Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 310: Wild Harbors

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 @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. And 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 listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and I'm very glad that you could be here with us again this week for what is going to be a wonderful conversation with the band Wild Harbors. Wild Harbors is comprised of husband and wife singer-songwriters Chris and Jenna Bedeker. Formed in 2017, the alternative pop outfit creates gutsy lyric-driven songs laced with intricate vocal harmonies. Confronted with the knowledge that each person is given one short life to live, they put their previous careers aside to step into the adventure of music and invite other people to live their own adventures. Their debut album, Monument, was produced by Andrew Osenga in Nashville, Tennessee, and it recently released on March 15, 2019. Chris and Jenna, aka Wild Harbors, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Rick, thanks for having us this morning.

Well, I am glad to have you both, and I'll let everybody know that's listening that Chris and Jenna are both sharing a microphone this morning, so it may take a second, you know, if one of them answers, they have to grab the mic out of the other person's hand. But if you hear an epic battle ensuing, that means they both have things to talk about and they're fighting over the mic. So if you hear some commotion and scuffle in the background, that's what it is.

Just your typical married scuffle over a microphone.

It's actually just an extension of the live show. We're just both fighting over a chance to say something into the microphone. That's right.

I've seen you both when you do the one mic thing on part of your show, and I didn't know there was that much animosity going on, you know, who's going to get the mic, but now I know. Next time I see you live. Well, it's so great to have you, and it's great because the album has just released at the time that people are hearing this podcast, and I'm grateful that I have heard the album. I was one of the donors way back when, and I love it, and I'm so glad that the rest of the world is finally going to get to hear the new Monument album. It's really quite a memorable album, and there's a great story behind it, so I'm glad that you can be here to talk about it today. So let's start with— right away, people are always asking me, what's the story behind the name Wild Harbors, and where does the name come from?

So Wild Harbors was the start of a new chapter for us. We, we had played music for years together, but with making this latest album, we kind of realized that the music was going in a new direction and our lives really were too. Um, that we, we had worked other careers for a decade and we were feeling called to step out and away from that and into this. So it felt like a really good time to start a new project and come up with a new, a new title for it. Um, so we spent a few months trying to think of a band name, uh, thinking of words we liked and putting them in a hat and pulling them out and putting them together to see, okay, what works here? We came up with a lot of not great band names in the process.

Yeah, I'll have to share some of those at some point. I just have, you know, for me it was exhausting. For some mornings I would just go to a coffee shop and I would just start writing out the alphabet, like, you know, A, B, C, D, E, and after each letter I would complete it with a word like albatross, bunion, or, you know, car wash, whatever. And then I'd keep going until I had just a page full of random words. And I would start like highlighting and connecting words that sounded interesting together. So clearly bunion car wash didn't make the cut.

I think, I think albatross bunion car wash could have gone somewhere though. That, yeah, that might have done it.

Oh man. Yeah, so we, we kept going with that for a little while, um, and wound up with some pairings of words and would kind of crowd test them and crowdsource and say, hey friend, what do you think of when you hear this band name? What do you think of when you hear this? And We liked a lot of the imagery that was coming forth when people would hear Wild Harbors of thinking about things that aren't tame or defined, with harbors kind of having some different layers of meaning of, you know, it's a place that you can set out from when you set sail on a journey, but it's also a place that you're headed towards when you're coming back from it. So yeah, just some of the images that people were thinking about and that we were thinking about felt true to where we were in the moment of starting a new chapter.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, I like, you know, me personally, when I think of the name, and one thing that I like about it so much, and again, I guess it could be interpreted by everybody, but I really like when I think of Harbor, I think of almost like a place of refuge, and then like a wild, a wild place of refuge, you know, like, and, and what a beautiful way to— it almost reminds me of how C.S. Lewis describes God like through Aslan. He's, he's not a, he's not a tame lion, but he's good, you know, things like that.

I love that.

And so I, I really just love the imagery that Wild Harbors, uh, brings about. So, so well done. I think that's much better than Albatross. I forget all the stuff you just said a second ago, but yeah, I don't think that was actually one of the ones, but who knows.

There were some equally as hilariously bad.

So Rick, I'll dig some of them out for you.

That would be great. Somebody right now is going to be stealing these names for their future band as they to the podcast.

So I hope they get so much mileage out of it.

