Greater Things
A podcast about how faith fits with your everyday life. Matt interviews various speakers from around the globe and invites them to share their own experiences. For those who are asking big questions around faith, religion, church, and life.
https://www.greaterthingsinternational.com
Greater Things
From Atheist to Storyteller: Reclaiming Childlike Creativity, with Chris Falson
What happens when we strip away expectations and discover our authentic creative voice? Chris Folson's journey from atheist child to influential worship songwriter reveals powerful truths about creativity, faith, and finding your unique expression in a world that demands conformity.
Growing up with entertainer parents, Chris absorbed creativity through osmosis while his grandfather's encouragement to question everything paradoxically led him toward faith. This fascinating background shaped Chris into a storyteller who views art as a vehicle for mystery rather than a platform for answers—much like the parables Jesus told that confused even his closest followers.
Chris shares a startling NASA study revealing that while 98% of children aged 3-5 have creative genius potential, only 2% retain it by age 18. Through education and religious systems that value conformity over curiosity, we systematically unlearn our natural creative abilities. The revelation is both heartbreaking and hopeful: what if we could reclaim this lost creative innocence?
The conversation takes a compelling turn when Chris describes discovering his authentic voice after years of professional musicianship. After being constantly instructed to "play like" famous guitarists, his role as a church music director ironically freed him to develop his own style. "In God's presence," he reflects, "I forgot who I was supposed to be and I became who I really was." This moment became a cornerstone of his artistic philosophy and coaching approach.
For creators struggling with self-doubt, Chris offers this liberating perspective: "The world doesn't need another love song, but what the world needs is your love song." By embracing your unique viewpoint and releasing the need to be clever or successful, authentic expression emerges. Ready to rediscover your creative voice? This conversation might be the permission slip you've been waiting for.
www.greaterthingsinternational.com
In this episode of the Greater Things Podcast, I'm with a brand new guest. His name is Chris Folson. He is a singer, songwriter, author, music producer, an all-round awesome guy. I pray that this is a real blessing to you.
Speaker 1:Well, today on the Greater Things Podcast, I'm with a brand new friend that I've known about for a long time and recently been put in connection with. His name is Chris Folson. He is a singer, songwriter, producer. He has done many, many things, and if you have a look at his website, which I will link to this podcast, you will see all the very things that he has done, been a part of and doing. But to me, he is a guy who wrote albums back in the 90s that actually shifted my spirit. It changed the way that I interacted with God. One song in particular, called Throne Room, was one that changed my world forever and allowed me to connect with God from a presence point of view. To this very day, I can still hear the song in my head, mate, and I just want to say thank you for all of that, but that song in particular.
Speaker 2:A pleasure. I wonder who liked that song. There you go, Liz. I found someone. Just kidding.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, back when I was much younger and I was looking for music to worship to and you did the brilliant thing of putting your music online where we could actually download a copy of it and play it, and because I have to have a piece of paper in front of me to play music and all that sort of stuff, this was like a gift from heaven that I could put to memory the song of Throne Room.
Speaker 2:So thank you my pleasure.
Speaker 1:Anyway, this conversation, all of the conversations I have with this podcast, start with the place of who is the guest that I'm sitting with. So, Chris, I know that I've already given you that thought bubble, but everything past that is something we get to be creative and to think around and we've already, before we started recording, talked a lot about creativity and I'm really excited to have the listeners hearing what's going on inside your spirit. But do you mind just starting off with who is Chris Folson?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, this is a great question. It's like I hate boxes. So, you know, when I say who am I? I am, I am, I am, I make the joke, you know. And I say who am I? I am, I am, I am, I make the joke, you know. Therefore, I am, but I'm a storyteller. I think of anything else. That's why I'm a storyteller. I wake up in the morning with a story in my head or a song idea or some solution to something I'm doing. I think that's how I think of myself and the output of a song or a story or a lesson or a concert or something that's just coming out of the storyteller person. And you know to think about how God.
Speaker 2:I was raised as an atheist and there's some real positive aspects about that. You're a pastor's kid, so you're the exact opposite. Years ago we became friends at Rodney Howard Brown and we were comparing notes and our lives were nothing like each other, and so he was raised you know, a little kid in a church, maybe like you were, and you know his parents were preaching at camp meetings and he's asleep on the thing. And I said, oh yeah, I was asleep in the bar when my parents were playing in the clubs Slight exaggeration, but it's not unlike that in a sense. So, being raised by entertainers, both my parents were entertainers. My grandparents on my mother's side were entertainers. And what was normal? That's the thing about what was normal as a kid, you know, and I remember going to school, age six or something. The school was across the road.
Speaker 2:I lived in San Susie back then on the south side, and you know the teacher comes around and asks everybody what their dad did. It's a very the world's changed. Right, they wouldn't do that now. But you know, my dad's a builder and my dad's a fireman and my dad's a whatever and my dad's a musician, I said, and no one knew what that was. And then one kid thought I said magician, and they got very excited that my father was a magician and then the teacher had to pour, you know, water on that and said no, he's a musician, explain what it was. It was like how boring, how dull.
