Voices In My Head Podcast Episode # 268: Song Consultant Randy Cox

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Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices Voices in Your Head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and this is a really special episode to me because I'm here with an old friend today, Randy Cox, and I'm sitting here in his Song Consultant office here, and I'm looking at— let me count them real quick, all of the records on the wall. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 at least, unless I've missed a few that are around. These gold and silver records around the room of people you've worked with. I see Stephen Curtis Chapman, I see Scotty McCreary, I see Point of Grace, uh, I see, I see Wow, uh, not Wow Worship, but Wow from the '90s and different ones. Yeah, and my eyes are failing me. Sandy Patty, Michael W. Smith. So there's, you know, a couple Couple names somebody might have heard of somewhere along the way.

There's a lot of these that aren't there, by the way, because my friend of mine who was my business partner in the past, he and I split the records. So he's got the other half of these.

Oh, okay.

Plus the ones that I never got. You know, there's a lot of times towards the 2000 period where you were lucky if you got a gold or platinum record. And the AMI records that I've got up here are pretty much, you know, double, triple, quadruple platinum.

So I've been on over 80 million records, which just doesn't happen anymore, does it?

No, it doesn't. It'll never happen again. It's just that period.

Yeah, amazing. I was trying to think the other day, because she started so young, I want to say like by the time she was what, 19? Didn't she already have like 3 albums out or something? It was like—

she had—

I might be misremembering, at least 2. Yeah, because, uh, because she was still pretty young when, you know, Singing Your Praise to the Lord came out, right? Which is what you took.

Yeah, that one right there. And then before that, uh, was My Father's Eyes. Yeah, that was her first big record, and I had signed Gary Chapman as a writer and he wrote Father's Eyes. So her first big song on her first big record when she was still in college—

Wow.

—was Father's Eyes.

Yeah, that's amazing. She's had quite a career. Well, you know what, we should stop before we talk too much about other people. People who have listened to the podcast for a while, I'm sure, know who you are. Matter of fact, about a year ago we had a podcast because you had released a book with Andrew Greer, and it's actually behind me on the shelf. I saw over there—

That's right.

Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth., and it was on the anniversary of the passing of Rich Mullins, 20 years that the book was released. So we were in Parnassus Bookstore, just not too far from here. For whatever reason, there was an accident with paint outside that they were cleaning up outside the store, and every time the door opened up, listeners will remember this, "Tah-rah!" kind of noise in the background. That's true, yeah. But we had a really good conversation. And since that time has gone by, we talked a lot about Rich Mullins that day, but since that time had gone by, I have recorded one of Rich's unpublished songs that you brought to me called "Thunder." And we're getting ready to release the album hopefully before, maybe towards the end of summer. It's being mixed right now, and so we'll hopefully have a good mix to hear pretty soon.

Congratulations. I'm anxious to hear the record.

Well, thank you. I'm anxious to hear it too.

I guess I'll have to buy it. I want it.

I know somebody that can get you one. Do you really? Yeah. What a connection. That's right. So anyway, we did a lot of Rich Mullins-centric stuff because listeners might remember that you were Rich's first publisher and you were a lot of the reason. And Rich Mullins actually said in a room full of business executives that Randy Cox taught me how to write songs. And so I'm privileged to get to sit here once again with you, Randy, and I want to talk to you mostly today about this really cool new song consultant service that you are offering. And we can take the conversation anywhere we want to go today, but I think it's a really neat thing for any writer. I was gonna say young writer, but I think any writer can benefit because all of us at some point or another can benefit from the help of another person who can kind of mentor us along through the process. So tell us a little bit, and we're sitting here in the Psalm Consultant office right now, and it's a really cool setup. Tell us a little bit about how this came about and just, you know, the beginnings of it. And you can tell as little or as much as you want, as it brought you here, because you've got so many great stories. But you're doing some really cool things with artists right now, including including retreats, and I just love it. So tell us what you want us to know about it.

