Episode 347: Stephen McNeill Centerpiece Volume II: Shelter and Shade

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Thunder, hear it today at rickleejames.com. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @voicesinmyhead. RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James. I'm really glad that you're here with us today, and you're gonna get to hear from my great guest, Stephen McNeil. This is a song from his new album which just released, and it's called Centerpiece Volume 2: Shelter and Shade. This is Stephen McNeil, and the song is Count It All Joy.

Let's listen.

My Redeemer's name. We will count it all joy, every trial, every tear. When the bitter cup we drink overflows, you are shelter and shade, ever sure, ever near. Though we suffer, we are not left alone. We are never left alone. <LYRICS>Aba, Father, we cry as we wrestle with our fears. Your Spirit speaks, giving grace to persevere. The strife we face in this storm that will not heal does not compare to the glory that will be revealed in us.</LYRICS> Lord, let your glory be revealed in us. We will count it all joy, every trial, every tear, when the bitter cup we drink overflows. You are shelter and shade, ever sure, ever near. Though we suffer, we are not left alone. We will look to the life of your word to When all of creation is redeemed. As we pray that on earth your kingdom come. Your will be done in all things. Let your will be done in all things. We will count it all joy, every trial, every tear. When the bitter cup we drink overflows. You are shelter and shade, ever sure, ever near. Though we suffer, we are not left alone. We look to the life of the world to come when all of creation is redeemed. As we pray that on earth your kingdom come, your will be done in all things. Let your will be done in all things. Though my troubles may not cease, let your will be done in all things. There is nothing left for me, let your will be done in all things.

Stephen McNeil is a songwriter and a music teacher who lives just outside of Memphis, Tennessee. In 2017, Stephen released his first collection of congregational songs called Centerpiece: Songs of Gospel Community. The songs on Centerpiece were born of Stephen's experience serving as an elder in his church and walking with his community through the complexities of wrestling with scripture and believing the gospel in every area of life. Because of the album's underlying theme of community, Stephen enlisted the help of a number of friends and worship leaders to bring these songs to life. Well, on November 29th, Stephen will release Centerpiece Volume 2: Shelter and Shade, the second in what he hopes to be a continuing series of congregational albums. Stephen is here to talk about the new album and more today on Voices in My Head. Stephen McNeil, Welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thanks for having me, Rick.

Well, I'm so glad to have you here. I've been really digging the album, and one of the perks of getting to host a show like this is sometimes I get advance copies of the music. And so I'm so glad that I've been able to kind of be walking around and listening on my phone and just enjoying some of the great music you've been putting out ahead of time. And so I consider that one of my privileges as a podcast host.

I'm glad you've been enjoying it. A lot of fun to make, so I like it when people, you know, enjoy it as much as I did.

Well, and I don't know if all my listeners, depending on how old they are, if they will even know this reference, but I'm a fan from way back of the Traveling Wilburys, which was, which was a group together of Tom Petty and Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne and George Harrison, I think. Did I name everybody? I think I got everybody.

Yeah, you got them. Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, that— it was, it was a really cool collection of musicians that got together, called themselves the Traveling Wilburys, and it just had sort of a flavor like no other when you came to the album. Well, I'm listening through your album, and we're going to talk about this a little bit later in the show too, but I really had this feel of like it's, it's as though the Traveling Wilburys got saved and really like had this sort of gospel collective together. So I've really been enjoying it. Let's— and because, you know, that particular album that I just referenced was really a community project, and I think that's sort of one of the magic things about an album like The Traveling Wilburys. Your album is also filled with this communal aspect, both your first volume and the new volume that's coming out, and its design is to serve the local church. Talk to us more about that and how these songs were written.

