From the mullet days to The Great Adventure and all the way through heartbreak over losing a child, finding his unique voice, and keeping a strong marriage, Steven Curtis Chapman covers a lot of ground with Julie on this episode of the allmomdoes Podcast.
Listen to “#171 – Embracing Your Voice with Steven Curtis Chapman” on Spreaker.
Interview Links:
- Follow Steven Curtis Chapman Online, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
- Get your tickets for the Drive in Theatre Tour
- Check out their organization Show Hope
Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:00:00] I’m Julie Lyles Carr. You’re listening to the allmomdoes podcast part of the Christian Parenting Podcast Network today on the allmomdoes podcast. I’m your host, Julie Lyles Carr and Steven Curtis Chapman is in the house, the virtual house, the zoom house. Steven, thanks so much for being with me today.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:00:14] You are very welcome. Good to be here in the virtual house with you. Well, I mean, what a joy and I got to tell you. I’ve been with you for a long time. My friend, like I’m, I’m talking back. Great adventure. Like even pre that I, oh, you’re talking mullet years now.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:00:32] You wore it magnificently.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:00:34] I do know. I really am a firm believer that you go big or go home. So if I’m going to go mullet, I went. I went big, a very big, yeah. Party. The party in the back was, was quite the party and the business upfront, you know, there was, there was business going on up front, so it had the whole, the whole thing going on.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:00:55] You know, and what I understand Steven is that now we see an arise of the mullet again. So in many ways, you’re going to be able to claim that you were ahead of your time and then you are a trendsetter. And now if you wanted to go for it, you know, you go ahead.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:01:10] Yeah, and I’ve, and I’ve made it a vow and a promise to myself that no matter how cool and much in style, it may come back into or back into Vogue or whatever I am. And no, there’s, there’s no way there’s not enough, not enough money in the world to convince me to go mullet ever again. So I’m going to leave that in my past and let the young ones have it now,
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:01:34] you know, I do think there are, there is value in the sacred mullet vow. I think that’s good. I, mine mine is the perm. The perm I have a similar vow that I carry within my heart. So I, I feel you, I really understand. Well, you know, so many of us have just loved you, so appreciate your music, the craft that you bring to all of us and, and what it has meant through the years. And you’ve got, I mean, just racks and racks of awards and all kinds of notable things based on what you have, have shown as a body of work for so long and your faithfulness in doing so.
But yeah, I want to go all the way back. I want to hear where you started life. And when you began to realize that music was going to be part of your life, because, you know, I, I encountered those people that knew from young age that this is what they were designed to do. And I mean, people that stumbled into something.
So take me back to your origins. And then when music really began to awaken a new, like, I think this is my heartbeat.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:02:28] Yeah, well, music is my earliest memories of life. In fact, I have I’ve put it in a song. My most recent album was a bluegrass record, which growing up in Kentucky and loving bluegrass music as a, as a boy.
And hearing my dad play folk and bluegrass music with his friends and he was in a group and the sound of a banjo, the sound of upright bass, the sound of you know, flat top guitar. Those are just the sounds and the tight harmonies are the sounds that I. Th that I grew up with and the earliest memories I have literally are a music and particularly folk and bluegrass music.
I say in my song Where The Blue Grass Grows, the first thing I remember as a little barefoot boy was the sound of my dad’s Martin guitar and a banjo. And that’s true. So I loved music. From the very beginning loved watching my dad play music as a little boy being inspired by that, wanting to be like my dad got my first guitar when I was about six years old and my dad sat down and taught me my very first song that Johnny Cash song Folsom Prison Blues so started off right out of the gate, learning how to get to prison, which was, you know, probably now that I think back, I’m not sure the wisdom and the very first song my dad was teaching me about being, being a man in prison, but I love playing the guitar, particularly that was my thing as a boy.
Lived with a guitar kind of always on my lap or, or somewhere nearby. I started writing songs in probably junior high high school. My brother, I had one sibling and an older brother. Who’s an incredible singer. And he was really the voice growing up. We sang together. We started singing together as a family in church.
