Ricardo
Ricardo is an artist and worship leader who was born to break down barriers, of race and ethnicity, music, culture and religion; though it would take the better part of his 29 years of life for that realization to come fully into focus. With the release of his debut album, Unmerited, the vision is not only focused, but flourishing.
The minister of music and worship leader at the 1700-member First Assembly Dream Center, in his hometown of Scottsdale, Arizona, Ricardo has been both a youth and worship leader at a number of large churches across the country, as well as a touring musician and songwriting partner with Israel Houghtan—one of today's most successful and sought-after worship leaders and recording artists—on the long and circuitous path that now finds him on the verge of a major national platform of his own.
Ricardo was born and raised in Scottsdale , a suburb of Phoenix , the youngest of six children of Vicente and Frances Sanchez, both first-generation Mexican-Americans. Speaking Spanish at home, and English at school—and with one foot firmly rooted in the traditional Mexican mariachi music of his heritage, and the other just as decisively planted in American rock, pop and R&B—Ricardo's life was deeply multi-cultural long before he ever even knew the meaning of the word.
Unmerited is an unabashed celebration of praise and worship to the Almighty, put to often-infectious, instantly catchy and memorable modern rock. With its largely English lyrics interspersed with an occasional chorus-here-or-bridge-there in Spanish, the album's twelve songs—most written or co-written by Ricardo—speak to an expansive, demographically diverse group of people, but always of the love of the One True God. Producer Ken Mary—a Christian today who cut his rock'n'roll teeth in the big-time playing drums for with ‘70s and ‘80s rock superstar, Alice Cooper—brings musical muscle and a shimmering veneer to Ricardo's great voice and natural knack for melodies and hooks, delivering both serious rockers and tender ballads with passion and profound anointing.
“Come Down” is an instantly singable, rocking call to God to increase our revelation of Him. “I was going to speak to our youth group, and I wanted to change the musical format to an edgier rock sound,” Ricardo explains. “As I was preparing the message I was going to give that night, the song seemed to just rise out of that, and it just flowed.”
“I Call Your Name” is a powerful, guitar-and-percussion driven ballad. “I was just driving down the highway one day, with a lot weighing on my spirit, and that song just started pouring out,” says Ricardo. “It's a song of intimate worship that means just what it says: `Father, I need you right now.'”
“Celebrate” adds an irresistible, celebratory, driving Latin/rock groove to the mix, while “The Name of Jesus” is an inspired, acoustic-rock song of pure praise. “I had the hook to that one going on in my head, but I was singing `Hallelujah' instead of `The Name of Jesus,'” says Ricardo. “ Israel happened to be in town, and I showed it to him, and he asked if I minded if he played with it a little bit. He replaced the `Hallelujah' in the chorus with `The Name of Jesus' and it was just one of those incredible moments. It was a good idea that became something great with that one change he made.”
Music was always an integral part of Ricardo's life, even from early childhood. One of his brothers and a sister sang in a trio with their father, who also accompanied them on guitar, doing traditional, mariachi music. Some of Ricardo's earliest and fondest memories are of hearing their voices raised in sweet, three-part harmony. Naturally gifted vocally himself, and more than a little precocious, Ricardo, at the age of five, asked his father if he could join the group, and was overjoyed when the answer was affirmative.
Calling themselves Los Hermanitos Sanchez (or in English, the Sanchez Kids), they regularly performed at festivals and community events in and around Phoenix, gradually becoming popular enough to hire full mariachi bands to back them up. Ricardo's father, who had put himself through school working as a butcher, was also a talent booking agent and entrepreneur who started his own record label, on which the family group released a locally popular single when Ricardo—then known as “Little Ricky”—was 10.
Although his parents belonged to the Catholic church, Christianity and church attendance and involvement, were not a part of the family's life—except for Ricardo, who, as a child and young teenager, would regularly walk the mile from his house to church alone to attend Mass.
“I just felt the presence of God in my life, but I didn't know what it was,” Ricardo remembers. “I didn't know how to explain it. I just knew God was real, and something in me yearned for Him. But the church never taught me to pursue Jesus on my own. You were expected to depend on the priest for that, so I had no understanding of who I was in God, or what heaven was. I just knew Jesus was hanging up there on that cross, and I was supposed to fear God, and go to confession, and that was about it. But the priest and everybody there were all such nice, kind people. I felt comfortable there.”
Ricardo continued to sing with Los Hermanitos Sanchez until he reached high school in the early ‘80s, and the group drifted apart into their own lives and families. Though much younger than his then-married siblings, Ricardo's life was heading in a different direction as well.
When in his freshman year a friend invited him to a meeting of Young Life, the well-known national Christian youth outreach organization, both his passion for music and the Lord began to make a gradual but decisive turn. Active in Young Life throughout high school years, Ricardo grew in his passion for music, as well as his knowledge of the Bible and desire to draw closer to the Lord. But despite his faithful, lifelong church attendance—he still carried some significant misimpressions about Christ and his relationship with Him.
