Someone asked: What can I expect from your new EP? So, I thought it might be a good opportunity to blog about the songs on the new EP, their inspiration and production.
First: the inspiration. Song are weird, sometimes you sit down to write and nothing very compelling comes out, other times the words just seem to flow out of no where, but there is a common thread through five of the six songs for sure…that being “identity.”
In modern society we hear a lot about identity theft. But, last year I spent a lot of time thinking about our identity as followers of Christ: What it truly is and how it is often distorted. John 10:10 tells us, The thief comes to kill, steal and destroy, but that Jesus came that we might have a full and abundant life. There’s little more personal or as devastating which can be stolen than one’s identity and our enemy has been doing this since Adam and Eve first fell for his trickery. Ever since, mankind has been prone to believe lies, whether they are fed by our own insecurities, fueled by cutting words, or simply tainted opinions blaring from our media, echoing through academia, parroted by peers, all of these and more are used to skew our understanding of what it means to be a “child of God.” (John 1:12, Romans 8:16, 1 John 3:1) It is this stream of thought which went into five of the six new songs.
For this EP we worked with producer Stephen Gause at Invertigo Studios in Nashville. I love what he did with the songs, they are full and yet at the same time a little more stripped down that what we’ve done in the past. Which means they are a little more consistent with our live shows. drums bass, keys, guitars, banjo and (since he hadn’t yet picked it up from the studio) even Andrew Peterson’s bazooka are all the instrumentation.
Stephen has production and engineering credits on many great albums from artists such as Laura Story, Downhere, Jeremy Casella among them.
Two of the six songs are fronted by Kaylyn and Maggie.
“All In” is a song about full commitment and speaks about clinging to the truth in a world that tells us “you have your truth and I have mine.” This song will also be our first music video, which I am excited to get out as well.
The other song fronted by the girls is a song called “Completely Yours.” This is song which came out of a prayer of surrender, some of the lyrics say “I just want to live my life to learn to love You more, I want to be completely Yours.”
The other songs include:
“Song of Hope” which is a song of affirmation. I tried to write this in a way which was very singable and engaging and as a reminder that we are God’s children. We have already added this to our concert set and it’s been received very well! We have a blast every time we sing this, with its hand-clapping tempo and fun harmonies.
“Broken Places” was a song I co-wrote with Stephen. I had a song mostly finished called Beyond t the Brokenness, which was written after watching two couples we were close with divorce. Stephen had recently written a chorus which says in part “There is hope in the broken places” he suggested combining our ideas and what came out of it is an honest song about God’s amazing ability to redeem our pain and in it’s place provide hope. We have a heart for families and so I am hoping this song will encourage our listeners to surrender their “broken places” to God.
“You Are God” is a rare song for me in that I wrote the music first. I was just noodling around on my open C tuned guitar one night and came up with the melody. At the time I had been thinking about how I am thankful that the Bible did not just preserve the great victories of our heroes, but also their humanness. One of the lines says: “Sometimes I’m like Peter quick to draw my sword only to deny You before the dawn.” The lyric really comes from looking back on my struggle to try to work hard enough to earn God’s love, and the trap that comes with that mindset.
“Creation’s Song” was the last song written for this project. It’s funny where inspiration comes from. A friend had asked me to write a song for a worship project he was doing. I wrote one on the guitar and one on the piano. I thought sure he would like to piano song better, but I thought wrong. So, I sent the piano song to Stephen. He liked the music but wanted me to write new words. I was coming up blank, so he suggested I listen to Rich Mullin’s The Color Green several times and think about his use of story and metaphor. A few days later I woke up dreaming the words “Like a single drop of water falling from the great Niagara is this simple song of praise amid creations majesty.” That line was tweaked a bit, but as I got up and started writing most of the lyric came quickly.
Over the years, I have been blessed to have worked with many great producers, Michael Aukofer, Jeremy Casella and Andy Osenga, they stretched me and grew me in many ways, now it is Stephen’s turn and I love what we love what he was able to do. I am so excited for what Stephen has done so far and can’t wait for you to hear it!
If you would like to pre-order or help fund the EP feel free to visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomfrye/reclamation-0
