Russ' Story |
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When
I was nine years old, I saw a movie about the life of Hank Williams Sr.
and from that moment on, I knew that I wanted to write songs. It
just seemed like such a great art form to me, and a great way to express
myself.
In
my late teens, I subscribed to a magazine called "Songwriter
Magazine", I wrote dozens of songs, played in local night clubs,
sent songs to publishers and artists, hoping for a "break".
During that time, I met a lot of other songwriters that were 40+ who had
been doing the same things for 20+ years and I began to realize that the
music business was weird. Some of these people had awesome talent
and yet they were never heard, while the radio stations at the time were
playing silly songs. So
after seeing these folks (who had worked so hard and long with no
results), I decided to do something else for a "living" and make
music something I did for fun. Let me clear that up a bit, I
didn't feel any disrespect for these folks, to the contrary, I respected
them for following their dream, it just wasn't for me. Jesus
Music At
age 25, I gave my life to Christ and started writing songs about my
experience and later got involved with a Christian band and then
contemporary worship. Occasionally, I hear a story about the
royalties received on a song like "Majesty" or "Lord I lift
Your Name on High" and I think, "wouldn't that be nice".
But the "Christian Music Business" works basically the
same way the Secular one does. Folks in high places are
trying to build a "brand" that will make their product a
household name. That doesn't bother me. The
apostle Paul said once that he realised that some people actually preached
Christ out of impure motives, but he still rejoiced that Christ was being
preached, and that's how I feel about the "biz". Thus,
4Praise.com/ShareSong.org. To me, it's a great
alternative...there is an opportunity now for the songs to get out to the
200,000+ churches that have CCLI licenses without the need for them to
pass through "the star makin' machinery" (borrowed from Joni
Mitchell).
So
why share the songs?
In
every church and worship team that I’ve had the privilege to minister
with, I’ve seen gifted songwriters responding to the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. I believe that
song writing is closely tied to the gift of prophecy spoken about in the
bible. A few years ago, I began to wonder if there might be a way to
share some of the songs that God has given me with more people.
Traditionally,
to do that, you have to make a serious commitment to travel and
“promote” yourself and your music and I just didn’t feel that God
was calling me to do that. Like
everyone else, I’ve observed over the last few years the potential that
technology has to enable communication and sharing and so I thought, why
not? But I don’t want to just share my songs, I want to see ALL
the songs brought into the “storehouse”. So, I’ve invested a great deal of time into this effort and I’m
so blessed by what we are seeing!
Worship
leaders are just beginning to find out that this storehouse is open to
them and they can choose from all of these songs instead having someone
else choose for them.
One
last note… Some
years ago, I wrote a song called "The
devil is Defeated". To me, it was just a little ditty
that gave me perspective when I was feeling overwhelmed. We began to
use it in church and it's become a regular song that we do from time to
time. My mother (age 72) recently went on a short missionary
trip with our church to Argentina. After carrying her luggage and a
16 hour flight, she found herself in Argentina with tremendous back pain
and feared that she would not be able to participate in the outreach
activities. She asked the group to pray for her, but did
not feel any better.
She
went to bed, but woke up at 2 AM in pain and unable to get back to sleep.
She told me that when she can't sleep, she often sings through the
alphabet, a hymn for each letter (Abide with me, Blessed
Assurance, etc...) . She said that when she got to
"T", she sang "The devil Is Defeated" and as she did,
her pain subsided and she fell asleep. She woke up the next day
with no pain and she told me that through the rest of the outreach,
whenever the team encountered difficulty, she would say "we need to
sing The devil is Defeated". I relate this short story, just to
say that "royalties" come in many forms. Yours sincerely |
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