My new LIVE Worship Record "MATCHLESS"

On this episode, I give a few sneak peeks and share my heart behind a brand new LIVE album I'm releasing on August 25, 2023, called "MATCHLESS". We recorded this LIVE at my Creative Legacy Conference this past January here in Kansas City. Was honored to have some of my good friends, Matt Gilman, Jaye Thomas, and Cade Thompson join me in leading.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I worship and I worship the Father of Christ. He blesses his sons, he blesses his daughters. If I look at fire, I see a man after right hand Praise for me daily. My faith will not fail me. Forever. I worship. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back.

Speaker 1: 0:25

In this past January I hosted my first conference here in Kansas City called the Creative Legacy Conference, which is a conference I started for worship leaders, pastors and Christian innovators to embolden their creative expression and empower their witness in their community, and it was an amazing time. The Lord did some awesome things and we are currently knee-deep in planning year two, which is January 25 through 27, the upcoming January 2024. So the website and registration early bird registration will be open for that here soon. So keep an eye out for that on my social media and on my email list, january 25 through 27, 2024. Gonna be an amazing time. Have some amazing worship leaders and speakers who have confirmed and will be announcing that soon. But I'm so excited that on August 25th we are going to be releasing the live album that we recorded from our conference this past January, and I was so excited to have a couple of my really, really good friends Matt Gilman who, if you don't know Matt Gilman, go check him out on Spotify. He's incredible. He has an anointing and vocal chords like I've never heard before. He's just amazing. Matt and I have been friends for nearly 20 years Best friends. We did an internship here in Kansas City at the International House of Prayer way back in January of 2004. If you weren't born until after that, welcome into the show. But he's incredible, so we had him come back.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Jay Thomas, another one of my good friends, who's worship bleeding has impacted just tons and tons of people. He was on staff here at the House of Prayer in Kansas City for a lot of years. We ran together. I brought him in, and also a friend of mine named Cade Thompson. You might know Cade. A lot of his songs are on K-Love and he's doing some really, really cool things in the worship and CCM world. You can check him out if you've never heard of him. But he also came.

Speaker 1: 2:27

So the four of us together did a live album at the conference and it was just beautiful, because what I really, really wanted to do, my heart for this, was that there would not be any overdubs. I'm sorry to diverse your bubble if you are not aware of this. Most of the live albums you hear out there are not truly live. They're done live in a congregation and then they're overdubbed and fixed completely in the studio afterwards, which, again, not saying that's a bad thing, but I really wanted to just press record on this Friday night in January at this conference and just capture everything and have zero overdubs, and we were able to accomplish that outside of one.

Speaker 1: 3:14

I love children, I love babies, but one screaming child who we had a really, really low moment in one of the songs and I was singing this verse and I was talking to Logan Murphy, the guy who produced and engineered this album for me, and I was like dude, we can just make it work, it's live, it'll be fine. He's like dude, you don't want to do that. Now, if you listen closely to this album, you will hear screaming at a different part of the album that we chose to leave in. But for this one I was like, okay, I really see your point, we need to overdub this one verse. So outside of that one little verse, nothing else was overdubbed and that, just like it, does my heart good to know that, it did my heart good to know that on that platform, that no matter who was in the room, no matter what happened, good, bad ugly on that platform that we were just making a live album and an offering of worship to Jesus. We weren't making this for someone else. We were making this to impress anybody. We were making it to capture what happened on this Friday night at this conference during the time of worship, and I'm so, so happy with how this turned out.

Speaker 1: 4:20

I've recorded and released a lot of music in my days and this album is right up there. For me, honestly when I say that, I'm truly being honest it's right up there at the top of some of the favorite music I've ever released One, because of the vulnerability of it. Two, because of the not being messed with in post of it. Three, a huge one is just being able to do it with some of my best friends in the world. Nothing beats worshiping the Lord with some of your best friends, both onstage and offstage, who gather that night, and I'm just so happy with how it turned out. So there's a couple of songs. I'm gonna play a couple of clips here, but specifically I wanna focus on there's two spontaneous moments that happened that night and again, these are truly spontaneous.

Speaker 1: 5:05

This was not pre-planned. There was no melodies pre. There was no choruses pre. The themes were there because we were coming out of these two songs that had specific themes. One of them was out of you Made Away, which is Matt Gilman's song that we had him cover on this album. Well, he's not covering it, it's his own song. We had him, too, on this album and so out of that we knew that the moment would have something to do with the blood of Jesus making a way for us to enter in. And this moment came out. That was called we ended up calling it Open Door and really Matt and Jay just went off and it was just this beautiful moment and the Lord moved and I'm super excited for you to hear a clip of that here shortly, and then the second clip I'm gonna play for you guys.

