Christian artist Crowder says music career started in Shreveport-Bossier. See him in concert. (copy)

Christian musical artist and two-time Grammy nominee David Crowder will be performing with MercyMe on tour in Bossier City.

Crowder has five Billboard No. 1 singles and four Billboard No. 1 albums. He spoke with The Shreveport-Bossier Advocate about getting into music, his new album “Exile,” and his upcoming performance at the Brookshire Grocery Arena.

How did you get into music?

When I was a toddler, we were told the only thing in the house not to touch was the piano — a family heirloom. So as a kid, that’s the only thing you want to touch. At some point, my mom recognized a song I was playing so she sent me off to piano lessons. I hated every second of it, but at some point, I guess by my teens, I decided I do like music, but I need synthesizers, because I’m a kid of the 80s. 

I grew up in Texarkana, Texas, and you guys are the big city, right? I saved up my lawn mowing money and my mom drove me to Shreveport and we bought my first keyboard at a Shreveport Bossier pawnshop – a Roland Juno 106. It got stolen about a year later, and it was like the saddest day of my life, but it started in Shreveport. My music career started in your city.

When I went to school at Baylor University, I was studying music. I thought I would do something fun, hoping I would later work for my dad, who had an insurance agency. I will tell you now it was hard. It is not fun to study music at college. It is so hard and you’re so alone in practice rooms hour after hour.

My junior year, a friend of mine started a church and talked me into helping with the music. About a year later he asked me to start writing some songs. I wasn’t singing on the front end but organizing everything. The way I started singing was that my fellow students would not show up on a Sunday morning, so I’d have to cover their parts. And here we still are.

Did you go straight from college into performing? 

It was really kind of organic, given that our congregation was very transient in nature as college students. They would go back home and tell their youth minister or pastor to invite us to do a ski retreat or a conference or something, so we started traveling while we were still in college. I was asking my college professor if there were some absences available.

We didn’t know if we were officially a band or anything. We were just the kids that are playing music on Sunday morning and getting called and asked to come do different things. It was called the David Crowder*Band because we didn’t even know what to call ourselves. 

Did you ever go to work for the insurance company?

No, at some point I called home and said, ‘Dad, it’s gonna be a while. I think we may have a job here.’ And it grew from there.

What has it been like as a solo performer?

The upside is I get I’ve gotten to make music and write music with people that I really admire. And I get to just ask, ‘Hey, would you help me write a song or be on an album?” That part has been really, really fun. I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a player and also as a writer just being around people that that’s what they do day-to-day. Writing is collaborative. Most of the stuff I’ve been working on of late has been with an incredible production team, Ben Glover and Jeff Sojka. 

What overall message do you want to share with your music?

I tell my friends I feel less a musician and more of an evangelist – a weighted term, yeah – but I want people to know that no one’s too far gone.

If you get all my lyrics over the years, I’m pretty redundant. I keep saying the same thing over and over. No one is lost. You can be found. In fact, all you have to do is knock on the door and it opens, it’s as simple as that. I get to sing songs that are about grace and forgiveness and a way back into communion.

In a recent interview you said you were in Scripture daily. How does this influence your music?

Rarely am I looking to Scripture to inspire a song. I’m more looking to Scripture to form me. And then hopefully songs will come out of that formation. Usually the songs come from people and settings. 

How do you describe your new album “The EXILE?” 

I feel like it’s more horizontal in the lyric writing than I’ve ever done before. Most of the time, my lyrics are very vertical, like I’m trying to help us sing to our creator in a way that forms us.

These songs are like we’re singing truth to each other, we’re telling each other we’re not where we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be back in communion with our maker. How do we get back there? And then that’s really where the songs are pointing us.

I think that what’s amazing about the gospel or the Scripture and what the church is carrying, the things that are most needed are somebody that says, ‘Here’s what grace looks like. Here’s what forgiveness looks like. Here’s what redemption looks like. Wherever you are, whatever feels broken in you or around you, it’s not supposed to be that way, and here’s a way back.’ I feel like it’s just one of the most incredible moments to be able to be making songs that say a truth like that, because it’s so needed and necessary right now. I hate that we’re here, but I love that it feels like I’m singing something that matters.

Do you receive feedback from people on how your music impacts them?

That is an upside of social media. You’re immediately accessible to people that you’ve impacted and the stories come through. I would guess the best word for what that feels like is humbling – the impact that a song can have can change the trajectory of someone’s life. And you know, hopefully what I’m singing about changes it in a good way, and sends you on a path that is more in line and back in tune with your maker and his intentions for how you’re living and what your life looks like.

At the concert what music can people expect to hear?

It tends to lean heavily toward the new stuff, but we try to hit the old ones as well that everybody knows.

And my favorite part about what I get to do in a live setting is hearing people sing. So my goal is to help us all sing together, because I think there’s something really powerful about us, like you’re very connected. It’s difficult to find disagreements or where we don’t align when you’re trying to harmonize or sing in unison. 

Crowder is touring with the MercyMe “Together Again…Again Tour” and will be performing at the Brookshire Grocery Arena at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 25. Purchase tickets here.