Show Notes
Listen to Weight of Glory (Jamie Soles) and read its lyrics.
Jamie Soles’ website, social media, and Patreon:
- https://solmusic.ca/
- https://www.patreon.com/user?u=13253630
- https://www.youtube.com/user/MrJamiesoles
- https://www.facebook.com/jamie.soles.5/
- https://twitter.com/SolesJamie
Video
Audio
Transcript
Lightly edited for clarity.
Daniel:
Welcome to the Expository Songs podcast. We discuss songs where the main idea of a passage of scripture is the main idea of a song. My name is Daniel Mount, and today we’re discussing the song, Weight of Glory. I have the honor to be joined by its writer and performer, Jamie Soles. Welcome.
Jamie Soles:
Thank you very much.
Daniel:
Glad to have you here. And for those listening to this podcast, if you haven’t heard the song Weight of Glory yet, pause this podcast, go listen. It’s linked in the show notes or listen on your favorite streaming service and then come back for the conversation. You’ll appreciate it more that way.
So I’ll begin with an introduction. This song was my entry point to your music. There was a point one day, probably seven or eight years ago, maybe pushing 10. I was wondering if anyone had written a good song from 2 Corinthians 4:16-17, which is the Weight of Glory passage. I pulled up Spotify, typed in the words Weight of Glory, and this song came up and I was blown away. I was like, why have I never heard of Jamie Soles?
Then I looked at the rest of your music and I thought, this isn’t a fluke. There are hundreds more. In fact, I maintain a free database of expository songs on my website with 48,000 song entries. Isaac Watts has the most. You’re in the top five. You’ve written a lot of songs from scripture. So how did you get started as a songwriter?
Jamie Soles:
I was a young fellow. I was in my early teens when I started listening to Christian Rock that was going on at that time. Randy Stonehill was around, Larry Norman was around, Chuck Girard, Phil Keaggy. I was listening to those guys and being inspired – man, that’s what I want to do. I want to be able to I want to write songs that sound cool and that glorify God.
I’ve been a believer as long as I can remember. The Lord got hold of me really, really, really young. I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t recognize Jesus as Lord. But that was present in 13-year-old me and so I wanted to learn how to write songs. Now I didn’t have any counsel on how to write songs. No one was talking to me about how to do this and I didn’t know what to write songs about. I fiddled with that for a couple years and it seemed like everything that would come across my pen just sounded stupid when you said it out loud.
Two years of that, though, quasi-following the Disney idea, “follow your heart,” right? What’s in your heart. And I remember it being a check on me even then because I’d read that scripture that said that “the heart is deceitful above all else and wicked and who can understand it?” And I’m supposed to write from that? Anyways.
When I was 15, I was at a summer camp. I started writing a song when I was there just to describe what I was looking. Because it was a beautiful setting and I wrote a song that was thanking God for those things and that was my first song that ever actually worked.
And, you know, I thought about that a lot later. The way in which I started writing songs was to stop the business of looking inside me and start the business of looking, not writing what’s in my heart, but rather writing what’s in my eyes, writing what I see, writing what I perceive. That was a way forward for me to get started in writing songs. And it was really successful that way.
Daniel:
So was there a point, were you using Scripture in your songs from that point forward as much as you are now?
Jamie Soles:
No.
Daniel:
Or was there another point where you really started diving more into Scripture and having more Scripture in your songs? And was that like an instantaneous thing almost like that song was? Or was it something that just grew over time that you started using more Scripture in your songs?
Jamie Soles:
Well, there was sort of a theological paradigm shift that I underwent when I was probably 22, 23 years old. I discovered the idea that the world actually has a future. The thing that I had grown up with in the churches that I grew up in was that the Lord was coming back any moment now, and there wasn’t much use in planning for the future. But I ran across the idea that Jesus intends to win the world with His gospel. That that’s His plan, that’s His desire. That was a revolutionary idea to me, and it turned my thoughts toward worship. It turned my thoughts toward the Scriptures. It turned my thoughts toward the Psalms, thinking, you know, “I want to write songs from the Psalms. I think that’d be a great thing.”
