something I did. Except that the horse is beady pink. That’s a little different. I probably wouldn’t choose that color.

How does your faith influence your art?

B: I think about it in terms of that we’re both Christians and we both in the Word of God as the absolute foundation of our life and everything we do and think and feel. And so, naturally, it comes through anything we try to express, any endeavor that we put our hand to is going to be informed by our deepest convictions. That’s really as simplistic as i can make it. For us it’s not really a conscious decision about a certain genre that we’re aiming towards, artistically. It’s more a matter of how does our beliefs enter into not just our production of art, but our production of everything: every decision we make, every thought process, it has to be informed by our relationship with God. So, it’s never been something we think too much about in terms of coming to a crisis point of “are we Christian artists, or aren’t we?” I think the short answer is: we’re Christians and we’re artists. We can, sort of, let others play with what that means.

V: For me, one of the values I really hold highly is authenticity. And I think that if you really believe that your entire life is under the gaze of God, your entire life and everything you think and everything you do, then you better not try to BS anybody. And you better not try to push people into a paradigm that they aren’t interested in. Does that make sense?

In terms of what a lot of people try to do, they either try to be so completely overt in their music with the gospel message that it ends up just becoming propaganda and people that don’t believe don’t want to spend the time listening to that. It’s not their paradigm. Or it ends up being, “oh, we have to try to infiltrate some sort of ‘culture,’ so let’s just suppress what we believe and intentionally not speak of it. Both of those are lies. I don’t think God thinks kindly to that approach.

B: I think it’s a question of context. It’s knowing your context, knowing the proper context for the creative output. One reason I respect Daniel Smith and why The Danielson Family has always been such an important band to me is that he is always very clear about his context. He’s clear about what he’s trying to do with his music and the people he wants to speak to. He’s created a universe and world where he has certain parameters and his audience is very much in mind. He’s 100% authentic. He can speak about his faith the way he wants to and he doesn’t let anybody dictate the rules. He creates the rules of what he feels comfortable with. But his intention is communication. So his words, lyrics, his song-writing is very specific and very important to his goal of communication to a specific audience. I really, really respect that and that’s something that we also feel very strongly about. So there’s absolutely…it’s wonderful if you feel that your music, your art, if you want to try to communicate the entire gospel message.

Is that possible, though?!

B: I think it’s possible, obviously it depends on…it’ll be an aspect, or a shade, a color, or a face of the gospel.

V: There are so many facets.

B: In other words, whatever the Lord is leading you to do, that’s wonderful as long as you know your context and you do it in the context where it’s appropriate. So to get up and play a worship song at CBGBs…it depends. If you’re going for communication with that audience, there’s going to be a lot that’s wasted, because that’s music that is meant for an intimate with the Lord. So, if those people in that audience have an intimate relationship with the Lord, then maybe it’s appropriate. So, it’s really about knowing your audience. That is I think where a lot of people get hung up.

V: I just want to add one thing, too, in relation to our house concert history. When we were running the house concerts we lived in the parsonage of our church, so there were some questions about what kinds of acts we could bring in. But we really felt very strongly that it was not about–we had run the Christian coffee house circuit for awhile, I had anyway. And, man. Wow. What can you say? There were some instances in which I was treated so poorly as a performer that I remember the point in which I said, “I will never play in another Christian coffee house,” because it was treated as, “Well, you either have to push the whole gospel message…so that these unbelievers might darken the door of your church basement will get saved by the end of the night.” Or, you’re really just merely providing background music to the “evangelical” work that’s going on, which is people trying to evangelize the people at their table. And we just didn’t feel like we wanted to run that kind of concert. We just wanted it to be about music and beauty. We had certain boundaries, certain things that we asked of the artists. By and large, we felt that our job (our ministry, if you could call it that), was to provide hospitality to these musicians. And, whether they were Christians or not. We felt it was our calling at the time to show as much kindness and authenticity and hospitality to the people who may not receive it when they’re on tour, or just in a club. I think that we have a similar approach to our music right now. For us, it’s primarily that relationship…so whether it’s with the people that we’re playing with in a band, or the people in the studio, or the people that we meet after a show, it’s really just about showing true love to people, really.

We’ve talked about the pressure to sometimes explicitly state the entire gospel in every piece of work…how did we move, especially in the Christian subculture, from taking this entire body of work to judging artists by a single piece of work as a propaganda piece?

B: I think part of the problem that I find is that people are so, we need to redouble our commitment to the artist, to really explore beyond sort of the surface of a song, or even a collection of songs…to work hard to follow the artists that we love and support over the long haul, so that we can step back and get a greater perspective of what’s being said. Just as audience-goers, as listeners, we need to make sure that we’re not being lazy. We need to make sure that we’re being fans and supporters who are really committed to understanding what’s being put forward. I just think that’s really important. That‘ something I try to do as a listener, as a fan of the music that I love. I think that in that way, a lot of times artists who are trying to be light and salt and witnesses in this world, if you do look at the larger body of work, you will often find something that’s more encompassing…I think it’s more about stepping back, about not taking things out of context, but really looking at the whole.

V: Artists are human beings., we’re entitled to a few duds. We are entitled to make some mistake along the way. I think it really is about looking at the larger body of work. We’re sitting here right now looking at a Alexander Calder mobile. Some of them are absolute masterpieces (they all are really masterpieces), but some of them are, you know, might not have hit the mark. But you look at the overall body of his work and you know that this man was one of a kind.

B: I think it’s important for an artist to be able to try things and develop, and to do work that is half finished, but maybe discovers something new and pushes the envelope. And challenges the listener and the artist and can take the next piece off in a new direction. It’s important to make sure that there’s room for that. The industry isn’t necessarily geared toward that. But I think it’s the responsibility of the artist to “never mind” the industry and just to be a responsible artist to always be exploring, and to never feel the need to close the circle, to complete and perfect and tidy up their work, or to cross all their T’s and dot all their I’s. I think that’s where art really suffers, it’s where the artist knows exactly what they’re doing, and they know exactly how they’ll execute it. And then the art becomes meaningless and doesn’t really end up taking people very far, because there’s no give and take [buzzing], so that’s really on us as artists. It’s also the listener‘s responsibility, I think that’s where the relationship becomes really important.

On some level, and especially in the “Christian market” doesn’t this mean re-training listeners? How do we do that?

V: Early music education in schools! Absolutely. I’m really serious, by the way.

B: I think, honestly, that, and there needs to be a serious revival of Christian music like Bach. Where it’s music that is from a completely different era and paradigm. It needs to be so removed from the current industry. I think it’s true. We do need to retrain ourselves on our heritage. We need to understand our heritages as Christians and as artists. Because the problem is now, the industry the way it is, the only reference point that any teenage Christian has, or the music that they are looking for, the music that they like is: go to the Christian bookstore, or go online on iTunes and they’ll see a reference that says, “sounds like Nirvana…you’ll like these guys.”

How did we as Christians go from being at the forefront of the arts, to now just being copycats?