Well, my song consulting business side of me is an extension of my publishing side of me. I'm still publishing, I'm still signing writers, I'm still getting songs out to the church and all, but I realize that For the most part, people don't have anyone in the business, especially these days in the business, to be able to bounce their songs off of them and tell them whether it's a good song, whether it's a not so good song, whether it needs rewriting or it needs to be put in the drawer for future reference. Right. And so I took the premise that I've used for the last 40 years, and that's working with songwriters on a one-on-one basis, helping them understand, first of all, what are the weak elements in the song and what are the strengths of the song. And then working on the weak elements to— in the rewriting process to make them— I get to the point where I call them finished. That's finished, or yes, that's right. And so over the last, especially the last year, but probably goes back 2 years, I've been working with individuals. I've also consulted. I was a consultant for Lifeways Music Publishing for 5 years. I was a consultant for Gateway last year, but in addition to that, I have I have about 7 individual clients that I work with, and they hire me on a monthly basis, and they send me their songs. They send a demo, worked— just a work tape, simple demo, and a lyric. And I go through that, though, that song, those songs, and basically work with them as I would if I were a publisher and tell them in no uncertain terms, we've got to work on this element, this is not right, let's rewrite it, and I'll help you understand where you need to go in the rewriting process. And I think that's the most important element. It's one thing to tell somebody, uh, your song is not quite finished. It's another thing to tell them why it's not finished. And then thirdly, and most importantly, is the fact that you want to tell them where they should go with the rewriting process. And those are elements that I bring to the song consulting side of me. Yeah, and that's a great thing.

I've benefited from that myself, just writing songs, you know, with you. And by the way, everybody, you'll have to hear on my new album, not just because it's me, but there's a song that Randy and I worked on together. Most of the lyrics are his, and I just kind of put some music to it and changed a few phrases around, but it's called "Be My All," and it's one of my favorite Randy Cox songs. It's so funny.

It's funny because for me, I don't write a lot of songs. Most everything that I write is either a lyric or the music for a choral piece. That's been my focus all my whole life, but I only started writing about 10 years ago. And of course that came as a result of my experience at the Abbey of Gethsemane and has affected my entire life, but it also gave me a voice to be able to speak some things into the church that other people aren't saying, and I found a little niche for me.

Yeah, well, I tell you what I love about not only you but your song consultant service. And when you talk about something that can serve the church, I feel like in the church we're best when we do things together, you know. And so often, if we're not careful, people like me who are artists, we can slip into a, I'm gonna do this whole thing by myself and then I'll reveal it to the world and then they're just gonna love it. When in actuality, I think the way we benefit is actually when we can write together and we can share together and we can even wrestle over it a little bit together and just, you know, because there's some good things that happen in that struggle, in that time together. And one of the most beneficial things for me over the years has been what I would almost call spiritual direction in songwriting from people like you, from people like Paul Balázs, from people that have been very kind to me over the years to kind of say, this is what I think this needs, or this isn't ready yet, or then things you were talking about that you do with that. And the reason I call it like spiritual direction is because I feel like that's what the Holy Spirit is doing constantly in our lives, coming to us and saying, it's not done yet, and there's these places that need to be worked on and polished. And that's why we need the church and the Holy Spirit working through the church, because together we're on this journey of as Paul says, working out our salvation together. So true. And I feel like the song is a good metaphor for that whole journey, you know, that we take together and struggle through. So you've got a way now for people to actually get in touch with you. I tell people about you a lot. And even last night, I'm at the National Worship Leader Conference this week, and once again I run across somebody that's just a huge fan of Rich Mullins, you know. And I say, well, you've got to talk to Rich Lee James. Granny sometime, you know, because he knew Rich and did a lot with him. Anyway, I just think what you're offering is a good service, not just for the individual writer, but hopefully we're doing something for the kingdom of God too.

It's the only purpose that really counts.

Yeah, for sure.

