Selfish* Creative: A Conversation with John Van Deusen

In this conversation with Singer-Songwriter, John Van Deusen, we explore what it means to create art that is first and foremost beautiful in the eye of its creator. We discuss the tension in every creative endeavor between presenting something truly authentic and pursuing artistic excellence, and how this played out in the creation of his newest album, As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise Pt. 1. This conversation was made possible in partnership with Anotherland.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Chris Badeker

John, thanks for being here.

John Van Deusen Thanks for having me.

Chris Badeker For people who are new to your work, can you just briefly share a bit about yourself and the work that you do?

John Van Deusen

Yeah, so my name is John Van Deusen. I live in Anacortes, Washington state. I have been making music since I was in high school and I’m about to turn 38 for some context. When I was a teenager and for most of my twenties, I played in an indie rock band. I’ve played in punk bands, rock bands, lots of different types of bands and I became a believer in Christ probably 2012 / 2013 was when it really began to stick for me. And so I had to kind of work up the courage to write about my faith because in the Seattle scene that I grew up in, Christian music was just not cool at all. It was just not what you did with your time. And I found my courage and started releasing music under my own name and I would say maybe 70 % of it has not been “Christian Music” in a classical kind of how we would define Christian music,

Chris Badeker

Sure.

John Van Deusen

but some of it has been. And so here I am getting ready to release my sixth solo record and it’s a double record and it’s a worship record. So it’s been kind of a roller coaster for me as an artist.So that’s kind of a good way to describe how I’ve gotten here and what I’m doing. A lot of people will go back and Google my name or look into my catalog and get confused really quickly because I have vacillated between what is obviously Christian and what is obviously secular art.

And so I’ve always kind of walked that line between those two realities and I have a niche audience because of that. So that’s who I am.

Chris Badeker

I love that. John, you described yourself to me as a “selfish creative” and that term stuck out to me. I would just want for you to unpack a little bit for me, what does it mean for you to be someone who’s selfishly creative? How does that affect your work?

John Van Deusen

Well, I think it means that I make the type of art and music that I like. And I am not that concerned with what other people want me to do as a creative. And it also means that I don’t embrace collaboration for the sake of collaboration.

I have friends and peers and heroes who love collaborating and they seek it out and they are adamant about the communal aspects of art, which I do appreciate. But I don’t force collaboration. I embrace it if it makes sense. And if there’s a chemistry between myself and a collaborator.

And so all that is to say that I love making art by myself. I love chasing down my weirdest impulses. And my favorite collaborator, not to give the Sunday School answer, is truly just the Holy Spirit. In those moments where I invite him into my process, I feel so free to take risks and to be myself.

So selfish might be a somewhat inaccurate term, but I do think it’s a good way to describe my process, which is do what I want to do and make decisions I want to make and embrace parts of my personal tastes that are not shared by a lot of people.

Chris Badeker

I actually really like that term so much because of the way it’s, in some ways, a misnomer. Being a “selfish creative” in some ways feels more generous in the sense that you are then forced to evaluate the work that you’re creating not through a metric of whether you think this will align with what is cool or popular, but more through this idea of does this resonate with me? And can I trust myself as a fan of the thing I’m creating to resonate with other people?

John Van Deusen

Yeah, absolutely. I think my musical education, my artistic education was always pushing me towards being myself.

And that sounds trite because it kind of is, but I think, does this feel like a true offering of who I am, who I am as an artist, what I like, what I’m going through, how I feel?I don’t know if maybe subconsciously I’ve learned to recognize over the 20 years of making records when something feels true and when it doesn’t to me personally. But I will say that I’ve learned the hard way so many times that compromising that truth, it doesn’t yield satisfying results.

And that isn’t to say that there haven’t been times in my life where I have compromised in order to collaborate. I’ve taken my hands off in collaboration and it has yielded really good results. But when it comes to my solo music, I’m pretty...Selfish, yeah, that’s the best.

Chris Badeker

Well then in the context of, song to song, album to album, we are looking at the music you’re creating and you’re always asking yourself, then, “Is this what I like? Does this sound like something that feels true to me? Is this something I enjoy?”How then do you expand from there and say, well then in a world where I’m evaluating my own art through the basis of my relationship to it, how do you then as an artist qualify success for a career?

