Bebo Norman

Whether you agree or not, Bebo doesn’t really care. He believes he’s been in a creative rut and he’s ready to fix that. Of course, that doesn’t stop most of us from enjoying his music and taking several singles to the higher end of the charts. But that alone doesn’t satisfy the artistic spirit, so Bebo is taking his act to newer levels.

When we met with Bebo at a hotel in Nashville, he’s still working through what he believes about his upcoming September release. It’s fun to talk to an artist when the material is still fresh and the answers to questions are unrehearsed. Here we discuss the ruts he feels he has been in, why he’s been hibernating and what to expect from his new label home at BEC Recordings.

SA: I’d love to start with the move to BEC. Can you tell us about that whole directional change?

Bebo Norman: Absolutely. It ended up being really a natural progression for me. I was with Essential for years with Provident. When I started with them, it was such a boutique label at the time. It was one of those things where it was me, Caedmon’s Call and Jars of Clay. Then it grew and grew which was awesome, but one of the things I loved about signing with them in the first place was that it felt small-minded in a good way, if that makes sense. They thought outside of the box a bit and it’s not that they stopped doing that altogether, but the box got so big that it was a different world.

So when I finished my contract with them, we definitely talked about extending with them, but I was just really interested in reconnecting with that idea of thinking outside of the box. That’s one of the things I like about Tooth & Nail and BEC. I have a long history with Tyson, the general manager with BEC. So honestly, I just kind of landed there. We talked to a few different labels and they were all super-nice and they were all great meetings. But the BEC thing, it’s just head and shoulders above the rest in terms of what I was looking for as a musician to keep things interesting. And even trying to stay engaged with music instead of making the same records over and over. It’s easy to get into the rut of knowing what works and sticking with that. One of the things I wanted to do at BEC and where I wanted to go is redefine what works and what we know works.

SA: So what does that look like? Out of the box Tooth and Nail style would be different than Bebo out of the box, I would think.

Bebo: Very much so. On one level, I’m never going to write songs that are outside of my own life. That’s going to be the common theme. I started making folk records. Over time, I take songs still written out of my own life and that folk mentality, but sort of apply different production or ideas to them. I think it’s a big step in that direction.

SA: Back in the folk direction?

Bebo: No! In the other direction. For example, a song I might play on acoustic guitar, instead of making it a folk song, we’ll take the acoustic guitars and double them and spread them out and double the vocals and spread them out. We’re making a more dramatic record. It has this edge of mystery and drama that I haven’t had on my other records. You go from the extreme of this tricked out acoustic thing and it moves into something bigger. It’s interesting to mess with that folk theme and make it modern.

SA: It sounds like you’re describing Big Blue Sky.

Bebo: Yeah, very much so in the sense that it was a departure. That was such a departure from Ten Thousand Days. But this is less poppy than Big Blue Sky. I won’t say this is rock, but it’s rawer and it’s not super-polished, which is what I like about it. But it has that extreme nature where it has that drama. I’m not quite sure how to describe it yet.

SA: So for production, who do you work with?

Bebo: The last few years have been the beginning of me saying, ‘Man, I just really want to stretch things a bit’ and this record is the first time I’ve been given the freedom to that with a new label and thought process. It’s not that I feel I’m progressing, it’s just that if I don’t keep things interesting for me on a musical level, I don’t know if I would have the same passions to keep doing.

Also, what I mean by ruts is that I have found out what works for me over the years. “Great Light of the World” became a big radio song a few years ago and I’ve always written songs like that, but every record, we sort of have this, ‘Oh, that’s like ‘Great Light of the World’ so we’ll release that.’ I think I’m just interested in trying to see if I can break out of that mold a little bit - not because I don’t love that song or the ones that followed but primarily because there’s new ways to express thoughts and new ways to keep things interesting and moving, so BEC is a natural fit for that.

SA: So who are you working with?

Bebo: I’m producing it with a guy named Jason Ingram. The two of us are producing it.

SA: You worked with him on Dreaming.

Bebo: Yes I did and I think Between the Dreaming and the Coming True was a step into this direction a bit and this is another step in that direction. We’ve written most everything together for this album.

