Tooth and Nail Records and the Providence of God

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one non -rockabodas must stop i don't want to rock the boat i want to sink it are you gonna bark all day little doggie or are you gonna bite delusional is okay in your worldview i'm an animal you don't chastise chickens for being delusional you don't chastise pigs for being delusional so you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay it doesn't really hurt what what desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men the careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men lauding them for their courage going to all the world to make disciples not going to the world to make buddies not to make brosives right don't go in the world make homies right disciples i got i got a bit of jiggle neck that's a joke pastor when we have the real message of truth we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not what is up welcome back to another episode of apology radio this is luke the bear hosting today with joy the girl on my left and uh old nostril damas is back here nostril damas playing and blaring on the ones and twos as i used to call me it's been it's been some time since we had jerry here but uh he's he's doing his own thing now with cultish which is doing well we're excited about that way to go jerry thanks man so if you haven't if you haven't heard cultish you should check it out it's awesome and then the voice you just heard is my good friend darren doan oh it's good to be here i mean this is i mean this is kind of my well let's be honest you're the only people that invite me on but it's kind of like my second home man i i didn't even know this i'm so i'm so happy that darren's on i didn't even know he's actually on family vacation he took time out of his vacation to come on today so i'm very excited about that um thanks dude well hey i obviously jeff's not here he's actually he's actually in darren's neck of the woods right now he's moving his son sage to moscow to attend uh new saint andrews so we're excited about that which is let's be honest jeff could even be in this conversation i know i mean let's i mean this isn't his world i know it's good to get jeff out for a moment we're not talking hair product we're not talking vaping we're not talking karate it's time to get down to some real stuff that's right yeah so um we didn't have a show last week in case you missed that we were actually we were all over the east coast last week we filmed all kinds of stuff so we watched for that we were in new york city we filmed stuff for margaret sanger we did stuff for stonewall we were did stuff for mormonism and joseph smith and paul meyer and then we were up in ontario uh for the runner academy at the ezer institute with joe boot and andrew sandlin so be watching for all that all that jazz um but i'm just gonna i'm just gonna bring us right into this because i'm super excited so we have today to talk about tooth and nail records we don't this is a this is an area we don't really dive into much the music industry which we i wish we had more time i wish if i had time i would have a whole podcast on music but you'll get me going for hours on music um but really quick hold on and for those of you who are listening who are confused right now yes luke does talk and he's talking right now and there's going to be a lot of luke so if you get weirded out that's because luke's going to be talking a lot today that's right that's true thank you yeah an episode about real quick an episode with jeff about music would be something maybe called something about like trance and nail records or something like that now transcendental records uh oh that's good i just come with them um so nobody's still that so what has what has brought on this discussion is a new part i'd say new but it was goes back till december of last year i think or something november uh it's called labeled the labeled podcast and it's a history of tooth and nail records it's done by the guitarist i believe from emory and i summer actually yeah i was i was gonna um totally take credit for it and talk about sheologians because that labeled came up in a like summer recommend summer and i recommended like what we're listening to this oh okay summer and we talked about and just gave recommendations to people and that was one of her recommendations she told me about it okay and then i think 30 minutes later i was at a barbecue at looking at your wife and i was like okay i have to tell you about this thing so it actually came i i think so you probably told my wife and i think summer told me directly okay so i started listening to it uh i guess i guess about three weeks ago maybe a month ago and i like just busted through the whole yeah the whole not hard to show it's not a lot of them but it like it's completely blown my mind um reason being listening to it i'm realizing that if you listen to the the podcast they talk about tooth and nail kids and basically i am a tooth and nail kid uh didn't realize that but like listening to that was or this podcast i'm like man like i actually my wife and i started dating when we started listening to the records back in i wish i i love tooth and nail but i don't even know if i can call myself a tooth and nail you're probably second generation luke luke is a like blood in tooth and nail kit so when i was at reform con i was talking to you and your wife and i just happened to casually mention like mxpx or supertones or something you were like wait wait wait wait what yeah what and i was like oh and it's funny that that kind of gave me the first indication that we were at a point now where that meant something to a generation and i was like oh there's something here yeah so we're gonna get we're gonna get into that here in a minute so especially like mxpx and stuff yeah so i still that was like my introduction into something that wasn't mainstream it wasn't michael w smith and twilight paris right like was mxpx uh supertones uh overcome focal point those were like some of my first cds that i bought this was like 96 97 when i started getting into that stuff and i and listening to this podcast who's now started really i think was 93 or 94 i think so we are basically from the beginning um so i started listening to this podcast it's amazing right and it's blowing my mind because i know all these people i know all these names are mentioning these places bands you know and just everything's kind of coming together for me so i kept hearing especially in the mxpx episode i kept hearing them mention darren doan and his crew doing this music video and so i texted there and i was like dude you keep getting name dropped and i know him yeah and he's like really you're like really so um so that started this whole conversation um and so actually i totally forgot before we even get into that what are you up to right now darren and then from there tell us your interaction and with tooth and nail and how that's affected you and your life because it's tremendous and then we'll just go from there yeah well what what i'm up to is actually really this i mean i've taken my my production company which i've had for almost 30 years now started filmmaking right out of high school um and i've just been grinding as a filmmaker for a long time and music videos have been a big part of that which we'll talk about um couple labels epitaph records victory records and tooth and nail records probably having the biggest impact on my career but what i'm doing right now is actually this you know in january i kind of rebranded my entire company focused more about being a creative agency and then really specializing in making sure we got deep into social media social platforms the future of content and then stuff like this i mean this is this is where we're at right now in regards to communicating sharing ideas where's the attention how do you meet people how do you reach out to people i'm sitting here doing your show we can't call it a radio show anymore because it's not a radio show anymore it's a it's a content show which lives on youtube it's going to live as a podcast probably there's going to be a video portion of it and i'm doing instagram live right now behind the scenes of it this is what i'm interested in this is why i mean i'd always make time for you guys but it was also a great opportunity to say okay i'm trying to demo for my clients what the