Clint Lowery, guitarist for Sevendust, recently spoke on the Man Up God’s Way podcast with host Jody Burkeen, sharing details about his spiritual journey and his recent tour as a “saved Christian.”
Lowery reflected on his earlier understanding of faith (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “I had the understanding of God, but I did just enough to feel like I wasn’t hellbound. I considered myself a pretty decent person earlier in my twenties.” He acknowledged how his life changed with the “typical rock and roll lifestyle”: “And then I started getting into alc*hol and dr*gs, and that took me down the darkest path that I’d ever imagined — you know, the typical rock and roll lifestyle. You go into dr*gs, you go into drinking, all the other things, womanizing and just different things that just were not aligned. And then deep in my soul and my heart, I knew it was wrong. I just wanted to fit in. I just wanted to exist… And it was almost a badge of honor to live in a sinful way. And there was a lot of like ‘attaboys’ that were given to you. And so as a younger man, you’re romanced by that. But there was always a consistent prayer life. A relationship, I wouldn’t call it. I’d call it more of a foxhole. I would go through the motions of prayer because it was the imprint of my being, ’cause my mother and my father did it. We always prayed at dinners. And so there was a foundation there, but there just wasn’t a relationship.”
Lowery further detailed his path to sobriety in 2007: “I got sober in 2007, and that, that opened up a relationship with what I’d called… Because I wouldn’t say I was church hurt, but I just was very reluctant to join or be a part of a religion aspect of it. Not realizing that the real mission and the real objective is to have a relationship with Jesus Christ as my savior that died for my sins and was resurrected. When I got sober, I just said there’s a God concept there. I had Jesus Christ, but I wasn’t fully supporting that in a way where I would even tell my kids early on, allow them to kind of, ‘Well, some people believe you die and nothing happens. Some people believe that there isn’t a God at all. Some people believe in Buddhas. A lot of people believe in different things.’ And I would just tell ’em that, and at the time, that’s what I thought.”
He admitted to a past skepticism towards organized religion: “I had conflict with man. I never had a conflict with God. It was the way that I’d seen man — and woman — manipulate and use religion with hypocrisy. And I was so interested in finding the holes in all of it. I’d see a preacher and just get a sense of, it wasn’t authentic and there was a motive and there was money. And I was just trying to find holes instead of going straight to the Bible, going straight to Jesus. And then I just had a very cynical lens on the whole world before coming to God.”
Despite sobriety and life improvements, Lowery described a lingering emptiness: “So that went on. I got sober and I had a prayer life that was more intense and focused, but it wasn’t specifically to Jesus. And I was sober. A lot of things in my life improved. I went through a divorce, got remarried, had two beautiful children, but there was a discontent. I would be driving around, and with sobriety and accomplishing that, people would always tell me, ‘So proud of you. Your life’s turned around.’ And I felt that in some regard, but there was a thing about just my existence that just felt empty. I held on to resentments, grudges. I judged people. I was very self-obsessed with fitness. Vanity was a huge thing. And yeah, I wasn’t drinking, yeah, I wasn’t cheating, yeah, I wasn’t doing the things I was doing when I was drinking. But I wasn’t complete.”
A series of health scares ultimately led him to a deeper faith. “And there were times I would be riding around town — and I have all these blessings in my life; my children are healthy and my wife is healthy, and everything is good — I just would be… I don’t know — ‘unsettled’ is the word. And then a couple things happened on the health side. I’d had a torn meniscus last year, and that turned into a herniated disc in my neck and sent shock waves down my left arm. And that humbled me in terms of physically. I was self-diagnosing myself. Then it turned out that my dad had Parkinson’s disease, so I thought I had some hand trembling things going, different things outside of just the neck, herniated, some different odd symptoms. And it sent me down the darkest health spiral I’ve ever gone through. And it put me on my knees in a way where there was a lot of fear of serious neurological disease that I thought was basically strip me down from the core physically to where I would have nothing but my brain. And so that few months is when I really dove into the Bible, to the word, because I’d seen so many doctors and I’d seen so many… I’ve talked to all my friends. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I was absolutely convinced I was checking so many boxes for this disease. So I was going through the test, and they were coming back clean. I was going through all these different things, and then I just had nowhere else to go. I knew that something was wrong, and I just went to the Bible and I went to find my relationship with Christ… But the suffering that I went through that and still kind of deal with a few things, it has been the biggest gift that was ever given to me. Even if those things panned out the way that I was in fear, it had brought me to a relationship with Christ that I never would have had it not been for that suffering for me. So once I got into scripture with that much zest, it was, like, ‘I have nothing to lose. I want Christ in my heart.’ And I started seeing things.'”
Looking ahead, Lowery discussed how his newfound faith might influence his songwriting for Sevendust. “I haven’t written any lyrics yet. I’ve written a lot of music for the new Sevendust. And historically I write a lot of lyrics and vocals and some of the other guys do too. I’m really gonna have a hard time not touching on that part of my life. I’ve written a lot about the turbulent parts of my life. ‘Cause it matches the energy of the music. So if you write this heavy, aggressive, minor music, [you] feel like the subject matter should be kind of aligned with that. So typically you go dark, and I’ve always done that. And it’s funny because I’ve gotten to the part where me and Morgan [Rose, Sevendust drummer] talk about it a lot, where it’s, like, ‘Man, what the heck are we gonna talk about?’ We’ve already gotten mad at everybody, and I’m not mad anymore.”
He also addressed the quality of faith-based music: “With every genre of music, there’s really the pioneers and people that are doing super-creative stuff, and there’s people that are just kind of plagiarizing and stealing and some safe and some of it doesn’t move me. And so that same thing goes with worship music. I believe there’s some really serious people that are tapping into their talent, and then some of it just doesn’t move me as much. And that’s okay. I love when someone is talking and praising God — I don’t have to like the song right to love the message — but I feel there are a lot of artists that are believers, but they don’t talk about it in their music. Which is crazy to me, ’cause it’s, like, man, that’s such a big part.”
Lowery admitted previous apprehension about overtly expressing his faith in music: “Before, I was very hesitant. I wrote a song called ‘Till Death’ [from Sevendust’s 2013 album Black Out The Sun]. It’s probably the heaviest Sevendust song we ever did, but it’s basically about wanting to get right, wanting to stop sinning and to find God. And it doesn’t say that. I was always worried about, ‘Well, if I do this, then there’s no turning back, and everyone’s gonna think I’m just this…’ And I don’t care about that anymore. So I feel like I’m absolutely gonna write about my journey with Christ, how obvious it is. And I don’t think every song is gonna be about that, but I do believe that it would be a missed opportunity to not… If I’m gonna write some words and not give some of that to God, then it just wouldn’t feel right. And it’ll be heavy too, man. It ain’t gonna be like we’re gonna lose a step. It might even be better. I don’t know.”
