Encouraging saints around the world since 1991 !!

Our background MIDI is "Our God Reigns"
written by Lenny Smith
(MIDI courtesy of  
http://home.centurytel.net/milleman/)

Lenny Smith Interview
by Christopher Wiitala

Chances are that you already know Lenny Smith. The name may not ring a bell, but the song “Our God Reigns” is a song you might be very familiar with. You might even sing it in your own church on Sundays. The writer of that song has recently released “Deep Calls To Deep,” a collection of worship songs he’s written over the years, on his son’s Sounds familyre label. When you hear his weathered, gentle voice singing to Lord and about Him, it’s not hard to imagine a campfire or an orange-red sunset fading over the hill as you’re sitting peacefully in the countryside. I expected his record to be him and an acoustic guitar, but there’s drums, electric guitars, bass, organ, bells and plenty of background singing provided by family and friends.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Lenny at great length, while he was visiting Chicago.

Tell me about your time in Seminary?

I studied seven years for the priesthood. From sixty to sixty-seven. I went in at eighteen and came out around twenty-five. And that’s really where I picked up the guitar. Around nineteen sixty-two after dinner over in the gymnasium, there was a guy who used to play ukulele. He would play through a stack of sheet music from the fifties, the old rock and roll stuff from the fifties. Bill Halley and the Comets, The Platters and Dion and the Belmonts you know. It was like a hundred pieces of sheet music. It was very impressive. I loved the music of course so I’d hang around there. After a while the guy asked me if I wanted to learn a few chords on the ukulele, the baritone ukulele, which is the same four strings as the high strings on a guitar. I did of course and he taught me some chords and I started playing those fifties songs. I played through that stack for a couple years. That’s all I did after dinner, almost every night. Eventually a guy bought a new guitar so I got his old one. And because I had never played the bass strings I took them off, the A and the E. I played those high four strings for a couple years. I was afraid of the bass strings, I was like “this is too much like heaven for me.” I could never learn that. That was just the way I thought. I finally got a newer guitar and I left the bass strings on and I started learning full chords.

When did you start writing songs?

I started writing songs almost immediately. It would have been ninteen sixty-four or sixty-five. I started writing songs for church. We were having folk masses in the Seminary and it was very controversial. It was a very heavily discussed topic. Because up until then all we had in our chapel services was the organ. We never even had violins or anything, just the organ. We were playing Gregorian Chant and here three guys show up with guitars and we wanted to do these folk songs in church, in English, not Latin. So, it was very controversial, but there were enough guys that wanted it that the director of the seminary let us do it once in a while and it became more and more popular. I wrote liturgical songs for mass. Songs for offertory songs for communion songs for introit --when the priest came in and walked down the aisle and the exit songs with scriptures.

What was the first song you ever wrote?

The first song I ever wrote was called “The New Jerusalem,” from the book of Revelations. And that’s where I got the name for my music company, New Jerusalem Music. I didn’t even intend to write it. I was reading the Bible in the closet, we had a large walk-in closet with a light, we had lights out at ten o’ clock because we were up so early in the morning. We used to all study in the closet, you had to. We had so many things to study you had to study late at night. So I went in the closet I was reading the book of Revelations and I came across that Scripture, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem. And God would wipe every tear from our eyes, death would be no more.” The whole thing, it’s beautiful. So I went and got my guitar and brought it in there and I wrote my first worship song.

How did you leave the Seminary?

Well, I left pretty much the same way I went in. God made me go in. I had no choice. I was overshadowed by this desire to study about God, especially about God the Father. And I couldn’t shake the idea. I ran from it, denied it and then finally I just had to do it. Even when I went in, I told myself that I’d only be in for a year and I’d get this thing off my chest, get it over with. But I couldn’t leave. I tried to leave all the time. I never wanted to be there, never. But I had to be there. And then after seven years when I wasn’t even thinking about it at that point, I almost heard an audible voice. I mean it was so clear. And it was God, He said you’re to leave now and you’re to leave quickly. He only said it once. And it was frightening because I knew it was God. Both parts were just as important, you’re to leave now and you’re to leave quickly. And I did, I left immediately. I didn’t even want to leave by then. I mean it didn’t matter any more [laughs]. I left and I taught high school for a couple of years and met my wife Marian just a couple years out of the seminary.

Where did you teach high school?