“I thought I knew everything about Christianity already, until I went to a Young Life weekend retreat in my junior year,” Ricardo says. “They walked us through all the Gospels the first night, then the next night they talked about sin, and Christ dying to pay for our sins. I had never made that correlation, and when I suddenly did it literally rocked my world. I went outside and found somewhere I could be alone, and just broke down weeping.
“It started to become clear to me that I hadn't turned all of me over to Christ, and that I had to have Him in my heart.,” Ricardo continues. “By the next summer's retreat, when they asked if anyone wanted to receive Christ as their personal Savior, I raised my hand, and gave my life to Him, and it completely transformed everything.”
Ricardo had sung and played bass in several loosely formed garage bands through his high school years. Among numerous, diverse early musical influences, he had a particular affinity for Top 40 rockers including Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Richard Marx, Def Leppard, lots of Beatles, and other hyper-hooky rock acts, whose musical influence combines with his own immense creativity and spirituality to create a familiar but still fresh and original amalgam on Unmerited .
Upon graduation, Ricardo gravitated from the Catholic church to an independent, non-denominational, evangelical church, and supported himself for the next five years doing various odd jobs, while he playing in several popular Christian rock bands in the Scottsdale area.
However, at the same time, Ricardo had made the acquaintance of a tremendously gifted, 19-year-old singer and worship leader named Israel Houghtan, who'd recently moved to Scottsdale and been a guest performer at Ricardo's church. The two formed an immediate personal and creative bond.
Ricardo, who had been writing songs since his mid-teens, began to write with Israel , as well as back him up on bass, ultimately hitting the road in Israel 's band. Israel relocated to Tennessee when he got a deal with a Nashville-based Christian record label in the mid-‘90s. Ricardo, by that time a youth pastor at another Scottsdale church, continued to write and play with Israel , traveling to Israel 's performances around the country while still maintaining his home base in Scottsdale , where he had become an assistant youth pastor at a local church. One of Israel 's gigs at a large Chicago church led to Ricardo being offered a position there as music director and youth pastor, a job he held from 1996 through'98.
Ricardo met his wife-to-be, Jeanette Stewert, at an Israel gig in Provo , Utah . In a classic story of love at first sight, Jeanette—a native of Orange County , California , and graduate of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa —and Ricardo began a long-distance courtship, and soon were talking of plans of marriage. Ricardo, feeling a need for reflection and seeking of God's will for his future, left his position in Chicago, moving to Nashville where Israel offered him a place to live in his basement as he thought and prayed over the serious issues in his life at the time.
Ricardo's sabbatical turned into an eight-month time of prayer and contemplation, during which he began to feel a new sense of responsibility and maturity in his calling to music ministry. Ricardo and Jeanette wed in Tulsa , in 1998, and then returned to Nashville to begin their life as husband and wife.
As Israel's career began to flourish, Ricardo continued to play in his band, and soon found himself making relationships of his own with churches and evangelists who began seeking him as a solo artist and worship leader.
Ricardo was offered and accepted the job of music director at a church in Kansas City, Missouri, before moving to a 3500-member church outside of Houston, which offered him a position as youth pastor and worship leader. Ricardo and Jeanette were well-received in their newest church home, and as Ricardo's original songs became embraced as a regular and much-anticipated part of the Sunday morning and evening worship mix, his ministry and calling began to take on an ever-more defined direction.
Though their separate callings had put geographical distance between Ricardo and Israel , they had remained in touch, and still close friends. In 1999, Israel had returned to Scottsdale where he took the job as worship leader in a newly birthed and burgeoning church, called the Scottsdale First Assembly Dream Center . When he needed a weekend off to do an out-of-town gig with Gospel luminary Fred Hammond, he invited Ricardo to fly back to Scottsdale to fill in for him at his new church.
Ricardo loved the church, and felt good being in Scottsdale again, near his family, and was completely enamored of the Dream Center . A second “fill-in” weekend led to an immediate offer from the church to provide “whatever it would take” to get Ricardo to move back to Arizona and partner with Israel on the worship team.
By January, 2000, Ricardo and Jeanette were back in Scottsdale and Ricardo had assumed the position of Dream Center 's youth pastor and co-worship leader. The next year, when Israel departed for a job at a church in Texas , Ricardo assumed the role of minister of music and full-time worship leader at still-growing and prospering Dream Center , where he remains today.
“I feel really settled in my spirit that I'm where I'm where the Lord wants me to be,” Ricardo concludes. “I love talking to people and discipling them. And I love playing and singing, and leading worship. I'm also in the process now of translating the whole album into Spanish, because I really have a heart for the Hispanic community. So much of that culture is very wrapped up in religion, but without a real, saving knowledge of who Jesus truly is—just like I was. If I could carry that message to them, and anybody who's in a place like that, it would be a great thing. I'm still not sure where God's going to take me, but I'm ready to be and do whatever He wants.” |