Then my brother and I formed a little duo and played all around Western Kentucky, Paducah, Kentucky, where I grew up and he went off to college and that’s really when I had to kind of find my voice cause he was the singer. I was not, but I think new songwriting was how I began to kind of find my voice because he had, he had this kind of make you stop and, and, you know, listen kind of a voice. I had a very kind of soft and a little more timid approach to singing. But when I began to write songs, that’s kind of how I found a little bit of my myself and That carried on into college. We went to college together and I, some songs that I had written in high school found their way into the hands of none, other than bill Gaither who took an interest in me as a songwriter in my music and gave me my first publishing deal.
My brother and I would end up as a little roundabout way. I would end up in Anderson, Indiana at Anderson college, where Bill and Gloria had started a little music program. And so I I did not go to college as a music major cause my father. Who owns a music store in Kentucky and Paducah. Chapman music still still teaches guitar lessons every day, 81 years old, and still they’re doing loving music and passing that love on to, to his students.
But my dad said, you know, you should go get a real job. Music’s hard. It’s hard to feed a family, playing a guitar, go get a real job. So I started out as that. You know, I’m majoring as a pre-med major for one very long painful semester in college and realized I was not going to make it in that I ended up studying music in college and primarily writing songs and that’s what led to me moving to Nashville, getting an opportunity. I was, I was working in Nashville at a place called Opry land USA, which is an amusement park. You remember Opry? Yeah, I worked there, my brother and I were in a country music show together and I got to sing on the grand Ole Opry when I was 19 years old.
So, you know, had some opportunities then, and those were probably leaning more towards a direction of maybe doing country music or something like that. But I just, what was in my heart, what I remember having a conversation with my dad and just saying that I feel like, you know, if I can, I want to write and sing songs that talk about the things that are most important in my life and that’s my faith and my relationship with Jesus and, and you know, I’d love to be able to share that with people and encourage people. And so I had an opportunity in 1987 to make an album. Sparrow records signed me to a record deal. And I thankfully was able to have enough success with the first album that they let me do a second and a third and a fourth. And, and it kinda grew from there. I saddled up my horses and took off on the great adventure. And it’s been quite an adventure 35 years ago coming up next year. It’ll be 35 years since my first album came out, so pretty crazy.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:07:05] Well, and to me, I feel like you were part of a Genesis of a music genre within the Christian message that was really new. I, you know, I feel like there had been gospel and I think the Gaithers had done some things that were really groundbreaking. And of course there were some of these bands that were coming out in the early eighties that were kind of a hard rock alternative. Right. And then Amy Grant came along and things started to open up a little bit but for me, I feel like within the, within the annals of your work are those early days where we began to see contemporary Christian music began to take hold and become a real thing. What was that like, trying to explain to people what was in your heart and what you wanted to do when the genre in and of itself was not really well formed or well understood or, well, where was this going to be played and who was going to come listen to this?
We had church. Why do we need, you know, pop singers, if you will.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:07:57] Yeah. Well, I think the good news was, I didn’t really know what I didn’t know. And I didn’t know that. There wasn’t necessarily a big place yet for singer songwriters, we’ll call it kind of singer songwriters, storyteller artists in the gospel music, Christian music genre.
Because when I did come on as a songwriter and got my opportunities, not flipping the door, writing songs for Sandy Patty, I wrote her a song and she recorded, wrote a song for the, my first cut was by the Imperials group called the Imperials. Is that. Originally kind of Southern gospel and then swung a little more into a pop sound.
So at my opportunities start out as a songwriter, but I was very influenced by the singer songwriters. I was a big James Taylor, John Denver, Jim Croce fan, you know, those kind of guys. And there was a guy named Dallas hall who was very much, probably the greatest influence on me. As far as a early Christian music singer songwriter who wrote very conversational songs where you sort of felt like he was just, you know, it kind of was opening his sort of journal and just singing to you here’s what’s going on in my heart. You know, here’s, here’s my journey. Here’s my life. And he was a great singer, but he didn’t hit the high notes. It wasn’t built around like, you know, where with the, you know, the great singers with the Sandy patties and Steve green Larnelle Harris is of my early days of my career.
