Liner Notes

“As He Draws You”  Thursday, 10/21/2021

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As I sat at the top of the back stairwell of Lawrence House at Sam Houston State University, often spending late nights studying for class, preparing for the next day, I would occasionally glance out the window at the end of the hallway.  Directly across the parking lot was a large building filled with dorm rooms called King Hall.  One night as I looked out that window, it hit me, suddenly, that each light in the windows, shining across the way, represented a human soul (actually two human souls since dorm rooms were usually shared.)  God cared about each one of them and desired to have a one-on-one special, unique, relationship with each.  The only thing separating each of these from a right relationship with God was an acceptance of God’s forgiveness provided via the sacrifice of the Messiah, Christ Jesus.  For “As He Draws You,” I wrote the lyrics to the chorus and the final tag inspired by that realization.  I went back to my dorm room, retrieved my Alvarez guitar and began working through the details of melody and harmony.  That original version, also, had an instrumental that I have long sense discarded.  I registered the copyright as “Jesus Is Calling” in 1984.  (I also called this song “Can’t You Feel,” but finally settled on “As He Draws You” many years later since those words function as the lyrical hook.)

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When I returned to Sam Houston State to work on my masters degree, I began working out the first and second verses and the bridge on a piano in one of the practice rooms of Music Building II.  At that time, the initial inspiration I had received, looking out the dorm window at the lights across the way, came back to me.  I decided that that word picture would work nicely as the first verse.  The second verse was inspired by Isaiah 41:17-20 and the bridge by I Peter 2:1-10.

 

By this time, I began to see the importance of a fully developed bridge section.  I saw that the bridge could act in a somewhat similar way, in pop music, as a development section of a classical sonata form.  I could hear how popular music was, often times, missing an opportunity to develop motives, themes and rhythmic ideas presented earlier in the song.  Bands like Yes, Rush and Queen embraced this notion of a bridge or of a development of the ideas that allowed for musical commentary.  Artists like Barry Manilow would often use key changes to provide emphasis to the lyrics.  Of course, The Beatles had no aversion to adding instrumental commentary to expand the palette of the piece.  So “As He Draws You” was one of the first pieces where I took my time thinking through and experimenting harmonically and motivically/thematically within the bridge.

 

My appreciation quickly developed for the skill set displayed by composers such as Bach, Brahms and Mozart.  Their expertise for navigating these kinds of developments and harmonic rides provided a tutorial for composing with a greater sense of deliberation or deliberateness.  Moving from simply dictating from a musically inspired moment to diving into the material, i.e. really exploring its potentialities, became something of an obsession for me, finally.  A quote that we ran across in one of Dr. Mallard’s musicology classes from Brahms went something like this “the initial idea is a gift from God, but it is my responsibility (or privilege) as a composer to explore that material, molding and fashioning it into the final product.”

 

Thanks to Robin Owens for her contribution to clarinet on this piece, as well as to Chad McCutchin on cymbals, Craig Needham on cello, Larry Bailey on flute and to my wife, Christy, on background vocals.