“I moved to Nashville with four songs,” he explains. “By the end of the summer, all these independent labels like Gotee Records, had offered me a deal. tobyMac came into our studio, as did a lot of other music business types who just started showing up. We kept getting offered deals to sign to these labels, but I was like, “I’ve got four songs; I’m not ready to make a record.” I waited, and started working, and took my time.
“I started playing songwriter nights at places like 12th & Porter, where you’d find Nickel Creek, Mindy Smith or Duncan Sheik. I’d get up there, and I was just learning how to play these songs. It was at the same time, humbling and really encouraging. I remember once, Mindy Smith was walking up, and she says, ‘That was really cool,’ and I was like, ‘Well, you’re Mindy Smith, and you’re really cool.’”
Kearney avoided signing to a Christian label because he wasn’t making music primarily for the church. “I paid for
Bullet myself and recorded it with the same guy I drove across the country with, Robert Marvin (Matt Redman, tobyMac). We licensed it to InPop.
“Growing up in Oregon, I didn’t have this genre experience, this industry specific expectation that if it’s this one thing, it’s not going to be listened to over there. I didn’t grow up with music divided into ‘Christian’ and ‘secular.’ Music wasn’t as categorized. It was either good, or true, or pure, or it wasn’t. There are good and bad things about that, I’m sure, but mostly it’s good.”
Even though he eschews the label “Christian artist” as a marketing tag, Kearney wanted to get his music out there. When “Undeniable” was sent to Christian radio as a download, it became a successful single, which surprised Kearney. “I love my music,” he says, “but I didn’t know who also would love it.” Once released to the mainstream, it caught the ear of music producers for ABC’s hit series “Grey’s Anatomy,” and it’s been, well, undeniable ever since.
“It’s a song about God and people and love—it’s about life,” he says. “It’s totally vertical and all of that at the same time. I wouldn’t pin it down and say it’s just about a girl; it’s definitely about my faith. I wrote ‘Undeniable’ about this kid. We were hanging out with him, loving on him and encouraging him. We invited him to be a part of the recording session. He was about 13 and going through this crazy time; they were tearing down his school. They were tearing down this old building and building this beautiful school in its place. He was going through these trials, but there’s this beauty from ashes story in his life.”