Change has been the name of the game for multifaceted musician Aaron Gillespie. It's been several years since he departed Underoath—the band that made him a household name among hard rock aficionados. And yet, the transitions for him continue. 

 

A year and a half ago he and his wife welcome their first child—a son, Joel—which has fundamentally changed everything about the way the Gillespies live, and even how Aaron writes songs. 

 

Gillespie is closing in on a milestone birthday (30), a relocation to New York City, a new ministry opportunity as a worship pastor, a forthcoming second worship record, and, oh yeah, the release of his third album with The Almost, Fear Inside Our Bones. 

 

As you could imagine, Fear Inside Our Bones might have something to say about the tensions that emerge in our transition-rich world. 

 

I had the chance to catch Aaron Gillespie before his set with The Almost at the Vancouver, Wash. leg of evangelist Levi Lusko's O2 Experience outreach event, where we talked about these transitions and the new record.

 

 

You know, 30 is 30. I don't know. I'm not fat and I have all my hair. (Laughs) I feel pretty good. 

 

 

One of my really good friends, Levi Lusko, is the pastor of a church called Fresh Life Church. He does these "true love waits" conferences that aren't lame. It's like a very evangelical, super Gospel-based thing. We're really good buds and we just kind of connected. They do this whole conference in the evening, and then we just do a show at the end. It's fun. It's like family. We're doing a West Coast tour for our CD release anyway. There's five of these things we're playing.

 

 

I put a worship record out, called Anthem Song, obviously, and then I put out a live component that was just like an online-only thing. It wasn't like a real release; just an online only thing—something we kind of just threw out there. So that was in 2012. Then we made this record and here we are. I'm making a new worship record in the fall. Just been working, man; travelling, leading worship, doing this. Just been busy, man. 

 

 

I'm not. Actually, I'm moving to New York City in September. I'm going to be the worship pastor of a church called C3 Brooklyn. 
 

 

 

It's crazy, dude. I preached at this church, just a mile from the Hills Campus of Hillsong, and I just really connected with the pastor, who was kind of the overseer of all the youth ministries. We just really connected and kept in touch with each other. And he was like, "The Lord's calling us to New York City, and we don't know what it looks like." And sure enough, he shows up, and we're doing a church. It's not over in Manhattan like Hillsong, but it's only in Brooklyn. There's no church in Brooklyn. So we ended up just connecting and he offered me the job, and I sort of was like, "I don't know man." New York is crazy.

 

 

Yeah, very different. I spent a lot of time there. My manager is a New Yorker. I've spent a lot of time there. It's kind of like a second home since I was like a teenager. It's a big move, though, man. It's crazy. 

 

We knew it was time to leave Florida. We went all over the nation looking for where the Lord wanted us to go. I said no the first few times this came up. We're nervous and apprehensive because it's New York and it's crazy. The neighborhood we're living in is really chilled out, though. It's great right now. Brooklyn is great. Brooklyn by the river is amazing. 

 

 

I do a lot of speaking. I don't know if they'll have me speak. Right now I'm just playing music. The church is meeting once a month right now because it's only like three months old. It's amazing what God's doing. It's over 100 people already at three months old. A lot of people are coming out. It's pretty crazy.

 

 

I'm not selling my house or anything. We're just going to rent the house out. My wife's kind of selling off all the furniture now. She put everything up for sale on Craigslist today because we'll need like two pieces of furniture for our Brooklyn lunchbox we'll be living in. It's something we've really prayed through. It's been a crazy decision. 

 

 

But I've never made a live, in-studio record. We spent a really long time writing the songs, but the recording was a quick process. I knew it needed to feel urgent, musically, so we literally spent like five days recording the thing. We just did it. We rented a room at Soundcheck in Nashville for like four or five days. We rehearsed and just went and did it. 