I taught in three Catholic high schools and one public school. And that was between sixty-eight and seventy-three or seventy-four. And I taught different things in different schools, but mostly English literature, Latin and Theology. During that whole time I continued to write songs. Strange times because in sixty-nine I was baptized with the Holy Spirit. Very, very dramatically. Every bit as dramatically as Paul was. It was just amazing. I wasn’t right for about five years. I just was so high on the Lord that I was teaching Bible in public schools. We’d cover all our material in four days and then on Fridays we’d have Bible class. The administration would get upset with me. Eventually I’d get fired, go onto to another school. I was fired from every school I taught at. Yeah, even the Catholics fired me [laughs]. Because I was too into it, you know? I mean they didn’t mind, but I was too into it. I was too much, it was too much for them. Crying in classrooms, baptizing kids in the river. We had a prayer meeting, a hundred and twenty kids, just me and Marian were the only adults there. And they were afraid that we were like a cult. We were loud, we’d sing for hours and we’d speak in tongues and we’d read the Bible and we’d dance. We were just too much for most adults. So eventually I rendered myself un-hireable, so I went into construction work. And in construction work it doesn’t matter if you get fired, because everybody does [laughs]. They’re always getting fired or quitting. I eventually started my own company and I’ve had my own construction company for twenty, twenty-five years or more.

Tell me about your record Deep Calls To Deep.

Well Daniel started to record me about eight years ago. When he started recording himself he had to put me on the back-burner. After he would be done on his albums he’d get a couple weeks and he’d record me again. Then he would get a new project, so he kept putting me on the back-burner, but we were always progressing. What he did was he took my life from sixty-five ‘til about ninety-five and he divided it into four periods. And he took three or four songs from each period, so as not to have songs from just one period. Because the songs I wrote in the early years I couldn’t write now. I don’t even know how to write them now. They came from that time period. The album has songs from span over 25 years. Dan picked them out because I don’t really know which ones are better than which other ones because I love them all equally.

What do you hope to accomplish with this?

[Laughs] You don’t want to hear. I’ll tell you, but don’t put it in print. You can print it if you want, I don’t care. I actually feel and I’ve felt this way for many, many years, so I don’t care what people think. I actually feel called to completely turn upside down what we’d call the praise and worship world. Or the world of worship, musically. I want to completely and totally revolutionize it and turn it back to melodies and deeper lyrics.

Thoughtful, deeper theological lyrics like the old hymns contained. Lyrics that are poetic yes, because they’re certainly not poetic now. These people don’t even want to read poetry, so how can they write it? And they certainly don’t know anything about melodies. They don’t value melodies, they don’t see the critical importance [of melodies]. I mean they value them somewhat, but they don’t see that it’s the essential ingredient. Where as I think melodies, good anointed melodies that go somewhere and actually do something, lead to a climax and then resolve, I feel that they contain the anointing of the Holy Spirit captured. It’s captured for eternity.

What was your first experience with the Christian music industry?

Well, the first experience was, the first seven or eight experiences actually, were all the same. I got these rejection letters in the mail [laughs]. They rejected “Our God reigns.” Most of the experiences I’ve had, I’ve had many more rejections than anything else, but for me it’s been good and it just makes me write more songs. But “Our God Reigns” has been well received. I’ve had literally hundreds probably thousands of positive experiences, letters, checks and things like that.

Who are your influences?

My background influences? Okay, well, most of my influences are from the past. Most of the deepest influences in my life are from the fifties, the late fifties. I used to go to three dances a week, every week. The local firehouse dances, the CYO, dances at the church basement. The rock and roll dances. Bill Haley and the Comets, I mean we’re going back, but this is the stuff that really got me. Just got me, hooked me on music. The Platters, Dion and the Belmonts, these kind of people. [I was] Totally captured by music, by rock and roll. And this is one of the reasons I had to go to seminary, because in the seminary we weren’t allowed any rock and roll. Now I did find the stack of sheet music, you know, that I played through all the time. But we weren’t allowed radio, we were allowed to listen to classical music. So for seven years I became gradually weaned from rock and roll, which really did have me by the throat. It just had me.

So, then through the sixties, I would say Simon and Garfunkel really, really got me. Peter, Paul and Mary. Bob Dylan got me. I loved his stuff, I was just completely smitten. Joan Baez was a big one. I had all her albums and Bob Dylan’s. In fact I saw Bob Dylan and Joan Baez live. And he was unknown, she introduced him at the show. When I was there it was one of the first times he ever played outside of his own gigs in New York. You know we used to do all Dylan songs. Three or four guys, when we’d get time off in the seminary, we’d take our guitars onto the buses in DC and sit in the back seats and we’d sing for hours. Just driving around DC singing. And that would be our day off. Other guys are going out and doing shopping or whatever. This is what we wanted to do. And we did. We’d sing all the protest songs, you know, “We Shall Overcome” and all that stuff. We didn’t do it to cause trouble, we just did it because we were just high on that stuff at the time. Believed in it. Actually we were mostly well received. People would applaud. Sometimes we’d get quite a bit of abuse, people threaten to beat us up and stuff [laughs].

In the church I was very influenced when I first started writing songs, in fact before I wrote songs, by a priest, his name was father Clarence Rivers. And he was the first person that I ever heard who wrote songs from scriptures. That would have been about 1965. I went to one of his concerts and it was just marvelous. There was another person who had been a seminarian, Ray [in audible] was his name. He took scriptures and put them to music. There was another guy, Cary Lantry. These were all just the guys who were doing this stuff before it was accepted.