How would you then say, have I had a successful career if I knew from the start the measure of what it meant to me was this instead of money or metrics?

John Van Deusen

That’s such a good question. So one of the things that has kind of sustained my creative process is having what I would call really healthy goals. And a lot of it comes down to do I like this and can I do it without losing money? So the practical part of me is usually trying to not lose money.

And that impacts how I spend, which studios I invest, you know, my time in, or which producer, or mixer, or master, or whatever. So there is a practical element.

If in 15 years I was looking back at my catalog and then realizing I had lost my family $300,000 and that then prevented my children from going to university, that would be a way for me to kind of say, maybe that was selfish in a bad way. And maybe that was not a successful career. But I think most importantly for me, I don’t know if this says something about my age, growing up in the nineties and the early two thousands for the internet, I think of discographies.

I want to be able to look back at my discography, my catalog of work, and feel like it was really strong from start to finish… that I wasn’t regurgitating or replicating something I’d already done over over over over again.

There’s lots of bands I love that their first record kind of still sounds like their fourth record and that’s okay, but I really want to be able to see it all as one big body of work. Do they fit together, but are they different from one another? Almost like siblings in a family.

My examples of success growing up in Anacortes, Washington have been primarily, you know, peers, friends, and people I look up to who have had influence, but not in a, a really visual or visible way. And they’ve impacted other artists. So there’s this term, you know, “Your [favorite] Artist’s Favorite Artist”. So if I was to maybe indulge a disordered part of myself, which is probably not the most healthy, I think I would hope to be that type of artist. I want to be, because I saw it a lot growing up, like those artists. I want to be the artist that is listed as an influence by somebody who’s popular.So that’s just me being really candid. I don’t think that’s healthy, probably, but it’s also a realistic desire, maybe in the same way someone else might say, I want to be able to sell 7,000 tickets in New York City.

Chris Badeker

I resonate with that. I think there’s kind of a quiet humility about this desire to even say to yourself, I don’t desire maybe “Platform X” or “Platform Y”, but I would desire to leave an artistic legacy that, whether it’s in the cultural zeitgeist or not, becomes something that people will eventually find the breadcrumb trail from and go like, this is actually still paying dividends and still growing seeds out of the soil long after the flash bang of the moment has withered away.

John Van Deusen

I think you just described it perfectly. I feel so honored when someone says, you know, I listened to this record and it really moved me to pursue my own…indulgent artistic tendencies, which now I see are just kind of things that I like. Because what I’m learning is that the more I follow those creative impulses, the more unique my projects become. More uniquely me maybe. But yeah, it is very honoring and flattering when someone sees the art as something that influences their art. I won’t hide the fact that that would be pretty cool after I’m dead if people are still discovering these random records.

Chris Badeker

I feel like you need to have lot of self-confidence in some ways, with your own predispositions, to say…because especially within music, but probably within entertainment as a whole, there is such a propensity towards holding up what is cool or popular. I mean here in Nashville…so many people come to the city to make records and inevitably file off edges of their personality, I think to fit into whatever that “Nashville Sound” is.And so there’s always, I think, a give and take between saying to maybe a producer that you’ve hired… “I don’t know, what do you think it should be? What should the guitar do? What should it be? A B3? I don’t know, I’m just a songwriter!” But I think you have to have a lot of confidence in your preferences to show up to something like that…in a culture that’s always trying to push us towards homogeneity in some way or form.

John Van Deusen

Absolutely. I don’t love the term guilty pleasure because I, at least when it comes to cultural touchstones and aesthetic preferences, I don’t feel guilty about what I like. I don’t want to feel guilty. I don’t want to make other people feel guilty. In fact, that’s probably something I’ve done in the past that I need to repent of. I don’t want to be that type of person who’s silently or audibly judging somebody for what they like, at least when it comes to music and film, books, paintings. If somebody likes Thomas Kinkade and that’s the pinnacle of what they love, I see nothing wrong with that. And a lot of people haven’t even really discovered what they like yet, and that’s okay. That’s when I think the ability of a producer or a co-writer or a collaborator is really important. But I’ll also say that if you can be comfortable with your likes and dislikes, and if you can learn to understand your aesthetic preferences, while also realistically understanding what you do well and what you don’t do well, that, I think, is a dynamite combination. Because then you can talk with a Rick Rubin or a producer or anybody, really, and begin to recognize what they’re going to bring to the table that you actually don’t bring. And the bands that work really well probably have figured out some of that dynamic.And so anyways, I like bringing up Rick Rubin within this context because his aesthetic dial is so confident. He has this true north. And I think most of us will never get to that place, but I do think it’s just so good to feel comfortable saying to yourself and someone else, I like this.