I thought I don’t have that kind of voice. In fact, my first producer, wonderful, wonderful friend, man, Greg Nelson, who produced Steve green and Larnelle Harrison, Sandy Patty sat with me and even said, you don’t really have one of those kinds of remarkable voices. And it wasn’t an offensive thing. It was like, you know, it’s, it’s conversational kind of voice like the guys that influenced me, the James Taylor’s or whatever, you know, but there’s something that only those guys can communicate in a way that maybe, you know, the other voices can’t.
So I just embrace that. And that’s where I started. And I didn’t think a lot about the fact of that’s not, are people gonna know what to do with this. I just kind of offered what I had. And thankfully I think the timing of everything was such that people were ready for that. Certainly not that I was the first that come along and doing that, I can mention Dallas home. There was Wayne Watson. I mean, even the, the Keith Green’s and you know, Randy Stonehill and, you know, there were artists, certain idea were kind of telling stories, singer songwriters, but the timing of everything just was such that people were ready. To kind of make room for that in a bigger way, maybe in our genre of gospel music.
And I was able to kind of help lead the way for some that would come along with me and behind me. And I think just the timing of all of that kind of was something that God was orchestrating at. And like, they didn’t really necessarily know even to ask those questions, thankfully, directly the company Sparrow records believed in that and believed that there was a spot for it.
Christian radio. I found it a great home. They’re a great support there, which was new because at that point, Christian radio, for the most part was there to support artists who already had a pretty significant audience, Christian radio wasn’t known to break artists necessarily as much as they were there to support already established, known voices.
But I kind of came along at a time where they said, well, nobody knows who this guy is, but we kind like this sound in it. And it’s not really like anything we have let’s, let’s give it a spin and people responded. And so that opened the door for me to do what I’m doing.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:11:23] I love the notion of. The fact that you had the wisdom to not be offended in that space and to realize that that could be your lane and how to be engaged in something authentically, you know, we’re living in a time now, particularly with the proliferation of social media and those kinds of things, where I find a lot of creators, whatever it is that there’s their medium.
They’re looking for formulas, you know, they’re trying to find, and we do it in everything from marriage to parenting, to the art we create to the different things that we’re engaged in thinking we have to find the exact formula to make it happen. I love that you got to have the experience of embracing who you were of having someone on your, on your side who was willing to say, Hey, this is where I think you’re powerful and not trying to in a weird way, compete in an, in a, in a lane that wasn’t your lane. One of the earliest times I got to see you was in the Young Messiah tour. And so it’s fascinating to me to hear you talk about, well, I didn’t feel like I was a voice like Sandy Patty or Larnelle or Steve green. Those are all the people you were on tour with Steven.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:12:20] I know I trusted him that that tour was an intimidating, you know, that took a lot of you know, self, you know, motivating talks, looking in the mirror, going, you know, you’re smart enough. You’re good enough. And people, yeah, you can do this. Cause it was, it was, I mean, I did a duet with Sandy, which is one of my
favorites.
Yeah. What in the world am I doing a, doing new here doing a, do that with Sandy Patty? But those were things that, again, yeah, the opportunities that came, you know, that, that began to push me and allow me to grow and realize that, Hey, maybe I can actually do things that I. Never had any idea I would be able to do.
That was a huge blessing and what a gift to get to, you know, do those kinds of things and, and tour with those artists and, you know, be up here with those artists that I never would have imagined I would be considered a peer. Yeah. Yeah.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:13:16] I mean, well, I thought you were simply amazing on that tour and, and it’s interesting because when I look back on that tour, I. I remember being struck by the fact that we’re close to the same age and I was starting to have little babies and little kids. And, and this meant that you were out on the road. And what do you feel like over time you had to accommodate for learn that may have been different for you when it came to your marriage and family life, being able to go out and do this thing you loved, but these multi-city tours.
