December 14, 2024 • 51 mins
Leeland Mooring is a Texas-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist with seven albums, four GRAMMY® nominations, and eight GMA Dove Award® nominations. LEELAND have become one of the most significant and standout voices in a new generation of worship music. In part 1 of this interview we hear about how Leeland started writing songs and touring at a young age, amazing and hilarious church stories and what shaped hi musical influence. Stayed tuned for Part 2 with Leeland coming soon!
Find Leeland
Listen to Still Mighty
Episode sponsor: Artist And
Produced by Brandon Carswell
Film & Editing by Shaun Carswell
Episode intro music written by Brandon Carswell & produced by Micah Tawlks - "Back To Us" Worktapes show cover art designed by Harrison Hudson
**All songs used by permission**
Find Leeland
Listen to Still Mighty
Episode sponsor: Artist And
Produced by Brandon Carswell
Film & Editing by Shaun Carswell
Episode intro music written by Brandon Carswell & produced by Micah Tawlks - "Back To Us" Worktapes show cover art designed by Harrison Hudson
**All songs used by permission**
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everyone, Brandon here with the Work Tapes podcast. I
wanted to take a second and tell you about artist
and dot Org. If there's one thing I love about
writing in Nashville, it's the community it creates. But let's
face it, we all need each other, and artists are
not just artists anymore where songwriters, we're content creators, marketing managers,
(00:23):
booking agents, social media experts, and we're doing it all
at the same time, a lot of us are doing
it by ourselves. It can be discouraging and it can
burn you out really fast. Award winning veteran songwriters Crystal
Wells and a Cole Wit are building a community through
artists and that will champion your craft artists and is
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helping artists of all backgrounds not only expand their mindset
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creative dreams. And they're doing this through a variety of
online and in person opportunities to connect and create within
a community. Visit artists and dot org to learn how
you can become a part of artist development, vision meetings,
(01:06):
writing prompts, annual songwriters retreats, coaching, and a whole lot
more so, whether you're a professional artist and you're feeling stuck,
or you're an up and coming artist and not sure
where to start, or you're just feeling overwhelmed by it all.
Visit artists and dot org and learn how you can
become part of a movement of people coming alive through
(01:26):
creativity and authentic connection. Artist and dot org let him
know Brandon from Work Tape. Sianya, Welcome to Work Tapes.
(01:46):
This is a podcast where we tear up our songs.
Why with the song written? What's it about? What's the
context and emotion behind it? Where were you at the time,
what were you going through? How did certain lines come
to you the inspiration? How long did it take to write?
I'm Brandon Carswell and I'm fascinated with songwriter and how
(02:07):
songs are built from the ground up. It's easy to
hear a full production song on the radio and dismiss
its origin story. I want to hear the rough draft
of the song or the work tape. I want to
explore the very beginning, how songs that move us and
make us move our more. All right, everyone, welcome to
(02:32):
Work Tapes. This is Brandon once again. Today's episode is
going to be fun. We are sitting with a Grammy
nominated songwriter who has co writes with people like Haley Williams,
Josh Pharaoh of Paramore, Nick Jonas, Raylen, Michael W. Smith,
(02:54):
Stephanie Gretz, singer Kieren, and a lot more. I did
my own homework. You did your homework.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Man.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Welcome Leland, dude.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's good to be here. Thanks for having me. Men.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I've been a fan of yours for a long time,
and so I'm so excited to talk to to meet you.
We've tried to get this roll in for like since
August at least.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thanks for thanks for being patient.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Oh everyone, Everyone's schedules wild. Yeah, so I get it, man.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, Dad with two kids is a whole deal.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I remember, I kind of remember some of the first
times I heard Sound of Melodies nice first record, So
I was in and out of leading worship in my
teenage years. And then I would do it here and
there whenever it called for a bit, and then I
did it at a church for about a year when
(03:48):
I lived in North Carolina, and some of the songs
on the first and second records were go tos for
me to choose from. I won't remember all the titles.
But yeah, man, I loved listening to those. I loved
playing those because I grew up in probably like yourself,
(04:12):
our parents were music directors and churches, so we were
immersed in that world and easily jaded by the music church. Right.
It wasn't that we didn't appreciate it or think it
was good, but a lot of it was just like, Okay,
I'm tired now, Yeah, where'd you guys grow up? Well,
we grew up between Nashville and North Carolina, in the
(04:35):
Raleigh area.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So you guys are like Nashville unicorns, and we are
not many people that are from here.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, me and my brother are both from Nashville. We're
still here, but we did live in North Carolina for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Kind of like like more a g southern. Yes, kind
of charismatic we were.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
My parents always worked in I think the longest stint
they had was in a church of God, like Pentecostal church. Okay,
so yeah, super charismatic. But they would, you know, over
the years, took other jobs in different churches. But I
say all that to say, when I came across your stuff,
(05:17):
it was like a breadth of fresh air. It was
like oh, this sounds like a band. This sounds this
is a band. Wow, this doesn't sound like the regular
you know, like worship music that I'm used to, like
the like the nineties hillsong stuff that got super worn out.
Granted some of those songs are great and fantastic, but
(05:38):
again for me, I'm just speaking in my miril. Yeah,
I was worn out. Yeah, and so I loved I
was listening to bands like YouTube and Travis and Radiohead
and all of this stuff, and then when I heard
your stuff, I was like, oh they listened to that.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, sure, all those same bands.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah. You know what's funny is, actually this is so
cool because like I I think I posted the other
day on I don't know how long ago this was
on Instagram, just going because I mean, I'm thirty six. Yeah,
so our when our band started, I was I was
the baby in the band. I was like sixteen when
we started, like coming up to Nashville and working on
(06:17):
demos as a band and writing with other writers and
so just a kid. But our drummer, Mike is one
who got us kind of all into like really cool bands.
And then we had another buddy here in town.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Actually we're just talking about Mike as we were.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He he's a g man. He's awesome still to this day,
one of the best drummers I've ever played with. And
so Mike was like always into cool bands, Like he
got us into Travis and there was a band actually
called Kent from the UK that we were super into.
I remember Kent, and there's a few of the bands
that he got us into. I mean obviously the ok
(06:55):
Computer record from Radiohead blew all of our minds. And
then we had another friend I can't remember his name,
but it was like a friend of a friend in
Nashville that was like always on the on the edge
of like what bands were coming out. So I guess
he was. You know, this is when when people were
like reading blogs to get their information right, you know, yeah,
(07:15):
Twitter was like barely a thing and everyone was still
on MySpace. So the way you got your info about
like cool bands was either you subscribe to a magazine
like Relevant or something kind of cool that was like
telling you about new bands, or you just got on
a blog and you had to know about the blog
something I did to tell you about it. And so, uh,
(07:35):
it was a friend of ours that like followed a
bunch of these blogs, and so he told us about
Keene for the first time.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Oh yeah, you guys do have a little Keen feel something.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, it was so crazy because we were freaking out
because of the harmonies, you know, the to the dual
singer thing that was happening on Keen, all the melodies.
And then we heard the whole backstory of like the
keys Player originally getting invited to be a part of
Coldplay before the or cole play, and he like turned
it down.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I didn't know that. Yeah, that's a good story.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
It's the whole story, like I guess, and I keep
blanking on everybody's names, but it's you know, you have
the the it Tom the lead singer of Keen. Tom
anyways his best friend or the keys Player, and Keen,
I guess was one of the primary songwriters. And you
can kind of tell like he's cort Old genius melody nerd. Yes,
and uh, I guess he was from the same town
(08:26):
or from one of the same areas as like Chris
Martin from Coldplay, and I guess he and Chris invited
him to be in the band, to join the band
and be.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
The keys player.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Can imagine and he was like, I'm going to butcher
the British accent. I'm already in a band. It's called Keen.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
That was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, and so uh so, like we just were listening.
That's we kind of came to the I came to
like into bands kind of late because we grew up
probably pretty similar you and I and I grew up
in East Texas, like outside of Houston, kind of like
Baytown is where we're from. And then just east of Dad,
(09:02):
it's a town called Beaumont in like Niederland, Texas, which
is on the way to Louisiana. So we grew up
watching mom and dad lead worship. My dad is like
a keys player. He's still to this day one of
the best piano players I've ever seen play. And we
grew up watching him kind of like direct Or the
(09:24):
MD the bands from either like a Roland nineties and
Sonic that had like all the sick horn sounds on it,
you know, right the brass, you know, stabs and stuff,
or it was like he was on a B three,
like a HM and B three. And then my mom
she's like still to this day a great singer, a
singer singer, so she would kind of direct these big
(09:46):
choirs and you know, I mean, you know all about it.
In the nineties, it was like choir music.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It was choirs. That's what My parents were exactly the same,
singer directing choirs.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
So my dad is like and still is this way
like which is very quiet, very sweet and like love
serving people.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
We don't have the same, Dad, Okay, we might, we
might do.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
This is wild, this is crazy. And then my mom is
she's the life of the party, you know, like full
on texting mom. Yeah, at the time she had big hair,
you know. So that's what we grew up around, and
so we you know, I grew up on like all
it was. The church we were in in East Texas
was like I remember it being like half and half,
(10:33):
Like it was fifty percent black, fifty percent white, right
down the middle. So the church was like we we
had we were rather doing black gospel or Southern gospel music,
and that was kind of it. So, which is awesome.
I mean, there's there's great things about both of those
genres of music. So we were either like singing gaither stuff,
or we were singing like you know, some quartets music,
(10:54):
or we were singing you know John p Key, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
That you please do a side project with the Gaith
just so sad, I don't know what vocals are.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Like, dude, Yeah, some of those guys like Guy Pinrod
and all those days. Man. So we were like me
and my brother, we were and my little sister. We
were nerds about like vocal groups and that funny like
like vocal groups were our thing. We were like in
we had like we all had our favorite and the
gathers that we liked. And like I loved Donnie McClerkin.
(11:26):
I still love him and his music, and I loved
that he memorized all these hymns and he would get up.
So this church was kind of like a bigger church
at the time in East Texas for for like those towns.