So there was a particular time in my past that really started to focus it. It wasn’t as focused as it eventually got, but it was focused. I began to get an idea. The Scriptures are powerful. God uses His Word to shape and change people. I know that’s true. He does it. And so I want to sing as much of it as I can.
Daniel:
And I will say, you’ve succeeded in that goal. There are passages of Scripture you’ve written songs from that, for all the song entries I’ve seen, I’ve never seen anybody else write another song from. And I would say in particular the song “Jealousy Test” comes to mind. That’s just not one that Christians sing about often.
Jamie Soles:
Oh, yes. Will she swell or will she not?
Daniel:
Yes. I really could be remembering wrong. I don’t think I have come across another single song from that passage.
Jamie Soles:
No, probably not.
Daniel:
Yeah, so to focus, then, and now I’m gonna devote a good portion of this conversation to a deep dive on this song “Weight of Glory “because I love the song so much. There’s a note on your website that you wrote this song on February 14th, 1997. Does that sound right?
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, that’s about right.
Daniel:
Okay, so just to put this in context, I believe I’ve seen you mention Rich Mullins as a musical influence.
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, I listened to a couple of his early albums. I really liked it and I liked the way that he did things.
Daniel:
Yes. And I hear it come through in your music.
But to put this in context for listeners, when you wrote this song, Weight of Glory, Rich was still alive. Like this would be about the time he was putting together The Jesus Record. This song, even for those of us who have come across it more recently, for me it might be ten years ago, but that’s still more recently, this song is a contemporary of “My Deliverer” or “Man of No Reputation.”
So, I say that to say in part: With some of the questions I’ll be asking, I completely understand, and I think our readers will too, that it’s been long enough, and you’ve written a lot of songs since then, that there might be some answers to questions where you might not remember specifically, that’s perfectly fine.
But then I think I’ll just pull up the passage, read the passage we’re talking about here, which is 2 Corinthians 4:16-17, which says, “Therefore we do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
Do you recall if you sat down and you’re like, I’m gonna write a song out of this passage of Scripture, or do you know if you found your initial point of inspiration somewhere else?
Jamie Soles:
I think the first is probably true. My senses really got centered on writing Scripture songs probably 1995, 1996. I had a whole bunch of little kids and I was reading Bible to them because I knew that Bible getting the Bible into these kids’ hearts and bones was important. But not, you know, the feedback I’d ask—I’d read a passage to my five-year-old and then ask her to tell me what she heard in that passage. And that was always a slow process. It didn’t work well.
One day, I was driving along a street in Grand Prairie, it occurred to me, “You know, Jamie, you should be trying to sing these Bible stories. That’s what you should be doing.” And I thought, “Man, that’s a good idea.” And I started thinking about what Bible stories I could turn into songs for my kids’ sake. Okay?
So when I started doing that, I began to realize, especially in terms of Bible stories, there’s nobody else in this field. No one’s doing this that I’m aware of. In the 70s, I remember listening to Don Francisco. He did that a few times. He took a few different Bible stories and made songs out of them. I really liked those songs.
Daniel:
Yes. And did it well – Those are some good songs.
Jamie Soles:
But nobody was doing it on the scale that I perceived could possibly be done. No, there’s so many Bible stories. There’s lots of them. There’s lots of them that don’t make the Sunday School papers too. Numbers 5!
Daniel:
Yes.
Jamie Soles:
They just don’t. And so I set with a will into writing Scripture songs at that point. I had in my heart two long-term goals that I’ve really been keeping at. One being writing Bible story songs, as many of them as I can, and one being to try and write songs for every Psalm. I’ve been working away at both of those goals for the rest of my life to this point. And I figure that if I’m going to finish either task, I’m probably going to have to live to be like 500 years old! So, there’s lots to do.
Daniel:
Although I think you’re probably a little closer on the Psalms, just from what you’ve recorded, it would have to be somewhere near a third or half of the Psalter. Wouldn’t that be?
