photo by Filip Vukina
how do you help teach that community how to love and support and carry the burdens of the other’ s in the community?
So there was a lot going on! And when I left the DC Band and stepped down from being on staff, I felt like,“ This is going to be a breath of air. I’ ve been working so hard for 16 years.” I was excited about that, and I really didn’ t even know if I would do music. But I quickly discovered that I was going to keep doing music, because the songs kept coming, and I thought,“ Okay, I guess this doesn’ t go away.” So I decided to keep doing music. I felt like this is what I get to do, and what I’ m called to do.
I struggle with the word“ calling”. My dad is“ called”. He’ s an insurance agent, but he’ s called to carry the story of God. His job is actually more complicated because he has to navigate commerce and culture and also insert the story of Jesus in the middle of the relationships that he’ s developing. And... nobody likes their insurance agent!( laughter) But his calling is no less than mine; his platform just looks different. And he’ s actually in people’ s lives in some of their worst moments. He has an ability to do things in people’ s lives that I only had a chance to do when I was on staff at the church.
From the platform, I just throw stuff out there that God has put on my chest and hope that the Holy Spirit can do something through it.
[ WM ] You have a knack for blending Americana folk music with an old‘ Holy Ghost Tent Revival’ feel, but somehow in the process you make it appealing to the modern worship music listener. What’ s really going on here?
[ DC ] I don’ t know!( laughs) With Neon Steeple I wanted it to be Bluegrass Appalachian Porch music meets EDM. I was able to get some cognitive threads that wove that together in my head. I asked myself,“ What is Bluegrass / Porch music all about?” It’ s all about community. You go have a good meal together, sit on the porch and make music together, and there’ s community that’ s formed. The music is played live, and then it’ s gone. EDM is totally different. It’ s totally future oriented. And most of the time it’ s created by a dude, sitting by himself in some basement, and there’ s no community built. Most of the time it never even gets out of the box. But it’ s cool, really cool.
His intention though, and the genius of the DJ’ s that are amazing and great, is to be in a setting where they put their finger on the pulse of a group of people and lead them on a journey, and all of a sudden this thing that is disconnected becomes community. The intention is the same. On a porch, community happens. At an EDM festival, community happens. And it won’ t ever happen that same way again.
So on a rational level, I thought,“ This should work. There shouldn’ t be any dissonance.” In reality, it was much more difficult to pull off the Neon Steeple album to where it felt organic and not contrived. I had to figure out where it needed to breathe to create enough space to grab onto the porch, and support it with the future, EDM music. So I put the‘ Neon’ word,
22 Jan � Feb 2017 WorshipMusician. com