Speaker 2:I grew up in this way that, um, everybody that visited my house for a long time I mean my father would be writing music. He worked on the tv shows back then, which was was, I mean the Today Show or the whatever, you know Ray Martin or Mike Walsh or whatever, and so people like Little Patty or Johnny Farnham or Don Lane or these people at our house all the time, my father, that was kind of a normal thing. So in a funny way, without ever being told it, just by being inside it, I was given permission to be a creative person, and so that's kind of, I think, where I was. And then the atheist thing is interesting to me about, because my grandfather was an atheist also, but he was the one that encouraged me and my brother and sister to ask questions all the time, which got us in a lot of trouble. It got me caned at school, an awful lot in questions. But that's I think you know.
Speaker 2:We talked before about the wisdom, or seeking, searching for wisdom. Is that, I think those two areas, my parents being entertainers and just seeing my father write music, so he wrote scores and he would actually sit down and, just like the movie Amadeus with Mozart, he would tune. So I was taught to do that as well, to write without your guitar or your piano next to you. And I still do that. I've got a melody, I write it out, you know, by habit, and so that's that side, and then my grandfather's side, which is the seeking of wisdom, was actually how I got saved, because I was walking up and down. I'd walk to the football. I love walking and dreaming. I still do. That's also a spectrum thing. So I don't like being with people. I've talked to myself. So I'd walk for hours and then I started noticing nature with a different perspective because I was taught to ask questions. I started asking questions hang on a second, you know, touching leaves and touching trees, the bark on the gum tree or the bottle brush or something, and I started thinking somebody did this, somebody made that. It's the starting of a journey. So I think that's what I am. I'm a storyteller and I'm a seeker and everything that comes out of me, it comes out of this inquisitive thing and a big push for creativity we talked before about the kingdom of God is that I recently did a I'm writing this book on creativity, maybe if I finish it, but in the research going online, I found this study by NASA. I'm knowing I'm going off but I'll come back to Earth in a minute.
Speaker 2:But in the 1960s the Russians beat the Americans to you know Sputnik. They panicked, nasa panicked and they said well, we've got to have a long game here. We need to find more creative geniuses. So they had this study and they did this thing with kids. They said let's start with children. So between three and five they measured the creativity of 1,600 children of all different backgrounds, colour and everything. They found out that 98% of those kids had the potential to be a creative genius, but by the time they were 18, only 2%. Wow, they came down towards and curiosity was knocked out of them through school.
Speaker 2:I'll encourage the past. Tests and churches are worse, probably in this way Listen to the Bible says this and da-da-da-da-da, and I'm preaching and you should listen and you should thank me afterwards, kind of thing. And Jesus was the exact opposite. He told stories that no one understood around him and he knew that and he loved doing it, which, I must admit, I like that part of it coming up with something that maybe not everybody understands. So, if that makes sense, it's a complicated way, but that's how I view myself.
Speaker 2:I don't think of myself as a guitar player or a musician or a songwriter. I am all those things. I'm really a storyteller and a seeker and I remember the song the U2 song came out and at the time I didn't understand it. Again, it's a bit like a parable I still haven't found what I'm looking for and at the time I'm thinking, well, what do you mean? I was leading worship in a church and surely they have found it. And then I can really, you know, relate to that. Now I'm always looking and if God, if we can put God even in the Bible, if we can put him in the Bible, he's not a really big God, he's extremely mysterious and I love the fact that he's mysterious and that gives me I can be mysterious too. People don't have to understand. So, yeah, that's the joy.
Speaker 2:And I think working here in LA for 32 years now this week I think it is and I got to work on lots of different little films and TV shows and all the people on those people, they're storytellers and that's what's cherished. Hollywood has a lot of other things, but the actual making of things is for storytellers and that's what's cherished. Hollywood has a lot of other things, but the actual making of things is for storytellers, and if the church could understand that and be storytellers, they'd reach way more people and more people would understand or be drawn to the mystery and God's love. But they don't they like telling people what to do, which is what they were taught in school and college, and I think sometimes we read in the same book, because the four Gospels is basically a storyteller confusing the people around him, hoping they seek. So there you go. There's my long-winded answer about who I am.
Speaker 1:There's so much in that mate that I want to get curious around myself. Like I was talking with a primary school teacher um a few weeks ago and she said the problem with education in australia is that we we teach kids what to learn, not how to learn. And I thought, yeah, that's not just school, that's also church. So the what becomes more important than the how or the why and the curiosity for me of the kingdom is not in. Like cs lewis once said, if one person can actually articulate everything of god, then I could be god myself, sort of thing. That was a very butchered version of cs lewis's brilliant quote, but these are the sorts of concepts for me that you know how.