So all those big preachers in the nineties or even
artists would come through the church and hold like meetings
and stuff. Like Donnie McClerkin. I remember he came in
(11:50):
and led. It was unbelievable. It was so good. But
you know, in the middle of the in between songs,
he would just transition with old hymns and like he's
was like a walking hymnal. Just crazy that he could
memorize that many it was insane.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
And so yeah, so like we got into bands kind
of late. Like I remember being like fourteen and listening
to like my first you know, Beatles album and just
losing my mind.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
How old were you when you heard something like that?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
About fourteen? I think I was thirteen when I heard
Delirious for the first time and that might have been
the Glow album, yep, and I just lost it. It's
like Delirious. And then I listened to Third Day that
same year when I was about thirteen. It was the
Offerings Live album. Okay, So I had like three CDs.
I remember like on the Sony you know with the
(12:39):
what were the headphones that like we go around the
back of your neck kind oh yeah, kind of kind
of on your ear and know if they're Walkman's or
something like that. And so I had Third Day Offerings Live,
I had what was that, I just said, Delirious Glow,
and then I had Michael Libby Smith's instrumental.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Record called Freedom Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And I loved that. I grew up on like drums
is my first instrument so like I loved the drums
on that record. And yeah, so those those are the
first kind of band, think non Southern gospel and black
costal music that I listened to that I was like
geeking out over. And then I've heard about you two
and the Beatles and the whole other world opened up.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
What I was going to ask you something, I'm trying.
I'm spacing out. I had it ready when you were talking.
Hold on a second. Okay, So what what were those
like the first kind of records, like Christian records would
(13:41):
have been like the first where gospel records were the
first ones you were listening.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yes, okay, so.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
How old? Because you start you started music really young,
You started touring and doing this stuff really young. So
I kind of want to get into what inspired you
to start writing and when did that happen, Because if
you started young and those first Leland records were so
good as they were, you must have developed for some
(14:13):
years before that and what led into that.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Oh it's crazy. Well, okay, so I'm thirty six now
and I look back and I have two kids and
two girls, and then we have one on the way,
which is We're thank you. Yeah, two girls there are
six and three, and then we have a boy on
the way. So we're like pumped, I'm excited to be
a boy dad. But you know, I look back now
and me and my wife been married for over fifteen years.
(14:37):
I just kind of go like, my parents were probably
looked insane to people like and I mean that the best,
like in it as a compliment. They said yes to
the craziest thing. I realized that my childhood upbringing is
actually not normal, you know, and I mean that in
the best of ways. Like, Okay, so all of us siblings,
(14:59):
my older brother, little sister, we're all three years apart.
So when I was eleven, my brother was fourteen, my
sister was nine ish eight or nine, my parents were
leading worship at this big church in East Texas and
they were fired like out of nowhere. It was kind
of my first time seeing like maybe the uglier side
(15:20):
of church politics and stuff. Yeah, so we were we
were in this house and our neighborhood the day that
my dad got fired. The night before, our neighborhood was
hit like this crazy lightning storm, so there was no
power in the neighborhood. So we got like this motel
and this cheap motel Dad left to go to work
to the office was a Tuesday, and he came back
(15:42):
like an hour later, and Mom was like, what happened.
He's like, well, they gave me a severance check. And
my dad is like, we affectionately call my dad. We
don't do it anymore, but around then we used to
call my dad Jesus because he's just what I tell you,
he's the kindest man he'll ever meet, and just he
(16:04):
loves to serve people. So the idea of somebody like
having a problem with my dad is like, that's like
something that's like Mars. You know, it's a sci fi.
It doesn't make sense to me. So my dad walks
in and you see they have a severance check and
and I was like eleven. I didn't know what that was.
That was like a bonus check. So I was like
a seven check, sick, let's go like toys rs. So,
(16:28):
finding out that, you know, he was fired, I remember
my mom and my dad. My mom just started laughing,
like you know, she's like, they fired us, and she
just starts laughing and so and Dad starts laughing, and
then all those kids are like we kind of start
laughing with them, and they were like, well, guys, we
need to pray. So like we prayed as a family,
(16:49):
just asking God for help. And then about a week later,
some friends of ours, friends of my parents, from Corpus Christy,
reached out to my mom and my dad were like, hey,
we heard what happened. We're not in a place to
hire anybody, but we have like this young, really talented team,
but they kind of they're really green, They've got a
(17:09):
lot of gifting. Would you guys consider moving here for
like three to six months and just we'll pay you
contracted rates to just teach them. So we're like, well,
we don't have anything else to do, so let's go.
So my parents pulled us out of school, got our
homeschooling material, which homeschooling is kind of cool now, you know,
it's like all libertarian now. Right back then it was
(17:32):
like just weird. Yes, you know, it's borderline, like you
know you're gonna have the CPS calling for homeschooling your child.
So uh so we move. We kind of moved to Corpus.
We're like in this rental house for like six months,
and while we're there at this church, my parents helping
train this team. They were like these series back to
(17:54):
back of revival style Pentecostal meetings right at the church.
So the first guy that came who's evangelist. His name
is Nigel McNeil and his wife's name is Kathy, and
they're from Budroum, the Melula Bah like coast and Ozzy,
but they apparently would come to the States for three months,
travel around, preach the gospel on the road, and then
(18:17):
go back and they would do that every three months,
and so they just kind of really love America and
call to the country. So they're there at this church preaching.
My parents are leading worship with this team. And on
the last night, my cousin the services were great. So
my mom's calls her sister and all of her kids
(18:38):
and she has five kids. Oh, my cousins. She's like,
you guys need to drive down to Corpus. These meetings
are amazing. You should come on the last night. So
on the last night he lines up my whole family,
this Ozzy, Nigel and praise for every member of my family,
all my cousins. When he gets to me and my brother,
he said, he said, I see you guys like starting
(18:58):
a band and writing songs together and leading people in worship.
And so we're like that cool, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And then you hadn't done anything like that.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
No, wed like we would like sing specials with my
mom and my dad, like they could bribe us to
sing like I'll get you a dog if you sing
this Christmas playing. So music was in the house.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Had you done anything at that revival that he would
have seen.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I think I might have sang one song, like I
think it was like it was actually and I know
exactly what song was now. It was a song I
believe I can fly.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Really, Kelly was so amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Sounds I believe I can fly for like an offering
special and uh anyway, so he so he's you know,
speaks over us, and then like about like maybe a
month later, another couple comes to the church and does
the same thing, but they're from Texas, this Dale and
Jean Gentry. So they come and they do the same thing.
(20:01):
My cousin's coming the last night and he he like
speaks over me and my brother and says basically the
same thing. And so a couple of weeks later, we're
kind of coming near the end of our time there
and this Auzzy calls my mom, my dad, Nigel and says, hey,
like I'm gonna be We're gonna be in the States
(20:22):
for three months, and usually the teams that are leading
worship with these places are awful. I mean, this is
like before, this is before the resourcing of the American church,
when like, you know, Baytown, Texas where I'm from, sounded
like Baytown, Texas right right right now everyone has multi
(20:43):
tracks and it's really trained and everyone sounds great now.
So he was like, hey, can you guys come out
and do the music? And it's just three months and
we'll road trip around and I'll we'll tick up offerings
for you guys. So he packed up our Lincoln town car.
My parents just said yeah. They were like, it's and
everyone thought they were crazy. So we packed up like
(21:04):
our Lincoln town car. We had like an ice chest
in the middle, and we were already had her homeschooling
material and so it was us three kids in the
back and my dad. So my mom was you know,
my mom and dad had said yes, but they're kind
of like, what did we just say yes to? Because
not only are our kids gonna be like on the
road with us, we don't have a band, we don't
(21:27):
have singers. We're used to having choirs all these things,
and they just kind of felt like, you know, you
use the arrows you already have, you get you have
your kids. So my mom brought me, my brother. My
sister was like, I'm not singing a thing. She was like,
she was like nine, it's like I'm not doing anything.
So she brought me and my brother to the room
(21:47):
and we were like eleven and fourteen, and she was like,
I know you guys can sing, but I'm going to
teach you how to like really sing, like harmonize the
way Mom teaches choirs. I'm gonna teach you guys. And
she was like Jack, you're gonna sing tenor and was changing,
you know, Leland, you're gonna sing alto. And so we
learned like I think like twenty songs over the course
(22:08):
of a couple of days in her bedroom listening to
these tracks, and they were like Southern gospel music, Black
gospel music, a little bit of hillsong, like maybe two
or three songs like Shout to the Lord. And and
then my dad had a friend like make some tracks
or they made some on a keyboard at his house,
(22:30):
like drums and bass, and he had like a garage
like mini disc player studio where he could put things
on mini discs, and so that was our band, and
then my dad played keys. So we packed up the
car and we thought it was going to be like
three months, you know, a fun, crazy adventure with the family,
(22:52):
be in these revival meetings, do our homeschooling stuff in
the morning and then church or in the middle of
the day, church, morning and night. Road trip for a
couple of days in the next spot. And those three
months turned into like two and a half years. Bow
And so when the Aussie couple went back to Australia,
(23:12):
the other couple that came to that church, Dale and
Jean from Texas called us up and we're like, we
heard what you're doing with Nigel. You guys want to
come join us. We're gonna be in Oklahoma next week. Yeah,
so that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So we were kind of like a family trio, singing trio,
and and my mom would like, you know, lead worship
and so but these meetings were very like they were
very spontaneous, you know, for you know, it wasn't so
much like the movies. It was very spontaneous and very
(23:47):
you know, it's either really either really funny things happening,
or like really awesome things we talked a little bit
off camera, but like, I have friends that like kind
of grew up friends of friends that sort of grew
up sim or ish and had a lot of weird experience,
like a lot of bad experience. Yeah, I mean this earlier,
but for some reason, I'm thirty six now and I'm
(24:09):
still unpacking all that. Honestly, Like, over ninety percent of
it was amazing. Yeah, and there might have been some
weird things here and there that some people said or did.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Like back then, back then, I feel I and that
could be wrong about this, but I feel like the
majority of what we were experiencing, you didn't really question
it very much, sure, the good or the bad. It
was just kind of like, oh, well, this is.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
How it is, sure, And I think and as you
get older you can start unpacking that stuff, right Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, And nowadays I think everyone is questioning everything all
the time. Yeah, not just in church, but just in
just everywhere. Therapy, life and mental health and all of
the things that are kind of buzzwords now. Not to
speak down to those things, but we're focusing in on
so much of that stuff and how it impacts us culturally,
(25:07):
and back in then, you know, eighties and nineties, we
weren't really doing that.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, that's it's a really good point. It does kind
of feel like now that sort of in the air
that we all breathe is like a collective distrust of
every major institution.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, which could be a bad thing. In some ways,
it can be and in some ways.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
A good thing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It's yeah, it can be a healthy thing to look
at and have your doubts and your questions and and
get it right.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, you know. Yeah, it was it was in those
environments that, yeah, that I started to get melody ideas.