V: Fear. I’m just thinking a little bit of the Reformation here, too. I mean, I’d have to sit down and formulate my thoughts about that. When the Reformation happened, so much that was good happened, but it was also really iconoclastic, so it relegated the arts into teaching tools (which they kind of always were in the Church). But I’m thinking of Bach. Most stuff after Bach, what can you say, in terms of the Church’s relationship to the arts. The pendulum just swung too far over. I think it goes back that far. If you go back to the Reformation. And then I think when the Enlightenment happened they were the ones that were triumphing the new developing the new developments and the arts and we just went into hiding. There’s more to it…

B: I think whenever it really happened, we don’t really know, whenever the shift was it’s because we lost our vision for who we’re supposed to be in the world, and how we’re supposed to relate to the world. And how we’re supposed to be in the world, but not of it. It’s just we have a confused relationship with the world, just in general. Never mind the arts. If you talk about being copycats in music or in art, it’s only because we’re copycats in every other aspect of life to the world. The world still has so much draw to us that we end up lusting over things of the world. That really comes back to the fact that our love for God is not strong enough to the point that we don’t understand a relationship with God. We don’t understand how beautiful and lovely and worthy God is so our affections for him aren’t what they should be. Our affections for the world are out of whack and become much stronger. That’s when we begin losing our distinction as Christians. And losing our salt, because we don’t want to be salty, we want to be with the world, we want to be of the same substance of the world. And we forget that the Lord calls us out of the world. But, I really think it does stem from…something is wrong with our knowledge of God. We don’t understand who it is that we worship, we don’t understand who we serve, who we say we love. So we go after these other things. Art is just sort of an obvious fruit of that. It’s really the first commandment.

V: One of my favorite quotes is from M. Staples and she says, “The devil ain’t got no music. All music is God’s music.” And it’s the truth. It’s the devil that’s the one that counterfeits. The quote really echoes from Psalm 16 that says “at the Lord’s right hand are pleasures forevermore.” I think that if we as Christians really really understood the beauty of God, and really understood his pleasure, we would let go of all this…it’s very freeing when you realize that God is the author of life and beauty and truth and everything good. And there’s no conflict there. We’re free to pursue, under God’s gaze (obviously)…we’re really much more free, as Christians, than we think we really are to not only confront the world, but trump it. We have the trump card. We have the Author of all this truth and beauty that everybody really is seeking after. I think, Mike Bickle says, “if we understood just the primary pleasures, the secondary pleasures would have their rightful place.” And the primary pleasure is God himself.

Are there any practical ways where churches can help foster the arts again?

V: Preach the first commandment in the first place.

B: Yeah I really think it comes down to that. I don’t think it needs to be that churches need to open up all of these specialized ministries or outreaches, or try to be cool, or any of that. It needs to be at the root, to really seek as the Church, to become God’s temple again. Where he is worshipped and adored and glorified for who he is. The rest will follow. At the end of the day, music means nothing. Art means nothing, if God is displaced by our idols. Everything else becomes completely worthless. That’s what really what the church can do: to make a commitment to prayer and worship and to the Word. To love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And to love our neighbor as our self. That’s what it comes down to.

What’s next?

B: We are getting ready to go on a short 2 week tour. We begin next week. We’re going to be touring with Danielson and with Ortolan who is another wonderful band on Sounds Familyre. We’re going to be heading down to SXSW and playing several shows along the way. That’s our next endeavor and we’ll be playing all of our songs from the EP and just be promoting that. That’s what’s next. I’m working on some new material for the next recording. We have another full length that’s being mixed right now that we hope will be ready for the summer.

Anything else that you want people to know?

B: Something that I try to live by, creatively, is the idea that as Christians we should be first to be the most experimental and the most engaging and the most inventive in our creative pursuits. Because we have the most reason to be. We have the greatest example before us in Jesus, in the Father, in the Holy Spirit. We have the most reason to be the most daring in our art, the most reckless in our creativity, because there’s nothing more reckless and crazy than what Jesus did for us. So, how can we hold back in our creation? How can we be so conservative and safe, and just sort of boring, when we are sons of the Living God? That’s really what I try to live and work by, what Vesper and I try to order our lives. So just to encourage others that they have freedom, because our Creator is a joyful God and he’s worth celebrating.

• Visit Ben + Vesper at Sounds Familyre

One of my favorite parts of this blog has been that people send me music. Please feel free to send me music. Once in a while, this can be awkward. I like all kinds of music, but I also have very particular tastes. So if you send me something and I don’t review it on the blog, no offense, but chances are, I didn’t like it. I’d rather ignore it than post negative reviews, that’s just not part of what I’m interested in doing. But once in a while, I make a connection that results, not only in finding great new music, but also in keeping in touch with someone new, even over the years.

Matt Haeck first contacted me through a mutual friend several years ago and sent me his first CD. I didn’t review it. But then he also recently sent me his follow-up EP Western States. I did review that one. Whatever happened between that first and second release, Haeck has grown by leaps and bounds in finding his own voice as a songwriter. I recently spoke to Matt and asked him about this progression.

Were you raised in a musical home?

Yeah, I grew up with parents who sang all of the time. My Dad would play a lot of old gospel songs at home. My Mom would sing Alto in the church, and I remember, hearing her from my earliest days and not understanding what she was doing or why it sounded so good. I just knew that she was doing something different from everybody else. That was one of the first times I became intrigued with music. My Dad had an accordian he would bring out every now and then and play “Roll Out The Barrels.” I think it may have been the only song he knew, but yes, it was definitely a musical home. Neither of my parents were professional musicians or highly trained but they appreciated music and made me do it, made me join band in 5^th grade. I played trombone for a few years and they made me join choir in 6^th grade and I think I was pretty mad at them for that for a while but that became a good thing after a couple of years.

At what point did you start writing music?

I think the first time I ever wrote a song was in high school. I wrote a couple of typical youth group open E worship songs that were probably pretty bad. I didn’t really apply myself to it until my last year of college and then I didn’t really take it seriously until a couple of years after that, so it’s been pretty recent.

What drew you to songwriting?

That’s a good question. Songs impact me very deeply and I think that at some point I just realized that songs are a type of art that connect with me deeply and they connect with the majority of people. Visual art can sometimes go over people’s heads. A lot of people don’t see architecture as art, though I do. There’s dance and things like that, but songs relate to everybody. Once I started trying my hand at it, I realize that, it is difficult, but it’s not necessarily such an unattainable thing that a lot of people make it out to be so I just started applying myself to it.

Do you have a typical songwriting process?

No, not really. It’s pretty much different every time.

For those who may not be familiar with your work, how would you describe your music?

Dutch Pop? Krunk? I guess “Americana” is the easiest way to get to it; at least to what I’m doing now. I’ve had some ambitions lately to maybe branch out a little bit and start a side-project where I could do something different. But what I do now is definitely based in a very American folk tradition.

What direction would you like to see a side-project go?

Actually, I’d really love to do something electronic! I’ve been toying around with some beats and samples and stuff like that. That would have to be under a completely different name.

No offense to your previous release, but your new work has made tremendous progress, both in writing and direction. What happened?

It took a year to record that first album and honestly, by the time I finished, I’d written a lot of songs that I liked a lot better than the songs on the actual album. By the time I finished, I wasn’t very enthusiastic about that album. I only sold it for a couple of months and then I just stopped selling it completely because it just wasn’t what I was doing anymore.

I’m not sure how the change came about. In the writing of the first album, I was very much trying to see myself as some sort of Christian agitator. But I just didn’t feel right in that skin after a little while and I just realized that’s not what I’m called to do. At the same time, my thinking about music and art began to change quite a bit. I started to simplify. I think a lot of writers go through a phase where you want to write songs that express the deepest, ultimate reality about the world but very few people can actually write like that. I’ve come to find out that it’s better to write simpler songs about more common themes and that was kind of the change in my mind. I wanted to write about things that were a little more concrete, more about real life instead of lofty, heady stuff, which is what I was trying to do with the first album. I don’t think I succeeded, which is probably part of why I realized that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I was trying to write a lot headier on that album and it didn’t go so well. I started coming to value simpler music a lot more and I think that, as I’ve done that, my writing has gotten better.

