Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #227 - The Big Announcement One - One Day Early

Today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. Get a free audiobook download and 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Give it a try today. 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 in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Well, welcome back to the Voices in My Head podcast. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad you could be here with me today. This is gonna be a special podcast in that it is the one for you, the listeners, because you have been faithfully listening for some time now. According to the stats that I have on the internet, we've had over, well, almost 32,000 downloads now of this show, and I'm thankful for every one of those. I'm thankful to all of you who have taken time to listen to the show. And I have been saying online for about 2 months now, with different memes, different things being posted, and little hints here and there. I've been sending emails out to my email list. I've been making hints on this show in particular about some upcoming news. Well, I'm gonna tell you that today is the day that you, the listeners of the Voices in My Head podcast, you get to have this big news a day early before the rest of the world gets the news. Today when I am recording it, it is just a little before 8 o'clock in the morning on Thursday, September 14th. The big news actually comes out on September 15th, and, and it's going to be on ccmagazine.com. Uh, so here's the news. Are you guys ready for it? Uh, because I specifically have made this podcast today for you, my listeners, uh, people who have been so dedicated over the years, because I wanted to give you, uh, the first chance to hear before anyone else. Um, so this is sort of my way of saying thank you today. So let me say, first of all, thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing it with friends. Thank you for all of you who have made suggestions for guests to have, and, and that we could have a podcast to have a place to have good conversations and places where people can tell their stories. And sometimes we agree with them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes they make us happy, sometimes they don't. But it's It's always been, hopefully, a safe place for other humans to come together and talk about life and faith and things that hopefully matter. In that tradition of someone who has influenced my life and faith, and someone who has done things that have mattered in the world, not just in the Christian world, I don't think, but in the world in general, I am referring to a person that passed away 20 years ago. This year. Rich Mullins, uh, his real name was Wayne, but we all knew him as Rich. This is the 20th anniversary of his death, as I say, and it's appropriate that since it is the 20th anniversary this year and we're remembering Rich in many different ways, um, that we talk a little bit about Rich Mullins in order to start the news of this show. Admittedly, I didn't get super into Rich Mullins until after his death. I was in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was at a concert with a bunch of people. It was an outdoor festival. There were people like Steven Curtis Chapman, there was Third Day, there was Chris Rice, all the artists who at that time were really big artists, probably the biggest Christian music names in the world of music. And I remember someone coming out at the set, I think it was right in the middle of Third Day's set, if I can remember, because the last two acts of the day were Third Day and then Stephen Curtis Chapman. And Third Day had recorded with Rich Mullins, so this was significant. They came out and made the announcement that Rich Mullins had passed away that day in a car accident. And this flood of people, I mean, it looked like to me, I looked around the crowd and, you know, when you see in the movies of the Exodus out of Egypt and you see this huge crowd, just more numbers than you could possibly even try to count by yourself, it was a scene like that. And it was a crowd that had been pretty boisterous and, you know, just having a great happy fun day. And I remember because the sun was starting to set, we were outside, and there was this huge crowd, and they made the announcement that Rich Mullins had passed away. And there was such a profound silence and a gasp of shock and such a profound sense of loss among these thousands of people that were gathered together there. It was significant. And Third Day came out on the stage and just played a very quiet version for their old friend Rich, singing, "Oh God, you are my God, and I will ever praise you. Oh God, you are my God, and I will ever praise you." And I will seek you in the morning, and I will learn to walk in your ways. And step by step you lead me, and I will follow you all of my days. So I remember that significant moment, and I remember Stephen Curtis Chapman came out and debuted his song "We Are Not Home Yet.". And he said he dedicated this song to Rich Lee James, whose album notes— he said as he would go through the liner notes and read the notes, he said these were lyrics of a man who was longing for home, who was longing for heaven, who was longing to see Jesus, who was longing to have a new understanding of what it means to live in the presence of Christ. And so he debuted that song, "We Are Not Home Yet," and he said, "And Rich is home tonight, and we want to follow in the legacy that Rich left behind." So it was a profound evening, and I started diving more into Rich Mullins' music from that day on, more than I had before. I