And I didn't know that that was songwriting. We would
just be in these services and like so I had
So there's lots of I'll tell some funny stories, but
I want to tell like one crazy one that's really cool. Okay, So,
(25:54):
you know, and the charismatic world, I guess it's some
of these things are like the gifts to the spirit.
One of these called the prophetic, right, And I've seen
plenty of people do weird stuff and call it prophetic.
But some of the stuff that like happened we were
kids was really wild stuff that were like there's I
have no explanation for it except, you know, something supernatural.
(26:17):
So like in one of those nights, Dale Gentry, that
other couple from Texas, he didn't call himself a prophet,
so he never likes said I'm a prophet. And he
loved to talk about prayer. He still does. He's in
his eighties now and doesn't travel anymore, but he preaches
online about prayer all the time and how to pray.
(26:38):
And so he was he would talk about prayer and
then at the end of the night he would pray
for people in an altar or around the building, and
he would sure enough start prophisying over people or saying
whatever he heard there was in almost every night he
would profise over me, my brother or at least pray
for us. And so there was one night where he
(26:59):
looked me and my brother Jack and he said, I
see you guys leaving worship like in a baseball stadium,
and then I see like thousands of people coming to
the baseball field and giving their life to Jesus or
dedicating their lives to Jesus, and I see you guys
(27:20):
singing while that's happening. And He's like, you know, and
then he kind of moved on and I was like eleven,
and you know, fast forward on how many years. This
was six years later. I think I was seventeen or eighteen,
maybe it was seven years later, and we were in
(27:40):
Anaheim at with Harvest Crusade at the Anaheim Angels Baseball
stadium and our me and my brother were out like
right field and we were going to do sound check
that day and we called him, Oh, we call them
Papa Dale, like our families. So we called them. We
were like, hey, like, you know, we're standing in right
field right now at a baseball stadium. And I think
(28:03):
there was like four thousand people that came down and
like made decisions to follow Grice at night. But it
was wild. And so it's like stuff like that that
you know, and a lot of other things, like there
was one this is crazy. There was one. We were
in this one meeting with my mom and dad and
(28:25):
this church in like West Texas somewhere, the small church,
and this woman was preaching. Her name is Nancy Cohen,
and she's amazing. She was preaching and her her life
is a bit like it's a bit like the Book
of Acts, right, and so just just wild stories, you know,
so the whole room is like on the edge of
their seat listening to this stuff. It was amazing. But
(28:47):
one night she just looked at me and my brother
and she said, hey, can you guys come out here?
And she said, does anybody have a map in the room,
And somebody was like, we got one the youth room,
and so they grabbed like this plastic youth group maps,
you know. She had a stand on it and she said, uh,
she said, I hear the sound of melodies traveling all
(29:08):
over the world to the nations of the world. And
she said, Okay, you guys can go sit back down now,
and then we sat back down and she kind of
went and did her thing. Yeah, we totally forgot about that.
I was eleven when that happened until our band was
in Nashville working on our like EP with the producer
Steve Wilson here in town, and we were working on
(29:31):
a song called Sound of Melodies, which she ended up
becoming the title track of our record. And my mom,
after we had worked on that song and played the
EP for she was going through she said, you guys
an't gonna believe this, she said, but I have written
in my journal, like the date, the day, the.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Time, and you had forgotten all about.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
It, forgotten all about it, and she said, I wrote
in quotation marks what she said over you guys in
that meeting. So like we had lots of cool stuff
like that happened. That was just kind of like, Okay,
you know, I can argue that all day long, or
I can just believe and accept what I experience as
being from God and being real and then also laugh
at the crazy stuff. So like plenty of that, you know.
(30:14):
So like we were so in these I'll get to
the songwriting bit in a second. Can't tell you crazy story.
So I'm good, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So we were.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
When we were with Nigel or with Dale, most of
the time we were going to churches that they had
relationships with for years, and so it's like they would
introduce to these pastors they had known for a long time,
so it's really chill. But there was this one trip
in particular where Nigel the Aussie was like, hey, guys,
so where we're going at This next place was in Bellingham, Washington.
(30:47):
I think he was like, I don't know these guys
at all. I don't know this pastors. I don't know
anything about this church, so if it's crazy, please forgive me.
You know, it's not my fault. I'm just I'm just
as new to this as you guys are. So we
make this road trip from Baytown, Texas, which is you know, Houston,
(31:09):
essentially all the way to Bellingham, Washington, which is you know,
the most northwesterly tip of the country. We road trip
it in our Lincoln Town car. I have no clue
how this thing made it that far. My dad was
pumped about the drive because he's a bit of a
road dog. He was he was a truck driver before,
so he loves like the road. And so this is
(31:31):
before iPhones obviously, so it's really the Atlas maps. So
maybe they had those big maps. So we were planning
out the route and he was like, we're going to
go through Yellowstone, make a big trip out of it.
And it was epic. We had fun. We took our time,
so we were like a couple weeks on the road.
We finally get to Bellingham. We roll in. I didn't know,
but found this out later. My dad and mom had
(31:53):
like ten dollars in their bucket. Yeah, we get to
this church and like always, we get there early the
sound check before the meetings starts. So we go inside
this church and there are like five women with kind
of the lights dimmed and some worship music going in
this kind of like you know, sort of like strip
(32:13):
mall church, and they're praying, you know, I guess they're
like the Intersectional team or whatever. So they come towards
the front and they see us walk in, they said,
and there was a uh, there was a woman who
was kind of like leading the prayer group, and so
she sees us and she says, I'm gonna I'm gonna
try to do your voice by trip. She's like, well,
(32:35):
you guys must be Majestic Praise. And so we're like,
that was our family I forgot to mention that that
was our family band name, Majestic Praise. So I love it.
And so yeah, we're like, yeah, that's us. And she said,
she said, are you guys about to sound check? And
we're like, yeah, we' about to sound check, and so
she says, uh, she says, uh, well quickly, let us
(32:55):
let us pray with you guys, And so we get
in a circle and we're holding hands and this this
is really normal. We're like, okay, we're gonna pray, you know,
so we hold hands. Everyone we're in a circle and
my brother and sister are next to me, and she
starts off the prayer right and it's like, God, we
thank you for majestic praise. We thank you God that
they are thank you for the Lord that they're here.
(33:18):
And there's really sweet and she's like, and we thank
you God that they are the missing piece to the
symphony of what you're doing in our city. And we're
like and I'm like eleven, Like that's awesome. Yeah, God,
will be the missing piece of symphony. That's amazing. You know,
that's got to keep in mind, like eleven, we've seen
a lot already, like on the road for like a year,
you know. And so we're like cool, yes, God, and
(33:38):
we're kind of aimening. And then the next four ladies
could just kind of have like these norder kind of
real high pitch voices. And the next lady pipes up
and she's like, yes, God, we do thank you for
majestic praise. We do believe they are the missing piece
to the symphony of what you're doing. But also God,
we just want the whole hunky meat. We want the
(33:59):
whole hunky meat of what you're doing this week. God,
in our midst we we don't want a part of it.
We want the whole hunk. And she keeps saying a
hunk of meat, and I'm like eleven. She just going like, okay,
what is okay? Maybe she's talking about the Word, the
Word of God maybe and so and so I'm like amening.
Then the third lady kind of popcorn prayer. The third
(34:19):
lady starts and she says, yes, God, we do think
they're the missing piece of synfity. We do want the
whole hunk of meat this week. But also, God, we
do pray for the digestive juices of your spirit to
flow so that we can digest the meat of your
word God, the whole hunk. And so she's going on
about digestive juices. At this point, I'm kind of like
open my eyes. I'm like Mom and Dad into this,
(34:43):
like what's going on. So they're kind of like looking
at us, like y'all be quiet, you know, close your eyes.
And so then there's like a fourth lady. She starts praying.
She's like, God, and we, yes, Lord, we do want
the juices of your spirit to flow we want to
be able to digest the hunk of meat of your word.
We also believe God also just sends the Lord that
there's a new flavor in the air, there's a new
(35:03):
flavor this week. And the last lady, they hadn't said
anything the entire time, kind of caps it off and
she goes, it's coconut coconuts, the flavor of what you're doing, guy.
And so literally this point, i mean, all three of
us kids, we're just laughing. We're laughing ab out loud.
The lady that started us off, the sort of leader,
is like, yes, God, more joy, more joy more. We're like, yeah,
(35:24):
we already have joy. So so that was just a
prayer service and we're like, this church is gonna be awesome.
We're gonna have some stories to tell. So we get
into the first service and you know, we have like
tracks and piano and it's like this, you know, smaller
church with the platform is kind of small. We're kind
of like in the pit with everyone, you know, in
(35:45):
the altar with everyone, and we're singing like, you know,
lift up the name of Jesus, shout it every way
you go. That kind of stuff like gospel music. You know,
or Southern gospel music, and so the altar gets filled
with all sorts of people, really characters, you know, they're
ready to worship, but they're just doing really everyone's kind
(36:06):
of doing odd ball stuff. So there's a woman who
as she's singing, she'll just be worshiping, and then she'll
just strike a pose and like just no emotion on
the face, and for an entire song, you know, five
six minutes, she would move until the song changed, and
then she would move again and hit another pose and
then stay there for another seven minutes or whatever. So
(36:29):
that that's happening. There was a guy down there with
like you know, like the mc hammer PANTSM like the
nineties what are the parachute pants? He had those on,
and some some wooden like what are the what's the
percussion instrument? The blocks that it's like the wooden blocks
you hit him together.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I don't know what does it called.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
You know, most people probably know what they are. They're
louder than any pas. They're like one hundred and forty
dB when you hit them. So he had those in
a vest and e would like, you know, dance like
nineties dance, and then he would look at us and
just gouck and just in the middle of the song
and not And then there was someone down there that.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Was this sounds like a movie.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It's like a movie. This all happened the same time.
