We talked with Bryan and Katie Torwalt about their new live album I’ve Got Good News. We also talk about worship leadership in the world today, their songwriting process, what it’s like touring and leading worship with your spouse and a bunch more.
Podcast Transcript
Ryan Loche
Welcome to the church collective podcast. In this episode, I had the chance to talk to Brian and Katie Torre Walt and I think you are going to absolutely love it. They are seriously just some of the great worship leaders that have been with us for a really long time with some incredible music and their new album is fantastic. And it was just wonderful to talk to him. So here we go.
Katie Torwalt
Yeah, well, we just got home from a tour. It was really fun. We were out with our friend Benjamin Hastings. And we’re huge fans of his we have been forever his songs. I think people don’t always associate him with his songs yet. They will. But songs like still I one of my favorite songs that he sung seasons, I’m just promoting him to
Ryan Loche
tell everyone
Katie Torwalt
we were on tour with him. And during our tour here, let me get to it during our tour, we had a record come out called I’ve gotten good news. And it’s been really fun it was we haven’t actually gone out at the same time, like, as a record releases before. So it was very fun. We felt like we got to sing a lot of the new songs right away, and just have some special moments with the songs and we didn’t have to wait. And so that was really fun. And we had just been extremely busy. But we’re kind of on like a rest period now. Amazing. I’m drinking like lemon water at my house. Just the life of luxury, life of luxury.
Bryan Torwalt
regular tap water out of tap water.
Ryan Loche
You guys got it. Go ahead. The album’s been out for a couple months at this point. So like what’s Yeah, so what’s the play? So you’re on a little bit of rest? And so where are we? Where are you going after this? Yeah.
Bryan Torwalt
Who knows?
Katie Torwalt
Well, we know we have some plants, we actually have a couple of songs that are part of this record that haven’t released yet. We recorded 14 songs, and it was kind of a lot of music to put out at once, especially nowadays. So we have a few songs that are coming up. And then the next month that you guys are gonna hear, and I’m really excited about the songs is or it was very hard to pick, you know, which ones do you want to release? And which ones do you want to hold back. And we held back some of our favorite moments from the night. So really looking forward to that. And we have some other things planned for fall that we’re excited to share later on. But other than that, we’re home recouping from just one of the busiest seasons of our life and a little girl. Yeah, she was on the tour bus with us. And it was awesome.
Bryan Torwalt
That was your luck once so that she fell
Katie Torwalt
out of her bunk bed one time? Yeah. Oh,
Ryan Loche
no. Yeah. I I’d love to hear. I know, often you guys are seen as like, you know, family and worship, ministry touring. And that’s like, a common thing for a lot of worship leaders is like husband and wife doing ministry, and then a kid on tour. Could you maybe I mean, I know you’ve talked about this before in a lot of different ways. But I’d love to kind of hear just how is this tour doing? How’s the four year old versus when she is a sheet right, that we said when she was she was born? Like what’s it look like? Now? Like, let’s talk a little bit about that dynamic?
Bryan Torwalt
Yeah, I think, I think yeah, we have a handful of friends that do this, like Kari and Cody, husband, wife that are traveling together, trying to figure it out with kids. And it’s it is both incredible, and also a challenge. I think it’s incredible, because we get to do everything together as a family. And we get to travel and see the world together and do ministry together and have these life experiences together as a family that some of our friends that are just out on the road, you know, alone, and then they go home to their family, they have these experiences with their band, and then they go home and try and talk about it to their family. But we have the opportunity to do this together. But at the same time, it creates challenges because we are trying to figure out how to tuba with a four year old and the first time she went out with us was actually on a Jesus culture tour when she was four months old. And then And then, you know, we didn’t do a whole lot and then also the world shut down. And then now she’s turning four for first tour that we’re doing after that. So there was a long space between that and traveling with with old is both harder and easier.
Ryan Loche
Yeah, exactly where they are every time
Katie Torwalt
they where you put them. But no, I think overall, she’s at a great age. She loves the tour. And it was really fun to take her and thankfully Like Brian said, I have some mom friends especially that touring moms will that I can ask for advice that have done this all before me that I know like, what do I do if my little girl has to go the bathroom on the box? You know? What do I do? What do I do, please? Well, and so just some amazing women that have been able to help me with this process but we’ve loved it and Uh, I think yeah, like Brian said, it’s such a privilege that we don’t take for granted that we get to go out together, because we don’t. We don’t have to have that period of time away from each other. And it’s really special.
