Speaker 1: 0:14

Welcome to the power of songs. My name is Chris Estes and I hope you enjoy where we're going to go with this podcast. My vision for it has been to dive deep into what I call the power of songs. That can mean a lot of different things to so many people. What I realized was there's also not only the power of songs and how it connects and impacts people, moves culture, comes, anthems there's so many layers to that. But there's also in the music industry, which is where I've had the fortunate blessing of being able to work in for decades now. It is built around songs, so the power of songs also has created a whole industry that supports it in a lot of ways, brings it to places where people can experience it. Now more than ever, music is very ubiquitous and it feels super present wherever you are, almost like electricity. You can always have the benefit of hearing songs and music becoming a soundtrack. So we're diving into all that between. My plan is to have guests that are from all walks of the music industry, that have been involved in a lot of different ways, even had a friend recommend that I also speak to people that are just music fans, that are super fans, because I think there's perspective on the power of songs with that as well. So I want to start with this episode really just talking about how it's impacting me and diving through some of the what would become the staple questions that I'll ask a lot of our guests, but also give you a chance to learn more about who I am, what I've done in this industry and how songs have become a super powerful aspect of my life and for me.

Speaker 1: 2:06

As many songs impacted me at a young age I was not even 10 years old, I was whatever. From what I remember I was eight or nine years old and that's when I really felt the magnetic pull into music and the songs and it really kind of fell in love. For me Initially was a bit of an escape from a chaotic family situation that I lovingly referred to as dysfunction junction, and it was my, my secret place, my, my sacred place, where I could experience something that kind of put language to what I was feeling and also helped me channel my emotions towards something that felt bigger and felt, felt almost like an escape, and it would ultimately become a soundtrack, and so that, nine years old, I remember listening to music that I wanted to listen to and and buying music. That that I wanted to listen to. Yeah, I'm that old back then you had to actually buy music. You couldn't just you couldn't just dream it, but it was a. You know, for me it was that. That was the age where I felt like gosh, this is something that's very unique, similar to what to what movies can do to to young kids and to adults.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Music had that kind of impact on me. Then, at 10 years old, I kind of escalated and moved into having more time with it and that that evolved into me having a tennis racket and a shoestring for a guitar strap and I would. This was in the air of the cassette tapes and I would. I would get all my cassette tapes lined up, cue up the songs that I wanted to hear from each one and just have little mini concerts in my room in front of a mirror, you know, mimicking what, what I heard, what I saw, and I just had little concerts for myself and after about a year of that, you know parents kind of observing that that was my, my thing, that I did. They again kind of dates me a little bit.

Speaker 1: 4:22

There is a thing called a catalog that was, I think, pioneered by JC Penny. Sears had a catalog as well and it's two or four months. But before Amazon, you you had a big book and you flip through pages a lot like you do when you search on Amazon, but it was a longer process, obviously. You had, you know, sections and they all had the electronic sections and they all had versions of guitars that were the JC Penny catalog guitar or the Sears catalog, which is a very entry level off brand guitar name, but looked and had the same shapes of what I was seeing and what I was trying to imitate on my tennis racket, which certainly was not a guitar. So that was my first entry into music as something that I could engage and play outside of something that I made look like a guitar.

Speaker 1: 5:16

And then I realized, you know, I had a lot of rhythm in my right hand and left hand of persons and I think the reason I play right handed is because I watched right hand and guitar players and I try to emulate that and I learned a lot of I could. I could get the movements and everything down. After a year of doing that in front of a mirror. The right hand was certainly in place, didn't know what left hand needed to do. Of course I was only 10 years old, I could see what left hand was doing on on the great guitar heroes of those days. But when I got the guitar I realized I got to figure out how the chords and what I have to do on this thing with the strings and my fingers. So that that evolved over the years and you know typical kid who loves metal, hard rock, punk, learn the power chords and really fell in love with the guitar. I fell in love with that and then I started listening to music. I feel like in a different aspect, like at that point I was not only listening but I was listening for what I could play, what I could feel on a guitar.