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, I think that I have written songs on, I think, close to 90 of the Psalms. Some of those being my own versification or my own trying to do a word-for-word thing of the Psalm. I’ve actually had a great deal of success in recent years writing Psalm versions using the poetry from the Canadian Reformed Book of Praise. I got their permission to do this, to to use their poetry and build my own songs to them. And I’ve got 75 or 80 of those now waiting in the wings that aren’t recorded yet.
Daniel:
Okay! So looping back to “Weight of Glory.” With you thinking in terms of Scripture songs, did you start off writing the chorus first, which is almost line for line, setting these verses to music, if you recall, or do you know if you started somewhere else? Do you remember where you started?
Jamie Soles:
I don’t think so. I don’t think I did. My song creation process—it doesn’t usually come piecemeal. It usually comes as a unit. That’s been the way that it’s worked for a long, long time. I’ll sit down with a passage and I’ll try and find my way to be able to express that passage in song. That’s really what I’m shooting for. But rarely does it happen that I’ll write a chorus to something and then go searching for words. They all seem to come in as a unit, my reflections on that passage.
Daniel:
That’s interesting, so do you recall if you wrote this song all in a day or if you over the space of maybe a week or a couple months?
Jamie Soles:
I’m pretty sure I wrote that song in about an hour.
Daniel:
Wow!
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, probably.
Daniel:
That’s impressive.
Jamie Soles:
But I say that of just about all of my songs. There’s a way in which it took me an hour to write this song. There’s a way in which it took me thirty years to write this song, right?
Daniel:
Yes. Definitely.
Jamie Soles:
Had to learn how.
Daniel:
Yes. But even then, many writers I’ve talked to in—you know, this is a new podcast, but just in conversations I’ve had through the years—many excellent writers spend weeks or even months on a song, polishing it, tweaking it. So it’s a surprise to hear you could write songs of this caliber in a sitting. I’m impressed.
Jamie Soles:
Well, you can thank the Lord, because I have no idea. That’s just how I work.
Daniel:
Yeah, that’s good! So until i heard this song i didn’t think it was possible for, as the chorus does here, for for the chorus to follow this passage of Scripture so closely. Is it all right if I read the chorus lyrics here?
Jamie Soles:
Oh yeah, go ahead.
Daniel:
Okay, so it says:
So we do not lose heart,
Even though our outer man is melting like the dew,
Yet our inner man is new.
All these light afflictions are only for a time,
And they work for us a greater weight,
A greater weight of glory all the time.
And if you go phrase by phrase through the passage: “Therefore we do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” That follows really closely. For a song that’s not setting it to music word by word literally, that’s about as close as you can get.
Jamie Soles:
Well, I’m glad of that. That’s what I was hoping for.
Daniel:
Great.
Jamie Soles:
I want to be able to say what the Scripture says in my song. So, I’m thankful that worked that way.
Daniel:
Yes. So the big idea of this passage as I understand it is to encourage us during a trial. Even if it would seem like the trial is meaningless from an earthly standpoint, this passage is telling us that this trial is working in us a far more exceeding an eternal weight of glory.
Jamie Soles:
Mm-hmm.
Daniel:
But that phrase, “eternal weight of glory,” has really intrigued and I would even say puzzled me through the years. And I have to be completely honest, I’m not sure I understand it as well as I could. So because you wrote a song from this passage, I’m thinking you may have thought about it for longer than I have. And so there’s these interesting concepts as they come together of glory and weight, weight perhaps in a metaphorical sense, and then there’s this concept of trials adding to this weight. How do you understand this passage? What are any thoughts you might have as you think about this passage and in this song?
Jamie Soles:
I’ve talked with guys who know Hebrew and they tell me that the word “glory” has as part of its meaning, as part of its understanding, the concept of weight, of heavy. Glory is heavy. And so when Paul is using it that way, he’s probably reflecting on Scriptures that he knew well, using that word glory with this weightiness, this heaviness, this gravitas, this weight. Because glory is heavy.
Daniel:
So it’s almost like—Paul loved plays on words.
Jamie Soles:
Oh yes, he did.