Speaker 1:The Bible says that all things new. Well, even those phrases around the idea of kids being 98% creative genius, like look at the kids that we have today. When they're young, the fear of failure is not there. By the time they get to 18, they're going. Is it good enough? Now, what would it look like if we let go of that phrase and allowed them to be the creative, Like you say, the geniuses they are in all the areas that they want to be creative in. And, like we said before we got on record the idea of creator and creative. These things are intricately whatever that word is linked. For me it's a non-negotiable, but I've found over time in church it's been separated rather than embraced or rejoiced over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have to. I think you know our role, each of us, anybody watching this or listening, whatever that's. Our role is to make the change and instead of I mean, I carry, like I said, I carried a bit of a bitterness or anger about the church and I started starting churches outside the mainstream. I've started in pubs in here and twice, and then Switzerland and New Zealand and different places, and it's only really to reach people who wouldn't come to normal things. But when you do that, you actually have to come up with a whole new blueprint, because there's a pub and there's a bar at the back and people can smoke and then, okay, that changes. What church does that? But there's a fun thing about the journey, I think, when we're always doing oh, I've got a sort of joke on this, you know is that if every church service starts the same way think how many churches there are in Australia, I don't know, but there's 300-something thousand here in the US and pretty much 99% of them hey, start with a fast song. The second song, they have the announcements. You can actually kind of roadmap and there's nothing creative about that. Yeah, a creative thing would be like I don't know what are we going to do this week? How are we going to do it? And and there's. So I live in that kind of world and I enjoy that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:I, on chat gbt, I, I use it for a search all the time, but also tease it, so I try to get it saved. I shared my testimony with chat gbt and it came back. It says oh, what a um. Well, I can't think. What is it very, very romantic view of life. It basically sort of said to me um so, but I continue, I still still try to preach to it but the um, the notion of creativity. So I asked chat gbt said I'm trying to think of a term for a creative team in a church. It could be anywhere, but church is my market. That is doing the same thing every week, so it's not being creative. What would you call that? And it came back with 10, but the best one was the copy-paste collective. Wow, brutal, right, but actually kind of how it is.
Speaker 2:And so, like with you, like your books um, I've not read them right, but I've just had a quick look at them and I started writing this book on creativity and I'm halfway through it and I'm having lunch with two authors. Right, this is a few years ago and I'm telling about this book and the national. They go, oh, wow, wow, wow. And I said what would be the best way to communicate this? And, as I say it, I go oh, I know what the answer is. I hate the answer. The answer is to tell stories. And they said, yeah, tell stories. I go, yeah, that's a lot of work. Um, and then that's the problem. It's a lot easier to write a how-to book and we give them things, but then to actually tell the stories which like a parable. I think so for my responsibility, I'm looking at the next season of songwriting and projects as a storytelling way to communicate what we're talking about and it'll reach who it reaches.
Speaker 2:But the deaf ears are already on the say, the bigger mega church pastors. They're already deaf to this anyway because they think, well, I wouldn't listen to me anyway unless you have a big church. Yeah, they're missing their point. So I don't see them as my target audience. And the bell curve is a great example because, let's say, there's Netflix and Amazon and Apple here and the interesting things are done down here, all the innovations, and it's also with people and so, like parents of young families, which would be great on this right, their target market of this conversation. And if they go, oh, yeah, yeah, if your kids are three to five or six, maybe you've got a chance to help them become a creative genius. Now, if they get older, you still can this, still, you can still go back, you can backpedal, but what you, what, what they could do if they turn 18 or 20 and they could be a creative genius, then we could change the world.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of this is my latest mission. You know, can I do that? It just starts with us. We start, and then my wife, my kids, whatever. Like my youngest son, james, I'm a grandchild now, so he really bought into this idea. So he's been before she was born. She's just turned two, but before she was born he would play Steely Dan, rachmaninoff, stravinsky, beethoven into the tummy, and every day in the house he plays all the different things to educate her brain, because that's part of the study that NASA did the more art and the more music and the more stories you can, even if they don't know what it is Anyway. So I've got one disciple. He's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's actually interesting because our youngest son, he, actually is a drummer for one of the churches over here at the moment and it's always been his dream to do that. And when he was in the womb my wife would play music to him and there was one moment where she said and when he was in the womb my wife would play music to him, and there was one moment where she said you can hear, you can feel Zach keeping beat to the rhythm even inside the womb. And now he's just turned 26 and he's drumming his heart out. He's actually a sound engineer as well and doing and living the best life in that sort of regard.
