Rebel for God

by Eddie DeGarmo

  A pastor once shared with me, “Eddie, of all the things you have been able to accomplish, your publishing of worship songs may be your most significant contribution to the church. For the first time in history, Christians worldwide are able to know of and sing the same songs in worship to God. You have been a big part of helping that happen.” I never thought about it in that way before. I’m honored to be part of building that kind of unity in the Church. That’s important stuff.

  I recall a meeting I had with Chris Tomlin. He came to my office one day pretty down in the dumps. He sat on my sofa and looked up and said, “Eddie, why won’t Christian radio play my songs? I just don’t understand.”

  Fortunately, I had quite a bit of experience with that question.

  “Chris,” I said, “You know, I’ve seen this before. Radio wouldn’t play D&K when we started either. It was too new and too different for them. They wouldn’t play dc Talk because it was labeled as hip-hop in the beginning. Just give them time. They will come around. You’ll see.”

  Well, the rest is history. They saw the light. Worship songs now make up a massive chunk of Christian radio stations’ playlists, and Chris Tomlin is one of the best-known artists and songwriters in the market.

  Modern worship music is a worldwide movement within the Christian church that has affected the industry and the public in profound ways. There is much to be celebrated, of course. This music has helped millions of people sing to God in a way that is authentic to their culture. There are also some areas of concern. The industry of worship has taken that age-old quandary of ministry and commerce to new extremes. I’ve lived in that conundrum for several decades, but it’s even hit a new level for me. Nobody ever thought of the term “Worship Celebrities” before, either.

  My work at EMI CMG wasn’t strictly related to modern worship music. In fact, a few major developments helped us reach mainstream audiences in ways we could not have imagined in the past.

  Part of my continuing responsibility in Meaux Music world was to executive produce all the Stacie Orrico projects. Stacie’s first album, Genuine, was a big hit. It was certified “Gold” for sales exceeding half a million copies. That is a wonderful accomplishment for any artist and a stupendous achievement for a Christian music artist.

  It wasn’t long before our sister company, Virgin Records, came knocking. We saw some success with them on records by dcTalk, Newsboys, and Delirious. Virgin had new leadership with Matt Serletic and his brother Dean, who was now head of A&R. Greg Ham at ForeFront did a great job making Virgin Records aware of Stacie. They ultimately decided to take her to the pop music mainstream.

  Stacie’s second album was crafted to address both a mainstream audience and her Christian music fans. The album launched two successful mainstream singles, “Stuck” and “More to Life,” and both enjoyed an enormous amount of success globally. The album went on to sell over three million units worldwide and she became a bona-fide star, especially in Asia.

  Around that same time the band Switchfoot released their breakthrough album The Beautiful Letdown through Columbia Records in the mainstream and Sparrow Records (part of EMI CMG) in the Christian market. We published all of Jon Foreman’s songs, and the entire Switchfoot catalog, at EMI CMG Publishing partnering with Charlie Peacock. Their songs “Meant To Live” and “Dare You To Move” were very successful in the mainstream and Christian worlds.

  Tedd T, still signed as a producer and songwriter with Meaux Music, co-wrote and produced an album of electronic dance music for a British artist/DJ named Andy Hunter. Hunter was signed to Sparrow Records and was connected to several worship artists in the UK, but his music was perfect for film and TV uses. In fact, the music on that album ended up earning far more from licensing than it did from traditional sales. It took us to a new place as a publisher.

  Stacie Orrico, Andy Hunter, and Switchfoot propelled our publishing business into the middle of mainstream music publishing worldwide. That was a bit of a stretch for us in the beginning, as licensing opportunities exploded in areas new for us, such as film and TV, advertising, and video games. Those artists, and others, acted as a springboard to launch our film and TV licensing business to new heights. We were able to get our songs into major motion pictures, hit TV series, and all kinds of video games and media previously closed to us. Part of our mission statement dealt with serving our writers by getting their music out to as many people as possible. None of us could have predicted just how successful those efforts would become.

  FORTY-NINE

  Out of the Danger Zone

  A few months after I started my new job at EMI CMG Publishing I invited Bill Hearn over to our home to listen to the finished recording of !Hero. I was in the process of funding and producing the project independently and was nearing a release date. Pete Stewart put the final touches on the recording, and I was very proud of it. It took almost two hours for us to listen to the whole thing. When it was over, Bill said, “I think you may have something special here. Let’s discuss how we can help you release it.”

  We ultimately negotiated a distribution agreement for !Hero: The Rock Opera between Meaux Records and EMI CMG distribution. Meaux Records was a new company I started to operate alongside of Meaux Music.

  I’m forever grateful to the artists who sang the roles on the recording. Michael Tait was our Hero, Mark Stuart, from Audio Adrenaline, was Petrov, and Rebecca St. James sang the part of Maggie. The album also contained performances by the rapper T-Bone, Matt Hammitt from Sanctus Real, John Cooper from Skillet, Michael Quinlin, Nirva from TobyMac’s band, Nathan Lee, Bob Farrell, and Paul Wright.