future is and the future is doing stuff like this and so i'm trying it it's awkward because i'm live over here on instagram so i don't want to mess up right i mean people are watching me i'm trying to interact over here as well waving to people high five and doing the show so i'm i just want to be the um you know i just want to be the test pilot for everything um and so that's why i love doing this and the fact that there was a tie -in now you know part of building your brand is also telling your story i kind of tell people now that you know when you hear the word brand building just replace that with reputation this is reputation building and so any opportunity that a brand or a company has to tell their story to communicate um how long you've been here whether it's a year or 30 years like like myself those are great opportunities right on and so you're actually uh you're going to be doing some of the mxpx here soon right or a little serious can we talk about that or is that maybe we will uh we will see i'm supposed to go on my career as podcast at some point reached out so um so so we've got that and um i kind of sent them a message saying hey let's just do a music video again let's just meet let's just meet up and do a music video together yeah let's just have some fun and do it so we'll see what uh happens there but i think they're just they're just a lot of energy right now around this whole subject so yeah i'm excited man plus you're doing all this amazing stuff with uncle gary and oh yeah gary demar kind of you know you know rebuilding and establishing the gary demar brand and american vision um i've got a lot of great clients sierra international machinery is one of you know again i'm i'm all over the board from authors to people that make machines to musicians i'm just doing a free fund campaign for yamaha guitars right now i have a page over on facebook called jam house if you find jam house we're creating a ton of original content with surfers and skaters and musicians you got that going on so then of course building my own brand and doing what i'm doing right now which is um i really want to be a um i just want to be in the game on social media because i think we're we're at a time right now where people are still people are still on the fence surprisingly i think all the cool kids are still on the fence everyone uses it everyone's on their phone every day yeah everyone we know that but everyone still pulls this thing like well but what's the next platform what's the next platform you know and i want to be the one that that is saying it doesn't matter what the next platform is let's use every platform we have at the moment and maximize it yeah right on hey darren i just want to say real quickly i love everything that you do man and one of my biggest takeaways that i ever got from you is when you're just talking about when you were working with kid rock and how he approached you if i remember correctly to do a specific music video for you but you weren't you didn't like the content because it had stuff in there you that weren't in line with your family values so you basically said hey this is how i this is what i'm going to do get back maybe you want to do something related to this and then he came back so it's almost he had to abide in your terms not you were not that you were preaching to him he did good enough of a job where he had to adhere to your standards and that just that's always been a huge takeaway with how i think about how i appreciate that yeah it was a really funny moment i was doing a zack brown music video i met him for the first time that day he was he was a cameo in a video for a song called toes by zack brown and we were shooting this big scene it was a crazy scene and afterwards you were you know we had like sea dudes and helicopter chases and boats and all this stuff and afterward we're just sitting there and he just looked at me he's like hey me and you should make a video together i said hey as soon as you're ready to get rid of stripper poles in your videos call me and he just kind of laughed and kind of looked at me but i kind of looked at him and he was like oh you're serious i'm like yeah he was like all right he was like all right and like a year and a half later i got a call from his manager he said hey bobby's ready to do a video without stripper poles and um it was like awesome okay here we go that's a great story um but yeah and so i just love this i mean i love i love what you guys are doing even what you guys i gotta i said it before i'll just say it one more time thinking back now that what you guys have been doing grinding in the dirt for so long you know and doing what you're doing i didn't even get it so it's fun now for me to look back to what you guys are doing and i'm just stealing as much as i can from from you guys as well so that's a compliment dude thanks for being an inspiration over this well yeah i appreciate that because we feel the same about you so i before we get any further i have to mention i have oh my podcast and my podcast the don't cast oh yeah the don't cast promote the don't cast is on you find on youtube or you can find it on spotify i think itunes the don't cast it's a thing i'm up to eight or nine now pretty fired up on that so the don't cast all right so i have to mention before i go any further i'm actually i'm wearing my brand new i went and saw august burns red last night with isaac actually so if we're a little hard of hearing today i apologize okay it's okay uh awesome show speaking of to the net records just happened to see august burns red their 10 -year anniversary tour for the constellations album they played the whole album straight through it was amazing the best light show i've ever seen at a at a metal show was incredible um anyways so so august burns red check them out one of my favorite bands the they're amazing okay so just tell us how darren how you got involved with tooth and nail and you know and how that's affected your life and then that'll bring us into the next discussion so go for it sure so i'm doing you know i'm the young hot music video director only because blink 182 blows up and so there's a point when i'm just begging to do music videos and then i somehow wander into the sort of punk rock camp i'm doing bands like pennywise and guttermouth and all the stuff over on epitaph records and and you know i'm the i'm the only guy doing music videos that that's a young kid and they don't want to work with a bunch of you know older you know dudes they want you know someone young that's around the scene and i'm the guy and then blink was with pennywise they were kind of you know the they're like baby brothers i do a blink video for a song called m &ms when they were still on cargo records and then all of a sudden they get signed to mca records and they still no one still people didn't really care about blink yet and we shoot a music video we shoot the video for a song called growing up or damn it i think it's an alternate title there i think it was called damn it but they eventually changed it to growing up because when it got popular they just couldn't have one called damn it and um and so all of a sudden you know we're editing the music video and the song blows up on the radio and they're just they're all of a sudden blink just blows up overnight and i'm the i'm the hot young director you know names are on mtv the director's name like everyone just kind of blows up literally overnight and you know i'm not a christian at this time and if so you know we're in hollywood or something you know and life's going really really good and um like one in the morning in this and i was with some people and we were walking and a guy and a guy turns to me who like kind of met from another guy who found out i was a music video director and he was like hey do you want to make some money off some christians and um i was like i was like what are you talking about and he started explaining to me that there was a thing called christian music and he was like yeah for every band you can think of there's a christian version and i was like what are you talking about i was like what what are you talking this is the weirdest thing i've ever heard and um and he kind of explained it to me and he goes hey there's this band you know there's this label called tooth and nail records and if they can't get their music videos played on mtv but if you did a music