Chris Badeker

So much of what I like about this is the idea that our preferences and our personalities are this beautiful, God-given thing. He made us to like Ninja Turtles or Hot Pockets or Sushi or whatever it is that makes our brain explode. And I think there is maybe this propensity, especially as we age to go, “Well, I used to like...It’s a guilty pleasure now.”You kind of qualify the thing that actually you really love with the sense of, “I probably shouldn’t be into this.” And I think developing some sort of, like you’re saying, internal true north that just throws all of that other stuff to the side and goes “No! This is what we’re after. We’re after the loudest snare hit and the loudest lead guitar we can possibly get. And that’s going to be the record!” I think there’s a beautiful confidence to say, “Lord, this is who you made me to be. So rather than assimilate to the culture, I’m gonna try my best to retain myself.”

John Van Deusen

This probably paints me a Christian mystic on many levels, experientially, I have had lot of moments with the Holy Spirit where I feel like he’s genuinely encouraging me to get noisy or dissonant. And I worship, I enter into worship when I’m making records. And oftentimes the most worshipful moments for me that are approaching some sort of union with the Holy Spirit, they’re moments where I feel like I’m really being myself. And usually the moments where I’m being myself, I am making a lot of noise.

There are songs on this record…a really good example is track two, “Jesus of Nazareth”. It actually has double kick, like, metal drums. I wanted it to be simple, but then I wanted to filter it through a production aesthetic that seemed kind of wild. I added those double kicks and I instantly got so... I think I probably teared up in the studio. I am not a metal artist, but that just felt so right to me. And it felt so worshipful.

And I knew that a lot of people would probably turn it off. And that’s okay.

I’ve just found that if I close a studio door and I’m in that space by myself…I’m not even thinking about what anybody else is gonna say about the song. I don’t even have to worry about them because they may never even hear it. All I’m thinking about is, I guess it’s the “audience of one” thing, but it’s just this, “Hey, do You like this? Because I kind of like it.” And I think this is a really long way of saying I do sense often that He’s like, “Yeah, I like that. I kind of liked that you put the double kicks in there.” And I think that that personal relationship with God is really important to me as a creative. It sustains me.

Chris Badeker We don’t have to take it here, but I’m in this season so it’s just what you’re bringing up in me right now. It’s just so many days of my three-year-old son coming up to me and going, “Daddy, cars and trucks! Monster trucks!” and he gets such joy out of ramming these monster trucks into each other and to see him behold that joy, I go “Yeah, you love this. This is good stuff” And in some ways I feel like musically, artistically, so many of us are holding up the little simple things we love and going “Big chords!” And He goes, “Yeah, buddy, big chords!”

John Van Deusen

That’s so funny. I mean, I’m definitely ramming monster trucks together in the studio. That is the best way to describe what I’m doing. It is kind of like I’m a caveman just hitting stuff.

Chris Badeker

So many people, I think, who are just discovering your art right now would probably categorize you, for lack of better term, as a “Christian Singer-Songwriter”. But so much of your musical upbringing comes from that Seattle West Coast punk scene, that DIY upbringing. Talk to me a little bit about how that ethos, that culture has shaped the way that you approach music now and what on paper seem to be occasionally very different approaches to creating music.

John Van Deusen

I really was raised in an environment where guitar solos are not cool. Our gods were Nirvana…Kurt Cobain didn’t play guitar solos. He just made noise. And I think the experimental artists I grew up around in Anacortes embraced a lot of first take philosophy. So it’s really just, this was the first thing I recorded. And even if there are mess-ups, they would keep it. And so in order to maintain that ethic that I learned growing up, I had to kind of bring along that “first take” philosophy. I had to be okay if there was a mess up or if there was something that was kind of out of sync or out of time. And what’s interesting is that then as a believer in Christ, I’m also really concerned with making something that’s God-honoring. And excellence is God-honoring.

