Audrey Assad, blue-collar musician

Audrey Assad is a singer-songwriter who’s blazing her own trail in the world of contemporary Christian music. Her debut album, The House You’re Building, released in 2010 and became the Christian album of the year on Amazon and the Christian breakthrough album of the year on iTunes. That success led to collaborations and tours with Chris Tomlin, Tenth Avenue North, and Jars of Clay.

A second album with Sparrow did even better. Still, Assad never felt quite at home on a Christian music label, so she parted company with Sparrow and used Kickstarter to fund her third album, Fortunate Fall, independently. It came out in 2013 and was her most successful album until this year’s Inheritance, which she also released on her own label.

Inheritance has not had any radio hits, but it reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Christian charts and cracked the Top 100 on Billboard’s secular album chart, topping out at No. 81. It also reached No. 2 on Billboard’s folk music chart. I had this conversation with Assad at the annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters in Nashville.

You were with Sparrow Records for a number of years. How did you get discovered? I was living in West Palm Beach, Fla., for a long time doing independent music, just recording little demos and leading worship. I had a friend in town, in Nashville, who was a producer. His name is Phillip LaRue. He was in a band called LaRue back in the ’90s that I was really into. He was a friend, a brother-in-law of a friend. He heard my music and he said, “Hey, I’d love to work with you. Come up to Nashville sometime.” I raised money to make a record by putting out a guitar case on the end of the stage. I raised about $5,000 or $6,000 that way before Kickstarter or any of that. I came up to Nashville and recorded an EP with him. Then a week later, I got a phone call from Sparrow Records because he handed it to someone who worked there. I didn’t end up signing right away, but it happened really fast. It was just I knew the right person, I suppose.

It’s extremely rare for something like that to happen. Indeed. I only know now. I wished I had taken more time to figure out what I was going to do. At the same time, I was grateful that the door opened. I had a lot of great opportunities really early.

Why do you wish you had taken more time? I didn’t understand what I really wanted from my ministry and career yet because I was trying all kinds of things. I was trying folk music. I was trying pop music and worship music. Now I know my heart is really for leading worship and writing worship music.

During that you came in contact with Matt Maher, the worship leader. What was Matt’s influence on your life and your music? I met Matt right about the time I was showcasing for Sparrow Records. He was leading worship full-time at that time already and had written “Your Grace Is Enough,” and it was on the radio. He was on his way. We met and he said, “I can’t believe you’re working full-time as a nanny. You need to quit your job and come on the road with me.” I did. For two years, I was his background vocalist, opening act, and everything in between.

I learned a lot from him. We wrote a lot of songs together for some of his records and some other people’s records. I learned a ton about the Holy Spirit and leading worship and discernment and songwriting.

He’s been a dear friend. He lives about 3 miles from me. I am his first son’s godmother, and he is my son’s godfather. I met my husband through him. We have a lot of history.

What is your formula for working together? One of us [gets] a song about 75 percent of the way done. Then we call the other person and say, I need a closer. Someone to help me tie the loose ends up and maybe give it that extra perspective, or melody or whatever. We end up helping each other finish songs a lot. It just seems to be the way we work well.

After three albums, you left Sparrow. Did you have creative differences or just want more independence? For me, I think, it all amounted to the fact that there are certain restrictions on what kind of music and lyrics happen because of radio being such a huge marketing tool. I just never did well at radio. I never did well at writing those songs. It began to be very constrictive for me and kind of miserable because I didn’t feel like I could be myself. That’s not a person’s fault. It’s just the way the system goes. Being released from that constraint of “you have to write for radio” is really helpful for me.

