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When we first made the interview arrangements with downhere, they may not have realized they’d be on the road in Ohio on a hot mid-summer tour of radio stations.
But drummer Jeremy Thiessen couldn't have been nicer about it and we were able to get right to it, talking first off about the wonderful reception their newest album, "Wide-eyed and Mystified" from Centricity Records, has gotten. (See review here). I wondered if possibly some of it might be explained by the simplicity of the album's theme. "I've been amazed at the warm reception," Jeremy says. "It's about the childlike wonder that we're called to have in our approach to Christ. And I think that definitely has something to do with it, because people are looking for ways to simplify their lives, to remove all the clutter. Marc (Martel) and Jay (Jason Germain, both co-lead vocalists) are the primary writers of our music, and they didn't sit down and plan this theme, but it's just the way it came out. We, along with bassist Glenn Lavender, had 60 or so songs or song ideas to look through when we started putting the record together, and we chose the top 16 of those. Then we had to whittle those down to the 13 that would make the record, and that's when we saw the theme emerging from the writing. As far as our own story," he adds, "it's been three years since we've had a record out, and we too have been challenged to simplify things in our own careers and in our personal lives. We sat down and revisited the way we do things and said, OK, let's make this simple again. Which is really a refreshing thing to do, since our age is so complicated. It's a fresh wind reminding us to keep it simple." I asked Jeremy to bring that thought down to a personal level, about the Lord's fresh wind in his own life. "In my walk it's really been coming back to simplicity as well. To that place of the Lord saying. 'I just want to have a conversation with you. Let's just spend time together. You don't have to do a crazy Bible study with a full on hermeneutic approach every time. It's just a matter of spending time together. You tell me what's on your heart, I'll speak to you from mine, and we'll grow in friendship.' Again, it's a simple concept that we manage to complicate, thinking 'I must read this much every day, for this long.....' It gets overwhelming really fast when we do it that way," he shares candidly. Hearing the heart works that played a role in creating the spectacular "Wide-eyed and Mystified" only makes me like the album more, and we'll talk more about the project in the second part of our conversation with downhere's Jeremy Thiessen.
The copyright of the article downhere Interview in Christian Music is owned by Kevan Breitinger. Permission to republish downhere Interview in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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