  It was a gargantuan task to release !Hero and bring it to market. I began by hiring several expert consultants to help with the sales and marketing, web presence, social media, publicity, tour marketing, and art direction. It also became a major family project. I hired my oldest daughter, Breckon, to be the project manager. Her job was to coordinate all the different pieces. She had been a school teacher for several years, but was taking a break to raise her two children while finishing her master’s degree. Breckon was always highly organized and efficient. I knew she would be great in that role, and she was.

  Apart from the product release, there was a tour to put together, and there was a separate staff for the tour. Bob Farrell rehearsed the five-piece band and worked with me to put the show together. Teresa Davis rehearsed the six dancers and worked with the choreographer, Todd Hannebrink. Ian Cattle was the tour production manager. Eric Welch produced the video backgrounds and screens.

  Eric later directed and filmed the !Hero live DVD. My son-in-law, Marcelo Pennell, who is married to Breckon, was charged with oversight of all audio mixing and sound design prep in advance of touring. Marcelo is a very talented recording and mixing engineer. We had massive amounts of video and audio to sync up, sound effects to be edited and so forth. He nailed it all.

  Of course my dear wife was the costume designer. As I have mentioned, Susan is excellent with all things artistic. She taught graphic design at a college level for twenty-two years. She can also sew anything, design anything, make anything, paint anything, and do anything. Oh, and she can cook. I taught her everything she knows.

  Okay, she hasn’t read this, and will probably smack me big time when she does. But seriously, without the support of Susan none of this would have happened. We funded the project together and she was an enormous help in getting it staged. The point here is !Hero was a family affair. All hands were on deck—and then some.

  I was managing all of those moving parts and a new full-time job. I took that on while serving as president of EMI CMG Publishing. I was also running Meaux Music with its staff and roster of writers. It was a lot. I’m not complaining about it, even though it took me sixteen hours a day—on a short day—to manage it all.

  It was obvious something needed to change in the long term for me to survive, thrive, and do the tasks before me well. I was doing too much. I have learned a very important key to success is
focus, and whatever you do, you must be able to do it well. That is much more important than doing many things at once. Quality always eclipses volume, especially if you can’t handle the volume. That is when you are most at risk to let everyone around you down—most likely yourself.

  In December of 2004 I sold another company to EMI when they purchased Meaux Music and integrated all our writers into their publishing family. Meaux had grown tremendously in just over four and a half years, but Susan and I were ready to move on. I was getting a bit weary from running two separate companies. It made sense for several reasons. Besides, I was able to continue working with the Meaux writers and producers through my role as president of EMI Christian Music Publishing. It was a win for everyone.

  My time at EMI Christian Music Group was fruitful and fulfilling. We were positioned well in multiple genres of music, including modern worship, rock, pop, and were even making good strides in mainstream country and pop. We grew the business well beyond EMI’s in-house record labels over the years. We became song publishers for writers outside those borders, including Casting Crowns, Third Day, Matt Maher, Mutemath, Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond, Leeland, Ben Glover, and many, many others.

  The modern worship genre was exploding all over the world, and our songwriters were leading the charge. Unbelievable songs were coming from Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, David Crowder, Brenton Brown, Tim Hughes, Martin Smith, Stuart Townend, and Keith Getty, to name just a few.

  Our contemporary Christian writers were topping the charts as well, with hits by TobyMac, Switchfoot, Steven Curtis Chapman, Rebecca St. James, Stacie Orrico, Newsboys, Ben Glover, and Audio Adrenaline.

  We were number one in the industry and the largest Christian music publisher to ever have existed in the world. Where do you go from there?

  FIFTY

  Soldiers of the Cross

  My dad was a pretty good harmonica player. He could hold his own on a guitar, too. At the mature age of just twelve he ran away from home to hop trains around the country during the Great Depression. He learned how to blow harp from the hobos sitting around their campfires. His love of music never faded. Music was always around our home when I was growing up.

  Dad was also an electronics and gadget geek. We always had the latest in stereo equipment and recording devices. We owned one of the first cassette tape recorders on the market. It was made by R.C.A. and the dog-gone cassette tape was about the size of an iPad.

  True to his musical roots, Dad was a big fan of Southern Gospel quartet music. Memphis happened to be the home of the annual Quartet Convention. Every year dozens of quartets and thousands of fans gathered at Ellis Auditorium down by the river. They held “All-Night Singins” during which one group would come on stage right behind another group until the break of dawn. My dad loved those “Singins.” He dragged me along with him, staying up into the wee hours of the morning to hear the tenors holding out high notes while everyone else held on to something else.

  That was my first introduction to Christian music on a professional level. Beyond that, my knowledge of Christian music was limited to singing hymns at church. The guys in those Southern Gospel groups were always dressed to the nines, with matching suits and matching colored shoes. Heck, sometimes even their hair color matched. The ladies were dressed impeccably well, in the fanciest dresses money could buy. Their hair was often piled so high on top of their heads I imagine the Bride of Frankenstein would have been envious. I took it all in. I really admired the showmanship, even though it could be a little over the top by any standard. But boy oh boy, could those folks sing!