Just keep in mind. So there was someone down there
that was acting like they were pulling out arrows, like
bow and arrow like you know, I guess in the
spirit or imagination there. Yeah, they have a quiver behind
them of sorts, and they're pulling out an arrow and
shooting over our heads, you know. And so all this
is happening at the exact same time. Dude. Now I'm
(37:31):
like eleven, We're like singing these songs, and she's going like,
this is our first time experiencing all this at the
same time. So we're trying to hold together. There was
a woman who would come up every night, and this
was like by like night two and three, realized, oh,
she's going to do this again. She I don't know
if she came to show off the street or from wherever,
but she she had like a really short skirt on
(37:52):
and she would just fall in the altar and throw
her legs up. Yeah, and you know, so then the
ushers have to come down throw claws over her, keep
her from showing everyone right, everything, So all this is happening, dude,
this is wild. Okay, this is like night one. So
by night like you know, four or five, we're like,
we're pretty tired and like, just like where are we
(38:17):
come to find out? I guess the team that the
pastoral team wanted to lead worship on the last night.
And I don't know if they just didn't like us
because we were singing like southern gospel stuff. I think
they're more of like a prophetic kind of vineyard style,
so maybe what we were doing was a little too
like professionally sounding. We had tracks and stuff like that,
(38:39):
so we were like, yes, please let them lead. We
would love to have like a night off. So on
the last night, the pastor and the whole team hop
up there and there's like, you know, I don't know
I'm exaggerating, but you know, twelve thirteen of them. You know,
there's a lot of them. There's multiple guitars, there's multiple rainstays,
(39:00):
there's a percussion set, there's and it's a small platform.
You know, there's there's a whole thing. It's an army
of people flags maybe yeah, oh yeah, oh, yeah, there's
flags everywhere. Flags are standard, you know. So they start
strumming or and I think this is the pastor of
the church starts strumming in the key of D and
just going and he starts singing something like, you know, uh,
(39:23):
live my whole life is saying I was living for
the devil every noight and day and I never got one. Honestly,
I was something in the whole songs. It's and I'm
like eleven, I'm going I think that's Rolling on the River,
but it's just Christian lyrics about like it running.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
From the Lord Classic.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
So before the chorus hits, during the entire verse of
the song, everyone everyone from the whole church. There's a
few hundred people. Everyone's getting out of their seat during
the verse of the song and are all walking like
on queue down to the altar and lining up like sardines,
you know. And so before the first chorus gets to it,
(40:09):
the band just kind of goes and they're just on
a kick drum and it's and the pastor sort of
looks at us because the whole church is in the altar,
and he says, guys, ma, jessic praise. There's no spectators
in this church, only participators. And so my n my dad,
my dad looks up and says, guys, get down there.
(40:29):
We got to get our check.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Oh my god, I got Yeah, whatever they're about to do, we're.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
We're doing it. So we all get down the altar
and they start going and we rolling, and everyone starts
rolling in unison left to right throughout the altar while
we're singing rolling the River bro just wild stuff. So
it's the.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Lyric rolling on the River.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
We're rolling on the river about the river of the Lord.
You know, the river, Yeah, the river the Spirit. So
so like you know, we had like epic crazy stories
like that happened. And what we do is we just
if anything really weird happened or really strange that we
(41:13):
didn't really understand or it was kind of funny, we
would just talk about mom and dad like that was
kind of crazy that happened? Would you and Mom and
were like, yeah, it was a little strange. I don't
know what that really meant. But and we just learned
to laugh at the stuff that was strange or weird
and move on, you know. And then and then you know,
really cherish at things that really good or if something
was really dysfunctional, and we're like, okay, that that actually
is a little dangerous. Kids don't ever you know whatever.
(41:36):
So like, but for the most part it was really
good and so and they are really funny and so
we have these amazing stories. So but in these meetings
that's where like the good ones, you know, not the
crazy ones, but the good ones. I would just get
like little melody ideas and I would try to remember
them because I had no way of like capturing them,
(41:57):
and I would sing it for my dad. This one meeting,
I got this melody idea and sing it for my dad.
At the house we were staying out. Somebody let us
stay in their house and they had like an upright
piano in their house, and so my dad was playing
on it and I was like, hey, I got this
melody last night in the service, and so I was
singing it for me, and he would like put chords
to it, okay, And then my mom was like, what
(42:19):
are y'all singing? We're like, well, it's a dad's like
a melody Leland got last night in the service. And
she said, do you have any lyrics for it? And
I was like, I've got like one word and it's
like the word shine, like I want to like shine
the light of the gospel or something, you know. And
so my mom was like, Okay, what does that mean
to shine? And so she starts she's pressing it. She's pressing. Now,
I'm pulling like words out. So we start talking about it,
(42:41):
and so she's kind of helped me with lyrics and
what the song sang. And so I didn't know that
that's what co writing was.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Was there anyone else writer in your family?
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, So my brother ended up kind of following suit
like he asked him and I would in these meetings.
We would get melody ideas and stuff. And then my
brother started getting stuff, and so my parents got both
of us like these like digital early digital recorders. They
were like get them at radio shack. They're like these
little gold you know things you recording zero zero one,
(43:14):
you know, And so that's what we had. We just
you know, ha them the service and we'd put stuff
down and try to listen back it was good or not.
And so they were already kind of like teaching us
to kind of have our intentnas up. And so about
two and a half years of that goes by, and
we had a you know near this is near the
tail end of that where a song would start kind
(43:34):
of happening. So when we came back home to Baytown, Texas,
we weren't sure what was next for our family. My
dad had a friend who was like who was an
electrician in Denver and had this whole electrician business and
he just loved my dad and he was like, I
really don't want to work with anybody else. I know
you don't know anything about being an electrician, but I'll
teach you. It's a great job. You know, it's like
(43:59):
over one hundred though dollars a year. It was like
this nice job with health insurance and you get to
live in Denver and it's cool. And so we were
actually thinking about doing that, and then my parents were
weighing that up and my dad like and mom were praying,
and they're like, I think we're supposed to start meeting
with people in our house. So if my dad like
turned down this job, we started a church in our
(44:20):
house essentially, and that's where our band started. It was
me and my brother Jack at the time, I was
like fourteen and he was like seventeen, and we started
just meeting with our older cousins. They were like we
were still homeschooled, but our cousins were like normal, they
were like going to normal, like public school. So we
(44:41):
didn't know anyone. When we moved back to Baytown, we
just come off the road. So we just told our cousins.
We were like, hey, can you guys bring your friends
to our youth meeting in our house. We didn't know anybody,
so just bring your friends. And so our cousins started
bringing people and that's how like our band started. We
were just me and my brother just writing songs in
(45:04):
our house and around our piano, and so yeah, that's
kind of like the beginning of what song. We didn't
even know what that co writing was even a word
right right when we started doing that together.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Let me ask you this. You're doing that those years
of traveling with your family and you're getting the melody ideas,
what type of what artists or writers would you have
been listening to during that stunt? Like mostly maybe you
know what you were singing like you're drawing from, but
(45:39):
can you give us like examples of songs or songwriters. Yeah,
maybe at the time you didn't even know who they were.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, Well, so there's a couple of black gospel artists,
like one was John p Key. He had a record
called any Day. I think that was a nyme of
the record. Or he hit a song on the record
called any Day that we would jam all the time
and it was really good. There was a there was
a singer, another black gospel singer name I think it
(46:08):
was I might be getting the name wrong, Darryl Cooley,
and he had a song I think the title of
the song was What's in that Name? And it was
just an awesome song about the name of Jesus. And
there was some Southern gospel artists we'd listened to around
that time, a couple of quartet kind of groups, vocal groups,
blanking on some of their names. We were listening to
(46:30):
one of Whole's songs first, one of the early live records.
I think it was a record called You Are Near,
and I had like Ruben Morgan and Darlene leading everything
on it. I think Marty even sang a song on
it when he was like sixteen. And so we were
listening to that record that was kind of blowing our mind.
And then there was a yeah, and then there was
(46:54):
who else were we listening to around that time, blanking
on the name, I had something else in my mind.
I'll think about it in a second, because essentially just groups
like that. Oh there was That's all right, there's another one.
There was a live worship album from Lindall Cooley, who
was I guess the worship leader at the what was
(47:15):
it called in Pensacola, Brownsville. Yeah, so he was the
worship leader during all of that, and then he had moved.
I don't know if he was already living in Nashville,
know he's here now or in Franklin, but at the
time he was somewhere and he did like a live
record that had some great like live worship song, some
kind of praise songs. So we were into that, and
(47:37):
so we were listening to that stuff. And then yeah,
and then just get these melody ideas and would which is.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Where I was going with it because I want for
our listeners like you and I share a friend named
Kent Cooley, and Kent, when I started talking to you
about doing this episode, he tell me, like Leland, he's
like a monster of melodies. He's like a melody maker.
(48:05):
He's just insane melodies. And I agreed with him based
on what I've heard your records, and so where I'm
going with it is, however worship music was influenced got
to you. Yeah, like whatever that thing is with the
melodies and the hooks and the whatever that is. You
(48:27):
obviously have a great voice as well. I'm interested in
finding out, like I like to take it all the
way back, So not just those like That's why I
asked who are you listening?
Speaker 2 (48:41):
There was there was also the other one I remember now,
the other one that I wanted to mention that was
really left of center. That we didn't know was we
had stumbled upon his music through Carmen. No we did,
we did listen to and the one No Monsters. There
(49:02):
was a worship leader out of the UK, out of Lincoln, England,
and the only reason we found out about him was
because we went to this church in Tulsa, Oklahoma through
some friends of ours. My parents were helping there and
he had already been to that church the year prior,
and so my family helped him record a live record.
