Joseph Habedank discusses his new album The Great Adventure: A Tribute to Steven Curtis Chapman.
Show Notes
Keep up with Joseph Habedank on his website, Facebook, and Instagram. Listen to The Great Adventure on CD, YouTube, Apple Music, and Spotify. Also check out Joseph’s interviews on I Love to Tell the Story and on Gold City’s Double Take podcast.
Transcript
Lightly edited for clarity
Daniel Mount (00:03)
Welcome to the Southern Gospel Journal podcast. My name is Daniel Mount, joined today by Joseph Habedank How are you this afternoon?
Joseph Habedank (00:10)
Well, I’m doing great, man. Hope you’re doing well. It’s been a long time. We were just talking about how we hadn’t seen each other in a few years. Daniel used to come out and see the Perrys quite a bit when I was with them. it’s probably been a decade or more since I’ve seen you. So it’s crazy. Crazy. Well, thanks for having me.
Daniel Mount (00:13)
I did! It has been a number of years. Thank you for coming on! And I hope it’s not long till I see you again in person in concert before too long.
Joseph Habedank (00:33)
Yeah, you ought to come out to a solo concert now. I’ve got a full band now and a big old bus that keeps me broke. so it’s a good journey. I’m home though. I’m getting ready to go to the gym. I’m off for I think 45 days and I’m only halfway through. So I’m having a blast.
Daniel Mount (00:42)
That’s a nice break! So I want to mainly just ask a couple of questions about your recent Steven Curtis Chapman album. But before I do, one question we’ve been keeping up with on social media. How’s your mother doing?
Joseph Habedank (00:55)
Thanks for asking. She is doing well. She’s texting. I talked to her every day via text. Got to see her about once a week since she’s been in the hospital. She’s slowly progressing. She has a little bit of a brain injury because of the cardiac arrest. I didn’t know this. Only 6% of people survive cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. So she’s a miracle that she’s even alive. Her only thing that hasn’t come back is her strength and her memory.
But I think both of those things are getting better. I mean, she knows who her family is. She of course knows how to play piano, which is, it’s amazing. Music never leaves your heart and your soul. I think that’s why I’ve given my life to it. It’s so powerful. But, thank you for asking. She’s doing well. I know she would appreciate your prayers still. So we’d really appreciate it.
Daniel Mount (01:36)
Yeah. Definitely will. Alright, so a couple weeks ago, maybe about two months ago, you released an album of Stephen Curtis Chapman songs. What prompted the idea to do this album?
Joseph Habedank (02:05)
Yeah, so most people know I grew up on Southern gospel, but Stephen Curtis was a big influence when I was a kid. Just loved his singing, songwriting, and guitar playing. But his songwriting is what really, really stuck out to me. And to be honest with you, man, this kind of came out of nowhere. I’d always thought about doing it, but I just never thought it would happen.
And then his bass guitar player slash producer, Brent Milligan and I became friends. We started talking about doing an album together and I said, “Do you think we could do a Stephen Curtis record, a tribute record?”
And he was like, “Let’s do it.”
So I said, “Well, there’s only one way I’ll do it. I would really like to get his blessing somehow, if that’s even possible.”
And he said, “Well, let me text him.”
So it took him a few weeks and Stephen Curtis sent back the nicest, sweetest text, like how honored he would be. And he’s been very supportive of the album.
He sang on it and played guitar on two tracks, “For the Sake of the Call” and “I Will Be Here.” It’s just been crazy how involved he got. I think a lot of that’s because of Brett Milligan, cause Steven and I aren’t super close. I’ve met him, know him. I feel like there was one time – the coolest thing that happened was I was in an airport one time and I saw him, but I didn’t want to bother him. And I walked on the plane and he said, “Hey, Joseph.” I thought, “Wow, that’s pretty cool!”
So we’re acquaintances, we’re friends, but we’re not super close. So just to get his blessing and get him to be involved on this record … I think he’s the greatest of all time as far as when you put together writing, singing, and musicianship. He checks every box. So that’s kind of how it came about.
Daniel Mount (03:22)
Neat! How did you pick these 12 songs? Because as you mentioned, I’m sure growing up with his music, I’m sure there’s way more than 12 of his songs that you really like. How did he whittle it down to 12?
