Morning Wire - John Rich Explores Faith, Freedom & Country Music | 7.13.24

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

Country music star John Rich discusses his new faith-focused song "Revelation," the evolving landscape of the music industry, and his commitment to independent artistic expression. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The music industry has been rapidly changing in recent decades, with even the tradition-laden country music industry morphing into something that many of its long-time fans find unrecognizable. At the same time, more and more artists are going independent and reaching their audiences through non-traditional venues. In this episode, we talk with country music star and entrepreneur John Rich about his new faith-focused music venture and how the changing cultural landscape is leading to necessary innovation in several industries.

I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's July 13th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire. Since 1974, Saudi Arabia has sold oil solely in U.S. dollars, which was paramount to the dollar's strength and stability. But not anymore. That's why you've got to get in touch with the experts over at Birchgold today. Right now, with qualifying purchases made by July 31st, you get a one-of-a-kind limited edition Golden Truth Bomb.

The only way to claim your eligibility, though, was by texting Wire to 989-9-8-9-9-8. Text wire to 9898-98 for a free no-obligation info kit on gold and to get your hands on that limited edition golden truth bomb today. Joining us now to discuss his new faith-focused project and why he undertook it is country music star and entrepreneur John Rich. John, thanks for coming on. Always good to talk. So you've got a new song out. It's called Revelation and it's about the book of Revelation. So first, can you explain what the song focuses on and what it hopes to share with listeners?

Well, there's a few things about not only the book of Revelation, but all prophecy pertaining to end times and return of Jesus to the earth. It's in Daniel. It's in Second Thessalonians. It's in Matthew. And of course, it's in Revelation and other places. And up until recently, a lot of the things that have been prophesied, people just couldn't imagine how they could even be possible. One good example of that is the Mark of the Beast, which we all have learned about very well, it says people will not be able to buy or sell without having the mark. And nobody could ever understand that, including my dad, who started preaching at about 19 years old. He's now in his early 70s. But he said to me, now with the furtherance of technology, he said,

the thought of being able to track everybody on the earth and know how they spend their money and where they spend their money and all of that, he goes, it's not even a question today. Of course, they're already doing that. So what needs to be in place for those prophecies to actually come true now, they exist. So the video and the song, when you see those two things together, the point I'm driving home there is another piece of scripture that says, in Ephesians, it says we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers and with the rulers of the darkness of this world in spiritual high places of wickedness. and that's a really important verse because I know I'm guilty of being completely wrapped up in the Trump, Biden, nonsense going on all over our country caught up in these news cycles. But when you go back to the word, it says, yeah, that's not the real fight. The real fight is what you can't see going on behind the scenes.

That's the actual battle. And so in this video, you see me standing in front of this little country church in the woods in Tennessee. and then appearing out of the woods in a blast of fire, you see the devil come riding in on a black horse. And then on the other side of the church, you see this huge explosion of light hit out in the trees. And then here comes Michael the Archangel carrying a sword. And they're coming right at each other,

evil and righteousness coming right at each other, and I'm standing in the middle of it, kind of representing humanity, which is what they're fighting over. And I've never seen anybody write a song like this, record a song like this, or ever even approach this subject in the way that I'm doing it. And I thought this is the perfect time to put something like this out, because millions of people who are watching what's happening in our country and around the world are starting to

tune in to what does the Bible say about this? Am I looking at stuff that was talked about in the Bible? And the further they read, the more they realize, yes, absolutely. A lot of these things have been spoken of, and we can see the makings of the final. times of this earth right now. Yeah, I want to ask you a little bit more about that. What inspired you to make this song, particularly right now? Are there some specific things that prompted you to write it? No, that's a great question. I know that sounds like a funny answer, but I wrote the song last November. I was at home by myself. They did not intend on writing anything. And out of nowhere, this overwhelming feeling came over me with this melody and this chorus rolling through my head,