It was one of the random things we did in
(49:23):
those two and a half years. He wanted to come
in and sing with her. They had this really big choir,
so he had sung there. This year's name is Godfrey
Bertle and Godfrey Bertel or Bertle. He's from Lincoln, England
and his story is really crazy.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to this episode of work Tapes.
We are going to do a part two with Leland
coming up really soon. We simply ran out of time
and have so much to discuss. So in the next episode,
tune in we will hear from Leland. His brother Jack
is going to join us. We're going to hear the
work to Still Mighty. It's gonna be great, encouraging, funny.
(50:04):
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe everywhere
you listen to work Tapes. Work Tapes is produced by
me Brandon Carswell, filming and editing for this episode by
(50:27):
Sean Carswell. Visit lelandonline dot com for music tour dates,
coord charts, and booking info.
Hey everyone, Brandon here with the Work Tapes podcast. I
wanted to take a second and tell you about artist
and dot Org. If there's one thing I love about
writing in Nashville, it's the community it creates. But let's
face it, we all need each other, and artists are
not just artists anymore where songwriters, we're content creators, marketing managers,
(00:23):
booking agents, social media experts, and we're doing it all
at the same time, a lot of us are doing
it by ourselves. It can be discouraging and it can
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(01:06):
writing prompts, annual songwriters retreats, coaching, and a whole lot
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Visit artists and dot org and learn how you can
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(01:26):
creativity and authentic connection. Artist and dot org let him
know Brandon from Work Tape. Sianya, Welcome to Work Tapes.
(01:46):
This is a podcast where we tear up our songs.
Why with the song written? What's it about? What's the
context and emotion behind it? Where were you at the time,
what were you going through? How did certain lines come
to you the inspiration? How long did it take to write?
I'm Brandon Carswell and I'm fascinated with songwriter and how
(02:07):
songs are built from the ground up. It's easy to
hear a full production song on the radio and dismiss
its origin story. I want to hear the rough draft
of the song or the work tape. I want to
explore the very beginning, how songs that move us and
make us move our more. All right, everyone, welcome to
(02:32):
Work Tapes. This is Brandon once again. Today's episode is
going to be fun. We are sitting with a Grammy
nominated songwriter who has co writes with people like Haley Williams,
Josh Pharaoh of Paramore, Nick Jonas, Raylen, Michael W. Smith,
(02:54):
Stephanie Gretz, singer Kieren, and a lot more. I did
my own homework. You did your homework.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Man.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Welcome Leland, dude.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's good to be here. Thanks for having me. Men.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I've been a fan of yours for a long time,
and so I'm so excited to talk to to meet you.
We've tried to get this roll in for like since
August at least.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thanks for thanks for being patient.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Oh everyone, Everyone's schedules wild. Yeah, so I get it, man.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, Dad with two kids is a whole deal.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I remember, I kind of remember some of the first
times I heard Sound of Melodies nice first record, So
I was in and out of leading worship in my
teenage years. And then I would do it here and
there whenever it called for a bit, and then I
did it at a church for about a year when
(03:48):
I lived in North Carolina, and some of the songs
on the first and second records were go tos for
me to choose from. I won't remember all the titles.
But yeah, man, I loved listening to those. I loved
playing those because I grew up in probably like yourself,
(04:12):
our parents were music directors and churches, so we were
immersed in that world and easily jaded by the music church. Right.
It wasn't that we didn't appreciate it or think it
was good, but a lot of it was just like, Okay,
I'm tired now, Yeah, where'd you guys grow up? Well,
we grew up between Nashville and North Carolina, in the
(04:35):
Raleigh area.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So you guys are like Nashville unicorns, and we are
not many people that are from here.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, me and my brother are both from Nashville. We're
still here, but we did live in North Carolina for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Kind of like like more a g southern. Yes, kind
of charismatic we were.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
My parents always worked in I think the longest stint
they had was in a church of God, like Pentecostal church. Okay,
so yeah, super charismatic. But they would, you know, over
the years, took other jobs in different churches. But I
say all that to say, when I came across your stuff,
(05:17):
it was like a breadth of fresh air. It was
like oh, this sounds like a band. This sounds this
is a band. Wow, this doesn't sound like the regular
you know, like worship music that I'm used to, like
the like the nineties hillsong stuff that got super worn out.
Granted some of those songs are great and fantastic, but
(05:38):
again for me, I'm just speaking in my miril. Yeah,
I was worn out. Yeah, and so I loved I
was listening to bands like YouTube and Travis and Radiohead
and all of this stuff, and then when I heard
your stuff, I was like, oh they listened to that.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, sure, all those same bands.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah. You know what's funny is, actually this is so
cool because like I I think I posted the other
day on I don't know how long ago this was
on Instagram, just going because I mean, I'm thirty six. Yeah,
so our when our band started, I was I was
the baby in the band. I was like sixteen when
we started, like coming up to Nashville and working on
(06:17):
demos as a band and writing with other writers and
so just a kid. But our drummer, Mike is one
who got us kind of all into like really cool bands.
And then we had another buddy here in town.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Actually we're just talking about Mike as we were.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He he's a g man. He's awesome still to this day,
one of the best drummers I've ever played with. And
so Mike was like always into cool bands, Like he
got us into Travis and there was a band actually
called Kent from the UK that we were super into.
I remember Kent, and there's a few of the bands
that he got us into. I mean obviously the ok
(06:55):
Computer record from Radiohead blew all of our minds. And
then we had another friend I can't remember his name,
but it was like a friend of a friend in
Nashville that was like always on the on the edge
of like what bands were coming out. So I guess
he was. You know, this is when when people were
like reading blogs to get their information right, you know, yeah,
(07:15):
Twitter was like barely a thing and everyone was still
on MySpace. So the way you got your info about
like cool bands was either you subscribe to a magazine
like Relevant or something kind of cool that was like
telling you about new bands, or you just got on
a blog and you had to know about the blog
something I did to tell you about it. And so, uh,
(07:35):
it was a friend of ours that like followed a
bunch of these blogs, and so he told us about
Keene for the first time.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Oh yeah, you guys do have a little Keen feel something.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, it was so crazy because we were freaking out
because of the harmonies, you know, the to the dual
singer thing that was happening on Keen, all the melodies.
And then we heard the whole backstory of like the
keys Player originally getting invited to be a part of
Coldplay before the or cole play, and he like turned
it down.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I didn't know that. Yeah, that's a good story.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
It's the whole story, like I guess, and I keep
blanking on everybody's names, but it's you know, you have
the the it Tom the lead singer of Keen. Tom
anyways his best friend or the keys Player, and Keen,
I guess was one of the primary songwriters. And you
can kind of tell like he's cort Old genius melody nerd. Yes,
and uh, I guess he was from the same town
(08:26):
or from one of the same areas as like Chris
Martin from Coldplay, and I guess he and Chris invited
him to be in the band, to join the band
and be.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
The keys player.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Can imagine and he was like, I'm going to butcher
the British accent. I'm already in a band. It's called Keen.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
That was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, and so uh so, like we just were listening.
That's we kind of came to the I came to
like into bands kind of late because we grew up
probably pretty similar you and I and I grew up
in East Texas, like outside of Houston, kind of like
Baytown is where we're from. And then just east of Dad,
(09:02):
it's a town called Beaumont in like Niederland, Texas, which
is on the way to Louisiana. So we grew up
watching mom and dad lead worship. My dad is like
a keys player. He's still to this day one of
the best piano players I've ever seen play. And we
grew up watching him kind of like direct Or the
(09:24):
MD the bands from either like a Roland nineties and
Sonic that had like all the sick horn sounds on it,
you know, right the brass, you know, stabs and stuff,
or it was like he was on a B three,
like a HM and B three. And then my mom
she's like still to this day a great singer, a
singer singer, so she would kind of direct these big
(09:46):
choirs and you know, I mean, you know all about it.
In the nineties, it was like choir music.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It was choirs. That's what My parents were exactly the same,
singer directing choirs.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
So my dad is like and still is this way
like which is very quiet, very sweet and like love
serving people.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
We don't have the same, Dad, Okay, we might, we
might do.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
This is wild, this is crazy. And then my mom is
she's the life of the party, you know, like full
on texting mom. Yeah, at the time she had big hair,
you know. So that's what we grew up around, and
so we you know, I grew up on like all
it was. The church we were in in East Texas
was like I remember it being like half and half,
(10:33):
Like it was fifty percent black, fifty percent white, right
down the middle. So the church was like we we
had we were rather doing black gospel or Southern gospel music,
and that was kind of it. So, which is awesome.
I mean, there's there's great things about both of those
genres of music. So we were either like singing gaither stuff,
or we were singing like you know, some quartets music,
(10:54):
or we were singing you know John p Key, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
That you please do a side project with the Gaith
just so sad, I don't know what vocals are.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Like, dude, Yeah, some of those guys like Guy Pinrod
and all those days. Man. So we were like me
and my brother, we were and my little sister. We
were nerds about like vocal groups and that funny like
like vocal groups were our thing. We were like in
we had like we all had our favorite and the
gathers that we liked. And like I loved Donnie McClerkin.
(11:26):
I still love him and his music, and I loved
that he memorized all these hymns and he would get up.
So this church was kind of like a bigger church
at the time in East Texas for for like those towns.
So all those big preachers in the nineties or even
artists would come through the church and hold like meetings
and stuff. Like Donnie McClerkin. I remember he came in
(11:50):
and led. It was unbelievable. It was so good. But
you know, in the middle of the in between songs,
he would just transition with old hymns and like he's
was like a walking hymnal. Just crazy that he could
memorize that many it was insane.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
And so yeah, so like we got into bands kind
of late. Like I remember being like fourteen and listening
to like my first you know, Beatles album and just
losing my mind.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
How old were you when you heard something like that?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
About fourteen? I think I was thirteen when I heard
Delirious for the first time and that might have been
the Glow album, yep, and I just lost it. It's
like Delirious. And then I listened to Third Day that
same year when I was about thirteen. It was the
Offerings Live album. Okay, So I had like three CDs.
