The Heart Behind People & Songs: An Interview with Jennie Lee Riddle - Part 1
In part one of this interview, NRT speaks with Jennie Lee Riddle about the label, publishing house, worship group, and songwriting collective People & Songs.
Earlier this year, NewReleaseToday spoke with worship music pioneer and "Revelation Song" writer Jennie Lee Riddle about the label, publishing house, worship group, and songwriting collective People & Songs. In part one of this interview, she talks about how the group came to be and how the Lord is working in their midst.
Just to start off, for those who don't know what People & Songs is, we'd like to know exactly what that is. It seems to be a hybrid of a label, a publishing house, a worship group, and a songwriting collective.
Yes, it's all of those things. At the core though, we consider ourselves missionaries, honestly. We've determined, everybody individually and corporately, that we just live in community in such a way that makes the city glad wherever we are. That's our hope. That's a value that the Lord instilled in Darren and me back when we first got saved in 1988, and we have spent almost 30 years living in community. One of the very first scriptures the Lord wrote on my heart as a new believer was "be given to hospitality," so we've been opening up our homes very purposefully, like I said, for almost 30 years, and I've had over a hundred people live with us. That's just a way of life. Another scripture that the Lord planted in us very early was Acts 32, basically, have everything in common. We have lived a very shared lifestyle and have lived as stewards. My husband and I have just a mandate on that we don't own anything. Everything we have honestly is the Lord's. It's true of all of us in theory, but we just kind of made it a very real marching order for us. We share everything. This house that the Lord has given us, that big ole headquarters you've heard about, we live in a tiny room. That's all we do and that's how we've always done.
Anyhow, this group of people, back in '88, the Lord gave me a vision for a sending, receiving, training hub for missionaries. The goal would be to use music as a means to preach the gospel, raise up disciples, make the city glad everywhere we went, and we would use community service and extreme hospitality to do so.
Over the years, the Lord has just brought people to me that I absolutely love and we spend our lives on them. When he gave us a vision, my husband and I were brand-new saved. We were in Alaska, little tiny crustaceans, church plants, and didn't know any worship leaders beyond our two pastors and ourselves in a 30 person church. Only the Lord could have given that vision then, and then worked it to the degree that He has. Missionaries, first and foremost. Yes, we're a label and a publishing company, but that's not what we are. That happened as a result of good stewardship and it became necessary. It had a momentum behind it that just required a different level of stewardship and so, for very practical reasons, we just had to. We've been running to keep up with God.
You mentioned community service and you mentioned this house. We'd love to hear you talk about really how both of those. We'll start with community service—when you say that, what does that look like in terms of this community that formed?
We get together and we do all kinds of things. One of the things that we do every year host a summer camp for kids ages 13 through 18 called The Emerging Sound, and then interns ages 18 to about 28 or so. The whole point of that is to use the Bible as our source curriculum, the powerful tool of meter run and melody, and the skill of songwriting to permanently write on them. The Word of God instills a kingdom posture, so it's a radically transforming week. The Lord meets us thoroughly. All of us come at our own expense, we don't get paid to do, we're all volunteers and we pour out our lives so thoroughly for these kiddos. We wouldn't miss it for the world. Everybody takes off work and we don't run in the black yet. We do a recording that, you know, a kid's camp record is not going to pay for itself. This year actually, for the first time, we've made probably enough to maybe pay back half of one record. That's been kind of fun though. That's one of the ways we have served, and we continue to serve. This year for the first time, we've moved it to Indiana.
Another way we serve is that we band together and last year we did this thing called Turn Up The Lights. It was our live recording festival here in Laporte, Indiana. It's a festival that was just created to make the city glad. We invited pretty much the entire community, had vendors in the basement, and different individual sets of People & Songs all the way up through the day.
As a final supergroup set at the end, we did it on Veteran's Day and we had a little veteran's tribute. A local band came in, a jazz band who were amazing. A little bit of dancing, a lot of worship. It was so fun. The point of it was that we wanted to do something for our city that would be a real blessing. There's a little amphitheater, this historic amphitheater that never had bathrooms, in the park that expressed the desire for bathrooms, which made perfect sense and made it easier for mamas to go with their kiddos and the elderly people. We were able to hold an entire giant party for the city, invite everybody into it and see the community come together and also give $34,000 to the city for their bathrooms. We all spent our own money and time and did it.
So while music has been a primary thing that's been your expression of love and of service and stewardship, we would imagine that your community is made of some non-musicians too?
Well, People & Songs are all artists. Every single one of them are worship leaders, artists and songwriters—that's what People & Songs is. Now, we also have an internship program and that is made up of those who love the art and are either going to go into the field of music as a servant to those who are doing it full time, or they're going to go in as ones who are using music themselves. They're not sure yet when they come often times which one that is, then the Lord just kind of shows them as they're here. We've got an amazing group of people who are all so sold out to the Lord, all talented, and He's using music in varying ways to do all the things we just talked about.