Daniel:
We see it—you know, I know a little Greek, I’m not an expert in Koine Greek, but I know a little Greek and just from that and from what I read in commentaries, he loved plays on words. But I tend to only see it if it’s in the Greek. What this is doing in a sense is he’s almost making a play on words, but he’s pulling from the Hebrew word, the Hebrew concept, and he’s pulling that into it, an Epistle he’s writing in Greek, such that the play on words that’s obvious in his mind isn’t necessarily obvious to us.
Jamie Soles:
Right. Right. Yeah, he’s not the only guy in the Scripture who did that all the time. I’m told Hebrew is full of puns.
Daniel:
Hmm.
Jamie Soles:
I’ve been told that by, by folk who, who study it and know it well. They find puns everywhere in Hebrew. Whoever said that a pun was the lowest form of humor? (Laughter)
Daniel:
Well, not if it’s in Scripture. I would not say it’s the lowest.
Jamie Soles:
No, there you go.
Daniel:
No, I think we have a Paul’s example, there’s some value in it.
So the second verse then goes up… to verse seven, which verse seven of this chapter says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” And then I see in this second verse, second verse lyrics, you say:
Here we have this treasure
Enshrined in earthly tools
That the power of God is with us
We will not be found as fools.
Do you have any recollection, either of what you may have been doing then or as you see it now, what drew you from the weight of glory concept up those couple of verses to be looking at it and tying it to the earthen or the jars of clay concept.
Jamie Soles:
Well, Paul did, right?
Daniel:
Yeah.
Jamie Soles:
If I recall rightly, what I wanted to make a chorus of that notion that we we don’t lose heart because of verses 16 and 17, but the content of the song… It seemed to me really should be the content of what Paul was dealing with. That made sense to me.
Daniel:
Yeah. This is putting the chorus in the context that Paul put the verse in.
Jamie Soles:
Yes. That’s what I was shooting for,
Daniel:
Perfect. So we say the same thing with that second half of the verse, which is:
And though we are bewildered,
We are never in despair.
Christ the Lord is our example,
We will find our comfort there.
And His life, which is manifest within
Is displayed to every man that many more may enter in.
Which draws briefly from verse 8, “we are perplexed but not in despair,” but then also in more detail in verses 10 through 11, which say, pulling them up, “that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body; for we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’s sake that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
So that really ties it together well and I really appreciate that verse. If we just had the first verse and then the second verse was maybe a personal story or something I’d still like the song. But I really appreciate how verse two takes us in that flow of thought that leads us into the chorus, back into the chorus. That’s really strong.
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, well I do think that the Scriptures are really deep and they can they can bear a lot of various different approaches to them. But it’s usually the case that it’s not just a main point that I’m after. I really don’t think God wasted words at any point in the Scriptures. This is all “the power of God to salvation.” He uses this Word to shape people, to raise the dead. He uses His Word to do all kinds of excellent things. And so I wanted to get something that was following the flow of Paul’s argument and to make a good song out of it. That’s what I was hoping for.
Daniel:
Yes, and I like how verse one kind of brings us into the passage from our context.
Jamie Soles:
Yeah.
Daniel:
We’re not jumping into it. We don’t live in Paul’s world. So it can take a little bit of prep, a little bit to get our minds in gear to be in the mind space Paul was in. But then once you have us in that mind space and we go through the chorus, I really like how verse two then puts us in Paul’s mind space, heading back into the chorus.
Jamie Soles:
Right.
Daniel:
That’s just a good way to structure a song.
Jamie Soles:
“How long has it been since you made a conscious choice?” So yeah, there I’m asking the listener to think about their life and then to encourage them from the Scriptures. Which, okay, that’s good. That works.
Daniel:
And then that next line, “to believe that all your troubles give you reason to rejoice.”
Jamie Soles:
Mm-hmm.
Daniel:
And that reason to rejoice is that the trials are working in us this more eternal weight of glory.
Jamie Soles:
Yes.
Daniel:
Yeah. So then looking at the bridge:
Here we gaze on things that are unseen
Through the eyes of faith. we see them
And that’s the first part of the bridge. Pulling from verse 18, but because that’s halfway through a sentence, I’ll go back to verse 17 and read it one more time. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.”
