Worship Musician Magazine January 2024 | Page 8

again , it wasn ’ t even like , “ Man , there ’ s such a need for good scriptural music .” It was a lot like , “ Uh , I think they used to sing the Psalms .” ( laughing ). You know ? We just didn ’ t grow up in music at all or know Christian music . I actually grew up on the West Coast and in Washington State in particular . When I was a kid , during my first several years of school , we didn ’ t have a radio . We didn ’ t have a TV . I mean , there was like zero music culture in my family . We were just both new believers ; we ’ re like getting slammed with life , you know , trying to go to God ’ s word . And when we would go to God ’ s Word , we would sing it . And it started to work . Not for people , but for us !
We started to walk with the Lord and get into his Word , we would sing his Word , you know ? And that ’ s what we do today . ( laughing )
[ WM ] How did it develop into a situation where a Christian record company became interested in you and started talking with you about being actual artists ?
[ Shane B ] Yeah , we did a record . It was in those first handful of years that there was a pretty big valley that I walked through and really clung to the Psalms . I didn ’ t know that I was clinging to the Psalms , really . I was just singing through them . And then that kind of desert season ended , and all of a sudden , there were these 10 songs in the Psalms . And so we did a record called Psalms .
Actually , I did it independently . Shane was there with me ; he sang on it . Then that record was the one that we had a couple record labels calling us . And we didn ’ t even call ‘ em back . I mean , we had a thing , you know , we would go out and we would play largely at colleges , and we would play the Psalms , and we were enjoying it . So we weren ’ t really looking for something else .
And we didn ’ t really even know what the whole record industry looked like . But that record was the one where now we ’ re talking to some people . I remember talking to Six Steps Records with Louie and Shelly Giglio because we used to play at their conferences way back then . And then we talked to InPop Records ; that had just begun because we kind of knew the Mercy Me guys a little bit . And so we ended up signing with Jeff Mosley there . He left right after we got there , sadly . But that kind of started us off in the label world . Then we ’ ve been independent for a while . I guess we ’ re kind of on our own label . ( laughing )
[ WM ] Well , tell us about the new relationship with Worship Together . Are they going to do publishing with you ? Are they going to distribute your music ? What ’ s the new relationship like ?
[ Shane B ] So we have an online training tool called The Worship Initiative . And we had started a little record label a few years ago . We ’ ve known the guys at Capitol / Worship Together for a really long time . They ’ ve been
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