I remember like on the Sony you know with the
(12:39):
what were the headphones that like we go around the
back of your neck kind oh yeah, kind of kind
of on your ear and know if they're Walkman's or
something like that. And so I had Third Day Offerings Live,
I had what was that, I just said, Delirious Glow,
and then I had Michael Libby Smith's instrumental.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Record called Freedom Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
And I loved that. I grew up on like drums
is my first instrument so like I loved the drums
on that record. And yeah, so those those are the
first kind of band, think non Southern gospel and black
costal music that I listened to that I was like
geeking out over. And then I've heard about you two
and the Beatles and the whole other world opened up.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
What I was going to ask you something, I'm trying.
I'm spacing out. I had it ready when you were talking.
Hold on a second. Okay, So what what were those
like the first kind of records, like Christian records would
(13:41):
have been like the first where gospel records were the
first ones you were listening.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yes, okay, so.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
How old? Because you start you started music really young,
You started touring and doing this stuff really young. So
I kind of want to get into what inspired you
to start writing and when did that happen, Because if
you started young and those first Leland records were so
good as they were, you must have developed for some
(14:13):
years before that and what led into that.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Oh it's crazy. Well, okay, so I'm thirty six now
and I look back and I have two kids and
two girls, and then we have one on the way,
which is We're thank you. Yeah, two girls there are
six and three, and then we have a boy on
the way. So we're like pumped, I'm excited to be
a boy dad. But you know, I look back now
and me and my wife been married for over fifteen years.
(14:37):
I just kind of go like, my parents were probably
looked insane to people like and I mean that the best,
like in it as a compliment. They said yes to
the craziest thing. I realized that my childhood upbringing is
actually not normal, you know, and I mean that in
the best of ways. Like, Okay, so all of us siblings,
(14:59):
my older brother, little sister, we're all three years apart.
So when I was eleven, my brother was fourteen, my
sister was nine ish eight or nine, my parents were
leading worship at this big church in East Texas and
they were fired like out of nowhere. It was kind
of my first time seeing like maybe the uglier side
(15:20):
of church politics and stuff. Yeah, so we were we
were in this house and our neighborhood the day that
my dad got fired. The night before, our neighborhood was
hit like this crazy lightning storm, so there was no
power in the neighborhood. So we got like this motel
and this cheap motel Dad left to go to work
to the office was a Tuesday, and he came back
(15:42):
like an hour later, and Mom was like, what happened.
He's like, well, they gave me a severance check. And
my dad is like, we affectionately call my dad. We
don't do it anymore, but around then we used to
call my dad Jesus because he's just what I tell you,
he's the kindest man he'll ever meet, and just he
(16:04):
loves to serve people. So the idea of somebody like
having a problem with my dad is like, that's like
something that's like Mars. You know, it's a sci fi.
It doesn't make sense to me. So my dad walks
in and you see they have a severance check and
and I was like eleven. I didn't know what that was.
That was like a bonus check. So I was like
a seven check, sick, let's go like toys rs. So,
(16:28):
finding out that, you know, he was fired, I remember
my mom and my dad. My mom just started laughing,
like you know, she's like, they fired us, and she
just starts laughing and so and Dad starts laughing, and
then all those kids are like we kind of start
laughing with them, and they were like, well, guys, we
need to pray. So like we prayed as a family,
(16:49):
just asking God for help. And then about a week later,
some friends of ours, friends of my parents, from Corpus Christy,
reached out to my mom and my dad were like, hey,
we heard what happened. We're not in a place to
hire anybody, but we have like this young, really talented team,
but they kind of they're really green, They've got a
(17:09):
lot of gifting. Would you guys consider moving here for
like three to six months and just we'll pay you
contracted rates to just teach them. So we're like, well,
we don't have anything else to do, so let's go.
So my parents pulled us out of school, got our
homeschooling material, which homeschooling is kind of cool now, you know,
it's like all libertarian now. Right back then it was
(17:32):
like just weird. Yes, you know, it's borderline, like you
know you're gonna have the CPS calling for homeschooling your child.
So uh so we move. We kind of moved to Corpus.
We're like in this rental house for like six months,
and while we're there at this church, my parents helping
train this team. They were like these series back to
(17:54):
back of revival style Pentecostal meetings right at the church.
So the first guy that came who's evangelist. His name
is Nigel McNeil and his wife's name is Kathy, and
they're from Budroum, the Melula Bah like coast and Ozzy,
but they apparently would come to the States for three months,
travel around, preach the gospel on the road, and then
(18:17):
go back and they would do that every three months,
and so they just kind of really love America and
call to the country. So they're there at this church preaching.
My parents are leading worship with this team. And on
the last night, my cousin the services were great. So
my mom's calls her sister and all of her kids
(18:38):
and she has five kids. Oh, my cousins. She's like,
you guys need to drive down to Corpus. These meetings
are amazing. You should come on the last night. So
on the last night he lines up my whole family,
this Ozzy, Nigel and praise for every member of my family,
all my cousins. When he gets to me and my brother,
he said, he said, I see you guys like starting
(18:58):
a band and writing songs together and leading people in worship.
And so we're like that cool, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And then you hadn't done anything like that.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
No, wed like we would like sing specials with my
mom and my dad, like they could bribe us to
sing like I'll get you a dog if you sing
this Christmas playing. So music was in the house.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Had you done anything at that revival that he would
have seen.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I think I might have sang one song, like I
think it was like it was actually and I know
exactly what song was now. It was a song I
believe I can fly.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Really, Kelly was so amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Sounds I believe I can fly for like an offering
special and uh anyway, so he so he's you know,
speaks over us, and then like about like maybe a
month later, another couple comes to the church and does
the same thing, but they're from Texas, this Dale and
Jean Gentry. So they come and they do the same thing.
(20:01):
My cousin's coming the last night and he he like
speaks over me and my brother and says basically the
same thing. And so a couple of weeks later, we're
kind of coming near the end of our time there
and this Auzzy calls my mom, my dad, Nigel and says, hey,
like I'm gonna be We're gonna be in the States
(20:22):
for three months, and usually the teams that are leading
worship with these places are awful. I mean, this is
like before, this is before the resourcing of the American church,
when like, you know, Baytown, Texas where I'm from, sounded
like Baytown, Texas right right right now everyone has multi
(20:43):
tracks and it's really trained and everyone sounds great now.
So he was like, hey, can you guys come out
and do the music? And it's just three months and
we'll road trip around and I'll we'll tick up offerings
for you guys. So he packed up our Lincoln town car.
My parents just said yeah. They were like, it's and
everyone thought they were crazy. So we packed up like
(21:04):
our Lincoln town car. We had like an ice chest
in the middle, and we were already had her homeschooling
material and so it was us three kids in the
back and my dad. So my mom was you know,
my mom and dad had said yes, but they're kind
of like, what did we just say yes to? Because
not only are our kids gonna be like on the
road with us, we don't have a band, we don't
(21:27):
have singers. We're used to having choirs all these things,
and they just kind of felt like, you know, you
use the arrows you already have, you get you have
your kids. So my mom brought me, my brother. My
sister was like, I'm not singing a thing. She was like,
she was like nine, it's like I'm not doing anything.
So she brought me and my brother to the room
(21:47):
and we were like eleven and fourteen, and she was like,
I know you guys can sing, but I'm going to
teach you how to like really sing, like harmonize the
way Mom teaches choirs. I'm gonna teach you guys. And
she was like Jack, you're gonna sing tenor and was changing,
you know, Leland, you're gonna sing alto. And so we
learned like I think like twenty songs over the course
(22:08):
of a couple of days in her bedroom listening to
these tracks, and they were like Southern gospel music, Black
gospel music, a little bit of hillsong, like maybe two
or three songs like Shout to the Lord. And and
then my dad had a friend like make some tracks
or they made some on a keyboard at his house,
(22:30):
like drums and bass, and he had like a garage
like mini disc player studio where he could put things
on mini discs, and so that was our band, and
then my dad played keys. So we packed up the
car and we thought it was going to be like
three months, you know, a fun, crazy adventure with the family,
(22:52):
be in these revival meetings, do our homeschooling stuff in
the morning and then church or in the middle of
the day, church, morning and night. Road trip for a
couple of days in the next spot. And those three
months turned into like two and a half years. Bow
And so when the Aussie couple went back to Australia,
(23:12):
the other couple that came to that church, Dale and
Jean from Texas called us up and we're like, we
heard what you're doing with Nigel. You guys want to
come join us. We're gonna be in Oklahoma next week. Yeah,
so that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So we were kind of like a family trio, singing trio,
and and my mom would like, you know, lead worship
and so but these meetings were very like they were
very spontaneous, you know, for you know, it wasn't so
much like the movies. It was very spontaneous and very
(23:47):
you know, it's either really either really funny things happening,
or like really awesome things we talked a little bit
off camera, but like, I have friends that like kind
of grew up friends of friends that sort of grew
up sim or ish and had a lot of weird experience,
like a lot of bad experience. Yeah, I mean this earlier,
but for some reason, I'm thirty six now and I'm
(24:09):
still unpacking all that. Honestly, Like, over ninety percent of
it was amazing. Yeah, and there might have been some
weird things here and there that some people said or did.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Like back then, back then, I feel I and that
could be wrong about this, but I feel like the
majority of what we were experiencing, you didn't really question
it very much, sure, the good or the bad. It
was just kind of like, oh, well, this is.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
How it is, sure, And I think and as you
get older you can start unpacking that stuff, right Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, And nowadays I think everyone is questioning everything all
the time. Yeah, not just in church, but just in
just everywhere. Therapy, life and mental health and all of
the things that are kind of buzzwords now. Not to
speak down to those things, but we're focusing in on
so much of that stuff and how it impacts us culturally,
(25:07):
and back in then, you know, eighties and nineties, we
weren't really doing that.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, that's it's a really good point. It does kind
of feel like now that sort of in the air
that we all breathe is like a collective distrust of
every major institution.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, which could be a bad thing. In some ways,
it can be and in some ways.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
A good thing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
It's yeah, it can be a healthy thing to look
at and have your doubts and your questions and and
get it right.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, you know. Yeah, it was it was in those
environments that, yeah, that I started to get melody ideas.
