November 2, 2025 • 29 mins
Fletch Wiley's story is one of relentless divine pursuit. From a drug-addicted jazz musician who wanted nothing to do with Christianity to a Grammy-nominated producer and writer, his transformation is remarkable. He shares vivid memories of being chased down by God in a Tulsa hotel room, experiencing instant deliverance from addiction, and miraculous healing that confirmed his new faith. His journey took him from playing alongside legends like Doc Severinsen to spending years as Andrae Crouch's trumpet player during the groundbreaking days of contemporary Christian music.
In this conversation, Fletch opens up about traveling to 13 countries in recent years with his wife, playing music on streets from Turkey to India, and encouraging volunteer musicians around the world. He offers fascinating insights into the early Jesus movement, the wild west days of Christian music at events like Explo 72, and why he believes every musical style can be used to glorify God. His passion for worship through music remains as fresh today as it was when he first encountered Jesus over 50 years ago.
WEBLINKS God Doesn’t Play Fair (Book)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for taking the time to listen to today's episode.
Hundreds more inspiring episodes are available now at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:31):
Please share episodes of Bleeding Daylight with others through word of mouth and social media.
Today's guest has created some amazing music, played with absolute legends and been nominated for his industry's highest award.
But his story goes way beyond music and we'll explore his remarkable journey across the decades today.
(01:03):
Today I'm excited to welcome a musician who's done it all, from spending years playing with the legendary Andre Crouch to building his own incredible career as a Grammy-nominated producer and writer.
Fletch Wiley has crafted everything from film scores to million-selling children's albums.
But what really draws me to his story is how he describes being chased down by God.
(01:27):
His faith story is absolutely remarkable.
Fletch, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Good to be with you, Rodney.
God bless you.
Music has always been a part of your life.
Where did that connection to music come from in the first place?
Did you grow up in a musical household?
I did.
I took piano lessons when I was five because my brother's four years older and he was playing, but I hated it, honestly.
(01:51):
I just wanted to play American baseball, you know, go outside and do that.
But when I was 10, they brought you into a room in school and said, choose an instrument, and I immediately ran to the trumpet.
And the rest is history, as they say.
I just, I used to sleep with my trumpet.
I was a little weird.
I just love playing trumpet.
It was a bit fascinating to me, but also just, there was something about it that I loved.
(02:16):
And it may not have been the general choice of people of your age at the time to choose an instrument like the trumpet.
Can you define what it was that drew you to that specifically?
Not really.
I played piano a little bit, so that kind of helped maybe in the reading of music and things like that.
But it was just something that excited me when I heard it.
(02:38):
I had one of those old box record players, you know, where they had LPs.
And at night I'd put on three or four LPs.
Harry James, Harry Sweets Edison, an old black jazz trumpet player, and Jonah Jones, another black gentleman that played with a mute.
So I liked the mute.
So I fell asleep to those guys every night and just gravitated toward it.
(03:02):
I had an aptitude for it for some reason.
It's a difficult instrument.
Playing, you know, buzzing your lips into a piece of steel is not something I recommend for anyone, honestly.
But it worked.
And again, for someone of that age to be listening to jazz music, to the likes of Harry James, again, that's not normal.
(03:25):
Was there something in your home, like were your parents listening to that style of music?
What was it that attracted you specifically to those jazz musos?
Yeah, well, you have to remember I'm old.
So my mom was a piano player.
My brother was a very good classical player.
We played a lot of music in the house.
We played classical Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.
(03:48):
1, Barbra Streisand.
Okay, that's dating me now.
Big band stuff.
I loved Miles Davis, John Coltrane.
I was not into pop music, really.
I loved jazz a whole lot.
So that kind of led me into trumpet playing with Miles and guys like Freddie Hubbard and different trumpet players.
(04:09):
And I just loved the freedom of playing jazz.
And the challenge, too.
It was challenging music.
And I guess the big question, is it true that jazz is the music that we'll be hearing in heaven?
Well, maybe not some of the famous guys that we know, but hopefully they'll be there.
(04:32):
Jazz has a checkered history, but the essence of jazz is improvisation, which I like to think about as like playing in the spirit.
You're improvising and spontaneously creating melodies, rhythms, and harmonies on the spot.
So, of course, it will be the chosen music of Jesus.
I don't know if they had it back then, but it's a wonderful freeing kind of music and allows for a lot of spontaneous creation.
(05:00):
Yeah.
When was it you started to realize, hey, I'm not too bad at this.
I might be able to do something with this music.
Oh gosh, kind of early on.
I did practice a bit.
I think I thought I was better than I really was.
And I had a great, what we call junior high and high school, which was probably 12 to 18 years old, a great band director who really pushed me.
(05:24):
And we had a big band, a jazz big band in junior high and high school, and it was quite good.
There was a fellow named Doc Severinsen that stayed at my house when I was in high school.
And he was a great trumpet player.
It was on a show called The Tonight Show back in the 60s, the early to mid 60s.
Very, very well-known trumpet player.
(05:46):
He's still alive.
He finally quit playing trumpet at 95.
I learned a lot from him and other big bands like Stan Kenton and Buddy Rich and Woody Herman, those kinds of big bands.
And then I went off to college.
I grew up in Seattle, Washington, which is up way in the Northwest, but I went to a school, a big jazz school in Denton, Texas called North Texas State University.
(06:09):
And it was a great school.
At that time, the Vietnam War was just kind of starting to pick up, and if you went to college, you didn't get drafted.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we had a bunch of what we call ringers, players that shouldn't have been in college, but they were there because they wanted to get out of the draft and avoid going to Vietnam.
(06:31):
It was amazing musicians, amazing musicians.
So I decided I need to practice.
