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Phil
Callaway: My daughter is pretty impressed that her dad gets to talk with
you. Paul
Brandt: Well, I just
finished your book Making Life Rich Without Any Money. I’m a big
fan. It’s
great to finally meet. Tell me, how did a Christian guy become a country
star. You were raised in the church, weren’t you? I
was raised in a place called The Gospel Hall and it was very legalistic
with lots of rules and regulations. There were no instruments allowed in
the church, just a cappella singing. When I was 13 I started playing the
guitar and, hey; I was a teenager, I wanted to rock. But my mom really
pushed me more toward country music because as that time at least there
was some morality attached to it. There
was? Did I miss something? Some
morality. How
did your parents encounter Christ? When
I was about six their marriage was on the rocks thanks in part to alcohol.
They went to a gospel meeting one night. My aunt was a crazy,
“born-againer” who kept asking them to come and after the meeting she
asked my dad, “What is it in this world that’s worth holding onto?
Worth giving up knowing that you will have eternity with God?” It really
got him thinking. My mom came out to rescue my dad from his sister and she
asked my mother, “What is God to you?” Mom said, “God is love.” My
aunt said, “What does that really mean to you?” And she told her a
story. She said, “Imagine you had to go across the street and get some
bread and milk at the store and you left the kids home alone for ten
minutes. While you were gone someone broke into the house and killed both
of your daughters. But Paul escaped. He was underneath the bed and the guy
didn’t find him. Two years later they find the guy and try him and
convict him and sentence him to death. And the judge is about to strike
the gavel and you say, “Don’t kill him. Take my son instead.” My mom
said, “Why on earth would I do that? That’s crazy!” And my aunt
said, “That’s what it means when it says God is love. That’s what
Christ did for you.” It rocked her world. My parents didn’t talk about
it that night but they couldn’t sleep. In the morning my mom got down on
her knees in the laundry without knowing my dad was doing the same thing
upstairs and they asked the Lord into their hearts. They met in the living
room half-way in between and found out what they’d done.
I
was six when I heard about Jesus. More than anything he was my ticket out
of hell. But as I got older and got into the music business, suddenly I
wasn’t going to church because Mom and Dad wanted me to. I had to decide
what I believed and what I thought. And I found that my relationship with
the Lord really deepened a lot after getting into the music business and
moving to Nashville. When
did an a cappela boy know he wanted to play music? When
we were finally able to listen to outside music, even Steven Curtis
Chapman was risqué. It was pretty much Sandi Patti and the Gaithers. I
remember praying at 13 or 14 years old and saying to the Lord, “I really
love music and I want to play music, but because I’m a Christian does
that mean I have to do music that doesn’t really sound very good?” I
remember wondering if I be in the secular music industry and still be an
influence on people’s lives? When I finally signed a record deal it
started to become the catch phrase of “making a difference” and being
positive. And I found I was making music that was really nice but it
really didn’t offend anybody. Morally, it was like a cream puff. I ended
up leaving the record label I was with and starting my own company. I
realized that unless I was making music and taking a stand both in
interviews, that it just wasn’t going to matter? What
do you mean by taking a stand? When
it seemed appropriate and when it was Spirit-led, I began to take a stand
in the name of Jesus Christ specifically. All it was if I didn’t do that
was just really nice music that was providing people with a sound track
while they’re on their way to hell. So on this last album we just really
took a stand with that on tour, Liz was on the road with me as well and we
put a song on this album called “That’s What I Love About Jesus.”
It’s a very simple testimonial of why I love Him for what He’s done
for me. We’ve never had more oppression during the tour. It seemed like
a confirmation that we were doing something important because it was
brutal—the things that would go wrong. How
do you mean? Nitpicky
things that would wear us down and make us more tired. Little annoyances
throughout the day, production problems, issues with things that we never
had issues with before. I’m not a mystic. It was obvious that something
was trying to thwart our effectiveness, which gave us even more resolve
and made us lean on the Lord for strength.