As your writing has progressed, do you find yourself thinking more or less about incorporating your faith into your music?

Honestly, I’m not very conscious of it. I’m sure it happens, I’m sure my faith affects my music somehow but I’m not sure how that happens. I guess I’m still trying to figure out, or even if I see everyday occurrences differently than a non-Christian. Besides knowing that God is behind it all, sovereign over it all, it seems to be me that we experience life existentially. We still experience the consequences of our choices. The existential side of life is really what I want to look at when I write my songs, at least right now.

When I was out on tour with Joe Garner, at one point, we were singing to a bunch of people who were all Christians and there were a lot of soccer moms, it was that kind of crowd. I think we were maybe trying to defend what we do because I think we thought they were expecting “Christian” music, but Joe explained it to them as “human” music. That really helped me. I’ve never thought of it so simply. What I’m trying to do is just “human” music. I think that a lot of the songs that I write could have been written by a non-Christian and yet they weren’t so I don’t really know what to say.

Moving more towards the “Americana” genre seems to have also made some of your lyrics a bit grittier if not darker, have you received any pushback on that from your Christian audience?

Not too much, though I have some friends from my past ask me why I’m writing about these things lately. But for the most part, I haven’t had much backlash, no.

You spoke about the distinction between “human” music and “Christian” music. Why make that distinction, what is “Christian” music?

I don’t know what it is. I know what “Christian” people are but I don’t really understand the concept, why we even engage in this thing called “Christian music.” To me it’s just another way of protecting ourselves from a world we’re supposed to be out “in,” “among,” “engaging.” There’s a lot in human experience, Christian or otherwise that’s shared experience. The best music to me, usually, is music that hits on themes that are shared human themes. I think everyone who’s really honest about life and reality, sees themes of brokenness and redemption in life and that’s shared stuff.

As far as the Christian music industry, I grew up around that, but, I haven’t listened to that music in a long time, so I don’t really even know what’s going on. Maybe there’s some good stuff going on but I just don’t know. I know there are some people in that industry who’ve tried to shake it up a little and that’s great. I really love Rich Mullins and Keith Green. Mostly older stuff, but somebody like Sara Groves, I think she’s fantastic. Her writing is incredible.

While I typically want to say that trying to write songs in “explicit” Christian terms is probably not a good idea, but then I hear people like Sara Groves, someone who is really great at doing that without the cheesiness and they prove me wrong. But that seems to be the exception. Oh, and the Welcome Wagon! They’re probably the best thing out there doing “Christian” music.

What’s next?

I’m on tour with Joe Garner and Randolph Robinson. We’re sharing the bill but it’s not a band, it’s all three of us sharing the bill. We went out in August and November and we’re going out again in March. Joe and I had been talking before I moved out to Nashville. I’d like to begin another record soon and we’ll continue the mini tours every three months or so. I’m looking for a manager right now, I’m at that point where I can’t get to that next step by myself. I’m still learning a lot.

Why the move to Nashville?

I’d been going to seminary in San Diego and I did a year-and-a-half, and in the middle of that I realized that I wasn’t called to be a pastor. Instead, I was being called to do music, so I did music out there for a couple of years. Both of our families live in the MidWest so we wanted to be closer to them and there just wasn’t a whole lot going in musically in San Diego. Nashville is a great hub to tour from and there’s obviously a lot of industry stuff here. Nashville really feels like a community, which I’ve not experienced before.

Here is Matt performing his track “Drug Like The Ocean:”

 

• Get Western States for yourself

This is actually an archived interview with Steven Delopoulos, formerly of Burlap to Cashmere, that, for some reason did not make it in the transfer from the old site to the new one. Hope you enjoy:

Were you raised in a musical home?

Oh yes, my parents played music. My uncle played classical guitar. I always loved classical music, even as an infant, my mother would tell me that I would lay in her lap and pretend to conduct. My mother also led; we’re Greek, so we’re from the Orthodox tradition and my Mom always led in our church.

At what point did you begin creating music?

I was always a scatter-brained ADD child. My mother had put me into a choir, I must have been around 12 or 13. It was called the Mama’s Conservatory Music Choir and I started singing. My mother would play piano and there was a composer there who used to actually conduct the Vienna’s Boy Choir in Germany, Felix Multer. He decided to move to America and take on a position that was a lot smaller and nobler. He wound up leading at our church and conducting this conservatory boys choir. There was a director there by the name of Paul Hart who would present these plays to Felix. They’d be these wild, avant-garde plays. One was called Pollicino which came out of Germany and we performed it here in New Jersey. Another one was a Holocaust piece called Brundebar, written by the children of Terezin, the death camp in Czechoslovakia and we got to perform that at a big festival there, I forget what it’s called and then we performed it for Holocaust survivors in Red Bank, NJ. I was fortunate to be among really smart musicians and composers and theater directors and I think that led me into wanting to continue with it.

In high school, I wound up going to a performing arts school and majored in theater. I stayed in musical theater and also did some serious acting. From there I found myself in a theater college. I auditioned for a theater college called Marymount, Manhattan. That led me to want to continue theater, but what happened was: towards the end of my sophomore year, we had to a project. I decided to do a music project. I think I’ve jumped ahead, high school was also a big musical part for me as well. My acting teacher, Joe Russo would pay folk songs. He was a great folk singer and we’d sit around in a circle and I’d just drool, thinking this is amazing! I’ve got to do this! He taught me how to fingerpick on the guitar and I started buying Harry Chapin records and I just loved folk music. I ate it up. To go back, in my sophomore year of college, I did a performance and I called it Burlap to Cashmere and that was the beginning of professionally doing music.

Where did the name Burlap to Cashmere come from?

It came from a roommate who came up with the idea and it just kind of stuck.

From there you involved your cousin in what would become the band, is that right?

I did. I asked my cousin Johnny to come down and play with me and he did. From there we met a manager named Jay Ernest from Jamieson and Ernest. It just kind of all snowballed into a nice little run we had.

You’ve mentioned growing up with church involvement, would you say you were raised in a Christian home?

Oh absolutely!

At what point would you say that faith became your own? Can you talk a bit about your own salvation experience?

I’ve always had a deep reverence towards God. As a child I would make my mother pray with me every night. She thought this was a little odd because they never enforced bible reading or prayer in the house though we would pray before dinner and God was present in the home. They weren’t strict about it. I think that’s what led me to want to experience God because in the Greek Orthodox Liturgy there’s a lot about the mystery of Christ and the mystery of God that makes you want to touch God. Sometimes, when God is spelled out for you too much it’s like: Oh, OK, well that’s done, now I’ll move on to something else. That’s one of the things I love about my Orthodox faith; it really emphasizes the mystery of Christ.

Growing up in that household, being involved in music, I think it all inspired me in the back of my head that if I ever went through any kind of suffering, that there is a God would be there for me and there was a God that existed. And then I was in college. I was about 18 or 19 and I had done some partying. I had experimented with some drugs in fact and it kind of damaged me. Something happened to the way I perceived life. It changed me in a frightening way. I remember going to Greece that year and I was on a boat going to an island called Sondureni, which actually has been a theme in my life for some reason, this island is just gorgeous! I remember just looking up at the sky and saying God, I know you’re there, reveal yourself to me. I can’t do this anymore on my own. I was just a frightened 18-year old.