And at that time, I did not know Jesus.
I grew up in a pretty secular home and music was everything.
It was the 60s, so I got involved in drugs and Eastern religions and along with this heavy coursework in music.
(06:55):
It was a challenging time, to say the least.
You do mention that you were chased down by God.
Tell me a little of that story.
We have a new book that I reluctantly wrote with my wife, who is a great writer, actually.
It's called God Doesn't Play Fair, and that's a good thing.
People kind of said, do you really want to name it that?
It's kind of, what are you saying to God?
(07:16):
Well, the thing is, if God played fair, I'd be in hell today.
But He chose me before the beginning of time.
He knew me and He loved me when I didn't want to have anything to do with Him.
I didn't want to be a Christian.
That's the last thing I wanted to do.
But He did chase me down.
He really did.
(07:37):
There's a place in the book where I kind of share my testimony.
I was playing with some fabulous musicians.
Bill Maxwell, who was Andre Crouch's producer and drummer.
Hedley Hawkinsmith, great guitar player who played with Neil Diamond for 35 years.
And a keyboard player named Harlan Rogers was just an amazing player.
(07:58):
And we had a good band.
We thought we were bound for stardom in the early 70s.
What happened was, these guys became Christians.
It seemed like almost overnight, but it wasn't.
God was pursuing them.
He was pursuing me in a kind of a crazy way, but I would have none of it.
You know, that's not for me, okay?
(08:18):
If I become a Christian, I can't play jazz.
Everyone knows that.
I don't know how I got that idea in my head.
One night, we were in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I had a bunch of drug paraphernalia with me.
Bill Maxwell, this great drummer, producer with the band Coenonia.
I don't know if you remember that band with Dave Laboriel and Alex Acuna and Uso Amarillo and Hadley and Dean Parsh.
(08:42):
He wasn't with the band, but he came back to the band just to get me saved.
So we went in his car on our breaks from this club gig and he was reading the Bible to me.
Something was happening.
You know, God is always at work.
He never stops working.
He doesn't care about our excuses or whether we say, I don't want you.
(09:05):
When people are praying for you, God's going to respond to that.
Later on that night, about three in the morning, I got on my knees and I did pray some sort of a sinner's prayer, not knowing what I was really saying.
And there was a battle going on inside my head.
You know, Satan saying, you don't want this.
This is going to ruin your life.
(09:26):
What about all your friends?
Yeah, my friends that don't care about me.
And God's saying, you know, this is right.
And I was a drug addict.
I tell people, I started out being a trumpet player who uses drugs.
And then I became a drug addict who played a little bit of music.
And I took every kind of drug there was.
And so I got on my knees about three in the morning and accepted the Lord.
(09:48):
And the next day, I had a big sore on my big toe.
There was no scab on it yet.
So Bill Maxwell said, well, you know, you can pray and God will heal you.
Oh, really?
Okay.
So I was a bit naive of all this.
I didn't know anything.
I knew God had changed my heart.
I knew that because I had gone in and flushed all my drug paraphernalia down the toilet, including a bunch of marijuana.
(10:16):
And don't let anybody tell you that marijuana is not addictive.
It's a terrible drug.
So Bill laid hands on my foot and prayed.
And I had this big pussy sore in my big toe.
And in a matter of about 30 seconds, it got hard and scabbed over.
And I was amazed.
I was like, what?
And then he said, well, you know, you can also be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues.
(10:37):
And I said, okay, I don't know what that means, but he said, you'll like it.
It's good.
And I did speak in tongues immediately.
And a week before all this happened, the Lord really appeared to me and we were playing this other club in another city.
I fried my big toe because that's what got healed.
And the Lord said, stop taking drugs and start reading the Bible.
(10:57):
I heard this voice out loud inside me.
And I told the guys in the next room and they were like, oh man, you are delirious, man.
You know, no, man, this is real.
So I came home.
This is before I got saved.
We got out the family Bible, my wife and I, we had a little six week old baby and we started to read it and I couldn't make heads or tails.
So I said, I was hilarious.
(11:18):
But then the next week at this club with Bill Maxwell, when I accepted the Lord, the word of God came alive to me for the first time in my life.
It was like I was reading the word of God all the time, praying in the spirit.
I could hardly sleep.
This was October of 1971.
We quit playing clubs and we took our little four piece band.
(11:41):
We had a six piece band.
The other two guys didn't want to have anything to do with it.
So we started playing a little storefront church in Oklahoma city.
We were the house band and we started to write our own songs.
And then this guy, Andre Crouch, and the disciples, they came through town in their little minivan and we met him and played for him.
(12:03):
I mean, we were good players.
We didn't know anything about Jesus, especially me.
We were in this little storefront church every night for about six weeks.
My wife and I and our little baby, Gabriel, learning what does it mean to be a follower of Christ?
And that changed my life.
Tell me about those years of playing with Andre Crouch.
(12:24):
He certainly has left an amazing legacy of music and certainly touched many lives.
When was it that he said, Hey, look, I want you guys, as you say, you're decent players.
I want you guys to be a part of what I'm doing.
We're there in Oklahoma city, this Jesus movement, this Jesus revival revolution started to happen around the world.
(12:47):
That was what happened to me.
I mean, again, people outside the church that had nothing to do with the church were getting saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and delivered and set free.
There was freedom.
I think some of us had a hard time finding a church that would accept us because we were long-haired hippies.
God delivered me from drugs instantly.
(13:09):
That was a miracle.
That was in October of 1971.
In 1972, we kept playing in this little church and somebody gave us some money to go out to Santa Ana, California.
We met Andre out there, but we were also playing a tent revival with a guy named R.W. Schambach, Pentecostal preacher.