The rest is just having some fun with songs. It has to have the depth that the Spirit speaks into it. And I take that responsibility very seriously so that, you know, praying over songs and try to understand where the song should go, whether the concept is being fulfilled. If someone starts off a song I just wrote a lyric called "Those that love his name," and in doing that I had to really believe that the Spirit would lead me in saying, "Those of us who love your name are these people," and speaking for the people of Christ and people in the church. My ministry has always been for the church. I've just been fortunate enough along the way to have songs on records, but those songs usually ended up being used in the church or in hymnals or, you know, choral arrangements or youth musicals or kids' projects or whatever else that might have happened, but it was all based for the church.

Well, tell me a little bit about— and by the way, I'm gonna have you think about something to answer later. Okay, but I'll just— just think about it while I'm asking you the next question, okay? I want you to think of maybe one song that you feel like you've been blessed to work on that you feel like really did have a sweeping impact over the church over the years that God just used. And because I do feel like there's some songs that God just has his hand on. I'll give you an example that I always think of, a song like "And Can It Be." There are good songs and then there are songs that for some reason it just seems like God's Spirit is just upon those songs and something has resonated throughout the whole church in that way. So I want you to just think about that for a minute when I ask you the next question. But while we're talking about this collaborative effort of working for the church, I'm really intrigued about the writers retreats that you've started leading. And I know that the Abbey of Gethsemane, which if our listeners don't know, the Abbey of Gethsemane was where Thomas Merton did most of his time as a monk in Kentucky, you know, not too far from here, just a couple hours, you know, 2 or 3 hours. And I know you make regular trips there, and I know that has to be a part of the motivation for getting songwriters into a retreat mode, you know, for doing that. So tell us a little bit about kind of where— what that's been like, you know, starting these retreats and kind of just— I'd love to hear about it.

Well, I have— I really felt in my spirit that I needed to go away with a small number of writers, not a cast of thousands. Sure. There are a lot of people that do retreats and they'll have, you know, 30, 40, whatever. I don't know how many, but a good number. And that's fine for them because obviously you can make more money and you can also talk to more people in those settings. However, my concept was I'm going to take 10 songwriters and we're going to go on a retreat and we're going to stay in this farmhouse that's been converted into a retreat center, and it just happens that— not really just happens, but it was down the road about a mile from the Abbey of Gethsemane. That's true. So, in Kentucky. And what I really wanted to do was to get to know these 10 songwriters who came from Arizona, Texas, Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Nashville and— excuse me— bless you— and bring them together, some of whom I didn't know, but through some promotion that I had done, I narrowed it down to 10 people that I felt like these 10 people are an eclectic group of writers. One was a church pastor, Another was a hymn writer who is an amazing hymn lyricist. I had one that was 17 and I had another that was 74. Wow. So we pulled in all this eclectic mix and then everybody shared songs among themselves. You know, all of us were able to share together and then I would break those songs down and everybody had a lyric sheet so that everybody could say, you know, I see something here. That's exactly what I wanted, because I want writers to understand that they can edit themselves if they learn how. Then they learn how to rewrite, and then before they get to me, for example, they've already caught most of the errors in their ways, so to speak. So that's exactly what we did. And then I broke them up into twos and threes and we did co-writing sessions. So we ended up with 2 or 3 really good songs that came out of it. But since then, several of them have become my clients because they wanted a continuation of what we experienced at the retreat. And then this last weekend— I'm sorry, weekend before last— I was in Columbus, Ohio Just down the road from me.

I was on the other side of the state, so I didn't get to see you.

So I did a songwriter's retreat workshop at Covenant Presbyterian in Columbus, and the pastor I cannot thank enough, Pastor Tracy Keenan, is one of the most wonderful people I've ever met, first of all, and secondly, she promoted it and got people engaged, and we had a wonderful time together over the weekend. And then of course I stayed over for Sunday and got to experience their service, which was a lovely experience. That's great. And I had 7 people show up, and that's exactly the kind of numbers that I enjoy most. I've spoken in front of 400 songwriters and So you get about 10 people that you can actually listen to in a session. But in this case, we listened to everybody's songs. And then another thing was we did on the last afternoon, we did a co-write. We split them up in 3 groups and came up with literally probably the best co-writing things at a workshop that I've heard. They came together musically and lyrically and theologically and melodically and everything else with really good thought-through songs based on a song text that I gave them. So that's what I'm going to expand. My workshops are an extension of my song consulting. It's basically taking it out to various cities and other places, whether it be colleges, universities, or churches, and speak to the people who don't have access to a publisher or someone who can actually tell them what's right and what's not right with their songs. So it's a huge honor for me to be able to do that.

