Hey guys, Vince here back with another artist interview. This time around I’m chatting with Aaron Stone, the voice behind the music and lyrics of My Epic, the band that doesn’t quite seem to fit on Facedown Records, yet they form a perfect union. My Epic released their new effort Behold last month to stellar reviews. Fans have been connecting with it lyrically and musically, and in our talk Aaron explains all about the ambient tone, what it takes to write an album, and their recording process. I hope you guys enjoy it!
IVM: What’s up guys, today I’m chatting with a man you have no reason not to know. A member of the group My Epic, in 2010 the group released Yet to rave reviews and followed that with the acoustic Broken Voices in 2011. Just last month they released the highly anticipated Behold to excellent reviews across the board. The man I’m talking about is Aaron Stone. Aaron welcome.
Aaron: Hey Vince, how are you doing?
IVM: Doing great man, thanks for taking a moment out of your day to chat with us. I’ve got a couple of questions regarding the new album and Facedown Records. Aaron we both know that Facedown Records is known for their metal and hardcore bands. How does it feel knowing that you’re the most unique group on that label?
Aaron: I just thought we were another metal band, I didn’t know there was any difference! (laughs)
IVM: Oh, come on! (laughs)
Aaron: No. When we first got a message from Jason who runs the label and now is one of my best friends asking us if we were interested in signing with them it obviously threw us off. In high school all my buddies were into old Facedown stuff, big Figure Four fans, NIV fans, so I didn’t think they knew who we were. But then we got to know them and their heart and at the time they were starting a side label to sign other types of artists. We’re sort of the only band that lasted. They put that aside and signed us over. It’s been one of the best things for us. Someone has to offer us a ridiculous, ridiculous deal for us to ever leave because they treat us so well. We love being on their and all the bands are rad. It’s cool getting to be the change of pace, whenever we get put on a Facedown event we get to be something really different. We love the heart of the label and they’ve always been so supportive. They’ve always let us do what we feel led to do, so what more can you ask for?
IVM: Speaking of being a change-up during Facedown events, you’ll be performing at Facedown Fest. This isn’t your first gig there. How is it performing with the rest of those hardcore bands?
Aaron: All those dudes are our friends now, and now we’re one of the more mature bands on the label. We’ve been around, I think War of Ages is the only band that’s been on the label longer. We played for our first time in 2009 and that was interesting. We opened the night and I think kids were kind of confused because we were such a new band and they didn’t know what to expect. We knew a lot of the kids there were kids who grew up in the church, so you could still feel people responding to what the Lord was trying to do. Every year it’s gotten better and better. The last couple years we’ve had such an incredible set that out of all the places we’ve played, Facedown Fest is where we feel the most accepted and appreciated for what we really do. Kids just want to worship the Lord, and it’s awesome. That’s the day we circle on the calendar, we look forward to that pretty much more than every other date of the year as far as playing shows go.
IVM: Awesome. Let’s talk about the new album, called Behold. On Facedown’s website you broke up the album into 2 different segments: songs about the Lord and songs sung to Him. What inspired that purposeful dichotomy in this album?
Aaron: It was something we began talking about when our last record was done. My brother and my best friend were rejoining the band at the time, and we realized what we really had a heart for was singing to Him. We just wanted to sing to Him. So many of the songs that I’ve sung in the past, almost every one has been a very didactic song. I’m always teaching a lesson, it’s always some big thing that I’m laying out as a thesis in the song. In this one I felt I just wanted to shut up and sing to Him, I just want to sing about Him. The two ideas just came up. There’s a trilogy on the record, the first song, the last song, and the middle song. They tell the story of His return, that moment when we will actually behold Him. Those are sung about Him because it didn’t seem natural to sing it as if I’m in that moment, trying to predict what it would be like. But the rest were sung from the heart of the psalmist. I just spent the last year after Broken Voices really just reading the Psalms, just dwelling on the heart of David and the other psalmists, reading about these guys who are warriors but who walk with the Lord and who sang to Him all the time. It really just became natural to want to sing to Him instead of sing about Him. That’s the two aspects of beholding, calling others to behold Him and just singing about what that process has been like for me.
