Classic station on our sister station legends 810. You're listening to. Broadcasting. What's not every day you get a chance to talk to somebody who is so influential in the area of artificial life for most of our life in so many different aspects but that sentiment is a key to garment musician composer songwriter force but then also music executive I mean entrepreneur I mean that the list goes on he's written his autobiography it's about $900.00 pages long and that if you want to put everything in there would have it's called maybe not maybe a few pages for him that's called Rebel for God Faith business in rock n roll we've got a link for the book up at the bottom line Show dot com ready to Garma Welcome to the bottom line show today great to be with you Roger I could be right did not realize until I started reading through your autobiography I didn't realize how multifaceted your career has been and I mean I've remembered you and Dana key with you know the d.m.k. Thing and and you being the 1st guy I ever saw to play a portable keyboard type thing on stage I thought wow this is a Christian concert that this is a lot of fun but there's more than just you know being a singer and songwriter for us it covers the whole gamut let's let's take a better take it back to the very beginning when did the music bug 1st get you and how did you know there was God leading you say Ok you're going to play music but I want to do it for me well Roger it goes back to when I was really little you know at the age of 3 years old. Playing piano because my mother played at our church and she started you know giving me lessons and. By the time I was 5 or 6 I was taking lessons from her and taking lessons from you know another piano teacher and I didn't really less necessarily like it that much because I mean when you're 6 years old you kind of want to go outside and you know your little kid churns on piano bench so. But you know when I was 89 years old. It was when I was in the mid sixty's that's how old I am today but. Music was a really big deal in midtown that I lived in which was made just Tennessee and I grew up kind of across the street from Graceland mansion you know not a bad place to grow up and the fact that just a sidebar going hollowing out trick or treating from Elvis Presley really and yes and he gave me a signed on dollar bill and probably just like every other 6 year old I went out it's going to. Get is made of all by most hoping he'd say I've got it I've got it framed it's on my mantle piece at home but you know I don't know candy bar was good . And so you know you know in our school bus would go by Graceland and it was Elvis was in his prime in those days in music seem to be a really good way to make a living so from an early age I kind of dedicated myself if you will to the altar of rock n roll and got pretty serious and high school playing with bands and when I was just 15 years old us on my 1st major recording contract wow with the mainstream label and was kind of a little bit of a big deal I'm s.s. You know later celebrity meet the guys in the band and I was on my way and then right before I graduated high school I had a very dramatic. Kind of a lightning bolt experience where you know God save me and I don't know what was up I mean you know I was going this one direction of the not going in her direction. I went back to high school the very next day and so my good friend Danny key and that's it you're going to believe what happened to me may not sound use he goes over I didn't know he was missing. But I know there would be you know that he would set him right yes me and so I said Well now watch as I skip school I didn't know you weren't supposed to. Get up school and I shared with him the best way I knew how being a Christian for one more did have you know yeah and he committed his life to Christ . That in my eyes oh my God over the next few months we just started writing songs about our faith right here it wasn't ever premeditated you know we're going to be in Christian music we're going to do this we're going to it was very organic We just wrote songs about what was important. And we soon found out there were a lot of kids that wanted to hear what RINGBACK we're doing in the midst of Syria. Yeah that's where we started it's incredible as I'm talking to Eddie to Garmo today here on the bottom line I'm Roger Marsh's book is called Rebel for God Faith business and rock n roll and we've got a link for the book up at the bottom line Show dot com It's incredible it is a thing about 1st of all I mean there was always such a great camaraderie but that you and Dana had in the De Garmo and key stage presentation of course in the studio too and and obviously that friendship was evident but I can just imagine what it's like for a couple of high school seniors to to be kind of wrestling with the new issues of what is faith look like were writing songs about it but there wasn't I mean the industry that we have now compared to what it was in the late early 1970 s. I mean there's no comparison really I mean you guys Was there a place for you to go with your faith in this music what we didn't know about an industry and one that exists it was very tiny at that time and so we originally played our Christian side. Gee this rock solid as they call them in those days for our mainstream label and they were like guys we don't know what to do you can trust you know we're not sure that we can market this so they released us from our contract and over the course of the next really just short period time about 18 months 2 years Dan I both went to work for an organization called Truth or crisis. And we were high school directors and both of us were in college and over the course of the next couple years it just became apparent was going to be really difficult to net this to do anything without a larger platform and lo and behold. We made a demo tape and it got into the hands of a friend of ours that later became a dear friend named Pat Boone I think some of our listeners have heard that guy. Called me he had a home and by this time I was married very little while he got married you got married very young did you not I was 19 yeah I was 19 by 2 leaks have been married for 45 years congratulations you know my wife reminds me Edie trailing like 23 and a half crazy on the 1st. And I just say it's been 20 of the happiest years of her life that's for sure there you go that's a good line yeah. We were married young and but I had been called the House and Susan my wife actually Hansard the phone and hung up on him because I know now. And this was I mean he still unknown guy but in those