What Matters Most

Produced By Wes King
Produced By Ed Cash *
A&R Direction: Craig A. Mason
Executive Producer: Elisa Elder

Song By Song Interpretation by Wes King

Spin You Round*
This song was inspired by Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton, one of my favorite writers. He said that God is really more like a child than he is like a grown up, and that God has an infinite sense of infanthood. He said Jesus said you must be like a child to understand, and in the same way that a child will say, "Daddy do it again, Daddy do it again." And they could ask you to do the same thing again and again, until you are sick and finally it is just a matter of, "I've got to stop or I'll die!" Anybody who has kids or who knows kids knows that's true, they just have this appetite, this infinite appetite for the same old thing. They don't get bored, they don't get tired of it. For me to be around Harrison and Mitch and see their infinite appetite for the same - it is amazing! And instead of getting tired of that, what that concept has allowed me to do is to try to get right in there with them and just laugh at the same old thing again and again and to try to see something beautiful every time. So that song is a song to Harrison and Mitch to say don't ever lose that - let it spin you round. Be surprised by the same old thing, again and again and again.

What Matters Most
This whole record is me saying to the boys, this is my proverb to you, what matters most in life. The structure of this is kind of a proverb, so every song is a little proverb to Harrison and Mitch. I was reading a book entitled Lillith part of the story was that this guy had to die, lay down and go to sleep, in order to wake up. He was afraid because they were in coffins. His God says to him, "Inhabit the trembling yet be brave." In other words it's okay to tremble, but be brave, do it. And I just never forgot that and that to me has been a theme to Harrison and Mitch. Not to go, "big boys don't cry, instead saying it's okay to cry but be tough, be strong AND cry."

GK Chesterton says that Christianity is at its heart a paradox. If you want to find your life lose it. He talks about the cross, it is not a balance it is a collision between the vertical and the horizontal. So virtue and truth and goodness is at its heart a collision. So that is what I'm trying to tell the boys. We live in a paradox, we live in a collision. A lot of times you are going to want to go "well if I'm brave then I need to be crazy." No, to be brave, Chesterton says, that if you want to save your life in a battle, if you lie there and hunker down and are afraid, you'll probably get shot. But if you rush in the battle to win, your chances of living will go up. The chorus comes around and says, faith hope and love, but the greatest of these is love, which is to me the heart of the paradox too.

In A Moment*
In a moment is that phrase we hear all the time growing up. I remember even when Harrison and Mitch were born I heard somebody say, "You know you're going to wake up one day and you're going to be going to their graduation and it is going to go by so fast." So I'm trying to live in the moment - fully in the moment. One time in one of George Grant's lectures he said that ultimately the Christian is called to live in the past, and the present and the future. We live in the past because we are called to love the lord your God who delivered you, who brought you out of Egypt, remember what God has done. Remember, remember, remember. We are called to live in the present by being joyful, this is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it. We are called to live in the future because we are called to hope and what is hope, where does hope exist, where does hope lie? In the future. That God will bring to fruition that which he has started. So ultimately when we die with Christ we rise with Christ and when we live with Christ there is a sense where we transcend time with him, because he is not bound by time and place. And so what I tried to focus on this song is the present.

Excavate
Fran and I went to Israel in 1993, and it was then that I got the idea for this song, yet I never did anything with it until this record, because I felt like it really fit the theme of writing proverbs to my sons. But I'll never forget we went to Jericho and there were these excavation digs. Jim Martin, a good friend of mine, was giving these archeological facts which were evidence of the fact that there was a Jericho and they found all of this stuff. He'd say things like we know this and we know this because it lines up with the Bible and we've got this evidence here. I just remember thinking we know about people from thousands of years ago. I started going, "oh man, I wonder what they'll say about me!" Not only in a thousand year sense, or an eternal sense, but what will my children say about me? So that is where that song came from and just being over in Israel and going through the excavations and going into tombs and thinking about Christianity, there really was a time in my life where I thought we really were supposed to enjoy living without. But that's not the case. I do believe that God built us for pleasure and joy and for immense riches, but I think what happens is that we confuse money for riches and we confuse promiscuity for pleasure. And I think God built us, he designed us, for pleasure to be had in the context of family, and marriage. Not that having monetary blessing is a sin, but I think we confuse it with either that alone, or too much of it. So the interesting thing about looking for a buried treasure, is that the greatest buried treasure that the world has ever found was an empty tomb because it meant that we were forgiven and we, too, would rise.