So things which are not seen has a pretty clear parallel in Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” So I can see why you tie it in here. That makes perfect sense. And it seems like at least in part what you’re saying in this bridge is that we see what this passage is calling us to see, trials working an eternal weight of glory in us, if we’re looking at them through the eyes of faith.
Jamie Soles:
Yeah.
Daniel:
And is that kind of where you’re going here?
Jamie Soles:
Oh, yes. Yeah, that’s the idea—that we want to we want to be able to look at our lives and at all the mundane troubles that we face and not just think of them as meaningless and as as valueless because they’re really not in God’s economy. God tells us that He knows everything about us and he loves us. And every every bit of the stuff that I face Is not just a waste of time. It’s not just a meaningless task. Do it as unto the Lord and the Lord will take that miserable those miserable dishes and he’ll he’ll build an eternal weight of glory for you that you can’t even imagine.
Daniel:
Yes.
Jamie Soles:
It’s beautiful. It’s just beautiful.
Daniel:
It is. It is. So is there anything else in the process of how you wrote this song, perhaps the melody or the arrangement, anything else that comes to mind that those of us who love this song might find interesting?
Jamie Soles:
Well, when I go to write a song, I always have my guitar in my hand. Because I’m trying to figure out what sort of music will carry this passage. And it’s all a rather strange mix, I suppose, where I do everything at once and it works. I’ve seen ladies do that in the kitchen. And I do that with my guitar. Where they’re not following a recipe. They’re going by what they remember and they can just build something.
Daniel:
Now I get that.
Jamie Soles:
Well, that’s sort of what happens with me and my guitar.
Daniel:
My wife has that talent. I do not. If I’m doing something in the kitchen, I’m following a recipe, step by step, carefully. She can just do it by feel. It’s amazing.
So how has this song been received? Is it a deep cut for you, or is it one that regularly comes up in conversations and song requests?
Jamie Soles:
This one is common closer for concerts, or it’s right near the end of the concert. Might not be the closer but close to it. I’ve used it a lot.
Daniel:
So you still sing it regularly?
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, I still sing it. It’s still in my it’s still in my playlist of things that I’ll play in concerts. Usually I have my wife singing with me sometimes—well, these days I don’t have any of my kids doing it because they’ve all grown up. Such things happen.
Daniel:
Is that your wife’s voice on the recording, in the harmony part?
Jamie Soles:
Yes, it is.
Daniel:
I thought maybe but i wasn’t a hundred percent sure.
In the years since you’ve written this song, you’ve been through some amazing highs with more children born, weddings, grandchildren, but also some unimaginable trials. Is there anything in this passage or in this song that you understand better or in a different light today? Is there any way that the song or the passage has come to mean more to you through time?
Jamie Soles:
I would say yes on a broad scale. You made reference to a serious disaster that we went through. In 2014, we lost our oldest son in a motorcycle crash.
Daniel:
Yes. I am so sorry.
Jamie Soles:
And that was such a hard time. That was a hard time to go through. And you know, I can’t count how many times people would send me back my own lyrics to meditate on. This one in particular. This one in particular. And so I have had lots of cause to reconsider that song and to think more deeply on it.
Daniel:
I thought maybe, just the nature of the song and that particular trial, I thought there was a chance that it may be one of those songs that came back to you a bit more with time, but I didn’t want to assume either.
So you’ve written, as we talked about earlier, you’ve written many songs from Scripture. Just moving into a more general part of the conversation, I’m curious, what are some of your personal favorites of your own songs? Both overall favorites, but also I’m also particularly interested in any songs you like because of how they connect to a passage.
Jamie Soles:
Well, this one’s way up there. Yeah, this one’s way up on my list. There are. Trying to pick a favorite out of my songs is a real hard task.
Daniel:
You don’t have to pick one. You don’t have to pick one. If you want to mention a dozen, that’s fine.