You walk into a cathedral, and you see the craftsmanship. And if their heart’s desire was to honor God with their craft, I think that is so beautiful and worshipful. And I was actually just in Scotland, and then I played a show on Guernsey Island, so I got to go to these old churches, and I kept thinking that their level of skill was remarkable. And a lot of it is clean. It’s remarkable how together it looks. And so I don’t want to paint a picture that says that if you’re striving for perfection in your art, you’re doing something wrong, because that’s not it. And for me personally, I just don’t find perfect music very interesting. I don’t find “pitch corrected to perfection”, vocals very interesting. I don’t like overly compressed guitars. If every kick and snare hit is exactly where it needs to be, it’s just not very interesting to me and that probably reflects my personal tastes.

And so that intersection of “Is this true? Does it feel real? Is it sincere? Is it honest? Is it authentic?” with “Is this God honoring?” is really interesting to me.

Chris Badeker

It’s a fascinating little cross section because I think, especially in the Christian music sphere, so often the way we interpret that idea of pursuing excellence is to almost like you say, apply so many filters that the human behind the performance is completely erased and it is now as quantized as it can be…and there’s maybe an element of humanity that gets lost in that. And it’s not to say one is right and one is wrong, but then how do you calibrate yourself as an artist when you’re in that process to say…at what point have I gone too far? Do we need to walk away and just say that that is the human in the picture? That’s me and I don’t like the face I made, but that’s authentically who’s there.

John Van Deusen

Yeah, I think you’re touching on something that feels really important today and there are times when I hear a record and it’s so well made, right? It’s fidelity, it’s the tones, the performances. Nashville’s a great example. Like some of the country records where the players are just the best in the world. That gives me chills. Like that is beautiful. I want to see that band play and I want to hear that record. But I think the problem is, especially if we were to bring this down into the world of worship music, Christian music, Christian art...It’s a little bit more profound. It’s a little bit more important, I think, that we talk about the heart behind what we’re doing. Have we all stopped to look at each other and ask, “Should we be pitch correcting our worship leaders’ vocals live?”Should we be? I don’t know. Are people having that conversation? I hope they are. And does the new big Christian record have to sound perfect? And if that’s what they want and that’s what they like, I’m kind of for it. I’m kind of high-fiving them from afar. Go for it. Do you like your record? And if they’re saying, “Yeah, I love it. I love how it sounds and I love that it’s so put together.” If that’s what they like, then I’m for it.

But I think some of it reflects this... the evolution of our ear. Because you go back and you listen to a Beatles record and you realize how many of Ringo Starr’s hits were off, or the fact that some of the vocals are a little pitchy, or even some of the mixes just don’t sound that great. But you can put on those records and nobody’s really saying out loud, this Beatles record is... it’s crappy because it’s a little sloppy.

You know what I’m saying? At some point, we’ve pitch corrected and edited and compressed to this point now where…Actually, I read a review of my record recently where the guy talked about my vocals being pitchy, and I remember thinking…are they? And I realized, maybe they are within the context of the current myriad of pitched vocals.

Chris Badeker

Right. One thing I say ad nauseam to people is that when someone critiques your work, what they are telling you is less something true about what you made and more something that is true about what they like. And I think when we consider the source of criticism in a cultural landscape that has been permeated with autocorrect things or pitch perfect, whatever, it makes sense to then say like…pitchy against what? Maybe pitchy against 100 % batting average.

John Van Deusen

I think that something has happened in the world of worship, and churches everywhere have kind of modeled their sounds off of the worship records that have done really well. It kind of has created this, you know, a lot of the worship music that’s being released really sounds similar. But my guess is that a lot of these artists, maybe they just need a little bit more wiggle room and time to kind of reflect on, I “Do like this type of music or this type of sound?”Is it Brandon Lake who did the Jelly Roll collab? I think it is. But just like a major worship leader saying, “I kind of want to make country music.” That to me, even if I’m not going listen to it, that excites me. It feels like maybe there is this thing happening where Christian artists are beginning to realize that they can stretch as creatives a little bit.

