Mark Lowry - Gospel Singer, Comedian, wrote Mary Did you Know - Interview on Life & Laughs Podcast

on the celebrity hotline we have one of the funniest and most talented comedians and gospel singers as well as songwriters today he is a dove award winner former member of the gaither vocal band and has recorded several music and comedy albums welcome to life and laughs podcast legendary mark lowry yes hey guys so good to be with you today houston you're in california and little rock in technology amazing it is great especially with times like the quarantine time we're having today how are you dealing with that i'm doing good i'm 61 so i'm in the in the uh category that could go down any minute but i've been avoiding people pretty well and uh washing my hands you know and i figured you got to die something so i don't know i think the coveted thing that would be a horrible death because you suffocate and i don't want to yes right right i don't like like what was that old comedian with the mustache and the glasses back here gallagher no no no way before that oh groucho marx yes he said i don't mind dying i just don't want to be there when it happens i love that i love that well now you have a birthday coming up soon in june yes you're gonna be what's i guess 62. yeah never dreamed i'd get this old but i am thrilled i like it actually i wouldn't you know i'm so grateful and at peace with who i am i actually like who i am and uh you know not everybody can say that so i'm blessed well tell us about growing up in houston texas and kind of what you were like as a child well i was hyperactive and i had the adhd before they knew how to abbreviate it in fact i was one of the first hyperactive product kids in our church that they knew you know i was sent to a psychiatrist i was put on ritalin so they were all starting to recognize it back then i'm sure hyperactive kids have been around forever yeah and uh i got a lot of spankings you know that's what you did back then your death of daddy coming home he always came home and did but um you know if you got a whipping at school you're going to get a whipping at home you know that's the way it was back then and so i'm thankful for my childhood mainly because they told me about jesus and i'm in love with him and i'm thankful for him and really all of my humor really revolves around him because when i was in college and the lord called me into music first actually in 1977 and i thought i was going to be a singer you know just a singer and uh then i started singing in these independent baptist churches because that's where i come from and they uh would laugh but you know they wouldn't clap back then because that's given glory to men they wouldn't shout someone might think they're doing it in another language but they would laugh and that's how i knew they were listening and all i cared about is are they listening you know so my my humor has always been really tainted with with the gospel you know i i i've only done one comedy club in my life and it went over like a turd and a punch bowl but it mainly because i was scared probably i just i was out of my environment yeah but um you know i bet you a lot of those people couldn't go into an independent baptist church and make them laugh either so audiences so uh it's been a fun journey i even forgot what the question was but when you start rambling and hope it ends up somewhere well we were talking about how you grew up and and progressed in to your comedy in in college i think in college you joined a group your first singing group is that correct well yeah well um it was called the preacher boys chorale right yeah and at liberty baptist college which is now liberty university but back then it was just a glorified high school if you had a hi if you had an iq of of a turn up and you could pay your bill you could get a degree or university but it still took me i still crammed four years of college into five yeah uh but the lord did call me to do what i'm doing to this day i believe it was the lord you know we baptist he never speaks to us audibly we couldn't handle that but uh i do think the lord spoke to me and called me because looking back it looks like looks like he was in it yeah isn't that amazing that it's not until years later sometimes that we can see the hand of god on our lives and how he was leading us and guiding us and at the time we may think we're doing a lot of it when it's we're we're utterly at his at his command yeah it's amazing get home to heaven one day because what jesus has done for me that's the only reason i'm going to get in but um the lord's got i think the father is going to say hey mark come here i want to show you something you know after about a billion years when he has time for me he'll say hey i want to show you something and he's going to take me to a fishing pole with a string on the end of it and a gadget on it and he's going to say this is how i kept you moving in the right direction i just hung gadgets in front of you because i love gadgets and i've used gadgets you know to reach people you know to facebook and twitter and youtube and and i can sit in my lazy boy and reach the world just that's incredible i mean really one live broadcast from my bedroom or my office or wherever uh because i do mondays with mark from my bedroom which is yes um we'll reach more people than i could on a tour you know i reached out a know if i'm on tour i may have about a thousand a night now well it'll be 30 000 watching on youtube yeah or facebook combine it all it's amazing it's amazing day we're living in it is and you seem very at peace and comfortable with doing it online i i'm i'm a i'm a comic and so i feed off the audience interaction and i need that feedback um in order to make well it's it's to make myself feel gratified that these jokes are actually working or not but but i've had a hard time in this lockdown because everything i'm doing now is just me looking at a screen hoping that people are laughing hoping that people are interacting but you seem to have come into this um i would say a confidence a healthy confidence that you're walking in being able to just just interact and