Speaker 1: 6:22

And I remember at 12 years old really having the first experience with a concert, the absolute first concert I think everybody can relate to, the first time they want to see something live. And at that time, living in New Orleans, I and my friends would go to wrestling at the UNO lakefront arena and our, our thing with wrestling was we'd always go and we would bring a bandana and Drop it over the rail and then jump over the rail and get onto the floor and at wrestling events. Oftentimes we could get away with that, we would just. And if we got caught we just tell them that we're grabbing our bandana that we dropped off again, this was the 80s, so it's cool to have bandanas. As you know, fashion was Fashion, was questionable back in the 80s. It's kind of come back to a little bit now. So that was our plan and so when I went to see this first concert I was by myself and and 12 years old, thinking now would never drop a kid off at 12 years old to go see Rat opening up for Billy's Squire.

Speaker 1: 7:25

So there's a band called rat which is really Kind of at the at the hard rock and the glam rock intersection. So the band rat was Moving towards glam. My liqour was around at that time. Early shout to the devil, too fast for love. Rat had a Appropriate named album called out of the cellar and they had a big song called round and round that MTV made popular Was on the radio. So they had this opening spot with Billy Squire. I didn't really did understand. I didn't know who Billy Squire was. I knew the song struck me which was his big song and All I knew was I wanted to go see rat.

Speaker 1: 8:02

So I went there with the bandana in mind, thinking I could do the whole jump over and Get, get on the floor. What I realized was, when I got there, the security for a concert Was a lot different than security for wrestling. So there was no way I was gonna get onto the floor because there was security posted Every, every spot. So what I ended up doing was I was in the first riser. I don't even remember what seat I had, but I do remember trying to get as close as I could this stage and when the lights went down I ran over to To the. If you're looking at the stage stage, it would be the right side. If you're on stage, it's called stage last. But I was on that side of the stage. Lights were going down. I was at this section where they actually don't let people sit because it's so side stage you don't have a view of the stage that they don't sell those, those seats. So I made my way to that with no security pushback and I remember when the lights went down I saw the band walk out, kind of silhouettes, and Robin Crosby, the guitar player, was the tallest guy in the band, could see his hair glammed up and just see the silhouette of his height, I was like that's him. Steven Pearcey, lead singer, had this kind of hairdo that is came down the front and covered his eyes, half his face, and I would later Adopt that hairdo as myself, which is another.

Speaker 1: 9:27

Another powerful part about music and songs is it impacts the culture in the way that you dress and look sometimes, and Certainly wanted to be that guy. So I was there and I saw that and I just remember having the feeling at that very moment Like I either want to be those guys on the stage playing in the band or I want to be the guys I saw around them walking them to the stage that were Walking them out and we're around the stage, side stage. I wanted to be a part of all that. I didn't care, which we know obviously wanted to to be in the band would be great, but I at the same time remember having feeling like I don't care what it is, I just want to be back there with those guys and be around them. So that was the moment when I saw it and I felt it and Also was like gosh, it hit me. This is what openers do. They come out to an audience that really wants to see the headliner. So nobody was standing up. So for the whole rat set I was Sides kind of where I could see closest to this stage. That was there near the side and Just loved it. But also looked at the floor realizing gosh, then these people really care about the soap or they're here to see Billy's wire. So that was that was kind of the entry point into live music in the layer of experiencing and feeling what music was in a live, live setting like that.

Speaker 1: 10:52

And then I think the next intersection for me or the next development and how songs impacted me was coming out of garage bands and Just doing all that with with friends and school. In college started playing in bands, with bar bands basically, and living in the South. At that point I was in the Mobile Bay area and kind of in the Would be one of the corridors of the channels to the Southeast College Circuit which had a lot of, had a lot of bars that would have bands, and college sororities and fraternities would support bands playing her. So as I played there, the, the one thing that really I would say one of the most powerful things about music and song in my life was In that process of playing in the bands and downtown Mobile Was at the garage which is actually still there. It's cool little bar and small stage but mutual friend of ours. In the band. My cousin was a drummer and we had a friend who wanted to introduce him to who is now my wife, wendy, and so she came out to see us play and Always laugh, because drummers are typically the last ones offstage when you're doing bar gigs like that Because you have to move your own stuff you don't have ready, you're not in a big you know like for an arena. So I was the first one offstage and got some meter and Not that guy, never was that guy, but just felt immediately drawn to her and Asteroid that night and we dated for a few years and later on Would become married and we just celebrated our 25th anniversary. So Song and music definitely brought that intersection into my life and forever grateful for that. It so in that in that age of Graduating college, as I was coming out of college had a marketing degree and my whole plan was kind of mid 90s was to do marketing for, for bands and for to be involved that way, cuz I was making more money actually doing that versus playing in a band.

