Housefires
Based out of Atlanta, GA where they host their monthly worship nights at Grace Midtown Church, Housefires brings a live, raw, organic and energetic sound that makes you feel like you’re in the room.
Blake Wiggins and Nate Moore from Housefires share about their newest album, How To Start A Housefire. They dive into the meaning behind the title, the recording of the album and how they want these songs to be used to build the Kingdom!
How To Start A Housefires is OUT! How does it feel?
Blake Wiggins: It feels so great to have this record out and listen to these songs with fresh ears.
We recorded this album almost a year ago, so the music has been running through my mind since then - I'm excited and hopeful to see what these songs start to mean for people outside of our community and what kind of life they can have in the world.
Nate Moore: Feels amazing! I’m so proud of this project and all of the people that were a part of it.
It’s a beautiful thing to pour yourself into a project and then be able to rest and wait to see what God does with it once it’s released.
This project aims to return to Housefires' original mission as a collective - the title may at first sound like an igniting but is really more a cleansing. Can you tell us about the origins of your collective’s name and what the metaphor of starting a housefire means to you?
Blake Wiggins: When Housefires started, the name was a reference to its roots, mainly the house churches that those first Housefires songs came from.
It was kind of a prayer too: that the songs could "spark" something in other communities like they did in the beginning.
I'm brand new to being "in" Housefires, but I got to benefit from what they've been doing since those early days. The songs coming out of that community and those relationships helped me in my own worship and worship leading, especially in some times when life and worship were really difficult for me.
The metaphor of "starting a housefire" is really (to me) about stripping everything back to the raw material of intimate worship.
Take out all the bells and whistles and get some people together to look at God and look each other in the eyes and see what happens. I think this album captures that. It feels simple and true.
Nate Moore: Starting a housefire is all about seeing every part of your life set ablaze with the presence of God: the ordinary and the spectacular. Both high and low moments. Your family, your community, your home, your vocation - your whole life consumed with the fiery love of Jesus.
“Housefires continues to embrace a more unrefined sound that’s free of the safety and restraints that a normal studio and even live recording set often offers.” How is this achieved in a production sense? For instance, the opening of “Don’t Get Me Started” starts in the middle of a phrase and in the midst of the vocals building.
Blake Wiggins: Every moment on this album was a part of longer times of worship, so some of the songs don't even have a proper start.
The recording process was really to press record with a loose setlist and a lot of space to flow between songs and leaders. It's the same thing you'd experience in a house church or a group of people just getting together to worship. No click tracks, no guides, so you really have free rein to just follow wherever God and the room are going.
Nate Moore: We approach production as a means to serve the original, living breathing moments of the recording.
Our aim is to make it feel real and invitational so that listeners feel like they’re in the room, experiencing the exact moments that we did.
In songs like “Lean on the Lord,” “To You” and “Sold Out” in particular, you can really hear the gospel influence. Tell us more about blending genres and the purpose behind it? Do you believe it reaches a more diversified group of worshippers?
Blake Wiggins: Worship and gospel music have each had seasons of homogeneous sounds and styles and that's created a huge and unnecessary genre gap.
I think blending those sounds can bring the best out of both genres and hopefully create tons of opportunities for writers and artists to make an expression that sounds like the diverse world we live in, rather than just what has worked in the past.
So many of these collaborations come from the real relationships we have built with other artists and writers, and making space for each other to bring our unique strengths into the songs is what allows for what I think is a really special expression on this album.
I hope that the value for different voices, styles, and the way they come together on this album allows for all sorts of people to see and hear themselves in the songs.
Nate Moore: We make music that we love and music that moves us and inspires us. All of us have been greatly impacted by Gospel music throughout our lives and journeys with God so we can’t help but let that bleed into our songs and style of singing.
Is your hope for churches that as they begin to lead these songs, they too feel their teams returning to what’s pure and true?
Blake Wiggins: I hope that these songs become prayers for the people who hear and sing them. That communities and churches would be changed and encouraged by the words and the melodies, and that a whole new crowd of worshipers can grab hold of these songs and make them their own.
It would be a dream come true if this album could draw people into real intimacy with God and honest worship.
Nate Moore: Absolutely. The Spirit and love of God purifies and ignites us. It’s our prayer that the Church would return to an expression of worship that makes room for that.
Lead songs from How TO Start A Housefire with your congregation. Resources available at MultiTracks.com.