 

 

No; you get a great producer, and it's never cheap. I spent three-and-a-half weeks doing vocals and making sure things were the way I wanted it to be. These days, making records is just generally cheaper. All the big name studios and producers realize that you can make your studio in your house. You can make a record for no money. I make recordings in my house that sound great. I would put them out. Software is cheaper and easier to use. 

 

 

That's it.

 

 

I think this process is more work [than the normal recording process]. I think you have to be a great musician. We've got a bunch of really great players in my band. You have to be a great musician to be able to do this.

 

 

Apple C, Apple V, Apple C, Apple V, over and over again. Our ears accustomed to it. It's really sad. You know? An 18-year-old kid puts in Led Zeppelin and is like, "Oh, this is out of tune!" It's true. It's kind of the world we live in.

 

 

No. Like the old, really polished way just doesn't sound like music to me. There's a reason the Rolling Stones are still playing music, you know, and they're like, dead. You know what I mean? Obviously there will always be a place for polished pop music. But it's not for me.
 

 

 

It's not like a concept album or anything. Sort of the big theme behind the whole thing is like... When my son was born, I was right in the middle of writing this record. The doctors told us he was going to have a heart defect and Down Syndrome and all this stuff, and he ended up being miraculously healed in the womb. It was one of those things where I saw him be born, and he was perfectly fine.

 

I watched him take his first breath, and it was this overwhelming feeling that we're all born in this world that's sinful and dirty. We're all born with this fear of the unknown and this fear of saying yes and taking a step. We're kind of born with that. This place is fearful and it's unknown, sinful, dirty and all those things, and yet we have this choice to live here and make Christ known and make the best of where we are, or just to get crushed by it or join with it.

 

 

You know, I can't say enough about my wife. I was, like, beside myself. I was just crushed, and she knew the entire time. She said, "I'm fine. The baby's fine." She never wavered, ever. She was right. I wish I could've been stronger for her, but I wasn't feeling what she was feeling. We would've been happy even if things had gone differently, but I don't know... in His word God says He wouldn't give us any more than we could bear, and I didn't know if I could bear that. You love your children so much, and it's like, I'm sure you could, but at the time, you just don't know. But yeah, he's all good now. 

 

 

I listen to a lot of weird singer-songwriter music. I always have since I was a kid. Noah Gunderson, Ryan Adams—that kind of thing. I've been listening to that Bryan and Katie Torwalt record. I like everything. I don't really like rap music.

 

 

No that's not rap for me; that's like hip-hop. I love Lecrae. He's a genius. I love stuff like that. 

 

 

My guitar player and drummer in The Almost both go to this massive church in Winstom-Salem, North Carolina. They're both on the worship staff there. I've been listening to a lot of their stuff as they've been making a record. You gotta love Jesus Culture, obviously, and Bethel. I like a couple songs from the new Hillsong record a lot. I'm good buddies with Joel [Houston]. I think he's really talented. I think he's the real deal. I really liked the last John Mark [McMillan] record a lot too. It's not like super congregational worship, but I just love the way it sounds, like Bruce Springsteen making a worship record. I'm into that. And I love Robbie Seay Band, dude. I love the way Robbie Seay does Jon Foreman's "Your Love is Strong." I just did a tour with Jon.

 

 

 

It was the best. It was me and Jon and Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek their band [Fiction Family] did a few songs, Noah Gunderson, and Bryce Avary (The Rocket Summer). It was incredible. It was one of the best trips I've ever taken. Just a bunch of dudes with just guitars. We all played songs together. Dude it was rad. There was no "this is your set, this is my set"—it was just this big mess. He did that tour with no [sound system]. It was so cool. 

 

 

I'm so last minute, man. I'm like, that's how I do records. It's bad. I'm going to write the record three more times before I go in. I'm doing this thing where I'm doing a bunch of hymns and four or five originals. But they don't sound like hymns; it's jacked up. But I want to just put out this idea that we were designed to worship God. We are made in His image, to know Him, to know who He is. As humans we connect with identity. When you meet someone, you tell them what you do—always. Oh, you're a writer, or I'm a carpenter. You tell them what you do. I feel like a real purpose to grab and chase after is our identity that we are to be people of God. That's what we're designed to do. We're made in his image.That's why people look for their dad online, when they've never met before, because you want to know where you come from. That's the idea behind the whole thing. We'll see, man. I'm super last-minute, always.