Speaker 1: 13:11

So that kind of evolved into Managing and at that time the internet was really really young. I remember the first experience with it was in In that whole scene, the whole music scene, and there was a guy named fish is an amazing bass player and was a band guy, also a computer geek, and he showed me geo cities, which I thought that's kind of this online hub and community and at that point with the marketing degree like it was, you know, direct mail, it was direct to fan interaction and a live venue type setting. But we, we honestly we even had a newsletter. We would. We would gather mailing addresses at the merch table and send out a monthly newsletter for the last band that I managed during that time. But it really was an interesting Time because I feel like that was at the internet was at the beginning stages of how you would be able to to mass communicate and to Aggregate fans in a really big intentional way.

Speaker 1: 14:16

But the interesting thing with At that point in my life I had coming out of a dysfunctional family situation, a lot of, lot of hurt in that Living and thriving in the music scene that was around colleges and the southeast that were, you know, full of parties. Obviously, the bars were too, which kind of led to a really unhealthy lifestyle for myself and, unfortunately, music at that point was kind of the thing that I thought was going to to save me and to Would be my career path, and it was unfortunate because the path that I was on Was also a path that was super unhealthy. There's a lot of party in around when I was and you know who I was with and what we were doing and that actually led to To me taking a departure from music. It that honestly led me to to a drug rehab. That was a faith-based Rehab in that that introduced me to a much powerful thing than songs and that was, you know, jesus and and a God and his love and his restoration, his hope. What I thought was a lot of judgment and rules and all the you know, all the things that Christianity gets stuck with. All the negativity is what I thought that was. But what I what I found was there was a. There was a guy who loved me, had a plan for me and loved the passion that I had for music and I would see that come to fruition later. That took a seven-year departure from it and went into a print technology company in Mobile and dove straight into marketing with that and you know was on a was on a great career path. I was, you know, set to become an executive in the company and had had enjoyed it.

Speaker 1: 16:21

At that point I got out of the bar scene and the music in that scene and Committed to doing that and was plugged into to local church and and playing with the worship team. So I still got the outlet of the, the creativity and the fun of nothing you know. Then this was circa 1998-99, so there was a modern music that that was really starting to permeate the church. So it was really fun. My first pastor that that I was in church with Encourage me to bring my, my Gibson Explorer and play that on Sundays. You really wanted that. You know that guitar which is, if you don't know guitars, it's basically straight out of Metallica. That's what James Hadfield played for years and I think he went in the ESP versions of those and anyways, a classic guitar. It's definitely heavy metal, rocker guitar and so I Jammed on that thing every every Sunday and to me that was the outlet. And that was another aspect of song that I never experienced before, a song that could carry something into an environment that people could experience and could experience a lot of, a lot of touch from from what From a God is really for in the truth of God and the, the positivity of the things that I Experienced when I needed joy and I needed hope and I needed Salvation. So I saw that for a while and that was my thing on on on Sundays For seven years, did that at the same time At the print technology company.

Speaker 1: 18:01

I was traveling the world and doing what the calling was there and what God was doing during that time was he was showing me his church around the world. So I got to experience some of these you know they call them mega churches now, but they were. There are big, influential churches around the United States, around the world and I got to say how they. They did music and I. What I didn't know was the whole time he was preparing me to Just step back into music.

