Christian Music Planet with Lacey
CMP: What has it been like to be on tour with P.O.D.?
Lacey: It has been really cool; they are really great to
us. There are ups and downs because we are such a small, nobody
kind of band. We just had our record come out and we don’t have
a lot of money so we have our tour manager, our driver and our
merchandise girl. They have a drum tech, a guitar tech, a stage
manager, production manager, tour manager, driver, merch person,
etc.
CMP: But Howard Benson produced your album and Dave Navarro
makes a guest appearance. You can’t be that small of a band!
Lacey: No. Let me tell you, it was a complete fluke. Everything
that has happened has been a miraculous door opening and we recognize
that. We are just a small band. We have been together three and a half
years. We toured Texas for our first few years and then we played
“South by Southwest” (an independent music festival held in Austin,
Texas), which is right near our hometown. When we played “South by
Southwest,” a music lawyer—who heard our music from a friend from
high school—was there. She was so excited about our music. She knew
our manager, who knows all these people. I think we got Howard
Benson from her.
CMP: Did he hook you up with Dave Navarro?
Lacey: He (Benson) was in the studio mixing our record and
Dave Navarro just happened to be there. Howard Benson was playing
one of our songs and I guess Dave Navarro asked about us. Howard
showed him one of our songs, “There For You,” and Dave really
liked it. He picked up the guitar and started playing it and said,
“Hey, you want to record that?” So we recorded it. It was a total
fluke. We didn’t even meet him.
CMP: Have you always wanted to make music professionally?
Lacey: After I graduated high school, I was going to teach.
I worked at an elementary school with kids who had emotional or
behavioral problems, or ADD. I didn’t expect to start a band. I
never thought I’d do it for a living because my mom is a musician,
and she always struggled. We were always poor. I always thought,
“I don’t want to be poor.”
CMP: Now that you are on tour with P.O.D., how are
audiences and other bands reacting to your positive message?
Lacey: Initially, when we play for a new audience, they stare
at us like, “What is this about?” Every time we play a really
great show, people say, “There was something really different
about your music, I got chills and I almost started crying.”
And we pray for the audience. This is the way I think about it:
We go into places where people are hurting, into dark places
where people don’t see light very often. We hope to bring a
light to where people will see it and be hungry for it. We plant
seeds in places just with the music, without preaching the gospel
through talking. There are people who plant seeds and there are
people who water them and then people who reap them. If we are the
first encounter a person has with God, or the second or third and
their life doesn’t change until the twelfth, that’s alright, it
all adds up. It’s so important. That’s what we hope for.
It’s hard because when you are planting, you are not always going
to see the fruit right away. But not too long ago, we were playing
in a club in Austin, Texas—we barely played any churches—and a
lady named Anna came to our shows. She was drinking very heavily and
I didn’t think twice about it—she looked like everyone else in the
club. I just wanted to be loving to her; that’s what our point is.
I told her my story and what our music is about. I hadn’t seen her
in years, but we played in Austin the other day and she was at the
show. She looked like a different person. She had a present for me
and I said, “What’s this for?” She said, “I have been sober for two
years, and I just wanted you to know that your music and your band
and what you do is one of the biggest parts of that.”
We actually got to see the fruit.
CMP: Most of the songs on the album were inspired by your
life circumstances and your testimony. Is any one song the most
meaningful to you?
Lacey: All of them are meaningful. One of the ones I think is
important to play is “Sorrow.” That’s because in our day and age, there
is such a huge number of people who deal with depression, or know
someone who deals with depression. In the Bible, it says, “Jesus was a
man of sorrow.” On the secular side, there are people who deal with
depression because they feel empty. On the Christian side, there are
people who deal with depression because they feel alone with their
Christianity or because they mess up. That’s the spirit we’re
combating when we play it. The promise in the end is, “Joy will come.”
