Michael Sweet Rocks Christmas (Again!) Full Interview Added
Michael Sweet, who has seen meteoric success as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and principal songwriter for the multiple platinum-selling metal band Stryper, as well as providing late-era lead vocals for classic rockers Boston and accumulating hits as a solo artist, will be offering a fully produced and fully interactive, live-streamed Christmas concert on December 19th at 7 PM EST (6 PM CST) with replay options through Christmas on the new live stream platform VenueNet. This event, actually Sweet’s fifth annual Christmas show, will stream live from The Bank of New Hampshire Stage in Concord, NH, and will include Stryper songs, songs from Sweet’s solo catalog, and Christmas favorites “with a twist.”
Christmas Like It’s 1984!
Christmas music is certainly nothing new to Sweet, Stryper, or their fans. Way back in 1984, as they were out promoting their debut Enigma Records EP The Yellow and Black Attack, the band released an original Christmas single, penned by Michael and his brother Robert Sweet, called “Reason For The Season,” which was backed with their raucous cover of “Winter Wonderland.” Sweet, speaking with True Tunes from his home in Massachusetts, reminisced a bit about that early effort at bringing the spirit and meaning of Christmas together with the metal music they loved. “That was the setup for a Christmas album that never happened,” he explained. “We didn’t have time, so that was the solution. We did a single. I’d like to think that we were one of the first metal bands to do a Christmas single. We might have been.”
“Reason For The Season” tucked a critical message – the real meaning of Christmas – inside a clever rhyme delivered by a mainstream heavy metal band with a cheeky image. Much like the struggle many have long had to extricate the essence of the Incarnation from the trappings of Christmastide, Stryper offered up a song that was more complex, confrontational, and meaningful than its wrapping may have suggested. “It had a good flow to it,” Sweet reflects, thinking of the slogan-like lyric. “It was a nice little rhyme. He is ‘the reason for the season.’ And He is – especially from our point of view. We really believe that. Through the years, it’s been interesting to see the true meaning of Christmas, to celebrate the birth of Christ, kind of taking a bit of a back seat.” That it was a “secular” band taking that message to mainstream radio back in 1984 is an interesting bit of history.
The Livestream Christmas Show For 2020
For this year’s Christmas show, Sweet promises a blend of big loud fun and spiritually reflective moments. “It’s a combination of acoustic meets electric,” he explains. “I have a full band; a drummer, a guitar player, a bass player, I’m playing acoustic, and we’ve got four-part harmonies going on. We’ll be doing Stryper songs, Michael Sweet songs, and Christmas songs.” The entire show will be presented in a state-of-the-art theater, in HD.
Although December caps off an exceedingly busy year for Sweet and the band, (Stryper’s 2020 release Even The Devil Believes notched their first #1 chart debut, landing in the top spot on Billboard’s Christian Albums Chart,) reprising this special Christmas show for fans around the world was a priority, especially as he considered the bizarre and often painful circumstances many are enduring this season. “After doing this the first time,” he explains, “I felt overwhelmed. My heart was full, seeing the music touching everybody at Christmastime. The candlelight and singing ‘Silent Night’ – it was really a spiritual time. That lead me to want to continue doing it.” And continue he has, though this year’s event had to be modified due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While undoubtedly disappointing for the fans who would have gladly trekked to the Northeast during a snowstorm, the closure of the in-person concert will open this rare event to fans and friends worldwide, who may be struggling to get into the spirit of the holiday in quarantine. “Even though COVID has slowed us down,” Sweet adds, “there’s no reason we can’t do a show like this.”
Fans have two remaining ticket price options. A $10 general admission ticket allows access to the live stream and unlimited re-watching through December 25th. A $25 “Front Row” ticket will let Sweet at the band to see the fan’s faces on a video wall that will be set up in front of them as they play. ($100 VIP experience tickets, which allowed access to a post-show talk-back session and have the fans’ faces on 2-way access screens on stage with the band, are already sold out.) But despite the necessity of ticket sales for an event of this caliber, Sweet was committed to keeping the prices low and accessible for fans. “It’s not about making money,” he says flatly. “To be honest, I don’t really make much money. Sometimes I lose money doing the show. It’s not about that. It’s about a gift I can give to people, and they give back to me.”