Speaker 1:Mate, I love the idea of storyteller, like as you've seen with my books the books two, three and four are all parable, written on major stories of the Old Testament, and the idea simply happened on a walk that my wife and I were on around our suburb. On my first book I said to Trish I said you know what? I reckon I need a parable and she's like, why, like what for? And I said I don't know, but I think Jesus taught this way and I think it's really cool how I can read like a parable of the sower and I can get different things from it every single time that I read it. I wonder if I could write this way and so much of the books that I've written so far in parable form. The younger generation so teenagers and down are engaging with the concept of the creativity and for this old guy it's brilliant to see young kids picking up that and just going. I want to be creative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I actually do have a collection of stories. I started doing the same thing. So I teach at a few little conferences and I said one day, you know, when Jesus told the parables, I said he made that stuff up and I got a breath. I went, oh, you know, and I said, well, that stuff up, and I got a breath. That went, you know, and I said, well, hang on, let's think about it. I went through each parable. You know, where did that come from? Show me in the Old Testament, where that is, you know, and so that's an opening of that's also a thought process most people don't ever think of. So I started writing Same as you.
Speaker 2:But I've got a book maybe I've got to go through it, but it's called the working title Short Stories, tall Stories, short Tales, or something like that Tall Tales, short Stories, because half of them are true and half of them are not true. But the ones that are the true ones are crazier than the non-true ones. You know, because we've played in Europe where I had this whole notion to take a worship band per se out into the club and just tour. So I did that for years in America and US and Europe and the stories and stories and stories, the things that happened in there are such amazing that when I've told them especially, like you know, a non-charismatic church person I tell them they go, oh, that could never happen. So if I put them in a book and say this could have happened or it couldn't happen, you decide it's easier. But yeah, I think stories are great. I mean, I'm working on a film, I'm working as part of a team on a film right now and the story behind the background of that is so amazing. I hope it comes out because it's been the funding stage. But that's the sort of thing as you go. Yeah, because it's a story of brokenness.
Speaker 2:And how do we do that and I think you know, maybe from a bullhorn kind of way is to stir up anybody out there who's a storyteller or anybody who's got a story. Think of a way how you could share that story or how you could do it. It could be a song, it could be a book, it could be a painting, it could be whatever it is, and it doesn't have to be anything that the world, as in the whole world, sees. Might just be your neighbour, that might be it, it might just be for you. You know I started painting for fun and I don't care if I get better or not. If you go on Bandcamp, on my Bandcamp site I've done three or four, you know, titles, pages of my covers of my songs and it's meant to be like a child. I like that. They're like a child, you know. So, yeah, that's that encouraging of other people, giving people permission to have fun with art.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wasn't it Picasso who said I spent my entire life learning to paint like a master, then the rest of my life to paint like a child?
Speaker 2:yeah, he says paint like ruben. He said I spent 20 years trying to paint like ruben and the rest of my life painting like a child. Yeah, yeah, he's someone, I think that I like I never understood him. As a young person I probably into my late 20s I think, ah, ah, that's crap, I'd say that's crap. And then I went to an art gallery and it was all that impressionist and everything, and I was determined to understand him and at the end I just wow, I really loved it.
Speaker 2:And I saw one painting I forget what it's called, but it's this strange angry lady on the beach and I go, oh, I know what it's called, but it's, it's this strange angry lady on the beach. And I go, oh, I know her. You know, it's like a narcissist kind of kind of character and so, yeah, I fell in love with that kind of that kind of art. That is hard to explain, you know, and I like songs that don't can't, can't explain them, or I do, I love actually or don't actually love it. But I get a lot of people write to me and tell me what my song's about and it's like, wow, I never thought of that, thank you.
Speaker 1:I always struggled in school where they said what did Shakespeare really mean by this? And I'm thinking did Shakespeare actually put all of this into his writing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, yeah, I know it's a thing of you know, yeah, trying to make things. That's the thing of art, good art. Well, my mother was an actress and she would say to me, like, about theatre? She would drag me to the theatre as a kid every weekend. I hated it until I was about 14. So I went from the age of eight every weekend, every second weekend, and I dragged along because I was childminding kind of thing, and I'd say, oh, this is terrible, I don't understand, it's so stupid. And then one day, whatever, I forget what the play was. But I'm in the back of the car and she's with another actress and I started saying, oh, that play was so stupid, I don't get it. And I started telling her what I don't get. And I started telling what I didn't get and the other actress said to my mother I think he's getting it. And she said to me yeah, if you understand, a theatre, a good art should make you think. It shouldn't give you answers, it should actually put questions in your head, which is again like Jesus he asked these parables, told the parables and nobody understood it.
Speaker 2:We have the hindsight of 2,000 years later to go. Oh, yeah, you know, we know what that means. But uh, yeah, I think that's the fun. I think you know little kids, you know that the mystery of children, I, I, I work hard. I guess I work hard and when I'm coaching I try to make people to think like a child.
