After releasing a new album, her second book, having a single featured in a movie, and gearing up to head out on her upcoming co-headlining tour, it's an understatement to say that 2018 has been a big year for Plumb. The powerhouse vocalist continues to use her platform to speak up for the things that matter, not just in the music realm, but in many other aspects this year as well.

We recently caught up with her to talk about all the excitement and what the rest of the year holds. 

You're about to head out on the road with Unspoken and Dan Bremnes...tell us about this fall tour and what you're most looking forward to about being with these guys. 

Yeah! So the We Are One Tour, I'm co-headlining with Unspoken. Dan Bremnes is coming out as well. I'm excited to get to know Dan. I think I've met him before somewhere in passing as far as the industry is concerned, but I don't know him and I don't know his music, so I'm really excited to actually get to know him because there are quite a few artists that I respect that really respect him. They have toured with him and they've said wonderful things about him, so I'm really excited to get to know him and his music better. I really, really believe in what World Vision does, and I'm really excited for them to sponsor the tour. The difference they make in being associated with stuff like that is always just really classy because I think it's what the church is supposed to be doing.
 
Then Unspoken...when you're in the industry, you pass each other at festivals or industry events and you've met face to face, but you don't really know each other. This past February, I was on a sponsored cruise where I was performing and the lead singer of Unspoken, Chad Mattson, was there just kind of accompanying the former lead singer of Sanctus Real, Matt Hammitt, for some stuff. He and his wife and I and my husband ended up connecting there and having a blast, and we were like "man, wouldn't it be fun to one day tour together," because we see some things very similar, we have some similar passions. Truly, no sooner had we come off the cruise and come home and we were having conversations about the fall. Transparent Productions is a production company that we have both worked with in the past, and they bring up to us, "hey, what about you and Unspoken this fall?" I was like, "No way! This has got to be meant to be because we literally were just talking about that."

I really love, first of all, that I feel like me and Unspoken working together is just divinely meant to be. I'm kind of excited to see what the Lord's going to do because I really feel like He was instrumental in pairing us together. Furthermore, I had the opportunity to play at something with them in Seattle this past June, so I got to know the whole band better. Their hearts, the authenticity that's a huge thing with me. I'm a huge advocate of the enneagram, understanding your personality.

One of the things about my personality I've learned is that I'm easily angered—and I hate to use that word but it's the term that it uses in this particular part of the book—by ingenuine people and things that aren't authentic. Essentially, the fake, politically-correct, just trying to be socially appropriate, phony kind of person really gets under my skin. But Unspoken is authentic, they are unapologetic about what they're passionate about and how much they love Jesus and what He has rescued them from and the hope that He has given them. They have a true authentic testimony that really pairs with their passion to see hearts set free, so the We Are One name, when they asked us to co-headline, we both felt it couldn't be something that Chad chose or I chose. It needed to be ours, and so what does that say? Transparent Productions came to us and said "what about the We Are One tour? What does that mean to you?" I haven't heard Chad's answer, but to me, it says unity, that it's not about my thing or their thing. This is a united group of people, male and female, to meet a vast demographic of people with a message that is true for anyone young and old, rich and poor, black and white, you name it. We are all human, and we are all, because of that, fallen. We are all, because of that fall, broken. Because of that brokenness, we are all in need of grace. Chad and Unspoken and myself, and Dan as well, we care about that and we want people to know that actually if you don't know it, you've fallen and you're broken, but there's grace for you. And if you do know it and you're drowning in the regret or the shame or the guilt or the anxiety, you need to know that there is this huge life preserver to come around you called grace and forgiveness and mercy that says you're not alone and we are you too.
I think what connected Chad and me when we first met is that we talked pretty openly about that fact that we've both made some really dumb mistakes and God has forgiven us and then given us a platform to share, hey, guess what we've done wrong, and God's rescued us, and how much more He can do that for you." I love being out with authentic people who are wanting to communicate that message of hope and I'm wanting to do the same.