video for one of their bands at least they'd have someone who has a name value at mtv at that time i was kind of like i was i definitely had some like some cred at mtv and they were like at least they could use your name as directing the video um and and the actual i've told the story condensed but the actual story goes that the first video i actually do is for an artist named mike knocked and mike knocked for a song called tattoo um i did that video and which is really interesting how this all ties in because at the end of that video and i've been told lately that that was actually tooth and nails first music video i don't know if that's true or not but if it was then that's some pretty cool kind of lore for tooth and nail that the mike not tattoo music video but at the end of that video mike not kind of comes up into frame and he's and he's we covered him in pasta and flour i don't know why but he comes up and he starts shaking at the end of the song he's going like like this like zeppelin s like you know robert plant like and he's like he's shaking and i started shaking the camera while he was doing it and at the end of that take i remember thinking i've never seen anyone shake the camera before and i've never shook my camera before which is funny because that would become like my staple like the like the camera shake thing was like the thing that i was doing yeah so we shoot that video but then i'm talking to brandon ebel on the phone afterwards and brandon says hey i've got this band called mxpx or this punk band and you're doing all the punk stuff and you know man if we could get you to do this band because i can't get mtv to play them and you know and uh because i think they had shot a music video for them but anyway so i was like yeah like let's do it and so i then shoot you know a video for a song called punk rock show and we you know we go out to orange county and everyone's hanging out we just ran around like aqua ducks and like you know and just ran around just with super eight cameras and and we just shot this video um and finished that one and then i think we also did a video for a song called doing time or doing time and then i think a song not shooting not doing time we we we did a video for a song called money tree uh and then i think a song i think the song for teenage politics i forget but that was the first album and now i'm kind of just getting to know the tooth and nail you know people there and i'm talking to brandon ebel on the phone and at that point i knew a lot of people in the industry it it took one phone call to realize that brandon ebel was the absolute smartest human being i'd ever met when it came to business in the music industry and even when like lawsuits were going on and there was all this controversy about who could own what and publishing and mxpx later down the line and bands being upset i remember i don't know if you'd ever admit to this but i remember brandon ebel looking at me in the midst of all that because i asked him about it and this is a long time ago and brandon ebel said darren i've run the numbers unless your capital records and you have the beatles catalog and you have all that money sitting there there is no way there's no way you can make money off music unless you have a piece of every single thing a band does yeah it's impossible and here we are 20 years later 25 years later from saying that in every major label record deal from shine down to madonna you name it like it's a 360 deal it's called a 360 deal you have a piece of touring merchandise music brandon knew that um but anyway so that kind of starts tooth and nail you know me doing videos for them and then they had the next mxpx record and there was a song called move to and they were convinced that this was going to be the hit they were convinced and so they hired me to come up and do and do a video for move to bremerton we drive up to seattle we go over to bremerton we shoot the bremerton video move to our bremerton video but we get it done pretty quickly and while we were there i was like you know what it was like it was like four or five in the and we were all just sitting in mike's house hanging out and we kind of just sort of riffing on ideas like you would just joke around with your friends like what if we did this and what if yuri was the chick magnet and then what if there's all these girls then like mike and tom are there maybe they're having fries and um we'll see like we just started just joking about it and then mike got on the phone and started calling people and by like seven o 'clock that night we got to their friend's place and we shot chick magnet and move to bremerton wasn't the big hit single but chick magnet was and then boom that mtv and that was i think the first mtv music i mean maybe they had something play on like 120 minutes like a star flyer video i don't know but this was their first big mtv music video and from there it was just on and we were literally shooting two to three music videos a weekend for about five years wow so you so you are partially responsible for mxpx blowing up well in in one sense yes i mean but if i was going to take any kind of pride in that it would it would just be that for as long as i've been doing this i love just grinding things out and we were done with the video and we were there and we still had film left and we had cameras and we were there like well look we're done let's shoot another music video that's what i'm most proud of is like let's just shoot another one right let's do another one and we shot a video for the song doing time as well i mean we just let's just because you never know and that's that's my approach to content media today there is no silver bullet you have to make as much stuff as possible and if we had sat there thinking we had one great idea for one great song for move to bremerton that wouldn't have happened and so that's what i get kind of most excited about but i'll never forget though to kind of back up to the punk rock show music video i was editing a new pennywise video and a new blink video at that time and during that time i was with both of those bands i said hey to fletcher from pennywise let me just play this video for you i thought he was going to say this is lame bunch of kids this is so done use the use the clean version of the comment yeah yeah i will you got it and um and he uh and i played it for fletcher probably the most feared man in all of punk rock and he's six foot seven you know crazy beard and hair at that time down to his waist he just he's just a scary guy and i play the video he watches it doesn't say a word and then it's done and he just looked at me and said that's probably the best punk song i've ever heard man and that's when i knew like wait what yeah like wait what's going on here and he just had this look fletcher just had this look on his face of like how did someone write the most perfect punk song and then it was only a few weeks later that i was with blink 182 and elise from the dance hall crashers and i showed them the video we were pulling out vhs tapes and i'm putting vhs tapes in the bcrs and you got you got this band and now i'm feeling pretty good because fletcher gave it to you like you know he yeah he approved it you know and um i played it for blink and blinks like oh my goodness we got to get this band on tour with us and elise sees it and goes i want to manage this band i want to get this band on tour with us i because she was in dance hall crashers and and also managed the uh the band and it was like boom you know and that's kind of always been a part of my career as well as like i love connecting things i love yeah i love being able to say hey you should meet this person you should do that we should get that together and at that and that's if you have a love for that you just you just do that and so that moment with pennywise that moment the blink 182 that moment with dancehall crashers i know it's had a huge it had a huge impact on you know on mxpx and i'm still just to just have been a part of it because those guys were awesome those guys gave me a career it's not that i helped them somehow get on mtv brandon did that the band did that i was just there at at the right time yeah but those guys gave me a career those those guys that being successful like i said i mean it was hundreds there's probably hundreds of tooth and nail videos and that's how i make a living so i'm