When I first mentioned to my worship pastor that we were writing a rock opera on Revelation, he laughed out loud and said “REALLY?!”… I get it… I understand…crazy right? 

It was a strange set of circumstances leading to all of this. (Read Rebecca’s backstory about this)…

One small step at a time before committing… first my friend, John Tatum and his wife Rebecca had a long-time vision for this Rock Opera… sadly, John fell sick with Alzheimerʼs so he couldnʼt finish the rock opera they had started together.

John Tatum and I had collaborated on “I’ve Just Seen Heaven” previously but neither of us had recorded it. Knowing just how much it means to a songwriter to actually hear his/her song recorded, I decided that I really wanted to make a fully-produced recording of “…Heaven” so that John could hear his creation, in all its glory, even while laying there bed-ridden. That was the least I could do for an old friend and musical partner, right? Besides, that song just needed to get out there somehow.

John was such a talented writer, producer and arranger, I knew that I couldn’t really cut any corners on that song. John would know in an instant if it wasn’t recorded just right. So to honor him, I started rehearsing all of his intricate piano chord changes and started laying down tracks I could orchestrate and sing to. Little did I know… that what was a labor of love, for my collaborator, would later turn into one of the most intense projects of my life. Heaven brought tears to my eyes many times during the hundreds of hours I spent working on that song for John. Funny how God works…

Wow!… I can still remember praying awhile back, before then, whispering something to the effect, “Lord, please draw me back to Your Word. I find myself getting bored when I read your Bible. Please make it fresh and exciting to me again!” Well, Wow!. I wasn’t expecting this kind of answer to my prayer. Some months later, I remember waking up, alert, at 3am one morning and being drawn to read Revelation all over again (it had been awhile). Then I read it a second time and so on… Little did I know that as I read, I began receiving a desire to become involved in John & Rebecca’s musical vision again. I knew John wasn’t able and I was; so I spoke with Rebecca and we co-wrote “Father of Lies” together, along with my collaborator Bob Huff (read the wild story about creating that song – “Flames of Evil and Angels”).

Ok, a couple songs.. I can understand that… But why would I want to take on the challenge of a huge project like this, full of angels, dragons, demons, death, plagues and destruction, …oh my…? I was already busy writing songs with a number of talented collaborators and working on my own album which I was putting on hold for these songs. Hmmmm… not sure…except for that still voice inside of me…

What kind of sound would paint the picture of what will happen during the end-times of our current world? Chaos, confusion, disease, fear, terror, darkness, plagues and evil… well, rock and roll of course!

Only a 40-piece orchestra or rock and roll band could paint the intensity that takes place at the end of the world. Well, how about incorporating both?

No edgy sound quite covers the gamut like rock does. I learned that in writing my first rock opera (about Evil) over 30 years ago. I never did anything with that first rock opera other than taking off a whole year to write and record a demo of it… but it became a valuable time cutting my songwriting teeth and teaching myself many recording engineering tricks I would learn and use for years to come.

It became a testing ground for what was to come here… so why not… that intense writing experience taught me what worked and more importantly, what didnʼt work, how show pacing is structured, pathos and the likes of a complete musical… hey, and why not… for the last few years, Iʼve been collaborating with one of the best texture rock guitar players around, Bob Huff. With that arsenal in my pocket, I thought… hey, we can do this!

And so we began… once Huff told me, “I’m in!”, I called John and Rebecca and told them I would be willing to pick up their torch and help carry the ball forward for awhile, never quite sure if we’d really be able to finish it or not. Thankfully, God kept feeding us the zeal to stick with it six days a week for about a year. We expanded the vision to a full 2-Act show and began outlining the storyboard to cover all 22 Chapters of the Book of Revelation. Basically, a song per chapter plus a couple modern-day songs that had previously been completed with John & Rebecca at the helm.

I won’t lie… some weeks were grueling and hard but all in all, God kept fueling me with zeal and the desire to complete what John & Rebecca had visualized and started. I’m so thankful we could see it through as a team with John smiling down from above…