31st March, 2006
JOE MONTAGUE

How many blokes have gone through school with a huge crush on girl that kept you awake at night fantasising about her saying yes when you asked her out on a date? How many high school girls blessed with incredible looks have wanted geeky high school guys to just stop gawking at them and appreciate them for who they are inside?

Such are the themes explored in the US band Roads to Rome’s single Beauty Queen, song number five on their debut album, Love Rain Down.

Roads to Rome frontman Michael Musick explains that the basis for the single is partially made-up and partially drawn from real life experience.

ROADS TO ROME "I came to Christ through a girl in high school,” says Roads to Rome's Michael Musick. “I just thought she was pretty and I wanted to date her. She wound up sharing the Gospel with me and that is how I wound up becoming a Christian.

"I came to Christ through a girl in high school,” he says. “I just thought she was pretty and I wanted to date her. She wound up sharing the Gospel with me and that is how I wound up becoming a Christian. To me it (the song) is a story about authentic beauty or even inner beauty

Musick says the fictional part of the song comes from the perspective of a guy who goes to high school with a girl that he just can't get out of his mind. She is the kind of girl that everyone wants to date. In this story the girl has an encounter with Jesus and her life changes. This loving and friendly girl is now seen through the eyes of the same fellow sometime after graduation - as Musick imagines, perhaps at a high school reunion.

“He sees that she is pretty but he sees her inner beauty and at the end of the song says, 'I wish I was her beauty king'. Pretty much what he is saying is, 'I want that beauty in me,” says Musick.

He describes the song as having "a little bit of a Sheryl Crow and Tom Petty thing (going on)”.

“I really like writing for that space. In fact my solo record had a lot more of that triple A (Adult Alternative Album) sound with a little bit of twang in there. My whole family is from Kentucky (in the south-eastern United States), so I have a little southern in me."

Musick is a guy who is comfortable in his own skin and it comes across in his music. He’s not about Christian slang or packaging the tried and true church ideas. He is about being earthy and involved in everyday life situations.

You catch that in songs such as Turn It All Around - "She likes to ride the tire swing; she likes to count the stars". You find it in his discussion of racism and civil rights in the song Long Road To Memphis, dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. You experience the memory of every teenager who has ever had a crush as you listen to the words of Beauty Queen. Like fellow American songwriter Sara Groves, Musick possesses that tremendous ability to paint awesome word pictures. He takes snapshots from life and memory and puts them to music.

Friend and sometime collaborator Mitch Dane (Jars of Clay, Bebo Norman) says of Musick: "His band Roads to Rome really embraces what rock is about, unapologetic and real."

Dane produced Musick's solo CD This Town and a 2004 EP released by Roads to Rome.

In fact, Musick gives a great deal of credit to Dane for taking him to the next level as a songwriter. Prior to recording This Town, he says "we sat there and wrote and rewrote”.

“He transformed how I write. It was a gruelling process for me and yet at the same time it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I stopped trying to be a Christian artist and I just started being an artist. I started writing from my heart. I think when I became a Christian I thought I had to (enter into) this Christian subculture and talk the way people talked. I started writing and it wasn't really from my heart. When the album came out it was beyond what I could ever have imagined.”

It is perhaps that honest approach to themes in their songs that has endeared Roads to Rome to the American college crowd. In February 2005, the band - which formed in mid-2004 and who also includes Kevin O'Neal on percussion and keys, David Burch on drums and bassist Seth Marcum - decided to release their EP The First Five and more specifically their single Always You through American colleges.

“The college market is really where our heart is at,” Musick says. “It is an environment we all come out of so we feel like we can relate to those (people). I am also part of a ministry called Kingdom United that does reconciliation festivals on college campuses."

Love Rain Down is a mixture of ballads and pop rock tunes. The style of music can be attributed directly to Musick's comfort zone. He says he tends to write a lot of his ballads on the piano.

"A lot of the upbeat stuff I tend to write on the guitar just rhythmically it is a little easier to catch the tempo," says Musick.

He says when he is writing, "I have a tendency to hear counter melody going on with a guitar so it's not just like riffs or chords but an actual melody in the chorus on the guitar”.

There’s enthusiasm in Musick’s voice as he talks about the new album Love Rain Down and in particular the song Weary From Walkin' In The World Now.

"It was one of those songs that everybody who played on it added to it and made it what it is. That is what is so exciting when you are in the studio and you have guys that can capture ideas and thoughts."

In 2004, Roads to Rome had an opportunity to perform in and visit several of the cities that the Apostle Paul ministered in on his journey to Rome. Working through a group known as Operation Mobilisation they performed concerts in Antakya (Antioch) and travelled through Tarsus and Istanbul before playing in Canakkale near the ancient city of Troy.

"It was a blast," says Musick.

A lot of the concerts were held at open air venues and one night the band had more than 1,200 young people in attendance.

Asked if the band met with any resistance he says the experience made him realise “not only is there a hunger for good music but I think people are a lot more open to spiritual things and to God then maybe we assume”.

“We have a tendency to look at the headlines and think, 'They don't want to hear anything about Jesus, but actually most young people - even in nations like Turkey - are very open to spiritual things. It helps to have music that they can relate to."

Musick may be soft spoken and measures his words carefully, but, as Mitch Dane says: "Mike Musick is an incredibly talented individual."