That's great! How do they find you and how do you find them? Obviously, the Lord's bringing you guys together. Do they know of you? Or someone told you about them? How do you connect with people like Kayden and Charity?
Every one of them are different as far as where they come from and the Lord does hook us up for real. I think the quickest way for me to explain it is I used to have a giant garden, a vegetable garden, and when seedlings are little, they all look exactly the same to most people, unless you really know it and then you know it when it's really young.
The Lord has given me an ear, an eye and a heart that just kind of knows what I'm looking at early on. Seeing what I've seen before other people see it, I think is what's happened. Kayden, he came through The Emerging Sounds. Charity Gail came through Immerse-- that's another way that I have served community service. A lot of people in Nashville serve at Immerse. Charity was one of the people through there and she's now one of our flagship artists, kind of one of our foundational pillars and she also does a lot with our publishing. So all different places. I found Micah Tyler, being in Texas, back before anybody knew he existed. He was just a sweetheart standing over in a corner wearing a flannel shirt at this little songwriting workshop I taught at. I got to be his very first professional co-write, maybe his first co-write ever, had him to the house. Of course, he came pretty loaded with his own skill set-- they all do. But I just see them young and I've learned to hear the Lord over the years when he shows me someone, I just take Him at His word, half the time sight unseen. When He shows me someone, I take Him at His word and I just say, "hey, we're supposed to know each other," and that's just kinda how it goes.
That's awesome. So how does the house come into play with all this? You mentioned that just a little bit. Tell us about that. Is it there for a certain amount of time or as long as the Lord leads? How many rooms do you have? What is this particular setup like and how does that add to what you're trying to do?
In 1988, The Lord gave us a vision for a sending and receiving training hub for missionaries. We have faithfully waited for that and worked towards that for almost 30 years, and every single decision my husband and I have made over the course of our married life has had this in the very center of our eyes. There have been times in our immaturity where we tried to do it ourselves or grab for different ideas or fill in the blanks, connect the dots, all of that. We all do that. It didn't work. It was not this past Emerging Sound, but the one right before, so it was in 2016. It was the end of July, beginning of August, and the Lord just said, "It's time. Go get your property." We had had a lot of training before, and now I know what it was-- it was the Lord conditioning us and teaching us, but I didn't have the heart to go do it.
I'd kind of worn out and I remember putting my foot down and just telling the Lord, "I'm kind of over it. If You want to do it, do it already, or break this delusion. I don't want to be a delusional person, so if I'm just following a fantasy of my own that I made up, then let's just be done with it. I don't want to be obsessed by anything, follow anything, chase anything but You. Let's just be done with it." I stalled for a week, and it was one week after He first told me, "go get your property," that He woke me up with a shout. He actually shouted the word "Atlanta," which was crazy. Then I looked at my Southwest app and sure enough, there were two tickets there that I was able to get for $11. Just kind of amazing. Then when I went to look for Nashville and New York, which my husband suggested, they were $450 each, so we went ahead and grabbed the Atlanta tickets and went to Atlanta immediately.
We were sitting on the tarmac and I was trying to rent a car on the tarmac. We get to the parking garage in the car and then we were like, "OK, what are we doing in Atlanta?" The Lord reminded me that I had a whole phone full of properties that I had looked at. Some people compulsively play games, I compulsively look at properties. So we went to six amazing places. The Lord led us from Georgia to North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, everywhere. We found six places, all that would be amazing, and each time the Lord kept saying, "You can have it if you want it, but why don't you go to the next one?" We almost placed an offer on the seventh property in Sand Castle, Virginia. Amazing little town. Anyway, it's a rainy afternoon at 3:00 o'clock. We're tired and my husband's on a conference call and we could have headed towards Buffalo, New York or towards Nashville. Actually, I pushed the wrong button and this property lined up and it was an hour away, so we made the decision to come to it and at least stay the night in that town. I got to it and It loomed in front of me as this giant mansion. I had never thought of that, I always thought it'd be a retreat center or an old church or whatever. I walked in the door and the minute I walked in, I tell you what, I just think it was actually the real thing. I think the heavens opened and clouds of witnesses were right there applauding. I felt like I walked into a party, I really do. Then my husband walked in and we're walking down the hall and I turned to him, something the Lord taught me to do over the years, "may I ask God for it? If He gives it to me, can I have it" He said yes, and so we said yes to the assignment also sight unseen.
Like I said, we moved fast, hadn't even seen the town yet, didn't know anything about where we were, but we knew it was the Lord who said yes to it. Bottom line—you're going to freak out here—it's a 30,000 square foot facility. It was built in 1888. That 30,000 percent includes the attic and the basement, which here in this area they probably don't really count as square footage, but we do because the basement and attic are the best part of the whole house. It has 31 toilets, 24 suites. It's three point two acres from the middle of the historic district. It's fabulous. For 128 years, it was a home for widows. The endowment kept it open all those 128 years, maintained by gardeners and the maintenance men and cooks. That facility that has been maintained for 128 years, the endowment grant ran out two weeks before we got to it. It closed its doors two weeks after we left. We placed an offer on it, and six weeks later, with four large moving vans, we were here.
