Show notes
We welcome Jason Ingram to Full Circle Music studios. He is a producer, songwriter, and artist with multiple SESAC songwriter of the year awards, Dove Awards, and Grammy Awards, with more #1 Radio Hits than most ever see. His credits include Brandon Heath, Hillsong, Chris Tomlin, Tenth Avenue North, Casting Crowns, and MercyMe.He talks about the idea that “your calendar will tell me if you're a songwriter”. It is the discipline versus inspiration. Which comes first.He also shares some personal insight into his story and his journey through the hard times in the beginning of trying to make it in a new city as a professional songwriter.To get Top 10 Songwriting Tips click HereAUDIO 37min:19secPodcast – Interview with hosts Seth Mosley, Chris Murphy & guest, Jason IngramSeth: Hey what's up. this is Seth Mosley, host of the Full Circle Music Show, thanks for listening. Again, this week we've got an awesome guest, one of my long time heroes of the music business, Jason Ingram, Sir Jason Ingram. He's a producer, song writer, artist, worship leader and all of the above. He has multiple awards on his mantle for Sesac songwriter of the year, he's won Dove Award producer of the year, more number ones than you can imagine and really has had, in the last several years, what has been an incredible career in the music business. And today we get to sit down and hear the story before Jason Ingram as the Jason Ingram that we know now.That's half the reason why we do this show is to kind of shine a light on the blood, sweat and tears that goes into making a successful career in the music business and there's a lot of stuff that I learnt in this episode about Jason; some stories about how he got into it and believe it or not at one time he was touring as a merch manager for a band, him and his wife were selling blood plasma just to get back home for Christmas. I'm telling you there's some stuff that you don't know that goes into making a successful song writing and producing career. So stick around and before we dive into it we wanted to thank you for listening, thank you for subscribing, go over to iTunes, leave us a good rating and review. That helps us a ton as we're getting this podcast off the ground.And for our next segment, Full Circle music trivia, the answer to last week's question: What is the highest selling album of all time? Well the answer for that is Michael Jackson Thriller. So to one of you guys who e-mailed in to trivia@fullcirclemusic.org, you get a free copy of the book ‘Hitmen'. And this week's question is: Who is the top Grammy award winner of all time? Again, who is the top Grammy award winner of all time? Email your response in to trivia@fullcirclemusic.org and this week the winner's going to take home ‘All you need to know about the music business' by Donald Passman, 8th Edition. Up to date information on new music business models including music streaming services and cloud lockers, the latest developments in digital rights and updated numbers and statistics for a traditional industry. Again, email your responses in to trivia@fullcirclemusic.org and thanks for playing along.Alright, let's just dive into the episode, we've got Jason Ingram in here, in the house. A good friend and without even probably knowing it, mentor of mine who I've looked up to since I've moved to Nashville and song writing and production. And just track record for days, the guy has just had hit after hit after hit and his songs are being sang in churches all around the world. So for you to take a few minutes to come and spend with us means a lot so thank you for doing this.Jason: Yeah, it's an honourSeth: So do you want to carry us in?Chris: Yeah man, one of the things that I wanted to know from you Jason, is when did the song writing bug hit you or how long have you been doing it? Was it one of those things just where you were doodling in a notepad when you were 6 years old or even earlier or…?Jason: I started taking piano lessons in middle school but I think I was a freshman in high school when I was introduced to just chord voicings so up until then I was just learning to read music and more classical sort of training and which I wasn't excelling at but I loved music and so I just stayed at it and then I think my freshman year in high school, someone just taught me how to play chords. And think about music as chords as opposed to just reading notes on a scale. And I instantly started writing songs once I had chords, I was a songwriter…not a very good one…but from then on, yeah, I mean I was writing songs.Chris: Did it start for you at going on what you were hearing on the radio and just putting chords to that? Or was it truly like “I don't care what's going on, on the radio, I've got my own vision that I'm…[4.06]Jason: Yeah no, I was, I was writing my own thingsChris: That's greatJason: Love songs for interest of mine, things like thatChris: Yeah, wow that's great man. So were you that guy with the guitar who got the girl because you had the guitar?Jason: Yeah…my wife…and then once I learnt chords I started leading worship as well and so my wife, we were on a little missions