incredibly thankful so talk about now then how uh so brandon ebel who's who started tooth and nail records talk about how he really is responsible for leading you to christ i love this story yeah i mean brandon is super adds one of the funniest guys you could ever meet talks like this and if you hear the podcast like he's he almost gets there but i'm pretty sure they gave him like an elephant tranquilizer like calm him down so you could understand them but like that's brandon he's high -pitched talks like this hey don't get this new band it's called that it's called zeo it's not zeo juliana theory now the heaviest band in the world get this this i mean he just you know like you know like he just he's that non -stop it's hilarious and we've he's having one of his rants and he on a side he was talking about i mean it was so strange something like something like that and like mormons there's a whole planet thing there's a planet and there's this weird thing and he was just going off on something he was like that but then cs lewis mere christianity he's like i i gotta go it's a phone call it's uh jason cars from the superdome and i was sitting there in my office and i was like what do you say at the end there mere christianity by mere christianity i got off work that day and i drove the bookstore when they still existed and um i found i was looking for mirror like a you look into a mirror m -i -r -r and i was like oh mere christianity i was like you know and you know i was like i just bought the book went went to my dad's house live close to the bookstore i opened it i started reading it and like a page or two and again i'm not a christian at this time and you know it's like a page or two in um it could be wrong don't don't quote me on the page but it felt very very short in that he talks about why is it when someone cuts in front of us we think that there's there's an injustice and i just stopped reading the book and i was like i'm a line cutter i'm a line i i deserve to go to hell no baptist preacher no one's talking about hell i hadn't been primed none of the tooth and nail guys ever shared jesus with me no one ever said he's got a plan for your life no like nothing and i was like i'm a line cutter i didn't have a super low opinion of myself i had a very high opinion of myself and i just uh -oh i got there like what the hell which is just crazy right it's like even if you want to have some post -modern take on that like that was my own personal assessment like no one judged me like i was judging myself and i was like huh well i don't want to read any more of this book and i put it down and for about six months i couldn't stop thinking about it when i went back to my dad's house i read maybe another chapter or so and i was like well okay i need to get i i need to do this and i and i i drove to like a little mountain little you know like a hill mountain which is funny now to think of that i went to go to a mountain to meet god and um that's my great typology there and i just i went there's a little bench at the top and i just i just kind of started praying like you know i want to have a relationship with you lord but i don't want to call myself a christian because christians are kind of lame and i watch tbn a lot and i don't know why i can't stop watching tbn but it's weird and but why do i keep watching it you why do i think like i have a connection with jesse duplantis i can't explain it you know uh it was almost like i knew he was my weird uncle like he was part of the family but he's not you know like you knew something was weird like you know because i couldn't stop watching that stuff and i i just i remember in the prayer i said lord i i don't want to say i accept jesus christ as my lord and savior i don't want to say i'm like a sinner you know i don't want to say all that stuff jesus christ lord and king like i just want to have a relationship with you you know and it's been one of the only kind of super charismatic you know supernatural moments i just he lifted me up he literally just lifted me up i'm getting lifted up off my seat he just slammed me on the ground i put my hands up and i was like i accept you you know as my lord and savior you know i don't want to go to hell your king your lord like like it's it's like i'm all in and then i was like wow what just happened yeah and i got up and i was like okay i'm gonna go read my bible and i was like i'm not gonna tell anybody just gonna be me my bible and you god and it was the only audible moment i've ever had you know and i just heard i just heard god speak and he just said you know no like i just stopped and i you know i've told the story before but the cadence scares me to this day because he just said no he said you're going to tell everybody about me jokes on you darn yeah right you know actually he said no you're not cool anymore actually he said you're not cool i don't forget he said you're not cool anymore and you're going to tell everybody in the accident the way i heard everybody it was like you're going to tell everybody about me and it was like okay it's on it's on his terms which is why you know i didn't know what predestination was calvinism was like i all all i knew was he was in charge you know and uh and then of course your life gets totally wrecked because you come to jesus you know but that all that was for music videos tooth and nail brandon evil that moment and then like boom now i'm a christian man that's awesome okay so we're gonna go to a commercial break here but when we come back then i'm gonna have you talk about what you did after coming to christ you got it and be a disciple yes exactly okay so we'll go ahead and uh we'll take that break now we'll see you guys here on the other side of the break what kind of society will we be responsible for building and what kind of people are we sending into the world part of our mission in working to redeem culture is to connect with people in various professions to help them to understand their life and calling as a process of culture building our work is best demonstrated at the h evan runner international academy for cultural leadership the runner academy represents a comprehensive instruction in christian philosophy worldview and cultural apologetics this two -week course brings students and young professionals on site for a training program like no other history politics law education medicine the arts there is a biblical vision for all of these spheres to bring them into obedience to jesus the king and to develop them toward cultural renewal to the glory of god the goal for new st andrews college as it trains students is not to make people who will be able to go out and just get jobs people who will just be bricks in the wall of our society the goal for new standards college is to make students into men and women who will really impact culture i want their faith to not just be something that stands but something around which culture can be built we want students who can think critically about arguments but also about the culture around them they can then speak clearly to it and that also have the ability to influence and shape because of the power of their message because that's really what the gospel does the gospel throws down all the arguments against it it speaks to the hearts of people it influences and it changes go to apologia studios .com

