Word Records

Tomlin as well.

And, man, I didn't even realize that Word Records was in Waco for a long time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so up until, I don't know, mom and dad eventually moved back to Texas and all the brothers started marrying off and it ended up just being David and I.

By the time I was probably 18, it was just David and I. We'd signed our first publishing and recording deal with Word Records.

But I'm getting a little ahead of the story.

You

And what ended up happening was Matt Redman, uh, n- the Nockels, who were producing most of those Passion records from 1998 through to 2007, then moved to Nashville.

You know, Word Records started out in, uh, Texas, Waco, Texas.

Mm-hmm.

It moved to Nashville.

Now, the biggest labels in Christian music in the world were EMI, Capital Music Group.

There was the Provident Music Group.

And Word Records were all in Nashville and were all between Franklin, Brentwood, and Downtown Nashville, and I lived in Franklin, right in the middle of it.

Mm.

This is like a good, hey, I want to edify some people here.

Dude, it had to have been about 1990 or 91 when we had first signed with Word Records, which was a really large record company at the time.

And, you know, when you sign a record contract, you have to deliver a certain number of records in a certain number of years.

And usually one of those records you could make kind of a specialty thing.

I mean, I was still 15 when the phone rang.

It was a call late one night and my friend who was an engineer said, you're not gonna believe this, but Word Records wants to offer you a record deal.

And I was 15, so I think the whole world's making fun of me.

And I was like, are you messing with me? My dad picked up the phone and said, hey, it's after phone hours.

And so in the mid-'80s, several different large record companies were saying, hey, there's kind of this grassroots faith music that actually is selling records.

And so some people from A&M Records started kind of – looking at what I was doing.

But really, it was the record company, the Christian record company I was signed to was Word Records.

And it was originally out of Waco, Texas.