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Driving it home.

It's been quite a while since the Christian music world last heard from Paul Alan and he's been pretty busy in the meantime. I was able to catch up with Paul during GMA Week just three weeks after the birth of his second son and just one week after the release of Drive It Home, the long awaited follow up to his 2001 solo album, Falling Awake.

We chatted about the new album, the state of the music industry, the joys of being an independent artist and more. Enjoy.

So, it's been seven long years, man. How's it been? What have you been up to?

You know, I. . . A couple of great things happened in that seven years. One, I got married. Two, I have had two little boys. I've got a two and a half year old and a three week old little boy.

Great things to happen.

Talk about a change in perspective, when things like that happen.

Definitely.

So, in 2001 - it sounds so cliche, but - I was just a different person than I am now. I had reached a point where I was just borderline ready to just throw in the towel and be happy that I had a good run. I never quite got there, but oh well, it's time to get a job, get married and have kids. And then I woke up a while back and realized that I missed it. And I decided that I didn't have to go and get a record deal and try to be famous. I could just make some music, put it online and let folks just hear it. And if a handful of people are encouraged by it, then it's worth doing.

Sure.

That's it. So, I just got the itch to get back into it and thus far God has blessed me immensely with some of the opportunities that have come my way with radio and some of these folks that I'm working with. It's exciting that there haven't been the walls preventing my re-entry to music that I thought there might be.

So, I guess it's safe to say that in 2001, you really did leave lonely behind. . .

(laughs)

You're married and now you have a full house. It's an amazing thing to have two boys and all that, so congrats on that.

Thanks. There's nothing like it. It's hard to get your head around. Now it's sleep depravation that is the biggest problem. . .

(laughs)

Yeah. Your last album was called Falling Awake and I noticed that the phrase re-appears on this album. Is that a tribute to the fact that you can't fall asleep anymore?

(laughs) You know, kind of uninterestingly, the title of that last album. . . The song that it appears in is called "Another Silent Night" and that song was very close to making it on the last album, but at the last second, we cut it. I still really like the title, Falling Awake and so, we just cut the song and kept the title for the album. I didn't think I'd ever do anything with the song, but at some point, I kind of rewrote it - changed the verses a little bit and mixed things up a little bit to make it a better song. So, it ended up making this record. So, there wasn't any intent of doing that, but the song came first, before the title.

And the lead single, "To Bring You Back" was similarly written back for the last album, too, right?

Yeah. It was a song called "Step Into My World," (laughs) It was way back in 1998 when I first wrote that and the chorus is essentially the same, but the verses were different. The hook and the actual point of the song was somewhat different, too, and so we recorded it for some demos for some labels and the labels basically said, "Okay, but we don't know what we would ever do with this. . ."

(laughs)

So that kind of began my hiatus from the mainstream Christian music industry and I kind of went the indie route from that point. The mainstream wasn't interested which I'm fine with. That's just how it happened, but that song was another one - just like "Another Silent Night" - where, the better writer I became and the more perspective I got as I got older and got better at what I did, I realized some of the reasons why. . . I found some of the holes in it and some of the things that needed to be fixed and I rewrote it, changed some of the lyrics, some of the verses and tightened it up a bit and, lo and behold, we're number 18 in the country on CHR which I'm just so thankful and thrilled about.

That's great. Obviously you made changes to the song, but do you think that the industry, or at least the listening audience, has changed in such a way that they're more accepting of that style or particular sound? Or maybe those people back then didn't know what they were talking about?

(laughs) No, I think they probably knew what they were talking about. The song is better now than it was back then, so, to be fair, in it's current form, maybe that would've made the difference. Some of it is timing. Some of it is, does it strike a chord with somebody or doesn't it. It just might not have struck a chord at the time. But changes in the music industry are very exciting to me right now. In the past, the only way you could get records into the marketplace was to be with a record label who could front those costs and had the distribution channels to get it into the market. But now, with the advent of electronic media and the internet, if you can find - through MySpace or email or whatever - the people who are interested in your music, then you can put it out there.

Yeah.

You don't have these folks who are gatekeepers in a way. They probably get thousands of CDs in the mail every day and they need to filter it down to the one or two that they think people might like and then they have to go create music that they think people might like. That's their job and there's nothing wrong with that, but that leaves the 98% of the other musicians that didn't get a chance to be heard. Most of the artists that did well, nobody thought that they were going to do well.