(13:29):
We couldn't have been more different.
He was an old time Pentecostal pastor, great guy, loved the Lord, full of the Holy Spirit.
But he used to tell the crowd, he said, now folks, these guys are going to close their eyes and that's okay because that's how they worship God.
And so we play our little set, but we play for Andre out there.
(13:49):
He got to know us a little bit more.
But it wasn't until, do you remember Explo 72?
You remember hearing about that?
Yeah.
It was an interesting and amazing event that happened in Dallas in July of 1972 that Campus Crusade put on.
They booked out for four nights the Cotton Bowl, which was where the Dallas Cowboys played football.
(14:13):
80,000 people were in there every night.
And during the day, they'd go out in the neighborhoods and witness the people.
And then on Saturday, they had this huge event called Explo 72 with about 200,000 people.
And Johnny Cash was there.
We became the backup band for anybody that needed a backup band.
(14:33):
I don't know how they knew about us.
It was just the Lord.
Andre played, Chris Christopherson played, a bunch of other Christian groups that were just getting formed then.
I mean, it was kind of the wild west of Christian music.
Nobody knew what they were doing, but God was moving on people to write original music.
So again, he said, Hey, I want you to be my band.
(14:56):
This was in July of 72.
In August, he called Bill and Hadley and said, I'm playing the Tonight Show, which was a huge TV show.
His first time to do that.
So we came out there and played that and then became his band later in August of 1972.
And I was with him until January of actually 1976.
(15:17):
So only three and a half years.
It was an amazing time.
I got to arrange Take Me Back, a wonderful record that won a Grammy.
I'll not say that I knew what I was doing because I didn't, but I'm one of those guys, when God presents something to you, you say yes, and then you figure out later how to do it.
It's a lot easier when you have great LA studio musicians that you're writing these charts for, you know, they make you look good.
(15:41):
Andre was a wonderful guy, very generous with his praise and helping us.
It was really how I learned to serve the Lord.
I think about every six months, the Holy Spirit would sweep through and if we had any things against people or anything, he would deal with us on a very personal level.
We'd have to repent.
Okay, I'm sorry I said that.
(16:02):
It was a really great four years being with him and all those wonderful people, his twin sister Sandra, Daddy Bill Hall, Billy Thetford, and Bill Maxwell, just a host of great musicians that we got to meet and play with and tour twice in Australia and New Zealand.
You mentioned there those early days of what became Christian music, of popular Christian music, and it's bands coming together, not really knowing what they're doing, but saying, hey, look, there's a story we need to tell.
(16:32):
When you contrast that with the very slick production and the very business-like contemporary Christian music of these days, do you feel we've lost something or have we moved on to professionalizing and are we in a better place?
Yeah, that's a great question because I think we're in a good place now.
I think we made a lot of mistakes back then in the 70s and 80s, but we kept plowing ahead and trying to serve the Lord through writing music and creating new elements.
(17:01):
I'm an instrumentalist.
I'm a jazz player.
I'm not going to sing and you don't want to hear me sing, but I've done a bunch of records, and it's been a blessing to be able to do that in the style that I'm comfortable with.
I think if there's a critique I have of where we are now, pastors love to follow contemporary Christian music radio, and they like to play those songs, so we have a bit of a narrower playlist maybe.
(17:27):
I think the guys are healthy.
I think spiritually and morally the songs are good.
I like where we're at.
You moved on from playing with Andre and from being that backing muso to looking more at your own style of music and producing your own kind of music in various ways.
(17:50):
Where did that take you?
What sort of projects did you pick up at that stage?
Yeah, that was right after I left Andre.
In fact, in 1975 when we were in Sydney and we had a morning meeting at the hotel in a room with a bunch of Christian musicians.
Russell Frager, you know that name?
Yeah.
He's a good friend of mine.
He's here in the States now, and they were asking me, what does the Bible say about music?
(18:15):
I had no idea.
We were sort of at a place where the musicians came on and played.
When you're in an Andre Crouch concert, in two and a half hours you heard the gospel.
You heard a presentation of the gospel, and it was wonderful, but a lot of times it was more we played for 30 or 40 minutes and then someone preached, so we were kind of the icing on the cake.
(18:41):
So I had to come back, and in 1979 I wrote a little treat that's called Biblical Concepts in Music.
There were these Australian Christian music seminars in Kuma.
People would come down there.
Mary McGuire and I did one year.
Ken Miedema and I did one year in Kuma and also Adelaide, and then they have a bunch of different musicians, and then they do their own thing, and then the Lord moved mightily.
(19:09):
I have an affinity for Australia and what God did there.
But in 1976, when I left Andre, I did a record called Ballad for God.
I used some of the guys that got in there, Bill Maxwell, Harlow Rogers, Hadley, Dean Parks, great guitar player still in LA.
I did a couple more records that Abe Abraham Laboreal played on, Alex Acuna, original jazz records, Christian jazz records, and people say, how do you know they're Christian?
(19:36):
I wrote them, okay?
And I love the Lord, and I do.
That's kind of how I got started doing that thing of Christian instrumental jazz.
And in those early days, you didn't really know whether jazz was going to be accepted in the church.
Are there still some forms of music that you find people think, oh no, that couldn't possibly be used of God, and you're thinking, no, God can use whatever he chooses?
(20:04):
God is a redeeming God.
I find that all forms of music are sort of amoral in the sense that even jazz, which is a very derogatory word early on, can be used because the basis of jazz is improvisation, playing the spirit.
Blues could be used, you know, the lament of God, lamentations.
(20:25):
Probably half the psalms are lamenting psalms.
Classical music's kind of majestic.
John the Baptist probably would have been a rock and roll singer, because he was emphatic in his use of the gospel.