IVM: I’m glad you’re talking about the Psalms. In fact, me and my girlfriend are going through a daily devotion where we read three Psalms a day, then we’ll talk about it later on. It’s great, and I see exactly where you are coming from when I listen to the album. I’m reading the Psalms and I’m recognizing the similarities in Behold. It’s really cool to see how you’re writing from the different styles of Psalms. David and the other writers write numerous different things in the Psalms, whether they’re asking God for redemption or asking for justice or whatever it may be.
Aaron: Yea, definitely. As you read the Psalms, you’ll see it really covers the entire extent of life. There’s a Psalm pretty much for everything you can be going through. Not like, “My jet ski broke.” (laughs) But everything you can feel, every human emotion. That really spoke to me, reading the Psalms and finding something to relate to. Really the Psalms are just an easy way of singing about the breadth of life, and the way in which we relate to God in those moments.
IVM: Was there one specific psalm that stuck out to you the most when you were writing the album, or one song you enjoyed writing more than the others while digging into the Psalms?
Aaron: Aaaaaah, well you know…I think the one that came the easiest…well, I will say none of them came easy, it was by far the hardest record I have ever written. I probably spent well over 100 hours on each song lyrically, just lyrically. It just takes me that long. There’s a lot of waiting and praying and thinking and fasting and waiting and waiting and waiting, and when you’re done waiting you wait a little longer. I think the ones that came easiest were the three I was writing about Him, because I’m used to doing that. Then the song called “Liturgy”, which is really a song about trying to write songs for Him. That’s really the key to what the record is about, that feeling like I’ve never written a song that’s good enough. And that’s true. No matter how good the song is, even if it’s an anointed song, it’s never going to say everything that needs to be said about Him. That’s kind of the beauty of it, I always feel drawn to write more songs. I’d say the one that’s really the heart of the record and the heart of the band is a really short song called “Selah”, it’s the second to last song. We always called it Dead Man when we were working on it. It’s one of 2 songs out of something like 50 songs that I’ve written for My Epic, one of 2 songs ever that almost came to me in 1 minute, the whole song came. It really speaks to the heart of us as believers and as a band. Selah is used in the Psalms all the time, I’m sure you’ve been seeing it. It kind of means pause and think about what was just said. So it’s kind of the heart of our heart, so I guess “Selah” would be the one to stick out the most.
IVM: There’s a noticeable ethereal quality, an atmospheric trait musically to Behold that we didn’t really hear on previous albums. I was a big fan of Yet, “Lower Still” is one of my favorite songs. You didn’t really have that atmospheric quality to the music in that album. In Behold, do you think it was just a natural progression of the band or it just fit the style you were looking for on this album?
Aaron: It definitely was natural. There were 3 things that went into that. We really liked Yet, we really felt good about how that turned out and super thankful that people loved it and the Lord used it. That was very intentionally a raw record. We decided bass, guitar, drums, vocals, that’s it. That’s what made that record sound the way it did, tons of feedback and my guitar just making noise. We felt we did it well enough that we couldn’t do that thing again and do it better. We still wanted to write these big, long, and for lack of a better word, epic songs, but we couldn’t do that again. That was reason 1. Reason 2 would be because that’s the kind of music we listen to anyways. We’re really big into ambient music, ethereal music. All of our favorite band is probably Sigur Ros. I listen to bands like Hammock all the time. That would be reason number 2, that’s just where our heads are at as musicians. You have to move to what is inspiring you and begin to incorporate that. The third reason would be that since Jeremiah has come back on bass, Tanner, who had been filling in, could move back to guitar, which is his original instrument. He is a very ambient guitarist. It allowed us to do what we want and play to his strengths. I’m a very riff-heavy guitarist, and even though we wanted to do ambient things before, there’s really no way to do ambience when you have one guitar without using a ton of live tracks. Since we had him, I could write these big riffs and he could still do all this ambient stuff and our guitars don’t argue with each other, our styles compliment really well because we never do the same thing. It really worked out well. We really just want to continue to grow as a band and move towards what is inspiring us. I think if you take Broken Voice and Yet and then a lot of the ambient stuff we listen to, then mix it you get Behold.