Well, that sounds so cool, and I was looking at a few of the pictures you were posting —looked like you had a really beautiful church. I mean, just the sanctuary looked amazing to be a part of. I love it when churches look like churches. Yeah, this was a real church. When they're built to be for worship.

Yeah, and you just feel the presence in that room.

We could do a whole other podcast on the sacredness of architecture that's made for holy spaces. Oh my goodness.

Yeah, we could go back to about the year 1000 and trace the history of sacred architecture. But don't get me started. That's right. I'll try not to. That is another time, I'm sure.

That's right. Well, that sounds like such a cool thing, and I know that I have benefited more from those smaller group settings. And I'm not a really— you know, that's not to say that conferences like this one this week aren't beneficial because Worship Leader Magazine does a do a great job, and I'm privileged to be a part of their conference this week. But there is something about when you can kind of get away and be in manageable numbers. When there's too many, like you said, you just don't get to hear everybody, and not everybody gets to be heard, and it makes it very difficult.

To me, if I were going to one, let's just say there's 30 people, and I went to one, and I was a writer and I wanted to co-write and I wanted to meet some people, whatever. That's wonderful. I think you meet some people, but by the same token, if you've got 30 people co-writing, how many people get to share their songs and actually get a critique? Yeah, that's a lot. It's too big for me. Yeah. And it's again, that's like when I was talking to you about the Sparrow— my Sparrow days as vice president of publishing for Sparrow. That was a period of time when I lost that one-on-one. I was more in an administrative position, which was not me. Mine is more of a one-on-one relationship with songwriters because it's important. Yeah. I don't sign a songwriter and then just say, "Bring me songs when you can." when you get inspired or whatever else. I have to pour myself into them as well because it's a commitment. And with my song consulting, I take the same responsibility with those people who are paying me to tell them what's right and what's wrong with their songs. It's a major responsibility for me, and I don't take everybody that I talk to. I'm not right for everybody that I talk to. They may have an agenda that is Maybe they want me to help them get songs cut. Well, I don't do that. I help them get to the place where the songs could be cut, and that's my role.

Yeah, and who knows if a song ever gets cut. It's a hard process to—

It's even more difficult today than it's ever been. In my 40 years, I've never seen it more difficult, but there are— as the publisher side of me takes publishing very seriously too, I look outside of the normal channels and say, okay, I don't have a number one record on CCM Radio, but tomorrow I'm going to be meeting with the United Methodist Publishing people to help the United Methodist see where their church musically would like to go in the next 10 years. That to me is more important than many other things that I could do, and it's not a CCM hit song. It's hands-on with a church denomination, and I value that.

It's an honor. I'm excited about you working with the United Methodist Church since We could use your help in the Nazarene Church too. I'm wide open to the Nazarenes and the Baptists and Presbyterians and the rest. Oh, that's great. Well, the question I asked you a few minutes ago, because I know you've had some real honors of working with a lot of songs and a lot of artists and writers that I think their songs have really made an impact on the church for the better. When I say that, I don't mean it because this song went to number 1 or made a gold record, but as I said before, I just feel like there are some songs that resonate with our heart. I'll give you an example of one that's doing that right now in my church because I just heard it last night from the artist himself. David Crowder has a song called "Come As You Are." It's really a call to just come to the Lord wherever you're from. And he sang it last night, and I saw the reaction of the crowd last night. I've been leading it at my church for a couple years now, and every time we sing it, it just seems like the people's hearts just get into that song and they just really sing it. Um, for the last couple weeks I've been on the road doing revivals, been singing that song with no prompting from me. People just get up and start coming to the altars, you know. It's just one of those I just feel like it's one of those songs that God just has his hand on and is using. So all that being said, it's not about whether it's a hit or not. I wonder if there's a song that you can think of that you have felt that way about, that God has just used it in a way like that.

