A Mystifying conversation with downhere
05-22-2006
by Brenten Gilbert

Debuting in 2001, downhere captured the Christian music industry's ear with their self-titled debut that would earn them a nomination for New Artist of the Year from the Gospel Music Association among numerous other awards. The band followed up that success with So Much For Substitutes, another well-received effort for 2003 before they parted ways with Word Records.

Now, on the verge of releasing a long awaited third release as the headlining artist of a young label, downhere took some time out to chat with CMCentral.com about their time between albums, what they've learned, the new album and a whole lot more. What follows is that conversation. (Note: "1000 Miles Apart," a song on the new album Wide-Eyed and Mystified includes the following lyric: "And we don't ever have to talk, 'cause you like hip hop and I like rock")

CMCentral.com (brenten gilbert): I was a little nervous coming in here because I figured you didn't want to talk to me cause I like hip-hop. . .

Oh. . . and we like rock.

(laughs)

nice.

(laughs)

Jason Germain: The song's about reconciling these things though..

(laughs)

So how have you guys been the last couple of years?

Good, good

Been a rough ride?

Glenn Lavender: No, not really. We've been going on a journey, that's for sure, but it's good.

Jeremy Thiessen: I don't know if I would say rough at all. It's kind of one of those refreshing, refocusing times and it's been very positive I think.

There definitely have been moments of [wondering] what is going to happen and where are we going to land, but I definitely sensed God's hand and provision in that time. We've had a lot of encouraging voices in our lives and obviously a lot of change in the last two years. Really, really positive and great changes for us. We love our new record label.

And as a band I think we have refocused since we got let go from Word [Records]. There was a time for us to evaluate things. To ask, "Is it time to throw in the towel?"or "Is this really what we are supposed to be doing?" It was good for us to sit down and talk through that, spend time in prayer about it and figure out exactly where we need to be and what we're supposed to be doing.

It gave us a chance to remember that we're pursuing a calling and not an industry. We once thought that the label is the only way to get your music heard or to be a valid Christian artist. That was taken away from us and we're okay. We're still around and still traveling.

So what has God taught you the most over the past three years?

I think I've - I'm just speaking personally - really come to a different understanding of what the Gospel means in my life practically - just how sufficient grace is, how magical and perfect salvation is, and how it really does give freedom in our lives. I've really been caught up with the Gospel's simple message of salvation and how huge that is. In some way, that is what our record is about: coming back to the basics. It's about becoming, once again, wide eyed and mystified at God's provision. That's me anyway.

I've gotten married in that time frame, kind of in the last ten months or so, and that's been a huge learning lesson, too. I mean it's been fantastic but just learning love, how to love and what unconditional love is. You can talk about that on one side of marriage and on the other side of marriage it takes on a whole new look. That's been a cool learning curve.

It opens your eyes to just how much depth there is to the description of Christ and the church as a marriage.

Yeah.

Anybody else?

Not just the last three years, but my wife and I had a little boy a couple of years ago, and I feel like everything I'm learning from God always seems to come back to selfishness. Having a child definitely reveals all sorts of selfishness that you have and didn't realize much like getting married. All the time, I'm in this refinement process. God's been kind of stripping me back to selfishness and trying to get me out of that. I feel like everything can always come back to that. It's interesting.

Marc Martel: For me it seems pretty basic, but I think about incorporating how my faith plays out in everyday life and the freedom that comes with that. Growing up in the church, you come away with a sense about Christianity that's kind of dictated by just two lists. There are the things you do and the things you don't do and those lists don't intermingle. You have to stick to the good one. It might be weird to say, but looking at life, it seems much more grayish. That might sound a little liberal, but I don't mean it in a liberal sense. [When you're] looking at life [with the two lists], it kind of breeds shame. When you do sin, it seems to amplify in your life and you get down on yourself. I'm starting to look at life more on the side of grace and forgiveness and that encourages me to want to serve Christ more fully - it doesn't make me want to sin. I'm just learning to live in the freedom that comes with being totally redeemed.

Let's talk a little bit about the new album. You've already kind of touched it a little bit on it, but what do you guys see as the overarching themes? What songs stand out or what themes for you guys?

There is a few themes. There is the newness of the Gospel. Even though it's old, it's always new. I think the songs "Unbelievable", "A Better Way", and "The More" all kind of have the theme that the Gospel is refreshing everyday. It never gets old and it's a story that needs to be retold. No matter how many songs have been written, there will always be a need for more, because, as humans, we forget and need to be reminded. We get used to things and they start to mean less after a while. . ..

You get "religious". . .

Yeah, you get "religious." Surrender is another big theme on the album as well as faithfulness in the small steps. We talk about not trying to figure out God and His unsearchable will for our lives. We need to be confident and know that it is just enough for us to be faithful in everyday things. We will only know His will when we look back and realize that He was with us the whole time.

This is kind of a new thought right now, but I think that there is a sentiment in this album that I've experienced since we've been playing the new songs live. I've always referred to this thing as my deep hope, and it's this idea that the Gospel is planted in our hearts, but it hurts as much as it's great. I'm now discovering that this is joy, despite the fact that things don't always work out and that life is filled with hardships. Joy makes you able to bleed with a smile on your face. I think with this album we are just really compelled by Christ's love and singing about life from that perspective. Freedom is bringing us joy and it requires nothing of us except just accepting it. It inspires us to be moved beyond our boundaries. In contrast, So Much for Substitutes was kind of prophetic, we pointed a lot of fingers, attempting to point at different problems. On a couple of those songs, we were really just laying it out there, telling everyone that we need to come out of our comfort zones, we need to serve, we need to do this and that, and we are not doing it right now.

