Behind The Music
By Jason Deere

How It All Began:

            In 1989, four months into my mission in the Nevada Las Vegas Mission, one night after my companion Elder Orr (from Blackfoot, ID) and I had just taught a first discussion, we rode our bikes home to our wretched little pink trailer house on Boulder HWY (yes, two missionaries living in a pink trailer made for some interesting conversation). After getting settled that night, I walked out on the crumbling turf covered redwood porch with my guitar (and yes, President Scott did approve my having a guitar) and wrote Lamb To The Slaughter. That moment on that porch was truly the beginning of these projects so many years later.
            I came home from my mission in 1990, went to BYU, got married, graduated from college, moved to Nashville with my wife one day later and began the arduous task of making a mark in the Nashville music industry. In the years of sweat and blood trying to carve a living out of a very tough town, I did not write or even think about any other religious songs for years and years. Oh, the thought crossed my mind many times, and I even had several discussions from time to time with my good friend Dan Truman about doing something for EFY or something, but we just usually ended up writing another country song. I thought that with Michael McClean and Kenneth Cope, what’s the point. Who would want to listen some redneck’s Mormon songs?
            In 2003, all that changed. I was called to teach early morning Seminary. I was so busy at the time I thought I could never fulfill this calling adequately. I was worried but I jumped into the most favorite calling I have ever had with 24 of the most wonderful kids I’ve ever known. We were covering the Old Testament that year, and I immediately had this crazy fascination with The Restoration. I saw all of these similarities between the Old Testament and The Restoration. I was teaching Exodus in the morning and reading everything I could get my hands on about The Restoration in the evening. I was immersed in both subjects and something started to change in me. Moses is so much like Joseph Smith. Both were called to organize and lead a people. Neither entered their foreseen promised land. Joshua, with a vengeance reclaimed the Holy Land. Brigham Young, like a LION, led his people to their mountain home. My heart was a stir.
            Suddenly, in September and October of that year, songs started coming out of nowhere. I wrote two or three (I think it was American Dreams, Emma and Modern-day Sampson) and I called Truman and said, “Hey, I don’t what is going on but need you to hear something.” I went to his house and played him the songs. We both cried and sat looking at each other, wondering what just happened. We knew we had to do something. We had NO IDEA what the world would think of redneck Mormon songs, but we knew that we had to make an album for us, if for no one else. Dan wrote Farewell Nauvoo shortly after that meeting and in a few weeks I had written all but one of the rest of the songs for the album, which at that time we called “Vision to Carthage” (meaning from the First Vision to Carthage).
            Truman and I booked a studio (OMNI Studios in Nashville) on December 6th, 2004 to start recording the Joseph album. In Nashville, when you book musicians, a studio and engineers for certain dates, to pull the plug and cancel at the last minute does nothing but make everyone angry and ensure that the next time that you call these world-class players that they will most certainly be somehow booked that year and have to decline your offer. I called Dan about a week before we recorded and was kind of freaking out. Something was wrong. I knew something was missing on the album. Dan and I had tried to be so careful to research every “main character” of The Restoration, and while there were many who were not specifically included on the album, we felt like we had done our best to represent those few who could not go unrepresented. But someone was missing. Dan thought I was a nut, worrying like a mama hen that had lost one of her chicks. I played him an old song that I had written about adoption, knowing that Emma had adopted the Murdock twins and many of the Saints had adopted children when parents met misfortune along the westward movement. Dan liked the song but didn’t think that it held hands with the others. I was distraught and about ready to postpone recording dates.
            The morning of the 6th, I came through the back door of my home after teaching Seminary. None of my family had come downstairs yet but I could hear them starting to stir. Knowing that time was running out, less than three hours until we had to be in the studio, and still completely unsatisfied that the song collection was complete, I sat down at my kitchen table, folded my arms and petitioned my Heavenly Father for help. Almost immediately, the sweetest spirit seemed to fill the room. In a few moments the lyrics to a song seemed to fall down on the page in front of me. Brother I’ll Follow You was the missing song. Tears ran down my cheeks as admiration and honor for Hyrum filled my heart. We hear so little comparatively about Joseph’s older brother. Why? Because he was honest, obedient and steadfast in his perfect testimony of his little brother as a prophet and of the truth that had been restored to the earth through him. You don’t hear as much about the good ones. It’s those who shake the trees that you hear the most about. The fact that the history books are somewhat silent with reference to Hyrum Smith is a testament to his magnificence as a righteous human being. I could go on and on about him, but to make it short, we had the last song we needed for the album.