Speaker 1: 18:27

So seven years later this was 2005 I was running an ad in the paper before that marketing group that I was in charge of at the company and I was just checking to make sure it ran. At the same time, I saw an ad for a digital Music marketing director at this independent music company called integrity music immobile, and that was an interesting job description because digital music was at that time Napster was becoming legit and legally having people engage with music. Prior to that it was Kazaa and, like Glimmer, all the free sites where music was being stolen. Industry kind of definitely felt the impact of that. But at the same time Steve Jobs at Apple had, I think, the iPod was a year old at that point and he legitimized the download and the consumption of music in a digital format with a digital device. That obviously would change the game and integrity music was feeling it. So they were advertising for someone to come in and to kind of run the house Again.

Speaker 1: 19:46

It was still very young in the digital music age, luckily our pastor at the church. He was a song developer in integrity music and when I asked him about it he said man, you should apply for the job. It's going to be great, we're seeing a lot of digital music impact and it's starting to grow a bit and it's you'd be at the ground level with all that. So he kept on me for a couple of months I applied and from there it was my journey back into music as a career and again I got to experience another powerful aspect of song and how that could be portable in a way and accessible in a lot of ways, and it was at the beginning of that wave. So back then it was, you know, digital music was 10, maybe 20% of the music consumption. The rest of it was physical product and stores. So I got to work with, you know, with a lot of different groups over that period.

Speaker 1: 20:49

With integrity I started because it was so new. I started in a church resource area, which is kind of funny. I was in a cubicle farm with a whole team of people that were selling products at church to help them play it Everything from court charts to resource books, octabos for choirs and all kinds of stuff. And there was me and a little desk talking to iTunes and Rhapsody trying to get things set up. And a year into that, president of integrity music was Don Mowen and he invited me into the label to engage more with the artist, which I thought was great flashback to you know, like for an Iranian rat, I was like, yes, I want to do that. I don't want to be in a cubicle farm all day doing stuff I want to do that with the artist and kind of help with that. So it was an interesting time.

Speaker 1: 21:39

A year into that the guy who was running all the Hillsong stuff from Australia, which was a big influence in Christian music and church at that time he left and they asked me to work with the Hillsong guys and the team and I knew them from some of the earlier stuff. But they had this youth band called United that was starting to come up and I think the first Christian praise and worship event prior to that I went to I talked about this in the first guest interview on the podcast, but I went to a Rebecca St James concert. I think that was the first Christian concert I went to and that was me as a new believer. But the first worship concert I went to was United on the United we Stand tour and they were in Baton Rouge and they had. It was a free event, they didn't sell tickets at that time and it was packed out. There was thousands of people in the main sanctuary, hundreds of people in the overflow areas and then another thousand people probably in the parking lot trying to get in because they wanted to see them.

Speaker 1: 22:53

That's when I realized the power of song and how it can travel around the world and impact just a groundswell that people can be impacted by it. So I saw that and I was like man, that's very interesting that you know they really haven't promoted it, but there is just such a groundswell of engagement and grassroots. It felt very indie. It felt very indie in a lot of ways because they were young and they were just people going crazy to go see them and I had the you know, the fortunate experience of working with them for over the years and that time and integrity was really impactful. I could talk a lot about that. I could spend the rest of this podcast talking about projects and artists I worked with.

Speaker 1: 23:39

But it was a time, I think, where there was another sound of modern worship that was gonna come out that was being spearheaded by bands like United. Brook Leisurewood was just starting to. I should just. Burk Frasier then was just joining the band permanently and she was a massive impact in that. John Mark McMillan, daniel Basta, all Sons and Daughters, like all that started to come as a wave through integrity music and so I had a chance to work on all that over this.

Speaker 1: 24:16

I was there for seven years towards the end of it, steve Jobs made a move on the iTunes Store to really get back to people engaging in albums and he created this thing called the iTunes LP. It was probably it probably in the heyday was about a four year run and I had to. It basically was like a website being built on the iTunes player platform on desktop, so on your laptop you could experience it. But it was interactive. You could put multimedia in it, you could do a lot of different things and I had the.