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get signed up partner with us on all access you get all of the radio programs you get the tv show you get the after show including apology academy and you partner with us in ministry bringing the gospel around the world all right welcome back to apology radio responsible for building next portion here so darren you left off it's part of our mission in working to redeem culture so um uh yes we're actually going to get to the theology here so you come to christ what's the first phone call you make your building i called david bonson david boston was his best friend he managed the supertones at that time he had a foreign agency at that time he was actually part of tooth and nail record a lot of people don't know that but then there was laws about can you be a management company and a record split it david had this two -week course in the touring companies fast management company that's how the whole thing kind of worked out training program like no other david boston's history politics great education i don't know i don't know what that means at that time but i called dave bontz i say dave i've given my life to christ i'm a christian and he says great get on down and i drove like an hour and a half down to irvine or somewhere down there where maybe newport where he lived at the time i got to his apartment and he gave me uh the great debate audio cassette tape between gordon stein and greg bonson he gave me a book called before jerusalem fell by ken gentry all about the year 80 70 and the destruction of the temple um and he gave me a little blue book i think matthew 20 by marcellus kick a little just small commentary on matthew uh excuse me revelation 20 on revelation 20 um and he said listen to this and read these two books and you'll do just fine i said oh i said okay he said in about a week or two i'll come up and i'll give you a bible study so i listened that debate probably about 20 times in those in that just those weeks looked up words what does presuppositional mean what does transcendental mean what does this mean just and started figuring out what this it was a new language to me um i read before jerusalem fell and reading that he starts talking about josephus and then i go and buy the complete works of josephus i'm reading all of josephus um then i'm reading this little book on revelation 20 he comes down a few weeks later spends about four hours with me at my apartment and he gives me a bible study and goes through all of the book of revelation with me that's amazing and he says this is going to keep you from being weird i joked on you again yeah well can you imagine what would have happened um i thought was a dispensationalist um and so so that's all i knew from day one i knew i knew you know so it's funny because you know most people kind of claim when when they come to calvinism or post -millennialism or it's like what people have to understand about me not that anyone needs to uh but we what we're talking about me is that you are a product you know if someone's raised in the south they go they're raised in the south they're a southern baptist they've got their quirks they got their whatever i mean from day one the only thing i knew was calvinism post -millennialism um presuppositional apologetics right um that the destruction of the temple in the year 8070 was the most pivotal moment in all of history i mean if you didn't understand the temple being destroyed you didn't understand christianity at all you could know how to be saved you could understand salvation you can understand hell and not go in there and being a good person but the big cosmic picture if you didn't understand what actually happened um in the year 70 like you were missing the entire narrative of all of human history and then where it's going um that's you know that is all i knew i mean that's that's it i mean that's that's from from day one that that's that's the crit so i guess i was reformed i wasn't so much covenantal in a weird way because no one really talked much about that but um i was that's that's what i was so my entire working out of undertanding apologetics reading van till i read the complete works of van till you know i mean because i was a i was new that's i didn't have any hurdles to get over it was learning a new language that didn't have any hurdles and so how i talk about things and and did apologetics and then you know like you know and i took in everything i took in all the norman geisler books and the rc sprawl books and all that but i was rooted in kind of this post -millennial bonds and van till kind of framework that that i'm incredibly thankful for because i i think it really has it's kept me out of a lot of ditches and and in a lot of ways i think it's also helped me be a part of bridges that need to be built in regards to where we're going and i took flack for it by the time i got into christian culture i mean i took sure for it you know but there was the supertones and the supertone was the band that i've been doing music videos for before i was a christian now here i was a christian i'd get on the set and me and matt the singer from supertones we could sit there because he was a bonson fanatic and we could talk presuppositional apologetics and we could talk about you know josephus and tacitus and you know roman history and what happened when the temple was destroyed and so slowly meeting people and realizing and then going back and listening to all the supertones music and realizing that dude all of matt's lyrics were just reformed theology and it was like wait a minute you know and you're singing about the perseverance of the saints and they're like wait what's going on and so you know all that really helped because i wasn't i didn't have really a church body there was no christian culture that that in any way supported what i was doing and what i believed and so that connection to matt of the supertones was huge and it blew my mind when you mentioned that you had a connection to matt yeah yeah and so that brings okay so before i get into that i one one quick thing i was thinking even when you the first quote you you you mentioned that kind of change your thinking a little bit and and c .s

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lewis was really a presuppositional question right yes why are you angry it was a little you know it that's that gets to the the point of what's anger what's morality you know so so there's that um which i thought was cool so really you know you're influenced directly you know again by presupp theonomy uh post all that and and so by what standard i mean that exactly by what standard has even when i've gone even early on as a christian when i went through some hard times i remember asking myself by what standard like yeah how i'm going to assess the situation i'm in yeah exactly and so how i want to just before i get into my side of the story i want to talk about because many people don't know how you really have directly influenced apology of studios and we talked about this on the phone a couple weeks ago but really like your style you're talking about the shaky cam you know like the way you you do videography was was essentially you taught that to marcus marcus took that and did his own brand of it and then marcus has taught carmen now carmen does that and and so everything you see from apologies studios visually really is fruit of of darren of you and so um and so like that's that's one aspect right it's how we've been influenced yeah okay so um so now to you mentioned matt mortensky so this is where i started freaking out so um when i was listening to the podcast the labeled podcast you know i mentioned they mentioned your name and then you mentioned dave bonson i kept hearing them say dave bonson and i'm like is that is that david not a super common last name but you're like how could it be how could it be we obviously know day we've had him on our show and and so i hit up david lowman who's listening to the show right now david what's up dude um because i know david lowman and david bonson are like best friends right and i knew that david had has history in the music industry so i i hit him up and i was like i'm listening this podcast is this like our david bonds and he's like oh yeah and so he starts telling me how essentially him and uh and david bonson i believe we're at front line records and then brandon ebel came over and and and then he ended up leaving front line to start to the nail and end up bringing david both david's with him eventually and and so all the wheels start turning at this point and i'm going oh my gosh wait a minute and so i'm talking to you then on the phone i think and or maybe we were texting and you mentioned matt morgenski and the supertones and then everything clicked like all at once and so um back in i think it was 99 or 2000 uh my wife and i cheryl we were dating at the time we started dating we were 17 so i think we were 18 or 19 and the um we were at a winter camp we were actually youth leaders uh the the pastor that married my wife and i he we were at this winter camp and he had somehow bumped into matt morgenski at a hotel playing basketball or something i don't even remember and talked him into doing this winter camp for us and so we're at this winter camp and matt morgenski is teaching and guess what he's teaching presuppositional apologetics wow and it and it completely trained you know transformed my life in the way i did