Darrell Vanzant, Nashville, TN
www.darrellvanzant.com
We don't see things. We see the result of light on things. Reflecting, refracting, or being absorbed so that the deepest, richest colors emerge and our eyes witness it, then our brains interpret it and give it meaning relevant to our experiences. It is the same with our ears and sound. It is the same with our hearts and love. The choice is ours to ignore it all or engage little by little and surrender to its Origin, letting it change us. This is the main theme running through Darrell Vanzant's new project, Surrender.
On his latest CD filled with wit and wisdom, Darrell sings about the light and love that provides a soundtrack to his life. A soundtrack to a story about losing, winning and everything in-between. A story synonymous with any quest Tolkien could have personified in a novel or Shakespeare could have romanticized with a sonnet. It is a story of a life well lived.
"The music is that which my eyes use to see, my ears use to hear, and my heart can feel. These songs give meaning to a language I knew at birth, but one that I had forgotten how to speak over the years," says Darrell. "My hope is that these songs will be wonderful traveling companions to those who see, listen and feel something resonating from them so that they will know, just as I do, that God is good."
Darrell has a 10-year history within the Nashville music scene as a creative and talented entrepreneur who has consulted and developed talent and material for some of the biggest names in music today. Over the years, he has written songs that have gotten placement with companies ranging from Disney to Sony, from Gap to Coke. So it comes as no surprise that when the music and words started to spill out from some of the darkest and yet richest times in his life, Darrell decided to record and release them himself.
"Take the first single ’Starting Today’," Darrell says, "I was lying on a beach in Hawaii when I got the call of a cancer diagnosis from the doctor. I was terrified, I had just lost my dad to the disease the prior spring and now, there it was for me. At first, I was apathetic like I had been in the past toward a god that I thought I could never be good enough for or that saw me as so bad that he would give up on me. I’m here to tell you, that is not the God that the Bible talks about. I wrestled with the disease and walked away with a limp. Needless to say, through God's grace I beat the cancer and here I am 4 years later. Fragile, broken, restored."
Infused with a pop/rock sound, the material on the CD spans a wide range of subject matter. But centers around Darrell’s recovery of heart. “I was addicted to apathy,” says Darrell. “I would go limp on you in a second or just keep quiet and aloof. Most of it stemmed from anger, rage, frustration that I had not felt and then let fester into resentment. It incapacitated me. I was paralyzed and didn’t know it and was waiting for everyone around me to change it. I do not want to live that way anymore. I want to feel no matter what.
“Surrender, this new project, was my response to an invitation to start living fully out of the pain in my life,” concludes Darrell. “By releasing it, I hope listeners will see, hear, feel, and be able to recognize the same invitation that awaits them.”
Surrender is a joint venture between Levity Records and Waypoint Entertainment. More information can be found at www.darrellvanzant.com.
