If you’re familiar with Sojourn’s Before the Throne, then you’ve heard Rebecca Bales Elliott, who sang on roughly half the record’s songs and also wrote “I’m Coming Back,” and co-wrote “In the Shadow of the Glorious Cross” with Brooks Ritter (hear it on our Before the Throne page) and “All I Have Is Yours” with me (hear it on myspace.com/sojournrecords).Â
Visit Rebecca’s official website from our Helpful Links section and you’ll see she’s not only a prolific writer for the Church, but that she writes and performs songs of beauty and hope, struggle and longing, doubt and faith, carrying them into the Louisville music scene and beyond. A gifted vocalist and pianist (for that matter, she can pluck out a song for you on guitar as well), Rebecca loves music and uses her talents well.
This is why I ask her to collaborate with me on songs like the one mentioned above and ”Let Justice Roll Like A River.” It’s also why people look forward to hearing her original material, as well as what she does on songs written by other writers, like Neil and Kate Robins’ “Amen, Amen,” (hear it on our Advent Songs page).
Kristen Miller recently caught up with Rebecca for sojournmusic.com, to let us all into the world of her life and music. Hear about her background in piano, songwriting and collaborating, film-scoring and more, and listen to mp3s featuring Rebecca from our latest worship CD and a live Sojourn worship service:
Kristen Miller: Please state your full name.
Rebecca Elliott: Rebecca Joelle Bales Elliott
KM: So what’s in the CD player of Rebecca Elliott?
RE: Lately I’ve been listening to Nickel Creek, Why Should the Fire Die, Sara Groves. Mostly Sara Groves. If I could be like any musician, it would be her. Her music is just so theologically sound.
KM: And she plays piano.
RE: Like me!
Hear Rebecca on her composition, “I’m Coming Back,‿ from “Before the Throne‿
KM: When did you begin playing the piano?
RE: My first lesson was when I was six. My parents felt the Lord told them I was going to be musical, and that was going to be part of my calling. So my dad sold his truck and they bought a nice piano and started me on lessons. Dad rode his bike to work for a few years, and I took lessons continuously for about 10 years.
KM: Was there ever a time when you were younger that you didn’t want to practice your lessons?
RE: I always wanted to play piano, but I didn’t always want to practice.
KM: What helped you stick with it?
RE: One time I pitched a fit about practicing, and my mom pulled out a newspaper article about a marathon runner. She gave me a speech about how they would never be able to run a marathon without all that training. She said I would never be a great piano player unless I stick with it. From then on every time I complained I got the marathon-runner speech. It got to the point I didn’t complain any more so I wouldn’t have to hear the lecture.
KM: How about your singing? Did that begin for you around the same time as piano?
RE: My childhood was very musical. I was always singing along with something around the house. Whenever my brother and I hang out we end up singing all the random songs we grew up with.
KM: Being surrounded by music, did that just naturally flow into songwriting for you?
RE: Yes, I sang for a long time, but the first serious song I wrote was around age thirteen called “Darkness All Around Me”. I don’t really like it anymore; it’s very amateurish.
KM: What helped you to continue as a songwriter?
RE: I don’t think there was a specific moment. It’s just kind of what I did, writing music and lyrics; it came naturally.
KM: Do you consider yourself to be a musician first and foremost, or a poet?
RE: What I love doing is melodies. Usually a melody and lyrics don’t come separately for me. If I’m writing a song, they come at the same time. When I’m thinking about something, I’ll get a line with a melody attached to it; it’s not one or the other. So there’s not really a way to separate them.
KM: Are there certain themes you find yourself returning to in your lyrics?
RE: Until about 2 years ago, I was very sad. So I wrote a bunch of sad songs. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself or my abilities as a musician. “Darkness All Around Me” was, “I can’t find my way; I was foolish; I didn’t obey”. It was being stuck in a pit. I wrote, “long have I wandered here in this wilderness so dry,” things like that.
At that time I worked in a prayer ministry with Ben and KC Woodward. Ben had a heart for equipping young artists; he was very encouraging when I was depressed. One night, he and KC sat me down and really laid into me. I was so mad. But Ben kept speaking truth about who I am, making me repeat scriptures aloud, like “I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus”. Then they made me sit down at the piano and sing them. That was really hard for me, because I wasn’t used to writing or singing about joyful things.
I went home that night and felt like it was pointless and dumb, like, “why did I do that?” The next morning, I woke up and realized that while I was sleeping, the Lord had broken in on me and made it all real. There’s this Sara Groves song that says “look what I’ve been missing; I just showed up for my own life; I’m standing here taking it in, and it sure looks bright.” Since then the themes in my music have changed from despairing to who I am in Christ.
KM: Do you think that going through that dark period has added depth to the music you write now?
RE: Absolutely. It’s not all happy music, but it’s not all “woe is me”. There’s a balance. I am naturally a melancholy person, so sad things give me material to write about. But since that experience two years ago, I can write about happy and joyful things as well as sad and dark.
KM: Moving forward in your musical journey, you now co-write songs with your fellow musicians at Sojourn. What’s it like collaborating, as opposed to writing by yourself?
Hear Rebecca on “Let Justice Roll Like A River,‿ recorded live at Sojourn
RE: I like to co-write. I do like writing lyrics, but it’s fun to separate the two every now and then and write a melody for someone else’s song. So when Bobby [Gilles] asked me to come up with a melody to “All I have is Yours”, I was really excited. I got to just go crazy and have fun with the melody. That’s probably one of the more fun things I’ve done in songwriting.
KM: Because melody is your thing.
RE: Love melodies.
KM: Recording or playing live, do you have a preference?
RE: I like playing live. But recording is also a lot of fun. I don’t know. There’s real energy that happens when you’re live. But being somewhat of a perfectionist, when I’m recording I can go back and tweak it forever. So do I sacrifice the energy of a live performance or the perfection of a studio recording?
KM: You recently recorded the soundtrack for the film Crimes of Passion by Shaughn Tillman and Phillip LeCompte. What was it like to create music for that particular medium?
Kristen Miller will conclude this interview with Rebecca Elliott tomorrow here on sojournmusic.com, as Rebecca talks about film-scoring, worship leading, teaching students to play piano, and more.