That year actually, I wound up meeting a lot of evangelical Christians, some Pentecostals, some Baptists, some Non-Denominational. They were more outspoken Christians and I would get invited to Bible studies a lot. And so, to make a long story short, I did get baptized, I did make a re-commitment towards Christ and from then on, I was like a chicken with my head cut off! Before you knew it, I had a New Testament Bible in my hands and I stopped acting. I went to an extreme, obviously, but I frightened everyone around me, there was just no way of stopping me; there was light coming out of my eyes, I had these Pentecostal experiences as well. I believe personally that I had a Holy Spirit experience and, what can I say? When you get touched you get touched and you can’t explain it.

So then, like most Christians, you kind of come down, you land, you come back down to the ground and you ask the question, Now how do I deal with being a human? That duality, I think, is in my music. I love thinking about it, I love talking about it, I love writing about it, although subconsciously. I really don’t have an agenda. I tell people that because I’m not that smart, I’m really not. There’s a song on Straightjacket called “Ruin of the Beast” that deals with this duality. It tries to deal with this issue of God and me and also having to deal with me and me, the two parts of me. Me and the godly man and sitting down and saying OK, how are we going to live together? Most Christian friends I find go through that when they have kids. They see themselves as a little child again and they see the human part of them and they have to deal with that without getting mad, which makes them have to deal with themselves in turn.

Your music very openly deals with expressions of your faith. Is that something you have been intentional about or is it something you even think about at all?

I don’t. If I did, I think I’d have more of a career.

What do you mean by that?

I feel that sometimes there is quite an agenda to the music business. Thank God the music business is changing, that’s all I have to say. But there was always this agenda in any kind of music genre, whatever it might be, whether CCM or pop music or folk music; the guys behind it who want to sell the records always have this agenda saying If you’re going to make a “Christian” record then it has to, from A-Z have a Christian message and it has to be lite, lite, lite, lite. Well, that’s phony to me. I can’t do that, I’m not that good!

I don’t have an agenda when I write music and I try to be as sincere as possible where I am at the time. I think that’s why people still buy my records; they feel kindred to that and they feel that they’re not getting a phony sense of hearing about God but that it’s something they’re going through too. Hopefully they can relate at some level.

What do you think of the tag “Christian” Music?

It’s strange, for me, I think. But not just for me. A lot of my Christian musician friends it’s strange. If someone comes up to me and asks if I’m a Christian, I’m very comfortable saying Well, yes I am, and if someone were to talk to me and say, “Let’s talk about God and open up the Bible, I would feel very comfortable about doing that. I’m very open about my struggles, especially at this point in my life. But if someone were to come up to me and ask if I’m a Christian artist, I just wouldn’t know what to tell them. It may seem strange to say, but I would tell them that I’m a human artist. You have to be a human before you can be a Christian.

Burlap to Cashmere was signed, to A&M and not a Christian label, is that right?

That is correct but we were distributed on the Christian side of things on a label called Squint, Steve Taylor’s label for Word records.

But your lyrics were infused with Scriptural truths, did you receive any negative feedback because of that?

Oh, it was definitely a paradox for us. I wrote those songs out of a reverence for God and the mystery of God. I didn’t think for one second that we were going to package it and I was going to have to put a suit on and say “Buy this” and there would be an agenda and that I would have to go a certain way about selling it. I didn’t think for one second that that would happen and when it did, it threw me off, it threw the guys off as well, so it was an interesting experience to see the Christian music business. And I do say Christian music business, I don’t say dealing with Christians, that’s a whole different thing.

Though Burlap to Cashmere ended, you and your cousin have been doing reunion shows, is that right?

That’s right, we have been and we’re in talks about possibly making another record.

How has it been different for you making music as a band versus going solo?

I struggle with how it all works. I’ll tell you, I’m not a business man; I’m really bad at it. All I am is this scatterbrained guy who writes songs and sometimes I’ll make money doing it and sometimes I won’t. I went from being on Squint and then Squint folded and everyone at Word records, everyone got fired, which was unfortunate. They were our family. They were the people that connected the dots to our fanbase. When they all left, we kind of went under. There was really no platform for us anymore. Then there were all these rumors about us. I’ve heard some crazy rumors that we were in jail or something and someone else said I was in rehab for all these drugs. I couldn’t believe it and I felt a little hurt. I would walk into some Christian manager’s office and they would say “We’ve heard that you were in prison” and I would look at them like, and I just wouldn’t know what to tell them. “No sir, absolutely not,” was about all I could say! Google my name, I have never been in prison, but I’m sure the reputation would help record sales! Maybe they were on to something. I did wind up leaving the band, due to a little bit of exhaustion. We were all tired. Once the platform was taken from under our feet, there was really no place to chime.

Artistically, how would you describe the progression from Burlap to Cashmere to Me Died Blue and now to Straightjacket?

Me Died Blue, I was just so excited to put that out there. I had an interesting couple of years after Burlap, I kind of went into seclusion and struggled with minor depression. Me Died Blue was a great healing record for me where I got to express the gray areas of life; as C.S. Lewis calls it, “the shadowlands.” I think that some of the Christian market didn’t want to put it out because it wasn’t lite, lite, lite, lite, lite. But I felt like I owed it to the fans who bought the Burlap to Cashmere record for them to hear something true because the Burlap to Cashmere record was written with the same notion. I wanted to keep the art alive and I felt like I succeeded.

But what I failed to do was reconnect with the Burlap fans. I didn’t even think about it too much. I went with different management, I went with a country label. I almost completely turned my back on the Christian music business, not for any other reason that I just didn’t think about it. I’m not one of those guys who thinks about what’s going to be good for my career, probably to my demise. The good part is that if I find people who “get” me, which I have recently, which is great, is that I’ll always be about the music. My singing will always reflect whether I’m struggling or having a great day.

At what point did you begin to think music might be your life’s calling and when did you begin to think that was actually feasible?

I had a couple of Pentecostal experiences. I had this one experience when my parents were arguing. I went to the beach and I just remember yelling at God saying “Why, why, why, how could you do this to me,” that type of thing. My parents were actually splitting up. And I had this; God gave me this news flash and it was me playing a guitar. This was before I was playing music professionally. My hand was out into the audience and the Spirit was flowing through me into the audience. It was really fast and I thought, “Well there’s an inspiration. There’s something maybe I could do.”

That year I started to pursue it. I actually wanted to get into the Christian music business at a young age. I thought it would be a great idea to go play at churches and share the Word and it would be a great thing. So I started buying Phil Keaggy records and Steve Taylor and I got into some Keith Green and I just thought “Oh, these guys, they’re doing it!” I began to discover that there was a market out there. I wound up that it worked out that way to an extent.

So how do you balance not being good at business with trying to make a living at music?

Well, you surround yourself with really smart people and you keep doing it. You keep going like a shark, you just keep on moving.

As far as incorporating faith and music, are there any artists you think are doing these things the right way?

I do, I think that Derek Webb is doing that very well. I think he’s sort of the next version of Rich Mullins. Some people are intellect and some people are heart people. Derek’s got both. He’s this “heart-intellect” guy who I think really challenges the church. He’s really outspoken about it; he’ll call a spade a spade; he’s outspoken about it, which I like. I think that’s important to have that in the culture, especially in the music culture. You have Jars of Clay, who have only been themselves. I’ve toured with them lots and they’re amazing people. They really are sweethearts. They’ve given me a platform when I was at my lowest. I believe that they’re doing it right. They’re living the life as well.

