Rebel for God

by Eddie DeGarmo

  Shelley and I have had the privilege of knowing and working with Eddie in a number of capacities over the years. When our budding relationship began in the summer of 1983, the songs of DeGarmo and Key were a part of our soundtrack. Together, they were giving a fresh and unique voice to a new generation of Jesus-followers and we were in the wake of their sound. Decades later, we had the privilege of partnering together in our shared passion to equip the Church around the world with songs that proclaim the Glory of God.

  Eddie is brilliant, kind, a straight-shooter, and like this memoir aptly puts it, he’s a Rebel For God.

  But, he’s not the kind of rebel who flashes his counter-culturisms for show or acclaim. He’s the kind of Jesus-loving rebel that left behind the world’s ways and never looked back from the Kingdom purposes God set before him. He rebelled against what the world called good and popular and right and successful, and chose instead to chase after righteous living, an eternal Kingdom and the fame of a Name greater than his.

  Eddie is a true original, and like one of the hits he helped bring to the world, a real-life Jesus Freak.

  Eddie is a masterful storyteller, and narrates the series of miracles that have made up his life with all the melody and delight you’d expect from a rock star turned record label exec and music publishing wiz. Turning these pages is like listening to Eddie’s fingers dance over his Hammond B3, making the notes sing of the goodness and grandeur of Jesus.

  Rebel for God is a retracing of God’s purposes in the dissonant events of life that helps us see the Divine Hand at work in it all. It’s full of the soul of Memphis, the gritty glamor of rock and roll, and the absurdity of 1980s hairstyles, all tied together by the cord of a faithful God leading his willing, faith-filled servant.

  I love Eddie’s story and I know it’s nowhere close to being done yet. Yet, the chapters that have unfolded so far remind us that God is always at work, narrating and knitting the moments of our lives together into a perfect pattern that draws us deeper into the fullness of his plans. Our part is to say yes, and let him lead the way.

  Rebel for God will remind you that nothing is wasted, and that no part of your story is unredeemable or purposeless in the economy and timeline of God. Beginning to end, this story is marked by his fingerprints, and you don’t have to dust very far to find them.

  Life is about stewardship of God-given capacity, and while it’s undeniable that Eddie DeGarmo’s capacity is almost larger than life, it’s the humility and open-handedness with which he’s chosen to steward his God-gifts that is most striking. He’s generously and skillfully shaped the music of our generation by helping amplify the voices of artists like dcTalk, TobyMac, Audio Adrenaline, Chris Tomlin, Skillet, and a host of others whose names would make your jaw drop. He’s given God everything, and left nothing on the table.

  I, and believers around the world, have so much to thank Eddie DeGarmo for. You and I may never know the number of voices who will sing the anthems his hands have helped craft, but I know Heaven’s chorus has grown under the careful craftsmanship with which he’s brought us his melodies.

  I’m grateful for Eddie’s life and legacy, and for the songs he’s touched that have given words to many seasons of my soul. It’s impossible to imagine Passion without Eddie’s partnership in helping the songs God’s given us reach the world.

  I’m so glad you’ve picked up this book, and cover-to-cover, you’re in for a wild and thrilling ride. As you read, I challenge you to open your mind to greater possibilities than what you’ve dreamed, and to open your hands to God’s plans for the talents he’s entrusted to you. In doing so, you—like Eddie—will be in for more adventure, and more fun, than you ever thought possible.