At least in this day and age, it seems like with crowdsourcing and with technology, you can have a middle-class life as an artist. I call it blue-collar music. The way that it has been for me is that even though I might have more success or things expand, I then have to hire more people, more help because things expand and there’s more work. For me, there’s not been this threshold of, “Wow, well, I sold this many more records, and now I’m making this much more money.” I pretty much make the same amount of money every year even when record sales increase because I have to pay more people to do more work. I do think it’s wonderful that I can make a modest living at this. I’m happy at this level. I feel like if I can just maintain where I’m sitting and have the small house we have—but we own it, we can have a few kids, and I feel really contented with that.

I think it’s cool that today the pool is larger. It’s harder to be one of those huge, superstar, million-record sales artists. But more people can do what I’m doing and make a middle-class living at doing music themselves.

How did you get into music? I’ve been a musician my entire life. Since I was 18 months old, I’ve been singing and playing piano. I really didn’t have any draw toward doing what I do until I was 19, and I had what I would call a second conversion. I met the Lord at 5, and I met Him again when I was 19. I’m sure I’ll meet Him again many times.

At 19 was really the first time I encountered Him in a personal way, I would say, that really felt like it changed my life. At that point, I felt like I heard the still, small voice of God for the first time saying, “I gave you this gift. I’d like you to use it in this particular way to lead My people in worship, to write music.” That was the beginning for me of the journey I’m on now.

I was raised in a church called Plymouth Brethren, which is a Quaker-type background where women did not sing in front of people or pray out loud in front of men. It’s a big change. I became a Catholic about eight years ago. There’s a lot of story there. I’m a charismatic Catholic with a Protestant bent. I feel like I embody a lot of different things, and I love that. I feel very connected to the global church because of my background and where I come from.

Do you see a new ecumenism going on in the church right now? I know that the ecumenism that I am encountering and I am a part of, I think, is real ecumenism, which is to say it actually dialogues about those deep divides and differences. It doesn’t just say, “Well, those don’t matter. We’ll just pretend they don’t exist.” Real ecumenism is meeting and saying, “Why don’t we take communion together? Let’s talk about that. Let’s feel the sting of that together. In the meantime, as we talk about that within shared community, and lives, and work, let’s pray and serve the Lord together, as well.”

Matt Maher was a pioneer in that regard because he was openly Catholic and also accepted on Christian radio. He does a lot of work in Catholic churches and Catholic venues, but also plays at a lot of the contemporary Christian music festivals. Where have you found you’re the most comfortable? I love it all. My favorite things are in arenas where there are both people there, both “sides.” Several years in a row, I’ve gone to an Anglican church in Fairfax, Va., called Truro. They’re a cornerstone church of the Anglican-American church because they have the oldest property, I think, in America that Anglicans have ever occupied. They do these ecumenical events and bring us in. That’s my favorite thing because I feel like it pleases the Lord. I feel like more than anything I do, I get a sense of the Lord’s joy when I am leading worship at events where Catholics and Protestants are coming together to pray. It blesses His heart. I truly believe that. That’s truly my favorite thing.

Your father came over from Syria in the 1970s. Your latest album refers to the terrible crisis there. My dad is 100 percent Syrian. He was a refugee in the 1970s. This whole thing hits very close to home for me. The record really has taken on a character because it’s a lot of hymns that are written by people in poverty, people in suffering. Then the song that I wrote, “Even Unto Death,” was inspired by watching a video that ISIS released of an execution in February 2015 of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians on a beach. I just felt obviously grieved and sickened by this video, but also gripped with the idea that the prayer of the persecuted should be my prayer as well. If we truly are one church, then the plight of the refugee, the plight of the persecuted Christian, even the plight of the persecuted Muslim or whatever religion it is, as a human person, as a Christian I should be feeling that. I should be praying through that. I should be adopting the prayer of the martyr for my own. “Even Unto Death” was really written as the prayer of the martyr.

The record, as you said, doesn’t really refer to it but so much about making it was really me offering this up for the plight of the refugee and for the plight of the martyr. It’s very important to me that I stay connected to that, especially as a Syrian, but as a Christian most of all, I think.

Listen to Warren Smith’s full conversation with Audrey Assad on Listening In.