I mean, Yeah. You know, you can be out on the road every month of the year with only a handful of days at home. And I don’t know that sometimes when we go to see artists, we completely understand the impact and the role that touring plays on families. How did you guys navigate that in what was a fresh territory?
Because you talked about, yes, your dad was in the music business, but he was home teaching guitar lessons at his music shop, this wasn’t having to accommodate for a multi-city tour over six months.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:14:15] Yeah. Yeah. Well that would definitely be the, the greatest challenge for what I’ve done all these years has been to from the very beginning, realize and recognize and say that, Hey, the commitment that I made first and foremost is to my wife, to my family. I mean, I wrote the song I Will Be Here, which is a song that probably one of my most, if not the most known song of all that I’ve written, and it’s a song of commitment to my wife and a song that says, you know, whatever happens, whatever comes, I’ll be here. Needless to say that song has been brought up many times by my wife to say, Hey, you know, you’re not actually here, you wrote the song and said, I’ll be here, but you’re there, I’m here. And so, you know, you’re singing that song, I’ll be here, but you’re there, you know, how’s that work, you know, it’s, it’s go with me here. You know, the idea is I’m here, I’m here, but that has been both a huge, you know, tremendous challenge, but also.
I’m so thankful. I mean, I wrote that song as, in a way, you know, a statement to make myself accountable to that little did I know it would become quite the Anthem in a way that it has for so many marriages, you know, Christian weddings over the years and whatever. And it has been challenged at every turn.
I mean, I often think, man, if I hadn’t written that song, you know, would the enemy of marriage and all things beautiful. And that God intended there is a real enemy and we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. And sometimes I think, gosh, writing in that song, I kind of put a big target on myself and on our marriage because, you know, we would be one of many that would be great to destroy. If, if there was an enemy that said, I want to destroy one, here’s somebody trying to not only honor their marriage, but sing about it, encourage other people and go very, very broad and very, you know, loud with this message. But because that has been the commitment that was right out of the gate, something that I just said, you know, however successful or whatever this career ends up being, I cannot have it be at the expense of my family and my marriage.
And if I had to choose one over the other, and those who have journeyed with me, pastors, counselors, friends, record executives, managers, booking agents, they will all, I think they would all say. Yeah, we’ve watched Stephen and Marybeth wrestle with that. We’ve had many conversations where I’ve walked in the office and said guys, I don’t know. I got, I feel like I had my hand on the, on the plug in the wall going I’m may have to pull this out of the wall. We’ve this might be the end I may have to just, I can’t, I don’t know if I can do both and if I can’t do both, I know which one. I need to do now. That’s a lot easier said than done because you do have a lot of people, depending on you, you have record labels, you have all the expectations, you have your own, you know, drive of just, gosh, here’s an opportunity I want to say yes to that.
This will be a great thing. This would accomplish the goal. I want to encourage people. I want to, if I can encourage millions of people that’s, you know, even better than if I could encourage a hundred people. But that comes at a price and, and, and if I pay that price and my family pays that price, what’s ultimately why where’s that going to lead?
And really it’s just been years and years of some amazing friends, pastors, counselors. I mean, we. We have, we’ve been very vocal about this. We kind of jokingly say we’ve probably built wings onto the houses of, of the counselors of Nashville area because of the money we’ve spent frequenting their offices saying, well, we’re still trying to figure this out.
And we’re 36 years in and we still have standing counselor appointment once a week that, you know, when we can make it to go, we still are trying to figure out how to love each other. Well, how to communicate well better, how to survive the season that we’re in. And we’ve been through a lot of crazy hard seasons, you know, grief and loss and victory and joy and success and defeat and all of that. Honestly, the bottom very, very bottom line without just the Sunday school answer. It’s just the most true answer I can give. Is that the way we have done it is by the grace of God. And only because God’s been faithful and he’s heard our desperate cries, God help us save us rescue us, give us hope in this season when we don’t know what the next step is going to look like, we’re going to keep showing up and trusting you. And we’ve done that and God has been faithful and that’s. About this, you know, as, as honest as I can be with it,
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:18:56] Right i, you know, my husband and I have been married almost 32 years and I am struck. And how much work it still takes.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:19:05] Yes, I absolutely. I know you kind of get it dialed in and go, man, we’re good to go. And then
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:19:13] figured it out. You got all the answers, but it’s heartening to hear. And I think it’s something that I really want to make sure our listeners hear you know, it’s okay if you’re still having to work on it and work on it hard because life does have different seasons and varieties of ways of things that happen and I know couples that struggle because one of them let’s say is in the military or has to travel a lot for work. And I know couples that struggle because they’re around each other too much and they work together, right?