Speaker 2:Yeah, child has fun, doesn't care about results or winning necessarily most kids and when we're jamming in the studio they're really really good musicians and I get to play with amazing ones here. But the really really good ones know how to get there real quickly. It's the mystery of the song finding it. They're not worried about it. It's a funny thing Often the best and most famous musicians in the studio aren't playing anything clever. So I hear this music come out of people from college, from Berkeley and stuff, and a lot of these modern jazz things come out and everything's fast. Little little little, little little little little. It's like, yeah, go in the studio with really good. They never do that, or it's just maybe at the end of something we've got there.
Speaker 1:It's all about creating an atmosphere together or something beautiful and anyway so yeah, yeah, you know, even when I am teaching like at the moment, I'm doing a course on dream interpretation, helping people get involved with their dreams, and one of the phrases I start with if we make this more complicated than a child can understand, we're too complicated, and so I really resonate that. Mate, if someone comes to you and says I want to write a song or I want to write a book, but who's going to listen to it? How do you respond to that phrase?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a good question and a lot of people have that in them. I'm actually doing some little one-off little courses. One is the. Of course, I'm going to put them on YouTube for free, but they're like creative block, right. And one of the things is the fear of that, like waste of time. Why should I do it? Or the parents. I never had that, so I never had the parents say to me you know, you don't do that, it's a waste of your life, but many people do.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing about it is, I mean, there's a guy, a famous songwriter I don't think of his name in a minute but he said, oh, the world doesn't need another love song. We've got plenty of those love songs, but what the world needs is your love song. It needs your story or your way of seeing it. And we could all like that. 20 people see a car accident and none of us saw the same car accident. So that's how that first thing I'd say I need I actually do need, I need you, matt, you know, like if you're going to write a book, I need your story of what's going on in the world right now and you'll see it differently. And that's the first thing. And the second thing is you're taking yourself way too seriously. If you think you know, why should I write this?
Speaker 2:A lot of people come to me. They say they want to be something. Maybe you're the same. I want to be a songwriter, but it's a romantic view. Writer, but it's a, it's a romantic view.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you're a songwriter, you're thinking of songs. You're waking up the morning. You've got a song. You know, you don't you? Probably you may have self-esteem issues or you might have that question, but you've got things in your head, and so I'm always encouraging people to gravitate to the thing. That's natural. So you know, if I throw a ball at someone and they and they catch it with their left hand, that's a good sign. They're left-handed, right, and so there's things like that. How do we do that? So that's why I always encourage people.
Speaker 2:But there's also people who, like one guy, came to me five years ago and you would say he was tone deaf if you heard him, if you sang next to him in church, tone deaf. And he sent me me some lyrics and they were like, they were pretty bad, you know. And so he said, can you help me write songs? And part of me was like do I really want to do this? Are you wasting your time? And he said I'll pay you. I was like, oh well, you pay me. Great. But what I learned with him and it changed the way I teach a lot of people is that I found or he I helped him find in him this little vein of creativity and the conversation, and the big hurdle for him was, yes, to tell his story without trying to be a writer, because that's where people get it wrong.
Speaker 2:They try to be clever and they're just messing it up. So it's the natural flow, so that's how I would say it, that's the quickest thing, is like fine, have fun. The world definitely needs. You know everybody's view on a song or something, especially when it comes from here. Not from here, it comes from the soul, it comes from your heart.
Speaker 2:I like to like, right now we're all around the world, we've got you just had an election and and we, you know, got the whole world's in turmoil and there's left and right, there's pro this and pro that or whatever, and as an artist, I my, I feel, feel my job here is to is to help people find the soul of the situation, not the, not the black and whiteness of it, because and also I think probably, I mean every artist is different.
Speaker 2:There'll be artists who are protesting, but dylan he created change with, who helped create songs to me. I'm a peacemaker, even though I might have an opinion about some thing that's going on in politics, whatever, but I'm going to be careful because some it's just an opinion and it's just from my head, but my soul and my heart are much better at writing songs about the brokenness, or the throne room, let's say, or whatever. So that's something I work at, and if I'm coaching or encouraging a room full of creatives, I'll point that out as well. Unless you're on the earth to shake your fist at injustice, your job always is to do the same thing in some fashion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that answer. The idea behind your voice, I think, is a very unique conversation which, again, I don't think churches have done that brilliantly well, because normally it's usually one person telling people who they are or what they are, but the voice inside of a person it's usually one person telling people who they are or what they are, but the voice inside of a person it's. One of the things I'm really passionate about is releasing it, or listening to the story that flows from the depth of the voice. And now, when I wrote my first book, I was sort of giving it away to friends to say, can you read this and just help me if I am? And like all this, concepts and feedback were coming back, but there was a challenge inside of it to lose my voice, to sound like other Christian writers or to sound like other writers.