Joseph Habedank (03:54)
Yeah, it was really difficult. In fact, I’ve already made a list of 10 or 12 more that I want to cut if we were to ever do a volume two. I don’t know that we’ll do that, but there were so many that we didn’t record. Had I had it my way, I would have recorded all the up tempo stuff because that’s the stuff that I loved when I was a kid. I always loved up tempo, like “Great Adventure,” “Dancing With the Dinosaur,” “No Better Place.”
So we left a lot of tempo on the table, like “The Change” is one of my favorites. Even some songs that weren’t really singles, like “Next 5 Minutes,” “Whatever,” I Do Believe.” So many songs that I love that were tempo that we just couldn’t cut. And honestly, think he’s had 50, somebody said 50 or 60 number one songs. I think it’s 50 number one songs. And there was no way we could do 50 songs. So we just kind of picked the 12 that resonated.
And we had to have a good balance, right? You know, we had to have tempo, but we also had to have some ballads, and he’s got great ballads. I mean, “His Strength is Perfect,” “My Redeemer is Faithful and True.” Those are two big Southern Gospel covers as well. So I knew I had to do those.
And then “I Will Be Here” felt like a no-brainer because of Lindsay. And it’s funny. I will be here has never been done as a duet until this record. I didn’t know that.
Daniel Mount (04:53)
Wow, I didn’t know that either.
Joseph Habedank (05:11)
Yeah, it’s always been a solo thing. So we kind of had that idea. I actually did some research. looked on Apple music and Spotify. I was like, I gotta see if this has ever been done. And sure enough, never been done as a duet. A lot of people think “I Will Be Here” was a duet Stephen did, but it wasn’t; it was a solo thing. So it was kind of cool to get to do that.
But I tried to pick the songs that not only resonated with me, but also stuff that I grew up remembering people loved, like “His Eyes” or “More to This Life.”
“More To This Life” was actually a song that Brent Milligan brought me that I wasn’t super familiar with. I mean, I knew it, but he said, “Man, if you really want to get Stephen to back this record, you need to record ‘More To This Life,’ because that’s like his favorite.” So I was like, “Let’s do it.” So that was the reason we did that one. But yeah, I mean, it was it was difficult to narrow it down. But once we locked in, we knew we had to do “Dive,” “Great Adventure,” “For the Sake of the Call.”
But then, to pick songs like Dancing with the Dinosaur, which is a little more abstract, that was something that just kind of happened. it was something that I remember listening to as a kid going, “This is cool.”
There’s one song that I regret not doing, and it’s “Facts Are Facts.” It’s my all-time favorite, but the Booth Brothers do it. And I just didn’t want to, you know … I could have done it because I know they do “His Strength is Perfect,” too, but that’s the only one if I could record one Steven Curtis song that I can get to probably though.
Daniel Mount (06:28)
“Facts are Facts” is just an amazing song also. It makes sense why you wouldn’t have it on, you don’t wanna do something that was big enough for the Booth Brothers, so, it makes sense.
Joseph Habedank (06:32)
It’s so fun. I mean, it’s just so fun. Yeah, it’s a big closer for them.
Daniel Mount (06:41)
Yeah. “For the sake of the call”: Was it an obvious thing when the door opened for him to sing a song with you that would be the song? How did it end up that that was the one that was your duet song?
Joseph Habedank (06:51)
Yeah, I mean, it happened pretty organically. I mean, at the end of the record, when I finished all my vocals, we were going through, we knew Lindsey was going to do, “I Will Be Here.” We had already done that. And we talked about Stephen doing a couple things. But “For the Sake of the Call” felt like the most obvious because it kind of spoke to – had Stephen not answered the call, right? To do what he does. Would he have had an impact on my life? No.
Daniel Mount (07:00)
Mm-hmm.
Joseph Habedank (07:18)
So I felt like there was kind of this hidden – not really hidden, but more like a kind of a secret little message here that, you know, I’m grateful even though that song is about the disciples following Jesus. I’m grateful for the sacrifices that Stephen Curtis made. It’s really easy to look at his life and go, man, this guy’s won more double awards than anybody else. He’s got Grammys. He’s played arenas, but he’s also lost a kid, right?
Daniel Mount (07:41)
Yeah.
Joseph Habedank (07:43)
And he had to get back on a bus. and go sing. I have no idea the sacrifices that he made as a young artist in this town. I can only imagine how difficult it was for him and Marybeth having a house full of kids and somehow him getting on a tour bus every week and doing what he’s called to do even when it’s hard and difficult. So I think that particular song felt like the best fit for our relationship, right? Which is, he impacted me because of his faithfulness to the call of Jesus Christ. So yeah, I think that was a big reason.