and input from there um is that just over maturity what i need to tap into that i think first of all when i go live i see the people start coming in i don't wait here's what a lot of people do wrong they sit there and wait for the people to fill the room before they start talking well most of your views will be on replay not live even though i always go live i love going live because it's such a high wire thing it's like with the slip of your tongue you could run your entire cookie and i love that i love the fact that with one word i could kiss everything goodbye no and i won't do that but and i love reading their comments they're instantaneous i can put their comments on the screen so they know it's live and they know i'm talking to them and they bring up things that i hadn't thought of things that will cause me to talk in one direction you know because i mean i i don't even usually know what i'm thinking until i hear myself say it i am a talk thinker and the ability to go live and and talk about jesus or life or whatever i want to talk about makes me number one believe it more you know it's the bible does say we're saved by the the word of our testimony i believe somewhere it says that blood of the lamb and the word of your testimony so talking about the lord will strengthen your faith no doubt so i love doing that and and then the humor just comes out in the way i express things i don't plan it but if they laugh i do it again all that gaither stuff that we created bill gaither and me where i was like the perpetual 10 year old boy picking on his hair and stuff was all original one night and off the cuff one night but if it got a laugh you know how this is as a comedian you do it again you know the audience does tell you what's funny you may think you know what's funny but i've had many things that i've said that i thought were so funny that they didn't get or else they were thinking because some things i do have a double punch like it'll be funny but i also have a point i'm trying to make like for instance when uh the baptist my people got all upset many years ago because disney had a gay day yeah and you know they were upset they were gonna pick it disney whatever and i'm thinking that's not the way you win them that's not the way you win anybody you know so with gaither we i always admitted i'm a baptist i was raised baptist i'm still theologically baptist i don't i feel like i'm now more of a follower of jesus but rather than a baptist but uh you can be both anyway so um i would gaither would say are you a baptist on stage i said yeah i said i said why did i get into that we can't we can't even i say somehow getting into saying we can't even go to death oh we can't do nothing we can eat and go to church that's about it i said uh and i said we can't even go to disneyland anymore and the people would laugh i mean you know gaither had ten thousand twenty thousand people at that time so i knew i was making it and then i was bringing to the people this thing that we can't do this anymore and and by saying i didn't say if i agreed with it or i didn't agree with it i just said this is it and i love that i love laying the facts in front of the people and let them decide if they agree or don't because they're intelligent they're not stupid they don't have to be a hand fed you know a lot of preachers do want to keep the lights out chew the food for you walk over and like a bird spit it in your mouth and tell you to swallow yeah but really preachers are just supposed to set the buffet and then we can come and take what we need yeah jesus jesus even said that at the end of matthew he said to those when he was chewing out those preachers back in his day he said you take god's law which should be a banquet for all to come and feast on and you bundle it into rules and you load them down like pack animals and you won't lift a finger to help them up when they fall beneath the load and that's from the message bible that interpretation but when i read that one day i thought oh dear god if if jesus ever looked at me and told me i'd gone around the world making disciples twice as fit for hell as myself which he also said in that passage i mean give me a gun i am wasting my life i want to lift people up i want to woo the bride to the bridegroom i don't want to piss her off [Laughter] that's so beautiful that you know then that that was the reason that i actually got started in comedy i was a youth pastor for 15 years and i got into the season that i see a lot of people do where we get so aggravated the entertainment industry for having a negative influence on on culture and uh one day i was you know i just i was turning burning it and i was you know preaching fire and brimstone uh to the young people and god was just he said listen elijah shut up man just be quiet those people that you are criticizing those are my children yeah and and you're their brother and you're just trying to shoo them away from me and uh and that's what merged me i said well god what can i do how can how can i how can i be an influence to the influ entertainment industry because i don't believe we have permission to complain about something if we're not at least helping to try to fix it and he said well what do you know to do and i said well i know to pray and so me and my little daughter we just started praying for a celebrity a day and then that that eventually merged me into becoming a comedian because that's the doorway for what i was doing because people would laugh when i was doing these messages and and still it's weaved and so the same kind of thing i do in comedy clubs is what i do in churches but that's exactly what it's exactly what's what your it has to do with what you're saying is that why are we trying to shoo them off when god is trying to reach them through us and through the gifting that he's given us i mean if you think about it if you walked up to a girl and said man i've got a man for you and she's wanting to get married she's you know she's really got that desire and you say but listen you got to get rid of those earrings and you got to make sure you don't cut your hair don't wear too much rouge amen you know