This is the important part—I think it's kind of awesome—for three and a half years, the Lord had us live in our Texas house where we raised our children and the little bitty Nashville cottage that we had staged. He made us get those homes ready for sale and live in the stage, living out of the suitcase, bouncing between the two of them and trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing. It was just a tarmac season and it's difficult maintaining two properties and not living in either one of them and not knowing what was happening next. The Lord was just being very, very, very purposeful in keeping us conditioned. When it came time to sell, we were able to sell both places to someone that came on the first day. The equity out of those places I bought out in the middle of nowhere at the right time was the equity on those houses that paid cash for this facility we're living in. We have zero debt. The Lord used this bizarre form of upsizing and downsizing to relieve us 100 percent of the debt. That's both mortgages—we have no mortgages. He had taught us to live and believe that every penny He puts in our hand is as good as seed. Every penny is a seed and you sow it. So when we go to a restaurant, we're choosing to sow into that mom and pop organization and bless them while we're there—to make the city glad, whatever it is we're doing.
I do what I'm doing in faith and there are all kinds of ways to spend money. It's important that we spend it in faith and we spend it correctly and we spend it as stewards. The Word tells us that we're going to reap a 36 year, 100 fold harvest out of what we do, so we've been asking God for a hundredfold return on everything. We got this property—I'm just going to go ahead and tell you—it was a 4.7 million dollar valued property. We didn't know that then, but we know it now. We paid cash for it—$492,000. It included a new roof and a new skylight. The antiques were all marketed to go for auction and I couldn't bear the thought of all the widows' things leaving the home, so we took it all. It's a home for missionaries now. We have kept it in its same condition, we haven't changed the wallpaper or anything yet. We've wanted to just honor the legacy of it because the town loves this home. Everybody's raised their moms and grandmas and aunts here and they have visited for Sunday dinners for 128 years.
Wow. How long have you been there now?
August 24th of 2016 is the day the tracks rolled in and we signed her papers. The old lady that built it, she was an 86 or 87-year-old widow when she built this house in 1880. That's crazy, right? She goes to deed in her own handwriting and that deed came to us. It's never been mortgaged. It's in La Porte, Indiana-- 51 miles out of Chicago, 20 minutes from beautiful Lake Michigan, and 20 minutes from actual Michigan, New Buffalo, which is beautiful and darling. There's an Amish community about 30 minutes away. Notre Dame's about 30 minutes away. It's fantastic and the home is so adorable. It's kind of the land I forgot, and I love it here. We love it.
That's an awesome story of the promised land and promises fulfilled. Now you're seeing a lot of these things that had been birthed in your heart. What does day to day look like there in La Porte?
Well, it depends on the day because there are travel days, there are event days. We've got writer retreat times where groups are coming in here. We've invited different ones to come write with us. There are down days that are just purely office work. It just kind of literally depends. Anybody that travels a lot, anybody who runs a band, there's a rhythm that happens inside each one of those events, but there's not a consistent rhythm of life. The only consistent thing is inconsistency. We've got actually two interns that live here with us currently, then we've got three that are returning like staffers that live here. Darren and I, and then our two sons, our oldest and our youngest. They both work for the ministry, which is awesome. We have a young family here that runs our registration for Emerging Sound and does a bunch of photography. We have four People & Songs that live here--Kayden Slay, Melanie Tierce, myself and Ryan Kennedy. There's a couple that's moving in three weeks that I used to run a school with, which is going to be super fun. We've got a couple more interns coming in about a month this summer. Over the summer, we have nine interns coming in for two whole months. There's an internship program and we still have room for about five more highly gifted people. So I think there's about 15 of us that live here right now full time.
So in a situation like that, how do you go about writing songs together? Is it just you all get in a room?
No, that's too many people. Emerging Sound will do it, but it's kind of in a lab setting and we will write columns with everybody, but 15 people is a whole lot of cooks in the kitchen. Typically two to five people, but it just depends. Our songwriting is our Bible study time. It's how we workshop giant ideas and so there's so much backdrop behind our songs. They're such a meal and they're such a blessing to us. We don't write with the idea that this is going to go out and be something for the whole world. Although we have faith for that, it's more like, hey, we need to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. What are we gonna cook? What are we going to eat? We try not to run the songwriting sessions by meeting to post the recipe and Pinterest the whole thing. We're not writing songs with the idea that everyone's going to hear them and we have to get it all perfect and ready for consumption. Instead, we get it ready for a family who is going to sit around and fellowship together, have a great time, and make amazing memories that will last a lifetime. That's kind of the backdrop behind our songs--it's the word of God as our feast and the reality that we're making memories happen that will inform the rest of our lives.
Read part 2 of our interview with Jennie Lee Riddle. Click Here
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