Stryper Homage On Film?
True Tunes fans will also be familiar with the large shadow Stryper casts over the romantic comedy / coming-of-age film we’ve been talking about all year, Electric Jesus. In it, a fictional band of teenagers, inspired by Stryper, form in 1986 and set out on an adventure that they hope will end with an opening slot for their Yellow and Black clad heroes. Sweet got to see the film in a private screening with its writer and director, Chris White, and its producer, Emily Reach White, back in October.
“They really captured the spirit,” Sweet said of the film’s attempt to put viewers back in the mid 80s Christian rock subculture. “That’s the toughest thing to do. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how little money you have, that’s the hardest thing to do – whether it’s a movie or an album – is capturing that ‘something special’ that you can’t even pinpoint that makes people go ‘Wow, I love it!’ – it moves people. This movie has that.”
Was Sweet bothered by the way Stryper was included, by name, in the film? “It was riding that line of poking fun at the band,” he said, “but I love that! I love the fact that we weren’t taken that seriously.” Sweet gave the film his full endorsement, hoping that it accomplishes its current goal, seeking a distribution partner. “I hope that someone gets behind it, and it gets out there to the masses so everybody can see it. I think they did a fantastic job. Love it!”
Stryper In 2021
With new solo material in the works, new Stryper songs always on the horizon, and the band recognizing a level of critical and fan acclaim that rivals anything they’ve seen in their 36 years, Sweet sees another strong year ahead in 2021. “We never phone it in, and we never will. We – I feel – are releasing the best music of our careers. We’re still relatively young. We’ve gotten older, but we think young, and we feel young, and we’re still in good physical shape for the most part. There’s a lot left in us, I believe.”
Get your ticket for the Live Stream event here: https://venuenet.live
All Things Michael Sweet: https://michaelsweet.com/
All Things Stryper: http://www.stryper.com/
JJT and Michael Sweet – FULL INTERVIEW – 12/16/2020
I had the great privilege of talking with Stryper’s Michael Sweet recently, in advance of his 2020 live streamed Christmas show. We published the above short feature as quickly as possible so that as many people as possible could hear about that show, but thought some of you fans might enjoy reading this full transcript of the conversation. We talked about the full sweep of Stryper’s career, the challenge of balancing fashion and substance, Stryper’s triumphant return, and more. So here it is – recorded on December 16th, 2020, via video call and only edited slightly. Forgive the rough nature of this one, but Christmas is here and we wanted this in your stockings today.
-JJT
John J. Thompson: Before we get started, I have to play you a little bit of this vinyl I was just blasting. (Drops needle on “Reason For The Season” single by Stryper circa 1984)
Michael Sweet: Ah! (Reacting to seeing the album cover on the computer screen,) Yeah – great! Yeah, the photo of us… that was probably the worst photo ever taken of the band!
JJT: And you turned it into a picture disk! How old were you in 1984?
SWEET: Well, I was born on July 4th of 1963. So depending upon when in ‘84, I was either 20 or 21.
JJT: You know it’s important I think people realize. Back in 1984 when Stryper was just coming out of the gate, one of the first things you guys did was a heavy metal Christmas EP. I mean, what in the world? And you wrote this original song, “Reason For The Season”, to send out to mainstream radio. It might seem normal now, because it’s so common, and it’s cool for people to do rock Christmas songs. But that was pretty out there back then. I think we had Bruce Springsteen doing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and that was it. There was not a lot of rock and roll Christmas stuff. So, Christmas music has been something for you for a long time, and now you’ve got this Christmas concert coming up.
SWEET: You know what, Christmas music has always been a part of my life. I’ve always enjoyed it. I mean there are certain songs I will not name, that after two or three listens I don’t enjoy so much. You probably know which songs I am talking about.
JJT: Everybody probably has a different list.
SWEET: Everybody probably has a different list, but you know most of the songs. The standards like Nat King Cole “The Christmas Song” and even the newer Mariah Carey, “All I Want for Christmas is You,” I love those tracks and I’ve always loved and appreciated Christmas music. When we recorded “Reason for the Season” and “Winter Wonderland,” that was the set up for a Christmas album that never happened.