IVM: What was it like to bring the whole original crew back together for Behold? Did you fall easily back into working with each other?
Aaron: It was super, natural, and it was also supernatural. (laughs) My brother is the drummer, he’s been my brother my whole life, except for the first three years. He’s my best friend and he’s incredibly supportive. We just happen to be living in the same city again, by the Lord’s will. Then I got my best friend hired at our church as well, who had been our bass player forever. Even when they weren’t in the band they were still my 2 closest friends, I talked to them every week. They were still very invested in the band even though they weren’t on the road anymore, it was still very personal. My brother supported the band a lot financially once he stopped playing in the band because he knew how tight things were. He believed in the ministry. Jeremiah started filling in on bass when we were touring Broken Voices, we couldn’t play it as a three piece. That allowed Tanner to play guitar. We were just like, “Well, you’ve got time again, life has kind of worked out, why don’t you come back?” Then Matt, the drummer who had come in for Jesse, needed to go back to college and Jesse was here saying, “I want to play again.” It was really awesome, it was all really natural. The only intentional thing we did was Tanner really wanted us to write the songs as the original three piece, then him kind of add to it and work as the producer so the songs wouldn’t lose the heart of what makes My Epic, My Epic. He would sit in a room and have a guitar in his hands, but he would never go, “Oh, then I can play this riff.” We spent most of our time talking about a song philosophically, like where does it need to go next, what do we need to feel next, what needs to happen. He added lots of layers afterward. It really worked out amazing. I’m still glad to be playing music with my brother and my best friend again, it makes a lot of sense.
IVM: That is a blessing, and it’s God-ordained. That’s really cool to see you guys come together again for Behold. Speaking earlier of Broken Voices, it was an acoustic EP, something a little different. How different was the process of recording and performing Broken Voices, or even Yet, how different is Behold compared to those two projects?
Aaron: Well, we haven’t been a heavy touring band since Broken Voice. We did a couple tours of Broken Voice. We have to play Broken Voice as a four piece, we have to play Behold as a four piece. That’s the biggest difference. We can play Yet as a three piece and it sounds really good, really big. We knew that we wanted to head in a new direction. It’s definitely different. Behold has a lot more layers to it. The recording process, the writing process for Broken Voice, we kind of call those, and this is a jokey stupid term, we call them “songy songs”. There are songs, and then there are songy songs. Songy songs have two verses, two choruses, then a break then a chorus. We’ve never stuck to that before, but with Broken Voices, almost all the songs I wrote on my acoustic and most of the time I felt they were 80%, then I would take them to Tanner and he would say, “No, those songs are done, you just need to admit they don’t need anymore parts.” It definitely helped me learn to be a simpler musician. Overall, even though Behold is our biggest sounding record by a long shot, my guitar playing gets simpler on every record because I think I’m learning more about what is strong in melody and complex doesn’t necessarily mean good. There was a lot of differences in the recording process too. With Broken Voice we had these songs and just wanted to record them. We weren’t trying to become a folk band. We just want to make more records period, and whatever they sound like is whatever the Lord gives us, you know?
IVM: Sure. I mentioned earlier that the album Behold has gotten rave reviews across the board, every review site that I’ve seen has given it very high marks. What interesting feedback have you gotten since the release of the album a month ago?
Aaron: It has been super encouraging. We were super thankful that our fans were patient because we were hoping it would come out early spring of last year. We almost pushed it back a full year. I think our fans and our friends knew that we weren’t going to put it out until we felt 100% that it was the best thing we could do, that is was really what the Lord wanted to say and it was the best we could do to say it. Honestly the record was done in July, I just didn’t have the lyrics done. So the whole band, the label, everyone was telling us to wait for the lyrics, because that’s so important to us. Really, I didn’t know if people would be as receptive to it because when you have an album that you love by a band, and I think a lot of people really liked Yet, and that was great, I think they kind of gave Broken Voice a pass. They liked it, but they didn’t judge it. They were like, “This isn’t another full length so they can do whatever and I’ll like it anyway.” But with this, they wondered if it would be as good as Yet. People loved Yet, and I think it was the best record we could make and I was so glad that the Lord gave it to us. But I didn’t know if they would be as receptive because once you have a favorite record by a band, you know, can they ever do that again? I guess I was just surprised overall that people have been so supportive, and almost immediately, most of the feedback has been spiritual feedback. That is way more important to us. This song meant this to me, God has been speaking this into my life, and I’ve been convicted about this, and I’ve felt what you’re saying here. That’s the biggest thing when you’re writing a song you’re trying to communicate. The fact that people understand what you are communicating even more so than loving a riff is the biggest thing, that people get the heart of it.