Let me phrase where I’m coming from in a different sort of way. There may be some people, y’all probably tag you when this comes up, and there may be some people who already know your music well who listen. But there will be probably some people who are hearing about you for the first time as they listen to this podcast. So for them, if they listen to the song “Weight of Glory,” and they’re like, “That’s a good song, I want to hear more,” what are some other songs I point them to? I can phrase the question like that. People who like the song, what would be the next few to listen to maybe?
Jamie Soles:
Oh, if they like this song, do they have kids or not?
Daniel:
I do! Either way.
Jamie Soles:
If they have kids, send them to “The Way My Story Goes.” That song, that song really connects well, I think, to the flood story. And that one is also almost always on my playlist because people ask for it.
Other ones, songs that are the best received among my kids songs are ones like that. Ones like “Bad Guys” songs, ones like “Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.” Those ones, they’re concert staples. Okay, because I know, I know that that album has probably gotten into where it is I’m going to sing. And they probably know that one.
In terms of songs like weight of glory, I was I was studying today, taking a look back in lists that I made of songs, as they’re by year. So I went looking in songs in 1997, ’96, ’95. ’95 was when I started writing songs and in ’95 and ’96 I wrote most of the material for my first kids album, Good Advice.
I did a lot of my preliminary songwriting trying to get Psalms working that year. When I look back at 1997, and was just looking through that list earlier today, and I was thinking, you know, that was a really productive year. It was a very productive year in that I wrote a whole bunch of songs that didn’t get on albums for many years yet. I wrote a whole bunch of them that year. That was a really good year. So, fascinating things about how, how this works sometimes.
Daniel:
Yeah, I’m fascinated.
Jamie Soles:
Yeah. There were years when I got so busy with life that I just hardly wrote at all. That was a really productive year when that one came out. I think there were three or four songs from that album that were written in that year.
Daniel:
And this sparks a question I’m a little curious on. Do you have any idea how many total songs you’ve written, even in a general sense? And are most of your songs recorded, or is what we can hear more like the tip of the iceberg, some of the best?
Jamie Soles:
I think I have about 300 songs recorded, and I think I’ve written probably close to 900, something like that. So there’s quite a lot of songs.
Daniel:
Okay, so maybe a third of your songs.
Jamie Soles:
What’s that?
Daniel:
So we’ve heard maybe a third of your songs
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, probably. I remember looking at my my early songwriting when I was learning how. You know, I told you about that one that I’d written at camp and that it worked and I played it at campfire and everybody loved it. And I played it for my family and everybody loved it. And I played it for my church and everybody loved it. And I was very much encouraged to pursue this songwriting thing. But But the first song of mine that showed up on any of my albums, I think, was the number 34. So it took quite a long while, quite a lot of writing before I started writing things that I was confident that I could record onw.
Daniel:
That makes sense.
So this is a bit of a different direction in the conversation.
Jamie Soles:
Okay.
Daniel:
And I can’t remember if this is something we talked about directly in Facebook Messenger some years back or a public post. But I’ve heard you bring up even in this conversation, an interesting topic when it comes to children’s songs.
There are Christians who hear somebody singing songs from Scripture. And even if that song wasn’t necessarily written for children specifically, they hear, “This is a song about David and Goliath, it’s gonna be a children’s song. This is a song about the ark or Jonah or whatever, it’s gonna be a children’s song. Children’s songs are the songs that tell Bible stories. Adult songs we don’t need that anymore.” So how have you navigated that?
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, that is an issue. I think that’s probably driven by the Sunday school papers of the last fifty years. What do you put in Sunday school papers? Well, you put Bible storied. David and Goliath get in there and Noah and the ark get in there. Daniel gets in there, and a whole number of other ones do. And people who grow up with that as their Bible teaching, and they grow up wherever they grow up, if they’re in the church or not, and maybe their church doesn’t teach very well, and they grow up and they think of those things as kiddish, of those stories as kiddish. Well, they’re not, really. And you’ve probably noticed in the songs that I’ve written, even though I’ve done a whole lot of stuff that is kid-friendly, it’s really not childish.
Daniel:
Yes.