Speaker 1:And I knew at the time, but I didn't understand it was there's a warring within me as to why do I want to change? And some things needed to be changed because, hey, english was not my strong suit, but inside of it my voice was starting to form. Now I've got four books under my belt. I feel like I'm just beginning to properly understand the idea of my voice, and I know I've got a long way to go, but this one revelation of discovering your own voice, I think is it's one of those. It's like, if you use a biblical term, it's like a key of the kingdom for your own world to discover more of who you are. Would you agree with that statement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think from the day when you get to kindergarten I think it's kindergarten, well, no, it's preschool Before you get to preschool, you actually had a better understanding of who you we all did, of who we are, and we thought we sort of were okay because before preschool we didn't have to pass a test. Yeah, that's good thing is about oh, let's paint, let's think, let's imagine a funny story, and and people might be more shy at the next person but we're encouraged as soon as you get to preschool. Now we have to pass tests. We're on a journey to unlearn who we are. We have to conform, and so that's a terrible, terrible system.
Speaker 2:I remember my son, young James he was probably 10 or something, maybe younger took him to the golf range. It was my turn to mind James Saturday afternoon to get to the golf range. You know, it was my turn to mind James Saturday afternoon to get on the golf range and he'd never played golf before. But he got some clubs it's the right thing and he started swinging them and he's knocking them straight down the middle.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting that the guy that was a teacher, he noticed it and he said, yeah, he can tell someone who's never had lessons, because they actually have the more natural swing than the guys that have all the lessons Because you get all the fingers in your arm and a kid just naturally swings.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a big issue. I took me finding my voice. I found my voice as a musician first, but I probably would have been 30 or 31. I left school, you know, like my teens. I worked as a musician for 10 or 12 years. My job when I played as a sideman, you know, for Little Patty or Johnny Farnham and whatever it was back in those days.
Speaker 2:You'd go to a club somewhere or a TV show and you'd have a chart, a music chart, and as a guitar player it'd always say it'd give you the tempo, the key, and then on the left-hand corner it would say Allah, play like BB King, play like Gary Clapton, play like Freddie Green. And you had to know all these guitar players Django, reinhardt, whatever. So it might be country, it might be jazz, whatever. And so there's sort of a. You get rewarded by being someone else and you get pat on the back oh, that's awesome. You play just like and church right now is probably the worst of it, because all the tracks and all the four or five big worship teams everybody's copying and someone says, wow, you sound just like Jesus Culture, wow, whatever. Oh, that's wow, thank you, and I don't see that as a biblical thing at all.
Speaker 2:But so for me what happened was at about 30 or 31 I got a job part-time job as a music director at a church Christmas City Church in Brookvale, near Manly, and then they offered me a full-time job, which was very strange. I'd never had no ambitions to do this, but the full-time job was quite demanding. We ended up being 60 hours a week. I had no ambitions to do this and the full-time job was quite demanding. We ended up being 60 hours a week. I had no time for anything else. So I just my wife and I both felt like you know, we definitely had a check in time in our daily 20s, making some bad decisions Like let's do this, they've offered this thing to us, okay, let's commit. So I stopped all the other gigs and for about two years what was happening to me was I had that little bubble and I started shaping the musicians. I you guys would get saved, I'd bring. I had a sound in my head and something was happening there. And then I got a call one day from little patty and she said hey, my guitar player is sick, can you? She said to me. Funny thing. She said I know you're doing that church thing. She said but any chance you could do on play on Friday night and I was like yeah, that'd be cool. So I turned up and Laurie Thompson, her husband, was playing drums. I don't remember who the other guys were, but Little Patty's songs.
Speaker 2:If you don't know if people aren't listening, if you're a different age, it songs. If you don't know if people aren't listening for your different age, it's just country rock and it's real simple and it's fun for a guitar player especially. So I'm ripping through all these songs. They're reading the charts and and having fun. And at the end of the night, um, and also I didn't take any pedals. I'm like for a guitar player, if you don't, I had racks but I didn't take it because I'd stopped using them, I just had just a telecaster and an amp.
Speaker 2:Anyway, at the end of the night Laurie Thompson came over to me and said, you know, sort of asked me what the heck I've been doing because I disappeared out of their life for two years. And he said man, I've never heard you play like that before. He says whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I drove home and I started thinking like oh, I didn't take pedals, oh my God, oh I didn't take pedals, oh my God, I, oh I didn't do this. And the other thing, it's like I didn't look at the play, like so-and-so, I just ignored that and I realized that I discovered, I started to, had begun to discover who I was as a musician. So that's the first thing that happened to me and I share this many times around the world that I discovered who I was. In worship, which is significant, right In God's presence, I forgot who I was supposed to be and I became who I really was.
Speaker 2:And on the guitar side, and then the songwriting thing kind of followed. Was that? So you know, we are no one's totally unique. So I was in the sense that I grew up listening to James Taylor and Eric Clapton and all these different things, and so they're part of you. Like I said, all the books you've read, cs Lewis or whatever it may be that's part of who you are, but then you interpret it somehow.
