by David Dodd

You come from a very strong musical background; you started playing the drums when you were 5.

Yeah, I did. My mom taught me how to play the drums and my dad was a band director.  He’s retired now, but he was the band director for me and my brother when we were in school.

My mom played drums and her dad played drums, and her brother played drums.

My dad’s sisters both sing and play piano, so everybody played, all of my cousins too.  Musically, it’s just the in-laws that aren’t.

It’s pretty funny when we all get together because you can tell the sides of the family. 

You see who’s singing in tune and who’s singing out of tune. 

Yeah, that’s right, One of them is a preacher so he doesn’t have any rhythm at all.  

One of the great things about your music is there’s this compelling mix and diversity of strings.  Did those classical arrangements and that influence come from your music theory classes in college?  

Directly from that, yeah.  When I first went to college, I majored in music education with a minor in percussion because I had been playing drums.  There were group piano class and the instructor asked me if I would start giving private lessons, and so I switched my minor over to piano and started playing classical music.  But I’ve always had the desire to listen to classical music and movie soundtracks.  Over the years I’ve taken classical music more seriously. 

And you start the record off with a classical piece. 

Yeah, It’s pretty cool how that came about.  We were just starting to record the bass tracks in the studio and I was sitting in the other room just playing through some of the pieces that I had written, not really thinking of putting them on the record, and the producer asked me, ‘Man, what is that?’ and I was like, ‘it’s just stuff that I had written,’ and he said, ‘Man, that has to be on the record!’ 

One song that really stands out is How Have We Come This Far. 

I wrote the music and our bass player Matt wrote the lyrics.  It’s really about a personal journey of his relationship with God.  When he struggled with sin and temptation, he just looked back and thought how have I come this far away from God.

One of the coolest lines on the record is the bridge where it says:    

Those lyrics were so encouraging, knowing that God’s Grace always covers our sin and it’s only that such a loving God can do that. 

I find it interesting how you made your commitment to Christ.  Like many people, you gave your life to the Lord at an early age, but as you grew older, you wanted to become even closer.  You wanted that moment of surrendering and commitment to have deeper meaning.  

When I was 8, I had an experience at church when they asked, ‘Do you want to be a Christian?’ and I walked down the aisle. 

Later on in my teen years, I looked back on that and I know that God can save someone at the age of 8 or younger, I’ve heard of people who have given their lives over to God when they were even younger and kept that strong faith, but for me it just felt like the only reason I did it was my brother did it and my friends did it.

So one night I was in my room all by myself and I really started thinking about it and I felt I really didn’t have Jesus in my heart.  I got really nervous and scared so I just hit the floor in my room, I can’t remember exactly how old I was but the memory is very distinct in my mind, just crying out for God and asking Jesus to not only save me, but to be my Lord and my Savior for the rest of my life.

He’s definitely held to His promise, that’s one of the biggest things that I’ve learned after that experience because when I got to college, just trusting His Word made a huge impact in my life.  Sometimes mountains will come and doubts will rise up and the only thing you can do is cry out to God and trust in His Word, that’s all you can do. 

And I think your song Praise and Adore (Some Live Without It) reflects that and also exposes the fact that many people in this world live without Christ in their lives. 

I sat down and I wasn’t even trying to write a song, I was just writing spontaneous worship to God and this is what just came out. 

I was talking about how beautiful God’s nature is and how He created the world then the words some live without it just rolled off my tongue and I thought man, that totally changes the whole meaning of the song. 

I didn’t know if I wanted to go in that direction or not, but the more I sat down thinking about the song, the more I felt that was the direction God was leading me because now the song was not just a praise and worship song, it’s more of like a call to not think about yourself for a little bit and to think about others who don’t have the hope that we have in Christ and to do something about it - to love them - and hopefully we can show that love.