and Greg came back to the house because he has to go to the bathroom . He saw that we had no furniture , and he went to Brentwood Baptist Church , and he told his Sunday school class at Brentwood Baptist that we had no furniture . Two weeks later they turned up with two box trucks and furnished our house . I still remember standing in the hallway with all of these guys dropping off beds and washing machines . I was truly staggered . We ’ ve seen the miraculous . When you ’ ve seen the miraculous , it ’ s life-changing ! To be honest , I moved from lukewarm to passionate . I started as the typical music guy that you ’ d work with for many years . Then I saw the industry wanted me to go away because I was an embarrassment . But the church who didn ’ t know us - loved on us . I think I can safely say , and me particularly more than Helen , because Helen has always been a wonderful Mom and very spiritually sensitive , but it was my Damascus experience . It changed my thinking on a lot of things . Even the questions you ’ re asking Alex are so thoughtful and well-prepared . Most of my friends have not survived our industry very well . I think we challenge each other as a family , and how do we look for the Jesus answer in this difficult question ? What we do in Nashville , as you know , we look for the commercial question as a family , and we ’ re challenging each other . A lot of times the Jesus answer is not immediate gratification , and because were so influenced by the culture in our industry were looking for immediate monetary gain . But our whole approach to ministry is , “ slowly but surely ”. We don ’ t want to get ahead of ourselves . It ’ s really been quite a remarkable ride .
I ’ d like to say a couple of additional things as well . I ’ m going to comment on Joel and Ben and also on Joel and Luke . Joel and Ben do pretty good videos these days , and they did a movie called Priceless , so they ’ re a pretty good team . We gave Ben a camera at about the age of fifteen to document Rebecca ’ s career , but I don ’ t think he ever documented her career . But he did learn how to use the camera . They used to do little movies . The other thought that you might be able to use somewhere , is its giving
Luke & Joel with their father , David
hope to other people out there who are doing partnerships . In the early days when I went to Joel and was taking him around town trying to get record deals and no one was interested , I said , “ Well how about doing it with your brother ? The duo thing is a bit different from anything else out there , and it could just work .” And he wasn ’ t that excited about that idea , because Joel and Luke were never really that close growing up . But they experimented with it and stayed at it for about four or five years demoing and writing songs . And I think the reason they didn ’ t give up is because they were waiting for the other one to give up . It ’ s typical Nashville , you have to go through everybody .
[ WM ] I ’ d like to close with a couple of questions that are a bit “ lighter ” in content . Do any family members have Tennessee accents , and if you owned a food truck , where would you park it and what would you serve ?
[ Joel ] I think if we owned a food truck , we would probably do iced coffee and donuts .
We ’ ve always been big on the iced coffee and donuts .
The closest to having a Tennessee accent would actually be our brother Ben . When we were growing up , I never minded feeling different or other and having folks comment or asking where we ’ re from , but Ben loathed it and he wanted to feel a part of things . We kind of parted ways in dialect in that I worked very hard on hanging onto it because I thought it was my roots , and he worked very hard to shed it . A lot of people will talk to us when we ’ re both present , and they ’ ll be like , wait , he sounds completely American and you sound like you have an accent . He very much decided it was not the accent for him and he wanted to be more American . ( laughing ).
fK & C