Paul will be a featured worship leader at this Lenny, but I didn’t know when I helped them tour. So we moved down, and then it turned
year’s Christian Musician Summit. move. We packed the truck and drove all the out that they would do fly dates and we’d stay
way to Muscle Shoals, and Lenny told them, home and babysit their kids and I’d mow their
[WM] Paul, you have been at the forefront of “Oh, your friend can stay with me” when we lawn on their little three acres next to Last
worship expressions though song for the better unloaded the truck. And so there I am, about Days Ministries, and Melody Green was their
part of almost 30 years. Who were some of three years from hearing Christian music for the neighbor, and Matthew Ward. We lived in a
your musical worship inspirations during the first time on this AM radio station in Philadelphia, little mobile home for about two or three years
beginning of your journey, and how did their and I’m sleeping in the guest room of Lenny and did YWAM and Last Days Ministries and
songs impact you? LeBlanc. So I ended up moving there and started playing guitar and leading a little bit in
playing guitar with Lenny on Sundays. When the church. So that’s where I really began to
[Paul Baloche] Probably my first exposure he would do concerts I was playing electric find my “legs”, my worship leader legs in the
to praise and worship would have been… guitar in those days. We would do high schools church, and then we ended up staying there
well, growing up as a Catholic, I have never and prisons and a lot of that kind of ministry. I twenty-six years.
heard Christian music, or what we now call was sleeping in Lenny’s guest room and asking Contemporary Christian Music, or CCM. So, myself, “How did I get here?” And I would just [WM] When you attended the Dick Grove
after having an encounter with the Lord around watch every Sunday how Lenny would lead School of Music in LA, which is now an online
nineteen years old, the first people I heard were worship. I’d play guitar for Kelly and I’d watch learning platform. That’s something that I did
Kelly Willard and Lenny LeBlanc. And then how she would lead worship, and I felt like both not expect! Those that I know who went there
maybe a year or two after that I started getting of them had such an unpretentious authenticity, are jazz musicians, composers, and arrangers.
into it. I really liked those first couple Praise and just such an authentic relationship to the Did your academic path help you in your
Band albums. But there is no doubt about Kelly Lord. It was transparent, and so I ended up musical legacy?
Willard and Lenny LeBlanc, I would hear them moving to Muscle Shoals. To me, looking back, on the radio. Then I moved to Los Angeles in I’m so glad they were my early role models, [Paul] Without a doubt. You know Bob
California to attend The Dick Grove School they still just have such pure hearts for the Lord Barrett? He was one of the student teachers,
of Music. It was a great experience. I was in and in leading others in worship. Everything and he was about the only other Christian at
Studio City for one year and while I was there. they did was relational. the school (laughs). So we became friends,
I met Kelly Willard. The Lord put it together,
and for his senior year thesis, I was playing him
and I started hanging out with Kelly and Dan Anyway, I moved back to Jersey after a year, these songs that my friend Rita in New Jersey
Willard. I would go down to their house on and got married to Rita, and that was another would send me on cassette, because she had
the weekends and just mow the lawn, do the long story. Rita would send me these little that born-again experience too. She was kind
dishes, play guitar or help out with the kids. cassette tapes of songs she was writing and of a Joni Mitchell clone and would play open
They were just a loving family and they showed “I Will Celebrate” was one of those. We got tuning. So anyway, Bob took three of her songs
me the possibility of marriage and ministry and married and that was the first song that we into a studio and arranged them and recorded
kids, and I thought somehow this could work. I ever had recorded was “I Will Celebrate”, and them. That was an exciting thing, this is before
would go to Whitefield Studios often with Kelly Tommy Coomes wanted Rita to sing on that. I we were married, she was still my “friend” Rita.
and Stan Endicott, and just hang out and pull think it was Praise 14.
some charts out of the trashcan and take them
But to answer your question more direct, I had
home, just try to learn some of the Hadley So, we moved to Texas to Last Days Ministries, composition classes, and guitar classes, and
Hockensmith guitar parts. Those were probably that’s where Kelly and Dan moved too and they arranging, and theory. He was kind of known
recorded tracks that you worked on back in the were saying come on down and play guitar for his modern theory. I feel like that helped me
day Alex. with us, and Rita could sing, and we would tremendously, especially as years went on. I
started filming. I did a whole series of master
I’m trying to make a long story short here, classes that eventually became DVDs. We sold
but that was a great year of being exposed to maybe half a million DVDs, we’d send them out
praise and worship, learning about some of the from my neighbor’s garage. Ten years or fifteen
early Christian music. Maranatha! Music, and years full of music theory, guitar, praise and
the early Vineyard Music. And then the Willards worship guitar, and music styles. I basically just
moved to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where they took a lot of the things I learned from school
met Lenny LeBlanc. I of course had heard of
Kelly Willard
February 2020
and that I was learning as a worship leader
Subscribe for Free...
41