i mean who would want to meet him no you know god loves you as you are not as you should be because none of us are as we should be thank you for that quote but god loves you as you are jesus wants you as you are not as you should be one day we'll be as we should be but until then he wants us as we are that's good stuff that is so good hey i want to know because a lot of people don't know the background between uh for the song mary did you know and i know you talk about this a lot but there's a lot of people that don't know actually how that song came about would you mind talking a little bit about that yeah my pastor back in 1984 called me and asked me if i would write the living christmas tree program for our church and being young and not knowing that i couldn't i said i would and i proceeded to try to write christmas songs so i am a songwriter but writing a christmas song is hard because it's hard to get into that yearly christmas thing where it comes back around you know like white christmas and and it which is kind of interesting many of our wonderful christmas songs were written by a jewish fellow what was his name he wrote white christmas look him up anyway and um and so that's a side note but and come to find out i'm jewish i did 23 in me and i am 11 jewish i have never been more thrilled in my life i just thought i was a heinz 57 jewish and evidently my great-grandfather uh was scared to let everybody know it but anyway uh so i wrote monologues what i ended up doing is writing monologues between songs that were already written and like i do for my concerts you know and um and so that's how the program was created but one of the monologues i wrote was asking questions about i wonder if mary realized the power and the authority and the majesty she was cradling in her arms that first christmas and that those little baby fingers that were wrapped around hers were the same that had scooped out the oceans and formed the rivers and i and those little infant lips had spoken worlds into existence you know i was trying to sound like gloria gaither and um pastor would get up every night and repeat that before he gave the invitation that whole little monologue he memorized it evidently and so i knew something was special about that so when that was all over i just sat down and i thought well now if i could ask mary a question you know if i could have a cup of coffee with mary what would i ask her and most of the questions i had for her did not make the song because they didn't rhyme but the others did and it was like you know what was it like changing god's diapers what was it like having god nurse at your breast what was it like teaching the word of god to talk was it like teaching god to walk uh what was it like being his little brothers following him through school well that's probably why you know i say in my when i talk about this that's probably why they didn't become believers till after the resurrection it'd be hard to acknowledge your older brother wasn't just good he's god what was it like what was it like following him through school you know i can hear the teachers now well when jesus was in my class he made straight a's he wrote the book and did you ever walk in his room say clean up this mess were you born in a barn [Laughter] but the other question made the song and um and it's so interesting i wrote that in 84 when i was 26 and then in 91 buddy green put music to it but now a lot of people a lot of people are having problems with it it's so funny to read how many people get upset it's usually like women that think i'm mansplaining one of them said one of them said mark your man this mary did you know is mansplaining to mary what if i'd been a woman what would it have been woman splaining you know and then i've never responded to a critic because first of all i know monuments have never been raised to critics so you shouldn't listen to them or take them too serious and also let the children play when people are just being mean don't respond and i've never really responded until this one day i had a weak moment and i responded then and i didn't know who was talking about it i never know these people uh and i but i responded i said i wasn't asking you [Laughter] and boyd back oh yeah how dare you well how dare you yeah i wasn't talking to you i was asking mary and maybe the angel did tell her all that stuff well i didn't know it she could say yeah the angel told me these are questions who are you to tell me i'm mansplaining i don't know what that means [Laughter] here [Laughter] that's that's that's the negative side i guess of today's technology that critics can anybody can be a critic and it'll be anonymous that gives them this power yeah to say whatever's on their mind well this lady wouldn't most of them are not anonymous and the thing is there's not that many of them you know yeah i get a million uh comments about how much it blesses them and then one will say and i go and i always examine myself was i mansplaining you know god did i you know i don't because sometimes they're right yeah you know they're not always wrong it does wince at first but then you need to take a deep breath and realize you know number one you ain't all that and you could be wrong it's one of the reasons that hecklers are in in clubs are so aggravating because you know 99 people 99 of the crowd can be just enjoying everything but that one person that says thing because in your heart you kind of think yeah that guy that guy's the only one that gets me like he knows he sees through the veil and he realizes what he's saying may be mean but it's a little bit true probably do you have uh responses for them oh oh yeah i've learned over the years i started i merged into stand-up when i was it was it was 2005 and so i've got i've got loaded the the main thing in club scenes is people are either a few drinks too too many in you know they everyone came there to have a good time everyone's invested some money into the thing and so so i don't i try not to i'm not a mean comic you know i i try to be kind to everybody do a story okay what do you got oh my gosh my most embarrassing moment on stage to this day i