Matthew West's career was already an impressive story of victory. The artist worked his way into a record deal and radio play armed with solid songwriting and earnest messages of God's grace, overcoming severe vocal problems along the way. But by 2010, something was about to drastically change his career. One day the artist decided to accept stories from fans and spend time isolated in a cabin reading them, engaging them, and letting them inspire a new album. Two years and over 20,000 stories later, the artist is releasing his second album inspired by the stories of his audience, starting a non-profit, and not looking back. Matthew West's poignant songs and his commitment to telling the stories he hears continues to impact audiences and connect with fans.

NewReleaseTuesday's Bill Lurwick chatted with Matthew West about singing songs, telling stories, and the impetus behind his upcoming release Into the Light.

I’ve got to ask you, Matthew, when you went into record your last album The Story of Your Life, I know you had so many letters and stories to base it off of. Did you think you’d go in that direction again the letters from listeners for a new project?

Well, the short answer to that would be no, but I was so overwhelmed by the response and just the sheer amount of how many stories came. What I wound up discovering is that releasing that CD The Story of Your Life, people weren’t receiving “he’s done now. I shouldn’t send my story.” Instead they were taking that as the cue to say, “That’s what he does. I want to send my story.” 

We’ve doubled the amount of stories. Over 20,000 have come in. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but eventually it was to the point where I can take a hint. Maybe there are more stories that need to be shared with the world. You know what? I’m at a point in my ministry where I feel like this is just very much what I do. These stories have opened up a whole new world to me, and I’m honored to be able to have this platform to share people’s stories.

The song “Forgiveness” is doing really, really well at radio, which isn't surprising— the first time I ever heard it I was like, “Wow. I needed to hear this song.” I'm sure there are incredible testimonies coming out of this song.

It’s been really powerful. My prayer was that this song would be a catalyst in somebody’s life to help break up strongholds of a grudge or a damaged relationship or whatever that may be.
 
It’s a song, again, inspired by another powerful story. There is so much power in each of our stories, and a lot of times we’d be surprised by the source of the power, where God chooses to use some of the most difficult things in our stories. That’s what he did with Renee.

Renee lost her daughter. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but she lost her daughter because some kid got behind the wheel of a car drunk and struck her daughter’s car one night. Renee all of a sudden has a mission she never would have chosen. She’s talking about the dangers of drunk driving at schools all over, but she held onto this bitterness and hatred towards this man who’s in prison.


God’s put in on her heart that if she was going to ever really rebound in life, she needed to set it free because it was just weighing her down. It was damaging this young man in prison. It was all the effects it was having on her. 

She reached out to him in prison and said, “Eric, I want you to know that I forgive you.” Little did she know how God was going to use that act of forgiveness. Eric actually accepted Christ into his heart as a result and now Eric’s going to be released from prison. He was supposed to serve a 22 year sentence, but Renee took that act of forgiveness even farther and convinced the court to cut his sentence in half. 

Just to give a glimpse of how perfect God’s timing is, the label picks that song to be the first one on the radio. It’s being played this fall and I just found out that Eric’s going to be released from prison in November.

The power of forgiveness. Amazing stuff. You must kind of feel like you’re a therapist.

Unqualified therapist, absolutely. It’s funny that you ask that question, because that’s one of the most prominent emotions that I’ve dealt with in reading these thousands of stories. Just feeling like, “Lord help me. We created this way for me to not only read people’s stories, but for me to write them back.”

A lot of times I would read a story and just feel like this person needs to be contacted right now. I actually enlisted the help of someone very close to me who, when I feel ill equipped, I know God’s gifted him to be able to go a little deeper into counseling and touching people’s lives, and that’s my dad.

He’s been a pastoring counselor for 38 years. He’s just come on full time with me, and we’re launching a new ministry because of these stories. It’s called Population We. Basically what we’re going to be doing is instead of just reading stories in the hopes of writing a song, we'll respond when we come across somebody’s story who’s really crying out for help. 

Because you know what, Bill? A lot of these stories, that’s what they were. They’re saying, “I don’t want you to write a song about my life. I want somebody to listen to me and somebody to help me.” We’re finally going to begin to put those pieces into place to really help people to begin to find the healing they need.

There are 12 cuts on the project. One of my favorites is track two, “Hello, My Name Is.” Is this a song about the nametag that people wear?

It is, in a way. The guy whose story inspired it, the first line of his story said, “Hello. My name is Jordan and I’m a drug addict.” It was as if it was what he was saying at an AA meeting or something. Immediately I had that image in my head of that little “hello, my name is” nametag.

This guy went on to share with me about how he was an all-star athlete and had a scholarship to play football in college, and he broke his ankle his sophomore year and he was introduced to the prescription drug Oxycontin. He said his life just began to spiral completely out of control and addiction took a hold of him like nothing ever had to the point where he was kicked out of college, lost his scholarship, and he wound up at a drug addiction recovery program called Teen Challenge.

He spent about a year there. During his stay his life began to kind of come back together, and he realized that maybe God’s not done with me yet. He got out of there, recommitted his life to Christ, wound up going back to the college that kicked him out and got his master’s degree.

Now he’s a teacher and a coach at my high school alma mater, and he introduces himself a little bit different these days. He said, “Hello. My name is Jordan and I’m a child of the one true king.”

That story just made me jump. I was jumping to my feet cheering for this guy and immediately I started singing “hello, my name is child of the one true king.”

Wow. Talk about coming full circle.

Isn’t that awesome?

That is incredible.

Matthew, there are a bunch of songs on here that possibly could be recorded by other people. You’ve had some songs recorded by Rascal Flats and Billy Ray Cyrus and some other folks. Is there a song on Into the Light that we might be hearing on another format, maybe country radio at some point do you think?

There could be. There’s always that chance. There’s a song called “Wonderfully Made” that some pop bands had heard and said, “We like that one.” Some of my songs are story songs too. Obviously that’s the concept behind the album. So some of them really come out as the actual stories.

But there’s a song called “Power of a Prayer” that’s a sweet little story inspired by this little boy who wrote to me. He was saying how life was really hard back when he was a little kid. The funny thing is he was only 13. He’s saying, “Back when I was a kid, when I was 11, life was very hard.”

He was writing about how his dad and mom were fighting all the time. His dad wasn’t a Christian so he began to pray that his dad would find God. The pastor visited their home and his dad accepted Christ into his heart.

He went on just to share how life is so much better. His dad and him are close and they read the Bible all the time. I just thought, “What a powerful moment in the life of a kid to say, ‘I prayed for this. God heard my prayer and He answered my prayer and He brought my dad back to me.’”

These are just sweet stories that I think if the world can hear them, if you’re thinking your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, you need to hear this story and be reminded that God hears you and in His own timing, in His own way, He will prove Himself to be faithful.

We're excited about this brand new record. Thanks for spending time with us.

Thank you.