Hey guys it's Jonathan here from Set Sail and rivers and robots and this week
I'm pretty excited because we're trying out a new format which is an online
video interview. I mentioned at the start this year that we want to make a weekly
video exploring the space where faith meets art and especially digging into
kind of creative worship projects. This week we're gonna be having to chat to a
guy called Sammie Lee who is a full-time musician at the International House of
Prayer in Kansas City and was also assistant producer on a new album of
theirs called Fully Alive. He sent me a copy of the album and I've been
listening to it every day for the past week, it's really awesome.
The songs are great, really love the production of it but anyway I don't want to
waste too much time getting started so here's the interview with Sammie Lee.
So yeah, Sammie, I was reading on your little email that came out you've been a
full-time musician at IHOP for like the past five years! - Yes.
What's that like? What does that look like on a week-to-week basis?
So I'm a full-time musician right now serving with my worship leader Laura Hackett Park
at International House of Prayer we have 24/7 worship and prayer going on
since 1999, so this is year 19 and each team takes a two-hour turn and then
back to back, non-stop it's been keeping going throughout the night in the morning.
We exist to really sing and play to declare
proclaim the beauty of Jesus. - I'd be interest in hearing just like your
own story of how did you end up becoming a musician and finding your way to IHOP?
My mom is a piano major / piano instructor, I've always loved music but I
never thought about becoming a musician was like a reality
like I always loved music but I never really thought that I would be
privileged to do so like do it as my job like I grew up on a mission field on
the islands of Indonesia in a boarding school - that's really the time during
my middle school high school time where I really got to build my experiences
like loving God but like through music, you know, expressing that and then
I moved to IHOP about nine years ago finishing on high school and I was
preparing to you know go to university, I got some scholarships and
different things like that to pursue. I was actually gonna pursue pre-med I
don't know how I would have done that but I remember
just like, the Lord's leadership like "hey I want you to do IHOPU, I want you to
stick around here". It wasn't "Thus says the Lord, Sammie Lee your staying here, there's great
things in store for you it was the just like a gentle leadership of the Lord
like "hey, you should stick around" so I remember calling my parents and
"hey I think I'm gonna do this" at that point I was not part of
the worship team so I was just telling them I'll do the Bible school
and then, you know, typical Asian parents would have said 'no' but my parents
you know always told us to obey the Lord love the Lord and all that so they were
really on board with that idea so I jumped out doing full time Bible School
and thankfully it worked out that I got to be part of a worship team and I
started playing with Jon Thurlow. He's been such a good role model for me he's
kind of a person that set the tone for me, intro to this lifestyle as a
worshipper and a musician he's the one that would lead in front of 20,000
people, and the next day show up 6 a.m. faithfully and singing and leading
in the prayer room, you know, it might seem all glorious and all that stuff
from outside but the reality of... He's just the one that really role modeled
for me how to, you know, keep your heart alive I'm declaring that you wanna just
grow closer to the Lord and knowing how to really develop that lifestyle that
expresses when he's onstage. It does not affect who he is, so, it's really
my joy to be here day in and out with my wife who is also a singer and an
instructor for music academy at the University. We're doing it we're
singing we're playing, hanging out with our friends and that's been that's like my
little journey. That's awesome! How do you guys, like, I bet there's tons
of songs that come out from just being in like 24/7 worship and prayer all the time
how did you guys figure out, like, this is gonna be a song on an album or maybe
this is just a spontaneous moment.. Especially with the Fully Alive album it
has been interesting it's been a very unique album to us, because as we are
in the process of rebranding and restructuring our music label called
Forerunner Music, it's been a fun project where in the midst of all the
craziness, all of the 15 songs are songs that have been curated by
different worship leaders and and we did something called songwriting
camp like songwriting retreats with a bunch of us together of each writing
a song or two a day like those choruses or the verse melody ideas or
the lyrics have been birthed in the moments from the prayer room or
it might have been the idea had been birthed out of the inspiration, like one of the
songs called Fill Us With Glory was Chris Tofilon
really sharing with me and another artist named Olivia Buckles and he was just
sharing about in the prayer room you know he felt like as he was singing when
Solomon was dedicating the temple he was dedicating the temple and praying that
God will visit with glory and literally the presence of God filled the temple to
a point that the priests had to get out like that kind of imagery kind of set
the tone as we were writing so, there are so many songs and we had a group
of producers and our executive leadership team that was checking
different theology and themes, but we also had group of
worship leaders, I think it was between eight to twelve of us that you know
wrestled around "man this would be such a good song thematic wise that flows into
this one." Yeah it feels like.. my dad's probably been journeying with the IHOP
kind of music for longer than me that he came over at
the first like trailer-park days when it was like Misty Edwards and that stuff, this album
feels kind of different to stuff that's been before. It's either been live
onething albums or there's like the 'Songs Of Eternity' ones that feel like maybe songs
from different people's albums kind of collected but this one feels like
everything's part of the same session like.. One thing about the group that we had was
all the worship leaders were very gifted very experienced but also very
humble but becoming we we built synergy to really root for one another to
champion one another and believe in these songs believe in another person's
songs and as, you know, Jon like music production Christian or
non-christian it's such a competitive thing it's a it's a very challenging
thing to build a culture where people honor one another, love one another, but
you know get the job done, you know. Definitely a lot of room for
us to grow too, but it has been an amazing process for sure.