days he was a movie star and still. You know doing. Big shows like The Tonight Show you know him and that sort of thing motion pictures and so it was a big deal that he called us and he had a record company with a friend of his by the name of Mike Curb which guys are very involved in music kind of became one of the giants in country we just actually in those days being a little record company called landline and they find the problem key to our 1st album without playing that we would have never had that kind of platform that make it necessary digging and get the music out there because radio stations in those days were. Right it was he was very conservative what they were climbing so the engine the kind of crow the public he was you know if you will of the controversy can you really do you think can you do this for God. And you can and it was at that point no one no one was doing it for I mean the. Larry Norman a little bit instead but I mean like I said it was it wasn't an organized concentrated effort where there are 25 bands there are different formats and things it was basically ever it was kind of piecemeal You know here's another band here's another group it really was in. Newspapers and magazines to provide it was really important but all this was pretty Internet of course right so you had radio and television to be on then it really meant. It was about you know it you know. So it was challenging to get the word out there without major radio support an early days that did come later but it. You know added to Garmo is my guest today here on the bottom line I'm Roger Marsh Eddy is the author of a brand new book called Rebel for God Faith business and rock'n'roll we've got a link for the book up at the bottom line Show dot com And as we continue to take a quick break here and as we continue or to talk about what that what that really means to be a rebel for God in a kind of an anti God culture today also the the De Garmo key story gives way to the forefront records story there's a good possibility that you did may or may not know how many different bands became popular how many different acts became popular Christian music because of Eddie to Garmin Dana key saying we let's have our own label and these are the these are the bands and the acts that they signed more of my conversation with Eddie Garmo in just a moment as the bottom line continues your station with the best ministry variety and Bible teaching 95.3 f.m. . Steve Russo with real answers. Have you ever jumped out of bed in the morning and ask yourself What am I here for I've lost track of the number of people who said Russo give me a reason to get up in the morning everyone wants to know they matter that they're on this planet for a reason how do you know what you're supposed to do with your life it's a captivating subject and the answer lies in your relationship with God He allows you to be born and you're still alive so what's his plan for you. Solomon the wisest man to ever live pondered this question we read the account of a search for meaning in the book of ecclesiastics His conclusion was simple Fear the Ad Council taking a stand for America following the and corrigible a wicked attack on America September 11th 2001 President Bush said Terrorist attacks can shatter steel but they cannot dent the steel of America's resolve stay tuned to this Crawford broadcasting station stay involved and take a stand for America a safe space for those who like to think that's the bottom line. Ready to go is my guest today here on the bottom line I'm Roger Marshall remember the name to Garmo from the group to Garmo and key if you are a Christian music fan in the seventy's and eighty's d.m.k. Did a all sorts of wonderful things matter of fact Eddie I was noticing in your new book rebel for God quite a few of the chapters had to Garmin key song titles and they're just kind of a fun little way to kind of tie things together is is it all of them or just some of them. Were to some of Yeah I mean we we made 170 or so for 17 years so you know really a lot of been if we had 10 phones be a 170 Well earlier I suggest that your book could have been 1800 pages so maybe if you do that if you do the expanded version we can do a different chapter let let's do it let's talk about the government can let's kind of move into the eighty's here because I know you mentioned that the Pat Boone connection getting you guys signed and lam in line records and Mike Curb and all those things but then once you know that they're starting to get there was a little bit of foothold for Christian radio in the 1980 s. And different genres for happening and you guys were really at the forefront of that along with Petra the Imperial Zen you know bands like that as far as far as groups went right mid eighty's or so all of a sudden you take you guys make a decision to start your own brokered label talk about that we did to back up just a little bit you know to get us into radio we teamed up with Amy Grant and we became her and toured with her a couple years right and we would open the shows and then play her music and she would sing in so you know radio story kitchenette with them we. Became way more popular than I ever dreamed it actually went it was probably 987 about the peak maybe 88 of our career. I wanted to put together a mechanism that could help other artists that were like honest reach their potential when reaching an audience so Dan and I had a couple other guys won't go here's Walt and. Record label called forefront records and one of the very 1st groups that we signed up for front was a hip hop group out of Washington d.c. Called d.c. Talk now we've heard of those guys in. D.c. Talk a mobile or did we make an album RINGBACK with those guys and then they went on tour with the colonel on. For a couple years kind of like what we did with Amy Grant and they were with us during our people career time and so you know they were they were really obviously very talented and very good at what they did and so it helped them gain a platform very quickly and course they went on to far surpass what Dan and I were able to do just like and so the record company started taking a life of its own and. At that point didn't really care for the record business so he didn't stand all agree and our 3rd partner other named Ron Griffin he and Sting both been too long either so the record company came down to the office on 992 you know I had a really big dilemma to face that because the record company at that time had 16 artists we had d.c. Talk down your drilling and James Moore in the distance and skillet and several others and so I retired from