Speaker 1: 24:54

At the time there was no Christian version of that, so there was a lot of genres that were doing it. They were super expensive to make because it was like building a website, and I worked with Israel Houghton on Love God, love People. He did an Abbey Road. I was like man, let's recreate Abbey Road. So I had the experience of doing that much, launching the first iTunes LP for Christian, and it was really fun. We got to recreate the control room. We had a Bible on one of the music stands and it had a daily scripture that was about loving God and loving people. That would refresh every day If you clicked on it. You could mix your own version of every song. You could bring in guitars. You vocal only, so we had all the stems loaded into it, we had chord charts, we had video content. It was really, really fun.

Speaker 1: 25:46

So I got to do a few of those over the years and on my way out of integrity. So integrity was bought by a book company in Colorado Springs and we made the move out there. At that time we had two kids that were really young and again I just felt like this was the calling to be an integrity music, which was indie but had distribution through Sony. So I got to meet all the Sony people, went out to Apple and Cupertino several times and was on a great career path with that. And then, when we got to Colorado and the book company, I bought integrity music in Kingsway, which was a music company out of the UK, and merged the two. So you can imagine a book company trying to be to diversify into a music company and at the same time merging two labels together. So it was a formula for chaos and that year was pretty tough.

Speaker 1: 26:44

I felt towards the end of the school year that it was time to move on and I did and in the process was able to go independent and work because I still wanted to stay in music and was able to do that. I met Bethel Music in the process of that year and, from the label side, worked on loft sessions which was very unique Again felt like a very new sound for the church. Young Stephanie Gretzinger Hunter was super young that and Jeremy Riddle, which is like this fresh sound. It was a I don't. I haven't really heard anything exactly like that since and it's very interesting.

Speaker 1: 27:28

And I met Brian and Jen Johnson and Joel Taylor, who's a CEO at the time, and they all came to Colorado and got to hear them lead worship for the team and just felt something really, really special to me as I dug into it growing up in New Orleans, the only thing I can. They call it spontaneous worship. I liken it to what in jazz you would call improvisation. It's, you know, it's off script, the rules all go out the window, which in jazz often happen anyway, but there's a cohesion to it and there's a feeling to it and you know when it happens.

Speaker 1: 28:09

And Bethel, in those days they were doing spontaneous worship. That was again, you know, it was very spirit filled. It wasn't rehearsed or even in the moment and it's where the songs would go and that was the first experience with that aspect of music in the church and you know, I think in other genres you'd hear it in bands like back in the day, widespread panic in the 90s. You'd hear that. A lot of fish Prior to that you'd hear it in Grateful Dead, hand or Exhale A lot of the 60s rocked the doors Like they all. They had those moments where it was captured and become, you know, it would become iconic. So that really drew me to what they were doing and the songwriting was amazing and I was the guy who did all the iTunes LP.

Speaker 1: 29:04

I don't think I've only told this story to a few people, but I'll share it on this podcast. I think there's a powerful aspect to it. So, leaving integrity music, you know it was a good transition and I had a great team that left in place and offered to help consult on the iTunes LP because again, it was like building a website very complicated, you had to work with developers, you had a bunch of different testing and at the time Bethel Music was working on for the sake of the world and it wanted that to be there for our iTunes LP, which is going to be great, and I offered to. That came out in the fall of 2012, offered to work on that and help them, consult, help, consult on that as I left, and they decided to keep it internal and to do it themselves with somebody that wasn't as experienced or any experienced with doing iTunes LP. So what happened that fall is it came out and it was totally discombobulated. It was live and, I think, outside the US for a minute. It was a partial out in the US, like everything that could go wrong with it went wrong, and I think a big part of that may have been because I wasn't involved not to toot my horn but that actually led to Joel Taylor see I reaching out to me saying, hey, we're leaving in Segrity Music. Would you consider coming out and helping us and consulting with us because we're working on the next album, you Make Me Brave, which was an iconic album for them and, I think, started a real maverick wave of what would be the momentum and movement for Bethel Music. So I did and I flew out there, but without having been involved in for the sake of the world rollout with integrity music. I don't think that would have ever happened. Who knows what would happen? But there is a powerful aspect in my journey in music that led to Bethel Music. They wanted to stay independent.