            In the studio, four of Nashville’s best stood before Dan and I as we started to tell them what we were doing that day. Bryan Sutton (acoustic, mandolin & banjo), Glenn Worf (bass), Shannon Forrest (drums) and Terry Aldaffer (recording engineer), none of them LDS by the way, listened with a look on their faces that seemed to say, “We’re doing what?” However, before each song, I told them some history behind the song, who the people were that the songs were about and the circumstances in which they lived and these guys became somber and focused and really gave their all to represent these individuals who Dan and I felt so strongly about. It was really a beautiful thing…those sessions. Only one musician, a background singer, walked out on us. He said he just couldn’t sing about the Mormon prophet. We were totally OK with that. Everyone else gave their all and we made the tracks that we hoped we would.
            I asked another non-LDS friend of mine to mix the album, Grammy Award winning Brazilian mix engineer Silvio Richetto. Silvio had just worked on the Ryan Shupe And The Rubberband album Dream Big, that I had just produced, so he was somewhat acclimated to Mormon culture. Silvio had spent weeks in Provo at June Audio recording and once he and I even toured Temple Square, where we had both wept upon reaching the top of the balcony before The Christus. Many times while Silvio was in Miami mixing in his studio, he called me weeping, moved by the stories and people in the songs he was mixing. He did an incredible job mixing that album, by the way, showing his respect for our heritage.
            Some time before we recorded the album, Dan and I flew to SLC to meet with an executive at Deseret Book to see if they may be interested in our album. We just had some simple work tapes of the songs. We played them for him and I do believe he liked them, but he said, “We’ll, I honestly don’t think that the last part of the Emma song or especially the Porter Rockwell song will ever make it past the committee across the street. We asked him what that meant and he said that a group of about a dozen people, some of whom are apostles, periodically had a meeting to approve new Deseret Book products. We said, “OK, thanks”, and we left to meet our mutual friend Jeff Simpson who ran a little label called Excel that had proven to be a thorn in Deseret Books’ side as a competitor. Jeff liked it, but like us, had no idea whatsoever of what to do with it, and he said, “Let me live with it.” We flew home not knowing if anything would ever happen.
            A few weeks later Jeff called me and said, “Hey, I honestly had kind of forgotten about your project, but after you guys left town I gave the CD to one of our new guys named John Dayton. He just came into my office and said, “Jeff, I have no idea if this will ever sell one album, but we must put this album out for Dan and Jason.” Jeff said, “So, you should thank our new guy, we want to put it out for you. Give us a few months to put some ideas together while you guys make the record and we’ll talk again.” Dan and I were happy, that is until we got a call a couple of months later and someone read us from the newspaper that Deseret Book had just bought Excel Entertainment from Jeff Simpson. Oh boy, back to the committee across the street thing.
            Excel moved in with Deseret Book downtown and Jeff became one of the big wigs in the DB hierarchy. We didn’t know what, if anything, was going on with our project. Then, out of the blue, I got a message to call Sheri Dew, the head of DB. I called her back and she said, “Jason, I want to tell you a story. Your CD just got put into my hands the day before I flew to St. Louis with all of my family to go on a church history tour. I took the CD along thinking we’d have some drive time and could listen. Jason, my nieces and nephews never took it out of the player. We love it! I took it across the street this morning and played one song for the committee.” I said, “Oh, what song?” She said, “My favorite one, the Porter Rockwell song!” I thought holy mackerel! She said, “I figured if they approved that one than the rest of the album was OK. They liked your song and we’re putting your album out.”
            In June of 2005, sure as they said they would, DB put our album out, which to our amazement has been one of their best sellers ever, winning multiple Pearl Awards and leading to Dan and I, with some of our best friends whom we admire immensely, doing hundreds of concerts for thousands of people all over the United States. We love our history! We love our religion! We love the way we feel each time we look out at a group of people and sing songs about people who we know lifted the fullness of the everlasting gospel from the dust of the earth with their own sweat and blood so we could be so blessed today. We love to meet you after the shows and hear how you love the “main characters” of The Restoration as well. These years have changed us forever!
            This is how it all began and I hope that this is truly the beginning of many more opportunities for all of us who live at the end of this dispensation to connect with those at the beginning of this dispensation. We are one dispensation. We are strong! We are blessed! May we forever be thankful!

Jason Deere