Well, I want to talk a bit about your journey— rather, I'm going to let you talk about your journey because I know you both have really stepped out on faith after a decade of having other careers. And, and this sort of, uh, it's not really a new life of being artists and singing. I know you've done that for a long time, but it's new in the sense of you stepping out as a career and, and leaving jobs that you've had behind, and I just love to hear some of the story behind what led you to this place.

Yeah, we— I mean, it's certainly not what most of our friends in our 30s where we live are doing right now, um, so it's felt a little different. But we, um, I was a teacher for 11 years and was so, was so glad to be able to do that job, um, and I I really had a clear— I can still remember the moment of deciding to take my first teaching job and just feeling like, God, I don't think this is it for, for me. Like, I, I feel like you're giving me this job, but I don't feel like this is what I'm supposed to do for the next 30 years. Um, and so like took that job knowing that it, it's the kind of job that would be really easy for me to stay at for that long. And that it's certainly, you know, it's a great job. It's a great opportunity to speak into kids' lives. Kids' lives and parents' lives. Um, but that ultimately I didn't feel like that was the thing that God wanted me to do forever. Um, but because I didn't know what that other thing was, it became really easy to just kind of keep on keeping on and get complacent and to stop asking questions about what else that should be. Um, so we kind of got to a point, um, eventually just in the past couple of years where we started asking a lot of questions and realizing, okay, you know, we've, we've lived life in a way that anything could happen. Like, you know, we've, we've worked on the debt piece of our life. Like, we don't—

we own—

and sorry, not own, but we rent an apartment, so we don't own a house. We don't have children yet. Like, we, we don't have a lot of things that would keep us from making decisions, but yet because anything is an option, it felt really paralyzing. And so we did nothing when there were too many options, and I just would kind of collapse and duck my head back under my wing and say, okay, I don't know. Um, but about 2 years ago now, that started to change. Sorry. That's all right. I was Trying to give my husband a turn here and he looked at me like, "That was not the right time." No, I was just trying to find my inroad here.

So because I still work a part-time job, so I don't feel like I've had to make some of the same steps that Jenna has. But the big change did come for us about 2 years ago when we started recording in that in making talks for the record, we were discovering through talking to Andy, he was saying like, you know, ideally we'd like to have you guys down here for about a month to make the record. And for us at that time, it just felt impossible. Like, you know, Jenna gets a day off per year in the school system. So a month was just really not feasible. And in order to wait like another, you know, whole school year to get a summer down there was just not something we were really willing to do. So I think for us, it was interesting to have this crossroads put in front of us so blatantly and so suddenly that, um, Yeah, we actually started to really pray about specific things, and it was crazy to see, like, especially for Jenna, just the difference it made to have a single specific ask of like, "Should I leave my job to make this record?" And then like, you know, seeing all the different ways people would come up to us or speak into our lives and be like, "You know what? Change is good." It's like, "Oh, what makes you say that?" So just all of a sudden just feeling like, I don't know, just a lot of peace about the decision. And I know the peace didn't always feel very peaceful to Jenna before it happened, but I know it gave her a lot of confidence to walk through that.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I was terrified. Like I ended the one school year assuming that I would be coming back in the fall and then all this started coming up and I had, I feel like God has been gracious to me in major decisions in my life to give me a very limited timeframe in which to make them. Because if I, I just overthink everything and if I have too long, then I kind of back out of doing anything. Anything, which kind of becomes the default decision. But I had 2 weeks before I had to tell them whether I was coming back when this started to come up. So it, in a 2-week span, it went from the idea being terrifying and me crying and saying, I don't know why I would do this. This doesn't make any sense. To walking into headquarters, feeling still scared, but also feeling like it was absolutely the right thing. To do, which is so not me. Like, that's just the Lord, because I— my practical mind never would have been like, you know, I should quit my job and become self-employed in a totally uncertain career.