I believe every style can be used of God to glorify him.
Old Testament is ripe with deliverance through music, the prophetic in music.
(20:46):
David sort of set up a government of music through three guys, Heman, Asaph, and Jejuthon, and he commanded them to prophesy.
And I believe those are still valid and vital, even though they're Old Testament scriptures for us today.
We know that music touches us somewhere deep inside.
It has a connection that sometimes even just bypasses the mind and goes directly to the soul.
(21:10):
With that in mind, how important is it that we check ourselves with the sorts of music that we listen to?
We know that there's some great secular music, but we also know that there are other forms of secular music that if they're going direct to our soul, we could be in trouble.
How do we check ourselves against, you know, what should we listen to, and what shouldn't we?
(21:31):
Petey Right.
Well, that's a great question, because I think most worship music is great to listen to.
I don't think there's anything there that is offensive to God, but you need to be careful.
Watch what you listen to, what you watch on TV, movies, anything that enters into you via your senses, be it a book, a podcast, a movie, a TV show, music.
(21:57):
Especially now, there's some stuff going on in the spirit world that is very real and very, very bad for us.
And I think as Christians, we will know, and the thing we could do is turn it off immediately.
And if we don't know what it is, maybe do a little research and find out, just so you have a healthy relationship with media.
(22:18):
Media is great.
It's like the internet.
The internet is great if you use it correctly, but it can really drag you down and wound your heart.
So, the Bible says to guard your heart above all else.
We need to take that to heart and to our minds and make sure we do that.
Peter We've mentioned that you have had a very long career in music and done some amazing things.
(22:42):
When you look back across that career, what are perhaps one or two things that you've done in that music world that you look back with the greatest fondness?
Wow.
Oh, that's hard.
I think going to Australia and New Zealand and the Polynesian islands, Tonga, Fiji, American, and Western Samoa in 1973 was just a seminal trip for us.
(23:07):
We were with an assembly of God missionary, Sam Sasser.
He really had an effect on me.
Just his testimony and who he was, and I got to meet a bunch of other missionaries and island people that loved him and venerated him for good reason.
We did a concert, I think in 2003 in Hawaii.
(23:28):
There's a great church in Honolulu called New Hope, and it was with Abe and Alex Acuna, Bill Maxwell, and a keyboard player named Greg Matheson, who was Faith Hill's keyboard player, and a bunch of other people, this amazing musician, and playing my music.
It was Fletch Wiley and Friends.
It was a wonderful evening of the Holy Spirit moving and using what I wrote to minister to people.
(23:56):
You can't beat that.
In the 90s, late 90s, I was at a vineyard church in Houston, and I went to Istanbul four times.
That was a wonderful time.
And then, I have to say, the last six or seven years, my wife and I have been traveling together.
We've been to 13 countries in six years to do music, play on the street.
(24:17):
First trip was nine weeks, and my wife says, nine weeks and two days, don't forget those.
She says, don't ever do that again.
The first six weeks were in Turkey, Egypt, and Albania, playing on the street.
And in Turkey, you don't ask permission.
You just show up, and hopefully, they don't bust your chops.
But two places, they took our passports, but we got them back, so we're still alive.
(24:40):
That was 2019.
And then, Nigeria, South Africa.
The Lord is so good.
Bulgaria, France.
A year ago, too, we were in India.
I was teaching at a Bible college for a week there, also at a YWAM base in Bangalore with a fellow named Benny Prasad that you should have on your program.
Do you know Benny?
(25:01):
Have you heard of his name?
Tom Clougherty Yes.
I interviewed him on the radio when he was in Perth quite some years ago.
Yeah.
Well, he's built this 400-seat coffee house in Bangalore, which is kind of their high-tech capital of India, which they have several, I guess.
So, I was there with him for about five days after that Bible college.
(25:21):
We're still having fun.
I love musicians.
There's a lot of pressure on Christian musicians these days to be really great musicians.
Well, these guys are mostly volunteer.
I always try to encourage them and teach them and help them.
I'm an arranger and a musician.
I've got a degree in trumpet, and I went to Yale for about 10 minutes.
(25:45):
So, that five bucks will get you a cup of coffee in most places.
Fletch, you did touch on the fact that it really does something for you to see people who are blessed by the music that you play, and I'm sure that over your career, there have been times when people have mentioned to you how God has used your music in their lives.
(26:07):
Is that something that's empowering or encouraging for you?
It is.
In fact, just this last weekend, we went back to Houston.
We live in Austin, Texas, which is a big music city here in the United States.
We went back to Houston, Texas to the 50th anniversary of our church there, and it was a wonderful church.
(26:28):
Lots of great dance with the Houston Ballet, people who were Christians, musicians.
We did three records for Star Song Records.
I don't know if you remember that label.
We had actors from a professional dance troupe.
Saturday night, we did a worship concert for two hours, and I got to be able to play, and it's the most wonderful thing to use the gifts God has given you to worship Him, and it was powerful worship.
(26:56):
That is probably my highlight.
I've got a big band concert Tuesday night.
I play with a jazz group here in Austin, but to worship with your gifts, man, I love that, and the Lord allows me to do that.
That never gets old.
Traveling around the world and going to places where maybe the musicians aren't up to speed, but you know where that is?
(27:21):
That's in Europe.
In Africa, the musicians are unbelievable all over Africa.
I've only been to Nigeria and Egypt and six times to South Africa, but the musicians in South Africa and Nigeria are unbelievable.
They're Christian musicians.
In Europe, they need to step up to the plate a little bit, if you know what I mean.
(27:45):
They need to practice, okay?
God is moving all around the world, and that's the fun thing about being able to travel.
I love to travel.