So I wondered if we could talk a bit about your Forerunner Sound thing
cause I think I just saw that through your Instagram and actually signed up for
the keys course and learnt quite a lot so what's your, like, some of the vision
behind that then, the plans for... Yeah so Forerunner Sound is a sub brand of
our music label Forerunner Music especially dealing with all the
educational materials that we will come out like right now there's two things
that we have two three mini courses - one for Guitar and one for using Ableton like
optimizing Ableton and especially dealing with five different effects
that I'm talking about on those videos, so those are free resources we'll
have plenty of free resources and different paid courses that people can
sign up. Mike Bickle our leader, he said that there are over 10,000 or 11,000
different houses of prayer in that expression of a praying church
being birthed recently which is an incredible number but then when it
comes to, not that IHOP is the only place that is doing this but as
a place, as an organization that have done this for a little bit
we should really take ownership and steward what we have and make it
accessible for people to be equipped and really give the glory to Jesus who
deserves our energy and our time and our songs, you know. I think just having that
kind of resource online now, like you say, it's so good just to be able
to jump on a website and be equipped.
I'm sure you can relate with this too
I love going to different concerts too, there's something
unique about like live music in general but like to see live music that is all
about singing to Jesus, about Jesus and declaring
truth about Him, I mean that's the beauty of it.
If I were to just be you know pumping out music wherever, like let's say I'm doing different pop stuff
or different other studio stuff, sure but it is really such an amazing experience
to be in a community where we are really wanting to love Jesus well, yet our music
production is really, to do that well. I think there's power behind it
that people that have tasted will like really resonate with that so.
Another question, is there gonna be like a six minute version of awake my soul?
Because I think there should be. I love writing
instrumental music for sure and I was in the process of writing this piece and then
my worship leader Laura was like 'hey I have a melody and some lyric ideas'
so it was like you have lyrics I have music
I have music, you have lyrics let's put it together and write some of music that we
could use for like for one thing session like an intro. A lot of the
concerts like a lot of bands or shows that you go to starts with a pretty
epic banging intro. It's only in worship context sometimes like we're "hey, welcome to onething"
let's change that, let's write music let's blast people, awake my soul was
one of those approaches to really kind of introduce the album soundscape yet also
kind of bridging them together, I don't know if that makes sense even though it's
an intro song, it bridges different songs and different ideas too - yeah it works really well as an intro
Which was a very difficult job for International House of Prayer
because we have so many worship leaders with so much talent and different styles
and that has been such a difficult task in our previous collaboration
albums because everyone is just so unique but when you get all these unique
people together, the album does not sound like the one
album it was like a very important task to find the soundscape that worked for
everybody yeah I think you guys did a great job of bringing that together cause
that's one of the things I love about that as well, like, the diversity and the different
styles and like, it still feels like it has that but it also feels like this
was recorded in the same kind of space at the same time it was it was the long
process to honour each artist and their preferences yet also keeping
clear boundaries of over all project direction I mean you're
you've done a couple albums you know exactly what we're talking about - it's difficult
enough working on my own - so if people want to get that, that's on all kinds of online places
right? You can buy it on iTunes you can also stream with Apple music and
spotify the first two songs in the album they'll be on youtube on our Forerunner
music youtube. Awesome, I'll put a link to those in the description of this video
then and then people can go check that out. Thanks for taking the time to do the
interview man! - Thanks for doing this!
Ok so that's all for this week thank you guys
for watching and thank you again to Sammie for taking the time to do that
interview don't forget to check out the Fully Alive album from Forerunner Music
and if you're a musician interested in some of their online resources then
check out forerunnersound.com - also if you enjoyed this video and you haven't
subscribed to the set sail channel yet you can hit the button below we're gonna
be posting videos every Friday 8 p.m. UK time exploring the space where faith
meets art. Thank you guys for watching and we will see you next Friday!