I had a chance to talk with Kyle Segars, guitarist of Sow & Tether, about their EP project, their Kickstarter campaign, and leading worship for their church. TCC: Tell me about Sow & Tether – how did the band get started? Kyle: All five of us are members at Revision church in Olive Branch, MS. We started out playing together on the worship team. After several weeks of practicing and rehearsing, we all noticed a calling on all our lives to write original music in addition to leading the church in well-known worship songs. We began using all of our Saturdays to write. We wrote about 15 songs over the past year, and took 6 of them into the studio with us. It’s really just been a way for us to serve our church, and serve the church at large. TCC: Tell me about your Revision Church – How big is the congregation, and where do you meet? Kyle: We started in 2010 meeting in a skating rink. That was interesting. We put together a team of volunteers to help make things look less like a skating rink, since that’s not really an area conducive to worship. So the volunteers would put up pipe & drape, and a projector screen and that sort of thing, to make it look nicer. Over the past year, we’ve been meeting in Olive Branch High School, in their cafeteria. It’s been a blessing to to us to move into a bigger place that doesn’t have neon painted walls. We’re right in the middle of the “Bible Belt”, and a lot of people have asked what the point is of planting a church in an area that already has so many other churches. Our pastors were very firm on the idea that in order for everyone in our community to be reached, every church in our area would have to be running over 1,000 members. That is really the motivation behind our involvement in our community. TCC: Since the band is based out of a church, what does your weekly ministry involvement look like? Are you the only worship band, or are there others in rotation? Kyle: That’s kind of an interesting story, because we’re right in the middle of a lot of change right now. Our vocalist just stepped in as the administrative worship pastor. Our previous worship pastor has moved to another position in the church. He had brought all of us under his wing in the beginning, the 6 or 7 of us who were regularly serving. We’re just now to the point were we have a monthly rotation. We’ve got 3 guitar players, 3 bass players, and 2 drummers , and some female vocalists as well. The church worship team and Sow & Tether are two different things, even though we serve on the team, the band it its five members have created its own little niche. TCC: What does the future look like for Sow & Tether? What are your goals for the band? Kyle: All of us come from a history of indie bands, metal bands, and stuff like that, so doing worship is a whole different picture than what we’re used to, so we’re not really sure where to point it other than to intentionally serve the church that we’re in. We have been asked to play different events & summer camps, which has been a blessing to us to serve other churches in that way. As far as touring is concerned, we are open to that, but our primary ministry is to our home church. Whatever we do in the future with this, if it takes off, we definitely want to make sure we’re cleared on sundays to be able to be at our home church. If I could compare us to anyone else, as far as our intentions with this band, it would look like what All Sons & Daughters is doing with Journey Church in Franklin, TN. They serve at their home church but are still able to get out on the road and serve other churches. TCC: Tell me about your Kickstarter campaign. As of this interview, it has less than a week left. What is the funding for? Kyle: When we first started looking for producers to get the album done, my first choice was Jared Fox in Nashville. He’s worked with All Sons & Daughters, Tomlin, Gungor, and he produced the last 2 records for The City Harmonic. We ended up spending about $7000 on recording, which was our entire budget for the whole project. I had just heard about Kickstarter fairly recently as a way to get fans and friends and family involved in what we’re doing. It keeps us humble, for one thing, and allows other people to contribute to the project. $3000 is the minimum goal, that will take care of all the distribution of the album and of course, the rewards for the Kickstarter, as well as copyrighting and licensing. We did our own rendition of “How Deep The Father’s Love For Us” by Stuart Townsend, and evidently licensing costs money! We hadn’t looked into that much prior to recording, so that was a surprise. If we get past our goal, the rest of the money goes towards marketing and promotion. TCC: Explain the meaning behind the name “Sow & Tether” Kyle: We spent forever trying to come up with a name! Our church had been going through a series through the book of Mark, and we got to the parable of the sower. Our pastor inadvertently used the phrase “Sow & Tether” as a description of who Jesus is; the concept being that Jesus is both the sower of the seed, and the one that binds us to himself. So it starts and ends with Him.
Let’s help complete their Kickstarter!