Where do you see music going in the next five
years?
To me it’s still all
about the song. It’s all about creating, writing and just making great art.
Great art sells; and people want an experience. You better be really good at
what you’re doing and get them a good experience.
How have developments in technology changed the
way you approach your art/career?
Technology gives me
the ability to create sounds in my studio. All of a sudden, I’ve got thousands
of sounds and moods and wind and rain and thunder and orchestra at my
fingertips. You can start to visualize and hear this thing in your head before
you get in the studio.
What hasn’t changed for you over the course of
your career?
I’m still Michael W.
Smith, and if I’m grateful for anything I think I’m just really glad I am who I
am. I haven’t succumbed to the pressure to become someone else. I have to
reinvent, but I think you can reinvent and still stay true to who you are.
What are your plans with your career over the
next five years?
My number one priority
at this point is to make the best record I’ve ever made of my entire life;
this’ll be my 21st record. I would love to score another movie. I’d
love to follow up the Freedom project
with another instrumental record at some point, and I’ve always wanted to an
album of oldies. Then I think that there is [another] world of film that is
coming my way, not only as an actor but as a producer.
What is your advice for the next generation of
artists?
Be true to who you
are. Be authentic, and don’t chase the next thing. Just be who you are, and
stay accountable. And when you’re creating, just let it be real.
“O Lord, You have searched me and known me,
You know when I sit down and when I rise, You are familiar with all my ways...”Almost 10 years ago, I was standing in a
Pennsylvania field on a warm night in June when these words, fueled with
emotion, urgency and humility, thundered out from stacks of festival speakers
and made their way into my heart.
And you know, I really couldn't believe it.
In fact, if I'm honest, the first time I saw Michael W. Smith perform, I was
stunned.
Expecting just another hyped up,
emotion-exploiting, main stage-manipulated rock & roll circus event, I was
literally dumbfounded when Michael stepped up to the microphone that night and
began reciting Psalm 139 from memory.
Instead of pumping the crowd up into
musical mayhem and adrenaline-induced frenzy, the hit-writing, pop
song-singing, award-winning, poster child for Contemporary Christian Music did
not manipulate. He did not stroke his ego or exploit the energy of the
assembly; he just proclaimed.
Amidst the smoke, the noise and the
screaming fans, I watched him turn an old patch of farmland into holy ground.
I think it was somewhere in the middle of
Michael’s worship set, when he got up from his piano, walked up to center stage
and started a soliloquy from God’s Word. Infused with passion, and pouring from
an awe-filled heart, the Psalm seemed to strike the very center of me in a way
that I'd never experienced, and definitely not in a way that I was expecting.
“You
hem me in, before and behind, and lay Your hand upon me...”
He
recited all 24 verses from memory and then moved into some corporate praise
songs, but I was so undone, I couldn’t come along. Somewhere around verse 11 or
12, I was so pierced by the spoken truth that I simply knelt down in the grass
and began to weep. I cried for my unbelief, for my judgmental spirit and for
the acute awareness that God was near.
Now,
maybe this was so profound for me simply because of my love for theatre or my
love for words, but I like to think that it was something more than that.
Something spiritual. Something supernatural. Because after all, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing
through the word of Christ.”
Since
then, I’ve been extremely blessed. I’ve had countless opportunities to do what
Michael did that night—leading people in worship and carrying the broken on the
stretchers of song to the foot of the cross.
But
you know, there hasn’t been a night that’s gone by that I don’t think about
that night in the field and my first show with Mr. Smith. For it wasn’t until
that starry night in June, kneeling down in tears and earth, that I realized my
privilege to declare the Word in the same way that it was declared to me.
So
now, in every worship set, there’s at least one time that I’ll break out into a
few lines of Scripture.
“I have
hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you…”
I
thank God for using Michael that night at Creation Fest to show me the
preciousness and the power in the spoken Word, to show me that you can walk
onto large platforms and main stages, and still treasure Christ, above all. May
the Lord teach me to do the same. —MIKE
DONEHEY, TENTH AVENUE NORTH
Mike Donehey is
the lead vocalist and lyricist for new Reunion Records band Tenth Avenue North.
Over and Underneath, the band’s debut, releases May 20. Log on
to tenthavenuenorth.com to learn more.