JJT: Oh, I didn’t know that.
SWEET: A Stryper Christmas album, we wanted to do but we didn’t have the time. So that was the solution, to do a single. And I’d like to think that we were one of the first metal bands to do that. I think we might have been. And that phrase, (“Reason for the Season,”) we should have copyrighted because we came up with it, as far as I know, and it’s been used by lots of people ever since. So that’s kinda cool.
JJT: So that was an original idea? It wasn’t something you saw somewhere on a bumper sticker and said, “ooh I can use that.”
SWEET: Not that I recall, no. And I would certainly tell you if that were the case, but I just thought that it was a nice little rhyme. He is ‘the reason for the season.” And He is – especially from our point of view. We really believe that. Through the years, it’s been interesting to see the true meaning of Christmas, to celebrate the birth of Christ, taking a bit of a back seat.
JJT: Yeah. And we know that with anything in life, sometimes style and substance can work at loggerheads with each other. It’s kind of interesting to me that Stryper, with so much in terms of visual style, and steeped in a genre that was all about style, had that instinct to use the style of Christmas to try to get people to think about the deeper meaning. It seems like later you guys struggled to get some people to take you seriously because you were so good at the style part. That seems to be a challenge a lot of us have with Christmas. There’s so much style to it; so much decoration, so much tradition, that it can be hard to get past the romance and the decoration, to what it actually is about. So you guys went for it. You put the trappings of Christmas into the trappings of heavy metal and wrapped the whole thing up a couple of songs that were totally over the top. But I was just listening to the vinyl again this morning thinking, how in the world, at 20 years old, did you have that kind of sophistication? What were your influences or inspirations that pushed you in that direction?
SWEET: Yeah well I mean it’s a bit of a long story, I’ll try to condense it. We grew up in a musical family. My parents are singers and songwriters. So from day one, literally out of the womb, music has been part of me and literally in my blood, in my DNA. And when I was really young, an infant, every time my dad would play music, which was all the time, ranging from Elvis Presley to Creedence Clearwater Revival – and even sometimes Black Sabbath, believe it or not – and Country, (my dad wrote a number one country song in ‘76,) the minute he would play music I would start rocking back and forth on the couch or in the chair. My parents called that bopping. And the point of that story is, that I feel music. Music does something to me. It does something to everyone, but it really does something extra special to me. And I mean I just light up. I can be sick as a dog and I hear the right song and I’m not sick anymore. It just touches me and that comes through. I started writing songs when I was 12 years old, believe it or not. That’s when I joined my brother’s band. The craft of songwriting was instilled within me at a very early age.
JJT: Then this idea of the theology and taking these spiritual ideas and weaving that into it, that’s another level of sophistication that a 20 year old is pretty unlikely to get to. Especially in the heavy metal world where it was definitely not usually about that level of thoughtfulness.
SWEET: For sure, and we are really a very unique story. Because what happened with us (was that) when I joined my brother’s band at the age of 12, his arm was twisted to let me join by my dad, and the rest is history – as they say. But also, we dedicated our lives to God at that time. We got involved in a church and really grew up for a few years in the church. Then I walked away. I started playing clubs in Hollywood at an early age and got into that lifestyle: drinking, drugging, women. I know that sounds silly for a young kid, but it’s true. I mean if you saw me back in 1978 or ‘79, I was 16, 17 years old, you’d think that I was 25 years old because I grew up fast. I looked older than I was. And basically when I re-dedicated my life at the age of 20, I drew from all of that. And all that stuff started coming back and flooding back and that’s when I got really serious about my faith and started applying that to my songwriting.
JJT: Interesting. Wow. So this Christmas show that you’re doing, you’ve done this for about 5 years it says? And it’s been just a local thing but now seems kind of like a mixed blessing. The Covid situation has caused it to go online, that’s a con, but the pro side of it is that everybody can access it. This is a common story we are hearing from a lot of artists, how is this impacting you?