was with the gators i just joined them and it has to do with a heckler so that's why i'm telling you this and i was telling the story about pivot on your good foot it was a where i broke 11 bones on a car wreck and and so i and you know i'd never i've always up until i joined the gators i had always performed in churches and that's back in the day when churches had every light on it wasn't black it as it is now with smoke machines right real churches you know with lights on and everybody's in a pew and you can see them from the back to the front you can see everybody that's what i was used to which was very hard for me to get used to with the gaithers performing to a black wall you're lit up but the audience doesn't know you can't see them you can see maybe the first or second row at a gaither concert after that it's pitch black because it's a show right right well so i'm i've learned you know i'm listening to the audience and that's how i'm responding and i can hear them i can't see them and someone says your face is going to stick like that and i'd never hate their concert you know they don't throw tomatoes they might throw a brand muffin or two these are and so um but i'm thinking i am not being heckled right and then i just keep talking and then i hear your face is going to stick like that and because i make a lot of faces you know and i just keep going and then the audience starts laughing around this person so i know i've got my place because he's taking the attention away from this story so finally i remembered a line i used in public high school assemblies that i heard from some comedian because i don't i've never been heckled and i just grabbed it out of my memory and and i thought oh my and so i said yeah i said that's what happens to you when your mother takes drugs while she's pregnant oh oh let me at a gator concert okay listen that audience sucked air the air pressure changed the room out three fillings and you know that lonely drop of sweat that runs down your back when you're bombing lands in your underwear you know that well i finished the monologue because i'm a professional and i put it down next to michael english who is the color of a cloud white white white blood brain from his face and i said what happened and he said he's in a wheelchair oh no the audience thought i could see him oh you're when your mother takes drugs where's your friend my lord well let's see what i learned from that experience number one don't talk to anybody you can't see mm-hmm you can't see them put the spotlight on them and then address them write these down don't ever use that one again you know especially at a gaither concert and i you know my heart was broken because i really am a tender hearted person in reality and i couldn't wait to find that guy and apologize and it took me about five years before i could get over it playing in that same room because gaither goes back to that same venue in gatlinburg every year and i would clam up i'd walk and i couldn't perform and finally get you've got to get over that you know and i did immediately because he said to but it just in there i'd have this panic attack that that i hurt someone like that because i'm not that dude i'm a nice comedian right and i'm not and i'm a storyteller you know i i don't you know if you if you're not and i've been you know i was named a comedian by word records and i accepted it and i you know you know that's fine it doesn't really hurt but but when you say a comedian they expect to laugh and i like it when they just you know now when people know i'm coming they're all expecting to laugh but you know the days i miss 1980 to 1988 when i and i don't miss them that bad because i wouldn't want to go back and do this again but where i do about 200 concerts a year my pa system was in my trunk my polyester suits were on a bar from one side of my car to the next my eight tracks and albums were lined up under the suits that i would sell that night my pad was by me as i drove down the road because i might think of something funny to say and i want to write it down and it was me and the lord and um and nobody knew they were gonna laugh all they knew was coming was a singer from jerry falwell school because that's how they would get me in there yeah yeah and once i got there i'd be on on a sunday morning right and i would start singing in this very room which is a beautiful song but it is boring especially when someone like me sings it because i'm just not that exciting of a singer i'm a baritone how exciting can it be and um i would sing in this very room there's quite enough love for one like me you know and everybody's think sitting there and i could see it on their faces because i could see them and i could see them start thinking oh my gosh we're going to sit through 15 minutes of this and then right after i would start telling my stories and they would be in the floor because they weren't expecting it yeah it's really easier then okay he's coming here okay let's get ready you know then you gotta really knock it out of the park you know right what would you rather be known as like when this is all said and done your career is done you're not out in the public anymore would you rather be known as a singer a comedian or a songwriter well it doesn't matter what i would like to be known as i will be known as the guy who wrote mary did you know because comedy has a short shelf life all even great comedy eventually turns to corn yeah and listen to bob hope in his day it was hysterical right now it's you know kind of corny yeah and he was probably the best of his era right um and singing i've never been you know i've been i'm a i'm a i think i'm a good communicator but i'm not a great singer i don't i i love your singing and i'm not just saying that because you're on here you're when i listen to the gaither vocal videos and i listen to them a lot throughout the day i'll just let them play uh i i love your voice i think you have uh one of the most unique voices to me and you think it's normal probably to you because it's your voice but i i i can i can hear your voice out of everyone in the gate or vocal band and it just to me you're