Stage Presence: The Jeff Deyo Interview Most of you knew Jeff Deyo first as a founding member of the enormously popular Christian band Sonicflood. Three years ago, he launched a successful solo career and now leads worship across the globe. He's also the prolific writer of new music for contemporary worship. Jeff took time from his busy schedule to talk to us about what it takes to be a great worship leader.
			How can a worship leader really make an impact on the congregation? The number one thing is to worship God in private. The best preparation for worship leading is not actually working on the 'stage part of the presentation, but working in your room, by yourself, worshipping God. I'm a firm believer that you can't worship God in front of people if you don't worship God where there are no people.
		When you are worshipping in private, you're digging a well. You're providing the water that you're going to draw from onstage. If I haven't dug that well in a while, it's going to be stale or stagnant or completely dry. You can't dig the well while you're onstage. If you want to be real on the stage, you've got to be real off the stage. I also think it's important to have a non-performance mentality. I get rid of the attitude that says, "I've got to get up there and make the people feel good". I want to redirect everything that we do to God. I don't really provide the opportunity for crowd applause at the end of a song. If people start to clap, I say "this praise is for you, Lord" and people generally get the idea. How do you make sure that the band is on the same page as you when you lead worship? Again, it has to happen offstage. I always challenge worship leaders who don't have a lot of time to rehearse with their bands during the week, to spend the first 30 minutes and sit down together, put their instrument down, play a CD, sing together, pray together and share with one another. The next hour they spend will be much more productive. How long did it take for that light to go on? We learn things from pain and difficulty and struggle. One of the problems we had with Sonicflood was that sometimes we didn't put each other before the "stage stuff". As I started living some of those struggles, I began to search for answers and ways to get around that. It's more important for me to lead my band guys because when I mentor them and I love them and I serve them, the other stuff just flows out more naturally.
					On the road Beta 87A Wireless handheld microphone "It has a nice full sound, plus a sleeve that keeps me from accidentally turning it off." PSM 400 Wireless personal monitor system "I've used in-ears for about four years and switched from a competitor to Shure about six months ago. It has a great full sound. One of the things I love about it is that the beltpack is so lightweight and still durable. Plus the antenna comes out of the bottom instead of the top, so it fits under my shirt real well." In Jeff's home studio KSM44 Studio vocal microphone "We tested a bunch of different mics - a number of different brands and some really expensive ones. When we tested the KSM44, we just knew it was the one. It's much less expensive and emulates the tube sound we like really well."
How can our readers take advantage of the new music that's out there? There are a lot of different websites and resources that offer opportunities to learn. Worship Leader magazine puts out a "Song Discovery" CD every month that provides something like twelve songs. They do the research. And there are tons of workshops and conferences to help us re-understand how to worship and why we worship. Of course, there are Christian bookstores, too, where your readers can use listening labs to let them decide what's best for their congregations. You've probably seen a lot of changes in this music in the past ten years. Where do you think its going?
		A lot people have said that Sonicflood, along with Delirious and others, got to be a part of bringing in a new era of worship music. And I say this: worship has been around since God's been around. It's not anything we came up with. There have always been fresh expressions of worship. Let's think about hymns for a minute. We think of them now as "old school", but when they first came out, they were brand new and they were modern. Some of them, when they were written, were based on popular music - in fact, bar songs. You get two reactions - one; that we embrace them and they're the only ones we're going to have, and two-that they're old and we don't even know what we're singing about I think either of these attitudes is extreme. We need to reinterpret them. One of the dangers today is the motivation in creating new music with the culture of worship today in writing a hit song on radio … The lure of financial success… That's right. The guy who wrote "Amazing Grace" wasn't looking for a crossover hit. I think it's real important to keep the music on a positive note. And there are schools of thought on that, that maybe the message doesn't have to provide all the answers, that it's about the struggle and uncertainty. But I don't see that in the Bible. What's next for you? I just put out a new record, "Light" that came out in February. It has twelve new worship songs on it and it's doing very well. So many people have been covering our songs that I decided to write some new ones. We're in the process of thinking about a live album for 2005. The idea is to record several different worship services around the world - it's going to be a completely different experience than the studio work that we've done in the past. "Uprising" is a compilation CD, with other worship leader that will be out soon. I wrote a song, "Revolution" for it, that I'm really excited about. We do a lot of youth conferences and worship conferences, so your readers can check out our website to find out where we'll be. We thank Jeff Deyo for his inspired suggestions. Look for Jeff's recent CD, "Light" as well as soon-to-be released "Uprising" in stores everywhere. For more information on Jeff, visit his website at www.jeffdeyo.com.
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