Cass Hariss joins us to guest blog the history of some of NLR’s great summer theme songs!
Hey this is Cass, the guy that’s been writing the theme songs for camp the last few years. Each week I am going to pick a theme song and talk about how I went about writing it. This week we’re starting from the beginning with “I Want to Know Christ.” This was the song from the 2001 theme “Do You Know.” I believe this was Tom Graney’s first theme to sculpt on his own. The main verse was Philippians 3:10 where Paul is talking about his desire to know Christ. And not just to know him, but to know him in such a way as to “fellowship in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”
When I sat down to write this song, I was playing around with a partial capo. By the way, this section probably won’t make sense if you don’t play guitar. The capo only bands the G, A, & D strings. So when you place it on the 2nd fret and play D style cords, you get a really cool open ringing sound from the guitar. So the melody for the song actually came from a melody I was playing on the guitar. I originally recorded it for the camp video in the sound booth at Fellowship Bible Church in Lowell, AR late one night about 2 days before Week 1 ended (nothing like waiting till the last minute). I plugged the acoustic guitar right in and sang the vocal track over it. I don’t remember what software we used, but I would guess SoundForge. It was primitive as far as recording goes but it got the job done.
When we went into the studio to record this track for the album, I wanted a fuller sound than just the acoustic guitar. I think we accomplished that- big guitars, drums, even strings. Because of this change from the original recording, some of the lyrics were cut out- most of the chorus and the bridge. These were the wordy parts of the song that also didn’t fit the instrumentation. I wrestled with how to do it for a while and I’m still not convinced it was the best way, but it is what it is. Here’s what we recorded with: Gibson ES-335 & Les Paul on the big cords, a Fender Strat on the slide guitar, Fender Jazz Bass, Pearl Drum Kit, and Omnisphere for the strings at the end.
I can critique my own work, right?! Hope so, I do it constantly! Before I began writing theme songs, I was used to writing whatever came out, so it was difficult to switch to writing about something specific. The challenge has helped me overall in my songwriting. I think this song was a little wordy and too long for a song that was going to be sung every night in chapel the entire summer (and some summer staff were glad to point that out to me!). I found myself using direct lines from the accompanying scripture verses as lyrics which is obviously good for driving home the point, but it was lacking in artistic value. I wish I would have written more of what I felt about the verses. However, the melody is solid and the overall feel of the song is like an anthem- declaring “I want to know Christ”.
check back in next week for a look at “Setting the Curve”!
Be sure and check out www.cassharrismusic.com to hear some of Cass’ other music. You can buy a copy of all the theme songs Cass wrote from the NLR Store, or his site. – Ben