the voice that pulls them all together that's my gosh i love you already [Laughter] uh well thank you very much and my mother if she were living would agree with you but but anyway so i know that you know i'll tell you when i was 11 this this preacher came to our church the greenwood village baptist church in houston texas and he preached on solomon the wisdom of solomon and then he opened the altar if you want to come to the altar and pray for wisdom come on down here so i thought well i could use some of that so i went down to the altar and asked the lord i can remember this asked the lord for wisdom and i was 11. and before i get up from that altar i said and i'd like an interesting life and i'd like to do something that will outlive me i don't even know why except that i knew even then i'd never get married yes i've never had a desire to that scares me that's always scared me probably because my dad was a lawyer and handled a lot of divorces you know and it just scared me so um um but i said lord i'd like to do something that will outlive me because i knew there'd be no kids coming and uh 30 years later i'm at the walmart buying cds for christmas and i pick up natalie cole's cd and mary did you know is on it and i didn't know she'd recorded it donnie osmond's cd and mary did you know was on it and i didn't know he'd recorded it and uh and the lord reminded me of that prayer and i really think mary did you know is going to outlive me yeah wow and that i mean not many people can say that if i could pick one thing to outlive me that i have done i would that would be what i picked too yeah because it's everything i believe about jesus this song really isn't about mary the song is about her son right you know what a beautiful song too we and you went from writing that song and it went a number of years in the meantime bill gaither comes into your life tell us how that came about okay uh 1988 i was singing at estes park i'd gotten on on a monday morning at the esses park thing it was a big deal i mean i used to go to this thing it's a it was the biggest thing in christian music at that time for many many years about 20 years it was huge every major artist from petra to sandy patty to michael w smith amy grant they all went and and and they made a habit of it and then they would teach courses during the day on songwriting and stuff and i wanted to be a songwriter in the early 80s when i was learning my craft of that and i learned from dottie rambo and all these people at these songwriting conferences during the week and then i would i would go to the concerts where all the big stars were singing and i would watch them and i knew i could not sing any of them but i felt i could out talk all of them yeah back then that was my gift you know and you need to dance with who brung ya so when i did finally get on that morning amy uh sandy patty introduced me and i said thank you amy for that wonderful introduction i said your first album my father's eyes is still my favorite they were amy and sandy were the two biggest things in our industry at that time and i knew that would work if i called her amy called sandy and in on the joke she died laughing which helped and uh so i had him immediately because i had 10 minutes and then i said y'all ready to rock and roll and they went yeah i said tough i don't do that little songs and then i told a story about going to pittsburgh and not getting paid because i knew okay if you can picture this in this building all the people up front to the stage are the former wannabes all the stars in our industry the former wannabes and then everybody in the cheap seats where i sat were the wannabes right the ones who wanted to be in it and i knew but i knew both groups had probably gone somewhere in their career and not gotten paid so i knew this story would work and then i sang another song and i walked off the stage because i had to be at a camp i was booked i was hard they let me off on monday night so i could do this i had to fly to georgia to do the camp for the rest of the week and uh from that i got the gaither vocal band and a solo gig my solo career with uh word records wow and so that's how that happened and then from 88 you know 13 years later the next 13 years i was with the vocal bin and doing a solo career so i was busy wow wow yeah because you would go how often did you guys tour when you went out on the on the gaither tours how many cities would you do in a times in a time frame probably three or four in a weekend we'd always come fly home on sundays and we'd be home sunday monday tuesday maybe fly out wednesday or thursday but thursday night friday night and saturday night and rarely a sunday rarely because bill didn't do many churches yeah theaters and arenas and such yeah yeah um i got to tell you this because someone we might have a kind of a mutual friend here uh the church that i started going to is a little kid that my mama took me to uh praise god she took me um but it was in an old abandoned shoe store you know they were just starting out it was called arkey house and the guy that started it was johnny minnick and love him my mom used to sing with him in church a lot uh my mom's passed away now but i and i became good friends with his uh nephew who sounds i don't know if you've ever heard his nephew's name vince minich sounds identical to him such a talent talented person talented family in fact and um so he gave the church off to his brothers bobby and tony minik and of course johnny went full time into the music with the goodmans of course as you know and so found we that at that church we had it was it felt like we were at a gator vocal meeting every sunday you know we loved it and so that's probably what got me listening to all of this johnny had that has that still does thank god he has that i call it that big fat goodman sound yes [Music] i can't even do it but i try to do it when i'm singing with people it's great on harmony you know oh my god i got chills thinking about it yes i love listening to him sing and there's a song he sings it's one of my favorite songs of all time it's the lighthouse love love that song there's a lighthouse