Chris Badeker

What gives me hope is seeing artists who are comfortable saying…this is my record and there’s a song about God and a song about my girlfriend.

I mean, your new record, I feel, is also doing a lot of that work in deconstructing some of these boundaries of what is an acceptable lane for a worship record to drive in and what is an acceptable topic to sing about. The work you just put out, As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make a Joyful Noise Pt. 1… Rolls off the tongue.

John Van Deusen

Mm-hmm. I’m so sorry.

Chris Badeker

Just came on October 3rd, and you were pretty candid about the fact that this was a pretty emotionally hard record to just create in the first place.

John Van Deusen

I mean, candidly, I’ve had some pretty rough and serious depression throughout a lot of my life, but the last two years, it’s been kind of the worst it’s ever been. And so I’ve been working hard to discover why and where it comes from. You know, I’ve done all of the things I’m supposed to be doing. Therapy, prayer, medication, books, all the things I can think of.

And as I made this record, I spent a lot of time alone and it was blissful in a lot of ways. The only way I can describe it, if somebody’s listening to this who I think also... If you also have struggled with depression, maybe you’ll understand, but I have an ache. The best way to describe my symptoms.

It’s just an ache and I can’t get rid of it and everything is kind of soured by it. And I don’t like admitting that that’s something I struggled with while I made this record because it’s a worship record. I love my Lord and I love making music about Him and with Him. I love making records. I tried really hard to make something that I would love but that also I think would honor Him. And somehow it didn’t diminish my depression. And I don’t like that. I don’t like admitting it.

And in a lot of ways, I haven’t turned the corner. I’m not free of my depression, but I think I am entering into a new season where it’s not gonna have quite a grip on me.

But it felt really important to me as an artist to be able to say this out loud. I made a worship record and somehow at the same time, I was also really struggling with depression while I did it. And God didn’t just zap that away.

Christians often, at least in my experience, try to dissect it and tell me exactly what’s wrong but I just haven’t been able to figure it out. So the title of the record, As Long As I Am In The Tent of This Body I Will Make a Joyful Noise, it has multiple meanings, but probably the clearest meaning for me is, hey, there are days when I don’t want to be here anymore, and I hate admitting that. I’m super excited for the day when I see Jesus face to face, and I don’t have to feel that ache anymore. And that’s a heavy thing to say.

But I’m also so grateful for this life that he’s given me and I’m so in love with my kids and my wife and there’s so much about life that I love and there’s a dissonance in that reality for me. And as long as I’m around, I really want to make music and noise and art that honors Him. And so I want to worship God as long as I’m here.

It’s not just a “someday I’ll die a natural death and then I’ll pass on.” For me, it’s more of like, I have to fight to persevere. So that sounds so dramatic. It kind of is, but that’s really how I feel and I don’t want to sugar coat it.

Chris Badeker

I appreciate your candidness about that. If you could just maybe bring us back to that…creating this record. What did it take from you? What did it give to you? And what role did your community play in all of that process?

John Van Deusen

It was a lot of work. A lot of time alone. It’s over 30 songs, so it took a lot of just physical energy and thought. I was in the downstairs of our house, which used to be a salon. And so there was a couple of rooms that had tanning beds in them and I removed the tanning beds and then made it my little studio, truly the size of most people’s closets. I hyper-focus on my projects. So I think my wife put up with a lot, a lot of me being present, but not really being present, especially because my studio space was just 50 feet away.

I took off work for about two months to focus on it. And so the church where I lead worship was really gracious in giving me that flexibility. I had other people support me. I had listeners give money so that I could do that and pay my rent.

I think you touched on something that is true, which is... I really like this thing that I made. I’ve worked really hard, but it doesn’t ultimately satisfy me.

And even the cover art, which took me so many stupid hours. It’s just so funny as an artist, I look at it and I think, this is pretty good. Okay, I guess on to the next. And, I feel like I experienced one thousandth of what Van Gogh might have felt when he painted Starry Night. And it’s like, yeah, wow. Okay, I guess next painting.