Speaker 2:So the songwriting thing aspect I just worked out who I was and I'm not a populist in that sense. I'm not naturally drawn to writing a hit song. I've had songs that have been successful, but I'm not drawn to it and I just had to learn that that's. I don't know I'm not sure if anybody is either, actually, but I was never excited by that. And so the writing of a book, or writing if I was going to write a book now, um, the challenge I have I think I've got these story ideas is that some of them are very, would be very challenging to most church people. And I wonder maybe I need a pseudonym to write those ones. I don't know. But yeah, that's who your voice is, and Okay, who's your favourite authors in life? Who are they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question, Because I'm hugely influenced by CS Lewis, tolkien. Gene Edwards is another one. I don't know if you've heard of Gene Edwards, but he writes Parable. He's now passed on, but he wrote a book called A Tale of Three Kings, which actually, it changed the way that I looked at writing and I thought you know what I love this, the allegory, I love it, and so these are the sorts of people for me that drew deeper conversations. And so then I'm reading a book at the moment by a guy called Brendan Sanderson. He's all big fantasy, and for me it's the concept of the story like tell it in the way you feel it, tell it in the way that you experience it, tell it in the way you smell it, the way you taste it. And again, for this little guy who could not pass English at school, it's all of this.
Speaker 2:I didn't pass it either.
Speaker 1:But it's all of these things now that I'm drawing in, but it's helping me find my voice in a way that I can, I think. Also, I'd love to hear what you think about this, because it's valuing your own story as well, because sometimes we don't value our story. We listen to someone else's and in churches how many times have we gone on Nikki Cruz or whoever it is? We've gone, they've got a bigger story than I do, but we lessen the value of our own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I know I was saying with Nicky Cruz. I remember hearing his thing. It's like why do I ever share anything? You can't? You know it's all done? Yeah, I think also.
Speaker 2:But back on, like the fantasy thing, it's interesting. I'm actually getting drawn to that. I can't think of the authors, I just my brain's not good on that. But part of the reason to be drawn to those things or the way of telling the story is, I think it can be the style of writer, okay, and songwriting is the best way of explaining it. Style and genre aren't the same. So the genre of CS Lewis and Narnia and those things and Tolkien, that's much more of a genre as the fantasy thing. But the voice of the writer, I think there's difference because in songwriting and publishing terms you could have a rock song, which is a genre, but it could be a story or a love song or inspirational, which is the style, and I think so I'm being challenged or thinking through writing some fantasy things because of the interest in the audience and the younger people who they're into. So I think if I was trying to reach younger people now and to encourage them with identity, because that's, I think that's the thread that goes through most of my music and stuff is that I would probably be writing fantasy-ish type stories and novels, but the voice would be the same, because I'm a conversationalist.
Speaker 2:That's the thing I learnt in songwriting. And the same when I write stories. Like I get like I love Tolkien and I've read it. I've read three times or whatever but I find myself partly it's the spectrum thing If someone's got like a whole page of action, I go eh, I can get it. My brain, my imagination, is better than your writing. Sorry, buddy, I mean Tolkien's probably not one I do it to too often, but when people's too much description about the tree and the roots and stuff, yeah, yeah, I got it. And so because I'm drawn to, I need story, but I need the reaction of the person. That's how I write, so I'm drawn to that.
Speaker 2:So my favourite author is a 20-year-old. It was Graham Greene. He was a British writer, evelyn Waugh. They all write short books. They're all 130, 140 pages long. Brighton Rock I think that might be 200 pages or Hemingway, you know, man at Sea Is that the right title? That's a short book, and so I'm drawing as a songwriter.
Speaker 2:Songwriter is about getting a lot of information into three minutes, which means my style is I believe you're a smart person who's listening to it. I tell you every detail, I chop and move it through like a good editor. So that's how I learned. And when I'm writing, when I'm starting to write short stories, I'm very aware of that keep it short, keep it, because that's my style and um, but yeah, I think that's really important. The conversations, too, about other people is helping them. How do you find their style? The only well, you have to keep writing. You have to keep doing it, but without fear. Fear, that's the thing when I'm teaching. So if you're afraid that someone won't like it, like they flew me to Nashville to produce or to work with a pretty famous Christian band and the record company says you've got to get them thinking differently.
Speaker 2:The songs are all the same. Okay, so I just sit down and have a conversation like this and I get them talking about some things they'd gone through and I went, oh, that's a great idea for a song. So we started working on it and all of a sudden they go oh my God, I could never, if my pastor ever heard me say this, and I thought, oh God, you're afraid. You're afraid of being honest or being transparent. So I think that's that's a huge issue. But so my job partly is to be very transparent and, as my wife says, I wrote a song last week. She said, oh, there's another song you get in trouble for.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, probably you know, because just being transparent, honest about your life or you're showing you know, here's my heart, here's my thing, because in the Christian world the church is so afraid of sharing, you know, like David running down with his underpants on in the story, or David's sin in Bathsheba when he kills her husband. See, somebody left that in the book because it's good for us. But I think the modern church would take three quarters of the Bible and cut it out. Well, that's a big book. We shouldn't have the Bathsheba story. Oh no, oh no. We can't have a prostitute in the lineage of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, let's cut that out. Let's cut it out.
