photo by Makayla Symmonds
of them are very simple and intimate, but it’s [Chris] It all usually starts there for me, sitting we have at the end of the day. With “Holy Roar”
all part of the sound. I really appreciate you on the piano or with my guitar. The great songs we tried it a bunch of different ways and kind of
saying that, the album is really important to me can always be stripped down to just a piano or landed with that.
because there are so many songs, and you feel acoustic guitar and feel great. With “Holy Roar” like in this day and age will people even hear all there were many times when I would just play [WM] As a sharp contrast to the phenomenal
the songs? But hopefully they will, hopefully I’ve and sing it on the piano, and the producer Brian production on Holy Roar, the lyric and chords
created something that people want to come Baler would just turn to me and say, “Man, it’s video for “Whom Shall I Fear” has over
back to over and over again, not just hear the hard to not just record it like that!” because the 60,000,000 views. Clearly listeners are drawn
single and move on but dive into. song is there. When you produce the songs, to more than just the big production. Was there
you don’t want to lose the heart of the song but a moment where God kind of tapped you on
[WM] The title track on Holy Roar is about you want to make it exciting to match what I’m the shoulder and said, “Chris, I’ve got big plans
as anthematic as you can get, but it is also saying. That’s why “How Sweet It Is”, the last for you!” and if so how has the ‘thread’ of that
extremely dynamic in terms of the arrangement. song on the record, is just a nylon string guitar conversation evolved over the years?
The way the track unfolds made me think of a and a little piano because it really matches rose going from a bud, to full bloom and gently the vocal and what the song is saying. With [Chris] There have been different moments
ending as petals on the ground. Any time I’ve “Holy Roar” you want people to just be drawn where I feel like I am living a life that I would
seen you leading worship it is with an acoustic into it and feel that. So that’s why the songs have never dreamed. I feel like God has done
guitar in hand, so noting that there is very little are produced the way they are, some of them so much. I look back through the years and
acoustic to be heard in the midst of all that have more of a pop sound, some of them have I can really see God making his way. I would
sonic goodness, can you describe the process more of an acoustic natural band sound. I never have never known how to do this, there’s no
of going from a song you strum to a finished know which way it’s going until I get in there marketing plan, there’s no one in the history of
track like “Holy Roar”? and start finding different things and see what the world who would know how to market a
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November 2018
WorshipMusician.com