SA: When we did an interview two years ago, you mentioned that when you two started writing together it was an instant connection…

Bebo: And it’s still that way. He’s become a dear friend of mine as well, but we just really connected on a lot of different levels. He’s married with kids and I have my first kid. He’s from California and I’m from Georgia, so we couldn’t be from any more different places, but when it comes to music and producing, we finish each other’s sentences. Somehow it seems like it makes sense. Even if it’s just for a season, it’s the right time for it right now.

SA: Have you thought of doing a more collaborative effort artistically?

Bebo: Yes, I have, but I’m having a hard time finding the time to write my own record right now, much less do a side project. But yes, we have thought about it.

SA: What form would that take?

Bebo: I don’t know. We’re both so slammed, that’s the thing. He’s producing so much stuff right now. The first record he did was the one we did two years ago or more. Maybe three. But now he’s producing non-stop. He did the Rush of Fools record and Tenth Avenue North and Meredith Andrews who has a bunch of stuff rattling around right now. He’s staying slammed, so it will be interesting to see if we have time to make that happen.

SA: It seems you went into this hibernation of sorts because there’s hardly anything current to find on your life right now. Is that a matter of ‘I had a kid, so sorry world, but…?’ Or is it a creative thing?

Bebo: I think in a lot of ways it was that I had been so slammed for years and this last year, I did take a break to be in a small world for a while. I needed some air. The fun thing is coming out on the other side of that and being in a place where I’m excited to make music again. I’m excited to go in a new direction. I’m excited to explore things. I think the problem for me as far as that rut goes, I think it began to steal the joy for me out of playing music.

The things I was really drawing life from were these relationships, but music always took me away from those. It became the enemy of the intimacy of my life. So diving in those relationships and my wife and my son the last year has made me evaluate and reminded me that I still feel compelled to create music and that I want to do it differently. I want it to be interesting again, so that’s why it’s fun to make a record that’s not a folk record.

SA: So it has been as interesting as you hoped?

Bebo: Oh, yeah! This has been one of my favorite processes of any record.

SA: You tend to work in such themes, it seems, so in this season, what is the theme?

Bebo: That’s a good question. I’m still trying to work that out. Usually the themes don’t happen by plan. I’m just writing by experience, but since our lives are so cyclical that way or seasonal… the record I’m working on is usually indicative of that season. So if I have been lonely that usually comes out on the record. Right now, I think this is an observant record. I’ve been watching a lot of other close relationships around me right now and I tend to write out of those perspectives of watching somebody else. But because they’re so close to me or personal, they feel they are bring written from my own life. Yet they are not out of my own life, so it’s still intimate but different.

I’m watching these people I know that I love and they love the Lord but they’re struggling with addiction or with their marriage or battling cancer. How do you balance those things - the peace that we can live with and yet those issues and dealing with them? You can define faith in a number of ways, but I think a main way is that faith is this desperate clinging. We just hold on in a desperate clinging to Christ in a world that is beautiful some times and other times it is not. So that seems to be the theme because I get that. I will take somebody’s situation, like in a new song called ‘A Million Raindrops,’ and it’s about addiction. I haven’t struggled in my own life with that, but these people are so close that it’s like my own struggle.

SA: It seems on every work that you’re very drawn to tension. It seems no matter what form it takes on, it always comes back to this idea that artistically, you’re drawn to tension in some way or another.

Bebo: You’re absolutely right. That’s a really interesting point because I’ve never put a finger on that, but that’s the absolute truth. Every record I’ve made on some level or another, whether it’s in me or someone else, it’s always about some tension or another. That tension is universal. We all feel it. You’re right. Even in that definition of faith from earlier, there’s a strong tension there. It’s the push and the pull that God is in both places and that we can see Him in all of those things.

SA: So what’s the tangible title and release date?

Bebo: We don’t have a title yet but the release date, I think, is September 16. I haven’t quite figured out because I like to step back and choose a title that fits the entire work. Big Blue Sky was this big, poppy, airy work. So I don’t know what I would name it…

SA: So if you absolutely had to name it today?

Bebo: [Pause] We just wrote a song called “White Flag” that sounds like a cool title. And it makes sense. It’s about letting go and wrestling with the idea that I don’t want to fight, even if it’s painful, what God’s trying to communicate. If I had to name it today, that would probably be it, but who knows.

• www.bebonorman.com
• www.myspace.com/bebonorman

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