Sure.

Jars of Clay. . . MercyMe. . . I mean, some of these folks. . . Somebody took a chance on them and they did what they did and you know, off they went. I love the story about MercyMe and "I Can Only Imagine." What an incredible song. What a pure song. And the fact that it hit mainstream as blatently Christian as it is. . .

and blew up. . .

. . . And it can only be because God ordained that it be so. That's where you wanna be. So that's the interesting thing about the industry. I can hand you a CD or I can send you to a website and you can go download it and there it is.

You mentioned having a better perspective influencing your writing. How has that really changed the way you write? How is it different writing a song now as opposed to writing in 1998?

In 1998, going that far back, I was truthfully trying to write hit songs. In 2001, when Falling Awake came out, I was less concerned about that and more, that's when again, I got out of the [mindset] of I've gotta write a hit song to play for my label and got into the mindset of just wanting to write a song that I like and that is on my heart to say. I was at the start of that path back in '01 and then five or six years later, this is just a collection of songs that I've written or co-written with friends. I've had friends play on it. It's simply and purely what I would do with no outside intervention. This is purely my heart, my thoughts and I had no intention of writing any hits. I had no idea that "To Bring You Back" was going to be accepted the way that it is, in fact, I thought it probably wouldn't. Then, all of a sudden, people are calling the radio stations and people are saying that they like it. The fact that people like it means so much more to me - you have no idea how much more it means to me - than to have a record label like it.

I guess it's gotta be more satsfying and, to some extent, the songs must feel more personal. When you set out to write a hit song, you're kind of manipulating the audience and writing what they already like and maybe pushing them to like things a little more. Whereas this is more of just writing what you want to say and then when people respond, it's more validating.

For sure.

And if you are a super-Christian and have no doubts and have no thoughts of disappointment and have no fears, then you are dishonest with yourself. And that's how that song came about. It just says, "This is for the weary and the weak." We all fall down. We all need saving once in a while. You're not alone. Come to Jesus. It's just a message that whatever state you're in, you can come to Him and He will welcome you in that way. So again, I was sitting there thinking, "If I call it "Come to Jesus", are they going to think that I'm trying. . . " and I just had to stop, because that's what came to me and that's what worked for me. Thus far, it's resonated pretty well.

Now one of the big themes to the album - It's hinted at here in the title and the title of some of the songs and certainly throughout the songs - is redemption.

Yes.

God kind of calling us back to Him and coming out to get us personally. What kind of life experiences did you have during the writing process that, looking back, made that such a recurring theme?

That's a fantastic question and I'm excited and honored that you listened closely enough to have picked that up. I thank you for that. The bottom line is this. Again, "To Bring You Back" was written ten years ago and then I started writing "Drive It Home" about ten years ago. It was originally about something else and now it's about what it's about. Then there's "Come to Jesus" and then the last song on the record to be finished was "Bethlehem" and that was finished about two weeks before we tracked the vocals and got it done. We wrestled and wrestled with that song. We had the music pretty much how we wanted it, but we didn't have a lyric, or a title, we didn't know what it was about. I didn't want to just be cheesy and throw something at it.

Sure.

I had this concept about Bethlehem, about boiling things down to the basics. About a baby, born in a manger, come to save the world, a refuge. . . "Where the weary lay their heads and the lost are found." So, there's this thread from '98 through now and Bethlehem sums up the whole record in that it's not about my physical journey to the hog pen if you will, The Prodigal, but my spiritual journey of salvation. And everything is new and pure. There's no outside manipulation of your faith and where you're at. To the other end of that spectrum. To guilt and arguments about theology and all the different things that you see in the Church that are not consistent with the way they ought to be. All of a sudden you find yourself being a Christian, but far from God. And this album, for me, is that redemption. It's that returning spiritually to the basics of: He loves me and He's pursuing me, period. No more theology. No more religion which unfortunately we can get caught up in. That's, somewhat unintentionally, what emerged in the record. I think the record was, if nothing else, God's way of sending that message to me.

You got something out of it.

I got something out of my own songs.

And we're out of time. Thanks for the conversation.

For more information, visit PaulAlan.com - MySpace
Drive It Home available now at: MusiChristian, CBD/ChristianBook.com, Amazon or iTunes

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