  For His Fame,

  Louie Giglio

  FOREWORD

  TobyMac, Grammy award-winning artist, producer, and songwriter

  I was still in college about to graduate when I first met Eddie DeGarmo. I was in a group called dcTalk that recently signed a record deal with a small upstart indie label called ForeFront Records. It was a tiny label, but they were willing to take a chance on a pop/hip-hop band in those early days of our genre. We were down in Memphis putting the finishing touches on our first album, working in a hole-in-the-wall recording studio sitting squarely in a gritty part of town. I thought it was cool, though. One of ForeFront’s owners, Ron Griffin, was working with us on our record. The label’s other owner was Dan Brock. He let us know he arranged for us to go on tour to launch our album with DeGarmo and Key if we were willing. I really didn’t know about D&K and didn’t have much awareness of the CCM industry in general. Instead I was immersed in hip-hop, r&b, reggae, and pop music. I really didn’t hear any hip-hop that was incorporating faith in its subject matter. So that was where the idea of dcTalk began to develop. A long story short, I met a couple of friends in college named Michael and Kevin who could sing the phone book, and that is when the dcTalk story began.

  Unbeknownst to me, D&K had already been pioneering a new musical genre years earlier that was eventually called CCM—Contemporary Christian Music. So Dan Brock let us know D&K were going to drop by the studio since it turned out they were from Memphis. When Eddie came walking into the studio that day, it was clear that he had been swimming in the river of rock and roll. He had ‘80s hair bigger than seemed possible and a swagger to match his mojo.

  We toured with D&K for a couple of years and while Dana was the front man on stage, I figured out early on that Eddie was the guy pushing most of the buttons. A few years later Eddie let us know he was also an owner in ForeFront Records. So, we connected the dots and saw that it was clearly a good business decision to put us out on tour with them. It was good for us as well, as touring with D&K was an important building block early in our career. We were just grateful to be playing our music in front of a room full of people every night. Along with taking us on the road, there were a couple of times Eddie stepped in when relationships became strained with the label. His laidback manner and friendly approach along with his veteran wisdom helped us find common ground and continue our journey with our label partner.

  This book is Eddie’s story and I am thankful that our paths crossed when they did or the dcTalk story might look a lot different. Eddie has been a forerunner in a lot of areas within the CCM industry. Obviously one of those is starting a label called ForeFront Records. It is where we learned the ropes and then broke out onto the national landscape with our platinum record Free at Last and then followed it with the double platinum Jesus Freak. We could not have done it without our partners at ForeFront Records. We are forever thankful they took a chance on us, let us mature, and stretch artistically as they walked alongside of us.

  I have observed Eddie as an artist, keyboard player, tour producer, record executive, music publisher, rock opera creator, husband, and father over the years. Watching any man balance family with success in the music business gets my attention. Over the years I have respected Eddie at close range and at a distance. If I had one word to describe Eddie it would be wise, and I don’t throw that out loosely. Through all my encounters with him, Eddie seems to have the rare ability to stay focused on what matters. He is a patient listener who offers concise feedback, usually in the form of a few words that end up sticking with you for life. In other words, when you have a conversation with him he doesn’t leave you with a hundred different things to think about. He usually boils it down to the one or two things that really matter. To me that is a great picture of his life. He has been involved with a lot of different ventures and he has had many victories, but he has never lost sight of the things that really matter. I am grateful to be one of those who have benefitted from his wisdom and am honored to call him my friend.

  PROLOGUE

  Key Changes

  * * *

  “The only thing constant in life is change”

  —FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (CIRCA 1650) OR HERACLITUS (BC 500) OR EDDIE DEGARMO (CIRCA 2016)

  Change and constancy are
like the two rails of train tracks. They run parallel and never touch but always go to the same place. Change is inevitable in this life, but God is constant. In fact, he is the only constant. He never changes. His principles never change. How we interact with those principles, or even how we understand them, might change. The effect we allow them to have on our lives might change. But God is called a solid rock for a reason. He is like a boulder in the middle of a rushing river. Or maybe he’s like all of the stones on a riverbed. Time and circumstances rush over and around him. Waves might form. Ripples in the surface might make it hard to see the rock, but it’s there—shaping the flow of the river. With each turn of the stream the view changes. We can fight it all we want. We can try to row against the current. We might even be tempted to just head to shore and watch it roll past us. But if we want to get anywhere it might be best to embrace the twists and turns as best we can; to navigate the transitions and enjoy the ride. And what a ride it is!

