stuff. Surely enough he asked me to come to his studio at church where he worked and we hung out and got to know each other. Pretty crazy. I kept on going back many times and I sat behind him and watched him work on his ProTools projects, how he prepares to direct a band, setting clicks and tracks. I learned so much from him just by hanging out at his studio and watching him work. Like who does that for a 17-year-old random kid who doesn’ t even go to his church? He has been such a huge blessing, and he really opened my eyes on what I could do as a musician and that I could be more than just a guitar player. Everything he does is literally my dream job.( laughing) He inspired me to get into music production and get studio gear and really reinvent myself as a musician. I seriously owe a lot to Nige and his influence, kindness, generosity and his heart to serve God and people with the gift of music.
[ WM ] While involved in your local church’ s worship team you had a chance to come to America. While here on a temporary Visa you had several exciting things happen for you musically. Tell us about that first trip?
[ Jemm ] I’ ve been serving in my home church of 26 years Come To Jesus church since 2013 and it’ s been an absolute blast. I was also doing music professionally at the same time, but I was the only one in my church doing it professionally.
But on the day after my 21st birthday in 2018, I received an email from a friend of mine Wayne Magee who is a lead pastor at his church telling me,“ Hey Jemm, I feel like the Lord was telling me to send you this email.” So, I opened up the email and it was an invitation to a church conference in Nashville, Tennessee. That email gave me a confirmation of where this journey was going to lead me next. Prior to the email, I always had in mind two locations of where I would go in terms of doing music and those places were L. A and Nashville.
Nashville was somewhere I would have loved to check out especially because I’ ve made connections with people over there from the Gear Talk Praise & Worship Facebook group so seeing this email was exciting but at the same time terrifying. I had no idea what I was gonna do, where to go and who to contact. I applied for a B-1 Visa which so happened to get approved on the spot when I went to the U. S embassy. It wasn’ t until about a week before my flight where my dear friend and session musician and current guitar player for grammy award winning gospel artist Jason Crabb- Spence Peppard gave me a video call.
Spence was one of the first people I messaged, and he is a man of many talents and such an incredible heart for people. He called me out of random, and it really caught me off guard in the best way possible. I remember Spence telling me that he wanted to try and help me and that God was pressing into his heart to call me for this opportunity which popped up quite unexpectedly. He told me that he was producing an artist who just came off being the top 5 of the finalist of the 2018 American Idol season and his name was Cade Foehner( who I interviewed for the November 2019 edition of Worship Musician Magazine and also the husband of fellow American Idol finalist / Country superstar Gabby Barrett). He told me that they were looking for someone to fill in on bass or guitar and if I would be interested to play on the tour. So without hesitation I accepted the offer.
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