Ryan Loche
Yeah, that’s really cool. Did you guys do most of the songwriting through COVID For this album?
Bryan Torwalt
Like, what? What did that look like? There’s a, there’s a ton of the songs that we ended up starting or writing over zoom, which was the very first new experience. But it was, it was a long, it was a long journey. I think we, the very first song are the first couple of songs that we wrote. One of them was called, it’s called, wouldn’t it be like you and it kind of started the process for us at the beginning and kind of just felt like an outlier? Like, okay, here’s a song that we wrote in the middle of kind of all being home, and it was us, kind of, through our own process, and, and watching the chosen and just, there’s a few things that kind of went into that is like, diving back into the Gospels in a new way. And like focusing on the words of Jesus, and, and realizing how many times throughout the Gospels, whether it was his disciples are the Pharisees or the prophets, or even John the Baptist, and so many ways that Jesus came, and he looked different than they expected them to. And so the course of that of that song is wouldn’t it be likely to be different than we thought different than we want a better and it kind of led us on this journey of what what is the good news of the gospel for 2022? And if he did it that way before, you know, in some ways, there’s this relief of like, I don’t have to have it all together, even his disciples missed him. But at the same time, like let our awareness of of your message of your heart of what it was like in the gospels, would that be true in us today? In to experience you in that way now, and I think it Yeah, a ton of it was written over zoom, or us kind of after we put our girl to bed at night, we’re just trying to do our best and like, okay, let’s tonight, let’s not put on Netflix, and let’s go to our writing room and just like see if something happens. And yeah, it was probably a lot in the last few months. But kind of over the course of a year of writing.
Katie Torwalt
I think we really thought and we joke about this, that first two weeks that we were going to write, we’re like, we’re off the road and everything’s canceled and we have to be home. We’re gonna write so many songs, make sourdough bread
Ryan Loche
was a magical time. All kinds of wonderful
Katie Torwalt
things. Yeah. But we didn’t get any songs. So it wasn’t that magical. Because I like everyone else. We’re like, what is happening? Like, let’s voice like, what’s he saying? And I think it really took us a lot longer to really feel like we had something that wasn’t just our own thoughts or opinions or whatever, which there’s nothing wrong with that. But for worship music, there is something wrong with that. But that we had to share and say and write about. And so I think we had to wait and just listen for a little longer than we expected. That song we probably wrote after six months or a year. And, and we released that song as a single and kind of just thought, Okay, well, that’s that’s that. And then after that kind of some more of the story started to flow out. Like he was saying, like, what other times did the people miss Jesus, we have a song that is coming out with this next batch called the Christ the King. And it’s around the story. When Jesus asked Peter, who do you say that I am? And Peter goes on to describe like, well, they’re saying that you’re, you know, you’re John, the Baptists, you’re a prophet, you’re whatever. And he stops Peter again, he says, But who do you say I am? And I feel like that was a question that was being asked of us during this last couple years. Again, like, you can hear anything you want. You can find anything you want, right now, any opinion you want, but who do you know Jesus to be? And so that really, that really was brought out during that. We have a lot of songs that were we call kind of processing songs, but also we feel like, just for ourselves, they’ve been really like a recalibration. To clarify again, like, what does it mean to follow Jesus? What is the good news of the gospel in 2022? What does it mean? Like what is the gift of the Holy Spirit? How does that look in our life right now? How could it look? And so it really started like that. And but yeah, they took a lot longer to write and then when we did finish them, the rest of the process was like so fast. With making a project and recording 14 songs in one night.
Ryan Loche
Yeah, talk a little bit about that. How’d that go?
Bryan Torwalt
It was a blur. No,
Katie Torwalt
no, it was really special actually. It felt very like purposeful and it felt like what we’re supposed to do. We we really pushed for because we felt like there was some songs on there that we really wanted to be out in the world that felt like in time, and we talk about it a lot of songwriters and talking with other songwriters have like, kind of that temptation to always feel like Why have to write something that hasn’t been written, say something that’s never been said this way. And I think one of the biggest like most, I don’t know, humbling compliments that that people ever give us or our music is just that, oh, it’s not like I’ve never heard this before. But I heard it just in the right exact time that I needed to hear it again. You know, I needed to hear Jesus like this, again, I needed to hear about, we have a song on this record that we did with the health service, and they have, they have a beautiful version. That’s amazing. But that song of like, I needed to be reminded, again, it’s called sound mind that God that God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. We’ve all heard that growing up, like we’ve heard things, you know, but it’s like hearing them again, hopefully, in a fresh way with the Holy Spirit.