Speaker 1: 5:49

A second moment came after a song called Father of Lights, which was a second single to this album. We released that in July. That's a co-write with myself and another good friend named Brandon Oakes, who's a worship pastor in Florida who used to be here at the house of prayer. An amazing, amazing worship leader Shut up, brandon Oakes. So we went into a moment after that that I knew and I kind of prepped the team and told the guys hey, james, chapter one, this whole reality of considering it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds for the testing of your faith, develops perseverance. That's where Brandon and I wrote this song, father of Lights, out Of. So, when we went into this spontaneous moment, I specifically told the guys that said I want to be okay, not being okay, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 6:33

You know, so many times in Christian music and Christian culture really, it's either black or white, right, and typically we don't like to focus on the darkness, we would like to focus on, you know, for like a millisecond, oh man, I was, like you know, bound and sin, and you know, in condemnation, but then think, you know, suddenly it's like the light shined and now I'm redeemed and everything's, you know, glorious and just. You know, my life is amazing and that's a lot of times what we do in Christian as a whole, but also specifically in Christian music, specifically in worship music. You know that we don't like to stay in that kind of gray area, if you will, right, and it's challenging me because I find that so much of the Christian life it's not just black or white, there is a lot of gray, which I would call the Psalms. Right, like so many of the Psalmists, david himself you know pen Psalms it's like man doesn't seem like he's doing too hot, he's not having a good day over here, like we need to get him in for some you know, some therapy or whatever to get him filled with the joy of the Lord. Like where is that joy of the Lord and David? And it's like, well, there's actually like seasons and times in our lives, says the book of James, when you're to consider it pure joy, when you face trials of many kinds. And again, there's a lot there that I'm not gonna get into necessarily on this podcast, but I told them in our briefing beforehand and our soundcheck. I said I'm not sure where we're gonna go. We're gonna ask the Holy Spirit to lead and direct, but I want to be okay with not being okay. I don't wanna have to jump so quickly to just suddenly like joy, joy, joy or whatever. So I'm really, really happy with where we landed there and my heart just even now when I listen to these tracks, I'm just fully there and I've heard them quite a bit since January as we've been in mixing and mastering of this thing and so super excited about this album. Again, august 25th, on all streaming platforms as well as on YouTube, the entire hour-long worship set will be available so you can experience exactly what we experienced that night in his entirety on YouTube and watch it and just put it on, get along with Jesus and let him just kind of watch over you.

Speaker 1: 8:47

The other songs that we included on this album it's a song called Matchless. That was the first single we released in June. I already mentioned you Made Away, which is Matt Gilman's original song, which leads to a spontaneous track called Open Door Jay. We had Jay Thomas do one of his songs called how About I? If you haven't heard that, he has an amazing version on Spotify right now. You can check it out. I also love this new version that he did A song that I released a couple of years ago called we Lift you Up.

Speaker 1: 9:14

We did a live version of that and I had Jay and Matt Gilman both do a feature with me on that Father of Lights. That was a single. We did in July a corret with Brandon Oakes. Matt Gilman did a feature which led into track seven, a spontaneous track about kind of how the Lord holds us in his heart in prayer before the throne of God. And then we ended the night with a throwback to a super old song of mine called Found Faithful. We had never done a live version for that, and so as I was kind of looking at the song list as we narrowed it down for this live album and kind of just praying, my heart just really felt like you know what? I have not done a version of this song since 2007. I'd love to do another version and I'd love to do a live version because that's really, you know, remains kind of a song that's been really kind of a heart cry of mine for a lot of years, and so we threw that one at the end.

Speaker 1: 10:07

So there's eight tracks on this album. It's just under an hour long and so, super excited. Again, it'll be on YouTube, but also everywhere you listen to music, and so, yeah, just excited for you guys to hear this thing. So I'm gonna play a clip here from one of these spontaneous tracks, following Matt Gilman's you Made a Way song. This is called Opened Role. Music PLAYS, music PLAYS. So again, that's a clip of a track called Open Door.

Speaker 1: 11:12

I'm gonna send you guys off today with a quick clip of the second spontaneous track from this album it's called Praying for Us which we went into out of the song Father of Lights, and it just really kind of went into this direction of Jesus being the great intercessor which we learned about in Hebrews, that he is a great high priest. Not only has he, you know, made a way by the shedding of his blood, but now he stands before the Father in Heaven, forever living, to make intercession on our behalf, and so I'm gonna send you guys off with a clip of that. Please mark your calendars August 25th. We'll be so grateful if you guys share this with your friends and family, share it on social media. So this album is dropping here soon. So we all consider it pure joy even when our face trials many kinds.

Speaker 1: 12:03

The testing of my faith develops perseverance, and perseverance and love is needed to run this race and I'm praying for you. Though the thorn may never leave and your grace, it will increase Through heart trials, through tribulations, Through persecution, through abandon you're praying, praying.

Speaker 2: 12:45

Though I may walk through the valley Of the shadow of death, and though I may walk through the wilderness For 40 years, I know there's a process. You're bringing me through and you'll always make a way. In the wilderness, you'll always make streams in the desert, you'll always be my cloud by day, my fire by night, my water from the rock You'll always provide. But there's a process In the wilderness you're leaving me through and though it's hard, and though it's dark, and though it's painful, I say yes Because you're with me. I say yes Because your glory is in the wilderness and you're praying for me. Oh, you're praying for me.