I feel like it’s important to share the vision behind this album, since I’m wanting it to be collaborative. Thanks for taking a minute to read on!
In the spring of 2023 I spent a couple of weeks in Arizona to be with my parents while my dad was in ICU, and then recovering at home. It became a built-in time of fasting, reflection and refocusing, simply due to the nature of my visit (lots of driving, lots of waiting; lots of time to pray and reflect). I felt the Lord asking me to allow it to be a time where I was also receiving “Intensive Care”, but spiritually.
As I would pray during my drives, I felt a need to focus on God and “sing to Him a new song”, to “worship Him in spirit and in truth”. I started from a place of praying about and writing down some attributes that came to mind: His love for us, His holiness, His ultimate authority, His ability to provide, His grace and mercy, His desire to save and redeem us, and His eternal rule. I imagined writing a song around each attribute, to write Him my own little “love notes” / personal worship album.
On a different drive, I was searching for a pure simplification, perhaps detoxing from the cultural norms and ruts about worship music in my own mind. My mom’s car was equipped with some older, “more simple” worship music I hadn’t heard, and was pleasantly impacted by. Imagining my mom listening and worshiping God with it gave me a fresh sense of more for me to connect to God through in my life than what I was used to.
Obviously using music to worship God is just as simple as an artistically-expressive version of praying; which reminded me of “the Lord’s Prayer”; how Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew 6. I thought that might be a good angle to write these songs from, as I realized the notes I had taken on His attributes quickly fell into the 7 parts that I saw the Lord’s Prayer progressing through. I began to believe this project is inspired, and something much bigger than my “own little project”!
Over the time I was in Arizona, and the following couple of weeks or so after I had returned home to Georgia, I experienced something else that felt “out of body” / miraculous, several times. I would look at my phone note of fragmented sentences which captured the heart of each song, and then suddenly hear the chorus in my head, with all of the lyrics in-place. It happened over and over, until I had 7 song choruses captured as audio notes on my phone.
Again later, I was driving and started thinking about how the melodies for the verses for these songs might go. For those, I didn’t have all the words, but again, I instantly just seemed to know how the melodies and structures of the songs went, like I had heard them all before.
Now I don’t want to “blame God” if any of these aren’t indeed inspired; I’m sure 20 years of songwriting may be “like riding a bike”, even after a year or so of me being dormant in the craft. However to some degree, I’m SURE there’s inspiration here, and I’m excited to do my best with it!
I was amazed, but also not surprised to see that God would offer me the “bones” for this project. Now I’m trusting Him to help me “put meat on these bones”, so to speak. I’m at this place where I’m trying to take care of this great thing I feel like God has trusted me with, and produce it into a gift and a resource that His Body can use to connect to Him. It’s definitely too much pressure for this one fallible guy to be able to give it what it deserves!
I hope the outcome of recording these songs doesn’t just result in giving my immediate friends, family, and few people from church an album they might listen to once or twice, but I hope countless believers will find comfort and power in praying how Christ taught us, through this means of worship music!
Scripture
Here’s the correlation that I arrived at, between “The Lord’s Prayer”, and the 7 songs making up this project:
Matthew 6:9-13 (KJV)
“After this manner therefore pray ye:
Our Father which art in heaven, (track 1 “Our Father God”)
Hallowed be thy name. (track 2 “Hallowed”)
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. (track 3 “King of Heaven and Earth”)
Give us this day our daily bread. (track 4 “My Provider”)
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (track 5 “Unburdened”)
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: (track 6 “Our Defender”)
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” (track 7 “Kingdom, Power, Glory”)
Production
As I progress through production, I’m looking for opportunities to collaborate on this (which is possibly what lead you here)!
For the overall sound and production for the album, I’m leaning into something that’s congregational, defined by layered vocal “ensembles” throughout, supporting the choruses, as well as many “oohs and aahs” that weave around the lyrical melodies. These vocal layers would be supported with a rock-worship vibe, a bit modernized, but nothing “too heavy”, “too synth-y” or at all distorted / overly compressed-sounding.
To achieve any of this, I’ll need a lot of help, so that this album doesn’t sound like a whole lot of just me!
Please head back to the project page, and prayer-fully consider how you can help this production and tool for worship advance, for His Kingdom, Power and Glory.
Project Page Here