Episode 61: do not be afraid // Saturday, May 30
Laura: On this week’s Story Saturday, I’m excited to share with you a conversation I had recently with a musician whose music I’ve loved for a very long time.
Christopher : Hey, my name is Christopher Williams and I'm an independent singer songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee.
I have always been a singer, I was a singer. As long as I can remember when I was a kid singing in the church choir was where I first started. And and then I learned how to play cello. Cello was my first instrument in fourth grade, actually, and and then junior year of high school, picked up the guitar and then I promptly dropped the cello, as I realized that the guitar was a lot cooler than the cello. And so I started playing guitar and went to college and got my heart broken and started writing songs and then through the course of my time in college, I was grateful to have parents that were supportive of my college experience not just being about education. And so I got to stretch my legs and write songs and start a coffee house and invite professional musicians to come in. And by the end of my college career I felt like I want to try doing this for a living. And so I moved out to Seattle, and because it was right after the grunge movement, and that was a really far away place to go and singles had just come out and it was an awesome city it looked like, so I moved up to Seattle. And then a year after college just took the leap and made my first recording in 1994. And then I've been doing it ever since and some as my job which is amazing.
Laura: Since then, Christopher has released eleven more albums. His twelfth album came out a little over a year ago.
Christopher: and I would say that it looks nice. Nothing like I thought it would. But we could probably all say that about our lives right now.
Laura: The first time I saw Christopher play more than a decade ago, he was living in Boston. He was playing a show at Club Passim, one of Boston’s wonderful, intimate folk venues. But his career has changed a lot since that show.
I feel like there's like there's two different kind of seasons of my career. The first 10 years were really spent chasing the singer songwriter, kind of independent folk club, the listening room movement. I was in Seattle for four years and then I went to Boston for eight.
When I left Seattle i was i, after four years of being there and three years of playing music as a job. I felt like I was getting pigeonholed into one niche with with a specific sort of Christian community and I felt like I didn't want that to be the niche that I was associated with some of the Boston to kind of chase the folk movement.
Laura: While Christopher was trying to avoid being pigeonholed as a Christian musician, I was trying to avoid being pigeonholed as a Christian writer. I adore Marilyn Robinson and Anne Lamott. But most of the writers I loved and admired didn’t believe in God. I thought if I let my faith find its way into my writing, people in the literary world would write me off and not take me seriously. It’s only been recently that my perspective on that has shifted.
For Christopher, that reckoning came when he moved down to Nashville.
Christopher: and then after that moved to Nashville, and when I moved down here just kind of got to the point of being over with the drama of the folk movement, I guess. and really felt the need To just want to play regardless of where it was, like whatever the venue was, I just wanted to play the people that respected it and wanted to listen and I didn't feel like I needed to prove myself as a musician, so I started doing a lot more house concerts and churches and coffee houses and basically anything that I wasn't very particular about it. I just wanted to play in places that I could make a living and be supported, and not kind of chase this golden ring, if you will, of wanting to become something in particular. I just wanted to make good art and good music and and play it for people that would enjoy it and appreciate it.
I also had a chance to tour shortly after moving to Nashville with a band called Jars of Clay, who were not as big at that point as they were when their first album came out around the same time my career started, but they gave me an opportunity to tour with them and it looked really different and kind of opened the door. They opened the door for me to just think differently about who I was playing for and why I was playing.
Laura: I know the band he’s talking about. Jars of Clay was huge among church-going kids like me when I was in high school and college. A song of theirs was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. I listened to their album on repeat for at least a year.
Christopher: they kind of were doing these songs but playing clubs but also playing churches and there was not a like a distinction between the two and I really felt like I I can play the songs that I would play in a folk club in front of a church audience and there's no difference at all. It felt like if people are there to to enjoy and embrace music and step into what you're doing it opened the door opened my eyes to like, I can play anywhere.
Laura: Christopher was a decade into his music career by that point. He’d been making a living as a musician for that entire time, and he knew what he was doing. But still, it takes courage to opt out of the traditional way of doing things. Sometimes it means that your life ends up looking a lot different than you thought it would.
If I am being honest and vulnerable, and genuine and the songs that I'm playing and what I'm what I'm doing with my art on stage, it doesn't really matter where it is. And so I kind of abandoned, abandoned that. The folk world a little bit. And actually, when I look back on my career, and the reason that I left Seattle, because I didn't want to be pigeonholed, I'm actually in the exact same spot I would have been if I had stayed there.