it's that kind of a sound yes but did you ever hear howard goodman it's the same yes yes yes loved that loved i loved hearing them together actually well he blended like he was part of the family if you ever heard rusty yes and johnny sounded a whole bunch sounded a lot like i know that you've mentioned jd sumner in the past and i love jd summer i'm a huge elvis fan we talked a little bit about some of the people i talked to earlier today and um i heard jd in person and he of course they say he's got the deepest register uh a bass sound on the record ever and um he was the building shake man records at one time he was what say that was he was in the guinness book of world records at one time uh as the lowest sound ever made by a human yes and i just love him i loved hearing your stories about jd uh you know how how you guys related he was a funny man i i met him a couple of times and he just uh he had that it was more of a drier sense of humor but he had the punchline every time he laughed i mean i would okay i'll tell you how it started i was at a gaither uh taping you know the kind that are always in the round kind of like in yeah do you think horseshoe kind of a deal anyway uh i saw i was sitting on one side of the room and jd was sitting on the other side of the room with george johns and i s jd jd lean up and whisper something in george's ear and i saw george laugh so hard i thought he's gonna cough up a lung and i right then i decided i will know jd sumner and i asked away so and she was like a guard dog i mean she wouldn't let anybody through but now that she's dead i thought maybe i could get through so and we went to breakfast and i'd get him laughing sometimes so hard i really i could have killed him because he loved to laugh and he'd get to laughing where his mouth is open and he's not breathing or moving or nothing you know it's weird but he had the best stories you know yeah i can't remember but george if you ever really want to hear a bunch of good uh elvis stories jd stories they're all jd's stories but they include there's a guy named george hare who used to always go up there with me too he was friends of jd and he can remember all the stories and uh oh my goodness yeah i'll i miss him but you know what is interesting when they called me and said jd had passed hey buddy when they came and said jd sumner had died i uh i remember you know being sad a little bit but also thinking you know what i had i said everything i had to say to him yeah didn't feel like we left one stone unturned we discovered grace together i had read the grace awakening by chuck swindoll i was at at the time and i would go up to his apartment and retell him everything i was learning because when i first met jd he said to me you know if i get to heaven it'll be by the skin of my teeth everybody getting in by the skin of their teeth and i started explaining grace to him from the book i was reading and he got it i mean and i got it big time from chuck's i thank god for chuck swindoll to this day because that book it just started my journey into believing that god is crazy about me and he'd rather die than live without me and he also likes me he's not watching everything i do so he can stop me he's watching everything i do because he loves me so much he can't take his eyes off of me like any healthy father when the child coming yes and he's that same way with you two and everybody listening to this podcast god's heart skips a beat when you come into the room amen and that that's something that really taught me and plus many other books like the life of the beloved by henry nowin and others like that anything by brennan manning anything abby's child ragamuffin gospel all great books if you're if you're still wondering if god likes you you know it's not a lot of people i love i don't like it's ain't no big deal to be loved it's a big deal to be liked yeah i go through chris thanksgiving too every family has a squirrel in the family tree that you know you'll cry you will cry when they die but you don't want to go on vacation with them you know right and if nobody popped into your head you're it [Laughter] got a nut in the treehouse right god's crazy about you he likes you even if you're insane he loves you he likes you and he loves you of course it's so important to know god loves you but it's i think it's really important to know he likes you too and i learned that really early on from mrs holland my third grade teacher who told me god must really like you because he gave you so much energy and i had never heard that before of course i was only in the third grade hadn't heard much yeah held on to it and then i relearned it later in life through those books hey i was going to ask you about your school your school experience were you considered to be a class clown type student oh yes i had a whole page of just my different faces that i had made that year when a camera was near yeah and called me the man of a thousand faces you know in my yearbook i got a whole page and um and i think i was i think i was uh yeah i think i was the main class clown of course it was a christian school okay there weren't that many people in the school our graduating class had ten migrants i was in the top 10 of my class which is not well that was going to be my next next question was did you ever go to summer school uh but if you went to a private christian school probably not because summer school is where where class clowns kind of gathered and it was like the that you you realize you're in a whole another league then you're like oh i'm among all these were you the class clown uh yes 10th and 11th grade and 12th grade yep i was we were actually in class together so it's a long time yes yes many many many years i wanted to ask you a couple of things too uh as far as your time with the gaither vocal band um what experiences that that you went through on tour and everything i know you guys had to become so close and and how many members i know there was a lot of members of the gaither vocal band but when you're on tour with that like bill uh gaither all of you guys still friends and close today and how often do you talk to these