SWEET: Yeah it’s true. This is the 5th annual. I started doing this not 5 years ago but actually like 7 years ago and we skipped a year. After doing this the first time, I felt overwhelmed. My heart was full, seeing the music touching everybody at Christmastime. The candlelight and singing ‘Silent Night’ – it was really a spiritual time. That lead me to want to continue doing it.
JJT: And compared to some other livestreamed shows, and the costs associated with doing a show like this, the tickets are actually pretty inexpensive.
SWEET: It’s not about making money. To be honest, I don’t really make much money. Sometimes I lose money doing the show. It’s not about that. It’s about a gift I can give to people, and they give back to me. So it’s really a cool thing. And even though Covid has slowed us down, there’s no reason why we can’t do a show like this virtually. And we’ve been doing things like that. It feels like this has been the busiest year of my life. Which is really odd to say that, but it has on paper. It’s crazy!
JJT: And you guys had that pretty big year with Stryper. After all these years to have a record like this that hits the charts the way it did and the critics and people listening going, oh my gosh these guys are taking this deadly serious, I mean this is a good record these guys are not phoning it in by any stretch of the imagination. That is a big year.
SWEET: We never phone it in, and we never will. We – I feel – are releasing the best music of our careers. We’re still relatively young. We’ve gotten older, but we think young, and we feel young, and we’re still in good physical shape for the most part. There’s a lot left in us; I believe.
JJT: I remember when I was on staff at Cornerstone and John and I worked hard to talk you guys into coming to play at the festival in 2001. It was tough because you did not seem to want to do it. I think you had played one show in Brazil or something and we used that to say, “look we know you can play still because you did this one thing,” but you guys were still kind of in retirement. But it seemed like when you finally got there to Cornerstone and that show was such a blast I mean it was so much fun. You guys had fun. The crowd had fun. My perception was that there was a different energy level, where it was a lot of smiling and a lot of laughing and not taking it quite as seriously. The stuff that we could laugh about we laughed about. The stuff that we could take seriously we took seriously and it was like the balance was back. And then you guys seemed to hit this new gear. What kind of shift had to happen for you that allowed you to enjoy doing it again and go back creatively so that you could do that and do it at such a high level? What had to change or shift?
SWEET: Well I left the band in ‘92 and the reason why I left primarily was because I wanted to focus on my family. And focus on everything that I felt should be at the top of my priority list. My relationship with God, my relationship with my family. I felt like the band was consuming that and taking precedence over that and I didn’t like where that was going. And we were starting to go down different paths and we started drinking again and just going in a different direction and I didn’t want to continue doing that. So I left in ‘92 and I really almost subconsciously vowed not to return. I never verbally said it, but I subconsciously thought I’m not going back. So when we spoke to you guys and I just didn’t really want to do it. I didn’t really care about doing it and I had a different life, and I liked that life. And then the doors started opening and I started conversing with Oz a little bit more, and my brother, and we started thinking more about it. As time progressed, in 2000, and ‘03, and ’04. In ‘03 and ’04, we did the Celebration Tour, it was supposed to be a one off, but we started talking about continuing on and we did. In ’04 I played them a solo album, Reborn, and they loved it and we decided to make it a Stryper album. It got released in ‘05 and from ‘then up to now it’s been nonstop.
JJT: It seems like watching your Instagram account that you clearly have a sense of humor about yourself. What role does having a sense of humor play in being able to maintain longevity as an artist, especially in heavy metal? It seems like if you take that too seriously, the theatrics of it, then you almost set yourself up to burn out.
SWEET: Oh for sure. I mean I’ve always been a prankster. I got in trouble for pranking. I got in trouble for pranking quite often. I was that guy, just always doing something. I remember I was in electronics class and my teacher, Mr. Swanson, he was always getting on me because I was always doing something. Just cutting up! I was that guy just pranking everybody and I’m still that way to this day. I love to laugh. As long as I don’t hurt anybody in the process, I love to laugh. I laugh at myself more than anybody. I mean that’s the best subject, man, is yourself. And when I post things like that most people get it. Most people laugh and some people say, “Oh this is so stupid, dude, just stick to music.” And it’s like, what’s the point of that, you know? You’ve got to laugh and enjoy life and I do. I try to and I hope I never change in that regard to be honest.