Sure, yeah. Well, I'm a part of a pretty young church, and When we started out, we'd be studying through a book of scripture, and I'd be thinking about the things that we were discovering as a church and wrestling with as a church, and I'd start writing songs. I realized that some of them could be beneficial to the rest of our church. It might be something we could sing. So whenever I'd write something that I felt was decent, I'd send it to my friend Blake, who's our worship leader, and he would give me feedback, and sometimes he would say, "Let's sing that next Sunday." So that's kind of how it started out, and we started singing these songs together as a church on Sundays. I never had any intention of making an album with them. I was just writing for my little community, and so that led to the first record, and a lot of the songs on Centerpiece Volume 2 were written around the same time as the first album. It kind of started that way, so I started recording them kind of piecemeal here and there. My church was kind of encouraging me to get them out there so people could hear them. And so anyway, as I was recording, I thought, you know, it's not the same without Blake singing a little bit or without my friend Summer singing. So I started having people from my church sing a little bit here and there and play. And then I thought, well, I've got a lot of really talented friends in my community, a lot of worship leaders and singers and musicians. So for the first album, I'd have a thought, "I'm going to call Austin. I'm going to call Josh." So it kind of just started to take shape kind of accidentally. So going into Volume 2, I was purposeful. I was like, "I'm going to try to include as many people as I can." I counted it up last week. I think that folks from 12 different churches in my area contributed, whether they played or they sang or they clapped or whatever. And so it was a lot of fun, and I was able to pick songs and send them to people and say, "Hey, do you think this would be good for your voice?" And whenever you bring other people into anything you're working on, when you bring other people into it, it takes on a different— it takes you somewhere you never would have anticipated. So I'd have friends come in and sing the songs and like, "Wow, I never would have sung it like that." It's so much better because you sang it like that, or they'd offer suggestions here and there about what to add or take away, and it's so much better because all these people were involved. So it was a blessing to be able to make.

I love that whole idea of including your congregation and congregations in your community, and I know that Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God tour, I mean, he is been such an influence on so many of us, and that's no exception to this album and sort of the communal aspect of what happens on it. Um, tell us about the first time you ever experienced the Behold the Lamb of God tour and how did that affect you?

Yeah, um, well, I first heard the music— I was in college, it was before the Behold the Lamb record came out. It was a recording I found on the old Ragamuffin archive. I'm not familiar with it, it was a It had a bunch of live recordings of Caveman's Call and Andrew Peterson and Shane and Shane and just all kinds of things. And so I found a live recording of one of like the early Behold the Lamb shows, and I was immediately struck by it and loved it. And then as soon as the record came out, I bought that. But first time I saw the show was in 2007. They played in Memphis. That was a notable night in my life because I saw the Andrew Peterson show on one side of town, and then directly after I drove downtown to FedExForum and saw Stevie Wonder. So it was an important night in my life for many reasons. But anyway, so I was in tears. The Behold the Lamb show, it changed my understanding of the gospel and helped me see Jesus in every part of scripture, and I'd never really considered that before, and it continues to affect me to this day. I didn't realize at the time how much the community aspect was affecting me. I just thought it was so cool that it was like, "Oh, he's got his friends out," and, "Oh, there's Andrew Singha," and there's Tom Brad from Cayman's Call, and all these people that I would see from bands and artists that I thought were great, and I just thought it was a cool thing, but then I started to realize that it's not just something cool he does, it's something foundational to that tour and to his life. And so that's when I started making these records. I was like, you know what, the Rabbit Room community that he's a part of, they encourage people to seek out community where you are and to build that sort of community in the name of Jesus where you are. And so that's what I'm hoping to do. I've strengthened and formed a lot of bonds through the making of these records with people in my community that I've met. Wouldn't necessarily have hung out with besides this, and so I'm hoping that that leads to more opportunities like that. I'm gonna have a little kind of celebration concert after the holidays and try to get as many of these people in the same room. We did that with the first album, and it was just so much fun and so much joy just to know that the Lord is working through so many people in so many different ways, and we're all linked because of His work on the cross, and Yeah, I love, I love that aspect of, you know, it gives everyone a real feeling of ownership.

And I, I don't know if you've read it yet, but Andrew Peterson's new book Adorning the Darkness is incredibly good. And he has a, a long passage in the book where he describes how the Behold the Lamb of God tour and album and all of it came about, and then all the years, the way it's developed. And a lot of that does have to do with the communal aspects. And so it's, it's great to see other artists who are really sort of taking that approach to heart. And it's not derivative at all of Behold the Lamb of God or anything like that, but it really does kind of find itself in, in the same vein, the same mode of that, just because of the way it includes so many different people on the project. And it really has a very unique and very special feel to the whole album. And, um, you know, when, when you write— and, and I want to talk about writing for just a few minutes here— when you write, even in community and with community, do you approach songwriting for others by writing what you need to hear and you hope it will translate to others, or do you try to write specifically with others in mind?