Slow Miracles*
Slow Miracles, came from an article about the miracles of Jesus, that the miracles he did were just the slow miracles that God already did in creation, just sped up. I'm obviously talking about the kids there and how quickly they grow, but this is a song to my wife, too. One of the things that Fran and I do purposefully is we hug in front of the boys and we kiss in front of the boys and we tell them all the time we love them. But I try to, just about everyday, say, "you know boys, I sure do love your mommy." And she'll go, "you know boys, I sure do love your daddy." Because I just know for me as a kid, that is what I wanted more than anything. Even as a kid I would rather them hate me and love each other. There is just something so powerful and important about that, about the husband and wife relationship. So this song is to my wife, but it is in keeping with the rest of this because I want the boys to know how much I love their mother.

Walk With You
When I do these songs, for the first time in my career, Dads come up to me, young dads, middle-aged Dads and old dads, because they've been moved and I think that is what this song is about It's never too late, it's never too soon, to start thinking about these things. This song was inspired by a time with Harrison & Mitch when one of them stood up first and I started walking around the room with them. I ended up doing that all day. I found myself in the middle of that thinking about what I needed to do next and not being there with him, not enjoying the moment. I was like, "Wes, wake up what are you doing?" I caught myself and I was there, I was really there. I look back on that and I'm so glad I was there. They have already forgotten that, but I remember it, I'll never forget it and they'll remember it someday when they are walking around with their boys.

Staring Down The Dog*
The true story is Fran and I really were taking a walk and a dog broke its leash and came after us, so I sent her off because she was pushing the boys in a stroller. I'm sitting there trying to stare this dog down and he keeps coming. I grew up in Winder where there were no dogs on leashes and they all came after you so you had to throw rocks at them to keep them away. However, I learned if you didn't have a rock, if you even bent down like you were going to pick up a rock they'd stop. Well, this dog didn't know that movement, and he kept coming and I didn't have a rock to throw at him, so I finally started running towards him just screaming and he finally stopped. I came back and caught up with Fran as a lady came out and got the dog and Fran said, "Gosh, I sure am glad you are here." That is what every husband wants to hear, that they are a hero. It was during a rough time for me, but it was the thing to do and the bravery part of what matters most!

There Is A God
I literally wrote this down in one sitting, on a vomit bag. I was somewhere on an airplane and it was terrible turbulence, to the point that the flight attendants screamed. One of them didn't put a lock on her beverage cart and it just came flying down the row and it was a wonder it didn't' kill anybody! The plane was actually shaking and it was one of those really big jumbo jets. We came out of it and I wrote this song down. Just to go, in case I don't say whatever I have to say, I want to write it down to you, my boys, in this song. It is, you know - love peace but be willing to fight. The same paradoxical theme, just know there is a God. And if you seek God with all your heart, you'll find him. Wherever there is truly good, there is a God. So as a Daddy my prayer is that they would know that God and be saved.

This Is The Church
I wrote this when I was going to do a concert at the First Presbyterian Church in Winder. I hadn't been in that church for years and years, and my brother asked me to come do a concert. I had just read a book called How to Read Slowly. The book was so stimulating and inspiring and the way it brought out image and metaphor and how sometimes just saying something it doesn't have to mean anything. Just saying tinfoil wings in this song, you know sometimes that's all you need to say! And a manger scene, or Holy Night, Peace On Earth, Front Row, Hymns. Or the big words Cherubim and Seraphim. Then I used the old hymn, "The Church," as the bridge. This is one of those songs that I just sat down and wrote in one sitting. The lyrics just say it all.

Connie Come To Georgia*
Connie is my sister and my brother wrote this song more as a poem and he asked me to finish it. We've written a lot together, but wanted to finish this one and put it on this project because it seemed to fit the theme of what matters most. It is a lesson to say it all while you can.

I remember going to a bar-b-que with my dad in the town where he grew up. I'd seen it before, but he wanted to again take me by his old house, as if he still needed to mourn the loss and remember. Remembering is uniquely Christian, the act of remembering. When you forget what God did for you, you repeat what led you to the desert to begin with. In generations past, family members weren't so spread out, it says a lot about us culturally today. We don't remember our circumstances, or get together, or visit gravesites. Now we have things that keep us young, we worship youth. Connie Come To Georgia is a call to come home, to say, "let's stay close and remember. Harrison and Mitch don't move away when you get older!"