We could do better.

Right, but with this album, it's kind of like we've accepted the fact that we can't do better unless we come back to the basics. Ultimately, the prime motivator in our life, as Christians, is God's love, but it's also the story of grace. It's us living it out and just accepting grace. That's enough. That's been really freeing and it comes out in the song writing. The two singles out right now, "The More" and "A Better Way," express this. "A Better Way" talks about the story of God being revealed incrementally through history and asks if it could have been done a better way. With the tension and the release, God reveals His community through history. When we intersect with that it's like a love affair. It's like you were saying, it's the bride and the groom. "The More" is a song about getting to know Him, like in a marriage relationship. The more we know Him, the more He changes us and the more we kind of grow in this relationship together.

It's great. Jay has been involved in a community group from church with John Mays for a number of years. As a result of that, John has kind of been following the whole Downhere journey - our time with Word and our time without a label. We weren't even really considering Centricity, they weren't even on the map for us once we were dropped from Word. We talked with a number of labels just kind of trying to find something that would fit or see if anybody was interested.

Centricity was this brand new, unusual new label that did things really weird. We wondered, "Do these guys really get how it works?" So we didn't really consider them for a while. As Downhere we've tried to partner with people who understand what we're about and they really just did. They're about a lot of the same ideas. When we met with them and started conversations with John, it was an open door. It was kind of cool. We were talking to Inpop [Records] for a while and we were really interested in working with Steve Ford, who is a downhere fan and also a friend because he's in the same small group as me. After we signed to Centricity, he moved to S/R/E [Recordings] and then Centricity ended up hiring him, so we got the best of the two worlds we were looking at, which was pretty cool. No matter who you talk to, John Mays is one of those guys in the industry that has a reputation for being forthcoming and honest and a man of integrity. We're very excited about working with him. He was very helpful in the song writing process this time around, too. He's got a long A & R experience in the industry and a lot to bring to what we do. They've just been an amazing label. We ended up with a better record deal and a better everything.

So what have you guys been studying personally either books or parts of the bible?

It's interesting. One thing all of us have been a little interested in over the past year and half so now is a series about Islam by a guy in Franklin named Dr. George Grant. So we started learning a bit about that. I know Jason was getting into Arabic a little bit. So we've just been trying to read up a little more and understand. . . I mean, there are a lot of other major religions that I feel like I know nothing about. So that's been something I know that I've been getting interested in. Just learning more about it to understand it. We have a trip coming up to Morocco, which is an Islamic country. It's just cool how 2 or 3 years ago when we started learning about this and how God put this trip in our laps that we get to do. So that's really cool. I feel that God is working through this for us.

I'm going to need to do some research because of this trip to Morocco. Morocco's second language is French and I'm the only one in the band who speaks French. Apparently, they have American artists every year, but none of them really speak French. Last year, Joy Williams learned a couple of phrases in French that they would understand and they totally responded amazingly to that. So we are going to work with George Grant to learn what things are acceptable to say in an Islamic country and still faithful to the scripture without watering down the Gospel message which is really an interesting thing.

In the process of this record, I went through a series that is basically like a "Read Through the Old Testament" overview with audio and a workbook by John Ortberg. He's a really gifted communicator. But that started me on the journey to really understanding the historical context for how the Gospel was going to play out. Just the pictures of the little Christs along the way in the Old Testament. That was a cool journey. That's been a while now, that was a year and a half ago.

I've been listing to a bunch of John Piper sermons as of late and one of his big points or things he likes to talk about a lot, is the fact that Scripture never says that being a Christian, living a life of faith, and following Jesus is safe, physically, financially or otherwise. I've just been trying to reconcile that to being a newlywed, providing for my wife, and taking care of a family. He has a lot of great things to say about retirement - how the biggest life wasted is the life that retires at 55 and spends the next 30 years sailing around the world on yacht or playing golf on the golf courses. It's just a huge tragedy. So I'm just trying to figure out if that is a tragedy, what am I doing now to keep myself from ending up that way.

And how can I sail around the world in a yacht and play golf and do ministry at the same time?

(laughs)

I've got a few years to figure that out.

That's how you end up working on the cruise lines.

(laughs)

So here is a fun question. If you guys were any particular type of cookie, what type of cookie would you describe yourself as?

I'm going to say white chocolate macadamia nut. A little sweet, a little salty and just tasty all around.

Jeremy just described himself as sweet, salty and tasty.

(laughs)

FudgeeO. I'm going with a Canadian cookie.

No explanation?

I like FudgeeOs. . . and I want people to like me.

(laughs)

I'll go with the ginger snap cookie because I'm snappy and gingery.

I gathered that from the hat... it's a very snappy hat.

I'm really having a hard time with this question.

Jay would want to be a cup of coffee.

No, I think I would be a cookie. I'm trying to think of a cookie that has sort of a soft outside and a hard inside. Is there such a thing?

How about a wafer?

Or Thin Mint.

A marshmallow cookie. It's got the marshmallow on top and then the wafer underneath.

Yes. It's got layers too, you know?

You're a complicated cookie.

(laughs)

I don't know if there is such a thing as a really complicated cookie.

Anything else you guys want to share with the readers before we wrap things up?

Well you got the website, plug the website, downhere.com.

We'd like to say thanks to the CMCentral readers. They've been really good to us over the past few years. And we are coming to a town near you. . . probably.