trip to Mexico, we lived in California and I was a graduating senior and she was going into her junior year in high school and we went down there and I led worship at this thing that we were doing. And I didn't know her but she saw me leading worship and she knew, she told a camp counsellor that I was going to be her husband. And so, yeah, I think the guitar strummings, it helps man.Seth: AbsolutelyJason: Helps make up for other things…Chris: The lack of confidence [5.06] actually talking face to face.Jason: Massive lack of confidence, man, growing up in the church, there's so many stories that sound similar to that, it's like going up to that youth pastor or whatever and pointing, like that's going to be my guy.Seth: Did you know at that time or did you find that out later?Jason: I found that out later, we started sort of dating a bit after that but yeah, I found that out later. And she's not that kind of person, she's actually…I wasn't one of the popular kids and she was so I wouldn't have even, like gone there.Chris: Yeah, she was out of your leagueJason: She was [5.38] but yeah, I found that out later and I've just been writing songs out of a ‘heart place' you know. Ever since I first started writing songs I think that's been one of the, hopefully one of the things that people notice when they hear songs that I'm part ofChris: Yeah, yeah. And has that always come naturally to you? To be able to express your heart on paper or in a recording?Jason: I guess it has, yeah I guess it has. I've found music as the gift of…which is hard to hold onto sometimes when you've been doing something for a while and it becomes your career but there was a lot of years where the only reason I had to write a song was just to get something out. There wasn't any career in itChris: AlrightJason: And so I did that long enough that I think that it's easy for me to sort of stay in that placeChris: Yeah, yeah, I think one of the hallmarks of the songs that I know of yours, I mean from a perspective of they've got a story or they've got an intention to it and it sounds like you were saying, in those early days before anybody was paying you to write a song; or asking you to go do something that it was because you had to get something out. And I feel like that there is a trend in, at least pop music these days, where there's not necessarily a story, it's just the feeling, it's a vibe that's going on. Do you find that you would have a harder time if you were you know, if you needed to go write the next Justin Bieber song versus writing something that has more of a, a heart pouring so to speak?Jason: I will say it, like a melody or a track or a vibe can bring out a lot of emotions so since you've mentioned Bieber…[7.16]…yeah, his most recent album is like, to me it's been the thing I've listened to the most this year. And so I just love it, I think the song writing is amazing, I think the production is phenomenal and it's emotional to me so it feels like, I feel like I can touch it. There is a lot of pop music that doesn't have that same sense to it.Chris: Yeah, maybe Justin Bieber recently is not the best of those examples but it has that pop sheen to it, necessarily more than an emotion.Jason: Yeah, what I'm kind of hearing you ask is, is it those songs that are less about the lyric and about just a vibe or something like that. Lyric is huge for me, especially in the lane that God has me in and I feel like in some regard a lot of pop music, the lyric is real secondary to whether or not it's a hit or not right? And I think we're accountable to more, I look at songs in this lane that God has called me to, I've often called them life rafts for people and so if I'm throwing someone a life raft, if that's what God lets me do with my song, I want it to hold them up. And so our words often become people's prayers, you know, and that's phenomenal. Martin Luther said when I can't pray, I sing and we're able to throw these life rafts to people, a lot of times that don't even know what to pray and write the prayer that they need to re-engage their heart with the Lord and so it's a huge, I think a weight, that we need to carry when we're considering ‘do we have the words right?'Seth: It's not just that when you're in a session just like settling on something because at some point, you know, I mean, you've got deadlines and you've just got to get the song out. I mean you've got eight hours a day and you've got to get home to your family. But the intentionality in this genre of lyric is everything.Jason: Yeah, it totally isSeth: So, rewinding, we skipped forward a lot of years but from you leading worship on that mission trip, wherever you were in California to when you, you know, got your first pay check from doing music, what did that look like?Jason: It was a lot of years. I definitely took the long road so I heard Christine Cane talk once on the distance between anointing and appointing and it's different for all of us but I really felt like God anointed me very specifically to write songs for His church, as a teenager. The appointing was probably some fifteen years later and so I went to Bible College, I