It's really hard to take 40 years and condense it down and say, you know what, But I will say that the song Holy Ground is probably the most interesting and probably the broadest-based song for the church that I've ever published. And it's been 30 years ago, but it's still sung.

And that's the— we are standing on holy ground. Yeah, Jaron Davis.

Everybody knows it. Yeah. And the thing I love about it is that when I signed Jaron Davis back back in the time, and it was based largely around that song and some other songs that he had written that had not been out there as a song on a record. I had Sandy Patty turn it down because she had done "How Majestic Is Your Name" the year before and felt like it was— and this is, you got to remember, this is early on in Sandy's career, and she's not real smart at that point, so She couldn't see the continuity of "How Majestic Is Your Name" and "A Holy Ground" being two early worship songs could have a place on another record. So anyway, I called—

I think they weren't necessarily thinking congregational worship back then.

No, it's true, and actually with songs like "How Majestic and Great Is the Lord" and "Thy Word" and some of those, they're piano-driven songs, they're not guitar-driven songs. So I look at it as in periods, as the West Coast thing happened in the '60s and '70s, and they were guitar songs. In the early '80s, Michael W. and other writers, which I won't even try to get into, but they started writing piano songs. So the piano was the driving force in the writing, and I think it made them more interesting. But a song like Holy Ground was so simple and elegant and it reached the heart. It went straight to the heart and nobody would record it in the beginning and so I called a friend of mine who has recently passed away, Paul Ferrin, and Paul at the time was one of the top arrangers in church music and he was a my first mentor. So I called Paul and I said, Paul, I've got this song called Holy Ground. I need a choral arrangement of it because I can't get anybody to record it yet, but I feel like to get a choral arrangement of it will take it into the church in all denominations. And that's exactly what happened. It started out as a choral piece. The denominations just all accepted it. Everybody loved it. It started going in hymnals. It started going around, then people started recording it. Wow. And so it worked the opposite way that most songs get their exposure. Isn't that interesting? It was fascinating. And then, of course, Barbra Streisand did it on a record that sold 6 million records. Wow. So you have to say, that's a major song. Yeah.

Well, that's interesting to me because was it— of all people, I wouldn't think Barbra Streisand would be one that would record Holy Ground. Was she doing like a gospel album?

She did an inspirational record, and I guess it's been, I don't know, maybe 15 years now. Wow. But it's— when Jaron and I got together not too long ago, and he said it's already sold 6 million records. Wow. And amazing for her to find it in the first place.

Yeah, and I think that's what I mean when I when I say that it seems like there's some songs that God just has his hand on. You can't stop them.

Yeah, if you tried to stop them, you would be, you know, you'd be messing with the Holy Spirit. Yeah, because that song, in all its simplicity, you could sing it around a campfire, you can sing it as a big choral arrangement, you can sing it as an invitation moment, you can just sing it during the offering and people give I mean, it just works in every context.