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:19:41] Yeah. Both extremes. Sometimes we’re a lot together and I’m home to the point where it’s kind of like, don’t you have somewhere to go. And then when I’m gone, then it’s like, you know, gosh, I’m so alone and dealing with all this by myself and we’re we’re disconnect. So we kind of see both sides of it. And yeah, there are challenges with both. And I think we. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of wonderful, wonderful books and programs and counseling methods and all of those things that can really be helpful. But I think our experience too is there’s also a lot that just is not ever this side of heaven going to be really figured out and can we love each other with our unfixable, even unacceptable things, you know, that we’re like this isn’t the, how this works. And I think one of our biggest things has been definitely in it for me is learning how to accept the unacceptables in a way to say, God, you know, I’m going to trust you with this. These are things that. For a long time. I thought, gosh, if we could just read the right book, if we could get, find the right counselor, if we could get the right cut up equation here and, and do it right, that we could get this thing figured out, and that can lead you to a point to finally go, gosh, well maybe we’re just too hopeless.
Maybe we’re just too. And I think that’s where so many. Couple of good dudes were just hopeless because you know, we’ve done all, we’ve tried, all those things are just not working. Right. And they were just too broken. Maybe we’re too, you know, too wrong for each other or whatever. And I think, you know, being able to say, or maybe there’s more going on here than what we realize, and God is at work, even in these broken things.
And we’re going to have to trust him, realize that some of this is not gotta be fixed this side of heaven. And what do we do with that? And how do we keep moving forward and believing that even with that God is working in that. I don’t know. It’s just that that’s kind of been our journey and our story.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:21:45] Right? I think it is for a lot of people. And I think because that doesn’t get discussed a lot, that yes, do all the things utilize all the tools, do the counseling, but sometimes we bring an expectation to that modality that this is going to fix everything plaster over and it’s going to be what we’ve had in our heads, in our hearts this whole time.
So what do couples do when they use the tools and do all the things and discover they’re still married to a flawed human being and they themselves are still a flawed human being. Right. And so the good news is those of us who were a little further down the road can share those things and say, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard. They’re going to be done. Don’t like each other. They’re going to be times that you take all the advice and it doesn’t work. And that doesn’t mean that what you’ve built needs to be abandoned
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:22:33] and it’s still worth it when you get those, those moments, you know? And obviously there’s, I mean, it’s always important to say, you know, if there are many situations, if, if there’s abuse, if there are things that you know, that that need to be addressed or professionals in counseling, and that’s so important, but I think so often we you know, I just, I think there’s, there are things we have experienced my wife and I will say this and yeah, I think that we could have missed, and we stood at our first grand babies crib, and this was only two or three years after, you know, just a tragic, traumatic loss of our youngest daughter and still carrying much grief and trauma and all of that.
And we stood at her cradle and I’ll just never forget that moment with tears in our eyes. And we just, we were so beat up and so weary and just grief was just doing such a number on us, but just that moment of standing there and our first grand babies cradle with our arms around each other, celebrating her together. And just those moments that we were, we’ve been able to say, it’s all worth it, that we get to, we get to experience this moment together. We get to celebrate these moments and, you know, there’s just a joy and something that you all know because you’ve been through all of those hard places and all those valleys and all of that.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:24:02] So you’ve had probably close to a year of maybe being, having a lot of time together. Now you’re heading back out on tour. What has that been like? Both having this kind of compulsory time off and considering heading back in to this schedule, that’s more robust. What are the things that you’re doing as a couple to get prepared for that?