Speaker 2:So that's the interesting thing about art and that's where I've mostly honestly work either outside the church or helping people aim outside the church. It's more fun.
Speaker 1:I think I'd love to do another podcast with you on authenticity and being seen um.
Speaker 2:I just think, I just I'm kidding but these are the.
Speaker 1:These are the topics. Like you say, the church is often scared and to go near because they wonder what happens next. Rather, and that's a fear conversation, but it could be an absolute love conversation where I wonder where this thing goes next, and that's. This is some of the conversations I want to be in with people, chris.
Speaker 2:I think you have to be personally like the church in Avalon they were broken, so they were rebuilt. You know the church and the leaders, so they're totally into this conversation. Yeah, and I don't think you can like the more successful you are, the more pressure it is to maintain success. So I loved the Bob Dylan journey when he went electric and his fans hated him and he didn't care.
Speaker 2:Or when you two went dance, arcturian Baby comes out and it's all these dance beats in there and they had the same thing. It's like, oh, it's exciting, it's fun. Well, I've had that many, many times and I've problems with people and I don't. I'd say half, oh no, three quarters of the songs I write don't have the word Jesus in it. But if you've got any brains you'll work out. That's what I'm talking about. But I get hate mail all the time on social media from Christians. So I'm just singing about Jesus, man.
Speaker 2:I said, well, the funny thing is because I was in a studio with a pretty well-known engineer here and he wanted to bless me. I'd helped him. He said bring your guitar out and let's record 20 or 30 really good demos. I said, great, I came around and I got to him about the 15th song and he says to me you know he just stops and goes hey, listen, you sing about God. Even when you're not singing about God, I can tell you're singing about God. You'd be so much more successful if you didn't do that.
Speaker 2:And I started looking through some of the songs I had, because at that time I was getting lots of songs licensed on TV shows. I go. Well, that song, unconditional Love, that was on CSI and that song there was on Brothers, and I threw all the things and he said to me oh sorry, don't listen to me, keep doing what you're doing. But the funny thing is he's a seeker. At that time he was a non-Christian, he was a seeker and all he could hear in my songs was God and the Christian right-wing crazy let's say, you know, fundamentalist christian complaining I can't hear god, because they only hear god if I say jesus or the cross or the blood or the lamb. You know, they're cliches after a while, unfortunately, if they if not done rightly so. So that's the thing. So, um, you know, when you are honest or transparent, you're going to win somebody and touch somebody and you're going to offend a lot of other people. And Jesus did. He offended all the religious people and he ended up dying for it. So if I'm not offending someone without swearing, without doing something you know awful, then I'm not doing a good job. Yeah, I'm not offending just because truth offends, truth challenges, you know.
Speaker 2:So I think it'd be great to have workshops, not a conference so much, but workshops, but with leaders or people that genuinely want to reach the non-church people about this subject, because I would like to think there'd be people, other people who are doing it, who can share their story and go. Oh, because when I share the starting the church and the bar thing I was in Singapore just like three weeks ago and it was, you know, a different time. I wasn't really meeting, in my mind, my people so much. I was helping and coaching. But until the last day and I met this pastor and I started sharing last day and I met this pastor and I started sharing him this and he hit the light bulb. He goes I always want to do that.
Speaker 2:How do you do that? And I was catching a plane only hours later and I said I can start writing to you, but why don't I come back? And I'm going to come back there in a few months, maybe. I said we'll do a pop upup event and I'll show you how you do it. It's not rocket science, but it's nothing like normal church. So you know, you have to have people with the stories and there are people out there all around the world who are doing these great grassroots things, but I don't think. I don't know. Maybe, like revolutions don't really start in the centre of town, do they? No, they don't really start in the centre of town, do they? They don't, you know they're somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at tables is where they start.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I heard you use a line the other day, mate, which said if it's not rocket science, if it was rocket science, this would be making songs or writing songs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're watching my video, yeah, yeah. No, it's not rocket science at all, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, mate, I'm going to put a bit of a pause in this conversation. If not, I'll be breaking records for how long my podcasts go for. Right, that works. I'd love to be able to do another one with you at some point, but when I was introduced to you by your nephew, he's the wisest man he knows, and I just want to say thanks for letting me sit amongst your wisdom Before we went live, I called you a bard, and I'm very. I've been called worse, yep, very true, but it's the storyteller bringing old truths back to life in ways that people are engaging in creativity, mate. So I just want to say thank you. So for everyone listening, this is the greater things podcast. Thanks for hanging out with us, and we'll be back in your ears next time. Bye, for now. You can find us on Instagram and YouTube or go to our website, greaterthingsinternationalcom.