Are you involved in a local church?

I am.

What role, if any, do you think local churches ought to play in supporting its artists?

I think of the Psalms. I think the artist has that duty, that calling of being the creative juice in the church. I’m just beginning an art ministry in my church. We’re different people, the artists, and I mean all artists, people who are trying to escape their fathers. All the ministers that I’ve encountered in my life all seem to like the artists, they welcome them in the church as important for whatever reason. I think they like the fact that artists have the tendency to not care and to be gutsy and put it out there whereas ministers have this sometimes unfortunate political platform where they can’t fully be themselves. There’s a part of them always looking over the shoulder and I think the artists give them that whisper saying it’s OK to push. I believe it’s important for the minister and the artist to bond and be friends. I think there’s a lot they can learn from each other because they’re essentially both doing the same thing. I’ll let you know in a year actually.

How has the experience of going from a major label to Eb + Flo been for you?

It’s different in that it’s more scattered. You’re dealing with a lot of noise. There’s a lot of MySpace people out there and everyone’s got a record out. So I always say that if you have a small platform, scream loud. At this point, it’s about surrounding myself with smart people. We’re approaching different labels for distribution, so there’s a lot of ups for this record. Right now it’s nice because I feel like I’m connecting with the fans more, the people that are buying the records and the responses have been great. I get to communicate with them and that I didn’t get to do with Burlap to Cashmere or even Me Died Blue when it was on a big label. It was like a machine and now it’s more intimate. And in a way, that’s what music is all about, it’s about the small and I believe that if you’re responsible with something small that God will bless you.

Do you listen to much music?

No, I don’t, I don’t! Not anymore. I used to all the time. I just feel like we’re in this time of a lot of noise; environmentally and spiritually, I just feel like it’s in the air. But I feel like there’s a new beginning happening here and it feels like for the first time I’m opening my eyes. It’s almost like I’ve been in a fog for the last 15 years. I just feel like at this point, quiet is good. At this point in the game, I’m always ready to either go sign a record deal or join the monastery.

Have you seriously considered monastic life?

I have. I’ve considered joining the priesthood as well of the Orthodox faith and I’m still considering it.

Do you read much?

I try to. I always start books and don’t finish. I really love to read when I’m in it. But my concentration level is pretty bad. I love reading a good book, but I’m pretty bad at it. I have ADD. Maybe not medically, I don’t know if that’s true or not but I feel like I do, my concentration level is pretty bad but I do enjoy a good book when I’m there.

What are some of the books that have impacted you?

The Orthodox Way, I love. It’s a book about the Orthodox Christian faith. You know, it’s funny, I’ll be in the South sometimes and they’ll ask me if I’m a Christian. I say yes and when they ask what church I go to, I say I’m Greek Orthodox and then they ask “But when did you become a Christian?!” It always makes me laugh and I just think “Well, that’s not fair, you should read this book called The Orthodox Way.

I enjoy Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, I like Oscar Wilde, I like some of his books. I just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray, that was a haunting book. It was awesome. He’s a great writer. I think he’s one of my favorite writers. The poor guy, what a life. I was pretty spooked by it.

Do you feel as though the Evangelical community understands the Orthodox tradition?

No, I don’t think so. That’s a good question. But I do know that a lot of them are becoming more open to Catholicism as a Christian church, which is pretty cool. But I think they thing we’re Muslims or something. But, if you ask a hardcore Greek Orthodox church go-er about the Evangelicals: “Do you think the Evangelicals are Christian?” The older men will say “No, we think they’re lost.” In every church there’s going to be that ideology taking over Christ’s love and the things that are real. I don’t think the Evangelical church gets it, but I also don’t think it’s my job to try and help them see the light. But it would help at least for them to know that we are Christians.

Is it possible to bridge that gap?

Yes, it is and that’s a good point. I would love to see in what form and shape that’s going to happen. Who knows, maybe that can be an open dialogue.

You mention the emphasis in the Orthodox tradition on the mystery of God and the mystical aspects, do you think that that emphasis helps encourage artistic expression?

Absolutely. When you see that God is big and life is big, when you go to the ocean and you have this personal moment and you just think about how the ocean goes on forever and ever and you don’t stop to think about the point where it ends, there is a feeling of possibility and of communication and a feeling of identity because it’s outside of yourself’ it’s grand and its eternal. I think that that’s the mystery of God and the mystery of Christ; He is so big, so eternal that it makes you want to fall in love. It makes me want to write, it makes me want to touch Jesus’ robe. It makes me want to love and feel and expand and not be afraid.

That’s a great term. I can never write music when I’m in fear. I don’t want to even do my laundry. They say that when you’re depressed you want to write, but that’s absolutely not it for me. I just want to stay in my room and be left alone. I shut off the phone. But when I’m feeling that feeling of eternity and possibility of moving mountains is finally here. Then we feel like the adventurer that God has made us to be. Then you want to paint, you want to express, you want to write about what you’re feeling. You want to express that love because you do it out of joy. It comes from that feeling that you’re OK and that feeling of trust.

A couple of years ago my wife and I actually saw you open for Derek Webb and you shared a bit about what happened to your cousin, could share a bit of that?

My cousin, who was actually the lead guitarist for Burlap to Cashmere was the victim of a very severe case of road rage. He was actually beaten up pretty badly and was in a coma, a very severe coma and we almost lost him at one point. That affected me greatly. Whenever you have family that in the hospital, it makes you appreciate family and God all that much more. He’s absolutely 100% percent better now and we’re thankful for that.

Anything else?

No, just that this is good stuff. I actually have to write a devotional for a website and you’ve given me some good ideas. I thought this was a really great interview.

I had the pleasure of meeting Trevor Davis a while back in Tacoma, WA. I heard him play at a house show in Aaron Spiro’s living room and I was immediately impressed. Though playing a solo acoustic set, it was anything but the typical folk you’d expect in such a setting. Trevor belted out a set of soulful, even funky tunes that immediately caught everyone’s attention. We recently had him play a house show in our living room much to the same effect. We also had him lead music for us at Church of the Cross. It’s a unique thing to find a great performer who is also a great worship leader. Meet Trevor Davis:

Were you raised in a musical home?

Not at all.

How’d you pick up music then?

I was raised in a single-parent situation. My Mom struggled with drugs and I wasn’t a planned birth so my Grandmother watched out for me while my Mom was out running around. Then she gave her life to the Lord when I was about 9 or 10 years old. She walked into this African-American church and basically just did a one-eighty with her life. Her life completely changed, she began walking towards Jesus and He was now Lord of her life. And so we started going to this all Black church where the music was amazing. So, no, I didn’t grow up in a musical family. No one in my family plays music but the fact that I was able to go to that church with the choir and the organ and all of these augmented chords; things that I didn’t even realize what they were until much later, that had a real impact on me.

Even now, I ask why it is that I don’t fall in love with the guitar playing G and D and I think it has to do with my subconscious remembering growing up with those harmonies and textures that are a little more complex. Sometimes they may not even know what they’re doing, they’re just going off of the feel. I don’t know what I’m doing either. I just go off of the feel too! I grew up with music, just not in my immediate family.

Was your Mother supportive of you pursuing music?