evangelism and it you know yeah ruined ruined me forever right so like so so when we're having this conversation and then all of a sudden i realized wait a minute i learned presuppositional apologetics from matt morgenski matt morgenski learned it from david bonson and and so like all the stuff starts coming together like you know so so what you see here the apology studios visually again we trace that back and then like theologically and methodologically you know this is well this was seven years before i met jeff maybe eight years before i'd ever met jeff i was still i wouldn't even live in arizona then and you know so like all this stuff's just coming together like this perfect storm you know and so i've been freaking out for three weeks like we gotta talk about this we gotta tell this story you know and this is the thing and this is the thing you know pete you know as as time went on i'm sure there were plenty of people who were thinking well what was the point of tooth and nail records yeah more like you know you have bands that become apostate and you have this you have that and all this time you know and you just and you you have to look into the details of what god is always doing right you know and i mean you you could do that right now i mean it's you know the church looks like a mess right now what's going on with southern baptist and this and that and i mean you could say oh we've got it but all these things are happening and it got me really inspired too because i was thinking yeah like this dude greg bonson who you know passes away at a pretty young age and his son um decides not to get into finance yet although he is now and is a part of a of a christian record label should be a joke um and it has the impact that it has and then you get guys like us who are being touched by it and here we are now and we're both and you know everyone that we work with that we're talking with that that's around us is influenced by that and we have our our sights set on some pretty big things yeah yeah those things come from a particular kind of worldview right hey darren um so me being a supertones fan myself the biggest album that at least the first time that i came across was uh chase the sun that came in 99 you're late to the game i know so a little bit a little bit later generation but my favorite song off of that album is grounded and so my question is the one lyric i think where he says learn how to fight from words on a paper learn from the shoguns bonson and schaefer so that lyric i mean it's obviously very relevant to everything that you were just jumping right into the game being a brand new christian so when that album came out and when that that obviously song that's part of the album came out was that kind of when you were working with matt kind of learning that where you ran into this or where were you kind of like and when when that song was written because it feels like it's part and parcel to when you were jumping on and how that song was written yeah i'm trying to think of the order of the uh of the album i did the first album um i did add an eye off the first album okay i think that is the second album strike back yeah that's the second one and then i think chase the sun is a third album chase yeah i yeah well yeah i mean i'm with them at that time for sure the only video i think i did off that album unless it's the next album song called wilderness oh yeah i know that song but yeah but i mean but yeah i mean i'm with them at that time i mean i'm with them and you know we're you know i mean again those those guys were those guys were my lifeblood i mean there there there was no reform post mill community it didn't know right yeah i remember even does it exist now i'm kidding now let's see it it does now which is which is crazy you know and so when when you can link everything from a moscow idaho down to you guys you know down to what we know artists are doing and filmmakers and writers like there's there's a whole new thing happening right now and and as things are being and as things are crumbling right now there's a whole group that i think are coming up right now i'm i'm excited to be a part of that a very intentional group of of people that are saying like look the world is not any anytime soon so we got to start planting seeds yeah yeah you know and that's why i love all this so that's why i love jerry when i see you're doing cultish like boom all of a sudden that's your first thing that's your first thing like you're planting seeds you know like we don't even know what that's going to be 20 years from now right like and it's going to come back to that seed for me it was an mxpx there was a mic not music video yeah that's amazing well yeah it just so one other thing i just want i remember you talking about this at reform con because we're we're talking specifically to the reform community especially it's it's relevant to what you were working with a different type of music labels you're working with specifically tooth and nail where you're saying how right now the culture is so um you know it's so inundated and it's going so far off the rails we're in a sense being being christians and and and getting married and having a family and just you know and following the bible how it's supposed to be interpreted not making it not being liberal that's the new punk rock you know and i was thinking too that like right now for example not not to toot my own horn because there's so many different people who there's so many different working parts of cultish i've just i'm just sometimes behind the mic on behind the microphone but like right now in itunes it's in the top 100 under christianity and spirit under religion spirituality and i was trying to think why is that well every sing every other like a brand spirituality is some weird woo woo it's like stephen furtick joel olstein all this lovey dovey stuff but there's this untapped marketplace of this controversial weird fringe stuff that people want are looking for one answers to so it's you know and i'm i'm i'm so fired up for what you're you're doing and it it really is i mean that that is you know i think i remember that talk i i was saying that we need to start building things we need to start building institute building relationships yeah and with with a coherent worldview and by the way i just like you just made me think how like you know yeah the the new punk rock is is actually being yeah it's being that firm in the word being that firm in what what what the bible says and even those who maybe had a who just maybe don't have a bent towards battle in warfare who just maybe thought like well i don't want to be that controversial i always want to be a nice christian that people like i want to build relationships look for that gotcha the last five right but you're absolutely right i mean you gave them an inch and look where we're at now we don't even know what a boy and a girl is anymore right so i mean and that wasn't the case five years ago we we gave people an inch and that's and that's what happened joy what's on your mind joy i was just thinking about um kind of what jerry was talking about and then obviously what you've been talking about the whole time which is kind of um um well i guess it's it's really about taking back that inch um and knowing that you know we have all this is obviously an age of media it's full of content you can find all kinds of you can find every piece of information on the internet whether it's right or wrong but just i know that there are plenty of people um who are creative and media minded and for some reason we we've sort of seen this like the birth of this generation of christians that are willing to approach creative industry more instead of just like oh i just like painting you know but you have people who are like no i i like talking into a microphone and i like singing into a microphone and i like recording stuff on a camera and and i'm and i'm going to do it in a way that's christian um and you know earlier you mentioned like a christian version of everything so like some people would say that like there shouldn't be a show on cults that includes jonestown because cults and true crime and stuff that's sort of like a thing that like the world talks about but that's something that we should talk about because i mean even and this is why when jerry came and was talking about the idea for cultish i was like this show will do