I
love people to have fun with my music. But we’ve become cultural
gluttons really. It’s like people just listen to stuff and say, “Oh,
that’s nice.” They’ll watch a movie and say it’s great. But they
don’t realize there are certain worldviews that are being sold to them
and they’re like sponges, absorbing those views. I decided to go out
there boldly and let people know about my worldview. I was playing a small
acoustic set one night and a lady stopped the concert right in the middle
of the show. There are 2,000 people in the audience and she’s down front
yelling at me. She said, “My son is sick, I have to take him to the
hospital and you still haven’t played ‘Convoy.’” I said, “We’d
love to do that song for you. And the crowd kind of goes crazy, a bunch of
country rednecks. But I said, “Before we play, would you mind if we just
prayed for your little boy?” And you should have all these cowboy hats
coming off. I just prayed a really simple prayer and asked that God would
bless this woman, that her son would get better and God would keep them
safe. I said, “We don’t know why bad things happen in this world, but
Lord, it’s not the way You designed it.” And just left it at that and
went into the song. But everyone of those people left there knowing
exactly where I stood. More than anything, that’s what I want. So this
album has that particular song on it. It’s been an incredible album for
us. Even the ballads reflect Christian values. The Bible says God has
written eternity on the hearts of men. We need to present unbelievers with
the truth. And if they get it, it gives you an open door to explain to
them why it filled the hole, why that mattered to them. Movies like
“Star Wars” translate because there’s the epic battle between good
and evil. Movies like Titanic work because he sacrifices himself for the
girl. Unconditional love, it fills the hole. People don’t understand why
it’s doing that, but when we can open their eyes it can be a great
vehicle. Won’t
it be amazing in eternity to see how God weaved all these influences
together? I
feel this movement of tolerance has just overtaken our culture so much.
Logic isn’t even a basis to start from any more. I think it’s up to us
as Christians to take that way of thinking and put it back in people’s
faces again. If you do tolerate, then why it is that you can’t tolerate
Jesus? Why is He the one figure that people can’t seem to quite
tolerate? And to do it with boldness, not in an in your face apologetic
kind of way, but really it’s only logic. And I’ve found that getting
into those discussions with non-Christians is a lot easier than I dreamed
it would be because for a lot of them, their tolerance is reflecting a
lack of conviction with anything. If you can kind of get inside of that a
little bit, it’s a great opportunity to share what you believe. I feel
like I want to that through my music and through this art of performing. Don’t you think people are tired of emptiness? That they’re hungry to know that somebody stands for something? Have you found it difficult at times to keep your testimony in the music business? Since
leaving the label and starting my own it’s been easier. I remember being
with a major label and at that time labels were investing so much money in
artists, they’d spend a million dollars on the artist before they were
even on the radio, they’d spend so much just getting everything set up
and for that they expect complete loyalty. I can’t count the number of
times I heard, It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the song or agree
with it; you’re an actor, go sell it. As a Christian I realized I was a
slave to something I wasn’t supposed to be enslaved to. The only thing
I’m supposed to be a slave to is Christ. And here were these people
trying to exert control over what I thought He wanted me to do. I was only
23 years old, I didn’t understand a lot of this stuff, I didn’t have
any background in business or being in public. So it was a real learning
curve and God gave a lot of grace and protected me from so many things
when I look back on it now. But it’s a bit of a tight rope walk because
you’re constantly evaluating, how am I coming across to the public. When
I say this, what does it say to people? Where’s the line between good
humor and taking it a little too far? Those are difficult things to try
and figure out and I think the only way I’ve been able to get through
that is with the support of my wife—she’s an extremely logical person
and she’s great at seeing things for what they are and she’s helped me
through a lot of those things. And having friends I can be accountable to
and throw ideas past them and say what do you think of this? If I want to
sing this song, what issues do you see coming from it? Anyone who wants to
do something without compromise is going to run into times when it’s
difficult. You’ve decided you’re going to do things a certain way and
that costs you. You give up certain things for having principles a lot of
the time. We came out in 1996 with the top selling new male artist album
in Billboard Magazine—a top 5 and a number one single, the first
Canadian male artist to top the chart since Hank Snow. I was at the top of
the game. I understand what it takes to be there and after experiencing it
and seeing it I realized as a Christian there are certain things I don’t
want to do and that pulls me out of the game sometimes. And that’s scary
because that’s your livelihood. But the Lord has always been faithful
and He’s proven to me time and time again that He doesn’t need man’s
ways to make things happen. Even after leaving the label I stood on the
stage at the Canadian Country Music Awards as the host in front of 70
million people and won Album of the Year for a live acoustic record.