Chris Badeker

Let’s not get too far from that, John. I see a lot of cover art. The cover art for your album is probably the best cover art I’ve seen this entire year. It’s fantastic. It’s like Sergeant Pepper-level interesting.

John Van Deusen

Thank you. That means so much to me. I worked really hard on it. I wanted it to be honoring of Christ, but just weird and surreal enough that I would actually like it. My metric for cover art is, forever and always, if I was in a record store and I picked it up and there was nothing signifying for me what it was, would I want to listen to it?

It’s that simple. That is my metric. And so yeah, that’s what this is.

Chris Badeker

Is it a collage?

John Van Deusen

It’s collage, mostly digital. So my process with collage is cut out some collage assets. And then what I do is I take the cutout and I put it on a white piece of paper and I take a picture with my phone. So I’m really interested in creating using really accessible tools so that it’s not kind of gatekeeper. It’s very like, hey, this is how I did it. You can do it too. It’s really simple.

So I take the collage asset, put it on a white piece of paper, take a picture of it with my phone, airdrop it to my computer, pull it into Canva Pro. So I can change its size. I can flip it. I can change its color. And so that’s how I made that cover.

Chris Badeker

Like you said, if I picked that up in a record store, just looking at the image, it fits what’s on that record so well. I’ve picked up a few records with that same metric and walked home to be like…what the heck? This is not what this picture promised me.

John Van Deusen

That’s so encouraging to me. My wife would tell you that I obsess over this. As I demo and record and get mixes, I listen to them obsessively while looking at whatever iteration of my cover I have. And I do it over and over and over and over again until it feels right. And so that’s cool that you felt like it was fitting.

And Sergeant Pepper’s is a really good touchstone visually. And Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, a lot of the surrealistic covers from the 60’s and the 70’s. Because the full record, when you listen to it all the way through part two and part one and part two, it’s so busy and it’s all over the map. I felt like the cover art needed to portray an overwhelming sense of scale. Because in a way it’s kind of an opus, right? I’ve made this record that’s over two hours long and I wanted the visual to feel kind of overwhelming. There’s a lot of Easter eggs in it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s headstone’s in it, there’s a Wendell Berry poem, there are pictures of my kids, there’s a picture of David dancing, you know, where he’s dancing in front of the Ark of the Covenant.

You asked this question, what did it bring to me and what did it take from me? And I think what I was saying was that the cost for me and my family was real. It was hard on my kids. It was hard on my spouse. My wife would say to me, I’m ready to have you back. I’m ready for you to be done with this record. And I’m not even done because part two is still being mixed and I still have to listen obsessively.

I wrote this essay about this release…and I talk about it being a Horcrux, you know, in Harry Potter, right? And maybe I shouldn’t use that as an example, but I really feel like it took something from me. A piece of myself is in it and it’s not totally a good feeling.

I don’t know how else to describe it.

I love it, but I also I feel like I’ve been wounded by it. And I don’t know what that means. I need to explore that with God’s help. Why do I feel this way about it? There are days when I’m really struggling, if I listen to it, I cry because I’m just like, this has been hard. So I don’t know if you’ve ever talked to creatives who feel that way, maybe about a book they’ve completed or a screenplay, but I do think I think when you give it all you’ve got, it takes something from you.

Chris Badeker

I resonate with that and I feel like on the listener side of that equation, I would much rather engage with a piece of art that ultimately leads to one more question…it makes sense to me that that process will inevitably lead to more questions for the person involved in creating it and for the people engaging with it. And that gives me hope in the idea that creativity isn’t just some sort of thing that you have this finite amount of, that you say…well, I wrote my last song ever. That was the last thing I could ever think of.

John Van Deusen

I thought of Daniel Day Lewis, and how he just kind of said I’m done acting. Almost as if he had a sense that there was just wasn’t really anything next to do, but then his son writes and directs this film. And so he returns to do this collaborative work with his son. And if there’s one thing that I get annoyed by, it’s when big rock bands continue making long after they passed a shelf life, which is so unfair of me to say. And so it’s interesting because I think you’re right in that there’s no, this is my last song or this is my last record, but there is also, if creating takes something from you and if your metric and your aim is to do something true, I do think at a certain point, you... I don’t want to say you dry up, but you kind of reach this place of…I don’t know if I want to make another record.