IVM: Is there any song that surprised you that people were picking out specifically, saying things like, “This message you were talking about in this song was exactly what I was feeling,” or you just didn’t expect to hear the response that you did for a particular song?
Aaron: I don’t know if there is. I always tell people that every single song for us is like an Ebenezer moment. In the Old Testament the Israelites would always build this monument, an Ebenezer, when God did something huge. Every song for me is always one of those. So I can understand when people can relate to something because every one of those is so personal to me. We asked our fans what was their favorite song, and a lot of them said “Zion”, which I think is my favorite song on the record. It’s interesting because it’s such a pretty song. Then “Hail”, which we knew was kind of the big song. But a lot of people did say “Liturgy”, which surprised me because it’s like a really pretty, chill jam song and it’s about songwriting. That was like the number 3 song. That surprised us for sure.
IVM: I’ve got a couple of readers from Indie Vision Music that mentioned how much they love “Liturgy”. You talked a little bit about the inspiration before, so you already answered that question before I asked it! (laughs)
Aaron: (laughs) Sorry about that! Honestly, I was so frustrated trying to write songs and they weren’t coming. I was spending weeks at a time, 10 hours by myself praying and waiting with my Bible and journal. I would listen to the song about 400 times in a row. I would pick up my guitar and play it and nothing would come. So the most natural thing to write was a song about how I can’t write a song. It’s really ironic, but it’s very true.
IVM: I think it’s ingenious, that’s a great thing to write about because nobody else has done it. This is kind of the first song about how you wish that your words were more pure and holy, but you just can’t write a song good enough for God. I think it’s very unique and definitely rings true for a lot of listeners because they get it. When they’re singing songs in church and in worship I get the sense that a lot of people feel the same way.
Aaron: Well praise God man, that’s encouraging, thanks for saying that. I’m glad they feel that way. We always say that about anything they see in us that the value is in Him. That’s encouraging.
IVM: Yea. Let’s go back to your sound. You guys do have a crazy unique sound. You don’t really sound like anybody else, you guys are My Epic and there’s no doubt about it. You’ve got lyrics like a worship band, you sing like an indie rock band, and you play music like a hardcore band.
Aaron: (laughs) I take that as a massive compliment, so thank you!
IVM: (laughs) So when was the moment, that Ebenezer moment that you just decided, “This is our sound and we’re going with it”?
Aaron: You know, it just kind of evolved over time. The songs of My Epic has always started with the ideas the Lord has given me, and I don’t take any pride in that because I don’t know where it comes from. Obviously when you spend 100 hours to write a song you don’t know what you’re doing, and that is clearly my formula, I have no clue what I am doing, I just wait. My Epic is just what happens when you get these people in a room. When you put Aaron, Jesse, and Jeremiah in a room in 2010, Yet is what we made. That’s just what was interesting to me on the guitar, that’s what was interesting to us as a band. When you put me and Tanner and Matt in a room, Broken Voice is what happened. It’s just a gift from the Lord. There is a lot of intentionality, but there aren’t a lot of rules about what we can’t do. We just talk about what is wise and what feels right. We talk a lot about feeling and dynamic. We talk about songs a lot more philosophically than we talk about keys and chord structure. I like to play cool riffs, I play guitar all the time and I’m always just listening for something that interests me. It’s not usually a chord structure or a key. Sometimes it’s hard to describe, there’s almost nothing to it, but it just sticks out to me and if I follow it there’s usually a song there. My brother and Jeremiah are both very groovy players. We’ve always liked playing heavy, we’ve always liked playing groovy. When I say heavy, there is a rock and roll edge to it, not just hardcore. We like rock and roll. And we like really pretty stuff. You mix that and that’s kind of us. There’s heavy moments, there’s lots of grooviness to it, and it’s pretty, and that’s the stuff we listen to, that’s what we like, and that’s what we make. It is funny, because i do think we’ve gotten to the point where we have something of a My Epic sound. I said it to Jeremiah when the record was done, like who else would write these songs, and I actually meant it in a negative way. It’s probably a bad thing if nobody else wants to write the songs we are writing. But it was kinda cool too, because there’s no competition. We write these songs and if people like them we’ll keep writing them.
