MercyMe – "Bigger than us"
Articles from CCM Magazine
By Matt Connor, CCMMagazine.com
Is there another peak for MercyMe to scale? With multiple Dove Award wins and GRAMMY Award-nominations, multi-Platinum singles and numerous chart-topping albums, the popular pop-rock band is now the subject of a theatrical box office hit, I Can Only Imagine (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions, Mar. 16, 2018). Their platform, at this point, is a global one and has been for some time.
To hear bassist Nathan Cochran tell the story of MercyMe’s success, it’s clear that they’ve been along for the ride for some time. They’ve simply leaned in the direction they’ve felt the Holy Spirit’s leading and that obedience has brought Cochran and the rest of MercyMe—Bart Millard, Mike Scheuchzer, Robin Shaffer, Barry Graul— to such great heights.
With a new greatest hits project (I Can Only Imagine—The Very Best Of MercyMe, Fair Trade Services, Mar. 2, 2018—buy) and the popular new motion picture out now, we recently spent some time with Cochran to hear about MercyMe’s journey from a group of guys playing summer camps to joining Billy Graham in his final ministry moments.
CCM Magazine: With a new movie out and a greatest hits project, it makes me curious how much of any of this were you able to picture when MercyMe was first starting? Did you have a vision for a legacy like this at all?
Nathan Cochran: Honestly when we first started, we just wanted to be able to pay our electric bill, which didn’t happen quite a bit, unfortunately. [Laughs] We were all pretty young when we started doing this. I was nineteen when I started playing with the guys, so there were some years in there when we were a bunch of bachelors. We were guys running around summer camps trying to make music for a living.
I think we started figuring out pretty quickly that some of the songs we were writing and things we were doing meant a lot to people. We took that seriously in the best possible way, not in a pressure to perform or fulfill, but we knew things were happening around us that were bigger than us. I think everything that’s happened with us over the years, we were fortunate that we didn’t treat those things like a stepping-stone to something bigger. We treated it like, “Wow, people like what we’re doing. I guess that means we get to keep doing this.” That’s always been our mindset. We try to be diligent and responsible with what we’re given yet not take ourselves too seriously along the way.
CCM: When the milestones begin to add up, does that become more challenging to protect that?
NC: It can, to be perfectly honest. You get to a point where it’s not just the five guys in the band. It becomes all of the people working around you and for you and with you. Outside of that, there are expectations of people that are listening to your music, coming to the shows, buying the records. All of that stuff plays into what we’re doing and it would be dishonest for me to say that doesn’t come into play, since it does. You can start to feel this pressure for a song like “I Can Only Imagine,” how do you follow that up? What do you do with that? [Laughs]
There were some moments early on when we didn’t know what to do. We knew that we couldn’t recreate what “I Can Only Imagine” has done, so we didn’t even try. We decided to say, “You know what, let’s write about what we’re passionate about. Let’s stay honest and if people stick with us, so be it.” So yeah, we’ve had multiple occasions over the years to feel the pressure. Some of that was self-imposed, trying to fulfill our own wants and desires over the years that wasn’t always healthy. But it’s been very character-driven over the years. At this point, we all really trust each other when things come up to ask if we’re on the right track.
CCM: Is that key to your longevity?
NC: I think so. With anything, you get a bunch of people together and you can get different egos flying around the room. It’s easy to get your feelings hurt when you don’t get your way. But we always have what we call this MercyMe filter when it comes down to songwriting. Let’s say we intended to write something rock and roll, we have done in the past, we have demos that no one will ever hear that creep up on Metallica. [Laughs] Not really, but you know what I mean. But we start writing and it all goes through this filter where it sounds like MercyMe.
CCM: When the milestones begin to add up, does that become more challenging to protect that?
NC: It can, to be perfectly honest. You get to a point where it’s not just the five guys in the band. It becomes all of the people working around you and for you and with you. Outside of that, there are expectations of people that are listening to your music, coming to the shows, buying the records. All of that stuff plays into what we’re doing and it would be dishonest for me to say that doesn’t come into play, since it does. You can start to feel this pressure for a song like “I Can Only Imagine,” how do you follow that up? What do you do with that? [Laughs]
There were some moments early on when we didn’t know what to do. We knew that we couldn’t recreate what “I Can Only Imagine” has done, so we didn’t even try. We decided to say, “You know what, let’s write about what we’re passionate about. Let’s stay honest and if people stick with us, so be it.” So yeah, we’ve had multiple occasions over the years to feel the pressure. Some of that was self-imposed, trying to fulfill our own wants and desires over the years that wasn’t always healthy. But it’s been very character-driven over the years. At this point, we all really trust each other when things come up to ask if we’re on the right track.
CCM: Is that key to your longevity?
NC: I think so. With anything, you get a bunch of people together and you can get different egos flying around the room. It’s easy to get your feelings hurt when you don’t get your way. But we always have what we call this MercyMe filter when it comes down to songwriting. Let’s say we intended to write something rock and roll, we have done in the past, we have demos that no one will ever hear that creep up on Metallica. [Laughs] Not really, but you know what I mean. But we start writing and it all goes through this filter where it sounds like MercyMe.
We try to push the boundaries, but to be perfectly honest, the song is more important to us. I’ve had guys over the years ask me about our first few label records where we didn’t change things up a whole lot. They wanted us to be edgier, but I’d say, “That’s really just not what we do.” We’re a pop-rock band and enjoy writing songs that mean something to people. If certain instrumentation gets in the way, then we avoid that. We got some criticism early on for that sort of thing, but we just try to write important songs. I think we still feel that way.
CCM: You mentioned earlier that you recognized the songs you were writing meant a lot to people. Was there an earliest moment when you realized this thing was picking up steam?
NC: We used to do a lot of church camps in the early days. We’d be gone all summer hopping week to week doing camps and we would lead worship quite a bit at those camps. It was usually cover songs of popular worship music at the moment because we hadn’t written enough of our own songs at that point. But we did get to a point where we wanted to try writing our own songs, so we would hole ourselves up in somebody’s church Sunday school room to work on them.
Like I said, if we were honest and tried to write from the heart, whether it was very sing-along or not, people responded to that. I remember being at camps early on, we would sing a song we’d just written the day before and it would actually connect with people. One day, you’re standing in front of a group of kids that you’ve never seen before and they start singing along. Then the next day, you’re in front of a retirement community singing along to the same songs. You realize it doesn’t matter what walk of life, apparently what we’re doing really means something. It’s bigger than us. It’s a fortunate thing that I can look back and have 100 different memories of how we were having an early impact on people.
Read the rest of the article HERE on CCMMagazine.com
