Apologetix: Interview with Karl Messner of Apologetix

MQ: Have you had a mentor or someone whom you sought direction from during this process - whether it is on the music production side or even on a spiritual side?

KM: I've surrounded myself with people who are smarter than me. They're easy to find. (laugh) I've surrounded myself with people who are smarter than me and more mature than I and a better balance of Christians. Our lead singer Jay is all of our mentors...spiritually. The guy knows Scripture cold. He lives it like nobody else has ever lived it. Jay sets the example... He really sets the example for everyone around him. He is the epicenter of spirituality within the group. I'm not saying like he's some sort of David Koresh. He's no charismatic leader or anything like that. He just quietly studies the Scripture. He must have read the Bible around thirty times since I've known him. He's just dynamite. When I get stuck on any little side story in the Bible and I can't figure it out, I'll ask him. He'll know all about that story like it happened to his brother and he can tell me how it ties in with so many other places in Scripture. So it is like, 'Hey, I want to be more like that because I want to be that useful to somebody.'

MQ: Was there a definite point in time or some confirmer that made you realize that is what I should be doing with my life?

KM: It wasn't in the begining that my mom thought this was a good idea. I had a big corporate job and I was climbing the corporate ladder. I was doing this ministry on the side - as my mom said, 'I was in a band.' It really got out of hand with visibility and touring and stuff like that. The next thing you know we're going to Hawaii with FFH and we're doing all of these other things. I really did not have enough time to do full time ministry and full time job and still be married and sane. I had to come to a decision. Something had to give. I couldn't talk my wife into moving out cause she wouldn't like that at all. (laughing) I wasn't going to quit the band. I didn't want to do that either. So, I had to walk away from a job. And that is like walking out of a window onto an open plank on a fifteen story building. If you have a pizza job, that is no big deal because you can go back and get yourself another pizza job. But when you've worked a relationship with your boss and have developed a situation where he needs you to survive and you've been able to translate that into raises and now you're making salary level, family raising income ... and now you're going to throw it away knowing you can never get it back, you'll have to start all over. And it was my mom who said, 'I think you need to do this - I think you need to walk away from that job.' So hearing that from her meant a lot. Oh - and she also taught me how to play guitar. (laughing)

MQ: I read in your bio that you had met Chet Atkins.

KM: He's just amazing. He really is. There are other guitar players that are better or whatever...but there is something about him. My girlfriend at the time was a major Chet Atkins nut and I took her to see Chet Atkins to surprise her. She actually didn't know where she was going. We actually got in the theater before she knew what we were doing. After the show, I snuck around backstage and we got to meet him and she gave him a hug and she told him she loved him. She was just starstruck with Chet Atkins. It was just unbelievable.

MQ: What CDs are you listening to or what music inspires you?

What music are you listening to these days?

KM: John Mayer is very talented, from a secular side of things. What I listen to the most is for research - stuff that we're deciding if we're going to cover, parody them. So I'm listening to a hundred songs to see which one of those I like and we like. But from a standpoint of just enjoying music, I love to go back and just listen to some of the sappy music from the singer/songwriter era - the sixties and seventies. I love listening to James Taylor, the BeeGees - did I say that out loud? That is some of the best music in the world. I can't go very long without listening to a Beatles song. I love, I just love some of the real funky new modern stuff. 'This Love' by Maroon 5 is an awesome song. A really tight little number. How did they do this? It's just so simple yet it is so funky. It doesn't sound like anything I've heard recently. It's like 'Ah, they did it again.' They came up with a new sound. You know, there are those guys. Every once in a while I come across a band where I go 'WOW - that is just a dynamite sound.'

MQ: Shameless self promotion time. Any thing you want the website visitors to know about? Any projects?

KM: We just put out 'Adam Up' this year, actually the end of last year, and it has become our most popular CD. People are really digging it. And we've released a couple of singles from it. One of the singles was 'Look Yourself' a parody of Eminem. That actually went to number one on the Christian Hip Hop Singles chart on a national basis.

MQ: Love the banner, by the way.

KM: Shameless self promotion time! We're already hard at work on our next CD. Our next CD project is going to include something we've never done before. We'll never do it again. Not many people do it but it's very cool and it's going to make a lot of people happy. We're talking fall, okay. We don't have a name for the project but I can tell you this, we already know every song that is going to be on it. That is all done as far as the decision making. It takes a long time to record stuff so we're going to be doing that as we're promoting. We always do songs that we need to do. You know, 'Oh, there's a song that we have to do because it is so doggone popular' or 'That song was number one for seventy two weeks so we have got to do it.' But this album is not the songs we need to do. It's the songs we want to do. These were songs that we voted because we just loved the song or if Jay has already written a parody for it - we just love the parody. We do a song - I won't tell you exactly what is it - okay, how can I tell you which song it is? We do a song about Hell. It is a dynamite parody. It is a great song. The original song is great - I won't tell you the song. However, nobody likes the original song. They're like, 'Yeah, whatever.' When they heard our new version they said, 'You need to put that on the CD.' So, the song is about Hell. You'll know exactly which one it is when it comes out. You'll have to wait for that one.

Apologetix interview continued...