Speaker 1: 31:10

After the left integrity and we did. In the next of the years I got to work on business development with them, doing direct deals with iTunes and Apple and Spotify later on, and just got to be involved. It was really small. It's funny, because the music was so much bigger than what you would assume. There was a massive label or team around it but it was really nimble and if people know Redding California, it's not a vacation destination. You have to be called to really want to go there and a lot of that calling was Bethel Church and the music side of it and so super small team started with them. There was like four employees total. I think two of them were part-time and the next 10 years was on that path with Bethel Music and doing a lot of stuff with them.

Speaker 1: 32:10

That would take me again around the world internationally touring and I would see the impact of how music and how a song could carry ministry and engagement into the church into a Sunday but also I'll probably get into this in future podcasts. But there's an aspect of that that is also carried healing and restoration and redemption. That was not on a Sunday morning but was happening in people's lives during the week when they heard songs and it's pretty amazing. So I got to see an aspect of the power of how a song can do that, and it's not to limit it to just it being a praise and worship song or a Christian song. I think there are a lot of genres of music that have the same effect on people. There's a powerful aspect to it that can help with mental health. It can help with how you process things and how you feel connected to stuff.

Speaker 1: 33:27

I think there's a power in that and for me, back to the origin of my story and how it's impacted me, that was my draw into it. It was an escape. It was something that became therapeutic, it was something that became passionate and luckily it was something that has become my profession, and I'm just as passionate about being in the industry and the business side and the creative side as I am about what I still am able to do playing on Sunday with the worship team and leading with those guys. It's a fun journey and part of the reason I wanted to do a podcast that was really geared around this was I think there's a lot of interesting stories. You can hear people talk about how they wrote the song and they can pick apart lyrics and things like that, and that's pretty common, pretty typical. And you can hear people talk about albums. But I wanna go a little bit deeper into everybody who's in the industry and everybody who really is impacted by music. There's those origin stories and those journeys that, the songs that impacted you and the songs that impacted your profession, the way that you think about music and to me that's always interesting and around people we talk about it all the time, from producers to booking agents to lighting directors, to name it, like even lawyers, that also are passionate about music and their kids are in music now and I've had the fortune of that. So you'll get a taste of all that. And the guests will be young and old. So I think the I love the older guests will have a different perspective on how music intersected their lives early on, and I think the younger guests will have a different perspective.

Speaker 1: 35:23

I came into the house of the day and my daughter was listening to wanna dance with somebody by Whitney Houston while she cleaning her room and I was like that's amazing At 16,. I had to go buy any kind of that catalog there are any other kind of song that was older, because you didn't hear it on the radio and you didn't have any other way to access it unless someone made you a copy. So it's interesting. There's a generation or generations that are growing up with music that have full access and they can go back and discover things. For me in the early hard rock metal days it was hearing a black Sabbath or a Judas Priest or Aerosmith or Doors, or just go down a list of music that's impacted me and they're realizing oh, there's five of their albums. Or Van Halen, there's like six other albums that came before 1984. I'm guessing don't quote me on that, that could be really wrong.

Speaker 1: 36:26

But now music discoverability is part of the norm. You can through playlists or curation, through a mood playlist, through all that. And even in the consumption numbers that just came out this year for the mid-year report show that catalog which is 18 months or older of songs are being consumed at 75% of the total consumption. So new songs are about 25% that are under the 18 month and catalog, because I think people now more than ever, taking road trips, talking with friends, playing songs that were soundtracks through their teenage years, through their 20s, and then also my daughter, who can feel, has a feeling she's like I wanna clean to this music, which is awesome.

Speaker 1: 37:16

So I think it's gonna be a fun ride. I hope you guys enjoy it. I'm gonna enjoy it. It's when I'm passionate about. I'm fortunate to be around a lot of people that are in different walks in this industry and I think they have a lot of great perspective and I think it'll be interesting to hear how that music has to impact what they do. Thanks for taking this journey with me. This is Chris and the Power of Songs. I'll see you guys next time.