That’s not the way it happens. I stood there waiting to go out and
receive this award and I never felt so humbled in my life because I knew I
had nothing to do with it. What a freeing thing to be able to walk out
there and thank Jesus for the provision and for the grace that He gave
that project and my career. It’s just amazing! How
do the big labels respond to that? I
don’t know. The music business right now is kind of the wild west in a
lot of ways. Since the Internet it’s really decentralized a lot of the
labels and the control they had. So I think that they were scrambling a
bit too much to notice little old me. It was pretty cool to go out there
blindly in faith with no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to
do it, but I said, “Lord, I know you created me to influence people.
They listen to me when I talk and they listen to me when I sing, and you
gave me the ability to make music, so I’m going to go do that to the
best of my ability and you need to take care of the details.” So that
was the prayer that Liz and I prayed and He answered. On a major label on
the first album I sold about a million albums worldwide. On my first
record on my own label I only sold 40,000 copies. But I made more money.
And I got to do what I wanted to do and I got to say what I wanted to say
and He’s freed me to do that. How have you dealt on a practical level with some of the pitfalls of success that come along with this? What has really helped you in that regard? My
wife and friends from church are really good at keeping that in check for
me and letting me know when I’m taking too much of the credit for
myself. I don’t like to hear that message, but they’re faithful in
giving it to me. The other thing is that things get really complicated
really quick and start to stress me out a lot when I’m not being focused
on being in the Word. Even ten minutes a day, as slack as that sounds to a
lot of people it’s an opportunity for the Lord to speak to you and for
you to be in relationship with him. And you can’t trust him if you
don’t know him. We need to get to know who he is as much as our finite
minds can. After he came back from the grave Jesus purposefully left and
sent his Spirit so that he could heal us when we’re sick through our
brothers and sisters because he resides in us. That’s why we need to be
community as Christians and that’s been a big part of it to me, letting
my brothers and sisters in Christ be Jesus to me and ministering to me. How hard is it to be part of a local body when you’re on the road a lot? Really
difficult. We recently moved back to Calgary, Alberta. But we found it
more difficult in Nashville where we lived for 9 years. It was a very
isolating place. The Lord taught us some really important lessons about
community while we were there and I think the way he did it was we got so
isolated there both because of my job and because we just found it
difficult to get plugged in to the culture there. And he withdrew
community from us so much so that we hungered after it and really resolved
that whatever it took, we would get involved in a small group and have a
core group of people that we were accountable to and could just hang out
with. Now that we have moved back here we are getting involved with a
group at our church. We just had our first meeting the other day. It’s
about setting that time aside and saying this is important to me so I
can’t work that night. I’ve got to be in town. That’s very hard to
do in this business and I’m constantly struggling to find balance. You have a line in the song “This Time Around,” that says “like an hour glass that can never be turned again.” Explain why you wrote that. I
was a registered nurse for a couple of years before I started in the music
business. I cared for a young girl who had cystic fibrosis and died right
around the time I stopped working at the hospital and started into my
music career. And because she knew that her time was limited, she just had
such a passion to experience life and experience it deeply and richly.
