The TechnoFunkBoy's "Valley"

This is part four of an interview I had with with the frontman of The TechnoFunkBoy recentlyDriver’s Seat.  Part 1 can be read here, Part 2 here, and Part 3  In this part, we will discuss track 4 of the album, “Valley.”
about their debut,

The whole album can be downloaded for free here or streamed online here.  Please do take a listen.  Kaenor and the band were very careful to not only make the music good, but that the lyrics and music would glorify God.

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Me:     Let’s go to “Valley.”  You sing this one, not rap it.

Kae:    Yeah, it was really too pretty of a song to do otherwise.  I really like it.  Morelle did a fantastic job on this one.

Me:     Lady Morelle’s role in the band is most often in the background.

Kae:    Yes.  She is not very confident in her ability to play, and generally really prefers to play a secondary role in the overall sound of the band.  At least what she considers secondary, because what she is adding in invaluable.

Me:     How can we tell what she is playing?

Kae:    She does all piano parts, for one.  But primarily, what she is playing is the organ or synth sounds with sustained notes.  In the instrumentals, she will usually play the counter-melodies while Steve plays the primarily melody and I play the bass part.

Me:     So she’s is putting in the solid texture in the back of the song that fills out the chords.

Kae:    Exactly.

Me:     Which is almost this entire song.

Kae:    Right.  She is playing several parts of this one.  Most notable was the piano solo, which took me a week to convince her to do, but I’m glad I did, because she just nailed it.

Me:     It’s very pretty.

Kae:    Absolutely.  The piano in the chorus really transformed the song too.  Actually, all of my favorite parts to this tune are played by Morelle, and it turned out so much better than my original demo.

Me:     Did you watch the video of when I played this one at the church cookout?

Kae:    Yeah, that turned out nice.

Me:     I didn’t have a monitor, so most of what I played that evening was only acoustic guitar.  Trying to play with the background when it I didn’t have a monitor turned out to be rather difficult.

Kae:    I didn’t notice.

Me:     Good, because I certainly did.  I had a hard time keeping the beat, so at times I really had to stop playing guitar for a second and just listen to the music behind me.

Kae:    It sounded fine.  It was also the first time one of our songs was performed live in the real world.

Me:     Really?  Yeah, I guess it would have been.

Kae:    Well, I was pleased with it.

Me:     Thanks!  But back to where we started on this song before I sidetracked us – this is also the only song on the album without a rap.

Kae:    Right.  Like I said before, we were an instrumental band a long time before we were able to add vocals at all.  It is not important to us whether we are playing hip hop or rock or pop or whatever, we primarily think in terms of what the instruments are doing, so I tend to write the vocals to fit in with the music and not the other way around.  I wanted this song on the album to drive home the point to those who are just starting to listen to us – we are not really a rap band.  We’re a band that utilizes rap a lot because it works with our sound, but we’re more interested in the sound itself.

Me:     And an actual sung melody was the most appropriate addition to this music.

Kae:    Right.  It was also important at this point in the album to drive the doctrine home.  We started off speaking of sovereignty theologically, and we began to apply it to life in “Cross,” but here it becomes personal.

Me:     And for that you turn to Job as your inspiration.

Kae:    Job and the Psalms.  There’s a few references in the Psalms in there – the valley, miry clay, that sort of thing.

Me:     The song tells a story of the narrator being in a place where he doesn’t really understand what God is doing, and he’s crying out for help.

Kae:    Right.  And that’s a critical thing to understand when we are talking about God’s sovereignty.  It’s an easy thing to say that God is in control and that He works all things for the good for His children.  These things are true.  But what does that mean when you have, like Job, lost everything, and you don’t know where this is going.  There are a lot of people in Christianity that will dismiss the emotions that go along with that place, but those emotions are very biblical.

Me:     When I was teenager, I had a Christian tell me that if I was ever sad, ever, it meant that I wasn’t saved.  As someone who struggled with depression, that made an impact.

Kae:    Yeah, that sort of thinking is simply unbiblical.  If you read the Psalms to that person without telling her what they were, she would have told you that half of them were written by non-Christians.  Just read them.  The psalmists were struggling through some amazing emotions at times.

Me:     You have to reminders in the song of God’s sovereignty.

Kae:    Right.  The last verse is turning point of the song.  It’s a reminder of something that Job didn’t know would happen – that God Himself in flesh would go through the same pain and the same struggles, that He would take those things upon Himself.  “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Me:     Which is one of the passages you quote at the end of the song.  Why did you do that?

Kae:    Because the song goes back to the chorus after the verse about Jesus, and I didn’t want to end it on a note of sadness.  I debated this one, but decided that, since we are talking about sovereignty, that it was important to let the last word be one of hope.  So we put in some direct quotations from Hebrews and Romans.

Me:     I criticized DC Talk for ending on a sad note in “The Hardway.”

Kae:    See, I don’t think that was a problem, really.  There are Psalms that end in very dark places.  We don’t want every song to be like that, but they are there, in the Bible, so we should not make it a rule that everything has to end looking up.  In this case though, I decided that it was important.

Me:     Was this the “single” of the album?  The album to rope in the CCM crowd into download the album then surprising them with a bunch of rap?

Kae:    [laughs]  Yeah, I guess.  But between you and me, I think “Robot” is way better.

Me:     For those who are in a valley, what do you recommend to them?

Kae:    First of all, if you are not in one now, you probably will be one day.  Use the good days to lay a foundation of good doctrine for yourself.  Study the nature of God and His promises.  Get to know Him and His ways.  Then, once you are there, go back to those passages and remind yourself of what God has promised for you.  If you want proof of His trustworthiness, look to the Cross.  There is the proof of His love.  But don’t deny that you have times of mourning.  Let yourself mourn.  Let yourself cry.  But we don’t have to do those things as one who has no hope.  We cry as those who are on a hard road, but know that there is a warm inn and a fire already made for us, with a hot meal and good beer waiting for our arrival.  All that does not make the road smooth, but it makes the bumps more bearable.