revelation. I can feel it coming like a dark train running, and it was just in my head all of a sudden. I'm like, wow, where did that come from? Well, I knew where it came from? And so I said, okay, I better sit down right now and see what comes out of my hands on the page and onto my guitar. And in about 60 minutes, this song was done. I walked around the house listening to it, just me, nobody else had heard it, listening to it over and over and over. And I looked out the window, looked up at the sky, and I said, what do you want me to do with this? Because this is not what you would say, oh, I'm going to go have a hit song, or it's a piece of commerce or something like that. Absolutely not. What do you want me to do with it? And I felt like the answer back was,

take it all the way to the mat. That's the phrase I had in my head, take it as far as you can possibly take it. I said, okay, that's what I'll do. So I've taken a lot of time. I've taken a lot of time, with that recording, that audio, and then a long, long time with that video. Anybody who sees that video, you'll see. I mean, it looks like you're watching a movie. I mean, the special effects, the CGI, all the things that went into it

to make it as realistic as possible was not easy to do. But I think that's what you have to do these days if you want to really combat the evil side of entertainment and of the world in general. You've got to figure the budgets that they have behind Super Bowl halftime shows, or the Grammy Awards or live concerts, these big pop shows.

And they come out on stage with all this satanic symbolism everywhere. We've all seen it now. And some of them are even doing mock seances. I mean, straight witchcraft stuff happening on these stages. But they do it at such a high level and it's such a big budget that the entertainment value of it, even though it's evil, is hard for people to look away. So for Revelation, I wanted to come in at that kind of a level,

except from the other side. So when people see this video and they hear that song, they have to watch it. They have to absorb what it says. Now, you say there's not specific things that prompted this, but it sounds like culturally there might have been broader issues at play here that did inspire you. What do you see in today's culture that requires this kind of wake up for Americans? Well, we're inundated with just extreme blasphemy is what I would term it as. You know, it's gone beyond just violence and sex. That's bad enough, but it is straight up blasphemy.

You know, the wicked people in this world are running amok. And the first line in the song Revelation, it says, Dancing in the Flames, the people cursed his name, talking about Jesus, bowed at the altar of the father of lies, which is one name for the devil, that he's the father of lies. Everything coming out of his mouth is a lie all the time. And so when you look at culture and you see the lies being perpetrated and you see his influence with these artists and in our culture, inundating our kids, inundating even me and you and everybody else, we can't get away from it. To me, I thought, you know what, we can scream and holler about it or we can speak the truth and come with something that combats that, that shows the other side of that equation, which they're never going to show.

It's one reason why I'm really grateful. I do not have a record deal or a publishing deal. I'm not beholden to any company anywhere. Because if I was, this song would never be heard and that video would have never been made. It would be sitting on a shelf somewhere with a big company. So thank God I'm free from that. Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about the industry in the context of this kind of song. Country music has been traditionally very conservative, very spiritually focused often.

But you've said here that you're glad you're independent and that this song could not be made in the current. industry. What kinds of trends are we seeing in the country music industry in particular? Well, have you watched an award show lately? I mean, you know, marching out onto stage, all manner of things that offend the great majority of the audience. It's why a lot of their award shows now have gone online. You have to stream the award show, probably because their TV audience went to nothing. Because, you know, you're sitting there watching a country award show and everything's fine, and your wife is there,

and your kids are there, and you're watching some country music, saying who's going to win what. And then out of nowhere, they start parading things across the stage, and your kids are looking at you like, what is going on? And you're watching it going,

I can't even believe this is happening right now. And it's like a sucker punch. It's like they know who the majority of the audience is. They get you to watch the show, and then whammo, they hit you with this indoctrination. So that's who they've become. People don't realize that Nashville is running, by the same big three companies that also run Hollywood,

and those would be Universal, Sony, and Warner Brothers. Between those three companies, they control about 90% of all the record labels and all the publishing companies. And that's why you're seeing what you're seeing in country music today. There's a lot of artists like me that are out there that have record deals that have told me in private, man, I wish I could say what you say. I wish I could do the interviews you're doing.