Mostly, mostly I start with what I need to hear. There have been a couple of examples where I've been thinking about someone that I know or thinking about someone in my congregation, something they're struggling with, something that they're going through, and I kind of write from that perspective. But usually even when I start there, it ends up becoming something that I need to hear first because, um, I don't know, that there were, there were a lot of years where I would be— because I've played in worship bands, played guitar and, and things like that in worship bands and with, you know, my churches, churches I've been a part of, and A lot of times we'd be playing a song, they were fine songs, but it was hard for me to hang on to anything in the song as we were singing. I didn't always find something to hang on to. And so a lot of times when I'm writing, I'm trying to write something that I can hang on to, like a truth that maybe I'm forgetting or I'm having trouble believing or I'm trying to work out to understand better. And so usually it starts with that, like something I really need to hear, something I need to cling to, a truth from scripture or something. And then if it finds its way to where it's, you know, singable for other people, then that's cool. If I start with too much of an end goal in mind, I usually mess it up. So anyway, so some of the songs end up being more kind of just devotional songs, meditations on There's a few songs like that on the record, but yeah.

Well, I'm always interested, you know, to hear about the different processes of writing. There is, especially when you're writing for congregations, there are some similarities, I think, to writing a sermon. And, you know, I've done both. I don't know, have you ever preached a sermon yourself before?

Yeah, yeah, about twice a year. The other elders at church talk me into preaching.

Okay, sure. Well, and, you know, guys like you and me, it's not our main thing, but on occasion we get to preach, and I do feel like there can be this sense of when you're preparing a sermon, you do have sort of this approach of like, I can either preach from the word what it's speaking to me and what I need to hear right now, or we almost have this approach of like, boy, this person out there I've got in mind, he needs to hear this this week, and I'm gonna— and it almost never turns out well. Like, if you approach a sermon or maybe even a song that way, maybe some people are better at it than others. But yeah, go ahead, I was cutting you off.

No, yeah, we, uh a friend of mine preached recently. We were going through the book of Romans, and he was preaching about God not showing partiality in his judgment and kind of how we do, you know, we'll go for the speck in somebody else's eye when we've got the beam in our eye. And I told my wife on the way home, you know, the times I want to say amen the most during a sermon are when it's something I wish somebody else would hear right now, you know. You know, somebody else say something, and I'll be like, "Amen!" And then I'm like, "I'm amen that because of that jerk that cut me off in traffic today," or whatever it may be.

And I want to get quiet on the parts that are aimed at me.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I'll just kind of nod contemplating that a little bit.

That's funny, but it's so true. That's some great insight. And you know, maybe there really is a little bit different aspect because when you are writing songs for other people to sing, you do at least have in mind how this is going to connect with other people. But, but I do think, I do think you're so right, and we're so much better off if we're writing what's, what's speaking to us and what we need to hear, because the human experience, I think, is so common to each of us. And as unique and special as each of us are, I think there's so much that we share in common. And, and I feel like that really shines through on these songs. So I'm glad that you've kind of approached that way. In your writing. And it's, yeah, it's a fun topic to talk about. I don't always get to talk about songwriting on this show.

But I have a good friend—

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Oh, sorry. Like I said, I send a lot of these songs to our worship leader, Blake, and he gives me feedback. He can kind of tell, I can tell from his reaction usually, is this going to be beneficial for the whole congregation or is this just something that I'm singing to myself to remind myself of something? So As far as that community thing goes, like getting that feedback and kind of knowing like, okay, you know, we don't have to sing every song I write, and we shouldn't. And so he gives a lot of good feedback there.

Well, that's great. I, you know, just one other songwriting question before we get into some of the aspects of like the sound and the choice of songs for this album, because there's other songs too that you've sort of reimagined hymns and things like that, and I want to get into some of those. But do you find as a writer that at different times in your life you're inspired to write in different ways? And let me, let me give you an example of that. Sometimes it seems like the last few songs that I've written, and this has not been characteristic of me in my whole life as a writer, but the last few songs, handful, has been me sitting at a piano, which is not my instrument of first choice. Like, I'm much better on guitar, but I've learned piano over the years, and I'll sit and try sort of a new method. Like, I'll take the meters of a hymn and figure out like what the syllables are and try to write in the mode of a hymn just to like stretch myself, you know, a different way. And I found that that has been very fruitful for me to kind of box myself in in that way as a writer. You know, sometimes I— it almost hurts me. I used to sit down and sort of be very free-flowing, almost like stream of consciousness with writing. Yeah. But for me, I have found that it's more helpful and usually more beneficial— just me personally, I'm only talking for me, but I'd love to get your viewpoint— to kind of box myself in with some parameters when I'm writing, right? So, so that I can, especially in writing for congregation— do you find that to be a more effective way of writing as well, to kind of set some like parameters, especially when writing for a congregation? Or just kind of what's your thoughts on that?