There's this community, this organization that my wife works for called young life and their youth ministry and a lot of my audience was based on that and I was Like I don't really want that to be. And now that's a lot of my audience. I just took a little circuitous, 20 year route to get back to this.
So I feel like I feel like it's a little ways it's God's sense of humor. And I would not be able to have a music career without this community now. In the sense of, I feel more passionate about what I'm doing. I feel like I have a purpose and what I'm doing and not that I didn't in the first 10 years, but just feel like yeah, it comes with more maturity, you gauge and create differently for different reasons. And in my early part of my career, I was doing it probably more for myself and now I'm doing it more for others.
Laura: This struck me so much, this idea of doing your art for others more than for yourself. As a writer, you hear over and over again that you can’t think about your readers. You have to do the work for yourself. You have to create the thing you feel called to create, and worry about readers later. I still ascribe to that philosophy. Anytime I’ve tried to pander to an audience, it comes out false.
But Christopher is talking about something different. He’s talking about creating the music he feels called to create, no matter what the inspiration might be. He’s talking about not limiting himself by getting caught up on whether or not his music will be categorized as Christian or secular.
Christopher: When I think about where we are as a culture now, I think we're more divisive than we've ever been. And so the way that the algorithms work, we listen and read. We get fed what we listen and read to and what we get fed what we listen and read and so as as a Christian In artists, I fought against that in the beginning of my career, even though every song I wrote when I wrote him, a lot of my early songs I would write so it sounded like it was a love song to a girl, but it might have been actually about God. And, and I didn't want to get pigeonholed in that. And I actually my whole career, I feel like I've wrestled. You're too Christian for the folk audience, which is ridiculous. And then you're not Christian enough for the Christian audience. So I've sort of like this middle ground, I've I've kind of straddled both worlds. And in early in my career, I worried about that a lot. And now I really don't care. Like I just want to write good songs that will affect people that will challenge them, encourage them in whatever capacity they need that and but I wrestled very much with when I lived in Seattle, like I don't want to be a Christian artist. Don't want to be a songwriter. And so I moved to Boston and I thought that there and in some respects, lived a life that was probably not very representative of my belief system. And then as I've gotten older, and gotten married and realized how selfish I was not a child and realized how really selfish I was, and all of the artists kind of shifted and been affected by that, and so I'm just a little bit more loose with I just want to write songs.
Laura: In recent years, this has meant that Christopher’s work is more explicitly focused on his faith than he ever could have imagined.
You know, the last record that I put out was actually a commissioned piece, commissioned album of 12 songs by a author friend of mine who is a theologian, pastor, speaker, just all around amazing guru of a guy. And the whole collection of songs was based on the Old Testament book of Joel, like you couldn't swing that pendulum. Yeah, you can swing that pendulum any further from my first album to my 12th house. In some ways, but just writing out of Scripture which I, I've done a little bit of but I spent nine months in a book of the Bible that is 76 verses long and was so inspired by it and challenged by it. And love this collection of songs just because I think it hits on the heart of, of our culture and not being very good at lamenting and grieving and with the divisiveness feel like there's just there's so much that we need to learn about community and I'm I'm really hoping that and I'm sure that you are as well that when this whole stay at home thing is done, we will look at each other differently, will feel differently about each other will will reach out in a different way will care for one another in a different way. Even though everything in our culture and our politics and our media just pushes right back up against it. I hope that we can be we can rise above that. But there's some days where I don't think that's gonna be possible.
But it really has to do with what you feed yourself with drives, whether you're going to be cynical or whether you're going to be hopeful. And if you read the news all day long, you're gonna be cynical. And you're gonna think this holy cow, I'm done. I'm done on this planet, like, I just, I'm done. But if you spend time with community and friends, and in the word and poetry and good art and music, then you're going to have a totally different view on things.
I want to create art that people will come back to that will drive them towards the hopeful as opposed to the cynical.
Laura: I asked Christopher to play a song from the album he wrote that was inspired by the book of Joel.
Laura: I’ll be back with more of my conversation with Christopher right after this short break.
---
Laura: There’s a song on one of Christopher’s early albums called “Empty My Hands.” My family and I were listening to that album the first week of this quarantine. It’s what prompted me to reach out to Christopher. He wrote it such a long time ago that he no longer remembers how to play it, but it’s a song that captures what I’ve been feeling during this quarantine, when so many of the things we carried before have been taken away.