Yeah, and what a hard thing, you know, for the— I've, and I've kind of had that in my own life, you know, about a decade ago, and it's, it's a hard, hard thing for sure. And, um, you know, as you tell your story, it's very interesting to me because I think God is always calling people into new and not safe territory, you know. And we have a gentleman in our church right now who is, uh, I want to say he's probably early 50s, maybe late 40s, and, uh, he's been a police officer his entire life and is now feeling a call to ministry. And so it's taking a completely new direction, like going to school and, you know, really studying hard to become a pastor and You know, when we think about like just biblical stories, you know, how old like Abraham was when he was called out to go on this new journey in this new adventure, there's so much echo of that, I think, throughout the people of God and the stories that we share. And when God starts doing something like that, and it's almost never an easy decision to make, is it? It's often very hard and it stretches the faith. But I love hearing that story, and I think that your song Monument is actually the perfect way to start the album, just because of the way that it reminds me of, you know, almost like the Israelites putting an altar up to remind them when they would come by this place, this is where God did something and God reminded us of something. And I'd love to hear you talk just a little bit about the song Monument, which is also the title of the album, and why that's so part and parcel to your story.

I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Like, that's— we, we wrote that song. It was the last one that got written for the record. Um, and we were having all these conversations and making these huge difficult decisions, which you're so right, like they weren't— I think I had been waiting for teaching to feel like something that I just hated, you know, like, oh, well, this will be miserable and then I'll know it's time to go. And that's not how it went. That I genuinely loved doing what I was doing. And I— you're so right that I don't think decisions are always easy and cut and dry. Um, but we, yeah, we were talking about all these things and in these conversations, um, you know, we were having a heart-to-heart over some gelato and Chris said, you know, we're talking about the reasons why, like, we would or wouldn't step into music more. And I was just listing all the reasons why not. And all the reasons why I could think of not to do it. And he said, "But don't you remember this last month of shows where we were testing out all these new songs that we had written? And almost every show you came up to me afterwards and told me about an incredible conversation that you had with someone and how they connected with one of those songs. And you said, 'This is why we do this.'" And I looked back at him and was like, "No, I don't remember that at all." Oh my gosh. And he started to walk through and remind me, well, remember this and remember this person. And he was so right that it all had happened. And the minute fear took hold, all the things that God had said and done went clear out of my mind. And it was this revelation of, oh my goodness, if we don't purposefully keep those things at the forefront and record them somehow, we're not going to remember them. Like the minute stuff gets hard, we're going to forget and think that we're doing the wrong thing or that we made the wrong decision. Um, and it was through talking with a friend who voiced that very same thing about the Israelites and why they built monuments that Chris kind of looked at me and said, oh, we gotta go home and write. Like, because we knew we needed— there was a song missing from the album and we didn't know what it was yet. And that was kind of Chris's catalyst of, that's it, that's the song, like, we gotta write this song.

That's terrific. Yeah, well, let's take a moment and listen to Monument. Here on the Voices in My Head podcast. This is Monument from Wild Harbors.

Unknown. Didn't we hear that voice? Sent our spirits reeling, trembling before its choice, but couldn't shake the feeling. This is the moment when everything's clear. We know who we are. We know Oh, are we here before? Oh, we have our feathers caught in the wind. We'll raise a monument. Mountain tops that call our name. of worst resistance. This is the moment, and everything's clear. We know who we are, we know why we're here. Before all we have are planets caught in the web, we'll raise a monument. I know this won't last long. This is the moment when everything's clear. We know who we are. We know why we're here. This is the moment when everything's clear. We know who we are. We know why we're here. Before all we have, a feather's caught in the wind. We'll raise a monument.

Well, that was Wild Harbors, their song Monument. Of the album of the same name, Monument. And we will be back with Wild Harbors in just a moment, but first I have to pay some bills, so here are some words from our sponsors.

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And we are back, and we're talking with Wild Harbors, Jen and Chris. Jenna and Chris, sorry, I should say. My wife's name is Jen, so Jen just rolls off the tongue better than Jenna.

You get a pass on that one then.

I appreciate that. Well, I'm very glad to be back with you and to talk with you some more. We listened to Monument a few minutes ago. What a great song. And you know, we're living in an interesting time in not only the music business but in the Christian music business, I would say. Not only is everything kind of in flux and up in the air, nobody knows exactly kind of what the next step is going to be. People are trying different things. Is it going to be digital? You know, people are having a lot of success selling vinyl right now. I mean, there's all kinds of different formats to put songs on. You have radio stations that are, you know, known as Christian stations, the big ones like K-LOVE and Radio U. They, they are like changing formats completely now to like worship music only. If it's not congregational worship music, they don't play it, which is a huge change for them in many ways. And there seems to be a bit of a pull away from that from artists on the other side of it too, who— people who are Christians who don't necessarily write that kind of music. They have a different sort of calling, and they have a different way of telling stories, and their music is not necessarily geared at like, well, we're gonna have to sing this every Sunday morning in worship, but we're telling some stories, and they are faithful stories. And I think you guys would probably consider yourself on that sort of other end of things where you're, you're telling these stories and you're doing some great things with your music, but it doesn't fit into like the new format for K-LOVE or the new format for Radio U or whatever. So this long and rambling, uh, pre-question here, um, has it been a, a difficult time for you to kind of know where to get your music out to? I guess that's the best way I can ask it, because we're all kind of asking that question as musicians. But has that been part of the struggle to you, is to kind of know where to aim your music at?