Jamie Soles:
It’s really not childish. I’m dealing sometimes with dark themes. I’m dealing with things that they’re not puppies and kittens, right? There’s some dark stuff.
Daniel:
Yes. Yes. To the extent I’d say there’s a problem with this mindset, the problem is not singing Bible stories to children, because we should sing our children Bible stories.
Jamie Soles:
Yes, we should.
Daniel:
The problem is if we think that we ever outgrow our need to learn from David and Goliath and Noah’s Ark. We never outgrow our need to learn from Jonah.
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, it’s real easy to trick ourselves into thinking that we’re mature.
Daniel:
Yes.
Jamie Soles:
It really is. And we do it all the time. We trick ourselves into thinking, “oh, I’ve grown out of that. I’m past that. I don’t need to worry about that.” And really, you’re not right. You do.
Daniel:
Christian maturity, to a surprising extent. involves constantly reminding ourselves of the most basic things. Constantly reminding ourselves of the cross and the empty tomb and that’s our starting point. But we never get over it, we never stop reminding ourselves of it, we never get past that. We certainly move on to learn other things too, but we never get past the basics. And by that same token we never get past the basics of learning from the Old Testament narratives.
Jamie Soles:
Right. Right.
Daniel:
Thank you.
Well, I see this podcast as having two audiences. Many of the listeners are just people who enjoy listening to Christian music, perhaps singing it and they’re hopefully singing it in their churches.
But there’s also—part of my intent in this is something that encourages Christian songwriters. I’ve done some writing. I have a number of friends who also write and are among the initial listeners to this podcast. So coming at it, more from this part of the audience in mind. Do you have any advice for newer writers who are starting to think about using Scripture in their songs? What have you learned over the years of doing it about how to do it well and how to not do it well?
Jamie Soles:
How to not do it well: Take the story, tell the story, and make the story about me. That’s how to not do it well.
How to do it well is to consider what it is that God has revealed in that story, and tell that and leave me out of it. That will help your cause greatly in doing Bible story songs.
I was thinking about this, not just with Bible story songs, but with worship songs. You know, there’s a great deal of music that gets sung in normal evangelical churches that if it’s connected to Scripture, it’s connected to Scripture with me as the mediator. This song might say it’s about Jesus crucified alone, but in the end it’s about me, me above all.
And that kind of thing, that kind of approach to the Scriptures, it really needs to be ditched. It needs to be ditched and thrown away. And we need to have confidence in this Word so that when we’re writing a song we don’t have to write a personal application from this song. We don’t have to.
You know, if you look over the body of my work, sometimes I did, especially in the early days I did, less so in later days. Then I just started telling stories, telling the stories that are there because God takes those stories and he shapes his people with those stories.
Daniel:
Yes. And I think even to the extent that you have application in your songs, “Weight of Glory” is a pretty good example.
Jamie Soles:
Mm-hmm.
Daniel:
It’s actually starting—and granted, it’s one of your earlier songs—but it’s like, you know, your trials are giving you reason to rejoice. Why? And then you go into Scripture and you’re in Scripture for the rest of the song.
There is a time and a place for some application. But I would say “Weight of Glory” is still a very God-centered song, a very Scripture-centered song.
Jamie Soles:
Yeah, there is application and there’s application all over the place. Sometimes that application is broad. Sometimes it’s talking to, for instance, the whole church. Sometimes it’s talking about a particular situation, that if I apply it to me, it’s has to be peripheral. That application to me has to be peripheral because I’m not the center of this thing.
Daniel:
Yes, well said.
A couple other things I just want to tie into, three or four little things and then we’ll wrap up. You mentioned some of your early inspirations, the greats of Jesus music and early contemporary Christian music: Randy Stonehill, Larry Norman, Don Francisco, you mentioned Rich Mullins from slightly later but nevertheless still fairly early. And their success as artists and those who wrote as writers was measured in chart success and the big record deals. And so perhaps as you started getting into music you might have thought, “That’s what success looks like.”
And I’m curious: As life has played out for you, and you haven’t necessarily had a deal with one of the big record companies, but you’ve had a sustainable career, and you’ve done Christian music for a large portion of your life, how has your understanding of what success as a songwriter means changed through the years?
