[ Crowder ] Oh , when he comes in verse two , his voice when it hits , I ’ m like , that ’ s the deal . I think I said , “ Ricky just sing the whole thing , bro . You take the whole deal .” And man , what a joy to work with . That guy has been so kind to me . In the first Opry performance we did , he was there as the MC , kind of navigating that night , and just it was nuts . We got done playing , and I was wearing an International Harvester hat at the time , and he ’ s like , “ I just want to do something a little strange here with us together at the Opry . I want to pray for this man , because he is a harvester . He ’ s out there .”
[ WM ] Oh , wow !
[ Crowder ] And so he just had everybody at the Opry pray for us , for me , that God would put his hand on us and bless us and that we ’ d take the music all over the world . I mean , it was the most insane , powerful thing . So he ’ s been a huge encouragement and voice in what I ’ ve been doing in this solo endeavor , because that was right towards the front of things . I was so happy to finally get to make music on an album together because this is the first time we ’ ve gotten to schedule-wise .
[ WM ] Oh , yeah . I interviewed him before when I was still publishing Christian Musician magazine , and he ’ s just a godly gentleman .
[ Crowder ] And he was so involved in the mix process , too . It was so great . Sending back mix notes . I think he was the last one to sign off on the mix . He still had little tweaks . Like , “ Hey , there ’ s this one take of the mandolin , blah , blah ...” He was invested in it . And that was a joy to see that kind of passion and excitement about making music after having made it for so long . He ’ s , in a lot of ways , just an absolute beautiful mentor .
[ WM ] Right on . Well , so never a dull moment , from there you go to the fastest version of “ White Christmas ” I ’ ve ever heard . And here ’ s the thing , I can ’ t decide whether it ’ s Brian Seltzer rockabilly , or the old Christian Ska group the Supertones , you ’ re trying to go for there . Or you blended both of them , or maybe Stryper ’ s version , the really fast one . Then you threw in some Americana instruments to hide the Stryper part . So what was it ?
[ Crowder ] You nailed it right there . It ’ s Stryper with Appalachian instrumentation coming in over it . Yeah , that ’ s it right there , man . ( laughing )
It was around the time they were shooting the Christmas film stuff and we were trying