Audrey Assad has become a unique and vital voice in the faith-based music community, bringing thoughtful and compassionate theology to practice in discussing some of the more complex and weighty challenges that face the Church today. Her most recent release Evergreen digs deeper than ever before, crafting a journey through spiritual deconstruction and into awe-filled reverence. Every step of the road is sculpted by remarkable musical craftsmanship, creating an organic sound that serves as a breath of fresh air in a processed, packaged musical era.

I am one of many listeners who has discovered much of myself in Evergreen, so it was an honor to sit down with Audrey and talk about the album's creation and the personal process that birthed it. You can read the interview in full below, and subscribe to NewReleaseToday on YouTube to watch it in video installments. 

Could you start by explaining the title, the metaphor, that is Evergreen?

Evergreen kind of stems from an idea where I was reading a while back about the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. From some Jewish sources, part of the storytelling tradition around the stories in the Bible, I found that a lot of people believed the tree of life to be an evergreen tree-- a sycamore or fig tree in particular. I found this so intriguing, because I always think of the tree as like a giant fruit tree in the west because that's where I come from. I think of like an apple tree.

But a fig tree, a sycamore fig tree, appears throughout the scripture in different places, like most notably Zacchaeus climbing a fig tree to see Jesus. I was coming out of a long season of disillusionment and deconstruction of spirituality and Christianity in general. So Evergreen felt like me building a fig tree to climb to see if I could find God. So that's why I called it that. 

Musically, this project (and the last couple really) have shifted more and more away from the heavily produced sound to a more raw, organic kind of instrumentation. Was that intentional, and if so what precipitated that shift? 

Several records ago, starting with Fortunate Fall, I started producing my own material. I think that's the shift that is audible in my work. When I started producing, the sound changed because I started to lean into the things that I was good at doing. And obviously I didn't play every instrument on the album, but my arranging techniques really stem from my musical background, which is much more on the Celtic, neoclassical side of things. So I think those influences have really presented themselves more as I dive in farther and farther to the actual work of making the music and building the tracks. On this project, I actually engineered it a little more myself too. So I'm really getting more into the actual sounds themselves and not just making creative decisions from a bird's eye view. I think that's why the sound is evolving: I'm making more and more of it myself. 
 
This album really moves from, as it says, doubt to wonder through the course of the tracklist. Could you take people behind the spiritual journey that that represents for you?

The Evergreen tracklist, like all of my tracklists, is ordered very specifically to take people on a journey, should they happen to listen top to bottom. I built in a section in the middle starting with "Unfolding," which is track 6, where it's sort of the hinge or the binding of the book. The whole point of it was to go from almost like a thesis, a statement of what the album is-- which "Evergreen" and "Deliverer" kind of paint that picture-- and then descend into the madness of the chaos that I found myself in several years ago, existentially, spiritually, emotionally. Then to kind of emerge into the more simplistic and hopeful messages at the end of the record, which are everything from "When I See You," which is about seeing God and having your heart unbroken, to "Immanuel's Land," which is a hymn that I grew up singing that my grandmothers both loved, and sort of messages that are hopeful that I may not have been able to sing about a few years ago. Because I was able to paint the picture of the descent and then the ascent, it felt less trite and less cliche to be hopeful. 

So that's why I ordered the tracks the way they are. I always really slave over the tracklist. I know most people don't listen to albums front to back, but it's still important to me to do that.

Was there any track that almost didn't make the record, that felt like a risk to include?

Well "Teresa," which is track 7, I wrote 9 years ago. And it's the only old song of mine on the album, and I didn't decide to include it until like a week before I started tracking. So that one was a very late addition, and it just fell into place. I seriously worked on the tracklist for like seven months before I even recorded the songs. I would sit there on a plane and just order and re-order them. And I was like "I'm just missing something, and I don't know what it is." As I finally landed on the order, I saw the gap, and I thought "oh my gosh, this song that I've always loved that never had a home fits perfectly into that little hole." So I'm glad I thought of it. But if I hadn't, it wouldn't be there. It almost wasn't there.

So not just in your music, but in your speaking, your writing, social media, you address things that a lot of churches are uncomfortable with. What is your ethos behind doing that in a gracious way?

I'm never the type of person in general who does anything for its own sake. I don't do things just to shock people, or just to annoy people. I'm not saying I'm so virtuous, it's just not my temperament. I'm actually not a disruptor, and I don't like conflict, and I have a really long history of avoiding it-- which can be a bad thing, an unvirtuous thing. So I actually struggle with being vocal and speaking up for myself in every way except for like in music and on social media, because I think it's so much easier to feel a little farther away from what I perceive as the dangers of being controversial or of stirring up conflict.

So all that to say, when I talk about or sing about things that might raise some eyebrows, it's because those are the things that I feel the most deeply passionate about saying. I'm saying them and I'm singing them because I feel that they're healing notions. For example, I got a lot of interesting reactions, and I knew I would, to "Deliverer," which was our first single. It says things like "You are not possessive, You respect all things." That line alone I think I got more negative feedback about than anything I've ever sung in my entire career. I had actually taken it from a passage in a journal entry from Thomas Merton, who talks about how God, who is love, who embodies everything that love is, who is only moved by love and who only moves with love, does not exhibit any of the disordered attachments that we might when we love someone. So when I say "God is not possessive," I don't mean that He doesn't own anything. I mean that He does not treat what He made as if He owns it. I think that is a really healing notion for someone who grew up with, basically my idea of God as a kid sounded a lot more like an alcoholic dad or an abusive husband than it did like the Lover of my soul.