Bryan Torwalt
Coming out of isolation, that
Katie Torwalt
carry something else, hopefully. And so that’s always our guess is like, if we can get the timing right. Then yeah, that’s the dream. That’s,
Ryan Loche
that’s amazing that like, even that sound like so Carrie did that song at the church. I’m at the belonging co maybe three weeks ago. And I remember specifically being like, wow, like, What a unique new like, not new word, but like a unique way. So like, literally the way you describe that is how I felt that song Three weeks ago. So yeah, that’s so cool. It’s really like the,
Katie Torwalt
you know, as like creative people to you want to just be like, so out of the box. It’s so different and everything and but sometimes that’s really not the goal. And that’s not really what God’s asking us to do all the time, especially with worship music, you know, so and so serve the Yeah. And so it can be creative and beautiful. And I always will want that. But at the same time, that is really the ultimate prayer is just this is what God wants to say right now. And we’re hearing correctly and like being obedient to that. And so yeah, that was that was a special moment for us.
Bryan Torwalt
I think it’s fascinating too. And it’s like part of writing songs for the church. And being a worship leader that is probably different than like a different genre of like pop music or something like that, where, you know, you kind of the hope is that everyone’s kind of hearing from the Holy Spirit. And so you end up having these themes that come throughout different artists and church movements. And we literally like a month before we released our album, but a song on our album called begin to me that we wrote in 2020 with a friend Brett Brett Yonker, who’s part of passion movement, and the verses are all the Beatitudes. And like without us realizing, our other friend, Pat Barrett released a song with elevation, it’s a very different word for word. Verses are, again, Matthew five, the Sermon on the Mount. And the first response is like, oh, man, these like they’d gotten us up first. But then the truth is like, no, like, the Holy Spirit is speaking, we heard something, there’s something to this right now that we need to rehear blessing of the poor and spirit, bless it are those that mourn, there’ll be comforted bless it, or those that thirst for they shall be felt like there’s something that Holy Spirit is saying, Okay, now, if if I’m going to speak this out and like, catch it, because people need to hear this right now. And so I think at the same time, as you’re like, oh, they also really think that it’s very different songs. So it’s not like that, but, but that same message, it’s
Katie Torwalt
just been like reemphasizes emphasized by different voices. And I love that I think, for us, it feels like confirmation. We’re like, okay, yes. Yeah. And when people resonate with it, and connect to it, once again, it feels like okay, yeah,
Ryan Loche
that’s a really neat insight to like, hear it from that too. Because I know like, even just from like, as a local worship leader say, What was that 810 years ago, everything’s about water and oceans and like, they must all be talking but like, it’s neat to hear like, maybe Holy Spirit’s actually like, doing something for the global church in the middle of that. It’s really neat. That’s a neat insight. Yeah. I’d love to know how did you guys decide you needed to save some songs and like make a deluxe album like out of the 14 Like, did you go into it like that? Or were you just like, this is just too much. We’re just going to like, what did that look like? Why did Why do you say these couple ones?
Bryan Torwalt
Yeah, some of it was just conversations with our team and our record label. And, and even how we personally like listen to music now. Like we we we are big fans of music. We listen with
Katie Torwalt
lots of beautiful album, but it’s not as common nowadays. It’s kind of sad it makes no I’m like I definitely have record So I’ll listen to all 1214 1516 songs and let it play through. But it’s not as common anymore. And it is a lot to digest. I don’t think we thought we were going to get that many songs. Yeah, that’s actually really what it was. Our goal was to get like eight to 10 songs. And then we have some guests on the record, we had Cody Carnes, and we had our friend, Brock human who’s from United pursuit, and we just ended up having some special moments that were like, there’s no way we’re not going to share these like and, and capture these. And so we were pleasantly surprised that we had that much. And we decided, yeah, we’ll just make it a little more maybe digestible for people by holding a little bit of stuff back and then sure, yeah. We don’t know. I would love to release everything, like the day
Ryan Loche
that we record it. Put it out. Yeah.
