Editor’ s Note: Our staff interviewer Alex MacDougall had the opportunity to attend the run-through rehearsal of Worship Together’ s live recording of the new songs from Benjamin William Hastings and Aodhán( pronounced Aiden) King’ s Happy to Be Here worship project in Columbia, TN … the very night before he interviewed them on a Zoom call for this issue. Here is the conversation that ensued.
[ Alex ] Welcome gentlemen, and greetings to you. So, it’ s fitting that your project would be on the Worship Together imprint for Capital Christian Music Group. When we launched Worship Together in the US back in 1998, it was about worshiping together and not merely singing together. We made that distinction very clear in our announcements and promotions. Because when we worship together, we risk together. Risk. R-I-S-K. At a very basic level, you both risked when you took any individual song ideas or production aspirations and shared them with each other and the team involved in the project. I know that you’ ve collaborated for years and are friends, longtime friends. What was the genesis for this project, Happy to be Here? Please also tell us about the song itself.
[ Aodhán ] I’ ll start. Like you said, Ben and I have been collaborating for a long, long time and we’ d always talked about doing something. Last year I did this kind of rushed record with Abby Gamboa, who’ s an awesome worship leader and songwriter. And during that time, I said to Ben,“ Bro, this process of creating music in a confined incubator of time is just the best.” Having the pressure of not knowing what’ s going to happen and only having a set amount of days to get things done, is what I am referring to. I know particularly with Ben, songwriting is a labor of love that one song can take three years, four years. We have songs that we’ ve had for 10 years, and I think that the process of how we created this record was really unique for us. I was like,“ Ben, we need to try this.”
And so we talked over the Christmas break and
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