Sounds like it's going to be a great tour! Kind of alongside that, you just put out a brand new album—tell us a little about that album and what you're looking forward to about getting to share these new songs on the road this fall.

Yes— the new record is called Beautifully Broken. It just came out a few months ago, and it's titled Beautifully Broken because that's obviously a track on the record, but the message of that song spoke to the overarching theme of the record, which was targeting brokenness—more specifically, inspired by mine. Some people know this, but I'll just quickly tell you: almost six and a half years ago, my husband and I broke up. We separated, and we were getting a divorce. Eighteen months later, we ended up renewing our vows and God completely restored and renewed and resurrected our marriage. I began a journey of sharing that story of hope, and the enemy was really not thrilled about that. I ended up with an opportunity to spend the entire year of 2016 out on the road for 120 shows with Big Daddy Weave to continue telling that story to an even larger audience even more often, and I found myself away from my family more than I was used to being away for longer periods of time. What they do is absolutely beautiful, but it was completely new for me, so I got out there and I started experiencing some things that I had never experienced before. Temptations, struggles, doubts, worries, fears, insecurities, pride—many of which I thought I had already dealt with back when my husband and I broke up. Some of them I didn't even know were there. Here I had all this content at the end of that year, so I spent 2017 writing about it. Simultaneously writing and recording a record, and writing a book, so they really do pair together.
There's a message in the book that I just released as well—it's called Fight For Her: Even If You Have To Fight Her—and there's a song on the record called "Fight For You" that goes with the book specifically. Although the book and record do pair together, that overarching theme that I'm bringing to this tour is some of my brokenness that I had to come face to face with, knowing that, surely, I'm not the only one out there.

There are a few other stories that I'm telling on the record that are really personal to some people that I'm very close to that, while I was journeying through that, I connected with them and said "yeah, me too." The whole record is just authentic, true, raw story after story. I've never been this vulnerable, and I think it's because I've never felt this raw in the middle of it. I think when I made my last album, I had healed. I wrote a record in response to the healing that had taken place in my marriage—I didn't write that record in the middle of my marriage falling apart. It's interesting how the Need You Now record kind of spoke to that story, but it wasn't written about it. Then I had a year or two to come to heal, and I put out this "love songs to Jesus" record about how thankful I was. Then I go through some stuff, and I'm writing about it as it's happening or shortly after it happened, so this is the first time that's ever happened to me in the season where I was and writing both the book and the record at the same time. 

This is the second book you've released—tell us some more about that. 

The book is about how standing up for each other sometimes looks like standing up to each other. I would love to be a part of revolutionizing how we communicate with each other, and not just exclusively women. I wrote this from a women's perspective, but I've had almost as many men tell me this book had affected them in a really poignant way as I have women. Speaking truth into someone's life, motivated by the Holy Spirit and spoken in love, we automatically think of that being something kind of rocky or tough. That's true, however, I think it's just as important to speak the good things as the hard things.

Someone needs to hear that they're beautiful and not alone and loved and worthy and valuable because maybe they didn't grow up being told that and they need to be spoken that truth as much as they need you to say "hey, I love you, but I think this thing you're doing is destructive."

I wrote it from a perspective as a daughter and now having a daughter. I sat down to write that book thinking it would be a book for mothers and daughters, and I could not have been further from the truth. It was how the principles I've learned really do affect and translate into the way that not only do I parent both my daughter and my son but even how I interact with humanity. I think saying the good stuff seems very "duh," but you know what? We don't speak the truth into each other's lives about what God says about us as often as we should, and it's not always motivated by Him or said in a loving way. Whether it's the beautiful things we say or the hard things we say, if it's motivated by the Holy Spirit and out of love, I think it's incredibly important.

