In this week’s 10 Questions we get to know Living Waters, a band from Massachusetts, USA.
Their song ‘Anna Post Writing‘ is currently featured on the NAS Spotify playlists
You can follow Living Waters on ReverbNation, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter/X, Threads, and Instagram
1. Tell us a little about where you are from.
My name is Mark Lajoie – I curate and promote our music. Our band officially started as Living Waters in 1976, but some of us knew each other musically as early as 1972 in Maine. We moved to Massachusetts and met the rest of the band through a retreat center. Our first concert was in summer 1976.
2. What inspired Living Waters to start playing and making music?
It was almost like it was arranged. We believe, in fact that IT WAS! just the right amazing talents in each of us, meeting & blending in just the right way. I started getting inspired songs for meditation as a teen, and our piano player, Mike, started writing songs. But then we started to create band songs as the years went on, and everyone joined in on the arrangement process. IT sounds trite…but, yes, The Lord inspired us to make this treasured music!
But then we started to create band songs as the years went on, and everyone joined in on the arrangement process.
3. Who are Living Waters’ biggest musical influences?
For me? The BEATLES! and then Peter, Paul & Mary, Handel, 60’s pop music and, later, Christian rock, like 2nd Chapter of Acts, Phil Keaggy, Larry Norman, Servant. Our lead guitarist loved Rush & The Who and similar guitar bands. Early U2? had an IMMENSE effect on ALL of us. I would describe Living Waters as inspirational classic Christian rock band that also breaks that mold, plus adding a bit of worship, classical & folk.
4. What are your goals in the music industry or as an artist?
In the last few years, since cvd, we have stopped, no longer operational as a band. We are all now grandparents with growing families. But I have continued to work on adding recording touches to the band classics, remixing, re-creating, and using poor man’s methods for getting our treasures out there for a new time. I’ve been discovering that people are reacting strongly to it, as if the time is NOW more than it was ‘then.’ I am also creating my own music under my name. My goal is to get this music out to human ears at this time when it seems so needed.
5. Tell us about your creative process.
For the most part, the music just happens during prayer for the songwriter! Words & music often just come together. Then we bring the song to the group and work it out for performance. Some of us went to songwriting conferences and took singing lessons in the 80s to strengthen our effectiveness. There have been other songs that were sweated out more conventionally, no less inspired in my view.
6. What is your all-time favorite song by another artist and why?
“Thank You, Lord” by John Polce. As a group, we’ve always admired our musical friend, John Polce – one of the best voices I’ve ever heard live. He opened for our first concert. He has quite a conversion story. We all think his song “Thank You, Lord” is a masterpiece.
As a group, we’ve always admired our musical friend, John Polce – one of the best voices I’ve ever heard live.
7. What is the best advice you have either given or received in terms of music?
At a very early concert, I felt in my soul an invitation. I felt Someone saying, “Would you rather make it really big in the music industry at enormous danger to your soul? or do it poor-style, get married, have children, with far greater eternal hope.” That was so easy. The latter ladder to the skies, please! It seems to me I’ve found a group here in NAS who matches and believes in this advice to an amazing degree. There is NO better advice for musicians right now, I would say.
8. What is your proudest accomplishment?
I managed to get a song of mine, “Peter the Rock”, personally delivered to Pope John Paul II through the good graces of Ambassador Raymond Flynn from Boston. I talked to his secretary and she got it done! He sent a blessing “to you and to your family”. I’ve always thought anyone who is in a musical family of mine like NAS! – is included in this blessing.
I talked to his secretary and she got it done!
9. What’s been your most embarrassing moment so far?
I was leading a stadium of 25,000 people, at the World Marriage Encounter Convention, in singing the antiphon to the Psalm at Mass. I butchered it! and I never did get it right each time it was repeated. The whole stadium in cacophony! Now THAT is about as embarrassing as it gets. But it’s actually GREAT! This has served as the perfect antidote whenever I start thinking I’m hot stuff or something – perfect for knocking me off my high horse!
10. Tell us about your lowest and highest points in music so far.
High point? one was a concert at Hartford Civic Center where their mixing crew LOVED us and understood what we were doing, e.g. they were picking up harmonic tones from my Ovation, you could hear the perfect mix for bass & drums. And we were clicking as great as we ever did. Circa 1980 or so it looked like we were dead as a band already; some of us lost our way. But then it all came back together in such a way that we made some of the best music we ever had. Our song “Nobody Else” is a celebration of this.
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