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:24:26] Well, I think having had this time you know, we’re, it’s such a different season of life. Anyway, there’s so much changing. We’re getting ready to have our empty nest for the very first time in 35 years, you know, 34 years, I guess now see Emily’s 30. Yeah. 33 34. Our youngest DV joy is going to college in the fall and so we will be empty nesters for the first time. So there’s a lot of transition going on with that. And we’re very excited and you know, my wife’s very sad. I mean, that’s what she’s done for all those years is be a mom and hold the fort down and do the things that she does. So brilliantly of just, you know, the flight control operator and the taxi driver and the organizer and all of that.
I think this season of us being at home and being together and me not being able to do it, she’s obviously sees in me this. What God made me for. And there’s a part of her that I think is really excited that you need to go do that, encourage people. And I see the loss of that impact of that in your life. Just doing what God made you to do. I have been by design, slowing it down, you know, over the years, knowing that this day is coming, knowing that we spent a lot of days apart, and she’s going to be alone. I’m trying to convince her to just come with me every time I leave. I’m hopeful that that’s what she’ll want to do.
And she definitely wants to, but it’s kind of a little bit of both having her come with me and then having me slow down a little bit more to be at home or, and so, you know, I think we’re just trying to, I don’t really know that we know what to do to really prepare for it because we’ve never done it before.
So we’re just kind of trying to be aware of trying to be. You know, aware of the changes that are coming, we’re meeting with some folks today of, you know, possibly building a smaller house, downsizing. Some things would have an amazing place that we live, but it’s got all the memories of five, six children that have been there over the years.
So when that changes, what is it going to look like to be in that. Big the house with all those memories alone, or is it time to make a change prayerfully, kinda taking some steps to do stuff. So things like that, that I think are going to be really good for us and really helpful and doing, like I said, had a lot of counseling and praying through just how do we enter into this season really enjoying this season, because in some ways, right, there’s a part of us both they’re like, we’ve kind of worked really hard for this season now, can we kind of take a little a little bit of a break, you know, is that okay now, you know, giving ourselves permission, that’s a hard thing for both of us, because we’re both very driven and very wanting to use every opportunity we got show hope.
We’ve got, you know, there’s, there’s so much, they’re so good. And Mary Beth’s, the driving force and heartbeat of that and chairman of the board and we’re the founders. And there’s a never lack of opportunity with that, but it’s like, is it okay to kind of go, this is a season of life that. It’s okay for us to, you know, take a breath and, and sit together for a spell and take a walk, you know, and some things that we probably needed to do a lot more of over the years, but just haven’t.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:27:33] And so I think there’s are things that we’re trying to do better at, in the days ahead. Right. Right. I think for all of us, as the world is opening back up, there are profound questions. We all need to be asking ourselves adaptations. Just because of the way it might’ve been before. Doesn’t mean we have to return to that.
And I think this is a beautiful way of exploring what your season’s supposed to look like. Well, the tour is called the drive-in theater tour, being all over the place. All the things getting back on.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:27:58] Yes, I’m so excited. I’ve never toured with Big Daddy Weave . I’m a fan huge fan of those guys as human beings and also as songwriters and artists so this is going to be a great great experience. I had so much fun being with Michael and with Mac Powellon the drive in theater tour last year. And so this is going to be a great opportunity to get out there and do what I do. Encourage people, show hope!
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:28:23] Steven Curtis Chapman , what an honor really have enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for being on and keep going. We want that music. We want to hear you so appreciate all that you do.
Steven Curtis Chapman: [00:28:33] Thank you. God bless you. Appreciate it.
Julie Lyles Carr: [00:28:35] You’ll find more from this episode on the show notes, be sure and check them out at allmomdoes.com and wanted to ask you a big favor, be sure and go to wherever you are listening to this podcast and give us a five-star rating and review. It really helps us get the word out about the podcast. Can’t wait to see you next time on the allmomdoes Podcast.
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