[ Chris ] We had Daniel on guitar. I had Matthew, my bass player on bass, and Jonathan Smith was the producer. And so, he plays a lot of different things. He’ s an incredible musician, so he brings in lots of different things himself. He’ s on the keys. He’ ll grab a guitar. Jacob Arnold was on drums and Jonathan got the vision for it and got the passion for it. And then we recorded it, worked it, and then he took it and we started just going all different directions and brought this young woman in to open the song up, an Egyptian singer. And because there’ s a melody when“ Amen” is said a lot on this little piece of paper, Amen is used a few times. So apparently that word was very important in the song, and they sang it in a certain way. And John shared us with that melody and every time“ Amen” is in the lyric- that’ s how it would be sung. played through it as that melody from around 200AD. And then we brought this young Egyptian singer in to do that. And so when you hear the intro, you hear her in there. She’ s padded throughout the song with those“ Amens” the way you would hear it in that day.
[ WM ] Yes, it’ s amazing. And then John Dickson took it to another direction and did a full choir singing it along with an orchestra … which is just beautiful. that. When we did a thing at the Museum of the Bible, they brought in the choir to do the choir version. Ben and I sang our version, and the choir sang theirs and it was just gorgeous. The harmonies, the instruments, it’ s beautiful.
[ WM ] And in the film, you’ ve got the live concert where you present it for the first time to a big audience. How did you set that up? It’ s a‘ very old / very new’ song. Did the audience understand the moment of it?
And so we thought when you hear the guitar line, it’ s that( Chris sings the‘ Amen’ part for Bruce). The guitar hook is the“ Amen” style
[ Chris ] That way was better than me and Ben. And when I heard that, that is so insane. It’ s so gorgeous. I love that. And I got to be a part of
[ Chris ] I tried to set it up. I took maybe five minutes to say,“ We’ re going to do something special here tonight. This is different.” And
14 March 2026 Subscribe for Free...