On the Road to Recovery with Zach Williams

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] everybody Michael DeLeon on the road to recovery down here in Fairfax Virginia and last night tonight we're getting then sit down with Zach Williams the one the only people know is music but I don't know if everyone knows his story and what a story it was what a story it is and what a story it's still going to be as I am able to bring the hope is that Williams shares in his music like chain breaker and fear as a liar and no longer slaves and survivor so many songs impacting so many lives and now his story I am so honored to take his story share hope with other people on the road to recovery from Fairfax Virginia with Zach Williams Christian artists Zach Williams CD chain breaker won a Grammy in 2018 for Best contemporary Christian music album but there was a time in Zach's life when he had chains of his own I grew up in a small town Northeast Arkansas there are these memories I have were in church like my dad played music so I can remember being at church on Tuesdays and Wednesday nights during music practice and things like that you know playing with other kids at the church his dad's or mom's were on the worship team my dad took me to a petra concert when I was like seven years old Petra DeGarmo Keith I remember that was like my first real concert that I'd ever been to I just thought was the coolest thing and I grew up on you know his old vinyl records he had Keith green and rest half and Rich Mullins and Ronald lefeber and bands like that but I didn't have any desire to play music you know growing up as a kid I was into sports and I thought that you know maybe one day if I got a basketball scholarship I could go on and kind of get out of this small town and do something different with my life [Music] I can remember I guess you know 9th or 10th grade me the first time I'd ever really drank alcohol going over to a friend's house and there being a partier and then by the time I was in tenth grade though there were some older kids you know that um introduced me to marijuana for the first time and I can remember trying that and then by the time I was a senior in high school you know it was kind of a kind of every afternoon kind of thing you know you'd get out of school and go to somebody's house and my senior year of high school I had Division one basketball scholarship offers and I met this guy and he knew who I was and he's you know he's to do that kid that you know got in trouble for drugs aren't you and I was like yeah and scene you know if you think you can leave that stuff alone I'll get you a tryout for free junior college and so I tried out made the team got a full scholarship I was getting ready for her she's an opener her first game of my freshman year and I ended up tearing five ligaments in my ankle redshirted my freshman season set home and set there and taught myself how to play guitar when I went home a year later and grabbed my dad's old Gibson guitar and brought it back to school with me and for pretty much the next 10 years from the time I was like 19 until she's 29 or 30 I don't think I went a day without taking that guitar with me and then that in that 10 year time period I kind of found myself sinking further and further into you know the drug use and the alcohol use and I remember meeting some guys that were in this rock band in my hometown that fir'd we found ourselves with a booking agent in Europe putting us on a tour and at this time I you know had met my wife recently we're constantly fighting about changes that I didn't make and changes that she needs to make and we were getting ready to go back on another tour to Europe and you know I'd been using drugs you know 17 18 years old until Here I am 33 years old and you know me and my wife were about to call it quits you know we were about to get a divorce and she kind of came to me and was like you know there's got to be some changes or I'm not gonna stick around and I can remember having this kind of like conversation where I was like God I know you know you're real and I was like I just need you to prove it to me and so I was reading a biography by Greg almond it was called cross to bear it was like the story that Allman Brothers and just just struggle with a frontman of a southern rock band and then John Mayer had an album called born and raised that had just came out like literally that week and it's what I was so cool held that title born and raised was just kind of like working with cross to bear and all these things and I'm reading this book list of this thing and I seemed to be kind of quite on our - that we were on and I pulled my ears out for a minute to just kind of listen and the guy driving the the bus is scanning radio stations and he stops on a station it was Big Daddy leaves redeemed come across the radio [Music] it's a visa but stop fighting it's already been I everything you see and I just remember that song and it just hit me in a way that nothing else has ever really spoke to me in that way and I remember calling my life from this hotel and I said man I'm done I'm done with this band I'm done with the music because she kind of thought I was crazy but I just remember coming home from that tour and and literally canceling my shows and quitting the band I never looked back and I really didn't have an explanation to anybody other than and I got to make some changes for myself and for my family we got involved in the church in her hometown and these folks took us in and we found ourselves at church every time the door was open we were involved in anything we could getting involved in and we just surrounded ourselves with people that were accountability and I just kind of put music down for a while I wasn't playing music at all I was really just trying to concentrate on you know my relationship with my wife and kids and with where God wanted me to be at and what I was supposed to do with my life and and my wife came home she said she was gonna leave to go with some women to a prison ministry trip and I was gonna stay on watch the kids for and she left and came home that night and I'll never forget she was just I mean she was through the roof like excited about what she'd been a part of and she was telling me that you know she thought it was something that I'd really enjoy and I remember saying something like I don't you know I really think that's something I want to be a part of it's not really my thing and about a month later she signed me up to go anyway and so I took off with her and some other women and guys from the church and we shared we shared our story together and our testimony and I took a guitar and some new songs that I've been riding and I play a few of these new songs and we saw just this move at this prison we saw about 25 or 30 women give their life to the Lord and I was blown away I feel like it was in that moment where God just kind of said this is your moment you know and this is this is what I want you to do with your music what I want you to do with your life like these are the people this is a ministry I want you to have and it was pretty clear path at that point what I was supposed to do with my music and what long after that till the church that we were part of offered me a job and and asked me to help launch a campus and when we launched the campus we caught at refuge and we started reaching out to a lot of folks that had been through the same type of things that me and my wife had been through and our core you know congregation at the beginning were were celebrate recovery and jumpstart and you know about two years later I was leading worship at the church and a guy from Nashville was there with his family they were visiting some family around the holidays and he heard me sing singing the Christmas song and took me out to coffee a couple days later and wanted to hear my story he said man you don't people don't sing like that without a story and about six months later we hooked up in Nashville I started driving over and working on songs and picked the third fourth trip that I drove to Nashville and wrote we wrote chain breaker together and then they played it for a meeting one day like for the whole staff of the record label they played the demo and they offered me a record deal off of that demo and I was blown away and you know that's spin I guess right at two years now and it's been a whirlwind for the last last few years is my first first single this year first record just signed to the label about a month ago or about a year ago and I was upset yeah no no no to have a song you know my first single go wow number one and be nominated for Grammys been pretty cool hey Nicole C volunteer again would be incredible Zack William thank you yes Tony was nominated nominated today for five double wards yes man you won two of them exact thank you so much for sharing a story man thank you so much for inspiring me and sharing your story so I can inspire the people with your hope chain breaker was right man fear is a liar and I'm so glad that I've got a chance to sit down and capture your story and share with other people I'm Michael DeLeon from George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia and we will see you on the next episode of on the road to recovery [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] II [Music] you

Channel: STEERED STRAIGHT Inc.

Views: 468,828

Keywords: recovery, road to recovery, on the road to recovery, zach williams, fear is a liar, chainbreaker, steered straight, addiction

Id: -nTD5h-tFuI

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2019