MQ: On your greatest hits compilation, you have the song 'Everything To Me'...it's just an amazing song.
Jody: It's an incredible song. When I was making my solo effort, Grant Cunningham, who passed away just a couple years ago, was sort of like the fifth member of Avalon. He wrote a lot of songs for us and was A & R at Sparrow. We had never made a record up to that point that Grant wasn't involved in. Grant brought that song to the table for my solo record and I thought, 'Well, it's not quite right for me'...but the first time I listened to it I thought, 'Man! That song's incredible...that would be perfect for Avalon. Can we keep that for Avalon?' He said, 'Yeah, I'll just put it in the drawer and when we start making the new Avalon record I'll remember it...' But, of course, he passed away and so when we started making the best of, I thought of, I remembered that song. I said, 'Grant had a song, I remember it was written by Chad Cates and Sue Smith and I really wanted us to try and find it.'
Well, as God would have it, nobody was recording it - it was still sitting on the shelf and I'm so glad. Melissa sings the second verse on that song and...it just kind of talks about, you know, a lot of us grew up in church, we grew up around the things of the church and learning about Christ but...I don't think that any of us can honestly understand why He loves us the way that He does. His love and His compassion for us, goes beyond anything that we can understand. When somebody does us wrong, we're immediately saying 'Oh, I don't like them anymore.' But we do God wrong everyday and He continues to love us more and more everyday. It just talks about how it should be our desire and how He truly is our everything.
MQ: What can we expect at an Avalon concert?
Jody: It is our desire that it will be a night where you come and hear music that you love, but you don't come and hear...necessarily people, but you come and experience that and the presence of God shows up. It's our hope that people are changed by the music. I honestly believe and say this all the time that you could put four boll weevils, hamsters or whatever, on stage, and as long as they knew how to sing the songs...I don't think people care necessarily about us. God has just blessed us with amazing songs that are changing people's lives. That's our prayer for the concert that people will come and be a part of that.
MQ: Do you have any road/concert experiences you'd like to share?
Melissa: Actually, on this tour...we met a girl - my husband was doing World Vision for us, he was the representative so he was out in the lobby - and a girl came up to him and wanted to share her story with us. He brought her backstage and she introduced us to her daughter named Avalon. We thought that was funny, you know, because you hear people 'Oh, we've named our child after you...!' - and it wasn't the case at all. She named her Avalon and she had no idea who we were. She was not married and ended up getting pregnant and was not doing well in her life and her walk with Christ at all and she happened to hear the song 'Everything To Me' on the radio and that song began to minister to her. She still had no clue who sang it - just the song - God used the song specifically to touch her heart. So, when she had the baby she named her Avalon. Then come to find out, she realized from listening to the radio and hearing the song again that the name of the group was called Avalon and that this was the song that God used to get her back on track. So she introduced us to her beautiful child and she's now in a relationship with a guy who has taken the fathership role of the child right now and God is doing amazing things in her life. It was such a great story to hear. That's always great - that's why we do what we do.
Jody: There are countless ones like that...
Melissa: Yeah.
Jody: We also had a woman who come through the line with four kids - young kids - she was a fairly young wife, I would say, probably in her late thirties. She had just lost her husband and she was just coming and telling us how 'Everything To Me' was amazing in her life and how it's helped her get through this mourning process and realizing that even though she's lost her husband, that Christ can fill that place in her life and that He can help her through that. So, there are just so many things. I don't ever want to take it for granted because people come up and talk to you - you hear what they have to say...and it's so beyond fulfilling to know that God is using you to help people like that. It's very, very humbling and I just pray that He will allow us to keep doing it.
Continue to page 4...