JJT: I worked on the Electric Jesus movie. I was the music supervisor and the historical consultant and based on your sense of humor I was pretty confident you were going to dig it. But when Chris White (writer / director) went up and watched it with you guys I was waiting for the text. “What did he think? What did he think?” So, speaking of having a sense of humor, what were your impressions of that film?
SWEET: Oh, it’s great! I love it! I think they really captured the spirit of the music which is the toughest thing to do. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how little money you have, that’s the hardest thing to do – whether it’s a movie or an album – is capturing that ‘something special’ that you can’t even pinpoint that makes people go ‘Wow, I love it!’ – it moves people. This movie has that.
It was riding that line of poking fun at the band, but I love that! I love the fact that we weren’t taken that seriously. It was almost like an “in jest” kind of thing at times in a way, and I loved it, man. It’s sad that if that movie isn’t seen by the masses. I hope that someone gets behind it and it really gets out there to the masses so everybody can see it and I think they did a fantastic job. Love it.
JJT: That’s great. So I was thinking about that fictional band in the movie and so many groups that I knew back in the 80s and 90s that kind of got thrown out in the dragon’s jaws before they were ready. You guys started off in the mainstream. You started off in the belly of the beast. You didn’t come from Christian music and try to cross over. You came from the mainstream. Now, sitting in the position that you’re in and kind of looking back with the experience that you have, what kind of soul care or mentoring advice would you have for young artists who are now coming up today if you could put your arm around them for a while?
SWEET: Well yes, but I don’t know if it’s good advice. Because it worked for me but it might not work for others. What I mean by that is, I’m a rebel. I rebel. I remember walking into a Christian label called Benson, which is now Provident, and playing my music for Jerry Park, the president at the time. And played him a song called “J-E-S-U-S” and that’s the hook, that’s the chorus over and over again, and he listened to it. And he said, “Oh man I love this but is there any way you can just get the name Jesus in there couple more times?” And I sat and thought about it for a minute and I looked at him and I said “No, there’s no way. Not gonna happen. It’s in there plenty! It’s the hook.” And that’s my point is that’s me, I say ‘no’ a lot.
I was asked, for that album, to go to the GMA awards, the Dove awards. They said, “You have to be here” and I said, “I can’t be there, I’m on tour” and they said, “You have to cancel the tour and be here” and I said, “Not gonna happen.” And I felt like I was almost blacklisted for that. But my bigger point is, I do what I feel led to do. In the way I write, me as an artist, what I feel comfortable with. I don’t go into a board meeting with a label and they tell me who I’m gonna be. It doesn’t work like that in Michael Sweet’s world. And that’s the advice I would give other musicians is be you. Follow your heart’s desires. It’s okay to be steered in certain directions but don’t be molded by someone else. That’s between you and God, not some record exec. And it’s worth it to me. I’ve lost record deals because of that and I’m totally fine with that.
JJT: Right. But you also had the advantage of having a fan base and so I would imagine that part of your instincts were based on what you knew your community wanted from you and that those people in the boardroom didn’t get it. They were not part of that community.
SWEET: Yeah
JJT: These kids are coming up less likely to have a board room telling them what to do creatively than they are just sitting in their bedroom trying to imagine what an audience might want to hear from them. Because they’re not having access to a crowd yet, and they’re trying to find a way to cut through this digital noise and just get noticed.
SWEET: That’s true.
JJT: And the advantage of the Christian market back then was that despite all of its negative aspects, at least it gathered together people who were predisposed to want to hear some people and if you were reasonably good, you had a shot at getting an audience.
SWEET: I know.
JJT: Now it’s just chaos. And these kids are having a hard time. Even some amazingly talented kids are having a hard time finding 100 people to listen to their records.
SWEET: I would say, just to add to that, the biggest and most important piece of advice I could give anyone out there is the song. Make the song the priority. Not your chops, not your vocal runs, not your skill on guitar. That’s all important, but the most important part is the song. If you don’t have the song you have no foundation to build anything upon. So really make sure that you work on crafting songs and writing a song and get that down. Once you get that down the rest will fall into place. At least that’s my opinion.
