Now Brandon, is “Bee” your real last name?

It is my real last name, actually. I was born with that name. It’s a Scottish name. In Scotland there’s thousands of Bees, but in America there’s very few.

And it’s spelled Bee?

Yep.

It’s great for marketing.

I know. I was blessed with a stage name as a real name.


Let’s talk about Scott Krippayne. What did he help you out with?

He wrote a song with me called “Maybe It’s the Last Day.” He wrote two songs on the record, but “Maybe It’s the Last Day'” is the first one we wrote together. I had the song pretty much all done--well, not all done, but I had the chorus and I had the bridge and then a verse idea. I even had the lyrics and I was just not happy with where the lyrics were going in the song.

When we were editing it out and going through what was it we wanted to write together, the label wasn’t saying that they really liked that song that much. A lot of it is because it didn’t say what I really wanted it to say. So, we were just listening through and he listened to that song. He was like, “Man, I love that song. Let’s work on that one.”

So, we started working on it and the lyrics came to life and changed the song a lot. I actually had to go back in and pretty much redo a lot of things, but it was just really cool to see. I’m a producer, so I’m used to being the person who changes songs. It was just cool; even though Scott wasn’t producing anything per se, he did the part that I really needed. I needed that outside opinion that would really change over the lyrics and change over the mood of the song. So, that was just a huge blessing.

We also wrote a song called “Everlasting Song” together and that was from scratch. I think both him and I have been going through similar stages in life. He’s a little older than me and he’s definitely had a longer career, but he’s now getting into the secular industry and I was in a secular industry for the first five years of my producing. We just know a lot of the same people and all the same people are hurting and they don’t know Jesus and it’s not easy being a Christian guy in a secular industry.

Anyway, so we talked about writing songs for secular people. I was writing songs for Nickelodeon at the time and writing stuff for some label projects for Columbia and Sony. He was also writing with some of the same guys and we just kicked out all of these ideas where the song that we’re singing and that we’re writing is an everlasting song. It’s a song that we’ll be able to sing forever. What are we going to do with the time that we have now? We’re going to write songs that will last forever--worship songs. Songs that generations and generations can sing. That inspired the song, and really inspired me to continue to write the record. It's so exciting to recognize that our songs are not just for now. They're forever.

Talk about the song that’s going out to radio.

The AC song is “The Radiant Son,” and that song was just totally a fluke. My record was already mixed. I was in Wisconsin producing another record. But both me and the label felt like the album was incomplete. That there needed to be something in there, and I feel like half of the songs are worship and half of the songs are like life songs, devotional songs. I really wanted it to actually be more worship than being the devotional songs.

So, I was really determined to write a worship song. I was there and the sun was shining on me. I was looking down at the snow. Just saw my shadow and saw the sparkling of the snowflakes. I looked up at the sun and it was amazing to me that we look at the sun as being the giver of light in a lot of ways. Springtime is when love happens because the beautiful sun and warmth comes out. Our moods change.

If you think about it, all of our fruit starts coming out around spring and summertime. As Christians we look at Jesus being our Son. He’s the giver of life. Our moods change and everything changes when we have peace in Him, but you know what’s even more exciting and what the song digs even deeper in is the fact that He’s actually the giver of the sun. He made the sun.

So, the biggest thing and the thing that gives us vegetation and gives us everything is actually created by something even bigger and better than that. it was just exciting and it was almost like a revelation. It was like that song needed to be on the record.

I like what you said in the bio that your goal with the project is that people will look at it as a devotional. Can you open that up for us?

Well, every song kind of came out of the idea of a devotional. So, you know how like in devotional books you go through certain scriptures and then it points you to God in different ways? Every song put on this record picks up really important parts of the Christian’s faith, like the song “Everlasting Song” and “Stones on Bones,” which is the next song on the list.

That song is about how slandering and our words can hurt way more than we think they can. God’s called us to love and God’s called us to encourage and not rip people apart. Even simple lies and simple things can totally tear us apart. That right there is a devotional that might not be a worship song per se, but it’s a song that totally points to what we’re called to do as Christians.

Brandon, thanks for spending time with us.

Thank you so much.