great because it's so popular to talk about cults right now there are tons of podcasts about like i said jonestown makes the point might be good to know what revelation is talking about right yeah well and it's it's because if you don't why not right if if you're wrong about the book of revelation then why not jonestown right yeah and even for example you talk about you learn that theology matters because every single person had a worldview they ultimately like in jonestown they drank the kool -aid right because they jim jones told them to but they thought that jim jones was god and that worldview came specifically from uh very it was the new thought and a lot of the new age origins and stuff like that but i was going to say too when you want to talk about just getting out a message to the world i was going to say if you ever wanted to this is someone if someone wants to jump on this this is a great idea so we're we obviously are all on the same page a lot about the law of god if you want to do a great podcast about the law of god you should actually try and make the best true crime podcast as as you possibly can but then give the law of god as the solutions for how you deal with those guys really excited no i mean it's this is we need to be a part of so all this to say we well and we've always lived in a world like this there's there's always people that are creating content creating information finding new ways to spread information that is what we do as humans christians are the people that understand why we do that and they understand the importance of real and true content and so it's funny you say that because as i was watching the bob lazar documentary i was thinking there's only one worldview that can make sense of what he's talking about right yeah like like the whole time even when he talks about that there's like the you know how did he describe it that there was like an anti -gravity field around the thing he was he kept talking about like that's like you have to understand like that doesn't make any sense it's there's it doesn't exist like but it was happening and like only the christian world you can make sense of like wait you mean science might be wrong on how they think the world is created like so in his worldview you can't live in this universe and there's something that is anti -gravity right it's like oh oh but in the christian worldview i have no problem with anti -gravity like well yeah i guess a miracle is not a problem for the just right the laws of physics exactly working yeah well yeah i just think that it's it's so important that um you know there i'm sort of the we all take turns moderating the comments on the show so i've kind of been watching the comments basically to get rid of the holocaust deniers but uh pretty much everyone gets to stay on there we haven't had any flat earthers today no um but basically there are now that you mentioned them i know yeah now they'll now but basically i think it's so important uh you know we have had a few people in the comments say oh this is boring why am i listening to a conversation about music but the point is is that um you know this is the this is the christian's job which right now specifically to step into the post -modern world that we live in where nothing means anything or anything or whatever however you want to say it yeah there's no meaning or it's all subjective meaning or whatever it is and and just be like no this is meaningful it's information and information has meaning so we're gonna just take that back thanks right yeah well yeah go ahead oh yeah i was gonna say one thing darren is that um i've there's a guy i follow and he re he's paul paul joseph watson and he had a segment one time where he's just talking about the post -modern ship the whole culture has taken relation to art he was talking about all these places in europe these european art centers and even talked a lot about music because now there's no objective standard for beauty right you see this bizarre artwork going on with i think one time there's just a bunch of just clutter that was just like thrown onto a floor like in this art museum they called it art that's atheism yeah and you see that too like with music now i mean you look at the typical pop music where i think it's called the millennial whoop where it's like oh and that's but it's with that you see that beat with an every single song and this commercialized just garbage and just what they do and what they sing about you look at you know really popular artists like bing crosby or uh like just any of the any class any stuff that's like stuck around for a long time versus the typical music that comes out now um there's just there's a lot there's a reason why christians should be in the marketplace making the best type of music because we have an objective standard of beauty on which to go by and you're seeing the consequences of that now with the way music is at least i've seen it well ultimately what we're talking about here is as culture building right yeah and um well and by the way let's address just just i can't see comments but let's just assume there's there's you know let's let's just be nice about christians for a minute yeah and i was a dude going to hell like perfect candidate yeah and because a bunch of young christians got together and formed a record company like i'm not going to hell that's god's sovereignty though right the province of god's what we're talking about right so so you know it's it it turns out that what christians do and the things they build matter because the more you build the more those spheres touch and then they intersect yeah and i was a guy that nothing was going to find me in this little music industry bubble yeah but because a bunch of christians decided to create their own bubble and it overlapped yep i was brought into that and so when when christians do that and things begin to overlap all of a sudden you're sitting there and there's a guy like me that gets met and the gospel gets brought and it doesn't even have to be intentional witnessing god brings that in a throwaway comment from brandon ebel right and that's a hook that gets me to lewis yeah exactly it matters right because everything matters right exactly and so um quickly by the way jason i see you just comment about zeo i actually wore my zeo liver liberate tay ex and ferris shirt to august burns red last night and my wife was like i think your shirt's older than most of the kids at the show but i digress um we're talking about zeo i saw zeo in a trailer in a trailer i saw them at a really tiny club woods they're in seattle brandon took me a band called zegas banzeo in a trailer in a single wide not a double wide a single one my goodness they were playing in and then i remember just a few weeks later it was a few months later like brett brett or brent brett called me he's like i got this new band it's a side project and i don't want to tell anybody about it's called the juliana theory oh yeah and sent me the first five songs of it i was like this is gonna be huge yeah change our own life just one more just one that's amazing well yeah and even maybe we'll stay on on the tooth and nail facebook site what what was that i said we'll we'll tell a few more stories so we can yeah yeah oh yeah yeah so okay so so quickly so the culture building we're talking about um you know culture is just religion externalized right that's what joe boot calls it and and that's what we're talking about it's culture music is culture and and you know and all the stuff we're talking about how it all ties together how what we have here ties back you know i i said what degree of separation from tooth and nail we're probably like depending on where you start with zero or one we're maybe two or three you know but this is all culture and it's it's making good culture that honors and glorifies god and that's why we're here that's why this is all here because of uh believers faithfulness to to making good culture and i met a guy hold on i met a guy who was an all -access member to you guys and actually sat through like the two -hour bonus interview on the free speech apocalypse with me and doug and jeff and i think i think you were there too yeah i was there uh you were there too right you know and he watched the whole thing and i made a comment that there's just something happening up up in moscow idaho and next you know a year or two later he comes