IVM: There are bands that you say, “This band sounds like such-and-such, or this group sounds like so-and-so.” I think My Epic one day is going to be like one of those you use to describe other bands, like “They sound like My Epic from Behold.”
Aaron: Yea! (laughs) Well that’s a huge compliment! There’s definitely bands who have heavily, heavily influenced us and if you mixed them all together you’d get us, but we’re super glad to be thought of that way.
IVM: I’ve got a couple of questions from our readers at Indie Vision Music. Chandler wants to know if you write the lyrics first or the music first?
Aaron: Music always first. Sometimes I’ll get concepts about the lyrics, but usually I’ll start writing the music and about halfway through the process I’ll start to have a feeling about what the song is about based on what the song sounds like. What in my life dovetails with this? We have a lot of conversations as the band, in particular me and Jeremiah, about what God is speaking to us about. Yea, it’s always music first. Sometimes songs will be done for a year and a half before they get any lyrics on them.
IVM: Wow. Chandler wants to know if the rumor going around about a possible collaboration between My Epic and Shai Lynne is true. Is that happening?
Aaron: (laughs) That is nothing more than internet speculation. We’d love to! I love R&B, my brother and I grew up on R&B. I grew to love hip-hop when I lived in Charlotte for 5 years in the inner city. We’d love to do something with him. He’s got a lot going on, he’s much bigger now. I’ve never met him, we just exchanged some tweets. So if something worked out we’d love to do it. Honestly, time is short for us and it would have to be a priority for him. He’s a much bigger artist than we are. But we’d love to do that! I can do a decent Justin Timberlake impression, and Jesse and Jeremiah are a real strong rhythm section, so maybe we can make it workt, I don’t know.
IVM: I could see that, especially lyrically I think you guys go to the same places. I think you could make it work.
Aaron: We’d love to try, or go down swinging either way.
IVM: Evan wants to know what besides Scripture has the strongest influence been on you lyrically.
Aaron: Well, if we’re talking about things I’ve read, which I’m guessing is what he means because he’s talking about my favorite book, it would be C. S. Lewis. That is pretty obvious to anyone who has listened to us. I did my thesis on him in grad school. And Andrew Murray, who is essentially a devotional writer who died within the last 100 years. He wrote a book called Humility, he wrote a book called Abide In Me. Those would be my greatest influences book-wise.
IVM: When you sit down to write lyrics, where does that influence come from?
Aaron: I guess really great writers. I don’t have any desire to be thought of as the greatest lyricist ever. If I’m going to write lyrics then I want to do the best I can, that’s what Christ calls for me in everything I do. When I sit down and I’m going to write lyrics and communicate in a poetic way, I’m measuring it against the best stuff I’ve ever read, which is why I think I’ve got a long way to go. I don’t just want to be good for a rock band because I think the Lord deserves my best. I’m not saying I’m going to be like any of those dudes, but I’m always reading, and I really love reading intelligent people who love the Lord. I guess subconsciously, those are the things that push me.
IVM: Ok. I’ve got a question about your album Yet. Many people commented on this question, so I must ask it.
Aaron: Let me guess, let me guess. Did they ask when it’s coming out on vinyl?
IVM: No, no they didn’t. (laughs) Is it?
Aaron: We hope to put it on vinyl, it just depends on how well Behold does on vinyl. But it’s in talks.