JJT: Yeah and that makes sense. When I go back and listen to your songs, they transcend the genre and the theatrics. When I got the first Stryper record, I’ve told this story before, I got it on cassette and there was no photos of the band on the cassette. So you couldn’t flip it over and see what you guys looked like and when I listened …
SWEET: That’s a good thing! That’s probably a good thing!
JJT: Well in my case because I was a pretty serious rock kid at 13 years old, and I loved Boston and I was in Chicago, so I loved Styx, I loved classic rock. But I also loved early or late 60’s kind of stuff. And when I heard that first Stryper record, I heard elements of all of that and in the song structure I heard stuff like Boston. I heard that compositional stuff. When I saw pictures of 80’s glam rock hair metal stuff, that stuff 9 times out of 10 didn’t have compositional sophistication. It didn’t have good chops. It was just about the fashion. It was just about the hairspray. So if I had seen Stryper without listening to it first, I would have pre-judged it as being lightweight. But instead I got the cassette. So then, when I went and bought the record for a friend for a gift and I had the vinyl and I saw the picture, I was like, “Argh!” Now, I wasn’t offended. It wasn’t like..
SWEET: I love it! (laughing)
JJT: I wasn’t like “Oh no they got long hair!” I was just thinking, “Oh they look like the kind of music I hate because they look like posers.
SWEET: Yeah
JJT: I had to get past the decoration to get to the substance. But that’s what I was noticing, even on that Christmas song, is that you focused so much on the songwriting. You knew what your audience wanted. You knew what made songs work in the 80’s. And then in the 90’s you were still focused on the fundamental elements of what make commercial songs work for that generation.
SWEET: For sure.
JJT: And now you’re still borrowing elements of that for the new Stryper stuff, but you’re taking it into some other directions. You’re not just going back and playing the same type of hooks. You’re evolving it and letting it grow and letting it shift.
SWEET: We’re trying.
Robert and I started the band and we’re not only brothers, but we’re visionaries in different forms. So Robert is more of a visual visionary. He’s all about the look and the clothes and the stripes. You know that’s 100 percent Robert. I’m the music guy. While Robert was painting his drum kit and painting guitars, I was in the other corner of the room writing songs. So the combination worked really well together. Now some people might not agree. I personally have expressed my love/hate relationship with the whole yellow and black glam look because we’re not a glam band and when we’re referred to as a glam band it’s very frustrating. Because, not to down Poison, but you know Poison is a glam band in my opinion; musically and visually.
JJT: Right.
SWEET: Stryper’s not a glam band. Our songs definitely have a lot more to them, with depth and thought in the arrangements and chord structures and solos and all of that stuff. But it’s interesting, I could have at any point in time given up the yellow and black and been completely happy doing so. But..
JJT: But It did help you cut through!
SWEET: It did! And it not only helped us cut through, but many times I’ll run into someone out on the street, in a mall or on a plane or wherever, and they’ll say, “You look like you’re in a band” and I’ll say, “Yeah I am actually.” “What band?” “Stryper” “Hmm..” “The yellow and black attack…” “Oh yeah! I remember!” And a lot of times as soon as I say the yellow and black they say, “Oh yeah I remember you guys.” So that was implanted in their brains based on just the colors in the stripes and the concept of that.
JJT: So, the challenge is when we’re riding those gears, if the style ever gets out of control it can overshadow the substance and then we’re constantly chasing that balance. But you could have all the substance in the world and nobody ever hears it…
SWEET: Well a great example of substance not being as high as everything else is a band like Kiss. And again, no disrespect, I’m a Kiss fan. I don’t mean that in a negative light at all. What I mean is, they are 90 percent visual. And now many Kiss fans would want to kill me for saying that, but you know their music was just really simple and there wasn’t a lot to the music itself. It was good music but there wasn’t a lot to it like when you compared it to a Boston album or a Foreigner album. It just wasn’t at the same place. But man, they had the look and the visual side covered and all the merchandise and people loved that! It’s so important.