I mean, that's a really good question. In some ways, yes and no. It's interesting that, like, yeah, as Christians— I'm a Christian who writes songs, but I'm not super familiar even with the world of Christian radio. Like, I know I know the name K-LOVE, but I couldn't tell you a lot about what they do. So it's kind of fortunate just that, you know, in our writing, or at least my writing, I've never tried to pursue, I guess, a Christian audience or even a radio worship audience. So I even think just having some sort of idea of where you fit and where you don't fit makes it a little bit easier to figure out where you kind of fit in and who you are. So I think the easiest road for us is to just be at the shows and look at who are these people connecting with our songs and, you know, what are their stories and sort of looking at them and saying like, all right, well, this is kind of our crowd then. Like, so I don't know, it's been, um, it's been interesting to sort of in the absence of a very strong label like that, be able to forge your own little identity and be like, all right, well, this is kind of where we fit. And it's maybe not this big thing like some other artists are kind of doing, which is great. But it's not just— it's just not us.

Yeah, I think— yeah, I think what we've settled on, as you know, like, because there are questions that, you know, like, we all— we love labels and categories and we like to— like, our brains work that way. Like, we like to organize information. And I think— I think for us, we— I think we're committed to just trying to be honest in what we're writing about and wanting to show up where— wherever we're invited to share our stories. And sometimes that's going to look like a church, and sometimes that's going to look like a public coffee shop that isn't affiliated with anything. And we, you know, we just have a heart for wanting to talk about these things that are true, that God's put on our heart. And at their core, you know, writing about relationships and how relationships can be tough, or writing about taking risks and stepping into a bigger story than your own. I mean, those are things that both that anybody we think can connect with. And so that's some of our hope that, you know, we not— I mean, we're not going to make music that every single person in the world is going to like. It just doesn't work that way. But, but wanting anybody who is in a place where they would want to hear that story, whether they're in the church, outside of the church, you know, wherever that might be, we want to show up and be willing to talk about that with them.

Well, and I think that's great too, and you do such a good job with it. And you do such a better job because you're trying to be yourselves and, and not, you know, like pretentiously trying to be, you know, a band that's going to sound like whatever it is on top 40 radio, or, or to be this other group. And you have— because of that, I think you, you are being able to express the voice that God gave you, and you're able to tell these stories. I loved how you put it, I'm a Christian who writes songs. I'm not necessarily like a Christian songwriter. And at the same time, you have songs that, that deal with real life, and, and we're going to talk about that in just a minute here. But I can tell the audience who's listening to this podcast today, because I've seen you play a couple times and, and I got to have you at my church and we played a couple songs together, and then you guys kind of took over and shared your stories and you shared the songs. And what you don't know about that was before we had you come in, I had to have a conversation with my pastor because he was asking, well, but I don't hear any like, like worship music in there, you know. Is there anything we can use that's part of our Sunday worship? And I kind of had to say to him, like, you're just gonna have to trust me because what they're gonna do is like, it will connect, and it will connect in a, in like a very strong way. And what you did that Sunday morning at our church, um, In telling the stories the way that God gave them to you and singing the songs the way you wrote them, I know for a fact they connected with some stories in our congregation of people who were going through some exact same things that you were sharing about. And so all that is to say, you know, it's good for us to be who we are and to be who God has called us to be and not to try to necessarily fit into a mold. And one thing I want to deal with, and I know a lot of your songs deal with this, they deal with real life, marriage being one example. And you don't necessarily deal with it in a happy-clappy way, you know. And I say that because it seems like, you know, for the longest time when I was growing up in church, anything you would read or, you know, whatever videos you would have, you know, become a Christian and your marriage is going to be just perfect and super happy, you know. And the fact is, the reality is divorce rates in the church, when I last checked, are even higher than divorce rates outside the church.