I’ll tell you what, I don’t want to make another record like this. I don’t want to do it. Unless God showed up to me in a dream and said, I need you to do this again. I don’t think I’d want to do it because it took so much from me.

And if the only reason you’re continuing to make records is because it’s the only way you can pay your bills…you’re getting into a territory of...That’s fine, I don’t judge people who do it, but maybe artistically it’s gonna suffer.

I don’t know, do you have any thoughts about this?

Chris Badeker

I think if you have peace in that process and you don’t need to show up for an ego reason or a monetary reason, I think there’s really something beautiful about overstaying your welcome past the point that culture would say…we’ve all moved on and you being able to say…I was never showing up for you in the first place.

John Van Deusen

I like talking about film, like directors and writers in this topic because the filmmakers who I like who are continuing to just kind of work well into their 60s, 70s and 80s, they’re not really making the same movie over and over again. And I think that there’s a parallel to the music space as well…are you curious as a creative still in your 60s and 70s and 80s? Do you have a project that you had always wanted to make that no studio would ever fund?

I want musicians to kind of be in that space as well. That’s why I’m on board when somebody in their seventies try something new.

Chris Badeker

I’d much rather hear an artist at a point in their career where they say…I’m gonna start doing stuff that has less of a guaranteed home run quality to it just because that’s what I wanna be making.

John Van Deusen

Can I ask you one final question?

Chris Badeker

Well, now that you’re interviewing me, sure, of course.

John Van Deusen

Do you think Worship artists should be thinking that way because worship is something unique? Like, Phil Wickham does what Phil Wickham does really, really, well. But do you think we should be looking at them and holding them to the similar standard, even though what they’re doing is really about the church, like the big church, the global church, and songs we sing together.

Chris Badeker

I will say this to you and almost assuredly delete this from the record, but I think what my heart would like to see, and maybe I’m naive…I would like to see the American church divest itself from the financial stability of a successful worship team.

To me, I can’t imagine a landscape where worship artists feel free to create something risky when the result of that recording is maybe tied to the financial stability of their home church, if that makes sense.

Maybe there’s a give and take there that, yeah, I would love to see that. I want to hear lament be explored. I want to see all sorts of different styles of worship be explored in a broader worship culture. And I’d love to see a broader acceptance culturally of that expression of worship. But it makes me feel jaded to just hem and haw like, well…but that’s not what sells.That’s maybe me being too cynical because I think artists influence culture and I would love to see, especially worship artists, push more and more against the boundaries of what an acceptable format for a popular worship release is and can sound like and should be. And I would put your work even in that category. Like you said, it’s pop music and it is worship music.

John Van Deusen

Hmm.

Chris Badeker

I really appreciate what it’s doing in the sense that it’s not thirty of the same song over and over again with the same pad and the same octave jump on the bridge. So I guess I’m already saying thank you for being a part of the culture that’s hopefully trying to push us towards something more authentic and more interesting.

John Van Deusen

Thank you. That means a lot to me. I hope you don’t edit out that part about worship bands and local churches, but I also understand if you do.

Chris Badeker

John, thank you. This has been sincerely a wonderful time.

John Van Deusen

Yeah, it has been. Thank you. These are all really important things to me to talk about. And I don’t mean my record, I just mean all of the topics we’ve touched on. I think we’re at large really tired and weary and we need things we can trust and that make sense that feel human.

Chris Badeker

Well, it’s a great record and it’s very worth exploring and I’m excited for hopefully some of the Rabbit Room readers who are not familiar with it yet to get a chance to dive into this great piece of work.

John Van Deusen You know, the part two has a Sandra McCracken feature, an Andy Squyres feature, a John Gareth feature, Taylor Armstrong, Tenille Netta. So many of my friends are on the part two, so I’m really excited to share it. I’m so excited because the song that Sandra McCracken sings on gets so loud. I’m really excited for part one and part two to be out together. The plan is to release it on vinyl as one record. So that’s what I would say.

Chris Badeker Amazing. Well, John, thanks for your time