about teaching new songs. Pretty much all the songs we are doing this week are popular in the church right now, but it’ s always hard when you have a bunch of churches together because they are all playing different songs. Sometimes we just have to go with the ones that have been played for the last ten years so that for sure everybody knows them. I was just telling him,“ If you’ re getting feedback that students don’ t know the songs, I want to know because our only job here is to lead them in worship and if they don’ t know the songs, then we are failing at our job.” Being at Hume really allowed us the freedom to really embrace that and also providing us a spot to write music and try it out on the students and to see what’ s really connecting with them and to see what’ s really important to a congregational worship song. stuff while we were students at Biola and some youth groups would have us out. They would really just call us,“ A Band From Biola.” But then when we went to Hume, even the need for just merchandise to support ourselves, we were,“ Oh, I guess we need a name!” And especially when we go to make a record. For the first record we did for Hume, out of ten songs, maybe two were originals … possibly three. It was then we were,“ I guess we need to figure out a name” and it was around that time people were really affirming us in what we’ re doing and encouraging us to keep going and God was opening doors. I think it was right at that time that a desire to start writing more music came to the surface.
The cool thing about, not just Hume, but the different avenues we were able to walk down and places we got to play, we were really learning what it looked like to write a great worship song. When I say“ great,” I mean one that the congregation can really be engaged with. At Hume, we had the students for six days and we would only introduce two of our own, but we wanted to do a really good job introducing them rather than just like throwing a bunch of new songs at them.
But we didn’ t feel the pressure of having to release a full-length record immediately. And at that time, we had absolutely no understanding of Nashville and how that works. We were just releasing music so that every summer we have a new project. It would be a mix of some of the stuff that we were playing at camp and a few of our own songs. Looking back, it’ s almost like we were able to slowly ease into it. We were a part of camp ministry for six years! Having that safe environment to begin to write music and not feel this pressure of getting an entire record together. We didn’ t do a full record of our own music until 2014 and we had been going at it full-time since 2010. It kind of allowed us to figure out what we wanted to be about and write about and also really retain that heart for leading people in worship rather than just,“ Let’ s write a bunch of songs so that other people will sing our songs.” Not that that is the heart of other people, but I just see that I could put that pressure on myself. You know, I just had a meeting with the camp director here at OBU
[ WM ] You narrowed over 60 songs you wrote down to seven for your first EP,“ Clarity” with Centricity. Will you use some of the others for future releases?
[ Emily ] We’ ll save some of them. We’ ve had a couple of sit-down meetings with our publisher and A & R just say,“ Hey, out of the 50 + songs we have left there are at least 20 of them that we really don’ t care about at this point. They could be good songs, but we just really don ' t feel super connected to them.” A lot of this beginning season with the label was finding people to write with that we really connect with. But I think that there’ s probably 15 songs that we said we really believe in these songs which means we’ re going to revisit them … maybe we need to re-work the chorus or write new verses or maybe there’ s just one part of a song that we really like and we’ ll scrap the rest. It’ s hard to let those go because there’ s this fine line between wanting to fight for them and also realizing that we might be walking into a new season of completely different songs. It’ s tricky because you really feel connected to them, but sometimes you just have to let them go.
[ WM ] As a touring band, you are based on the West Coast. Does that geographically limit your touring?
26 July 2018 WorshipMusician. com