Matthew West – It’s Now, Or Never

This whole thing is a prayer, “Lord, keep me desperate. Keep me relying on You in times of blessing and plenty, and in times of trial, as well.”

CCM: What felt different in the songwriting cabin this go around?
MW: Well, the first thing that felt different was it was this cabin that was actually built by country singer legend Alan Jackson. I was really concerned, because every day I drove to the cabin, all I could hear in my head was Alan Jackson singing, “Way down yonder on the Chattahoochie…” So, subconsciously, I was trying NOT to make a country record [laughs]! But in all seriousness, I had been focusing my writing over the last several years on collecting people’s stories and telling the stories of other people’s lives, and that had just become part of my creative process.

People send their testimonies to me, and then I spend time with those testimonies, and somehow songs have been written out of them. With this album, I just, again, I think maybe it comes back to the fact that I had just written that book, and my own personal story was sort of free-in-my-mind and in-my-heart, that the songs just started to take a turn. They took a turn toward the really intensely personal side of things.

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Not like, “Oh, I’m showing you the darkest pages of my diary,” kind-of thing, just literally writing from my own personal experience. So, it got kind-of scary at times, but also exciting. The thought that I was about to make a record that shared more of my story with my fans or listeners than I had ever done before, I could tell something special was taking place in that regard. I’ve sort-of pulled back the curtain a little. I’ve been sharing stories from others for so long, now I’m telling my story too.

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