IVM: That’s good to know. Tim and several other people mentioned that they connected with the song “Lashes”. They were wondering if you could give them a little insight into how that song came about and the story behind it.
Aaron: That and “Lower Still” are the two songs we get the most feedback from, and when the record was done we kind of knew that it was going to be that way. Yea, “Lashes” is about me, about my struggles and mistakes. My struggle with lust, bad choices in relationships, and wrestling with pornography. That song is accurate to exactly where I was at that moment. I was still really struggling and really wrestling, and God was doing all these amazing things in my life, giving me all of these incredible opportunities. Still I was wrestling so hard with basic stuff I knew I shouldn’t be doing. That was the first song we wrote for Yet musically, and we were on tour for the previous record and I told the guys I think that song is supposed to be about my struggle with lust. That was probably a year before we even went to studio, which is way far out for us. I started writing, and my prayer, and I kept asking the guys to pray over it, was I don’t want to write a song that gets overlooked. I want it to really speak to it, but I also don’t want to write just to be edgy. I just wanted it to be real, not scandalous. That song is literally where I was even at the moment I was singing the lyrics into the microphone in studio, just struggling with not loving Him more than my lust. I really felt like I spent a lot of my time bribing Him. “I won’t sleep with her because You told me I can’t do that, but I’ll do all this other stuff that I shouldn’t do, and I know I shouldn’t do, but I don’t really care about being holy, I’m doing it so I can bribe You. You still have to give me an incredibly, Godly, beautiful wife because I never broke that one rule You said.” When very clearly Scripture says it’s the heart of the matter, even more so. That was where it was, and the postscript to that was God continued to work in my heart and “Lazarus”, which is a song on Broken Voice, is kind of about the healing that took place out of that. The first line is, “I can’t sing that song the same way anymore,” and I’m talking about Lashes (in the song). First time I did it we were playing Cornerstone in 2011 and in the middle of Lashes my guitar kept going out of tune. I couldn’t do anything, we were in the middle of the song. It was probably one of the biggest shows we had ever played, you know, Cornerstone was always fun for us. We got to the end of the song when the song drops down and it’s supposed to be really pretty and you sing along, and my guitar was so out of tune there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t keep singing and there was no other instruments at that point. So I just had to stop and retune my guitar, and I think it was the second song in. It was incredibly humbling. It took that night to, “here’s this rock band on stage with lights” to “here’s a bunch of dudes just trying to be honest.” When I finished the song, it has the lyric, “Have I loved too many daughters to ever be whole, I’m ashamed that you love me, send grace for the hearts that I stole.” In the moment I changed it to, “But I’ve not loved too many daughters to ever be whole, and I’m not ashamed that you love me because you send grace to the hearts that I stole.” Everyone just started cheering because they all knew the lyrics. It was so clearly a moment of redemption. That song is about me and I’m really glad that it’s…I mean, I’ve had so many kids pull me aside and say, “Did you write that song about me? Did someone tell you about me?” Just craziness. I hope God is continuing to speak that truth into people’s life.
IVM: Yeah, and clearly He is because people are still interested in it years later. That is a really deep song, and I bet it was hard to write too. But the honesty there, people just hear the honesty and they just connect with it.
Aaron: Yea, definitely had to explain some stuff to my parents, because it was like the first song we released. I had some apologies I needed to make to people, but I knew it was what I needed to say. I’m glad God used it.
IVM: thruchristalone777 asks, “As a band that aims to be Christ-centered, what sort of temptations or trials have you faced as a band or individually while recording or while on tour?