became a worship pastor at a church in California and had a band, got a little bitty record deal, toured…sold four albums…it was off to an amazing startChris: All to your relatives right?Jason: Right and then at some point my wife and I felt nudged to move here and so we did but I didn't have a job or anything in music and so my entry point into music, and I was working temp agency jobs, I mean it got pretty lean for us, there was a Christmas where we went to sell blood plasma to try to get home for Christmas.Seth: [10.43] from going to Nashville to California? WowJason: That year I just remember thinking, ‘This, this has got to turn around pretty soon', you know, ‘there's only so much blood available'Seth: It was literally blood, sweat and tearsJason: Yeah, right yeah.Chris: That's amazingJason: My entry point into what I'm doing now, oddly enough, was getting a job doing merchandise for Sonicflood and this was back when they were sort of at the top of their thing. And so I needed a job, I didn't think…that's not what I moved here to do…but I started selling their merchandise and I heard they were about to make their second record and I heard that they wanted the title of the record to be ‘Resonate' and they didn't have a song called ‘Resonate', usually you don't title your album until you've got an album you know? Isn't that weird, so I pounced, ‘merch guy' saw an opportunity and wrote a song called ‘Resonate' which was a shoe in because you have to have a song called ‘Resonate' if the album's called ‘Resonate' and they didn't have it, so they had to record it. They recorded it, of course it was the title track but that happened before I wrote the song [11.53] it became their first single off that album. So that was the first time someone else recorded something that I wrote.Seth: You were doing merch for them on a tour and heard some conversation that [12.09]Jason: I heard a conversation, went to a hotel room, wrote a song, came back and said “Here's a song called ‘Resonate'”Chris: What was that like when you presented it? Did you present it as though you had not heard that before but just randomly came up with a song that was…Jason: No, I wasn't, I didn't play it off like I hadn't heard that they were calling the album ‘Resonate', so that was my entry point and then someone said “So that song made a little bit of money”, that was the first time that ever happened to me you know, ten years into writing songs, selling merchandise and blood. Some friends were saying “You should meet with publishers in town”, I'd never heard of a music publisher. I didn't know there was a career to be had in song writing, I had no idea. I was pretty naive to how the music industry worked and so I met with all the publishers in town, got a quick “No” from everybody. I just didn't have, I had this one song you know, and then…Seth: And they were all like, “And what else?”Jason: Right, right. And so the fourth publisher I met with, which was the last option, saw potential in the writing but really valued sort of, my heart for what I wanted to do with my writing so I entered my first publishing deal and that was, I guess, twelve years ago now.Chris: Who was that with?Jason: Cindy Wilt signed me to Word, so I wrote for Word for three years, she's my champion, she's with the Lord now…Chris: Just this past year…Jason: Yes, she signed me, I probably wrote a hundred songs my first year, as a writer at Word, with co-writes, almost every day. I didn't get one cut.Chris: Wow! Out of a hundred?Jason: A hundred yeah, yeah my batting average was pretty low, I wrote a hundred songs, no cuts but I really felt at the time that it was the most amazing year and I thought ‘Well, I'm not going to get my option picked up because I've made no money for the company but I was just really thankful to the Lord to have sort of lived a dream for a year. And so I was really ready to pack up and go back to something else and she picked up my option, wrote another hundred songs for another year, got my first cut, found out it was a hidden track…Seth: So did you even get paid for this?Jason: Well my…Chris: He got paid with hidden moneyJason: Yes, hidden money, Cindy called and assured me that you get paid the same, just no one will hear it. I was like “Ah, awesome”. So again, I thought…Seth: So one out of two hundredJason: One out of two hundredSeth: That's amazing though just for her vision in you, you know. If I signed a writer, if I was a publisher…Jason: You would not, no, you do not stick around, I would have never stuck with me so yeah, she really is a champion for meChris: Yeah, that's amazingJason: And so she picked up my option again…Seth: After the hidden trackJason: Really, really caught a wave, “So you're telling me there's a chance…”. So year three is when I finally kind of did catch my wave and I started having quite a few things work and the real sort of, another real pivotal album for me was Joy Williams did an album called Genesis and we wrote most of the songs on that album together…Seth: You and Joy…Jason: Yes, and it, it didn't necessaril…
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