  As I look back on my life thus far I can see several major transitions I’ve had to navigate. In fact, if it wasn’t for transitions—and painful ones at that—I’d still be playing clubs and chasing girls in Memphis. I might even go so far as to say that how I’ve handled these transitions, or how they’ve handled me, may have more to do with the success I’ve experienced as an artist, a businessman, and a disciple than just about anything other than God’s providence. There’s a lot I don’t know about how God works, but six decades into this journey I’m learning to see His hand all around me. These stories I’m about to tell you, from the wild and wooly to the deeply personal and painful, are shared not to build my brand or to cement my “legacy,” but simply to demonstrate a few key principles I now realize have been central to my journey. From my earliest days behind the keys of a Hammond B3 to helming the largest Christian music publisher in the world, I’m ready to share it all. I hope if you find the thread running through my crazy ride it may help you stitch out your own incredible story.

  With the benefit of hindsight I can now recognize at least five major transitions in my professional life. First I made the jump from being a lost kid with rock ‘n’ roll dreams and a major label record deal to being a transformed Jesus follower on a faith mission that would eventually absorb and redefine every rock ‘n’ roll fantasy I ever had. A bit later I consciously chose to shift my creative vision from full volume blues rock to more mainstream pop style. After realizing more success than I could have ever imagined as a rocker, I shifted my attention to the behind-the-scenes aspects of the business and launched an independent record company that became the largest independent Christian record company in the world. Years later I returned to my entrepreneurial roots after selling my record label to one of the biggest mainstream entertainment companies and launched a boutique music publishing firm. Then I became the president of the largest faith-based publishing company in the world. How did that happen? Then, based solely on what I hope was a call from God, I stepped away from it all and retired. Talk about a key change!

  So these are the stories of my transitions. Some are funny. Some are painful. I believe all of them, however, reveal some important truths about life, faith, vision, mission, and what some people call “success.” As Dana Key and I sang all those years ago, I do believe we are “Destined To Win,” as one of our D&K song says, but how we get to that finish line, well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?

  ONE

  When You’re Not Looking

  I once heard a man speaking at a seminar deliver an interesting view of humanity. “There are three types of people in this world,” he said. “There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened!” I thought that was pretty funny.

  Southern California is an interesting place. You’re liable to run into anything—especially when you’re not watching what’s happening.

  In the mid 1980s, Disneyland hosted a massive concert event appropriately named “Night of Joy.” I was honored that my band, DeGarmo and Key, was chosen to perform on that big stage along with several other artists. That night the Magic Kingdom was packed to capacity. Frenzied, energetic kids, youth groups, college students, and families crammed happily into every action ride, show, castle, and pirate ship. The feeling was electric.

  Growing up in Memphis, Disneyland was always revered as the crème de la crème of theme parks. It was the top dog, the ultimate. However, I never knew anybody who actually set foot there. We all just watched and drooled from afar when Walt Disney appeared on our TV sets every Sunday night, glowing about what the newest attraction was and how it would change our lives forever. We watched it all happen for other kids and dreamed about being there ourselves.

  I was twelve years old when I finally got to see it for myself. It was 1967 and my folks and I travelled to California on vacation to visit my Uncle Eddie and his family in the San Francisco Bay Area. My dad, always the consummate deal maker, somehow convinced a downtown Memphis Lincoln dealer to allow him to deliver a new Town Car—complete with suicide doors—to a customer in San Francisco. I’m not sure you can do that anymore, but Dad made things happen. That Lincoln was our over-the-top, luxurious, vacation transportation. It was the size of an aircraft carrier. My mom, dad, and I spent a week driving to California. We passed through Colorado, which was my first time admiring the Great Rocky Mountains. We were amazed by the Grand Canyon and excited by the lights of Las Vegas. Then we cruised across the Mojave Desert and up to San Francisco. Vacation wasn’t a normal occurrence in my family. I was blown away.