Aaron: Hmmmm, man, I don’t know. We don’t write singles, so it’s not like there’s been any big fat-cat label dudes telling us to tone it down and they’ll sign us, there’s never been anything like that. Nobody’s ever cared as far as that stuff goes. And we always had each other on the road. There was no real chance of us making really bad decisions like sneaking off with some girl or something because the other two dudes would have gone and found that dude and beat him down, which is what we call accountability. I think the biggest thing is the same temptation that every believer has every day: to forget to be present in the moment, to abide in the Lord every day. To forget that this is the day that the Lord has made, and this is the day that I should rejoice and be glad in Him. This is the day for me to share my faith. This is the day to walk in my giftings and to walk in complete obedience. There is no such thing as partial obedience. I think on tour the hardest thing is every day doing the same thing and playing these songs that are so gut wrenching for me, sometimes just to get lost in them and just play them and sing them and forget what they are about. To try to go on autopilot. And spiritually there is no such thing as autopilot. You’re either walking in the Lord, or you’re walking in your flesh. And we have no reason to walk in our flesh because we have the Spirit. In studio, it’s even more of a grind for us than touring. I pretty much record 18 hours a day, or record 12 hours a day and work on lyrics for 6 and sleep with what’s left. By the end you’re just exhausted, and every record we’ve done I’ve been super sick by the end of the recording process because you don’t see the sun for like…literally the studio we did Yet and Behold in with the amazing Matt Goldman, there is no windows in the entire building. You don’t go outside except maybe to get a meal. You lose all frame of reference to what time of day it is. It’s so easy in those moments to get caught up on what you need to finish again and not abide in Him, not wait on Him or trust in Him. Maybe that’s overly spiritual but that’s the best answer I can come up with.
IVM: No, you know the greatest answer is truth, and that is truth.
Aaron: Yeah. The thing is, every other temptation would have been so much more of a problem if we would have given into that. Once you get into thinking you can have spiritual autopilot and you can just coast, then you’re really cruising for something bad. Your defenses are down, you’re not walking with Him. Then you’re going to sleep with someone, then you’re going to do something you shouldn’t do. You don’t want to lose that first battle.
IVM: Yeah. With that accountability, the guys that are with you who are strong spiritually next to you, that has got to be a huge help to have that accountability as well.
Aaron: Oh, there’s no doubt. With two people that, my brother and my best friend, that I’ve pretty much lived with for the last 10 years, minus a few months, there is nothing hidden. There is nothing I can hide or lie about. There is no two people that I know love me more and there’s no two people who can easier look me in the face and tell me I’m being an idiot. There’s no room to be a rock star. When you’re brothers in your band you can’t really be a rock star because he’ll always just punch you in the butt really hard, or whatever he does to mess with me. Keeps me humble.
IVM: What’s next for My Epic? Any touring, future music plans?
Aaron: Facedown Fest is the next official thing we’re doing. That’s big, that’s exciting. We always encourage people to get those tickets early and bring all your friends. Usually, I can’t guarantee it, but usually that is our only west coast show we play if we’re not touring that year. We’re talking about trying to do a tour this year, but it just depends on everybody’s schedule. We all have, as we call them, “big boy jobs” now. We’d like to do a tour, but man, so far, I’ve never felt done. We finish something and it’s like, exactly what “Liturgy” says, ok, that’s awesome, there are 1,000 more things to be said about Him. As long as He gives us the time and the energy to do it then we’re going to keep doing it. We talked about doing an EP or something like that, probably not another acoustic driven EP. There are so many songs to write and it’s just a matter of time, you know?
IVM: Yea, you write them as that influence pours out. You can’t control when it is, God just gives it when He gives it. When it is, that’s when you write it down.
Aaron: Yea, yea. Just like people set aside time for the person they love to spend time with them, I try to set aside time in my life with the Lord everyday, besides trying to dwell on Him constantly. I also set aside time to listen with my guitar in my hands. You can’t always guarantee that He’s gonna give you something awesome, but you keep tilling the soil, and when He wants to He’ll grow something. No one can control the harvest. So yea, we want to keep making records and keep making music, there’s no reason not to. This record is doing better than any other record we’ve done. What’s important to us is that it’s reaching people and it’s not losing Facedown Records a ton of money. (laughs) As long as we have time and those two things are happening and the Lord still gives us a heart for it, we’ll keep doing it.
IVM: Aaron Stone from My Epic. Thank you so much Aaron for joining me today. We hope and pray that the Lord brings you inspiration and continues to do so because we love the music that you guys release.
Aaron: Alright thanks a lot man, God bless.
