2008

The following is Part 2 (Part 1) of an interview with Mike Crawford about his album Mike Crawford and his Secret Siblings present Songs from Jacob’s Well, Volumes I & II: Even the Darkness Will Not Be Dark To You. You can read my review of the album here. Mike is the Worship/Arts Pastor at Jacob's Well, an emerging church in Kansas City, MO. For more information about Jacob's Well, visit their website or check out this article from the Christian Century.

For the record, all hyperlinks in this interview were provided by Mike, not myself.

JAKE BOUMA: Is the sound on the album the same sound the worshipers hear on Sundays? What's standard setup of musicians for a "regular" worship service?

MIKE CRAWFORD: I would say the sound on the album is a bit heavier or edgier than what people would hear on a Sunday. The album is also probably more intricate in a "parts" sort of way. We took the time to hone in on specific parts for the album, whereas on Sundays it's really more free-flowing. Sundays are definitely more improv, as opposed to the record, which is all very meticulously arranged.

It took me a year to record all the parts with everyone that was involved. It was a great process though. I’d send the musician into the tracking room and have them play along with my basic tracks, just doing what they do on a Sunday. Then we’d both sit and listen to the playback and find the really great parts and follow where they were leading, sometimes with me singing parts to the musicians to help get their parts mapped out, and sometimes with me jumping around to create some energy or excitement or laughter. I especially love the laughter on the record.

We have around 40 people on the worship team. The band is different every week, which keeps the music really fresh. The most common setup is bass, drum kit, electric guitar, piano, female singer and me on acoustic and electric. Sometimes we have violin, sometimes trumpet, sometimes flute. We usually have just one "auxiliary" melody instrument per week. Sometimes the pianists will play glockenspiel too, which I love. We also do more acoustic weeks with dobro, acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, hand percussion, fiddle.

JAKE: When we spoke in person, you told a story about CCLI rejecting one of your songs. Could you tell that story again, while elaborating on the Scriptural basis for much of the lyrics on "Songs from Jacob's Well"?

MIKE: When I submitted the song The Magnificat, CCLI told me I couldn’t register the song because it was straight from scripture, and that Zondervan or someone had the rights to those words. I didn’t argue the point, but we've continued to sing the song and to record the song. The words are so powerful how they are laid out, I just wanted to sing them straight from scripture... Hopefully Mary won’t sue us...

I do access scripture a ton when writing worship music. I just think singing those hymns and psalms that the early church might have sung is a powerful thing. Several of the songs from the record are like this, which I think is why people connect with them. It's certainly why I connect with them. It also keeps me out of too much doctrinal trouble if I’m staying really close to what the Bible is saying.

One of my favorite "scripture songs" on the record is Horse and Rider. I got this song after reading Walter Brueggemann's book The Prophetic Imagination. In it, he talks about the first worship song in scripture as being Miriam and Moses’ song after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 15). In one powerful chapter, he paints with painstaking beauty an utterly free God, controlled by nothing, whose character and task is to release the oppressed... release them from an oppressive royal regime that has co-opted and domesticated its gods to control and oppress and support the affluence of the status quo. To then re-read that passage from Exodus 15 in his context (God vs. status quo of empire) made me think, "We really need to be singing things like this." When we do, we are singing theology. I love how Brueggemann explains the line from verse 18, "The Lord will reign forever and ever": He says that implicit in that line are the words "...and not Pharoah...” The Lord will reign forever and ever... and not Pharoah! So when when we’re singing "Lord You will reign, Lord You will reign... forever, forever, forever, amen," it really feels like we’re singing so much more than just "God is so good, He’s so good to me..."

JAKE: Everyone I asked from Jacob's Well said the best song on the album -- if they had to choose just one -- is Words to Build A Life On. Admittedly, it's a favorite of mine. What's the story behind the song? How did it come to be? Does it have special significance to you?

MIKE: Ah yes, Words To Build A Life On... that song. That song is an enigma to me. I love it and am artistically frustrated by it. It seems to have a life of it’s own. It travels around the country and sends emails to me from places I’ve never been or seen. It tells me of all the people who relate to it and who cry the first time they hear it. It really is a strange one! I also know it will be nearly impossible for me to write another song that impacts people the way that one does, so it frustrates me a bit.

Seriously, I don’t know that I had too much to do with that song. It sprang from a sermon Tim was giving where he was talking about the beatitudes and he wrapped up the message by quoting the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. He was using Eugene Peterson’s translation (The Message) and it reads, "These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on." I thought to myself, "That sounds like a song if I’ve ever heard a song."

So I was up in my office the next week singing the chorus, asking God how he could make His words "mine", how I could incorporate them into my life. Then I started singing the beatitudes and adding things that seemed counter intuitive to how we, as people, feel "blessed". A woman named Deanne Pearson was our administrator at that time and she was in the office next to me. She came to my door and said, "What’s that song you’re singing?" I said, "I don’t know, I’m just messing around with a new one." She said, "Well, you should keep doing whatever you’re doing, because I’m over in my office crying listening to you." I guess that was the beginning of the tears... Thanks Deanne for encouraging me to continue on.

I just continued to write and write, piling up words like I was a Bob Dylan impersonator or something. It became very unwieldy -- much too long for a proper song. Anyway, we didn’t sing it at church for a long while because I wanted to edit it down, get it to a more manageable length, something that made more sense. A friend of Tim’s, Jason Clark, came to speak at Jacob’s Well one Sunday. We had two services at that time. After the morning gathering, based on his sermon, I knew we had to sing "Words" that night. I didn’t really have time to edit it, so we just sang all the words. The rest, as they say, is history, at least it’s Jacob’s Well history. That song seems to really be important for our community. I’m just glad to have had the time to be in my office dinking around on my guitar when it came.

Stay tuned for part three of the Mike Crawford interview... it'll be right here on JakeBouma.com in the next several days!

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