was familiar with, you know, the hits that were on the radio, but I had no idea of the profound, deep resource of songwriting that Rich Mullins was. When I really got into his music and really got into songs, and especially after he had died and his band came together with several well-known Christian artists to do songs that he didn't get the chance to record on the Jesus record, That Jesus record, I mean, I don't want to say an overstatement, but I really think it changed the course of my life in some ways. Looking at Jesus in new ways. You don't get lyrics like this on too many Christian albums. They were so deep. They questioned God so hard. They were not sugarcoated. They were a little bit racy at times. But they were prophetic. And the song "Hard to Get" was a song that I carried with me through the years. When I had gone through my divorce years ago, Rich Mullins' song "Hard to Get" was one that I would just— when you're in that depth of grief as I was going through my divorce, I would find myself on the floor in the back room of my apartment by myself, and I almost like I couldn't move.. And the song just giving God all the questions and lashing out at God, but then at the same time saying, "Maybe I'm just lost enough to let myself be led." I feel like Rich's lyrics, through the power of the Holy Spirit speaking to me, helped me through amazingly hard times in my life. They taught me how to be a better songwriter and hopefully a better person and a better Christian. They didn't teach me about perfection. They taught me about the struggle and the longing after God and the chasing after God. And so I dove into pretty much everything by Rich Mullins over the years that I could get my hands on. I found live bootleg recordings of Rich. I found all his old albums, even the ones that I don't think were even as good as the later ones. But I tried to find everything by Rich Mullins that I could. And I thought, well, this is it. We've heard everything there is to hear. It's too bad we don't get more of Rich in the world because he had a profound impact. I'm using the word profound a lot, but I can't think of a better word today. Well, fast forward to just a few years ago, and this all ties into Rich. I met a person who has become a dear friend to me. Randy Cox is his name. Randy Cox is a co-writer of mine. He is one of my publishers from LifeWay. He's recently moving out of that position at LifeWay, but has been a real champion for songwriters, an amazing publisher. It turns out he was Rich Mullins' first publisher. And so as my friendship with Randy grew, You know, we would meet from time to time whenever I would be in Nashville, or we'd have phone calls, or, you know, we'd do like the long-distance co-writing thing. And Randy would share stories with me about Rich's life, and he started telling me, you know what, I've got a handful of songs that Rich didn't quite get to finish. He didn't get to record them. They didn't make it on the Jesus record that was released after he died. We had these old demos that they don't sound great. They're just kind of an old tape cassette recorder, cassette tape recorder, I guess I should say. But we're gonna do something with these songs. We don't know exactly what yet, but we're putting something together. So that was a few years ago. And so I, like the rest of the world, was just in anticipation thinking, I can't wait. I really want to hear these songs by Rich Mullins. My life, I know, is going to be enriched by this in some ways because I think we need writing like the kind he brought to the world. I think there's a significant hole missing in our music. Well, then a few weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago now, Randy sent me beautiful song. They had actually gone in the studio and done some demos of Rich's music, and "The Joy of Jesus" was a song that he sent to me, and I loved it. I thought it was just a beautiful song, and it was a simple worship song. It's something congregations could use, and I thought, well, this is neat that I kind of get to hear this in advance. And then Randy started sending me some other of these Rich Mullins songs. And, you know, I got to hear the little scratchy demo at the beginning with Rich himself singing these songs, and then to hear the new updated studio demos of them, and they were just gorgeous and they were wonderful. And then Randy called me on the phone a few weeks ago after I'd been hearing these beautiful songs and loving them. And I gotta tell you, I'm not gonna lie, this was always a secret prayer of mine, but I never even really spoke it out loud. What happened next is something that just was awesome. And this is what the announcement is. All this backstory leading up to this. And you'll get to read more about it in the CCM Magazine. You're getting the behind the scenes. But Randy called me on the phone and he had such kind words for me. He said, "As an independent artist, I've seen you do things that I've never seen other independent artists do." the way that you write, the way that you've been able to get your name out there, and the way you've been able to be seen in stuff like CCM Magazine and Worship Leader Magazine and things like that, and getting to play at the National Worship Leader Conference, and getting to teach in different universities as a guest speaker and songwriter person. And he just said some very beautiful things to me, and I cherish those things because I respect Randy so much as a publisher. And he asked me, he said, "Would you like to record one or two of Rich's unfinished songs?" And he started telling me about this song called "Bartimaeus," which is an amazing story