 

 

I grew up in the Church, and fell away, obviously, became an idiot and did a lot of crazy stuff—drugs and whatever else. But yeah, you know, the Lord radically changed my life years and years ago, but I grew up reading out of hymnals and all that. I'm just trying to pick now. There are so many hymns that are not cool—and so many that are cool. 

 

 

That's the thing. There are some that my peers have done that are like way better than I could ever do. So Ascend the Hill's Take the World, But Give Me Jesus... any song on that, I gotta stay away from that. It's so good. We'll see. I've been in the van with the guys trying to figure out what songs to pick. I can't commit.

 

 

I just have to make Jesus famous with music and with words. I think for so many years I used my platform for my own gain, and now it's just like a mandate: I must make Jesus famous all over the world. And I think the local church is the best place to start. 
 

 

 

Because we have a stigma going on where you look at the local church as a nonbeliever and you're like, "I don't want to go there; that's crazy. I have to clean up, do this and do that?" That should change. People should look at the local church and think, "I can't pay my rent, I'm on meth and I need help. That's where I need to go." But it isn't like that. You've got issues in your life and it's the last place you want to go, and that scares me. 

 

The Bible says that, "I will draw all men unto me and I think he uses various methods to do that. For some people it takes more than it takes others to be drawn in. It may take addiction. I'm not saying God causes addiction, but He uses it for His glory, and as the local church we've dropped the ball on a lot of that stuff. We do production great, and we do music great, it all sounds the same most of the time, but we do it great. I really feel like we have to be the best of the best at welcoming people and making people feel loved and all of the above. And if it's not that, what is it? What are we doing? Are we golfing out here or what? 

 

We can build a $45 million building, but if people are afraid to come in here then what's the point? I'm not beating the proverbial drum of "I'm the best Christian ever." I've got a lot of faults and make a lot of mistakes, and I'm sure—I'm positive I alienate people from time to time. We all do. But I think that's my calling is to sort of put Jesus everywhere. I'll go into a bar and have an altar call. I don't care. I spent so many years kind of throwing it all away; now it's really important. 

 

 

I really felt like when we had our baby I was going to slow down, take a worship pastor role and kind of just write songs and stay in the background and relax. I've been on the road for 15 years, you know? I'm ready to like eat barbecue and sit in a chair. But the Lord's made it very clear that I just have to keep doing what I'm doing. We've seen so many people come to the Lord. So i'm just here for now. I'm going to take this job in New York. It's a partnership; it's not even a job. It's a friend of mine, so calling it a job makes it sound cheap. But yeah, I'm doing that, just sort of seeing what's next. 

 

 

Just to see what happens. We waited three years to put the record out. We've just stayed enough on the radar to stay alive. We're really just kind of getting back out there, you know?

 

 

A little bit. It feels like that. Anybody who puts out a record these days it's kind of like that, unless you're Michael Jackson. If he came back to life and put out a record, everyone would buy it. We sell a product that's free with Spotify and downloading, so it's always a challenge.

 

 

These are my people, you know? I go to their church—and this church is ridiculous. We connect on so many levels, and they do everything they do excellently. They bet the farm on it. And I think that's what it takes these days. They just bet the ocean. They don't care. And Levi's just one of the most on-fire for souls people I know in the best way. 

 

I don't need to sell 30,000 records first week because I went on tour with this giant band and just wasted my time. I just don't really care about that stuff. It's not where I'm at in my life. I've done that and it was empty. There was nothing there. I almost lost my entire life because of it. I'm just not in a place where I react to that type of thing anymore.