Christopher: I was 29 when I wrote that song, and I really had no clue what I was talking about. Like empty my hands. I didn't even really have that much in my hands at that point, other than other than my pride and my envy and my greed and my you know, and my desire to, you know, sell out rooms full of bulky people, but I mean, and I had lost love and I had, you know, had all those things. But now Yeah, the stakes are a lot higher when you when you really have to come up face to face with empty in your hands like, Oh gosh, okay, I have a child, I have a marriage. I have three mortgages. I yeah, it's like, all right. It's really a testing of one's faith. I think the older you get, and not to say that in my 20s I was completely, you know, had nothing to empty myself of but just it's Yeah, it's a different it's a different deal. And honestly, I wouldn't trade where I am now for anything.
Laura: This time has been one of emptying of hands for most musicians, and Christopher is no exception.
Yeah, I'm with you in terms of you and your husband's loss of income, like everything I just found out about another gig that canceled for the summer. So I kind of have my hands open to not playing another show live until like September, which is just bizarre. I sent out an email to my to my mailing list actually this morning with a picture of a toothpaste tube. And I realized on Sunday that that's the first time in my adult life that I've actually witnessed a toothpaste tube going from full to empty in one sitting like I've been home. Every day that I've used it and watched it be emptied, which is hilarious to think of. This is the longest I've ever been home. In my adult life. It's the most time I've ever spent with my wife other than the first year of marriage, which we're celebrating 16 years. And music business wise. Yeah, I don't, I don't really know what the future holds. And similar to how it was early in my career as well. Yeah, I really, I have no idea.
With with the way people consume their music and media it is gotten harder and harder and even more harder and this quarantine time to make an actual living because people don't don't purchase aren't anymore they just stream it and pay a couple pennies and that's what I get, and so I really don't know what what is next in terms of and I'm kind of hoping that this quarantine is a is a enlightenment for me if what what happens next? When I was reached out to by you and to hear your story of like you're taking on a completely new adventure was inspiring for me to thank Okay, maybe there's something else that is coming around the corner that I have no idea like I have no idea what it is.
Laura: That emptying has pushed Christopher to shift the way he approaches his music once again. His music is looking very different now than it was before this quarantine.
my career doesn't look anything like it? I thought it would part of the answer, or part of what comes with that answer is I've grown a tremendous heart to lead others in song for the church, which has been really neat. Both and writing songs like the Joel album that I mentioned, but also just leading people in, in music on Sundays and outside of Sundays, and that I've grown a love and a kind of a new talent for. So that's something that is new. Which I really, really have, in this season in particular have have where I've been spending most of my time. A friend of mine challenged me in the beginning of this quarantine, to pray Psalm 91 for 91 days, and he felt like it was going to be very important as a part of that. Have worship the sort of singing songs for the church be be an important part of that. And so every day for the last, we jumped on the bandwagon a little bit late, but today is Day 75 out of 91, where we've worshiped every single day.
And live streamed it so that like, yeah, never thought that would have been happening, but that every day at noon, I would be throwing a set of hymns and contemporary songs together and then on Wednesdays, like tomorrow is a Wednesday and I'll be doing a full hour of music of liturgy and scripture and, and and songs for whoever to tunes in from around the world. So that that's like wow, never never saw that one coming. And and the beauty of it, which you will probably could you could attest to is the rhythm of your day has shifted because your priorities have shifted because you lost other things. And for me, the same thing might priorities have shifted. I have a different creative outlet because traveling is not happening and concerts in front of live people. It's not happening. So I have to shift to a different mode of what I'm prioritizing and what I'm creating. And I'm not writing songs as much as I would like to, but I'm creating content every day, which I wouldn't have done. Three months ago, I wouldn't have imagined that I would be doing this. So it's been a gift. It really has been an amazing gift for my whole family to stop in the middle of our day, whatever we're doing, and we go into the living room or whatever room I've chosen, and we sit and we sing together and then we eat lunch and when they could carry on with our day.
Yeah, it's been a sweet season for us just to be home. Like I said, the longest time that we've been together as a family for Yeah. And the most time I've been home because I make my living, traveling. If I don't travel, I don't make a living. So that's part of the challenge of this time.
Laura: I’ve been hearing for years about how tough the music industry has become for musicians, how nearly impossible it is to make a living off your art. But even so, there’s a lot I didn’t understand about it, so I asked Christopher to walk me through the changes that have happened in the twenty-five years he’s been making a living as an artist.
