Tree63 frontman John Ellis had a heavy schedule of promo work for the new album Sunday!, but he couldn’t have been more interesting, candid or thoughtful.
Tree63 frontman John Ellis: Sorry I missed your call, I was just finishing another interview.
CMCentral (Kevan Breitinger): Oh wow, back to back, huh? Doesn’t sound like a fun afternoon.
For you or for me?
No, for you! (Laughing).
For me, it’s good (Laughing). I love talking about myself.
Well, that works out (laughing). I was listening to Sunday! today and thinking, just a few tracks in, John Lennon. It’s got such a psychedelic feel to it. It sounds like you’ve really stepped into some freedom.
Did you say psychedelic? It’s funny, I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently about the 40th anniversary of Monterrey, and the Summer of Love this year. So I’ve been reading a lot about Sgt. Pepper, the whole psychedelic culture of 40 years ago. My dad brought me up on the Beatles and by the time I was twelve I was a complete Beatle addict. I have a lot of deep roots in that culture, and most of the music I buy these days is 40 years old (laughing).
You guys really tapped into that flavor. Was it intentional?
The first thing is that my roots are in the older music, and the second thing is, well, maybe I’m just getting older, but there doesn’t seem to be as much going on these days musically or in terms of integrity. You almost have to go backward to find music that came from a real place. So much sounds very contrived or hatched, for want of a better word.
Demographic-driven.
Completely. There doesn’t seem be too much originality in the past ten years or so. So we were intentional in wanting to make music that had some roots, and drew from music from the ‘70s. It sounded better to us.
Well, it works well with your socially conscious lyrics.
That’s a huge part of this particular record.
I read a bit about your frustration with the Christian music industry, and I share some of it, but it seems like you’ve made your way through all that.
Well, I hope so. I think I may have put a few noses out of joint, because it’s not particularly polite, some of what I’ve been saying (laughing). But I think that’s the point, we’ve got to do something to get people to think about something besides themselves. And hopefully music can be part of that conversation.
It made me think a lot of Romans 12, where it speaks of what worship really is. That message seems very deeply ingrained in your music, portraying what real worship looks like.
Well, being a Christian only ten years I wouldn’t have said that I know exactly what it looks like, but I think I’m getting an idea.
I wonder sometimes what the Lord thinks as He listens. He is worthy of our adoration, absolutely, but I wonder if it is a stench to Him if we’re busy singing while everyone around us starves.
That’s a great point. I’m a musician, so my life to this point is about using my musical abilities for the glory of God, but the older I get and the more I‘ve seen in what’s going on in the church, the more I begin to wonder what God wants from us. I’m realizing that singing a song to Him is sometimes the least we can do. A lot of the time I think God wants much more from us than just a nice song. You can be worshiping God just as much by giving someone a loaf of bread as you are by singing a wonderful song to Him. Singing a song from within the comfort of the church, while looking our best, must at some point become almost meaningless to Him if we’re not focusing on helping other people who are poor.
That’s what the book of Amos is saying.
I don’t know why, but the book of Amos resonates in me. I’ve read it a few times and it seems to contain some of God’s strongest messages about having compassion for the underdog.
You have a very strong black-and-white personality, don’t you?
Yeah, I’m very up and down. But I’m getting more and more intrigued by the gray areas. I feel that is where God hangs about the most.
I’m pretty black and white myself, I need to get in touch with those subtleties.
We all do. For starters, it will make us a lot easier to hang out with. Black and white people can sometimes be really, really judgmental. I know I have been in my short time as a Christian.
I’ve struggled with that, too. It seems to be a part of the prophetic personality. And your music does come across as pretty prophetic, at least the way I read it.
It’s definitely something I’ve felt before, and been told before by other Christians. But unfortunately, prophetic doesn’t always mean it’s going to sell very well or impress other people, because the prophetic is usually uncomfortable to people (laughing).
Yeah, the prophets aren’t generally the best-sellers (laughing). “Becoming” was very helpful to me along those lines. What tracks on the new album really resonating with you right now?
I’m especially into track four, a song called “Alright.”
That track reached right into my gut.
Of all the songs on the record, something about that one got us going as well. That particular song is about South Africa, where I come from. But it also is a song we can sing to each other, applying to all of us hanging on by the skin of our teeth. We all need to hear once in a while that no matter what it is we’re going through, it will ultimately be OK. It’s the universal message we all need, because we can very easily in this day and age give up hope. There can seem to be less and less reason to hang in there these days. But one way or another God has a plan, and we’ve got to hold on to it.
I like it the way the album brings forth both of those elements. On the one hand it’s getting in your face, but on the other hand it serves up a big dose of hope.
That’s the word. Hope is the key word for this record. It’s one thing to be going on about how wrong we are, but if we stop there, it’s only half of the equation. We’ve got to talk about the fact that everything we face that is not right can be fixed and we do have hope. The Lord is coming back, and Sunday is right around the corner. Otherwise we live in hopeless darkness, and what’s the point of anything? But the fact is that even if we do live in dark times we’ve got to find the hope.
Are you in a hopeful season in your personal life, John?
Not particularly, but then again, kind of. After many, many years of being in Tree63 and running around the world, I now have a small family and it’s starting to get really difficult. On one level I don’t see how much longer I can carry on doing this, and that feels a bit strange. On the other hand, I see new horizons and sense God calling us to do something else, maybe quite soon. So it’s the dichotomy of hopeless and hopeful at the same time (laughing).
Yeah, having a family will do that to you.
Yes, (laughing) it really will.
John, I wanted to ask you before we go, about South Africa. What is your greatest prayer for your country right now?
Wow, that’s such a hard thing to get right. South Africa is such a tragic country. It’s one of the most beautiful places you could look at on the face of the planet. It’s not a very big country, about twice the size of Texas, but in that one small space, we have everything beautiful that you could ever think of. It’s a beautiful place, full of beautiful people, and yet it moves from one tragedy to the next, beginning with apartheid and then this terrible epidemic of AIDS, that has taken over our country more than any other nation on the planet. And the place I come from, on the east coast, happens to be the AIDS epicenter of the world.
So my prayer is that if God has a plan for Africa, and we believe He does, that He would have the mercy to start with South Africa and South Africa would be the hope of Africa, that politically, socially, in all these things we’d get it right. One step at a time we’d show Africa and the rest of the world that Africa can dig itself out.
Wow, that’s a big prayer, but I’m gonna join you in that.
The end of apartheid in 1994 was miraculous, and such a big answer to prayer. No one ever thought that could happen, but it did. If that could happen, anything can happen.
See, there it is again: hope.
Exactly. Never think that God can’t do it because He can.
Amen, well, I really enjoyed talking to you, brother.
Yes, I enjoyed your call, thank you for your insightful questions.
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