up he says you know i remember watching that video and i thought i'll just come up and check it out moves up next thing he was in our church next thing you know he's going to new sanders college next thing you know he's doing some intern work for me now he's working for another company i mean like and he's found his niche because he's listening to the two -hour all -access behind the scenes bonus interview and that changes life yeah it's amazing it's crazy yeah it is crazy we're joy you were going to say something were you oh i was just going to say well and it goes like even so we ragged on our comment section a second ago but also in our comment section is a bunch of people who are like oh i love this love this show this is bringing back so many memories and so even apart from darren and apart from luke or myself or jerry you have this whole subculture yeah of little punk christians right that came out of this this label right that could tell you 10 bands off the top of their head that they loved because they were a christian band right and they were cool and not just like something your grandparents listened to right you know which is there's nothing wrong with listening to the same music as your grandparents but right you know everyone has a home team and as christians we have a home team and when we can bring our punk band to the fight and they can go up against no effects and crush them we will yeah that's awesome that's the home team yeah and i would argue give me any genre of music and tooth and nail has a band that wins hands down i agree there is not a better punk band than mxpx there is no one heavier on this planet than almost all of solid state right i mean i'll just take zeo and living sacrifice alone and i'll wipe anybody off off the mosh pit i mean august burns red absolutely right so i mean it's what tooth and nail did what they've done what they're continuing to do what they're continuing to do now because they're they're having a moment right now brandon is coming back the smartest dude on the planet when it comes to music he knows what he's doing um but i just love that yeah you have your team you like it when somebody wins from your hometown right that's how we're wired right and i just love that from a music standpoint those of us who came from that world and music dominates the entire culture um that the fact that tooth and nail has been able to not just compete but win i'm really proud of that yeah oh absolutely and i actually you and i have talked about this darren i oh i always say this um i i really truly believe that christian specifically metal and you talk about punk rock but specifically i've said this about metal it's far superior to secular metal and i don't just mean lyrically yes absolutely lyrically but i mean uh when it comes to musically i feel like it's far superior i feel like the quality is far better and there's very few secular metal bands i can't even tolerate just because i hate the music and and and i and i and i believe that it's because again we're talking about people making good culture to the glory of god now you know that being said just for for the record not every band on tooth and nail and solid state are like maybe not even necessarily christians like or they might have like i just listened to the oh sleeper interview the lead singers are solid christian but the guitarist is an atheist and then talk about how that works you know but the point is like when when you have when you're being influenced by christianity to any degree really whatsoever you're you're you're bound to determine to have a better quality um and so absolutely i just wanted to you know right and and i would just kind of drizzle sauce on that but it's not going to happen unless we're helping nourish those communities and so whether it's podcasting filmmaking music you've you've you've got to give you've got to give people some room to grow and get some sort of support and that's and that's what i think tooth and nail did that's what i think you guys are doing i'm just now starting to think in those terms so to me that that gets me really excited and and optimistic about the future yeah postmill and also darren uh you're getting connected to the nail and all those connections had you come to christ which also that allows you got into bonson which you combine that with your filmmaking skills you ended up having connections later on that led to making this uh film called collision right which for me that's like been one of the most influential like apologetic documentaries i've ever watched and i've afforded to so many people and i've lost count of how many times i've watched it like i could watch i could watch it right now and be completely glued to it and that was and by the way and i've said it before but that was that was an influence from bands and being on the road and i'm not in a metal band i can't play an instrument how do i make a metal hip -hop rock album but with a movie and that was my first real outlet of being able to say i'm going to make something based on the structure i see all my heroes and bands what they've done this is this is now my outlet so that's how they inspired me was like this is me going on the road now this is me taking the stage this is me pretending like i'm norma jean and we're just going to just destroy you know every band that's going to walk on the stage after us like that's what i wanted collision to do is because i saw bands doing that yeah and probably also your skill set of music video making that i the first time we hung out when you came to a foreign con and i was driving you around you had told me that and you could probably know what i'm talking about i'm gonna lead you into here but you said the very ending of collision you weren't done filming it but you knew in that moment this has to be the end before you're done filming it and you know that tell us to talk tell everyone about that as well yeah we we were in the again we were still a day and a half left of filming but we were in the car and i was just sitting across from doug and and christopher hitchens so they're sitting next to each other and i've got my little handycam and hitchens just starts talking and he kind of switches topics and he starts talking about the sort of the the four horsemen of atheism and at an event they were at and he then goes on to say how you know he talked about how if if he had the ability and the power to eradicate all of religion or get rid of every religious person on on the planet would he he starts giving he starts talking about this and i remember and i remember thinking like oh my goodness whatever's happening here this is the end of the movie i didn't know what yet and it's a little handycam so you you can do the little zoom the little the little zoom toggle and if you pull and if you hold it if you pull it just a millimeter it'll go real slow zoom i was like lord i just pray that when this zoom ends it's on his face tight and he says something crazy it was just it was nuts and it just a slow zoom and it gets tight on his face and he just says that you know he wouldn't eradicate it if he if he could get rid of it he wouldn't he just wouldn't get rid of it and he says and the look that i think dawkins gives him the look of this look of credulity i think he says yeah man he has would never would has not left him and actually haunts him the look that they gave him that he would not eradicate all of religion and i'm just and now we're zoomed in it's on his face he's saying that i just and i just remember thinking like i don't know what else is going to happen in this movie but the end man that's incredible the providence of god though well hey man i appreciate it darren i know we're keeping a little long here i i'm glad i got to do this um love you dude i'm excited to see what you're doing and and uh you reform con maybe i'll get that invite to reform con yeah but hold on before you hang up because we'll talk about that um so yeah man joy anything else no jerry thanks for being on today dude yeah it was fun thank you thank you jerry i'm proud of you man um as always thank you so much to all our all access subscribers i mean that we say that all the time but i i don't know if people realize i mean it like none of this none of this would be here none of this would exist if it wasn't for you guys so we thank you um if you're not all access please go to apologystudios .com