I wish I could talk the Daily Wire. I wish I could put out songs like Revelation or other songs I've put out, but they just can't unless they want to completely be blackballed from the business that is their American dream. Their American dream is to go be on the radio and play concerts, and they have payrolls. You know, they're in tough positions, but fortunately for me, I'm no longer encumbered by any of those situations. You mentioned the American dream, and I wanted to ask you actually about patriotism. That's something that comes through in a lot of your work. And there's an upcoming event that is particularly focused on patriotism. It's a very important. It's

called flagstock. What's going on with that? Can you remind our audience how this celebration came to be and how you ended up saying you would perform at it? Oh, yeah. So you remember the boys from UNC University of North Carolina when they were having the pro-Hamas protests were going on that were tearing down the American flag all of the United States. Well, they were trying to tear it down at UNC at a bunch of fraternity boys who normally you wouldn't think would be the savior of anything, came out, and they stood underneath that flag on the campus and refused to let it hit the ground. And simultaneously, they're getting hit by rocks and sticks and water bottles and all kinds of stuff, getting screamed at, spit at. And they just stood there and held the flag up. We all

know that picture of those boys doing that. I was so moved by that that they had the courage to do that. And I reached out on X and I said, hey, I don't know how to get a hold of these guys, but somebody please let them know that when they want to have their big party, I'll come play a free concert for them. Well, man, that turned into an absolute tidal wave of support. So we're now going to do flagstock, which is what we're calling it, which I think is perfect. On September 2nd, Labor Day, in Chapel Hill, with all the fraternities and whoever they want to invite, it's going to be a private concert for them, but we are going to live stream it nationwide, multi-camera. We've got Big and Rich, Cowboy Troy, Lee Greenwood is coming, Aaron Lewis is coming. So it's a lot of really

hard hit and patriotic country stores coming to this thing. It's going to be a blast. Will you play Revelation there? Very likely. Yeah, because at that point, it would have been out for a couple of months. And I would say very likely I would play that. I honestly don't see a show going forward where I wouldn't play Revelation. Now, you mentioned earlier the Mark of the Beast as a major theme in revelation, and that has to do with access to money. And that connects to a trend that we've seen recently that's very troubling. It's the debanking trend. It's been such an issue that Tennessee actually recently passed a law against it. You've taken personal initiative against this trend through the Old Glory Bank, which you helped found. How is that project doing? What's the latest

with Old Glory? Well, it's doing great. So that's myself, Dr. Ben Carson, Larry Elder, and then some guys behind the scenes who come from the world of banking that left that woke situation. And we all had a conversation about the future that, you know, we saw Justin Trudeau shut down all the bank accounts of the truckers. That's the only way he could break up the trucker protest. He just took their bank accounts. He actually, he told the banks freeze their bank accounts. Well, I hate to tell you, but banks don't have to do what the federal government tells them to do. Banks are not owned by the federal government. In America, a bank can say, no, we're not freezing anybody's account because they haven't broken the law. They're within their

constitutional rights to do what they're doing. So no, we'll see you in court. But unfortunately, in America, we've now learned about banks that have been asked by the feds, hey, we want to see where your customers are shopping. We want to see where they're spending their money. And the bank just turns it over to them. Here you go. Here's millions of people. You can see, where John Rich spent his money here, there, and the other place, and just completely invading your space, obviously looking to find a reason to hurt you one way or the other, to turn off your bank account or put you on a list or whatever. So Old Glory Bank was born from the fact that we all know, that's in the cards for the people that currently are running this country. So it's

Oldglorybank.com, and the simple premise is you will never be penalized for exercising your constitutional rights. The bank is doing absolutely great. It's only, less than a couple of years old, but we're now doing mortgage loans, we're doing small business loans, and we're picking up thousands of new customers every month. Certainly great to hear. Finally, where can our listeners find Revelation and the music video? You can see the video on Rumble, which is John Rich Official. You can see it on YouTube, on John Rich Music. You can download the song anywhere you get your music, iTunes, Amazon, wherever you get it. And I would just urge people that if this song strike,

you, or as my dad would say, if the spirit moves you, push it along, forward it to everybody that's following you, because like I said, I don't have a marketing company or a record label or anything like that. So I really rely on the general public. If this song moves you and you think it's important, go download it and go send it to all your people. John, thank you so much. Always great to talk to you. You too. That was Country Music Star and Entrepreneur John Rich, and this has been a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.