I'd love to hear.

Well, it depends It depends, really. I go through seasons. A lot of times I'll, you know, I'll be thinking about something or reading something, and, and I'll think, I feel like there's a song in there somewhere, or I feel like there's— maybe not even there's a song in there somewhere. I'll think there's an idea in there somewhere that I need to digest.

Yeah.

And so I'll just kind of throw a bunch of words at the page, like kind of, kind of stream of consciousness, but knowing that it's not going to stay that way. And then I'll trim it down, and then maybe I'll see, oh, okay, here's a line. And then maybe I'll start building from that line. Like, okay, here's kind of a meter or here's something and I'll kind of build around that. So it kind of comes out that way. But here lately, actually, I've been, I heard an interview with Drew Holcomb. I don't know if you're familiar with Drew Holcomb.

Oh yeah, love his music.

He said that one of the things that he does is he'll take a great song and then he'll write new music to the lyrics.

Okay.

And then he'll write new lyrics to the music that he came up with. And, you know, kind of just as a starting point, as something to kind of get him going That's interesting. So I've been experimenting with that lately. I actually took a song that I really love, not gonna say which one, and I wrote new words to the same melody because I just love the melody and the way the words flow. So I wrote new words to it, and now I'm trying to put some new music to it to kind of reimagine that, just to kind of get me out of the box that maybe I find myself in sometimes. So yeah, the parameters at different points, they really helped me kind of to think differently, to think from a different perspective. And kind of, that's one of the things I love. Like, all my favorite songwriters, all my favorite artists, at some point they kind of, you know, they push against the walls a little bit to get out of where they have been and to try something new. And they're great, so whenever they try something new, generally it works. So I figured, yeah, I'll try that. And maybe this song won't be won't be good, but maybe the next one will be for having gone through the process.

So yeah, and I'm always fascinated by that too, because again, kind of what I'm thinking about is you'll have different artists through the years that'll do an entire album that is a completely different style than they've ever done, right?

Or—

and it's not necessarily something they're comfortable with. And I just find it fascinating that in, in pushing themselves to do something they don't usually do, they're, they're opening up by boxing themselves in to one area, they are actually opening themselves up to so much more than they've ever done. I find it to be quite fascinating about how that works, that we actually do find some freedom when we, when we kind of box ourselves into certain parameters.

Yeah.

And, and that's— it's just, it's great. I love discussions like this. So thanks for indulging me a little bit on some songwriter shop talk. I appreciate it.

I'm kind of a dork for that sort of thing, so I annoy my wife with this sometimes I'm like, hey, listen to this turn of phrase right here that Paul Simon does. And she's like, yeah, that's, that's, that's cool. Yeah.

And you, and you know what, Graceland's a perfect example of that. You know, his album, like, he'd never done an album like that before. And when you think of like the, the odd rhythms that are there and sort of the, the South African music that he was bringing about on the album, like, he, he really stretched himself on that album to do something he hadn't done before.

And then like the next record Rhythm of the Saints, I think is arguably just as good as Graceland, but that probably wouldn't have happened if he hadn't done Graceland first, you know?

Yes.

Yeah, indeed.

I love that.

Yeah. Well, very good. Well, you know, we could probably go on and on for days about this, but we better move on to a little bit more about the project at hand because I really want to talk about some of the hymns that you reimagined for this new project, which is something I love to do too. I always think it's a great thing. If we could figure out how to, you know, kind of reconnect because hymns are so— I always say they're very versatile because a lot of times they're written originally without music. They're just poems.

Exactly.

And they were kind of designed to be remade again and again. So tell me about some of the hymns on this new project and why these particular hymns were chosen.

Sure. Yeah, I started, I guess, we're talking about the songs that I could hold on to. I didn't realize it for a long time, but hymns ended up being a lot of the songs that I could really hang on to. Some of the hymns that the Caveman's Call recorded back in the day, and then the Indelible Grace records, they would take these old hymn texts and put new music to them. And it just, it hit me in a really special way. I did a little bit on the first Centerpiece record with an Isaac Watts hymn and Reginald Heber and some folks like that, and so this time around I wanted to include some retuned hymns again because I guess I find myself a lot of times thinking that maybe I'm not as connected to people. I'm not as connected to other Christians in different parts of the world or different parts of the country or for different denominations or whatever, and then beyond that, like maybe I don't have that much in common with people who lived 100 years ago, believers who lived 100 years ago, but really we do. You know, the church is connected throughout the ages.

