It’s just like, “Okay, there’s this puzzle that I’ve got to solve. I’ve got to find a way to say one complete thought in 14 lines with a rhyme pattern that’s more or less constant and 10 syllables a line for the most part.” I’m always surprised when I get to the end of one that doesn’t stink. The only way that you end up discovering it is by bumping up against walls and realizing, “Okay, I’ve got to get creative right now and find a way to say this thing in a new way.”

CCM: What made now the right time for Volume 1? Why not even kick that can even further down the road?
AP: I don’t know. Part of it, if I had to guess, one of the things that was the most gratifying about the making of this record, was that the songs are so joyful. I really wanted Volume 1, not Prologue (buy), to be a celebration. I wanted it to sound like a party. I wanted it to be the thing that people wanted to put on on Easter Sunday when the sun finally comes up.

I love Easter. I’ve always loved it since I was a kid. We always had a sunrise service at the lakeside in my little town, and my dad usually led it. Easter always felt more meaningful to me, even as a boy, than Christmas did. Easter never really lost its magic for me as a kid, because in my house, it wasn’t ever about the Easter Bunny. My dad fasts for 3 days beforehand, and we have a Good Friday service. Then as a teenager you’re never up at sunrise, but that one day each year, I had to get up at sunrise and go down to the lake to sing about the resurrection of Jesus as we watched dawn come. That stuff is just implanted in my brain, so Easter has always been meaningful to me.

Andrew Peterson, CCM Magazine - image

photo credit: Giles Clement

I wanted this record to kind of capture some of that joy. And after Light For The Lost Boy (buy) and The Burning Edge Of Dawn (buy), which were both heavy albums that came from a lot of pain, I was ready to sing about something happy. When I had the meeting with the label about a year ago, they said, “What do you want to do for your next record?” I just had this sense that it was time to sing about, not the dark before the dawn, but the actual dawn.

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