Yes, she was. Even though she didn’t make much money at all, I think I was in ninth grade and I wanted to play bass but the bass was like $200. That was a lot of money for us but she got me this bass. All her co-workers thought she was an idiot because, we were like, not even eating that month we got the bass! I never got an amp or even a case for the bass once I got it, but hey, I had a bass! I would borrow people’s stuff and would play in bands. She was always try and whatever she could pull off she would help with even though it usually wasn’t much.

At what point did you realize music was your life’s calling?

I got a Singelodeon, a cheap version of a karaoke machine in the fourth grade or something like that. Growing up in that church, I think my dream as a kid was just that when I grew up I wanted to sing in the choir. Not really knowing the choir was not that big, you know, this was a ghetto church and it wouldn’t have been like I was really accomplishing that much but that was my dream. I just knew that that was awesome and I wanted to partake in that. As I got older I just kept dreaming bigger and bigger and I just knew that I wanted to sing. In fact, it killed me not to sing and that just kept happening through my life even though I was so, so shy. But in spite of that shyness, it killed me that I couldn’t sing in front of people.

That church where I grew up, they had concerts like twice a year and they always picked me for the solo even though my knees were probably visibly shaking! But they kept picking the only white kid in the church so I guess I could sing a little bit and my pitch was probably pretty good or something.

Do you still struggle with stage fright?

Not at all. Besides those solos, I was always around the stage, at least playing bass and things like that. I started taking voice lessons at the very beginning of my senior year of high school. I didn’t tell nearly anyone, but I was taking voice lessons. I wanted to sing the national anthem or something big like that just to get out there. I told my voice teacher I wanted to work on that song so we worked on it together. I had to audition with the choir teacher and she had me sing the national anthem for her and she told me I wasn’t ready yet. So I gave it some more time and worked a lot on it and then I went and sang for her again and this time she said yes and gave me a date to sing. On that date, there was a huge basketball game, our school always went to the finals, so it was a packed-out game. Earlier that day before I had to sing at the actual game, she brought had me sing to her little ensemble to rehearse. Everybody could see my knees shaking! I was so nervous! They thought I sounded good, but I was like “shiver me timbers!” Then later that night when I sang at the game I was just so relaxed. Ever since then, I have never been nervous. I think just having done it at all, that cracked the egg and got me over that fear.

You tend to be a bit theatrical, How do you balance songwriting with also being a performer?

I’m actually having a really hard time with that right now. I recently moved to the Northwest, which is a very sort of “authentic,” not as showy place. Everyone has beards and flannel and they really listen to the content, which is great, don’t get me wrong, I love that. But I grew up in Southern California, where, you know, you have great shoes and they buy your CD. That’s a much easier thing to pull off: just go buy a pair of really cool shoes.

In high school I did Michael Jackson performances for talent shows. Again, another stage thing: I played bass and I danced for people, so that missing element was finally singing. I always wanted to bring that dance element into my music. The reason I feel like I’m having a hard time now with that balance is that I find myself sitting on my couch writing these folkier tunes with really deep content that touches my heart with a lot of emotion. Then I go and play a show in front of these young kids and the song doesn’t have the right energy. It has energy to me and it does to a certain group, but it is getting more niched in that sense. It’s not longer just this showy, uppity tune. So I just don’t perform those songs. If the setting is correct, maybe I’ll bust one or two of them out. In fact, I just had this experience where I thought it would be really cool to open up one of my shows with one of these really deep songs, and I started and everyone just started talking! That was really my first time with that experience. I can usually grab people’s attention. It kind of made me rethink performing these songs. As far as recording, I’d love to record some of them.

What’s your typical songwriting process?

For me, from the beginning, a big part of it has always been “OK, I have this guitar, how can I not make it sound like everyone else’s?” Also, “I have this lyric, how can I make it not cliché?” And “How can I make my melody not be cliché?” There’s a lot of music out there that just seems to be recycled. I want to create textures and things that are not the same thing just redone and redone. That’s a tough thing to accomplish but I also know that no one has my exact life. No one has my same story. So the years that I practiced as a kid on that karaoke machine, that comes into play and it’s being confident in that. I can now go out there and do my thing and let it be what it is. Before, I often felt pressure to sound like someone else popular, and it’s really hard not to want to do that. At the beginning I just did it out of fun, but I began to wonder if I was too weird or something. And then I listen to it and it’s not weird at all, but you just feel weird sometimes if you’re pursuing your own thing.

Does having an “alter ego” help in that tension between songwriting and performance?

Oh my gosh, artistically, that was one of the best things I have ever done as an artist. At the beginning, the first eight months or so that the Dr. Seahorse CD was out, I didn’t feel that way. CD’s cost at least around $10,000 or so to make, so when this Dr. Seahorse album came out and someone was searching for my name, because I perform as Trevor Davis, they weren’t finding this new album because it was under Dr. Seahorse, not Trevor Davis.

Now, as an outlet, I can take a song that’s maybe slow, deep and melodic like I’ve been writing, give it to the producer who does my Dr. Seahorse stuff and he’ll double-time it making it this brilliant, happy-fun thing even though it might be a really serious song. He doesn’t even always think about the lyrics, he just approaches it from making it as fun as possible and he does that well. So, being able to take those faster, more upbeat songs and make those Trevor Davis songs and making the others Dr. Seahorse songs has been really cool.

For those who might not be familiar, explain Dr. Seahorse

Dr. Seahorse is an electronic project that I do with a producer named Mark Suhonen, who had approached me years before I actually decided to go forward with it. He took one of my songs called “Grace,” took the vocal tracks and did a remix which I thought was pretty good but maybe not good enough to stop what I was doing. I was enjoying what I was doing. I wasn’t quite bored yet, I guess you could say. You know, I’ve done this acoustic thing for a while and I want to branch out. I was enjoying it at the time, but I kept hearing some of the tracks he was producing for other people and I kept thinking “Man, this guys is really getting better at what he does. He’s really sharpening his tools.”

So I came up with this idea for a five song EP to be done in a country, twang style. So I asked this producer to produce that, but I also asked Mark to produce those same five songs in his style, and I wasn’t going to let either producer hear the other’s thing. So I wrote up this vision, gave it to each producer and the country guy backed out and Mark was already flying away with his tracks and I didn’t want to stop him! They were coming out amazing but I didn’t know what to do with them. I couldn’t not let people hear them, but if I released them, people would wonder what the heck happened to Trevor?! I didn’t want my existing fans to get scared off so we came up with this other identity and then began to wonder how in the world we could perform these tracks live.

The whole thing seemed to be approached with questions and barriers, but we just kept jumping over them. He’s a drummer and he grew up doing drum line and things like that so he drums and does his DJ thing and I sing and dance around and it’s great. When we perform live, people are just having such a good time because we are having a blast.

Where did the name Dr. Seahorse come from?

Dr. Seahorse is kind of a folkier, 6/8 song I wrote quite a few years ago. It’s kind of an abstract song about dependency on God. I go around asking all of these sea creatures for help. One of them is an octopus and I ask him if he can lend a hand and one of them is Dr. Seahorse. People would just remember the title of that song and ask me to play it even years and years later. So when we were thinking of names, I just kept wondering what would be a name that people just won’t forget? We ret-titled that song a different name to put it on the album and named the artist Dr. Seahorse.

Would you mind talking about your salvation experience?

That was a slow process for me. I believe that we have been saved, are being saved and will be saved. It’s His power that has saved us but it’s also His power that is saving us. So, when we ask Christ into our hearts and then somehow believe that it’s up to us to save ourselves, I believe that slows the process. I had always been taught that it was up to me in some sense and I struggled with years of legalism, just trying to do it on my own. I think that that kept me “safe,” I didn’t go out and smoke weed or go out and party and stuff like that. I was scared of getting caught.