Yeah, when I first started playing, and I released a compact disc in 1994, that was a really big deal. And, and so when I started my career, I made most of my money off of merch, selling CDs. And then as our culture's kind of shifted, and as streaming has happened, as computers have lost their disk drives as cars have lost their CD players, the way of the compact disc is gone. And so that place where I used to make most of my income has been dwindled down to streaming which most folks are like, Oh, they the ease of getting music has trumped the knowledge of what it actually does to independent artists. So Spotify, all those things are great. I mean, they're great for for convenience factor, and they're great for people who have millions and millions of downloads. But if you have 10,000 downloads, you literally just get pennies per play. And so I laugh every time I get a check every two months for like 80 bucks, which before would have been you know, I sell a CD for 15 bucks and I get 14 of it. And now, if someone buys a song on iTunes, I get 70 now 62 cents. So just the economics of it and I don't think people fully understand that as like I said, we trade knowledge for convenience. And I think that the knowledge will come later when artists perhaps like myself end up getting a job doing something else because we couldn't support ourselves.
So yeah, it is a certainly a challenging time and then add in now the fact that like I said, if I don't leave home, I don't really make money. So if I can't leave home, then I'm not really making money.
But God has been really gracious and providing and creative ways like video content and a couple churches have hired me to create videos for them of songs. And I've been doing live stream concerts like private zoom concerts for folks, which is totally insane but awesome that I can sit in my living room and drink a glass of wine and play music for two and a half hours with strangers all over the world. But I really do think the livestream thing is gonna run its course soon. People are gonna get pretty tired of it. Because it feels like everybody is doing it. Yeah. And then I don't know, what will happen after that.
Laura: Nate and I decided a long time ago that whenever possible we were going to budget so we could at least occasionally go to concerts to support musicians we loved. We’ve stayed true to that, and over the years have seen some of our favorite musicians live. There is something magical about sharing the same room with someone who has created songs that you’ve listened to over and over again, or songs you’ve never heard but immediately love. It’s not a given that every concert will be that way, but you can tell when a musician is opening themselves up to you, when each song is a gift where you get to see the artistry unfold.
But of course now, concerts have been indefinitely put on hold. The world that was already challenging for musicians has become impossible. I asked Christopher if he could imagine a scenerio where we could go back to paying artists what their music is worth, of valuing them enough to make sure they can survive. And he said no, that he doesn’t think we’ll be able to move away from convenience as second nature.
Christopher: I really don't see how it's going to turn. I do feel like and maybe it's this time of quarantine or staying at home that that perhaps the pendulum on technology will swing the opposite direction and people will put down their phones more and for that I am hopeful that people are going to be craving face to face, conversation interaction, actual relationships face to face, and hopefully our technology will lose some of its grip.
That's my hope at least. But I don't think it'll change the way we we listen to music unfortunately, other than then maybe the live concert will will become something that's even more important. That connection. Yeah. And I'm grateful that I don't play a ton of large venues. So if it all goes to pot and nobody can ever gather again over 50 people I feel great about that. Because that's how many people I gather 49 people every night. And well, we'll see. Yeah, I'm totally great. I've got a long time ago, I sort of adapted that, like, I don't care who's in the room. If they're there and they're loving it. I trust that I'll get taken care of financially.
You know what I've done more of in probably the last 6,7, 8 years is house concerts, and I absolutely love them. They're not everybody's cup of tea, but man to roll into somebody's living room and just open my guitar and play for a couple hours and drink wine and hang out with people and have conversations. I love it.
Laura: Christopher has had to evolve as a musician many times over during his career. I asked him if his definition of success has changed in that time.
Christopher: To be able to say that I've played music for my living for my livelihood for my job for 25 years is is mind boggling to me. But to me, that's the definition of success. Like, I have a lot of friends who've had a lot of success and they don't play music anymore. One guy doesn't even touch his guitar. He like cold too. He stopped and to me that that this makes my heart break Thank you lost this love this passion that you had and and so for me I I kind of prayed a long time ago when I when I decided to play music that that if I'm not supposed to do this God would you make it have a deadly like crystal clear when it's time to be done and there have been moments where I've bumped up against that and and then he's responded with with something. And so success for me now is just I want to be able to continue making a living at it and more importantly creating good art like just songs that move people that make them think about things differently that encouraged the challenge that entertain more more than entertain I just want I want to affect people like in their core in their heart.