guys pretty much well uh michael english you know none of us talk every day except i talked to bill probably more than any of them because he'll you know bill bill call and i call him you know um and then who else was in there i don't uh oh gosh guy penrod i mean i can call any of them and it's we pick up where we left off it's that kind of friendship we don't have to talk now some have or just recently jonathan pierce died you know oh i did not know that i did not know that yeah oh my gosh and dropped dead at 52. oh my goodness i think he was the first and then just recently gary mcspadden passed away so those are the first two that have died since of of the clientele that has been in the vocab when i first joined it it was me bill michael english and uh jim murray who used to be in the imperials and then tim left and terry franklin came and it was me michael bill and terry and that was my favorite group of all time as far as the sound the sound it blended like oh my gosh it was like sometimes i'd literally have to stop singing to remember which part was mine yeah i couldn't i mean we just blended so well and then guy penrod came along and he took it in a whole different thing uh you know way every gr every change is good and different you know yeah all right yeah what what's what's next for you in your career i know are you still touring as of course i know we got the quarantine now but uh what are your plans for the future the first thing a week from friday which is interesting it's in pigeon forge they were supposed to have 10 000 and they're gonna have 1200 now because they to space everybody out right yeah um so it'll be very interesting i'm coming out in a hazmat suit [Laughter] but as far as i don't really you know i've never had any goals i hate to admit that i just kind of whatever door opened i walked through it i honest to goodness now i've been driven you know you don't do 200 concerts a year if you're not driven yeah but never had any goals i never thought i'd get this far any more recordings in the work as far as uh comedy or even albums no i think i'm pretty much done with that i wonder i thought about you know i've been saying i'm retiring and i but i probably never will but i don't want to record anymore i've recorded i've already said too much i've already told way more than i know is funny because which is funny because i see you're more active on these social media platforms and all this than ever in your life so you're actually recording things and documenting things more than ever so daily your voice is out there yeah that's that's true i didn't think of that but to me it's more like okay let's go here and i just do it and i don't plan it i just go in there and do it and then when it's over i think of it again but i guess those are out there forever you know yeah so much lately which number one i enjoy it number two i have been also hunkering down you know and i'm bored and i started thinking about all those sweet people that follow me most of them are 65 and older according to facebook and um most of them are single women probably widows or you're never married whatever two-thirds of women one-third of men wait wait that's right two wait a quarter of me i don't know what it is there's always more women and uh i started thinking you know i need to check in on them so i just called them checking in on you and oh my gosh they love it they lo cause some of them are sitting here alone yeah so i just call i just you know get on there and and i go live on youtube facebook and twitter all at the same time through a app called restream dot io which is really cool um and so um and the comments have been so encouraging because oh mark you're the only thing that got me through this pandemic that type of thing because we just sing old hymns and we sing a and because i can't play the piano and so we just i just sing and then talk a little bit you know tell them i'm thinking about them and it means the world to people you know i don't understand it myself i i wouldn't care to hear me every day but thank god babe hey well listen someone's got a man explain things to [ __ ] now we have what we call our dumb wheel we spin a wheel and it has a dumb question so i've already spun the wheel which we're going to add in later i'll do a little clip of that but all right here's the question for you and we kind of put up we tailored these to you okay yours is if you if you were trapped on a life draft with the members of the gaither vocal band and you can pick whichever error you just say your favorite error that you mentioned earlier and there's only room enough for three of you who are you gonna push off the raft oh it'd have to be bill because michael harry and i can blend so well and bill is already 84. you know it's like good night man how long are you going to hang around is empty and ready for you you know i keep telling my dad he's still here because his mansion's not ready and he needs to repent but um no i don't know i'd probably jump off myself i'm such a i'd die to self and just sacrifice you know yeah yeah believe that you know speaking of your dad i did see uh one of the videos of you and your family all sitting around i love that i love that by the way and the story he told about uh he's spanking the bed [Laughter] can you tell tell a little bit about that i love that story finally he realized my mama was half crazy um sometimes she uh you know i'd get a spanking that i probably didn't really need and um and so he that this one time he realized that you know i really didn't do it but he took me upstairs and he said mark you just holler i'm gonna spank the bed he loved he loves telling that story that day but you know i used to put on go upstairs and put on 17 pairs of underwear before every whipping pull my jam over that dad would come up to whip his deformed son [Laughter] yeah i got a lot of spankings but you know what i don't i'm not upset about it i mean some kids might have been but i always thought lord if you knew what i'd done you didn't find out [Music] [Laughter] what are your favorite couple of songs that maybe not necessarily that you sing as far as gospel music