  * * *

  Uncle Eddie was my father’s youngest brother and one of seven kids raised by their mother during the Great Depression. Their father died of malaria when my dad was only five years old. My Grandpap Edward was a sawmill operator in the cypress swamps off the Mississippi river in the Arkansas lowlands. The mosquitoes got him. Dad and two of my uncles, Eddie and Jack, were always close growing up. They started a thriving business together in the late 1940s in San Francisco. Their company manufactured and sold different contraptions and inventions my father came up with.

  One of the gadgets, called “The DeGarmo Ice Magic,” was an ice scraper you could plug into your car’s cigarette lighter. It was really a pretty good idea for 1949. It heated up to help melt the ice on your windshield. My dad, the inventor and salesman, was selling them out of the trunk of his car to hardware stores, grocery stores, and gas stations from the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of San Francisco all the way over to Lake Tahoe. His brothers ran the manufacturing operation back in the city. Things were going gangbusters until the scraper’s blades started to fall out prematurely. Uh-oh! They began to fly back, returned as defective by customers and retailers. At first it was only one returned per day. Then ten. Then a hundred poured from the mailman’s bag every day! The brothers didn’t have the money to fix and replace them as fast as they were coming back. That’s when Dad, Mom, and their three kids, (I wasn’t born yet) skedaddled out of town in the middle of the night and hurried back east.

  I didn’t hear that story until years later when I was a grown man. Uncle Eddie came out to see DeGarmo and Key play in the Frisco Bay Area and told me the tale about the scandalous “DeGarmo Ice Magic.” He was laughing so hard he almost couldn’t make it through to the end. He said he and his other brother went to the office one morning to discover my dad had just vanished, never to show up again. No note. No anything. The ice scrapers came back by the thousands. The brothers did their best at first, then finally locked the doors of the business and went bust. Dad finally called them both and made up a few months later. After that, I think my dad and the brothers got right and drove the straight and narrow. Well, for the most part anyway.

  Back to when I was a kid. When we arrived in the Bay Area on our vacation it was the “summer of love” in 1967. I was looking forward to spending a week with my cousin, David DeGarmo. David was a couple of years older than me. He was in high school and was quite the savvy
young man. We were thick as thieves that week, trudging all over the city. We had a complete blast and it was a real eye opener for me. He showed me the Haight-Ashbury district, Golden Gate Park and Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and the city itself. San Francisco was remarkably beautiful and definitely freewheeling during that time; way different from Memphis.

  At the end of our week together, and after Dad delivered the Lincoln to its owner, we planned to fly to Los Angeles and visit Disneyland as the pinnacle of our trip. It was decided David should accompany us. I was elated. Disneyland didn’t let us down. It was indeed magical. I even remember seeing a young Jim Morrison and his band The Doors rise from the ground on a small stage in the Tomorrowland section of the park playing “Light my Fire.” They were just getting started in those days and were not yet famous. I didn’t realize who they were until much later when I looked back on it. I’ll never forget it now.

  * * *

  Almost twenty years went by before I returned to Disneyland for our concert as part of the Night Of Joy in the mid-eighties. A lot of water surged under the bridge of my life between those visits. About three years after my childhood visit—totally caught up in San Francisco’s hippie culture—my cousin David died of an accidental heroin overdose. He shot up the drug under his tongue so his parents wouldn’t see the needle marks. That was heavy on my mind as I returned to the “Happiest place on earth.” Things could have easily turned out that way for me I guess. Fortunately, God had another plan.

  Our band bus rolled into Anaheim at about 8:00 a.m. and delivered us to a high-rise hotel directly across the street from the front gates of Disneyland. It was a normal blue-sky, pristine, southern California morning. We rolled out of our bus bunks and wandered half dazed into the lobby as our road manager checked us in. If not for our tour bus parked immediately outside, we could have easily been mistaken for homeless people. Hair all fuzzed out, wearing sweats, cut-off shorts, ripped t-shirts, and blurry eyed, we looked a total mess. That was typical for us.