It kind of worries on my life, but we'll do it as long as we can.
Fletch, I have your website on the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you, but I've got to say, this has been a wonderful conversation.
(28:08):
I just wish it could go on for several hours more because there's so much, but I just want to thank you for the things that you've done, for the way that you have blessed people through your music, and a huge thank you for spending some time with us today on Bleeding Daylight.
It's been wonderful.
Well, hope to do it again, Ronnie.
God bless you and bless your audience, and just follow the Lord, whatever you do.
(28:33):
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for taking the time to listen to today's episode.
Hundreds more inspiring episodes are available now at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:31):
Please share episodes of Bleeding Daylight with others through word of mouth and social media.
Today's guest has created some amazing music, played with absolute legends and been nominated for his industry's highest award.
But his story goes way beyond music and we'll explore his remarkable journey across the decades today.
(01:03):
Today I'm excited to welcome a musician who's done it all, from spending years playing with the legendary Andre Crouch to building his own incredible career as a Grammy-nominated producer and writer.
Fletch Wiley has crafted everything from film scores to million-selling children's albums.
But what really draws me to his story is how he describes being chased down by God.
(01:27):
His faith story is absolutely remarkable.
Fletch, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Good to be with you, Rodney.
God bless you.
Music has always been a part of your life.
Where did that connection to music come from in the first place?
Did you grow up in a musical household?
I did.
I took piano lessons when I was five because my brother's four years older and he was playing, but I hated it, honestly.
(01:51):
I just wanted to play American baseball, you know, go outside and do that.
But when I was 10, they brought you into a room in school and said, choose an instrument, and I immediately ran to the trumpet.
And the rest is history, as they say.
I just, I used to sleep with my trumpet.
I was a little weird.
I just love playing trumpet.
It was a bit fascinating to me, but also just, there was something about it that I loved.
(02:16):
And it may not have been the general choice of people of your age at the time to choose an instrument like the trumpet.
Can you define what it was that drew you to that specifically?
Not really.
I played piano a little bit, so that kind of helped maybe in the reading of music and things like that.
But it was just something that excited me when I heard it.
(02:38):
I had one of those old box record players, you know, where they had LPs.
And at night I'd put on three or four LPs.
Harry James, Harry Sweets Edison, an old black jazz trumpet player, and Jonah Jones, another black gentleman that played with a mute.
So I liked the mute.
So I fell asleep to those guys every night and just gravitated toward it.
(03:02):
I had an aptitude for it for some reason.
It's a difficult instrument.
Playing, you know, buzzing your lips into a piece of steel is not something I recommend for anyone, honestly.
But it worked.
And again, for someone of that age to be listening to jazz music, to the likes of Harry James, again, that's not normal.
(03:25):
Was there something in your home, like were your parents listening to that style of music?
What was it that attracted you specifically to those jazz musos?
Yeah, well, you have to remember I'm old.
So my mom was a piano player.
My brother was a very good classical player.
We played a lot of music in the house.
We played classical Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.
(03:48):
1, Barbra Streisand.
Okay, that's dating me now.
Big band stuff.
I loved Miles Davis, John Coltrane.
I was not into pop music, really.
I loved jazz a whole lot.
So that kind of led me into trumpet playing with Miles and guys like Freddie Hubbard and different trumpet players.
(04:09):
And I just loved the freedom of playing jazz.
And the challenge, too.
It was challenging music.
And I guess the big question, is it true that jazz is the music that we'll be hearing in heaven?
Well, maybe not some of the famous guys that we know, but hopefully they'll be there.
(04:32):
Jazz has a checkered history, but the essence of jazz is improvisation, which I like to think about as like playing in the spirit.
You're improvising and spontaneously creating melodies, rhythms, and harmonies on the spot.
So, of course, it will be the chosen music of Jesus.
I don't know if they had it back then, but it's a wonderful freeing kind of music and allows for a lot of spontaneous creation.
(05:00):
Yeah.
When was it you started to realize, hey, I'm not too bad at this.
I might be able to do something with this music.
Oh gosh, kind of early on.
I did practice a bit.
I think I thought I was better than I really was.
And I had a great, what we call junior high and high school, which was probably 12 to 18 years old, a great band director who really pushed me.
(05:24):
And we had a big band, a jazz big band in junior high and high school, and it was quite good.
There was a fellow named Doc Severinsen that stayed at my house when I was in high school.
And he was a great trumpet player.
It was on a show called The Tonight Show back in the 60s, the early to mid 60s.
Very, very well-known trumpet player.
(05:46):
He's still alive.
He finally quit playing trumpet at 95.
I learned a lot from him and other big bands like Stan Kenton and Buddy Rich and Woody Herman, those kinds of big bands.
And then I went off to college.
I grew up in Seattle, Washington, which is up way in the Northwest, but I went to a school, a big jazz school in Denton, Texas called North Texas State University.
(06:09):
And it was a great school.
At that time, the Vietnam War was just kind of starting to pick up, and if you went to college, you didn't get drafted.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we had a bunch of what we call ringers, players that shouldn't have been in college, but they were there because they wanted to get out of the draft and avoid going to Vietnam.
(06:31):
It was amazing musicians, amazing musicians.
So I decided I need to practice.
And at that time, I did not know Jesus.
I grew up in a pretty secular home and music was everything.
It was the 60s, so I got involved in drugs and Eastern religions and along with this heavy coursework in music.
(06:55):
It was a challenging time, to say the least.
You do mention that you were chased down by God.
Tell me a little of that story.
We have a new book that I reluctantly wrote with my wife, who is a great writer, actually.
It's called God Doesn't Play Fair, and that's a good thing.
People kind of said, do you really want to name it that?
It's kind of, what are you saying to God?