Katie Torwalt
I think we should share. It’s great. Actually, no, I also struggle with feeling like it’s never ready for some reason. Here’s both of those there, where I’m like, oh, I want to share everything. today. I want to sing the new song we just wrote. And then the record is never perfect enough or ready enough. Yeah. And I always want one more last thing. Yeah.
Bryan Torwalt
Get to Enneagram. She’s
Ryan Loche
not super well versed. That’s a three or four. And I’ve got plenty of friends who are way into the Enneagram. I’m unfortunately not.
Katie Torwalt
Either. I don’t even I’m not even sure which ones we really,
Ryan Loche
right. Yeah. Yeah. You’re like, what do they think they say I’m a three. And I was like, Okay, I don’t know.
Katie Torwalt
Rhonda, love to.
Ryan Loche
I mean, this stuff that you guys write has so much, like you said, like, it’s not necessarily a new but like, there’s a lot of theological depth. I mean, even just knowing the word, the Beatitudes, unfortunately, is a word that a lot of Christians don’t know. Could you guys maybe speak a little bit to? What’s your personal relationship with the Lord look like? How do you study? How do you bring that into songwriting? Like, what’s what’s that all look like for you guys?
Bryan Torwalt
Yeah, I think I think it’s even us talking about writing this, this album over the course of like, a year. And we we spend a lot of time we, we have Katie’s parents actually live in our, in our house. So beginning of 2019, we had, we felt like it was important, especially with us traveling a lot with our four year old and kind of creating a space where her parents could be with us and close by. But over the course of 2020 2021, it set up this space where every dinner, we were just having a lot of conversations. And it really helped us process life and the Gospels. And a lot of the things that we ended up talking about in this album was processed over the dinner table and Katie’s like a really incredible theologian, getting his Master’s in Counseling, like all these different things, he’s we’re huge fans of his. But we honestly would have these ideas that we would get either through us talking or an idea coming to the Gospels, or just watching the chosen just different things that, you know, inspired us through the year, and we would begin to write and then we would share these ideas with her parents around the dinner table. And like, does that feel right? If we say it this way that that feels like for us, it’s really helped to have community have friends and family that we trust that as we’re diving into the Word of God that they also are and that we can, we can have these conversations with. And I think it’s it’s that that grounding that foundation of community that helps us feel confident as we sing out these words that we feel like I know this, this has some weight to it, or at least it’s something that we can like sing believing full well that it is, you know, something that we can hold on to,
Katie Torwalt
I think too, as writers that have gotten out to do a lot of CO writing with other writers. Some of my favorite favorite songs have really come from those rights that we’ve had these amazing processing conversations for an hour, two hours before we ever start trying to write a song. Yeah. And it really is just we start to process like, What’s God speaking to us? What are we going through? And then we open up the Bible and actually look at what does God say about this? And like, for instance, that song with Brett, you know, we weren’t setting out to write that type of a song but I think one of us I don’t remember which one was Brett. Yeah, it’s just started talking about like Matthew five and I’ve been drawn there because there’s such a humility that I feel like we’ve been brought into as the church in the last couple years and and really how the Bible celebrates that it really demonstrated and illustrated in Matthew five are blessed are the poor in spirit, those that know they need a savior because they’re poor in spirit that’s actually a blessing, not a curse, and how countercultural how backwards. That is As to our reference point for, for some of those things here, you know, that we know. And so I think it’s just been really interesting. So a lot of those conversations turn into study, and then turn into, hopefully a song that’s biblical. About, like, you know, that’s, that’s our interpretation of those things, as it always is, through a human person. Very fallible. So, but at the same time, we do really, we do really take it seriously. And we think there’s a way just as worship leaders, even if you’re not writing the song, you know, you’re asking people to come declare certain words and, and things with you on Sunday morning or on a service. That is weighty responsibility, you know, for people to deal with yourself. We take it really seriously, I think, but also try not to take ourselves too seriously. That’s a that’s a, you know, wrestling to having to
Ryan Loche
Yeah, where do you think after? I mean, to say we’re out of COVID, but who knows, it’s probably more COVID Come in, but like now that we’re at this season, I’m always interested, like, what do you what do you think the church needs going forward? Like, where is the church? What does the church learn? Where does the church going? It seems like everybody’s like, Okay, we know, we’re not going back to what it was before everything. But then nobody really has an answer. And you guys might not either, but I’d love to have this kind of here. What do you what do you think the church needs for the next few years here? Like coming out of all this?