is concerned i've always wondered that coming from you what what are your favorite songs well you know i'm a lyricist i love lyrics and i can just quote them and be just as thrilled as if you sing them yeah my favorite lyric really is the second verse to the love of god do you know that i don't remember that could we with ink the ocean fill and where the skies have parchment made where every man a stripe where every stalk i'm sorry let me do it again uh could we with ink the ocean fill and where the skies of parchment made where every stalk on earth a quill and every man ascribe by trade to write the love of god above would drain the ocean dry nor could the scroll contain the hole though stretched from sky to sky and what i love about that is it was found on an insane asylum wall really yeah wow and that person that's a story i mean every lyricist i know adores that lyric gloria gaither all of them because it's just it says it all and and jd sumner said to me one time he said i don't get that verse and i said well it's like this okay where every stalk on earth let's see uh could we within okay if we emptied the oceans and filled them up with ink and then every blade of grass became a big pin and then the sky was one big pad of paper and every human being on earth became a gloria gaither and they all started writing on the sky about the love of god before they could finish the ocean would be dry and he said oh i get it now yeah sometimes cookies on the bottom shelf but but that song just stop and think about it oh gosh and then of course songs i don't know about you guys but sometimes i'll just be walking around the house and there are songs that just come out of me not that i'm writing on the spot but i'm talking about songs that like one of them that i love that gloria and bill wrote was i believe helped out my unbelief i walk into the unknown trusting like a child cause i believe lord help my unbelief i walk into the unknown trusting all the while and it says i long so much to feel the warmth and i always say that vestal seemed to know but should i never feel a thing i claim him even so because a lot of people think you know you gotta jump pews to know you're saved or whatever you know you can feel nothing and choose to believe and you're saved yeah yeah that's amazing love those lyrics i don't know that i've i've never heard that i don't that i remember anyway if i have i didn't think that much put that much thought into it like i did hearing you just say it instead of hearing it you know yeah and with all the song you know so forth so yeah that's amazing so much to feel the warmth that others seem to know but should i never feel a thing i claim him even oh my god oh that that gave me chills when you just i love it i love it i can't thank you enough for joining us today man y'all until uh i realize you're both christians cause i think gosh if these are secular comedians and they're thinking i'm gonna be funny they're in for a bad time that is isn't that the beauty though of comedy the beauty of comedy is is this universal brotherhood that's what i find is that you said something at the beginning of the interview where a lot of the people and the comics that are in clubs probably couldn't merge into going into a christian environment and make them laugh i find that both directions you know both both kind of like well you're not really playing with this crowd you're not really playing that crowd but the closer you get is that it's that universal language of humor and funny and it heals the soul and it just brings healing to people and uh and that's what i appreciate about you because where you stood out for me is my dad was a pastor in little rock arkansas we call it lotta rock arkansas back in the day because it was the 80s and everyone was a glam rock you know we're calling this lot of rock kind of thing and um and i was always a musician and uh and i was class clown that kind of thing and my dad had more of an inner city type church but it's impossible to be a pastor of a church without being exposed to southern gospel in the south it's just impossible and so so so where i started seeing uh releases and exposure on tbn on christian television of these and then i'd see you on there and you were saying funny things i was like oh well there's my connection right there i can i can relate with this right here and i'm a huge fan of southern gospel but i'm i'm a bigger fan of the universal language of love and of laughter you know and comedy and so that's just it this has been such a blessing just to for me to just hear you and hear you like i could learn you've forgotten more things than i'll ever know so i really appreciate your voice well you guys have made me feel so good thank you thank you awesome you've been such a blessing to so many people more so than you probably will ever realize so on behalf of those people and ourselves we we thank you and i always tell people uh i've always wanted to say this to you your your adhd has been a blessing to all of this world and you guys are great if you ever come to houston look me up we will do that we will probably we'll do some gigs here eventually so make sure you let me know and i'll come hear you okay sounds good i'm in houston well i was i i postponed a houston date but i'll i'll i'll reach out to you info mark lowry.com sounds good thank you mark thank you so much god bless you my friend been fun guys i've enjoyed it thank you [Music] you

Channel: Life & Laughs Podcast

Views: 17,627

Rating: 4.9069767 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Lowry, Johnny Sanchez, John Sanchez, Elias Isreal, Elijah Tindall, Life & Laughs Podcast, life and laughs podcast, Gospel, Music, Gaither Vocal Band, Bill Gaither, JD Sumner, Imperials, Johnny Minick, Gloria Gaither, Comedy, Podcast, Interview, Celebrity, Celebrity Interview, Covid, Best Podcast, entertaining, funny, hollywood, california, los angeles, little rock, arkansas, houston, texas, Mary Did You Know, songwriter, Gospel singer, legend, quartet, musician, baptist, southern gospel

Id: K5Gu_0GPYcc

Length: 58min 21sec (3501 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021