I wrote that because I needed it, not because I'm trying to make anyone uncomfortable, even though I know that may happen. I wrote that because those are the ideas that are healing me, and I don't know what else to write about.
 
As you are creating art, are there people who are inspiring you? People you're listening to or reading?

I've been really moved by the work of Brene Brown the last few years. Recently, my husband recommended a book of hers I hadn't read, which is called Braving the Wilderness. Her work on vulnerability and shame has been transformational for me as a person and as an artist, because those two things are very much wrapped up in being an artist and creating-- being vulnerable, learning not to be ruled by shame. So Brene Brown is a huge influence for me.

My literary companions on this whole journey have been Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Madeleine L'engle-- who I've read her fiction, but also her non-fiction is really amazing, and I named "Irrational Season" after her memoir called Irrational Season. Also Julian of Norwich, who is an English mystic from the late Middle Ages. She was the first published English woman, and she writes a lot about things like God as Mother. Which would sound like such a modern, progressive idea, but actually there have been people writing about that concept for many, many centuries now. She's been an influence on me as well.

As far as music, I'm a huge fan of an artist named Agnes Obel, who is from Denmark. She's a neoclassical singer-songwriter. I really love this Swedish artist named Frida Sundemo who writes EDM, but it's got a poetic approach lyrically, which I really love because in a lot of EDM music that's just not the focus. I love that combination of the dream pop sound with poetry.

I feel like you kind of have this unique perspective because you came from a Protestant church background, but now you've been part of the Catholic Church for some time. Having been in a multitude of faith settings, how has that informed your ability to create faith-focused art?

There are two ways that I feel like I could answer that. One is that my evolution has necessarily involved broadening, because I was brought up in a very narrow, fundamentalist mindset. My evolution into Catholicism was an evolution out of that into an idea that oh, Christianity is really broad. You can be a Catholic and be someone who leans more towards the predestination idea, you can be a Catholic and lean way far away from that. You can swim in this wide river, rather than being like "this is the only way to be a Christian." So my becoming Catholic had a lot to do with leaving behind that narrow mindset and trying to open my mind-- even though some people would look at Catholicism and say it's narrow minded, I know. But for me, it was a huge broadening.

Then I think in my work, traveling and singing and writing with people of all different stripes, Christian and non-Christian-- I wrote a song on my first record called "Breaking Through" with a non-practicing Jewish man. It was a really beautiful experience for me. I think my work and the places it takes me has also been just instrumental in helping me to live with open hands around truth. Not to say that truth doesn't matter, but to say I know I will never fit all of the truth inside my head. The best that I can do is try to float in the ocean of truth. I'm borrowing that from Chesterton, who said in Orthodoxy that a logician is the one who tries to fit God inside his head, and the poet, who everyone else calls a madman, is actually the one who learns how to float in the ocean that is God. It's not his head that splits in the end from going mad, it's actually the logician. So I think both my religious evolution and my work itself have led me on a journey of broadening and expanding. 

The album ends on "Drawn to You," this note saying "after all these things, I'm still drawn to the person of Christ." For you, what is it about Christ and Christianity that keeps drawing you back?

"Drawn to You," the last track, I wrote with Matt Maher. We wrote the chorus together, and I added the verses later. The chorus just kind of appeared out of nowhere, and I really needed it that day. A lot of what I've been going through the last few years is not just about religion and spirituality. That crisis existed, and it's been tough. But I've also been going through mental health problems: being diagnosed with OCD, going to a trauma therapist to deal with some really tragic events in my past. So all of that swirling together kind of created the maelstrom of pain and work that then gave birth to what Evergreen is.

And so "Drawn to You" was like at a point when I really truly could not tell you if I believed anything. And I mean anything. Does God exist? Does anything in the universe mean anything? I actually went to that place in my mind for a while, because I think I had to, because all of my ideas were just so terrible that the more I pulled at the strings, it just unraveled the entire tapestry of what I had woven together. So the more that I did that, I was like is there going to be anything under here? I might tear this down and just find that no, I don't believe anything means anything, I'm a nihilist. I was like, that could be where I find myself. But what I did find, after all that deconstructing and burning down, I was like I could go that way, but I don't want to. That seems just terrible. I'm really drawn to who You say You are, and who other people say You are. So I guess I'll just walk in that direction.

That was really the bottom for me. At the bottom of it all I thought, after all of this, after everything I've had, after everything I lost, I can't say much, but this one thing is true: I am still drawn to You and to who You say You are.

That's where that song came from. I felt like it was the right ending because it is truly the biggest piece of hope I've had over the last few years.
 
As a final word, as people finish the album, what is your hope that they'll walk away with?

I hope that Evergreen does whatever it needs to do for people. I guess what I mean is, I want it to help people create and facilitate space within themselves to bravely confront and see and have compassion on their deepest grief and their most secret pain. I think the beauty of music is not just that it's entertaining, but that it's actually like a portal-- yes to experience the transcendent, but also to experience the most incarnated thing on earth, which is ourselves. 

One thing I know is that transformation requires open eyes to see what really is. And until you're able to really deal with that internally, you can't really become the freest version of yourself. All of our beliefs about God are so shaped by what's going on in here. So the more healed and open you can be in here, I think the more healed and open you can look at other people and at God.

So to me it's really important that Evergreen be the kind of music that gives people permission to look compassionately on themselves, and to hopefully find at the bottom of whatever it is they're going through their own sense of peace and of being drawn to God. That's what I hope. 

You can purchase Evergreen now on iTunes by clicking here, or click here to stream it on Spotify.