That really influenced me because I realized when I was taking care of her
that I really was no different. We all only have a small amount of time
and we never know when it’s going to be done. Being in that profession
brought that to the forefront with me. Time is so precious. The world
takes that to mean you go out and live recklessly. But there is something
to getting out there and experiencing this wonderful opportunity that God
has given all of us. That little girl taught me that lesson really well. How
have your priorities changed since you started in this?
Are there Christians who are critical of you for being a secular musician? For
the most part I’ve had extremely positive reactions from Christians.
Once they really stop and take a listen to what it is I’m doing and the
spirit I’m doing it in, they’ve been very, very supportive. Are there things you feel you can do in the so-called secular music industry that you just can’t do if you are limited to Christian music? My
wife is a musician as well and she has a real passion for ministering to
the church through music. I think that my passion has been more about
influencing people in the non-Christian community and show them why my
life is different. I think there’s a place for both of them. The
Christian music industry primarily ministers to the church and that’s
great. But music in general is an incredibly spiritual thing. The first
time it’s even mentioned in the Bible, it was created for worship. And
when I get up on stage and play the first three notes of “Convoy” and
walk into the audience, I see a charismatic church in that audience.
They’re all raising their hands and they’re worshipping, you know what
I mean? And as a Christian I look at that and think, Man, where am I going
to point the praise? Because they’re pointing it at me; I need to figure
out a way to turn that around in what I’m doing. So I really think from
a grander scheme, being a Christian in the secular music industry is not
only a way to influence people; it’s a way to reclaim music for what it
was created for. The enemy wants to take everything and distort it and
twist it, whether it’s food or sex, or whatever, all these good things
God created he wants to twist and make into something it’s not supposed
to be. I hope the Lord uses me to redeem something that’s gotten badly
off track, whether that is in the Christian industry or the secular
industry. Do
you ever see yourself doing a gospel album? Yeah,
it would be really cool to do that. That’s the music, the traditional
hymns, that I grew up on. Historically in secular music artists used to do
that all the time and it’s become less and less popular. I’ve thought
a lot about it and I think it would be really fun. I’ve
called my books 10-ounce missionaries. How do you see your CDs? I’ll
be going to Belize with Samaritan’s Purse in December to deliver shoe
boxes. My albums are like shoe boxes. Those Christmas gifts are a way to
bless people, to give them something that brings joy and fun and
excitement to them and it provides an opportunity to tell them why you did
it. That’s what I hope, that when people unwrap this album, they’ll
find all the joy and the fun and the goofiness, but when they hear “What
I Love About Jesus” they see the joy that’s in my life and where it
comes from. What is it that you love about Him? I
just kind of take all these misconceptions that people put on someone in
my position, like they’re a self-made man living life to its fullest,
and I shatter that. I’d be nothing without him, without his love. What I
love about him is that he loved me so much that he died for me and
that’s just the beginning. How do you describe what a best friend means
to you? It’s the way He hears my problems and answers my prayers and the
way He gives His love unconditionally. When you strip away the trappings of success, what really matters to Paul? A
semi-religious Jew asked me about my motivation. I think we all have
motivations for loving our family better and making a living and
supporting them and all those things. I said, well, I’m a Christian and
the command that Jesus gave us before he left us to love our neighbor as
ourselves and to love him with all our hearts—that’s my motivation. I
must keep that at the core of what I do. When I make that the center of
what I’m doing my life seems so simple. It all just kind of comes
together and the creative juices start to flow and everything happens the
way it’s supposed to. What would you like to be remembered for when the last song has been sung? For
a long time I thought that a legacy was about having your name on a room
at the Children’s Hospital or being remembered for the money you raised
for some great cause. But the legacy of all Christians should be that they
pointed people to the Lord. That’s how I want to be remembered. Read Paul's interview with Phil. Visit Paul Brandt online. NOTE: This is from a Servant Magazine interview. We need your support to keep Servant serving. Please email us if you're interested in receiving the magazine and becoming a regular supporter. To thank you for your support, we'll be happy to send you a copy of one of Phil's books. Become a Servant Partner.
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How
did your spiritual journey begin?