And to me that's that when I'm successful.
Laura: I asked Christopher if he had any hopes and fears about this time we’re living in, both for himself and for our world.
I think my hope is that we would we will help loosen the grip of technology on our lives, that we would fight for community.
Difference differently and make it more of a priority. Whatever community looks like for you, whether that be a faith community, or whether that be your elderly neighbor down the street, or Yeah, I think that's my hope and That it would it would shift our priorities kind of moving forward.
My fear is that it's not going to end. And then out of that, in some sense like that I won't be able to get back to doing what I love to do. There's, I think that's a valid fear. I also fear for what it will the world will be like for my son.
That makes me emotional think about and just the world that he will, the world that we are in and the world that he will live in. As he grows and matures and what school will look like what church will look like, what friendships will look like I've Yeah, I feel a little less sure of that right now.
Laura: There was a point not too many years ago when Christopher thought about ending his music career.
Christopher: I released my 10th album, my 20 year of doing music for a living and I thought I was done and was okay with that thought. Felt like I had a good run and the album I had just made was really reflective of my songs and my heart and the intimacy of what I do live. and, and, and then this song came along called Do not be afraid.
And and I was studying kind of prepping for the Advent season at my church and and was reading the story of Jesus's birth and was struck by the the interaction of God with him. And the way that he called her the favorite one and he said Do not be afraid and he told her the news and she freaked out accordingly and then her response was very open handedly if that is your will then so it'd be and so I just struck by that and how this young woman received that news but also just the idea of being still and and receiving and that most of our days are not filled with that they're filled with more filth, you know, just filling our space filling our heads, filling our mind filling our souls and what we really need to do and especially now in the season is just stop, be still and rest. And and to do now, to not be afraid, which is really challenging for the culture and the media onslaught that we have all day long to really hold to hold that and and and I have no doubt that that there's a reason that all throughout Scripture it says do not be afraid from the Old Testament all the way to the end of the nail written is repeated, do not be afraid Do not be afraid even for the people that were closest to walking with Jesus when he walked this earth. He had to remind them so many times.
---
And then he had a funny little gift of giving me a song called Do not be afraid. That kind of reignited a whole album and then another album came after that, so I'm kind of hopefully excited. expectant for what is going to come next even though I have no idea what it is.
So the song was sort of a prayer that literally was written very quickly and and I started playing it and realized which is was beautiful part of the story was I realized, I just wrote a song that is resonating so deeply with people that I have to write at least 10 or 11 more songs to make one more album just to record this one song. So I set out on this great journey of writing songs that were all about pushing back on fear and the importance of community and all of the things that we find ourselves sort of wrestling in this season, I think in particular.
And then the song came along and I realized, Nope, I'm not done yet. I'm not done. I got a record and I literally every show since then. I've played that song.
Laura: I asked Christopher if he’d play that song for us now. Here it is.
-----
Play Do not Be Afraid
-------
Laura: My conversation with Christopher made me feeling hopeful--but it also challenged me. Twenty years into my writing career, I’m only just learning to accept that I might be coming back around to the place I started, something Christopher learned to accept a long time ago. When I was writing novels, I’d been able to keep my faith and creativity mostly separate.
But this project has changed things. The thing about doing a daily podcast is that you don’t have time to sit with things long enough to let them sift out into different categories. There’s a lot of trusting the process, of just showing up every day and being surprised by what comes out.
There was a point very early on, when I realized I had to decide: was I going to be honest about who I was--including my faith--or was I going to hide? Was I going to be brave, or afraid?
And so I’ve tried not to be afraid. I’ve hoped that the things I’ve shared--even things about my faith--could resonate across our differences. And it’s still hard, to share something so deep and tender in myself.
But also, it feels like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
My daily sanity to you today is the one that Christopher gave to me: it’s the permission to be authentically yourself, even if you are afraid.
Maybe that means doing something you’ve felt for a long time that you needed to, but that you’ve been avoiding. Maybe it’s as small and simple as putting away your phone. Maybe it’s sitting quietly as you listen to a song. Maybe it’s looking at what you’re carrying, and emptying your hands.
I don’t know what the future holds. Like Christopher, I don’t know if I’ll come through this time able to make a living doing the thing I was born to do. But I’m here now. And every day there are chances to reach out to others, to be still, to not be afraid. There are daily gifts we can give to ourselves, and to each other.
And maybe that’s enough.