Daniel Mount (08:13)
I got so excited when I saw not only that you were doing the album, but that you were doing this particular song. Random trivia, back in 2009 when I was blogging every day, I actually put up a post making the case that there needed to be a Southern Gospel version of that song. Took a few years, but I’m excited to finally see it happen.
So I also wanted to ask about Lindsay joining on I Will Be Here.
Joseph Habedank (08:27)
Yeah. It’s great.
Daniel Mount (08:39)
You know, I don’t need to recap your life story and what’s happened in last 10 or 12 years here. I’m just going to put in the the show notes, links to the podcast you did with Gold City and the podcast you do with Dave Clark and Dusty Wells. And you tell your story so well in those, I didn’t feel any need to tell the same story again. So I’ll just do this shorter episode. But in those two episodes, you talk about how she stood with you when you were coming off the painkillers. And did that just bring some extra depth and emotion to the choice to the song and to sing it with her?
Joseph Habedank (09:08)
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the title alone … you know, Lindsay really had every reason to walk away. I don’t know that anybody would have really blamed her. You know, if you’re to tell somebody, my marriage didn’t work out. My husband was a drug addict. Nobody would judge the wife or the spouse. Right? I mean, it makes sense. But, I always tell the story, you know, that she left home for, you know, five minutes and forgot her contact solution and came back home.
And she’s kind of helped me build this solo thing. She’s basically my manager and has been unofficially for the last decade or more.
I think the language of the song felt really fitting for what we had walked through. You know, my dad and mom split up when I was little. I was three years old. My dad’s been married three times. And I don’t say that as a slam. I love my dad. I respect my dad. My dad’s one of the people that introduced me to Steven Curtis Chapman. So he’s a big part of this record. By the way, his third wife, my stepmom, is a goddess. I mean she’s not really a goddess, but she’s pretty pretty pretty perfect. And I love her so much. But my dad would have wanted me to learn that, when it comes to marriage, man, you don’t really have to go through what I did you can stick it out.
So when I got married, I decided that divorce wasn’t going to be an option. Gratefully, I married a lady that doesn’t really give me a whole lot of reasons to ever want to leave, because she’s so amazing.
But yeah, I think that the message of this song [is] just about staying even when it’s hard, even when it’s not easy. My grandmother told me early on before she passed away, right before I got married, she said, know, marriage, it’s kind of like a train ride. There’s a lot of jumping off points you can get off different stops. There’s gonna be a lot of different stops you can get off. She said: But if you’ll stay on the train and ride it out, it’s worth the trip. And I thought that was a pretty good analogy.
There’s always a reason to walk away and go, “This is hard.” You know, marriage is hard.
Daniel Mount (11:04)
Mm-hmm, it is.
Joseph Habedank (11:16)
It is tough. It’s hard work and one day you think it’s great and you’ve got it all figured out and then the next week, you know, it goes crazy and you’re like, “Man, what happened?” It’s just, life happens and people are human and everybody makes mistakes. And I’ve certainly made a lot in our marriage and I’m just grateful she stuck around. And yeah, I mean, think the message of this song was a perfect fit for what we’ve walked through.
Daniel Mount (11:18)
Yes.
I have a question about arrangements. You know, at some level, a good song is just a good song and will often play well across genres. But I’m curious if there was anything that you and your producer and the studio musicians did to intentionally adapt the songs to work better for a Southern Gospel audience.
Joseph Habedank (11:51)
We didn’t, and only because I actually didn’t want to do that. And there’s a reason for that. It’s not that I didn’t want it to be Southern Gospel necessarily. But I feel like what Stephen did in the nineties is now Southern gospel, progressive gospel. So it really didn’t need to be changed.
Daniel Mount (11:59)
It’s friendly to our genre now, yeah.
Joseph Habedank (12:18)
In fact, the only song that we really changed up was for the sake of the call because it started with this big, this big eighties synthesizer. And I kind of went to Brent and said, “I don’t think I want to do that. I love 80s music, but I think I want to do a little more scaled back.”
That was the only song that we didn’t do like the original. Every other song,w e tried to stick exactly to some of the same players. Scott Sheriff, who did all the background vocals, sang background vocals on it. Steven played guitar on some of the songs.
