Kevin Max – ’00-Kevin’

When we did “Serve Somebody,” Dan Pitts from True Artists was like, “Man, you’re getting on this boat. What if you made an album of some of the songs that you like to play live and put it together?” Then we started talking about, “How about an album of spiritual songs that are relatable to rock ‘n roll?” That’s kind-of how we came up with a small list of songs that, in my opinion, were a perfect balance between spirituality and rock ‘n roll. We had tons of songs we could choose from, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time to record these. That’s why we were a little limited on the amount of songs on there. I had several chosen that we never did. I had a David Bowie song called “Word On A Wing.” I wanted to do a Leonard Cohen song. I wanted to do a Beatles song. I was actually looking at a Keith Green song. We just got down to the deadline and I was like, “Here are the ones that make the most sense to me right now.”

CCM: We were wanting to get your take on the music community losing some pretty influential artists over the last few years—Bowie, Cohen, Merle Haggard, Glenn Frey, etc…
KM: Yeah. I covered Cohen on my second solo album Between The Fence & The Universe (buy). I also covered Bowie, but never released it. I did “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps),” I think maybe six years ago? I put it out on my website at the time. It’s actually on Soundcloud, but I never released it into the marketplace. There are so many artists I’d love to cover, but at the same time, there’s so many songs that I’m creating on my own that it becomes a conundrum. It’s definitely a balance that I have to make. If I could call myself anything, I’d probably be “the Christian music Ryan Adams,” where I’ve got three albums under my belt at any time. It’s tough, but you don’t want to put out too much music that people don’t know what to choose from.

CCM: You covered Rich Mullins’ “Creed,” a song we just premiered at CCMmagazine.com. It’s a very obvious, black and white, cut-and-dry declaration of faith. What was the thought behind putting this track on the album?
KM: Yeah, definitely. The funny truth about how we came to that song, is I asked Jimmy Abegg—who was playing on the record—”Of all the songs that Rich liked to play live, what was his favorite song?” He said, “Beyond a doubt, ‘Creed.’” I asked, “Why?” He said, “Just because of the feeling of the Holy Spirit every night when they performed that song.” I said, “Man, I want the Spirit on this album. Let me cover ‘Creed!’” That’s how we made that decision.

There’s so many great Rich Mullins songs that I love. I was on two projects with him, and he produced me both times. I had a great industry relationship with Rich. I wanted to do him right by this song. I felt like we really did a great job of doing our own version of it, and keeping it simple.

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