David Vaters – Something new, all over again

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As summer begins its route toward fall, we at CCM Magazine wanted to make sure you knew about one more down-home, feel-good, toe-tapping, rootsy collection of music perfect for filling the warm air. Actually, make that two albums. Just as we have recently gotten to know David Vaters, Vaters himself is getting to know the process of writing, recording, packaging, and telling others about his music. However, the peculiar thing about all of this is that he has been “making” music for quite some time. Vaters is a music lifer, but after years of playing in bands, he’s begun a new journey all his own. Honing a lifelong craft like songwriting in just mere months, Vaters has created enough material to launch not one, but two debut solo albums: A Voice In The Wilderness – Volume 1 (buy) released earlier this year, with Volume 2 set to make its official appearance next month.

It’s rare to catch a glimpse of an artist as they’re coming into their own, so, with the second-half of his introduction coming soon, we took the opportunity to sit down with singer-songwriter David Vaters. Enjoy!

CCM Magazine: Knowing you reside in a rural area, is there any double meaning to the album title?
David Vaters: Well, I do literally live in the wilderness! However, the title of the album came to me two years prior to my wife and I actually leaving the city life. It came from when I took several months just to read the book of John—I just felt called to title the album A Voice In The Wilderness. It just felt right. After I decided the title, I realized that most of my writing for the past year was quoting or resembling the teachings of the book of John. So, that was an incredible sign to me that I was doing what I was supposes to do! I should also say that there is a little sprinkling of Revelation in the album as well, which seems to to round out the message.

CCM: You’ve been creating music a long time, was there anything specific during a recent part of your journey that directly had a result on this release?
DV: Well I don’t belabor writing over long periods of time any longer. I used to do that, however, writing Volume 1 and Volume 2, and ever since then, I only write a song if I’m inspired and I can finish it within an hour. If it takes longer than that, I generally never finish it. It is a real blessing to have developed that, and I hope the Lord continues to bless me with this way of writing. I rarely change lines or words once I write them down.

CCM: Are any of the songs on this double set ones that have been in the works for longer periods of time than others?
DV: Great question! Most of the songs were written quickly, as I said. These two albums were written over a period of several months. All in all, I wrote forty songs during that period which was a very interesting experience because, for the most part, I would be awakened in the middle of the night with a tune or lyric in my head. I would then get up, get a guitar or keyboard, and write out the song in about twenty-to-forty-five-minutes. I’d record it on my iPhone and then I would go back to bed. Both albums were written that way! There were two songs, however, that were different. “Mansion In The Sky,” which was the first song I had ever written when I was 15 years-old, and “Brighter Than The Stars,” where my wife told me point blank one evening to just go and write a song. So, like all good songwriting husbands, I got a guitar and wrote the song in front of her in 20 minutes. What a great husband [laughs]!

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