Jamie Soles:
Okay, that’s a good question. I did have that in my in my sights as a young writer, as a young songwriter. I was working with a band that I that I had in Bible school. And we wrote some good songs. It seemed to me that we wrote some good songs. And I was, I was looking for that break, hoping that this would catch someone’s attention. Which in the long run worked out, it wasn’t, it wasn’t the right approach. Jesus wants us to do things to honor Him, to glorify Him. It it took at least a couple years, and probably three or four, to disabuse me of that notion, that what I really, really needed was to be discovered. Well, like by some record executive who would take out my stuff and all of a sudden everybody would hear me, right?
I began to realize fairly early on, when I was still in my twenties, that this was going to be a long haul. This was going to be a system-skirting business for me, and it was going to have to be. The high octane Bible content of what I was doing was so different from everything that was being sung on the radio. I couldn’t get radio airplay to save my life, for that reason. It sat weird on people’s ears. But I mean, their kids loved it. You know, there were particular places that really took to my music. Those places were places where the Word of God was held high, where the Psalms were sung, where they weren’t afraid of large families, where they were big on Christian education. Those kind of places loved me. ‘Course there weren’t nearly enough of those kind of places! (Laughter)
Daniel:
Yes.
Jamie Soles:
You’re not going to be a millionaire down this path, Jamie. Nope.
Daniel:
Definitely not. Well, I want to thank you for your time.
Jamie Soles:
Oh, you’re so welcome.
Daniel:
Your time is so valuable, and I really appreciate that you took so much of it to really do a deep dive into this song with us. Where can people follow you online, find your releases? Maybe we can give a shout out to your Patreon, and anything else you’d like to promote, anything that’s recently released coming up as the case may be.
Jamie Soles:
Alright, the best way to find my stuff is to visit my website www.solmusic.ca. That’s Canada by the way. That’s the best place to look for my music.
You can find a whole lot of my stuff on Spotify. I don’t make much money off the stuff you find on Spotify.
If you want to finance me to be able to make more, Patreon’s a really good way to do that. Go on Patreon, sign up for some small amount. That’s regular every month. If a bunch of people do that, I will be able to live and make music because those things are closely intertwined in my life.
So I have an album that is probably half done that I think I’ve been discouraged on. And I need to light of fire under myself and get this thing out. I think it’s probably going to be the last of my kids’ albums.
Daniel:
Hmm.
Jamie Soles:
Think so. I’ve got a name for it. It’s called Pillars, and I’ve got all the songs written, and I’ve got got it about halfway recorded. Ask the Lord to give me a boost would you? That would be a good thing.
Daniel:
Sure. Hey, let’s take a minute and pray for that now.
Jamie Soles:
Let’s do that.
Daniel:
And I’ invite anybody else who is listening to this podcast, whenever you might listen, assuming it hasn’t come out yet, to join us and pray with us on this. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for the time that Jamie has put into this conversation and for the many years he’s put into thinking through how he can communicate Your Word to us effectively through music. And as he’s working on this project Pillars that may be his final children’s project, I pray that you bless him, that you give him the encouragement and the boost needed for this album to come together and bless both those who have been blessed by his earlier albums of children’s music and by a audience as well. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.
Jamie Soles:
Amen. Thank you very kindly.
Daniel:
Thank you.
Jamie Soles:
I have lots of Psalm stuff yet to record. That’s another thing I’ve got. Like I told you, I’ve got probably eighty that are congregationally singable Psalms. Quite a number of them.
Daniel:
Excellent. Well, I do plan to link to your Patreon and the solmusic.ca in the show notes so that hopefully whatever podcast platform somebody might be listening to this on, both of those sites are just a click away.
Jamie Soles:
All right.
Daniel:
And in conclusion, I would say you can find and subscribe to this podcast on YouTube or on your favorite podcast platform. You can also find future episodes, episode transcriptions and the free 48,000-song searchable Expository Songs database at danielmount.com. Thank you for listening.