Sure.

You know, for 2,000 years we've been worshiping Jesus, and it's looked different in different cultures, but so these hymns kind of help me connect with that. I picked a song by John Newton, a hymn called "Strange and Mysterious Is My Life," and it's a great hymn, and it's starkly honest about the inward battle that we have with, you know, I say I believe this, I believe the gospel to be true, but in my heart I see this other thing kind of fighting that. You know, why do I— like that passage in Romans where Paul talks about he does the things he doesn't want to do. The things he doesn't want to do are the things that he's doing, and it drives him mad. And so it kind of hits along those lines. And, you know, John Newton was a genius and a wonderful hymn writer, so he kind of explores that topic. And I thought there aren't a lot of worship songs these days that deal with those topics, and And so perspective from someone who lived 150, 200 years ago is really helpful in that because they're writing about the same struggle I have, but without all the baggage of, I guess, modern society or whatever. So I chose that one for that reason. There's one by Anne Steele. Honestly, I just chose it because I love Anne Steele so much, and she has so many great hymns. So there's one, I guess most people would probably call it by the first line, which is great source of boundless power and grace, but I kind of made a little chorus out of one of the stanzas. So I call it Let Me Call Thy Grace to Mind, but it's about going through a tough time, kind of echoes some of the words from the Psalms that talk about crying out of the depths, you know, hear my soul, hear my cry. And realizing God's presence with you through it all. So there's that, and then there's one more by Horatius Bonar who was a great writer called The Church Has Waited Long. It's kind of anticipating Jesus' return, which is another thing that I don't think we meditate on enough as the church, and I know I myself I don't. I need to hear more about the fact that Jesus is coming again and his kingdom will be on earth as it is in heaven. And so that the hymn, The Church Has Waited Long, really explores that a lot. And it's kind of sad. It's a longing sort of emotion, but it's encouraging too because we know that it's gonna happen. You know, like Jesus is going to make things right. He's going to bring the new kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth, and we can look forward to that. We can hope in that, and that hope is something that's not gonna be disappointed.

So yeah, he is making— behold, I am making all things new, absolutely says one of my very favorite passages for sure. Well, you know, I thank you for telling us about some of those great hymns, and I know our listeners are gonna enjoy checking those out on the new Centerpiece album. But I want to talk a little bit about the sound, and I alluded to it at the very beginning of the show. Yeah, this really does have a lot of— the album has almost like a Tom Petty, sort of Jeff Lynne influence to it. Yeah. And I'd love to, I'd love to just know a little bit more about sort of some of the writing. Were you particularly in a mode of listening to artists like him in the time you were writing, or did it just kind of turn out that way as you started experimenting in the studio and kind of made that cool, you know, unique sound?

Well, not so much when I was writing.

I'm—

when I'm writing, yeah, I'm always kind of like drawing from different, different spices in the cabinet, I guess, of, you know, whether whoever I've been listening to. But As I started to think about making the record, I wanted it to kind of have a cohesive sound as much as possible. And it started mainly with the drums. My brother, his name's Andrew McNeil, he's a great drummer and producer here in Memphis. And so I was thinking like, I really just want the drums to sound like Memphis, to sound like Al Green recorded all of his great records at Royal Studios in Memphis. And the sounds, that they would get, it was just so warm and groovy and they just make you wanna move. And I was like, I love that, but you know, I love jangly guitars, 12-string guitars and all this stuff. So I thought, what if Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne had made a record at Royal Studios? And they'd used the high rhythm section for that record. What would that be like? So I kinda like, I started talking to my brother about this and he's like, okay, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And so we didn't go to Royal, but we did go to a studio in Memphis. And he knew exactly what I was thinking, and he set up his drums and tuned them, and I was like, that is it. That work, you know. So we, uh, we started— so I was intentional at that point. Like, once I realized we could kind of head in that direction, I was like, well, let me see how many— I borrowed a couple of 12-string guitars from, from folks around and, uh, yeah, started layering. And I was going through a, uh, pretty intense George Harrison phase at the time too.

Yeah.

What if it wasn't a Tom Petty record? What if it was a Traveling Wilburys record? So yeah, started throwing some George Harrison slide stuff on there and, uh Anyway, it got to be a lot of fun at that point. I love the way those records make me feel, and there's not really a lot of worship music or congregational music with that feel in it. I was like, "That'd be something to try, something to shoot for." Well, I really love it.