Correct.

And you deal with real-life relationships and commitments and the struggles therein. I'd love for you to talk a bit— I know part of this comes probably because you are a married couple, but, but talk to us a bit why you are so drawn to writing about themes like this and, and why that seems to resonate.

I mean, I guess, you know, at the bottom they always say, "Write about what you know." We spend a lot of time around each other, so, you know, it just seems like just being in a relationship, you learn more about the other person. You— I don't know. Oh, Jenna's passing me the mic. She's stretching her arm a bit. I just think it's a natural place for us to gravitate to. Either because of the way our marriage works or because of the marriages we've been able to observe just in our communities, it seems like those kinds of issues and topics are kind of always at the forefront of our minds, or at least they were when we were writing this last record.

Sure.

So at least there's a good handful of songs that are either just about personal relationships or friendship relationships or romantic relationships and all the little weird pitfalls that can work themselves in and just sort of us addressing those in our songwriting of saying like, "Hey, this seems like the national trend." you're gonna get sad and then get divorced, but we don't want that for us. So like, how can we, how can we communicate that through our music, or, you know, incorporate that into what we're doing?

Exactly. Jenna, did you have anything to chime in on that?

Yeah, I mean, I, I have not mastered the art of a great romantic love song yet. Perhaps one day I shall. That's— there are so many people who are so good at it, and I'm always so amazed of like, wow, I What a gift. And I, that's not my thing yet. Maybe it will be. Um, but yeah, I just, I, I think that we've been so encouraged. I mean, partially, you know, people look at us like, wow, you know, you work together. And some people say, that's just the cutest thing. And we laugh and like, yeah, well, you know, you're not there at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when we're like, you know, I'm just gonna take 5 minutes real quick here and walk out of the room and we'll be friends again when I come back. Um, but, but then there are other people who look and say like, wow, you're married and you work together, that's got to be hard. We're like, you know, it is. But I think in so many ways it's really kept us communicating. Like, I've— it makes me appreciate how like we have to talk and we have to be honest and yeah, just keep that going together all the time in order to have this band work and have our songwriting work together. And I think in a lot of ways it's kept us honest with each other. And so I think we've been so touched at the way that that has kind of naturally come out in our songwriting and seeing the ways that other people have connected with that. Like, we played somewhere once, we played a concert at a place, and our friend who brought us there later said, you know, hey, by the way, they're being really quiet while you're, while you're playing, but they're, they're really listening. Like, it doesn't mean that they're not connecting with your songs, but, you know, they've never had someone stand in front of them and talk really openly and honestly about marriage and it being a struggle before. So I think that we're, we're honored to, to be able to enter into that space a little bit to just talk about relationships because we I mean, we're, we're made to live in community and we just think that relationships are such a gift from God and, and want to see that. Yeah. Want to see them thrive.

Maybe, maybe all this is you guys are just too honest to write that perfect love song, because it seems like every one of my, one of my very favorite shows of all time. I don't know if you've ever watched it or you've probably heard the music of Flight of the Conchords.

Yes.

And, uh, one of the things that's so funny to me, I can't remember the episode or any of the lyrics, but, uh, Brett is trying to write, you know, this love song, love song, and it's like, you know, 3 hours long. He's trying to, you know, any, you know, I would, I would climb the highest mountain, I would swim the deepest ocean, I'd eat the biggest sandwich, you know. It's like all these, you know, and it seems like, you know, the perfect love song, as you say, we'll say that with quotes, uh, the perfect love song, it always seems to have a lot of really lofty platitudes, but it's not always where real life is. And I so appreciate that about your music. Alone Together is one of my favorite songs on the album, and I just love the way that it's talking about things just like that, that, you know, we want to make a commitment not to the I do alone, because that's just one moment in time when we're at the altar, but The real "I do" is down the road and all that it takes. One of the best examples I've ever heard of this, a pastor friend of mine, Scott Daniels, who was one time talking about our developing relationship as Christians to God, and he said, "When I said 'I do,' I was married from that very moment." He said, but now, 20 years later, a couple of kids, getting ready to send him to college, he said, we are really married. He said, he said, I'm just as married as I was when I said I do, but, but like, you know what I mean when I say now we're really married? And, um, and he was talking about that in relationship to our, our journey with Christ. But I think that's such a good way to put it, and I think your songs help us deal with like the really married phase.