I wrote the book because my dad fought for me. He spoke the truth of what God said over me, and it empowered me. My mother fought with me. My mother said no, my mother was more caught up in being faithful to God about my holiness than she was concerned about my happiness. There were some rocky times in my past with my parents and I, but it brought me to the place where I advocate for the broken—especially for the broken girl.
Between God's grace and really good parents, I'm able to stand on that platform and I want to give that back to every person who wasn't afforded that for whatever reason. Maybe just sharing some of the wisdom that I've been given and empowering you that if you have someone that you're feeling this nudge to speak into their lives but you're not sure where it's coming from, this book can kind of give you some practical steps in how to self-check. It was written as a stand-alone book you can read for yourself, and it has some reflective discussion questions at the end of each chapter you can even do with a friend or a small group. I would say anywhere from age 13 to 130 could really benefit from it. Our young girls need to be thinking about what kind of wife and mother, or even just what kind of contributor to culture they want to be.

When I say that, don't shut this out if you're a dude, because again, I've had a tremendous amount of males tell me this has helped them hear from a women's perspective how they could better speak into the women in their lives. This is the future of what I want to talk about—that's why I wrote it. 
 
We talked about the song "Beautifully Broken" a bit already, but that song also ties into a movie. Which came first—the idea for the song or the idea for the film? How did those two get connected? 

You know what? That was a really, really unique situation that I have never experienced before. There was a man that was making a film based on his life. He went to a worship service and heard someone singing a worship song called "Beautifully Broken." He met with her afterward and said, "I'm making a film called such-and-such, but man I love that song and I think I want to call the movie Beautifully Broken." This film company came to me and said, "what would you think about recording this?" The only issue I had is that, when I'm part of a song, I really have to connect with it personally because of the authenticity thing, so I told them I didn't really connect with this song. They said, "what will it take? If you were able to rewrite it some, would that help?" so I said, "let me take a stab at that."

I did some surgery on the song to make it more the way I would say something, and some of the changes were subtle, but they were very significant to me. I wrote a new bridge and changed some melodies and a handful of lyrics, so I recorded it for them to use in the film and they loved it. No sooner had I done that was I listening back to it and I was like "you know what? I think this might have been the Lord intervening into my album because what seemed like an interruption to me at the time actually spoke to the whole record we were in the middle of making. So we ended up not only putting it on the record, but we decided to name the record after that—and not because of the movie. I had to do it for authentic reasons.

There's two videos—one that goes with the movie with clips of the film with me singing in the background to kind of make a personal connection, but then there's a whole separate Plumb music video of the song. The movie came out just recently as well, and we took our daughter with us to the night of the premiere. She loved it. It's a Christian film with a positive, true story. I'm such a movie person, so I can be very critical of every film, so I just sat there and let the true story speak for itself. It is an incredibly powerful story, but it is a true story, and if you go see it, by the end of the film you'll be asking, "man, did that really happen?" It's a true story of how God orchestrated how we really do affect each other and we never really realize how much. The fact that it's a true story is what I think is really beautiful. I was just honored for them to use the song, and I'm really thankful to have it on the record as well.

I would say that it's kind of like the chicken and the egg—this movie is already being made, and this worship song has already been written, and then they kind of collide and they bring me in to make the connection and it really impacted my life. That guy's story impacted the worship writer, then it impacted me, and we met at the premiere and someone asked how long we had been co-writing and we were like, we've actually never met each other.

Just another layer that's kind of cool. 
 
That's really cool! Well, to wrap this up, how can people be praying for you in this current season of life? 

I think because of how many shows we're about to do in so many places in such a short period of time—like 25 shows in the course of just over a month or so—first of all, for health. If we're not healthy, lose voices or get sick, that makes the actual show not able to go on. Health and protection for us and our families, because if our families aren't healthy and protected, we need to be home with them.

The overarching request of health and protection for everyone, and just for freedom in our hearts because I think as God is using us to help people to be set free from some of their brokenness, we're still human and every single one of us on this tour has our own hurts and our own things we're dealing with. The freer we are, I believe the more empowering it is for God to use us. We want to be fully present, free in Christ, and healthy.