So it was a lot of finding a way to make it true to the original, but also making it somehow original to me as well. That was the balance we were trying to find. And I think we I really think we found it. I mean, I still think it sounds like me. But it also does sound you can hear sonically, some of the choices we made musically, are very similar to the original track.
So, yeah, I’m very proud of how we, especially Brent the producer, how he tackled these arrangements. And we really did try, we would literally go back and listen. As I was recording “The Great Adventure,” I would go back and listen to how Steven phrased each line and said, “Okay, I’m gonna phrase it exactly like that, or I’m gonna change this one thing to make it more like me.” But most of it was pretty, pretty much like Steven did it.
And I really didn’t worry about my audience so much – only because for whatever reason, they have been – I told them this at the fan awards this past year. I was like, I don’t know why, but they’ve just been so gracious and allowing me to explore musically. They don’t come to me and say, “Hey, man, I wish you were a little more traditional. I wish you sounded more like you did with The Perrys.” They might think it, but my crowd just doesn’t say it. And they’re very gracious. They let me be an artist. And that’s one thing I’m very grateful for.
My only fear was that I was honoring a contemporary Christian artist. But I’ve gotten zero kickback from anyone – fan wise, industry, nobody. And again, I’m sure people think things, right? They might think, “Man, I wonder why he didn’t honor Kenny Hinson or Michael English?” And frankly, those are two of my favorite singers and artists, but they didn’t write like Stephen did. And for whatever reason, that really resonated with me as a kid.
And I think one of the reasons I wanted to do is because Southern Gospel does a great job of honoring Southern Gospel. I wanted to honor somebody outside of that, because nobody had ever done that before. As far as I know, there has never been a tribute record to a contemporary artist by a Southern artist.
Daniel Mount (14:39)
No, can’t think of one.
Joseph:
So I like doing things that nobody’s ever done before and seeing how it works out. So that was part of it as well.
Daniel:
I was really impressed at a point you raised, at how much it sounded like you and at the same time how you didn’t have to take it very far from what he did with his originals. That struck me on track after track. I’m so curious, which of these songs audiences have really been responding to as we do them live?
Joseph Habedank (15:07)
So I’ve actually only done, let’s see, “Great Adventure,” “Dive,” and “His Strength is Perfect.” I would say the biggest song for me live right now is “His Strength is Perfect.” And the reason for that is because I’ll usually talk about my mom and kind of tell the crowd how she’s doing. And then I’m very honest with the people that come to see me because I feel like they deserve that. I’ve always been very honest about my struggle with addiction.
Daniel Mount (15:26)
Mm-hmm.
Joseph Habedank (15:41)
So I tell the crowd the truth, and that is I really haven’t wanted to get on the bus since my mom, my heart’s been with my mom. I want to be at the hospital. I want to be at home with my mom. And, it’s that verse in the Bible that says in our weakness, he’s made strong. And that’s how I’m able to set that song up. And when I’m able to set it up that way, it feels very authentic because it’s true. But it also is such a great moment in our set.
Daniel Mount (15:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Joseph Habedank (16:04)
Because I’m able to communicate that song from a different place because of what I’ve walked through with my mom over the last two months. So yeah, I would say that song by far is the one that people are seem to be resonating with the most right now on the road
Daniel Mount (16:17)
And it has to be said that both of the co-writers of that song, because I believe he co-wrote that song with Jerry Salley – both of the co-writers of that song have Southern Gospel writing credentials too. Stephen Curtis, early in his career with “I Can See the Hand” and a few other songs. And then Jerry Salley, the last 10 or 15 years, has had any number of songs that have done really well in Southern.
Joseph Habedank (16:23)
Yeah.
Daniel Mount (16:41)
So both of the writers of that know what it takes to write a song that seven gospel audiences respond to.
Joseph Habedank (16:45)
Southern people like – they want a good song. They want something that says something.
Don’t get me wrong, they love the old quartet stuff that is fun. “Winging My Way Back Home.” There’s a lot of the old quartet stuff that’s not super deep, but I think now that the audience really loves a great song that makes them think. And the reason I know that is because I try to write songs like that.
And for whatever reason, they’ve latched on to my songwriting, and it’s been a little different. I mean, songs like “Religion Isn’t Working” and “Tell the Devil” and “Judas,” some songs that are just a little different. They’re not quite what other people write. But the crowd, for whatever reason, gets behind it. “The Basement” is another example of that.
