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10 Questions with ... Phil Joel
November 6, 2006
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NAME:Phil JoelTITLE:MusicianSTATION:Indelible Creative Group
Discography:
The Deliberate People. album (2006)
Bring It On (Inpop Records, 2002)
Watching Over You (Inpop Records, 2000)1) Offer a brief recap of your musical history from when you started playing to "the deliberatePeople. album."
When I was 13, my uncle gave me a beat-up acoustic guitar with two strings missing and cracks in the body, but none of that mattered because I loved it. I knew from that time on what I wanted to do. I started a band shortly after called Drinkwater. I played guitar and sang. Okay, this is going to get really lengthy if I tell the whole story, so I'll now skip along to moving to the States to join newsboys. After about five years of playing, writing and touring with newsboys, I was offered a solo deal and began writing my first solo CD. It came out in the summer of 2000 and was well received due to the success of the song "God Is Watching Over You." I made another solo CD a couple of years later and then left the solo thing for awhile until this year's "deliberatePeople" album release.
2) Tell us about deliberatePeople.
deliberatePeople is a ministry that Heather and I started with the desire to see people be more deliberate about their daily pursuit of God. Its concept is based on the act of rising and spending time alone with God at the start of each day. We set up a Web site to help people out with a reading schedule and to provide a few other tools to get them going. If you get a moment, check it out at www.deliberatepeople.com.
3) Which song on the deliberatePeople. album carries the most important/timely message?
Hmm? Well, to me each song is a story or testimony of what God's done or is doing in my life. The thing that I really enjoy hearing is other people's stories and being inspired by them, so I think that's what this CD is about. It's about sharing stories from my journey in the hopes that someone else might be inspired in theirs. My ultimate goal is that these songs would soundtrack a new move of God in one's life.
4) Through your "deliberatePeople" journey, what became your key Bible passage?
I think it would be the words of David in Psalm 27:8, "When You said, 'Seek My face,' my heart said to You, 'Your face Lord, I will seek.'" To me, that's cool!
5) How do you do it? Balancing family, solo work, newsboys, etc.
It's not as hard as you'd think. Although it's every man's challenge to allow God to set correct priorities and to be vigilant about keeping them in order. If I allow things to get out of order, then nothing will work out the way it should. It's called proper alignment unto our prophetic assignment. I stole that saying from my pastor's book "The Mighty Hand of God" (by Dale Evrist).
6) Why is Indelible Creative Group the perfect label fit for you?
Indelible is amazing in that they truly understand what it means to "partner" together and walk out the vision God has given each of us. The company's mission really fits with what we're doing.
7) Producing solo for the very first time on this record, did you discover anything different about yourself or the methods to your "madness"? Were there moments that you wished for different ears or were you cool to "go it alone"?
Initially, I was kind of freaked out about going it alone, but after a while, I got my groove on with the whole thing. You really have to shrug off the fear of being judged and just go for it. Heather helped my stay on track because she knows me and what I'm about. So when I'd record something that wasn't reflecting what I wanted to say either musically or lyrically, she'd let me know. I really wanted to keep it from becoming just another over- produced CCM CD, so I worked hard to maintain the simplicity of each song.
8) What continues to motivate you to create music? What gives you a sense of urgency?
Music has a crazy ability to move someone to new places of emotion, action, truth, indignation or whatever. This is a world in need, and as a follower of Christ, I have the desire to transmit the truth, the life and the way to others. It's simple I think, don't you?
I don't feel the need to over complicate it.
9) As Heather and you shipped the independent release of the deliberatePeople. album, did you discover any clever tricks to shrink-wrapping CDs?
Why yes, we did! Ha, who have you been taking to? The first 5,000 CDs we ordered turned up with the worst shrink-wrapping I've ever seen. It was like the manufacturer thought it would be funny to put them in wrinkled up, holey grocery bags and then send to us as a joke. It wasn't funny! Anyway, we had orders from the Web site that needed to be sent, and there wasn't time to send them back to be re-shrink-wrapped. So, we went out and bought our own shrink-wrapper and proceeded to unwrap and then re-wrap 5,000 CDs in our living room. It was a lot of work, but they looked good in the end. Silly really, when you think about it, because they just get torn off anyway.
10) Tell us your funniest radio station experience so far.
Well, it's not funny, or then again, maybe it is! Anyway, one of the most important moments in my life occurred at a radio station. It was where I met Heather, my then-to-be wife. Is that funny? I think what's funny is that she married me! Ha-ha!
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