the following key. More or less at the peak of our career and went into the record label full time did you ever imagine any that you could that you had those chops I mean I know there's that there's a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit in your family history but did you ever think when you were playing music at some point I'm going to get off the stage and get behind the scenes more possibly you know I was always given that it was it was plus there's much right brain is left brain and you know. I was always trying to figure out how to fire another take it to the northeast. So that part of it came pretty natural for me and I like the business element of trying to figure out how to make ends connect and how to to make them have impact to hit with an audience and so it was a natural fit for me to go into and move into the business side by 1st of very natural fit for Dana my partner to become a pastor of the church because that's where his heart was not that not that I didn't care about the ministry and not they care about the business but that's you know where we were both playing our strengths at that point you get toward guilds for business we go we tend to get into my work the songs you know there are. Records the recordings you know go into together but he was definitely more gifted on the pastoral side and I was definitely more gifted on the business and. Because the fundamentals of how to make it work side you know yeah definitely and also I I went into the label business soul strength the night the night he added to Gar was with me today here on the bottom line I'm Roger Marsh we're talking about Eddie's brand new autobiography called Rebel for God Faith business and rock'n'roll we got a link for the book up at the bottom line Show dot com by before the break he was talking about that title rebel for God in today's anti-God culture I think it's George Barna who's determined that we went for about you know basically where Christian nation to post Christian nation to now basically an anti Christian culture and yet you see Christian music thriving you know there are so many people who really love it how could a Christian embody this rebel attitude that you guys had back in the seventy's and eighty's especially when there was no industry for say when you were just saying God gave us these gifts and gave us this passion and and we're going to follow him with it well you really hit the nail on the head because that the philosophy world if you will 'd use pretty much all about self-gratification in one form or another it's the key to their. Career success and even you know some of the crew who are requests but a clue about what can a criminal. Recruits or. Critter Yeah in America refer. To rebel. Against the world's philosophy and become a servant which is critically peril thing if you can you know as we all could see so that's that's really at base is the fault of how to be a ripple through his just to war against the principals while teaches us you know you know throw yourself into Christ. Has it been tough for you working either as an artist or as an executive in the music industry because you got after forefront there's a publishing season of your life as well was it were there any really major challenges because of your faith that you ran into because obviously some of the people you're dealing with were you know as Christian music industry others it was more the mainstream. Well sure probably coming in some ways not any more challenges than a Wal-Mart actually runs into but you know a radio executive but certainly you had you had times where it was confusing which direction to go because music is a universal platform if you will because being in a Cain or such a public forum. There's a lot of celebrity ism and ego terrorism and those kind of elements that aren't necessarily. The elements that are. You know you learn how to manage those kinds of things in people's personalities as well as your own sometimes you know it can it's not so easy I remember when I 1st started Christian music Roger I would sign autographs cause I thought that was groping. And you know how can somebody on my. Right hand and sell it or tell people that and then it became Oh my gosh is he stuck up what. They can't win right you know one value you don't want to be too arrogant but at same time you come across that way if you don't. Make kind of flip the other direction and so. And the entertainment business in general can be pretty he does to keep you will if you look at Hollywood he looked at the pop stars line and that sort of thing and some of that definitely believes those are going to Christian lifestyles and. I think a big part of what I did as a record label owner going as a music publisher was to try to be a servant to these guys and Pastor Muppets so that they could remain strong be sort of strong in their calling and what they were meant to be because. The celebrity side of it can be fairly unhealthy it can be you know and tickets. Probably true for pastors and those kinds of folks as are politicians those kind of folks and before you know it all so you start thinking maybe nice spoke folks are doing this because it may be. The thing that really gets into your words. When I was in the lay all I'm working 20 hours. Back and John Cooper from scale another's. Give my best to try to poor into their lives from way Jesus perspective and when I get involved in music publishing. For your listeners that may not. Understand the difference because they hadn't thought about it but a record label is all about recording an artist and a publisher is all about songwriters songs. And sometimes artists write their own songs and sometimes they sing other people's songs you know in the publisher which means to make public works to get those songs into the public arena and I had the pleasure of working with some artists like talking back or somebody like Chris Tomlin or. Stuart counting. The guys that write the modern worship songs I published the majority of those guys in the world when I ran Campral Christian music group. Brother and. That's. Interesting dynamics as well because none of us frankly ever thought about worship music coming so popular right. Global where I would travel around the world and I would hear songs like that are great is our God are 10000 reasons why we're here and the mountain tops are in the jungles you know and and they were just global huge song. And. And. It's certainly been it's really cool yeah and then I grant that's a great way to describe the shepherding part of it to Eddie to Garmo with me today here on the bottom line author a