(07:16):
Well, the thing is, if God played fair, I'd be in hell today.
But He chose me before the beginning of time.
He knew me and He loved me when I didn't want to have anything to do with Him.
I didn't want to be a Christian.
That's the last thing I wanted to do.
But He did chase me down.
He really did.
(07:37):
There's a place in the book where I kind of share my testimony.
I was playing with some fabulous musicians.
Bill Maxwell, who was Andre Crouch's producer and drummer.
Hedley Hawkinsmith, great guitar player who played with Neil Diamond for 35 years.
And a keyboard player named Harlan Rogers was just an amazing player.
(07:58):
And we had a good band.
We thought we were bound for stardom in the early 70s.
What happened was, these guys became Christians.
It seemed like almost overnight, but it wasn't.
God was pursuing them.
He was pursuing me in a kind of a crazy way, but I would have none of it.
You know, that's not for me, okay?
(08:18):
If I become a Christian, I can't play jazz.
Everyone knows that.
I don't know how I got that idea in my head.
One night, we were in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I had a bunch of drug paraphernalia with me.
Bill Maxwell, this great drummer, producer with the band Coenonia.
I don't know if you remember that band with Dave Laboriel and Alex Acuna and Uso Amarillo and Hadley and Dean Parsh.
(08:42):
He wasn't with the band, but he came back to the band just to get me saved.
So we went in his car on our breaks from this club gig and he was reading the Bible to me.
Something was happening.
You know, God is always at work.
He never stops working.
He doesn't care about our excuses or whether we say, I don't want you.
(09:05):
When people are praying for you, God's going to respond to that.
Later on that night, about three in the morning, I got on my knees and I did pray some sort of a sinner's prayer, not knowing what I was really saying.
And there was a battle going on inside my head.
You know, Satan saying, you don't want this.
This is going to ruin your life.
(09:26):
What about all your friends?
Yeah, my friends that don't care about me.
And God's saying, you know, this is right.
And I was a drug addict.
I tell people, I started out being a trumpet player who uses drugs.
And then I became a drug addict who played a little bit of music.
And I took every kind of drug there was.
And so I got on my knees about three in the morning and accepted the Lord.
(09:48):
And the next day, I had a big sore on my big toe.
There was no scab on it yet.
So Bill Maxwell said, well, you know, you can pray and God will heal you.
Oh, really?
Okay.
So I was a bit naive of all this.
I didn't know anything.
I knew God had changed my heart.
I knew that because I had gone in and flushed all my drug paraphernalia down the toilet, including a bunch of marijuana.
(10:16):
And don't let anybody tell you that marijuana is not addictive.
It's a terrible drug.
So Bill laid hands on my foot and prayed.
And I had this big pussy sore in my big toe.
And in a matter of about 30 seconds, it got hard and scabbed over.
And I was amazed.
I was like, what?
And then he said, well, you know, you can also be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues.
(10:37):
And I said, okay, I don't know what that means, but he said, you'll like it.
It's good.
And I did speak in tongues immediately.
And a week before all this happened, the Lord really appeared to me and we were playing this other club in another city.
I fried my big toe because that's what got healed.
And the Lord said, stop taking drugs and start reading the Bible.
(10:57):
I heard this voice out loud inside me.
And I told the guys in the next room and they were like, oh man, you are delirious, man.
You know, no, man, this is real.
So I came home.
This is before I got saved.
We got out the family Bible, my wife and I, we had a little six week old baby and we started to read it and I couldn't make heads or tails.
So I said, I was hilarious.
(11:18):
But then the next week at this club with Bill Maxwell, when I accepted the Lord, the word of God came alive to me for the first time in my life.
It was like I was reading the word of God all the time, praying in the spirit.
I could hardly sleep.
This was October of 1971.
We quit playing clubs and we took our little four piece band.
(11:41):
We had a six piece band.
The other two guys didn't want to have anything to do with it.
So we started playing a little storefront church in Oklahoma city.
We were the house band and we started to write our own songs.
And then this guy, Andre Crouch, and the disciples, they came through town in their little minivan and we met him and played for him.
(12:03):
I mean, we were good players.
We didn't know anything about Jesus, especially me.
We were in this little storefront church every night for about six weeks.
My wife and I and our little baby, Gabriel, learning what does it mean to be a follower of Christ?
And that changed my life.
Tell me about those years of playing with Andre Crouch.
(12:24):
He certainly has left an amazing legacy of music and certainly touched many lives.
When was it that he said, Hey, look, I want you guys, as you say, you're decent players.
I want you guys to be a part of what I'm doing.
We're there in Oklahoma city, this Jesus movement, this Jesus revival revolution started to happen around the world.
(12:47):
That was what happened to me.
I mean, again, people outside the church that had nothing to do with the church were getting saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and delivered and set free.
There was freedom.
I think some of us had a hard time finding a church that would accept us because we were long-haired hippies.
God delivered me from drugs instantly.
(13:09):
That was a miracle.
That was in October of 1971.
In 1972, we kept playing in this little church and somebody gave us some money to go out to Santa Ana, California.
We met Andre out there, but we were also playing a tent revival with a guy named R.W. Schambach, Pentecostal preacher.
(13:29):
We couldn't have been more different.
He was an old time Pentecostal pastor, great guy, loved the Lord, full of the Holy Spirit.
But he used to tell the crowd, he said, now folks, these guys are going to close their eyes and that's okay because that's how they worship God.
And so we play our little set, but we play for Andre out there.
(13:49):
He got to know us a little bit more.
But it wasn't until, do you remember Explo 72?
You remember hearing about that?
Yeah.
It was an interesting and amazing event that happened in Dallas in July of 1972 that Campus Crusade put on.