Bryan Torwalt
Yeah, we definitely don’t have the answers.
Ryan Loche
Somebody will keep asking.
Bryan Torwalt
I think anything. Let us know, I think it’s, it’s a really interesting time for the church. And I think even culturally, and we’ve had, this isn’t really gonna answer your question. But it’s, we’re even thinking about touring right now. Like, in having a hard time selling tickets, and just live events in general, or people going back to church, we were talking with a friend recently about, like, we love movies, like pre COVID, we would go to the movie theater all the time. And, you know, we would find moments to be like, oh, let’s sneak away and go catch a movie. And like, it’s the movie theaters have opened back up, we’ve gone to like two. And if there hasn’t been movies that we haven’t wanted to see, it’s just like the either it’s the urgency or the just feeling more comfortable at home than we’ve ever felt is like, an interesting thing right now, it’s like getting back into big groups and feeling comfortable in those places. It’s not even like sometimes, yeah, taking longer than I think anyone expected to take. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just like, we are all processing together, and everyone processes at a different pace and what we all feel comfortable with. And I don’t even think, you know, I don’t even think a lot of it has to do with the fear of being sick or fear in any way, shape, or form. It’s just like, we have gotten used to one a certain way of life. And now we’re figuring out what that next step looks like. And I think it’ll be really interesting to see, you know, the, what it looks like for the church over the next five years as we come together. And, and but we’ve had some really special moments of worship, I think us recording our album, doing a live record. There was some moments in that night that I was like, Oh, this, I have not felt like this in a long time. And it brought a lot of hope, and refreshing that like, okay, there’s some really good moments to come moving forward. As hunger grows again, for those encounters with God corporately.
Katie Torwalt
I do, too, like we’ve had. We I think I may be mentioned before this, but we had a songwriting retreat recently here in town that we hosted. And we were talking about, what are we burning for, at this point, like, truly, individually as a church as our communities? What do we bring for what are we hoping for, as we go out and lead these songs as we write these songs for the church and a lot of discussion that was really healthy, I think came out of it a lot of things about you know, I think I’m more okay with imperfection than ever as much as I love strategic, beautiful, artistic produced things. There is just there is this hunger and this passion just for real, authentic moments together that are? I don’t know, I think that’s those are the moments that I think about over the last couple years to like, saying these conversations around the dinner table, these close circles of friends that were just like, I don’t know what’s going on. Do you know what’s fun? What’s God speaking to you and be able to speak into each other’s life truth in those moments of fear or, or sickness or loss or whatever that has looked like in the last couple years but something that Tim Hughes during our songwriting One thing that we just hosted said he just assumed in he’s in the UK, but he just and I really felt like it was God’s heart for the season. But he was just talking about how well I’ll briefly basically rewilding and what that looks like in the church. And kind of everything grow as messy as it is as organized as it can feel as backwards as it can feel, or like taking a step backwards, in some ways, that God is birthing something new in the church, and that he’s going to pour out a new measure and a fresh outpouring of spirit and being ready for that and being just being faithful to be there for that, because that’s such a gift to be in the room for that. And so I feel like that’s really where we’re headed. And what that looks like, I think is not I have no idea. I want to continue to just be faithful to be there. Because I want to be in the room for that. And I think that’s something that is our prayer. However, it looks and back to that, you know, wouldn’t it be like you saw him, but it’s like, it’s not going to look like we would plan for or even asked for, it’s probably going to be uncomfortable in some ways. It’s going to feel humbling. And so, and it’s going to be absolutely beautiful, and it’s going to be the Holy Spirit. So I look forward to that. But yeah, interesting, even just being a worship leader during this last season. I have so much honor and respect for all the leaders and pastors and worship pastors during the last couple years and what they have carried and led through is just, it’s incredible. It really is because it’s a it’s a faithfulness that we haven’t had. We have not had to walk through most
Ryan Loche
of us. So some endurance and all that. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode of the podcast. We would love to connect with you find us over on Instagram, Pinterest, Tiktok we are all over the place suit as a DM we’d love to chat with you. Bye
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