Yeah, and it's just such a great announcement. And, you know, when we come together to worship, we do need to remind ourselves of what we're— where we're at, where we are doing. And it just does— it does that perfectly, just reminds you, you know. And I, um, and as I think about it, like, who, who doesn't know that song? Like, it's just— it's just taken off. And, and I think that's an interesting thing too to think about because so many of like the really powerful hymns that we have were maybe not known in their time, you know, very much, or didn't even have, you know, in the case of like Wesley, didn't even have music to them to start with. You know, they were just poetry that was in a certain meter and lots of tunes worked with them, you know. So it's fascinating to me to see over time which songs are going to stay with us and which songs— especially in a climate of where I was telling somebody the other day, I said, you know, this— I can't remember even what song we were talking about. I said, but that song is only 10 years old, but most congregations would go, oh, I don't want to sing that, it's an old song. Yeah, you know, at this point. And when it came out, it was the biggest thing like ever because you know, it was on K-Love or whatever and everybody was singing it. But that does not necessarily mean that that is something that is timeless and lasting. I mean, it has its place. And I even saw, you know, very recently at an event where somebody who came in had a number one hit on the radio and followed a group that was just singing, being very generous with their time, not even singing their own songs half the time. They were just singing, trying to bring the congregation in and engage. When they finished singing, the congregation was just ready to worship. Then the person with the number one song came out, and it was just kind of all about a performance and just flopped. I mean, just kind of the room just went— and it wasn't even bad what they did, it just wasn't what the other thing was. It wasn't the same focus. And so it's powerful to me when I think about songwriting. And I think I've told you this before, when we were writing "Be My All" and my grandma was passing away and I got to sing it for her in the hospital and sang it at her funeral. Sorry, I get emotional. But my new focus in writing songs became, because we sang so much around her bedside and we sang so many hymns that she knew, you know, and we got Grandma back in her right mind for a few days in the hospital, you know. My new philosophy of songwriting for the church became we need to write songs that are worthy of being sung while our people are dying, you know. Wow. And that's important. And Holy Ground is one of those, you know. Again, we talked about all the context. Holy Ground could very much be sung as a person is being ushered into the next kingdom, you know, whatever that means of in the kingdom of God. And, um, so, so bless the Lord for all these good gifts that he gives us with music and helps in those moments and yeah.

Yeah, I keep thinking in fact at my funeral, whenever that might be, what songs would I choose or would I ask to have sung at my funeral? And I don't know. I've been involved in so many songs and I know so many other songs and then the hymns and everything else. I don't know that I even want any music at my funeral. I mean, I really don't, because I'm not going to worry about it at all. But looking down from heaven, I might say, "Gosh, I wish you'd change keys, Rick Lee James.

Give me a break." That's funny. Well, you know what? I'm going to have to go in a few minutes because I do have to get back to the conference I'm a part of this week. Please tell everyone how they can find you if they're interested in the service that you're offering. I think it's songconsultant.com, but I might have that wrong, top of my head.

Actually, the easiest way to get me is my regular email, which is rcox615@yahoo.com.

Okay.

R-C-O-X-6-1-5@yahoo.com. Okay, great. And then my website is randycoxmusic.com.

Randycoxmusic.com. Okay, so I was totally far off.

I do have a song consultant email address, but it's so long I'd rather give them the R Cox, 615 is my area code, and yahoo.com. But then my website is— we've been updating it and putting some photos from recent conferences and workshops and history and some photographs of, you know, Rich and I and Amy and I and just different people that I appreciate so much. Sure. Well, that's great.

Well, and I can tell all the listeners Randy Cox is the real deal, and he is someone that can benefit your riding. He's benefited mine. But more than that, I think He's just a companion on the journey. You are a companion on the journey. I've benefited from just being your friend. It's my pleasure. There are times that, you know, there's times that just I feel like in our conversation, I almost always feel like the Holy Spirit just comes in, in the midst of what we're talking about. That's a special thing that doesn't always happen. In a way. I appreciate it too, I value that. Well, everybody, please, if you're interested in taking your songs to another level, and especially if you want to use your songs for the church, you want to talk to Randy. But I should also say it doesn't have to just be only Christian music because you've worked with Scotty McCreary and people like that, and I think you can benefit anybody, even A lot of believers don't write specifically just, you know, songs for the church in the way that we often do.

I enjoy country songs, especially because they're either clever or they're incredibly serious. They're fun or they bring tears to your eyes, but they tell great stories. And that's why I enjoy the country songs as well. Yeah.

So get in touch with Randy and you won't be sorry. So thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. And Randy Cox, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

Thank you, Rick.

Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com. Follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames. Like my artist page on Facebook at Facebook.com/RickLeeJames. Www.amazon.com/RickLeeJames and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on Amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency. That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.