They booked out for four nights the Cotton Bowl, which was where the Dallas Cowboys played football.
(14:13):
80,000 people were in there every night.
And during the day, they'd go out in the neighborhoods and witness the people.
And then on Saturday, they had this huge event called Explo 72 with about 200,000 people.
And Johnny Cash was there.
We became the backup band for anybody that needed a backup band.
(14:33):
I don't know how they knew about us.
It was just the Lord.
Andre played, Chris Christopherson played, a bunch of other Christian groups that were just getting formed then.
I mean, it was kind of the wild west of Christian music.
Nobody knew what they were doing, but God was moving on people to write original music.
So again, he said, Hey, I want you to be my band.
(14:56):
This was in July of 72.
In August, he called Bill and Hadley and said, I'm playing the Tonight Show, which was a huge TV show.
His first time to do that.
So we came out there and played that and then became his band later in August of 1972.
And I was with him until January of actually 1976.
(15:17):
So only three and a half years.
It was an amazing time.
I got to arrange Take Me Back, a wonderful record that won a Grammy.
I'll not say that I knew what I was doing because I didn't, but I'm one of those guys, when God presents something to you, you say yes, and then you figure out later how to do it.
It's a lot easier when you have great LA studio musicians that you're writing these charts for, you know, they make you look good.
(15:41):
Andre was a wonderful guy, very generous with his praise and helping us.
It was really how I learned to serve the Lord.
I think about every six months, the Holy Spirit would sweep through and if we had any things against people or anything, he would deal with us on a very personal level.
We'd have to repent.
Okay, I'm sorry I said that.
(16:02):
It was a really great four years being with him and all those wonderful people, his twin sister Sandra, Daddy Bill Hall, Billy Thetford, and Bill Maxwell, just a host of great musicians that we got to meet and play with and tour twice in Australia and New Zealand.
You mentioned there those early days of what became Christian music, of popular Christian music, and it's bands coming together, not really knowing what they're doing, but saying, hey, look, there's a story we need to tell.
(16:32):
When you contrast that with the very slick production and the very business-like contemporary Christian music of these days, do you feel we've lost something or have we moved on to professionalizing and are we in a better place?
Yeah, that's a great question because I think we're in a good place now.
I think we made a lot of mistakes back then in the 70s and 80s, but we kept plowing ahead and trying to serve the Lord through writing music and creating new elements.
(17:01):
I'm an instrumentalist.
I'm a jazz player.
I'm not going to sing and you don't want to hear me sing, but I've done a bunch of records, and it's been a blessing to be able to do that in the style that I'm comfortable with.
I think if there's a critique I have of where we are now, pastors love to follow contemporary Christian music radio, and they like to play those songs, so we have a bit of a narrower playlist maybe.
(17:27):
I think the guys are healthy.
I think spiritually and morally the songs are good.
I like where we're at.
You moved on from playing with Andre and from being that backing muso to looking more at your own style of music and producing your own kind of music in various ways.
(17:50):
Where did that take you?
What sort of projects did you pick up at that stage?
Yeah, that was right after I left Andre.
In fact, in 1975 when we were in Sydney and we had a morning meeting at the hotel in a room with a bunch of Christian musicians.
Russell Frager, you know that name?
Yeah.
He's a good friend of mine.
He's here in the States now, and they were asking me, what does the Bible say about music?
(18:15):
I had no idea.
We were sort of at a place where the musicians came on and played.
When you're in an Andre Crouch concert, in two and a half hours you heard the gospel.
You heard a presentation of the gospel, and it was wonderful, but a lot of times it was more we played for 30 or 40 minutes and then someone preached, so we were kind of the icing on the cake.
(18:41):
So I had to come back, and in 1979 I wrote a little treat that's called Biblical Concepts in Music.
There were these Australian Christian music seminars in Kuma.
People would come down there.
Mary McGuire and I did one year.
Ken Miedema and I did one year in Kuma and also Adelaide, and then they have a bunch of different musicians, and then they do their own thing, and then the Lord moved mightily.
(19:09):
I have an affinity for Australia and what God did there.
But in 1976, when I left Andre, I did a record called Ballad for God.
I used some of the guys that got in there, Bill Maxwell, Harlow Rogers, Hadley, Dean Parks, great guitar player still in LA.
I did a couple more records that Abe Abraham Laboreal played on, Alex Acuna, original jazz records, Christian jazz records, and people say, how do you know they're Christian?
(19:36):
I wrote them, okay?
And I love the Lord, and I do.
That's kind of how I got started doing that thing of Christian instrumental jazz.
And in those early days, you didn't really know whether jazz was going to be accepted in the church.
Are there still some forms of music that you find people think, oh no, that couldn't possibly be used of God, and you're thinking, no, God can use whatever he chooses?
(20:04):
God is a redeeming God.
I find that all forms of music are sort of amoral in the sense that even jazz, which is a very derogatory word early on, can be used because the basis of jazz is improvisation, playing the spirit.
Blues could be used, you know, the lament of God, lamentations.
(20:25):
Probably half the psalms are lamenting psalms.
Classical music's kind of majestic.
John the Baptist probably would have been a rock and roll singer, because he was emphatic in his use of the gospel.
I believe every style can be used of God to glorify him.
Old Testament is ripe with deliverance through music, the prophetic in music.
(20:46):
David sort of set up a government of music through three guys, Heman, Asaph, and Jejuthon, and he commanded them to prophesy.
And I believe those are still valid and vital, even though they're Old Testament scriptures for us today.
We know that music touches us somewhere deep inside.
It has a connection that sometimes even just bypasses the mind and goes directly to the soul.
