creative excellence and Christ-centered living. For 10 years now, I’ ve served for one week of the summer alongside other artists of various mediums, facilitating workshops for creative high school students. It’ s just plain good.
For me, music was the first thing in life I just felt great doing. Later, when I discovered songwriting in high school, it was— admittedly--about self-expression. Cheap therapy. Now, it ' s many things. Fun. Expression … yes, there is me in there. But more to the point— I hope— my heart is in the attempt to articulate the elusive things of life. Common things. Extraordinary experiences. What we can touch and what we can only wonder about. Questions. I have so many questions. I have wondered at times what room there is for me in the village of musicians … surely, everything that needs to be said has already been written and sung. Surely, others with greater technical skills are out there doing it. But the past few years have taught me that all of that really doesn’ t matter, because we all really need each other to continue telling the stories and speaking truth from our unique vantage points.
There is only one me. And only one you. And you and I need each other to write and sing and paint and speak and build.
Extended Bio( for the super curious):
Christa wrote her first full-length song at the age of 15, but showed her interest in music when she was about one year old when she hummed the alphabet song in pretty good tune. Which pleased her mother very much. A few years ago she came across her very first recording: a cassette tape with her seven-year-old voice creating melody lines for nursery rhymes she’ d found on the pages of a Mother Goose book. Like the GarageBand recordings she puts together today, they were simply produced but conveyed the essence of an artistic spirit, expressing life in lyrics and melody.
Few things are more satisfying to Christa than sifting words into phrases and pairing them with music so that ideas and emotions become common places among listeners. After years of playing piano and singing in church and school music programs, she finally attempted to write her own music and was thrilled to discover a creative outlet that was truly compelling for her. Her method was untrained and totally her own when she arrived at Anderson University, Indiana, in the fall of 1991, where she took English literature and music classes, including Gloria Gaither’ s songwriting course, which contributed to a more solid understanding of the writing process.
Throughout those years, Christa wrote her own music while singing back-up for others and performing other writers’ music in a band called Same Rain, which she and some college friends had formed together. She then married fellow Anderson alum Toby Wells and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, eventually leaving Same Rain and heading east to Raleigh, North Carolina. But under the influence of gifted writers such as Natalie Merchant, Over the Rhine, Patty Griffin, and Sheryl Crow, she was unable to resist the pull of her grandmother’ s old piano in the living room and continued to build her own catalog of original songs.
In the fall of 1999, a conversation with a successful songwriter in Nashville led her to the decision to focus on songwriting rather than performance and make that her vocational aim. She began co-writing with her sister, Mandy Rogers, and with Tiffany Arbuckle Lee( Plumb), hoping to expand her skills and find a publisher who would see the potential in her songs and represent her in the industry. Providentially, in autumn 2001, her friend Jeremy Lee of FlatRock Management, began to talk with her about his vision for some of her songs. Jeremy was ready to champion her songs within the Nashville music community, despite Christa’ s geographical distance.
With Tiffany Arbuckle Lee( Plumb), Christa co-wrote two songs(" Real " and " Go ") for Plumb’ s album, Beautiful Lumps of Coal, as well as“ Day by Day” which was a number one single released by Point of Grace on their album“ 24.”“ Real” was the first single released from Plumb’ s album. In 2006, Christa was recognized for her song“ Held,” released by Natalie Grant on her“ Awakening” album, and named Songwriter of the Year by the Gospel Music Association.
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