I had this youth pastor who had paid for me to go to this all Christian Jr. and senior high school. He paid for me to go all the way through, which was thousands of dollars. As a poor kid, I knew what I had. This opportunity was huge. I knew that I was sitting at this banquet and that my spot was undeserved. That was pretty cool. I knew where I was at and I didn’t want to hurt that. A lot of my friends were getting caught doing things and I just didn’t want to lose what I had. I feel like that has worked its way into my Christian life now. It’s not a fear that I can lose my salvation per se, but more, man, isn’t this awesome, what we have?! Isn’t it totally undeserved? Could I really let something else take the throne? You know, we all have fears, that we would not be successful enough or something like that. We worship what we fear and I’ve just really tried to focus on that fear of God.

For me, feeling like I was pulled out of my ghetto life and being given this awesome gift, that’s just always served as such a picture for me. I didn’t want to lose that gift. So, as far as growing up in that African-American church, not only did they believe in speaking in tongues, they believed that you had to speak in tongues to be saved. So I was this little kid going up every week being prayed for squeezing my little butt cheeks as hard as I could to speak in tongues thinking “Oh Lord, please let me start talking weird, I don’t want to go to hell!”

So I grew up with that for many years, and then I went to a Calvary Chapel and they got to wear shorts to church. I just thought “Man, this is really loose!” It was really fun! I got to go to this children’s church and they had puppets and nothing but fun stuff! We got to go to Magic Mountain and I felt really loved by a lot of the leaders, but the music, man, it was just so bad. I remember singing that song “Our God is an Awesome God” like a funeral dirge! I just felt like I didn’t believe a word they said by the way they sang it. And this was contrasted with the black church that I had been a part of where the music was just so alive but where I thought I was going to hell. So I finally figured out that I didn’t have to speak in tongues to be saved, which was freeing but the music didn’t sound nearly as free. I was just in this weird tension.

So I have always struggled with Christian music, since I left that church and have become friends with white, Christian musicians. I’ve always felt a lack of freedom. I got that freedom from the theology of salvation, but as far as the music that they were singing, I think the black church really set the standard for the rest of us in that freedom of expression. You know, the Beatles didn’t listen to a lot of white people but we love their music. Sometimes we love it packaged by white people even when we don’t have that freedom that opens the door. I think that we should look at that and not be so uptight.

Why do you think that so much “Christian music” lacks that freedom?

I’m not even sure. I guess, when you look at Jesus, He hung out with a lot of people like prostitutes who knew that they didn’t deserve it but they got it and then they were so freed by it. And I’m not just picking on white people but I wonder if those of us who have had good families and comfortable lives, the family that goes out to church and then goes out to dinner afterwards and soccer practice, I just wonder if at least part of worship for many of us has simply because part of life. I don’t know how many of us maybe feel like it’s deserved in some way because of our comfortable lives. I think many of us don’t understand the depth of just how much we don’t deserve salvation. I think maybe if we really swallowed that pill, we might be more free?

We forget what a feast, what a party worship should be. We forget how much we don’t deserve it in the first place. We spend so much time and effort trying to control our environment and it’s not freeing, it’s really hard and expensive and many of us are in a lot of debt because of it. We have debt to the wrong masters. The people Jesus frees, He pays their debt in a different way. If I went to one of those families and paid all of their debt, I bet they would finally start singing a song!

Is there a relationship between that and something like contemporary “Christian” music that is often over-packaged and sterile?

Well, when you look at that type of music, who is their number one listener? It is the soccer Mom who deals with all of those things we just talked about. So, when your top market is “adult contemporary,” that is who its packaged for so I can’t really blame them. If I sold hot dogs, of course I’m going to sell them at a baseball game! People like hot dogs at baseball games. If soccer moms with sheltered lives are the ones buying CCM music, then that’s who you package it for, it’s all marketing. When I realized that, I didn’t have any bitterness towards it. I don’t want to impress, I want to impact people.

Do you intentionally seek to incorporate your faith into your music or is it just naturally part of life?

There have been different eras of my life as far as that goes. Coming from that legalistic approach in my walk, when I realized that it’s by faith that we’re saved by God’s grace, I definitely tried to push that in my music to free people, but I was almost not free in my pushiness of that.

You know, there are three areas, Prophet, Priest and King. The Prophet tends to really focus on Truth, the Priest focuses more on the counseling or feeling and the King is the organized one. As an artist, I’m not a King, as an artist, you have to be Priestly, which is emotional and as a songwriter, you need to also be Prophetic. When I first started, I didn’t ever want to write songs, I just wanted to sing other people’s songs. I just wanted to sing, I just wanted to be emotional. But as I started writing songs, I had to become more Prophetic and I probably went a little overboard, pushing that truth and now it’s about trying to find that balance. It’s not my job to be in control, it’s God’s so that allows for some more freedom in my lyrics. I used to feel that pressure, so I tried to put the whole salvation message into every song. I wanted people’s entire lives to be changed after that three minute song was over! But, of course, it takes more than three minutes! It’s He who began a good work in you that will complete it and if it is God’s work then I can’t even step to the plate. If He actually calls it work, then I don’t think I have the strength to do it!

You mentioned the kingly aspect, how do you balance the business side of things with the artistic side?

My wife cares about the inside organization of things and I tend to care about the outside, the feng shui of the house, things like that, so we work really well together. I’m very strategic, I like chess and in the music business, that’s really helped me to think long-term. I’m not going to play one time in Yugaslovia and never return. I’m going to play where I can build relationships. What’s the point of spending all that money and energy if you’re not building anything? I’ve always wanted to be the kind of artist that has depth with my listeners. So I’ve thought a lot about those strategies and then my wife helps put them into action, she helps fill out the back end of a lot of things.

Why did you move from San Diego to the Northwest?

I was touring up there a lot and I just connected with those people. I feel like their mentality, the way that they do music, the way that they do church, the way that they are in conversation is just very genuine, very real and deep. You can talk to a random person and feel like the conversation takes off right in the middle and it just takes off like you’ve already known the person. You don’t have to dance around things, you just dive in. I was in San Diego and often felt like a bit of an outsider in some of those regards.

I just kept thinking that I wanted to live up there. And as I toured up there a lot there was a church that I just really connected with; what they were doing and the seriousness that they call themselves to, I just thought it was amazing. It’s not just playing the game of church. I feel like as a kid, I felt like church was sort of like playing house or other games. A lot of us just don’t know what this Gospel should look like in real life and that’s one of the main reasons I went up there was to be part of this church.

How do you approach leading worship differently than other musical performance?

Well, the church where I’m at now, we work really closely with whoever is preaching and tie everything to the message. We do a couple of songs up front, then the sermon then we do most of our singing after the sermon and for the first time that’s really made sense to me. Worship has become a true response to the Word and I feel like that’s often lacking. We’re always trying to get people energized and excited and music can be that, but when it’s only music, that’s all it is. When we encounter the Truth and then respond to it, it is so much more exciting.

Who are some of the artists who have influenced you?