You gotta remember that back in those years a guitar at mass was very, very radical. I remember walking from the chapel to the dining hall one morning, next to the director of the seminary. I had lead the music that morning at mass and we sang one of my songs. So fool that I was, I asked him what he thought of that song. And he said, “Boy I didn’t like that at all.” I was crushed, but he didn’t know I wrote the song. Well, the good part about it was a couple years later we did the song again and he and I were walking once again next to each other over to breakfast and he was raving about how much he loved that song. The same song, it took him two years to get into it. So I felt vindicated [laughs]. He was a great guy, I loved him.

Do you write any non-worship songs?

Yeah I’ve written some ballads, some love songs and I like doing it, but I love worship songs and praise songs so much that the ballads to me aren’t as strong. When I’m singing a song that’s to the Lord, about the Lord, I just get so high that there’s no experience quite like it.

How did “Our God Reigns” come about?

I wrote “Our God Reigns” for me. I didn’t write that for anybody. I wasn’t thinking about anybody but me, because I was out of work at the time and very depressed. I happened to be reading through Isaiah, chapter fifty-two. When I came to that scripture, “How lovely are the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news,” right away I thought of Jesus’ feet because Mary anointed his feet with oil. It says, “the feet of him who brings good news, announcing peace, proclaiming news of happiness,” and it says, “your God reigns.” Now I’m just sitting at home in my apartment, newly married, we had Daniel at the time. Marian was pregnant with Rachel and I’m out of work. Finally got fired my last time, five high schools, five firings. Very depressed.

“Your God reigns,” when I read that, He said to me, “Everything is fine for you, it’s all gonna work out. Trust me. God reigns, I know you were fired and everything’s fine for you. It’s all gonna work out.” That’s exactly what I read, I mean I know it said, “your God reigns,” but I really, really read those other words. I got the message, it was clear and I was so relieved that I heard from God.

So I went and picked up my guitar and I wrote “Our God reigns” in five minutes. It just came to me. It turned out that the very message God used to comfort me, became the blessing. So strange. That song has gone around the world blessed many people, been a blessing to me and has brought in many thousands of dollars, helped me put kids through college and pay mortgage payments, etc. And I know if I hadn’t been out of work and if I hadn’t been fired, I never would have gotten that song.

That song came to a guy that was very down, very depressed. And at that time in my life I was reading the Bible three hours a day, every day. I’d been doing it for a couple of years and I did it for two or three years after that. That’s how smitten I was, I mean I was completely gone. I was in another world and it was that way for about five years. Maybe I should still be there, but I’m not quite there anymore [laughs]. I’d like to go back. That’s the way we lived. We were in outer space. And not just us, all our friends were there too, we were all there. We’d have two three prayer meetings a week, we’d have six, eight, ten guitars in a room, in a house. I mean two, three times a week. We didn’t go to the movies and we didn’t have anything against the movies. We didn’t have anything against anything. But we would just get together and we’d have these huge spaghetti dinners, people from three or four towns around. We had college kids living with us, runaways living with us, it was crazy times. We couldn’t do it again because now we’re so old. I don’t have the energy that I used to have.

What do you think about your children’s success in the mainstream?

Analyzing the success of my kids, the Danielson Famile, I really think it’s because when they look at the world they do not see the world, they do not see unbelievers. They see them as children of God. They see them as brothers and sisters. They see them as God’s offspring, as creatures of God. If the Potter has the clay in His hands and He makes the clay, then what is the clay? It’s what it is. It’s made by the Potter. People call it different things. They might call that clay unbelievers or they might call that clay the world. But my kids, from growing up with Marian and I from the very beginning, we’ve shown them and taught them that all these people out there are God’s children. Now that’s not to say, right away the church gets defensive, you know, so I always have to explain myself. It’s not to say that they still don’t have to be born again, of course they do, they have to have a clue. To gain an interest in God and get on with their lives. Yes, they do.

But let’s not take away from them, from the unbelievers, the little bit that they really do have. And what do they have? They’re clay that was made the Potter. I’m not taking it away from them. So they’re God’s children, they’re His offspring. We have what we call offspring, we call them children.

That’s a long, long way of saying I think my kids love these people. And they sense that they’re loved. They don’t sense any rejection, they don’t sense any judgment towards them. Some of these clubs are filled with homosexuals in certain parts of the cities. Some of the clubs they’re doing drugs on the bar. I’ve seen them doing cocaine on the bar. They’re into whatever they’re into and yet they still seem to receive my kids for some reason. I think it’s because they sense my kids like them, you know? They’re not afraid of them, they’re not repulsed by them.

Posted on 10/28/01

Link To LENNY's Web Site:    New Jerusalem Music

More  teachings, articles, 
sound files, online shopping ...
can all be found on Lenny's wonderful web site

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