And I didn't know that that was songwriting. We would
just be in these services and like so I had
So there's lots of I'll tell some funny stories, but
I want to tell like one crazy one that's really cool. Okay, So,
(25:54):
you know, and the charismatic world, I guess it's some
of these things are like the gifts to the spirit.
One of these called the prophetic, right, And I've seen
plenty of people do weird stuff and call it prophetic.
But some of the stuff that like happened we were
kids was really wild stuff that were like there's I
have no explanation for it except, you know, something supernatural.
(26:17):
So like in one of those nights, Dale Gentry, that
other couple from Texas, he didn't call himself a prophet,
so he never likes said I'm a prophet. And he
loved to talk about prayer. He still does. He's in
his eighties now and doesn't travel anymore, but he preaches
online about prayer all the time and how to pray.
(26:38):
And so he was he would talk about prayer and
then at the end of the night he would pray
for people in an altar or around the building, and
he would sure enough start prophisying over people or saying
whatever he heard there was in almost every night he
would profise over me, my brother or at least pray
for us. And so there was one night where he
(26:59):
looked me and my brother Jack and he said, I
see you guys leaving worship like in a baseball stadium,
and then I see like thousands of people coming to
the baseball field and giving their life to Jesus or
dedicating their lives to Jesus, and I see you guys
(27:20):
singing while that's happening. And He's like, you know, and
then he kind of moved on and I was like eleven,
and you know, fast forward on how many years. This
was six years later. I think I was seventeen or eighteen,
maybe it was seven years later, and we were in
(27:40):
Anaheim at with Harvest Crusade at the Anaheim Angels Baseball
stadium and our me and my brother were out like
right field and we were going to do sound check
that day and we called him, Oh, we call them
Papa Dale, like our families. So we called them. We
were like, hey, like, you know, we're standing in right
field right now at a baseball stadium. And I think
(28:03):
there was like four thousand people that came down and
like made decisions to follow Grice at night. But it
was wild. And so it's like stuff like that that
you know, and a lot of other things, like there
was one this is crazy. There was one. We were
in this one meeting with my mom and dad and
(28:25):
this church in like West Texas somewhere, the small church,
and this woman was preaching. Her name is Nancy Cohen,
and she's amazing. She was preaching and her her life
is a bit like it's a bit like the Book
of Acts, right, and so just just wild stories, you know,
so the whole room is like on the edge of
their seat listening to this stuff. It was amazing. But
(28:47):
one night she just looked at me and my brother
and she said, hey, can you guys come out here?
And she said, does anybody have a map in the room,
And somebody was like, we got one the youth room,
and so they grabbed like this plastic youth group maps,
you know. She had a stand on it and she said, uh,
she said, I hear the sound of melodies traveling all
(29:08):
over the world to the nations of the world. And
she said, Okay, you guys can go sit back down now,
and then we sat back down and she kind of
went and did her thing. Yeah, we totally forgot about that.
I was eleven when that happened until our band was
in Nashville working on our like EP with the producer
Steve Wilson here in town, and we were working on
(29:31):
a song called Sound of Melodies, which she ended up
becoming the title track of our record. And my mom,
after we had worked on that song and played the
EP for she was going through she said, you guys
an't gonna believe this, she said, but I have written
in my journal, like the date, the day, the.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Time, and you had forgotten all about.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
It, forgotten all about it, and she said, I wrote
in quotation marks what she said over you guys in
that meeting. So like we had lots of cool stuff
like that happened. That was just kind of like, Okay,
you know, I can argue that all day long, or
I can just believe and accept what I experience as
being from God and being real and then also laugh
at the crazy stuff. So like plenty of that, you know.
(30:14):
So like we were so in these I'll get to
the songwriting bit in a second. Can't tell you crazy story.
So I'm good, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
So we were.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
When we were with Nigel or with Dale, most of
the time we were going to churches that they had
relationships with for years, and so it's like they would
introduce to these pastors they had known for a long time,
so it's really chill. But there was this one trip
in particular where Nigel the Aussie was like, hey, guys,
so where we're going at This next place was in Bellingham, Washington.
(30:47):
I think he was like, I don't know these guys
at all. I don't know this pastors. I don't know
anything about this church, so if it's crazy, please forgive me.
You know, it's not my fault. I'm just I'm just
as new to this as you guys are. So we
make this road trip from Baytown, Texas, which is you know, Houston,
(31:09):
essentially all the way to Bellingham, Washington, which is you know,
the most northwesterly tip of the country. We road trip
it in our Lincoln Town car. I have no clue
how this thing made it that far. My dad was
pumped about the drive because he's a bit of a
road dog. He was he was a truck driver before,
so he loves like the road. And so this is
(31:31):
before iPhones obviously, so it's really the Atlas maps. So
maybe they had those big maps. So we were planning
out the route and he was like, we're going to
go through Yellowstone, make a big trip out of it.
And it was epic. We had fun. We took our time,
so we were like a couple weeks on the road.
We finally get to Bellingham. We roll in. I didn't know,
but found this out later. My dad and mom had
(31:53):
like ten dollars in their bucket. Yeah, we get to
this church and like always, we get there early the
sound check before the meetings starts. So we go inside
this church and there are like five women with kind
of the lights dimmed and some worship music going in
this kind of like you know, sort of like strip
(32:13):
mall church, and they're praying, you know, I guess they're
like the Intersectional team or whatever. So they come towards
the front and they see us walk in, they said,
and there was a uh, there was a woman who
was kind of like leading the prayer group, and so
she sees us and she says, I'm gonna I'm gonna
try to do your voice by trip. She's like, well,
(32:35):
you guys must be Majestic Praise. And so we're like,
that was our family I forgot to mention that that
was our family band name, Majestic Praise. So I love it.
And so yeah, we're like, yeah, that's us. And she said,
she said, are you guys about to sound check? And
we're like, yeah, we' about to sound check, and so
she says, uh, she says, uh, well quickly, let us
(32:55):
let us pray with you guys, And so we get
in a circle and we're holding hands and this this
is really normal. We're like, okay, we're gonna pray, you know,
so we hold hands. Everyone we're in a circle and
my brother and sister are next to me, and she
starts off the prayer right and it's like, God, we
thank you for majestic praise. We thank you God that
they are thank you for the Lord that they're here.
(33:18):
And there's really sweet and she's like, and we thank
you God that they are the missing piece to the
symphony of what you're doing in our city. And we're
like and I'm like eleven, Like that's awesome. Yeah, God,
will be the missing piece of symphony. That's amazing. You know,
that's got to keep in mind, like eleven, we've seen
a lot already, like on the road for like a year,
you know. And so we're like cool, yes, God, and
(33:38):
we're kind of aimening. And then the next four ladies
could just kind of have like these norder kind of
real high pitch voices. And the next lady pipes up
and she's like, yes, God, we do thank you for
majestic praise. We do believe they are the missing piece
to the symphony of what you're doing. But also God,
we just want the whole hunky meat. We want the
(33:59):
whole hunky meat of what you're doing this week. God,
in our midst we we don't want a part of it.
We want the whole hunk. And she keeps saying a
hunk of meat, and I'm like eleven. She just going like, okay,
what is okay? Maybe she's talking about the Word, the
Word of God maybe and so and so I'm like amening.
Then the third lady kind of popcorn prayer. The third
(34:19):
lady starts and she says, yes, God, we do think
they're the missing piece of synfity. We do want the
whole hunk of meat this week. But also, God, we
do pray for the digestive juices of your spirit to
flow so that we can digest the meat of your
word God, the whole hunk. And so she's going on
about digestive juices. At this point, I'm kind of like
open my eyes. I'm like Mom and Dad into this,
(34:43):
like what's going on. So they're kind of like looking
at us, like y'all be quiet, you know, close your eyes.
And so then there's like a fourth lady. She starts praying.
She's like, God, and we, yes, Lord, we do want
the juices of your spirit to flow we want to
be able to digest the hunk of meat of your word.
We also believe God also just sends the Lord that
there's a new flavor in the air, there's a new
(35:03):
flavor this week. And the last lady, they hadn't said
anything the entire time, kind of caps it off and
she goes, it's coconut coconuts, the flavor of what you're doing, guy.
And so literally this point, i mean, all three of
us kids, we're just laughing. We're laughing ab out loud.
The lady that started us off, the sort of leader,
is like, yes, God, more joy, more joy more. We're like, yeah,
(35:24):
we already have joy. So so that was just a
prayer service and we're like, this church is gonna be awesome.
We're gonna have some stories to tell. So we get
into the first service and you know, we have like
tracks and piano and it's like this, you know, smaller
church with the platform is kind of small. We're kind
of like in the pit with everyone, you know, in
(35:45):
the altar with everyone, and we're singing like, you know,
lift up the name of Jesus, shout it every way
you go. That kind of stuff like gospel music. You know,
or Southern gospel music, and so the altar gets filled
with all sorts of people, really characters, you know, they're
ready to worship, but they're just doing really everyone's kind
(36:06):
of doing odd ball stuff. So there's a woman who
as she's singing, she'll just be worshiping, and then she'll
just strike a pose and like just no emotion on
the face, and for an entire song, you know, five
six minutes, she would move until the song changed, and
then she would move again and hit another pose and
then stay there for another seven minutes or whatever. So
(36:29):
that that's happening. There was a guy down there with
like you know, like the mc hammer PANTSM like the
nineties what are the parachute pants? He had those on,
and some some wooden like what are the what's the
percussion instrument? The blocks that it's like the wooden blocks
you hit him together.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I don't know what does it called.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
You know, most people probably know what they are. They're
louder than any pas. They're like one hundred and forty
dB when you hit them. So he had those in
a vest and e would like, you know, dance like
nineties dance, and then he would look at us and
just gouck and just in the middle of the song
and not And then there was someone down there that.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Was this sounds like a movie.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It's like a movie. This all happened the same time.