I love that. That's such a fun way to put that.

Yeah.

Well, what I'd like to do right now is take another quick break for us to listen to Alone Together. So this is Alone Together by the Wild Harbors.

I don't want to be alone together. I don't want to be close like stars side by side, my love, but still a million miles apart. I don't want to spend a life pretending, tied together and tired of a never-ending story of a Miles apart, I don't want to spend a life pretending, tied together and tired of a never-ending story of us ever falling out, of ever falling out, of ever falling out of love.

Well, we are back once again. We're having a great time. That was Alone Together by my guest today, Wild Harbors. Chris and Jenna, we are so glad to have had you on the show today. I want to make sure that we don't leave anything out in our conversation. Uh, you've got a lot of great music. The album is released and everybody now is having a chance to hear it. By the way, everybody listening, go to Spotify, go to iTunes, go to wherever it is you listen to music and make sure that you save their song, follow them, do whatever you do on your listening area. If you listen to Amazon Music I don't know what you do there because I don't use that, but go do what you do and save their album Monument by Wild Harbors. So that's the first order of business. Everybody listening, do that, because, you know, if we do that together, we truly can get them on the Billboard charts. It's, it's really not an unreachable thing. So let's do that first of all. But before we go, I want to ask the two of you, is there anything that you would just are dying to talk about that we haven't talked about together on today's show?

I mean, just first of all, just thanks for having us, Rick. And I guess a big thank you to anyone who's still listening to the show at this point. You know, thanks for making it through with us. And I guess my big hope is that if you guys do go check out the music, just know that this is not something that I think, you know, I think we talked a little bit, but it's not something that we've always had this crystal clear vision of like, this is going to be our life and this is going to be what we're going to devote ourselves too. It was a lot of fear and a lot of wrestling and a lot of trust to get ourselves even here. And I think it was very easy to want to walk away from things at that point. But the more we talked about it, I think the more we both kind of discovered like there was just that something inside of us that ever since we were young, we really kind of had this passion for music. And we've talked to a lot of people throughout this journey where we've gotten to discover that little seed of something inside of them where it's like whether it's owning a pizza shop or being a baker or being a seamstress, whatever it is, they kind of always have this little thing of like, "You know, I always loved doing that when I was a kid and then I grew up and I just stopped." And that really just breaks our hearts. And I know it's here in America, so everyone kind of has this tendency to say like, "Well, you know, if you're going to get back into it, you have to make it a business." And that's so not true. Like you don't have to bring hustle into your hobby. Like it can just be a hobby. So I just encourage anyone, like, I don't know, sometimes it's finding a little bit of bravery to dig back into yourself and be like, you know, what really makes me feel alive? And I just hope you guys would look for that thing and start pursuing it even today.

Yeah. No, good.

Any, any closing remarks from Jenna today?

I amen to all of that. We, man, we just have been so excited to see spark that lights up in people when we're, when we're sharing our story is they start to remember that thing for them because God, we really just believe that God made us to enjoy those gifts. You know, he put those good gifts in us and we're, we're made to, to pursue them. So we just love hearing people's stories about digging back into the things that make them, make them feel alive and make them feel like they're doing what they were put on the earth to do.

Amen. Well, and I, and I am so glad to see all of the good press that you guys are getting. By the way, I wanted to make mention of that. It was great to see your video on ccmagazine.com. And everybody listening, if you haven't seen it, just go to CCM Magazine's website and look up Wild Harbors, and you'll be able to see that. But it's been great to see, you know, over this past year. Again, I hope you are making monuments for yourself and reminders along the way too. I mean, even just what I am thinking of off top of my head, you got to play Hutchmoot this past year, which is awesome. You know, that's a pretty amazing thing, getting in at the local show. I think that was last week in Nashville. Yeah, which is one of the great— like, I was able to go to that, I think it was their second one years ago when they just started that, and I thought, man, this is just a terrific show. I mean, I mean, this is awesome. And the fact that you're not local and you got to play there is even better, you know. But I am just so glad to see the way that God is blessing, and I'm glad to see that more and more people are going to be experiencing your music through this album. And I just look forward in the coming days to seeing the way that God will continue to open doors. Thank you for your ministry. Thank you for your music. And above all, thank you for being the voices in my head this week.

Thank you, Rick.

Thanks, Rick.

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 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.

Hope.

God bless you and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.