Wichita Christian News and Information

Feb. 14, 2011—Dodge City, Kan.—On February 19, the Rock & Worship Roadshow will be coming to the new United Wireless Arena in Dodge City. The other day I had the opportunity to talk to MercyMe keyboardist Jim Bryson who is currently on the tour. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: When did you begin playing with MercyMe? (Keyboardist)

A: I’m one of the founding members. We started in ’94, so it’s been sixteen and half years. I think I was 26 when we started the band, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I never really imagined that it would take off the way it did or last that long.

Q: How do you remain humble in this industry, when your band has gone so far as to win an American Music Award?

A: (laughing) Umm, you know it’s pretty easy because our wives slap us around when we get big headed at all. No. First of all we’re a ministry; we’re not just an entertainment band. Nothing slamming bands that do that, but that’s not what we were called to do. And I think that from the get-go, we all knew what we were called to do, and we’re super good at keeping each other in line. We’ve been doing this for, like I said, sixteen years, so it’s not that it’s old, but it is something that we’ve done for a while, and you kind of get use to the big surprises and stuff. You’re never completely not surprised when God opens the door and does something crazy. But you almost expect something from God. Not that we deserve it, but expect it like “Wow, He did that, so why wouldn’t He do something else?” kind of thing. So it’s pretty easy to stay humble. Another reason…we don’t live in Nashville, we live outside of Dallas. So when we’re home, we’re home doing the daddy and the husband thing. You know, doing “honey-do” and changing diapers, taking out trash and all that. So we’re as normal people as anybody else that’s out there. I can’t imagine being someone like a movie star where you’ve got people just graveling at your every move, and paparazzi, and servants and you know all that. Well yeah, I can understand why some of them could be just not in the real world. But luckily, you know, I still mow my grass, clean out the car, and do dishes. So we’re pretty normal.

Q: How many times have you been on this particular tour?

A: This is our third year. It’s actually our own tour. We started three years ago. We toyed with the idea for years about doing a general admissions low price ticket. You know a lot of people can’t bring their whole families if they’ve got four or five members if is a $50 ticket or something, so we just wanted to do something that allowed anybody to come. We went and did a thing with WinterJam, I think, four years ago and saw how they made it work and that it could work. So that just encouraged us to try to go out and do it. And it’s our third year. We’re super excited. We’ve got Jars of Clay, Thousand Foot Krutch, Matt Maher, The Afters, and Anthem Lights. For 10 bucks, that’s pretty hard to beat anywhere. You can’t even go to the movie and get a coke for 10 bucks anymore.

Q: What message do you desire to convey to your audience on this tour? Is it any different from any of the other concerts that you guys have?

A: No, the only thing different is because there are so many bands every band plays a little shorter set. But obviously the focus is on Christ. That’s why any of us are doing this. We do have kind of a sermon moment where Bart is the speaker. He talks about fifteen minutes about being beautiful in Christ. It goes along with one of our songs that we do on our new album. And other than that, it’s basically, the same songs that we would normally play; the same theme, the same attitude and approach. It’s just a few minutes shorter.

Q: On a tour like this, do all the bands become like family?

A: Oh yeah. Now, this is the first time we’ve toured with all of them but The Afters. We had the The Afters on two tours, maybe, before this one, so we’re really good friends with them. Their actually from Dallas, so their wives are good friends with our wives. But this is the first time we’ve toured with Jars and Thousand Foot, Matt, and the Lights. We’re finally getting to know a lot of them. You know, you play with them over the years at festivals; you run into each other at different events like that. You know each other, but you don’t really get to know each other well. So this is something where you get to develop really good relationships and friendships. Just hang out over the years. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a pretty tight-knit community.

Q: MercyMe’s most recent album, The Generous Mr. Lovewell, is about a fictitious character who is a cross between Buddy the Elf and Forrest Gump. Do you find any part of yourself to be like this guy?

A: Yeah. It’s one of those things that we created to be just a reminder, a new twist on an old teaching from Christ about loving everybody and loving them as well as possible even in the small things. There’s a lot of times when I’m at home and I have the opportunity to love on someone in the neighborhood or someone in our church or just a friend of ours and help them out whether their running late and need us to pick the kids up from school. Or they’ve got a doctor’s appointment and we’re taking the kids over to the house. Anything like that, the only difference being, it’s kind of a “pay if forward,” but it’s based around the cross. It’s just a simple way to love on people, but it’s also an opportunity to share with them why you’re doing it.

Q: What’s your favorite song on the album?

A: I don’t know if I have one. Everybody always asks me that, but I don’t know. It changes. First or all, if you’re playing the songs, some songs are more fun to play than others. It kind of evolves, but, This Life is fun to play. We do that one live and we do Lovewell live. Those two are fun, beautiful. So, I don’t know, it’s hard to say.

Q: Out of all of your albums, do you have a song that ministers most to your heart or to your family?

A: Yeah. Definitely to my family, and probably more personally to me, I Can Only Imagine, and not just because that was our biggest hit or whatever. But my mom passed away in 2001. She had cancer and that was her favorite song. This was right after we got signed, but things hadn’t blown up yet. And we had that song on an independent album we had done back in ’98. So that was her favorite song. We had a five-disc CD changer at the time and it had all these different CDs of ours playing. And literally when she took her last breath, of all the discs out of all the songs it could have been playing, it was playing Imagine, which was almost a little sign from God just saying, “She’s ok and even though it’s hard, it’s alright.” So we ended up playing that at her funeral and a couple of years later, we played it at my dad’s funeral. So that’s a pretty special song.

Q: Is there anything else that you’d like to add that we haven’t discussed?

A: If people are interested in the Rock and Worship Roadshow, they can check out the websites. Our normal band page is MercyMe.org. Then you’ve got rockandworshiproadshow.com. You can also go to Facebook. I think it’s MercyMe Music or The Roadshow on Facebook. They can check out those if they want some more information about show times and who’s all coming. And that should give them most of the info that they would need on it.

Drawing over 350,000 to concert venues across the country since its successful launch in 2009, the Rock and Worship Roadshow, is ready to embark on its 3rd Annual run of the popular concert series. Compassion International will serve as the executive producer. In addition to the lineup mentioned above, Grammy Award nominated hip-hop artist, LeCrae, will join the tour starting February 24. The tour, which began January 28, will hit major cities such as Chicago, Colorado Springs and Phoenix and more while on the 25-city tour.

The tradition continues, as admission prices will again be $10 at-the-door. The tour is also dedicated to a much greater purpose: helping children through Compassion International, a Christian child advocacy ministry that releases children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enables them to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adults. For more information on Compassion International go to http://www.compassion.com.

For more information on the Roadshow please visit www.rockandworshiproadshow.com.

Christina Siriwardena is a student at Dallas Theological Seminary where she is pursuing her Masters in Media and Communication. She is currently an intern at Christian Press and a copyeditor for her church. When she’s not writing, she devotes her time to mentoring teenage girls. She resides in Kansas with her husband and two dogs.