We’ve got about five minutes, so give me a brief run-down on where Staci Frenes is in life.
Staci – I guess right now I’m just in a mode where I’m really loving being a song-writer. I think that I’m a song-writer first and a performer second. I’m really into seeking out a lot of different avenues for my songs. I’m really excited about some really cool possibilities in the pop world as well as in the Christian world.
I just think that I’ve always written music that has been more about “human content” than “Christian” or “secular.” I grew up with old time Christian music. Early on I was listening to Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill. These are the guys that I was weaned on as a little kid. I listened to their albums and I was drawn to the content because they ran the gamut from struggles in life to commentary on the culture and searching for who God was in the context of that culture.
To me that’s big. It’s not isolating yourself from the culture, but being immersed in it and knowing that you’re a part of a world but that you’re not of it. I was drawn to music like that and I’ve always written music like that. It just doesn’t fit in one genre’.
As a result, I’ve found some cool outlets for what I do. In the last couple of years CBS and the WB network have picked up a bunch of tunes of mine. They don’t know it’s Christian and it just fits in the background. I remember the first time that CBS used it. It was on the soap-opera The Young and the Restless. I was freaking out! I was like, “No way you’re playing my song on The Young and the Restless!” I was just praying that it wasn’t going to come up in some steamy love scene. But it wasn’t. It was some college kids hanging out and on the jukebox in the background and you hear this song that I wrote about searching for God, understanding His love and chasing away all the other hunger that I had in my life so I could really focus on my hunger for God. They had no idea what it was about, but I feel like the Holy Spirit knew what it was about and could work through that setting.
So I’m all about finding venues where people can be receptive to the music first and respond to it on a musical level and then think, “Oh – maybe there is some content there that I need to seek out and think about.” So, consequently, I write stuff using metaphors in my lyrics. I don’t just come out and say it.
I once had a pastor tell me, “I don’t think you can come sing in our church because I didn’t couldn’t find the word Jesus in enough of your songs.” I was like, “Dude, you’re not even really listening! You’re just judging at a face value and looking for an easy way to stamp it as Christian or not Christian.” You look at Jesus and he spoke in parables all the time. That’s what people understood. He said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like …” That is what music can do. “Love is like…” “Sin is like…” You make those comparisons so people can connect with you on a human level and not necessarily “Oh you’re a Christian … I can’t listen to you.”
So that’s what I’m about right now … really. I’m doing what I’m passionate about and what I love. My husband plays guitar and bass and we do it together. It’s all about doing what you love and what makes you happy. Walking in what God has for you in this moment. I don’t know where I’ll be ten years from now or even tomorrow, but right now, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. There’s a peace about that and that’s where I live.