So yeah. Yeah, I just have to give the people credit. I mean, we don’t give them enough credit. We think they only want this certain thing. But I think if you give somebody meat and potatoes all the time, eventually they’re going to want spaghetti or dessert. You know, they like variety. They’re going to get a little tired of it. So that’s what I’ve tried to do is try to give them something else that nobody else is really giving them.
Daniel Mount (17:42)
Mm-hmm.
And I think this project does a great job of that because fundamentally these are just great songs. And that actually ties nicely into the last question I wanted to ask before really starting to wrap up, which is, I’m curious, you mentioned that you’ve been familiar with Steven Curtis’s songs from childhood. Is there anything you can point to that you’ve learned from his songwriting technique or anything else? Vocal presentation, how he carries himself, musicianship, anything that you’ve learned from him that you’ve been able to incorporate into what you do, either 20 years ago or today?
Joseph Habedank (18:30)
I would say yes, definitely more recently though, just because of the solo thing. You when I was with The Perrys, obviously his songwriting style becomes more personal. The biggest thing that I’ve learned from his writing is how well he writes. He writes life. And I have tried to write about my life.
And what I found is one of the first things that my record company, they may not even remember this, but they were a little concerned that my first few albums were just too personal. That people were just not gonna be able to resonate because it was so personal to me as an individual. What I found, though, is when you write something that’s personal to you, you’re able to communicate it better to them and it becomes more effective.
So, for instance, my new single is about my home church. Well, it’s called “The Church.” When somebody listens to that song, they don’t think about my home church because they don’t know anything about my home church. They think about their church.
Daniel Mount (18:59)
Mm-hmm.
Joseph Habedank (19:24)
When they listen to “The Basement,” they don’t think about me going to a recovery meeting. They think about somebody that they love that’s walked through addiction. So i think you can make these songs very personal and write story songs. That’s a big thing as well. Not only has Steven Curtis written so well about his life, whether it’s about the death of his daughter or his marriage, his dad, his parents, but he’s also he writes great story songs.
Daniel Mount (19:49)
Yes.
Joseph Habedank (19:50)
That’s something I’ve learned, and that’s something I didn’t do very well until the last – I actually had Michael Booth came to me. He said, “You know, you ought to really consider writing more story songs. I think that would serve you well.” And I did that on my my last record, Autobiography, which is literally the story of my life and what Christ has done in my life. And it was very effective. It’s been it’s my favorite album I’ve ever done, by far. The Steven Curtis record’s up there, too, don’t get me wrong. But I love autobiography because it’s so personal to me, in my life.
So, yeah, I would say learning to write about your life and being okay with the people, you know, knowing who you are, what you’ve walked through. And, you know, for instance, I wrote a song about my parents’ divorce on my last record. I’ve never heard a Christian song about divorce. I always tell the crowd, I’ve heard a lot of country songs about divorce, but I’ve never heard a Christian song about divorce.
You know, I just want to write things that are different. And I think that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned from Stephen.
Daniel Mount (20:46)
Wonderful. All right, so just to conclude, what are the best ways for people to keep up with what you’re doing?
Joseph Habedank (20:51)
It seems kind of silly, but Instagram and Facebook are still the best ways to keep up. We may or may not be starting a YouTube channel. Lindsey and I are talking about it, so we’ll see how that goes, so keep an eye out for that. That might be happening in the next few months.
Instagram, I try to update every day, whether it’s about touring or sometimes it’s about mom, sometimes it’s about me and Lindsey, sometimes it’s about what I’m eating for dinner, like things you probably don’t even care about. I love food. Instagram, Facebook, it’s always the best way.
Or you can email our office at heather@josephhabedank.com. If you want us to come to your church or your event, you can contact the Harper Agency.
Keep in touch. We’d love for you guys to come see us out on the road. I think what’s happening right now out on tour is so fun. Just having the band and it’s a dream I’ve always had. So having that another dream come true for me, which is having my own band, it’s been a great journey. So I hope you all come out see us.
Daniel Mount (21:49)
Thank you! I will put the links to both in the description. Thank you so much for your time.
Joseph Habedank (21:54)
You bet, man, thanks for having me.
Daniel Mount (21:55)
Thanks. And to the listener, thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. Keep up with the latest podcast episodes on YouTube, Facebook, your favorite podcast platform, or on southerngospeljournal.com. Thanks for listening.