  They also travelled in style. They had the best, flashiest, tour buses, and they displayed them for all to see outside the arena like a glamorous diesel chorus line stretching all the way around the building. You could tell they were awfully proud of them. I was amazed by how shiny everything was—even the people.

  In 1972, when I found the faith and became a Christian, we were at the tail end of the hippie era. The world was in the last gasps of the counter-culture revolution and many of us young people, whether Christian or not, liked to think we were anti-materialistic. We were anti-shiny.

  During our humble beginnings as a Jesus rock band, Dana and I talked about how we were going to be different. We rejected the stuff we saw being consumed and popularized by the world. We pledged to say “no” to both the trappings of secular rock glamour and what we perceived to be the materialistic trappings of the Southern Gospel world. We were going to do things God’s way. No glitzy showmanship for us. No sirree!

  A few years later, after we experienced some success, I remember looking at myself in a mirror before we stepped on stage one night. I was dressed in a shiny suit. When we left town that night, we rolled away riding in a shiny tour bus. Hmm. . .

  Then the inspirational artists of the early 1980s came around. They said, “We are not going to be like the Jesus rock bands. We are going to sing songs that can be sung in church on Sunday morning. We are going to do things God’s way.”

  A couple of years later along came success. One day they too looked down and saw they were all wearing shiny suits and traveling in shiny buses.

  Then along came the grunge movement of the early nineties. The Christian artists of the day proclaimed, “We are not going to keep God’s music closed up inside the church. We are going to do things God’s way and carry the music to the masses via MTV and mainstream radio.”

  Success snuck in. Even the alternative rock groups and grunge groups saw they were wearing their “flannel version” of shiny suits, and they too traveled in shiny tour buses.

  Then the modern worship movement was born. Those guys loudly shouted, “We are going to recapture God’s music and bring it back inside the church and sing it directly to God. That is how it is supposed to be. We are going to do things God’s way, not like the artists who want to be in the mainstream.”

  Now, many of the worship artists wear shiny suits from Urban Outfitters and travel on shiny tour buses.

  I can hear you saying, “Come on now, Eddie. You’re becoming cynical in your old age.”

  I assure you, that is not the case. My point is just this: shiny suits and shiny tour buses are just what happens any time success creeps into most anything in life, whether it is the Church, our work, or ministry. It’s as simple as human nature. Success isn’t a bad thing as long as it is viewed properly and the proper expectations and values are assigned to it.

  However, true success is not about money, fame, or even the number of baptisms you perform. Success is about following God’s will, no matter what it may be or where it may take you. I’ve known people who would be considered very successful in the world’s eyes, but are some of the unhappiest folks I’ve ever met. And it happens in all walks of life, not just music. Businessmen and preachers face the exact same challenge. One could run a Fortune 500 company or be a pastor at a mega-church with a popular worship and arts ministry, but still be a failure in life. Success is not about the numbers, ultimately. It’s about obedience. Sure, sometimes obedience leads to abundance. When it does, thank God for it and keep your head on straight. Sometimes, if a person isn’t ready for it, that kind of success can be the worst thing that ever happens to him or her.

  Success, as described in the Bible, is pretty straightforward. It is only comprised of two primary points:

  Point #1: Love God with all of your heart, soul, and mind.

  Point #2: Love your neighbor as yourself.

  Both are easier said than done. Volumes have been written on each point. It’s good to ponder what it means to love God with everything you have, and what it means to love your neighbor completely. But that really is the simple truth. That is what success is.

  Part of our problem is when the Church acts like a business it risks taking on the values and priorities of a business. We start judging our success as Christians, or as ministers, by metrics used to judge success in a corporation. I think in the end it is better when church is more like churc
h, and business is more like business. When we mix the two it can get messy. I’m not saying it’s always wrong. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that things can get messy with a capital M. Sometimes things can get weird fast. Is that what church should really be about?

  FIFTY-ONE

  Divine Embrace

  ASCAP, which stands for the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers, is a performing rights organization that licenses radio and television stations, public venues, websites, and others to use copyrighted music. Dana and I were both affiliated with ASCAP throughout our songwriting career. In 2007 ASCAP asked if they could honor DeGarmo and Key at their annual Christian Music Awards dinner for our lifetime contribution to music. They also asked if we would be willing to perform a few songs at the program. It was an enormous honor.

  But thirteen years had passed since we performed together. I was excited, but also more than a little nervous. I called Dana and relayed the opportunity to him. After laying out the details and asking for his opinion, he simply said, “What do you think?”

  I told Dana I would be game if Tommy Cathey and Greg Morrow happened to be available to join us. If we were going to do it, I wanted our performance to represent the full force and fury of what we once were. Dana thought that was a great idea. Amazingly, both Tommy and Greg, who were two of the most sought-after musicians in the entire country, happened to be available for that date. That seemed like some kind of miracle right there. They thrived in their post-D&K careers. Truthfully, they were always better musicians than Dana and I. We could just write songs.