(21:10):
With that in mind, how important is it that we check ourselves with the sorts of music that we listen to?
We know that there's some great secular music, but we also know that there are other forms of secular music that if they're going direct to our soul, we could be in trouble.
How do we check ourselves against, you know, what should we listen to, and what shouldn't we?
(21:31):
Petey Right.
Well, that's a great question, because I think most worship music is great to listen to.
I don't think there's anything there that is offensive to God, but you need to be careful.
Watch what you listen to, what you watch on TV, movies, anything that enters into you via your senses, be it a book, a podcast, a movie, a TV show, music.
(21:57):
Especially now, there's some stuff going on in the spirit world that is very real and very, very bad for us.
And I think as Christians, we will know, and the thing we could do is turn it off immediately.
And if we don't know what it is, maybe do a little research and find out, just so you have a healthy relationship with media.
(22:18):
Media is great.
It's like the internet.
The internet is great if you use it correctly, but it can really drag you down and wound your heart.
So, the Bible says to guard your heart above all else.
We need to take that to heart and to our minds and make sure we do that.
Peter We've mentioned that you have had a very long career in music and done some amazing things.
(22:42):
When you look back across that career, what are perhaps one or two things that you've done in that music world that you look back with the greatest fondness?
Wow.
Oh, that's hard.
I think going to Australia and New Zealand and the Polynesian islands, Tonga, Fiji, American, and Western Samoa in 1973 was just a seminal trip for us.
(23:07):
We were with an assembly of God missionary, Sam Sasser.
He really had an effect on me.
Just his testimony and who he was, and I got to meet a bunch of other missionaries and island people that loved him and venerated him for good reason.
We did a concert, I think in 2003 in Hawaii.
(23:28):
There's a great church in Honolulu called New Hope, and it was with Abe and Alex Acuna, Bill Maxwell, and a keyboard player named Greg Matheson, who was Faith Hill's keyboard player, and a bunch of other people, this amazing musician, and playing my music.
It was Fletch Wiley and Friends.
It was a wonderful evening of the Holy Spirit moving and using what I wrote to minister to people.
(23:56):
You can't beat that.
In the 90s, late 90s, I was at a vineyard church in Houston, and I went to Istanbul four times.
That was a wonderful time.
And then, I have to say, the last six or seven years, my wife and I have been traveling together.
We've been to 13 countries in six years to do music, play on the street.
(24:17):
First trip was nine weeks, and my wife says, nine weeks and two days, don't forget those.
She says, don't ever do that again.
The first six weeks were in Turkey, Egypt, and Albania, playing on the street.
And in Turkey, you don't ask permission.
You just show up, and hopefully, they don't bust your chops.
But two places, they took our passports, but we got them back, so we're still alive.
(24:40):
That was 2019.
And then, Nigeria, South Africa.
The Lord is so good.
Bulgaria, France.
A year ago, too, we were in India.
I was teaching at a Bible college for a week there, also at a YWAM base in Bangalore with a fellow named Benny Prasad that you should have on your program.
Do you know Benny?
(25:01):
Have you heard of his name?
Tom Clougherty Yes.
I interviewed him on the radio when he was in Perth quite some years ago.
Yeah.
Well, he's built this 400-seat coffee house in Bangalore, which is kind of their high-tech capital of India, which they have several, I guess.
So, I was there with him for about five days after that Bible college.
(25:21):
We're still having fun.
I love musicians.
There's a lot of pressure on Christian musicians these days to be really great musicians.
Well, these guys are mostly volunteer.
I always try to encourage them and teach them and help them.
I'm an arranger and a musician.
I've got a degree in trumpet, and I went to Yale for about 10 minutes.
(25:45):
So, that five bucks will get you a cup of coffee in most places.
Fletch, you did touch on the fact that it really does something for you to see people who are blessed by the music that you play, and I'm sure that over your career, there have been times when people have mentioned to you how God has used your music in their lives.
(26:07):
Is that something that's empowering or encouraging for you?
It is.
In fact, just this last weekend, we went back to Houston.
We live in Austin, Texas, which is a big music city here in the United States.
We went back to Houston, Texas to the 50th anniversary of our church there, and it was a wonderful church.
(26:28):
Lots of great dance with the Houston Ballet, people who were Christians, musicians.
We did three records for Star Song Records.
I don't know if you remember that label.
We had actors from a professional dance troupe.
Saturday night, we did a worship concert for two hours, and I got to be able to play, and it's the most wonderful thing to use the gifts God has given you to worship Him, and it was powerful worship.
(26:56):
That is probably my highlight.
I've got a big band concert Tuesday night.
I play with a jazz group here in Austin, but to worship with your gifts, man, I love that, and the Lord allows me to do that.
That never gets old.
Traveling around the world and going to places where maybe the musicians aren't up to speed, but you know where that is?
(27:21):
That's in Europe.
In Africa, the musicians are unbelievable all over Africa.
I've only been to Nigeria and Egypt and six times to South Africa, but the musicians in South Africa and Nigeria are unbelievable.
They're Christian musicians.
In Europe, they need to step up to the plate a little bit, if you know what I mean.
(27:45):
They need to practice, okay?
God is moving all around the world, and that's the fun thing about being able to travel.
I love to travel.
It kind of worries on my life, but we'll do it as long as we can.
Fletch, I have your website on the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you, but I've got to say, this has been a wonderful conversation.
(28:08):
I just wish it could go on for several hours more because there's so much, but I just want to thank you for the things that you've done, for the way that you have blessed people through your music, and a huge thank you for spending some time with us today on Bleeding Daylight.
It's been wonderful.
Well, hope to do it again, Ronnie.
God bless you and bless your audience, and just follow the Lord, whatever you do.
(28:33):
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.