Just keep in mind. So there was someone down there
that was acting like they were pulling out arrows, like
bow and arrow like you know, I guess in the
spirit or imagination there. Yeah, they have a quiver behind
them of sorts, and they're pulling out an arrow and
shooting over our heads, you know. And so all this
is happening at the exact same time. Dude. Now I'm
(37:31):
like eleven, We're like singing these songs, and she's going like,
this is our first time experiencing all this at the
same time. So we're trying to hold together. There was
a woman who would come up every night, and this
was like by like night two and three, realized, oh,
she's going to do this again. She I don't know
if she came to show off the street or from wherever,
but she she had like a really short skirt on
(37:52):
and she would just fall in the altar and throw
her legs up. Yeah, and you know, so then the
ushers have to come down throw claws over her, keep
her from showing everyone right, everything, So all this is happening, dude,
this is wild. Okay, this is like night one. So
by night like you know, four or five, we're like,
we're pretty tired and like, just like where are we
(38:17):
come to find out? I guess the team that the
pastoral team wanted to lead worship on the last night.
And I don't know if they just didn't like us
because we were singing like southern gospel stuff. I think
they're more of like a prophetic kind of vineyard style,
so maybe what we were doing was a little too
like professionally sounding. We had tracks and stuff like that,
(38:39):
so we were like, yes, please let them lead. We
would love to have like a night off. So on
the last night, the pastor and the whole team hop
up there and there's like, you know, I don't know
I'm exaggerating, but you know, twelve thirteen of them. You know,
there's a lot of them. There's multiple guitars, there's multiple rainstays,
(39:00):
there's a percussion set, there's and it's a small platform.
You know, there's there's a whole thing. It's an army
of people flags maybe yeah, oh yeah, oh, yeah, there's
flags everywhere. Flags are standard, you know. So they start
strumming or and I think this is the pastor of
the church starts strumming in the key of D and
just going and he starts singing something like, you know, uh,
(39:23):
live my whole life is saying I was living for
the devil every noight and day and I never got one. Honestly,
I was something in the whole songs. It's and I'm
like eleven, I'm going I think that's Rolling on the River,
but it's just Christian lyrics about like it running.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
From the Lord Classic.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
So before the chorus hits, during the entire verse of
the song, everyone everyone from the whole church. There's a
few hundred people. Everyone's getting out of their seat during
the verse of the song and are all walking like
on queue down to the altar and lining up like sardines,
you know. And so before the first chorus gets to it,
(40:09):
the band just kind of goes and they're just on
a kick drum and it's and the pastor sort of
looks at us because the whole church is in the altar,
and he says, guys, ma, jessic praise. There's no spectators
in this church, only participators. And so my n my dad,
my dad looks up and says, guys, get down there.
(40:29):
We got to get our check.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Oh my god, I got Yeah, whatever they're about to do, we're.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
We're doing it. So we all get down the altar
and they start going and we rolling, and everyone starts
rolling in unison left to right throughout the altar while
we're singing rolling the River bro just wild stuff. So
it's the.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Lyric rolling on the River.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
We're rolling on the river about the river of the Lord.
You know, the river, Yeah, the river the Spirit. So
so like you know, we had like epic crazy stories
like that happened. And what we do is we just
if anything really weird happened or really strange that we
(41:13):
didn't really understand or it was kind of funny, we
would just talk about mom and dad like that was
kind of crazy that happened? Would you and Mom and
were like, yeah, it was a little strange. I don't
know what that really meant. But and we just learned
to laugh at the stuff that was strange or weird
and move on, you know. And then and then you know,
really cherish at things that really good or if something
was really dysfunctional, and we're like, okay, that that actually
is a little dangerous. Kids don't ever you know whatever.
(41:36):
So like, but for the most part it was really
good and so and they are really funny and so
we have these amazing stories. So but in these meetings
that's where like the good ones, you know, not the
crazy ones, but the good ones. I would just get
like little melody ideas and I would try to remember
them because I had no way of like capturing them,
(41:57):
and I would sing it for my dad. This one meeting,
I got this melody idea and sing it for my dad.
At the house we were staying out. Somebody let us
stay in their house and they had like an upright
piano in their house, and so my dad was playing
on it and I was like, hey, I got this
melody last night in the service, and so I was
singing it for me, and he would like put chords
to it, okay, And then my mom was like, what
(42:19):
are y'all singing? We're like, well, it's a dad's like
a melody Leland got last night in the service. And
she said, do you have any lyrics for it? And
I was like, I've got like one word and it's
like the word shine, like I want to like shine
the light of the gospel or something, you know. And
so my mom was like, Okay, what does that mean
to shine? And so she starts she's pressing it. She's pressing. Now,
I'm pulling like words out. So we start talking about it,
(42:41):
and so she's kind of helped me with lyrics and
what the song sang. And so I didn't know that
that's what co writing was.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Was there anyone else writer in your family?
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, So my brother ended up kind of following suit
like he asked him and I would in these meetings.
We would get melody ideas and stuff. And then my
brother started getting stuff, and so my parents got both
of us like these like digital early digital recorders. They
were like get them at radio shack. They're like these
little gold you know things you recording zero zero one,
(43:14):
you know, And so that's what we had. We just
you know, ha them the service and we'd put stuff
down and try to listen back it was good or not.
And so they were already kind of like teaching us
to kind of have our intentnas up. And so about
two and a half years of that goes by, and
we had a you know near this is near the
tail end of that where a song would start kind
(43:34):
of happening. So when we came back home to Baytown, Texas,
we weren't sure what was next for our family. My
dad had a friend who was like who was an
electrician in Denver and had this whole electrician business and
he just loved my dad and he was like, I
really don't want to work with anybody else. I know
you don't know anything about being an electrician, but I'll
teach you. It's a great job. You know, it's like
(43:59):
over one hundred though dollars a year. It was like
this nice job with health insurance and you get to
live in Denver and it's cool. And so we were
actually thinking about doing that, and then my parents were
weighing that up and my dad like and mom were praying,
and they're like, I think we're supposed to start meeting
with people in our house. So if my dad like
turned down this job, we started a church in our
(44:20):
house essentially, and that's where our band started. It was
me and my brother Jack at the time, I was
like fourteen and he was like seventeen, and we started
just meeting with our older cousins. They were like we
were still homeschooled, but our cousins were like normal, they
were like going to normal, like public school. So we
(44:41):
didn't know anyone. When we moved back to Baytown, we
just come off the road. So we just told our cousins.
We were like, hey, can you guys bring your friends
to our youth meeting in our house. We didn't know anybody,
so just bring your friends. And so our cousins started
bringing people and that's how like our band started. We
were just me and my brother just writing songs in
(45:04):
our house and around our piano, and so yeah, that's
kind of like the beginning of what song. We didn't
even know what that co writing was even a word
right right when we started doing that together.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Let me ask you this. You're doing that those years
of traveling with your family and you're getting the melody ideas,
what type of what artists or writers would you have
been listening to during that stunt? Like mostly maybe you
know what you were singing like you're drawing from, but
(45:39):
can you give us like examples of songs or songwriters. Yeah,
maybe at the time you didn't even know who they were.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, Well, so there's a couple of black gospel artists,
like one was John p Key. He had a record
called any Day. I think that was a nyme of
the record. Or he hit a song on the record
called any Day that we would jam all the time
and it was really good. There was a there was
a singer, another black gospel singer name I think it
(46:08):
was I might be getting the name wrong, Darryl Cooley,
and he had a song I think the title of
the song was What's in that Name? And it was
just an awesome song about the name of Jesus. And
there was some Southern gospel artists we'd listened to around
that time, a couple of quartet kind of groups, vocal groups,
blanking on some of their names. We were listening to
(46:30):
one of Whole's songs first, one of the early live records.
I think it was a record called You Are Near,
and I had like Ruben Morgan and Darlene leading everything
on it. I think Marty even sang a song on
it when he was like sixteen. And so we were
listening to that record that was kind of blowing our mind.
And then there was a yeah, and then there was
(46:54):
who else were we listening to around that time, blanking
on the name, I had something else in my mind.
I'll think about it in a second, because essentially just groups
like that. Oh there was That's all right, there's another one.
There was a live worship album from Lindall Cooley, who
was I guess the worship leader at the what was
(47:15):
it called in Pensacola, Brownsville. Yeah, so he was the
worship leader during all of that, and then he had moved.
I don't know if he was already living in Nashville,
know he's here now or in Franklin, but at the
time he was somewhere and he did like a live
record that had some great like live worship song, some
kind of praise songs. So we were into that, and
(47:37):
so we were listening to that stuff. And then yeah,
and then just get these melody ideas and would which is.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Where I was going with it because I want for
our listeners like you and I share a friend named
Kent Cooley, and Kent, when I started talking to you
about doing this episode, he tell me, like Leland, he's
like a monster of melodies. He's like a melody maker.
(48:05):
He's just insane melodies. And I agreed with him based
on what I've heard your records, and so where I'm
going with it is, however worship music was influenced got
to you. Yeah, like whatever that thing is with the
melodies and the hooks and the whatever that is. You
(48:27):
obviously have a great voice as well. I'm interested in
finding out, like I like to take it all the
way back, So not just those like That's why I
asked who are you listening?
Speaker 2 (48:41):
There was there was also the other one I remember now,
the other one that I wanted to mention that was
really left of center. That we didn't know was we
had stumbled upon his music through Carmen. No we did,
we did listen to and the one No Monsters. There
(49:02):
was a worship leader out of the UK, out of Lincoln, England,
and the only reason we found out about him was
because we went to this church in Tulsa, Oklahoma through
some friends of ours. My parents were helping there and
he had already been to that church the year prior,
and so my family helped him record a live record.
It was one of the random things we did in
(49:23):
those two and a half years. He wanted to come
in and sing with her. They had this really big choir,
so he had sung there. This year's name is Godfrey
Bertle and Godfrey Bertel or Bertle. He's from Lincoln, England
and his story is really crazy.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to this episode of work Tapes.
We are going to do a part two with Leland
coming up really soon. We simply ran out of time
and have so much to discuss. So in the next episode,
tune in we will hear from Leland. His brother Jack
is going to join us. We're going to hear the
work to Still Mighty. It's gonna be great, encouraging, funny.
(50:04):
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe everywhere
you listen to work Tapes. Work Tapes is produced by
me Brandon Carswell, filming and editing for this episode by
(50:27):
Sean Carswell. Visit lelandonline dot com for music tour dates,
coord charts, and booking info.
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