For me, I’ve separated the idea of influence into two compartments: impress or impact. I’m actually going to write a book on this. Impress is sometimes what we as Americans live or die for. What is it that we’re slaving for? Sometimes it’s material things, sometimes not but it’s often not eternal stuff because we are easily impressed. When you’re impressed by something, just like the Kit Kat candy bar, the letters are actually impressed into the chocolate. Whenever there is an impression, it actually robs the original of something. You’re actually left with less chocolate. If I were to impress you, I’m kind of poking my finger into you and you’re actually smaller than you were before.

I think that’s a lot of what we do. Churches are trying to be impressive so they try to make the church up the street maybe feel not quite up to par. It happens across the board, we’re always trying to impress each other. We think that that’s how we can build ourselves up when actually we’re digging ourselves into a whole and robbing others in the process.

So I try to replace that word “impress” with “impact.” Impact is when you are overflowing, like in Psalm 1, you’re a tree planted by rivers of water. In whatever season, you’re always bearing fruit. If you’re always bearing fruit, you’re always in abundance. If you can be that figure to others, you’re not trying to get from others, you’re there to give and love freely. Maybe what you give is not what you think you should be giving, maybe it’s time or companionship or something like that. People pay others to listen to them! It’s amazing how we can impact others just by being interested!

So for me, influences in life have been anything from The Beatles to Michael Jackson. Led Zeppelin, all these other people. They impressed me. I felt like, sitting in my room with my guitar and karaoke machine, I didn’t have what it took to be an artist. What they did was way too impressive because I couldn’t even get started. I pictured them as the starting point. Using Bob Marley as an example, Lauryn Hill said once that we could never be like Bob Marley. Truth is never from the outside in. We have not had his life, the pain and suffering that went in to his music shaped him and that 20-piece band just happened. He wasn’t trying to impress people. If it just happens, I bet you it will be impactful.

I remember, I used to go see Jason Mraz with just a guitar, not even a PA system. He wasn’t impressive, he wasn’t a big deal, and I would go see him play and I would see him dance around and when I saw him, he was having fun. There’s another guy, Ricky Andrade, he’s one of my favorite singers. These guys gave me a starting point. I took their impactfulness and applied it to my life. The artists that impact me are not always the most glamorous. Jason Mraz impacted my life without a PA and now that he’s got all these albums out, but they’ve done nothing for my life. Not that they’re not good, they just don’t have the same effect.

What’s next?

Thank God, the guy who paid for me to go to the private school, he believes in what I’m doing. I never had a father figure and he’s been that for me. He’s done very well in business and helps me out with new albums and things and he wants two albums this year, a Trevor Davis and Dr. Seahorse album. Also, with that book, there’s a writer who lives like two blocks from my house and she knows a lot of technical writing things and when I asked her, she was almost in tears and she just felt like this was right. I don’t have to be impressive, all these things are just in the right place.

• Visit Trevor Davis’ website

His website describes him as a “young artist with an old soul.” It’s been four years since the release of Randall’s last album War and Peace. I recently caught up with Randall to discuss his new EP bluebird among other things.

 

• Were you raised in a “Christian” home?

Yes. I was raised in the Baptist Church by committed Christian parents.

• Were you raised in a musical home/when did you take up music/when did you realize it was your life’s calling?

My parents were not musicians, but they enjoyed music and encouraged me to play once they realized my affinity for it. I started piano lessons at around 8 years old, and I don’t know if I’ve ever thought of it as my life’s calling. I’ve just walked through doors that God has opened for me, sometimes even with prayerful consideration. However, I have recently begun to recognize music as the vehicle God has allowed me to travel in as I live out my life’s calling… which I now know is seeking him and his will.

• Would you mind sharing a bit about your salvation experience?

I remember praying “the sinners prayer” as we called it back then, during my 5th grade science class. But God had been working in my heart long before that. It was probably just a really hard day with friends or school that brought me to the place of saying those words. But they are powerful words, and I think that was the beginning of conscious faith for me.

• Did salvation change your view of music?

I don’t think so. We didn’t talk about music much in my house. We kids just listened to whatever was on the radio, which at the time was Van Halen, Madonna, Phil Collins… and my parents listened to stuff like John Denver and The Gatlin Brothers. I do remember a time in high school, though, when I realized that God was the giver of this gift. That’s when I began to consider him and wrestle with the question of what honors him and what does not.

• Is expressing your faith through your music something you consciously focus on?

This is going to sound like I’m channeling Hank Williams Sr., but really, I just focus on expressing the truth. It is hard to do, because I spend much of my life keeping the truth at arms length. But when I am most honest with myself about how I feel and how I see the world, the best songs are born. At the end of King Lear, one of Edgar’s famous last lines are “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” That makes the best art, and the best people. I think that’s why Shakespeare gives the line such prime real estate.

• If possible, please describe your creative process? Do you begin with lyrics or music? Do you primarily write with pen & paper or computer?

There’s no set way for me. Right now, I’ve got 2 unfinished songs that have fully finished choruses. For those, the music and lyrics came simultaneously, but now I’ve got to write verses for both of them. Sometimes I’ll write on scraps of paper at traffic lights, and sometimes I’m sitting at my computer writing late into the night in my office at home.

• What are your thoughts about the growing trend of artists moving away from larger record labels?

It is so exciting. The whole industry is changing and I believe the model that will rise to the top will be one like Brite Entertainment that acknowledges the value of good music and the people’s desire to support the creation of good music.

• How do you balance the business and creative sides of music?

It is hard for me. I have good business-minded people around me, and I need them to push me toward good business decisions as I work on my craft. I think artists need people around them speaking the language of smart business, so that it sinks into their sub-conscious. Issues from interactions with promoters, to what the record sounds like, to wardrobe choices all benefit from frank business discussion. In the end, though, the artist must be able to move forward fully confident in himself (or herself) and his decisions.

• Are you much of a reader? If so, who are some of your favorite authors/books:

Yes, I read quite a bit. I love historical fiction, I love good stories with great characters… everything from Hemingway and Graham Green to J.K. Rowling. Right now, I am reading a ton on healthy eating and healthy living. We have had some health issues at home that have opened our eyes to the problems with the typical American diet. Then there’s writers like Ian Thomas and Jean Guyon and Friedrich Buechner and C.S. Lewis that write so thoughtfully about the Gospel. I couldn’t do without that stuff.

• Who are some of the artists who have influenced you?

There are so many. Billy Joel and Elton John, Jimmy Buffett, Bob Dylan, David Wilcox, Patty Griffin, The Band, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and then all of my friends who are musicians. They are a big influence, I’m sure – because I’m always listening to their records!

• What are you currently listening to?

I got on the Coldplay train very late. So I’ve been catching up on them and other bands my friends tell me I should hear. And friends like Andrew Peterson and Sara Groves stay in the rotation a lot, which is fun because my kids listen to it and love it as well. My kids assume that I must be friends with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson because I know Andrew Peterson and Ginny Owens. It’s pretty hilarious.

• What’s next for you?

Well, I’ve spent the last 4 years working as the worship pastor for my church and writing songs for congregational worship. During that time, I’ve thought and prayed an awful lot about the Church. When I began thinking about touring in 2009, the vision God gave me combines my traditional concert with a time of congregational worship. The Church is great at compartmentalizing faith (I know that because I am great at it too). But the Gospel reaches into every corner of our lives, and I am passionate about inspiring the Church toward a deeper awareness of Jesus in every aspect of life. By beginning the evening with songs that deal frankly with the journey of human experience, and ending the evening with a call to sing together and worship our King, we will together acknowledge his presence in every detail of our lives. I’m pretty excited about fleshing that out.

• Visit Randall Goodgame’s official website