song about Bartimaeus and the blind Bartimaeus from scripture that was healed. And it's beautiful. He sent it to me, and then he told me about this song called "Thunder." And when he described the song "Thunder," I thought, "Ooh, I even like the title." I mean, something about that says, "This is Rich Mullins." Something about it. And when he sent that to me, I was like, "This is the one. Of all the Rich stuff you've sent to me that I've got to hear, if I had one song that I could pick to record, it would be this one." And Randy said, "I would like you to do this because I think this song is you, and I think it fits what you do, and I think Rich would be proud to have you do it. I'm getting teary just thinking about it. Sorry, guys. I'm sorry this is so dumb that I'm crying on the podcast, but it means so much to me because I can't describe to you how much that compliment means to me. Coming from somebody like Randy, who I respect so much, not just as a publisher and a songwriter, but as a spiritual hero of mine too, I just can't tell you how grateful I feel in my heart to be asked to record some of Rich's music. And so that's the big announcement, is in November when I go into New York with my friends and brothers McClurg at Old Bear Studios, we're gonna do our best to bring life to these songs that didn't get to be recorded by Rich before he passed away. We are definitely recording Thunder. That's going to be of the first order. I hope we can do Bartimaeus. We're going to see where it fits in on the album. If I don't do it, I'm sure someone even even more worthy is going to be able to do that. But that's the big news that I'm announcing today. In some ways, I get to share in this great legacy that Randy Cox helped bring to the world because he was Rich's publisher. I never got to meet Rich before, but I'm so glad. My prayer has been literally over the years, "God, could you help me to write music?" not to be rich and famous, but to somehow help hearts and minds of people in the way that Rich's music has spoken to me and helped me through such dark times. And would you speak through the music in the way that you spoke through Rich's music to me? So, I'm so excited about this. I'm so excited that I get to work with Chris Hoisington is my producer at Old Bear Studios in New York in November. I get to do a concert with the McClurg Brothers here in October at my home church. This week I'm going to Nashville for the book release of Randy Cox and Andrew Greer. They have a new book about Rich Mullins, "Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth." I'm going to get to do a live podcast with them from Parnassus Bookstores this coming Tuesday at 3 o'clock. And if you're in the Nashville area, you are welcome to join us for that conversation. Maybe we'll all get weepy that day, I don't know. But I'm so excited for what Randy and Andrew have done in writing this book about the life of Rich Mullins, bringing reflections together from other artists, people like Amy Grant and Andrew Peterson and Matthew West and different people that have been so influenced by Rich Mullins. And so I'm gonna be in Nashville to be there for them and to just celebrate with them, my friends, my co-writers, my people who are inspiring to me. So if you're in Nashville this week, I'm leaving Sunday and I'm heading your way after I finish leading music at my local church here in Springfield, Ohio, and I'm gonna be there through Wednesday. I have a a limited amount of time. I've got a lot of meetings scheduled when I'm there. I've got lots of podcasts to record. But I hope to see you if you can at Parnassus Bookstore. And then I believe it's at 7 o'clock PM Tuesday night. There is going to be a special book signing and book launch that evening. And there's going to be a whole lot of wonderful people there that have been influenced and even friends of Rich Mullins over the years that are going to be there. So if you can, come out and celebrate with Randy and Andrew and many of us. Randy has done a lot of work, and I can't tell you how much I respect Randy Cox. His friendship, his wisdom, and what he is teaching me day after day, at times more than he knows about following Jesus. So anyway, that's the big news. I hope this was a worthy podcast. For you this week. You get this news a day early. I cannot wait for the issue of CCM to come out tomorrow. There will be a special highlight of my new music video next week on Tuesday, actually the same day as the Rich Mullins book release, on CCM Magazine highlighting my music video for "More Than the Watchman," which I pray that God will continually use to bring awareness and help to those refugees around the world who are in crisis. So that's it for today. I know it's a short podcast, but there's a lot to it. I hope you enjoyed hearing the story, and I hope you enjoyed getting to hear the announcement. I can't wait to share the song "Thunder" with you. I played it for the first time last week in Elkhart, Indiana, and we had a wonderful time. I hope I did the song justice.— but it's my first time in front of an audience to play it, and they promised to keep quiet and not film it or anything until it's time, because we're going to do a big release of this when it comes out. So to everybody out there listening, thank you for listening to Voices in My Head, and more great podcasts to you coming very soon. God bless. 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 www.rickleejames.com. Follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames. Like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.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 forever. Forevermore. Amen.