Now, are those Rickenbackers that we're hearing? I'm just curious because they sound like Rickenbackers throughout the album.

I'm glad they sound like Rickenbackers. I could not get a hold of any Rickenbackers but, um, a friend of my brother's had a really great Danelectro, uh, 12-string. Oh nice, sounds great. And the music shop, uh, in town had a, an old acoustic Alvarez 12-string that the strings were, were old on it, but it sounded perfect, you know. It was like, it's exactly what I need right there. And so, yeah, so I did a lot of that for sure.

Well, that's great. Well, you know, Rickenbackers are, are very hard to come by. I played one on one song that I recorded years ago and, and, uh, you know, found out those things have 3 truss rods in them.

Yeah.

Uh, which, which is amazing. Like, who does that? Yeah, they are unreal.

Complex things of beauty.

Yeah, for sure. But well, it sounds great, and I think the, the sound you were going for— and it's wonderful that you and your brother Andrew co-produced this album together.

Yeah.

I hope— was that a really great experience to get to do it with your brother?

It was. Yeah, he, um, He's been my favorite drummer since he started playing. But, you know, and he played on the first record as well. But this one, like I said, I was a little more intentional about what I wanted to sound like. And I knew that I wanted him involved in the process the whole time because he has a great set of ears, he has a great set of timing, and he can kind of help me think through when I'm kind of stuck, you know, if I'm thinking something. And, and so that was, that was a blessing to be able to do it with him. And I knew that— I knew we spent a couple days in the studio doing drums first, drums and bass, and I knew when we left there that it was going to be a better record for having him involved and having his input.

So yeah, well, terrific. Well, we're getting close to the end of our time together, so I want to start wrapping it up a little bit with our conversation. And it's been wonderful to get to talk to you today. And listeners, at the beginning of this show, you didn't hear it because we've been talking, but as we edit the show together, they will have been treated to a song called Count It All Joy, which I really love the feel of. And so they already have a feel of some of the music on this album. And we're going to close the show today with the song As I Have Been Loved, which, which you actually have a new lyric video for. And so I want to— is that just YouTube, or is there another place that you want to refer people to to find—

yeah, it'll be on YouTube. YouTube and Facebook as well.

Okay, so if they look up Stephen McNeil, As I Have Been Loved, they'll be able to find the new lyric video.

Mm-hmm.

Great.

And the, the album actually releases— by the time that this album releases, it will have been out for a few days, but at the time we're talking, it's, it's coming up on November 29th. And I want you to take just a minute and tell people who are listening today what's the best way to find out more about you online and to get a hold of your music and, and find out more about what you're doing.

Right, well, if you just want to hear the music on whatever, whatever your digital music service of choice is, just search Centerpiece Volume 2 and it should come up. And you could probably from there find the first Centerpiece record as well. Centerpiecesongs.com is the site where you can buy directly from me and where you can buy CDs if, if you're still into that. And then stephenmcneil.net is my personal website that has— because I teach music and stuff like that as well, so that kind of has more information about that. But, but centerpiece-songs.com is where you can hear the music and buy directly from me if that's what you're into.

All right, centerpiece-songs.com. And we are going to make sure that all of these links are going to be on the voicesinmyheadpodcast.com page. For this episode, and we're really excited to be able to share and help you and kind of sharing, getting the word out about this album, because I think the music's great, and I'm so glad that we had a chance to talk more about this album today. So in just a moment, we're going to close out this episode with the new single, As I Have Been Loved, and it has been great. As I tell my guests every week, Stephen McNeil, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

Thanks for having me, Rick. I love the work that you do, and Grateful to be a part of the podcast today.

I am the son who fled his home. You are the father. Father, I did so. When grief was all my wandering, you held a feast when I returned. May I forgive as I have been forgiven. And may I live expecting nothing in return. May your power be perfected in my weakness. Oh God, give me grace to love as I have been loved. To love as I have been loved. I am the man beside the road, beaten, bloody, dying slow. You are the one who stopped to help. Compassion thinks not of itself. May I forgive as I have been forgiven. May I live expecting nothing in return. May your power be perfected in my weakness. Oh God, give me grace to love as I have been loved. As I have been loved. To love as I have been loved. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Freely you receive, freely give. Love your enemies and bless those who curse you. May I forgive as I have been forgiven. May I live expecting nothing in return. May your power be perfected in my weakness. Oh God, give me grace to love as I have been loved. To love as I have been loved. To love as I have been loved.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood.

You can find You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com.

Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.