JJT: Right. So I think the takeaway here is, it’s great to have a sense of that but, if you want to have longevity and have it mean something to people, especially when we’re talking about spiritual things, deeper things, the stuff that people are going to let into that inner part of them. You need to keep it in balance.
I really love your new song “Make Love Great Again” for example. It is a great example of taking a slogan, turning it on its head, and putting a hook in it that will get in someone’s brain, and then saying let’s build bridges instead of walls. Let’s take this thing that a lot of people are talking about but let’s take it deeper. It’s a great example of your ability to tap into the zeitgeist and ride that line between form and function or style and substance.
SWEET: I think that when you hear a phrase like “Make America Great Again,” which we’ve all heard billions of times. You can’t make anything great again without love, right? And that’s where it all starts. So you know Perry threw out the idea of “Make Rock Great Again” and I thought, “Oh I like where that’s going but rock, mmm.” And then Rob threw out the idea of “Make God Great Again” and I said “Well you can’t make God great again, he’s already great. He doesn’t get any greater.” And then I put the word love in there and I said what about “Make Love Great Again” and it became that. But it’s such a simple thing but such a powerful thing. And it goes along with this mid-tempo throwback to the 80’s, you know, Heaven and Hell, like just wow! And yet it’s got a little bit of a modern twist, Stryper style, and it’s a cool track. Really turned out great.
JJT: Yeah! Well thanks for doing it. Man I know I’ve used up your time, I heard that you got other interviews.
SWEET: I do I have a few but it’s all good man everything’s great I appreciate you having me on and I’m looking forward to this show!
JJT: I’d love to have you back. Ok, and yeah so the other thing about the show, and I can cover some of this just from the info on the press release but, there are options where people if they can’t watch it live can still watch it at their convenience. It’s not like they have to be sitting at their computer or at their TV right at that time. They are able to watch it any time before Christmas?
SWEET: At this moment in time, if you purchase a ticket, you can watch it from the 19th live at 7pm Eastern, and then re-watch it all the way till Christmas evening. Or if you miss it on the 19th, you can watch it any day afterwards up to Christmas evening. At some point we’re going to make it available in a different format. Even maybe package it and make it available as a hard copy, you know blu ray, DVD. But it’s gonna be fun man. It’s a combination of acoustic meets electric. I have a full band; a drummer, a guitar player, a bass player, I’m playing acoustic, and we’ve got four-part harmonies going on. We’ll be doing Stryper songs, Michael Sweet songs, and Christmas songs.
JJT: That’s great. And you’ve even got a way where you’re going to see some of the listeners who are watching you. You’re going to see some of their faces as you’re playing.
SWEET: Yeah, we’re gonna see, we’re gonna have the video wall. There’s a $10 ticket for general. A $25 ticket for what’s front row and those people are going to be placed on a video wall and if we have like 100’s of people, it will be scrolling through and we’ll keep seeing new faces. And then we’ve got the VIP’s which are sold out. I believe we had 25 of those, and those will be video wall and after show meet and greet. You know, Q and A kind of thing.
JJT: That’s great. Well man it’s great to see you doing it. A lot of us are stuck at home and not having the kind of Christmas that we’re used to having. So I think it’s great when artists are going out of their way to go to people’s homes with things like this and I appreciate you doing it and thanks for taking time to watch the Electric Jesus film too and telling me about it.
SWEET: Oh man, yeah we got some popcorn, Lisa and I went and we put our feet up and we watched it and we had a blast! What a great time.
JJT: Well hey man good to see you, and I look forward to seeing the show and I’d love to get you back on the podcast and we’ll hook up the microphones and do that.
SWEET: I will do it man!
JJT: But It’s great to see your face again.
SWEET: You too my friend! Merry Christmas, and God Bless. Stay safe out there and I can’t wait to see you in person soon.
Subscribe to the email list and “like” our Facebook page @TrueTunesNow for updates. Find us on Instagram at @TrueTunesMusic.
If you’ve never seen it – here’s a fun fan recording of Stryper’s Cornerstone 2001 Performance we mentioned in the conversation. Hard to believe this was almost 20 years ago now.
