but almost all of the co-writes kind of started with me sitting down by myself. Rarely do I sit down in a room and we’ re like,“ Well, what do you want to write about?” Most of the time, somebody is bringing a nugget of an idea that started on their own time. For me, I do a lot of writing on piano and sometimes guitar, and just playing the same chords and singing. I mean, I just start worshiping and singing a new song to God.
I do love co-writing. There have only been a handful of times that I’ ve written completely on my own.
[ WM ] You mentioned writing on your piano, what is your writing piano?
[ Chris ] It’ s a Yamaha upright. It’ s a U7, which we got from a showboat … I forgot the name of it. It’ s a riverboat in Nashville and people would just play it every night.
[ WM ] You mean the General Jackson?
[ Chris ] That’ s it, the General Jackson Showboat in Nashville. So, it was on that, but it wasn’ t super old, so it was in good condition. spending some sort of budget on marketing.
[ WM ] What was different for you, being a part of the Live Original Tour?
[ Chris ] HaHa! Well, the Live Original Tour, I mean is outside of my normal thing that I would normally do, which are mostly worship events. Worship events where the core of the entire night is worship and the crowd is mostly teens to young adults. Um, this was way outside of that normal in that it was a lot of younger teens, and half of it was more of a concert / show, and then Sadie Robertson was speaking the most incredible messages, and then we would do worship in a couple of points in the night. The reason why I did it was I felt like God said,“ Do it!” It pushed me outside of my comfort zone, and I am so thankful I did it. I feel it was such a big win for the Kingdom, and we saw lives changed. I think a lot of people might have come for a show or a concert, and I think that many of those people were kind of surprised by the Holy Spirit and by the Lord touching them in ways they were not expecting. They came to just have fun and watch a show, and I think a lot of people left completely changed. What an honor to be a part of that! It was super cool!
[ WM ] Back to your record, when is it due to release?
[ Chris ] Right now it is scheduled sometime near the middle of May.
[ WM ] Do you prefer co-writing, or do you find something special in just writing by yourself?
[ Chris ] That’ s a really good question, um … I’ ll say there is a greater value in co-writing,
[ WM ] What is your writing guitar?
[ Chris ] Ooo, now that’ s a complicated question because I have a handful of guitars and I kind of feel they all have had different songs hidden in them. You know you pick up a guitar and you’ re like,“ Oh this guitar is singing to me!” so I like to mix it up. This year I did a lot of writing on a Waterloo from Collings, and also a small bodied Avalon, which is a Northern Irish guitar … and also a Lowden that is also from Northern Ireland. My main guitar is still a Gibson J-45 from 1966. But, the other ones got a lot of use this year.
[ WM ] The J-45, that is a popular Gibson! When did you get yours?
[ Chris ] I actually got it for when I was recording my very first record ever, which was called
44 May 2018 WorshipMusician. com