It’s a delight to be talking with songwriter and musical composer Cody Curtis (Psallos) this week on rethinking worship music. Cody, who has a doctorate in music composition, comes at music ministry with a great perspective – a perspective that may be lacking in the church today. Our conversation involves talking about the “blind follow of popular worship music,” what discernment looks like, and breaking free from the “norm” and being creative (yet smart). One of Cody’s great accomplishments is the release of ROMANS (see link below), a musical journey through the ancient letter from Paul to the Church in Rome.

Episode Links

Check out ROMANS by Psallos (the project Cody made with past students from Union University).

Listen to Josh Garrels’ rendition of What Wondrous Love Is This (Cody gave this hymn as an example of a song written in the dorian church mode).

Read It

*Below is an edited transcription of the audio conversation.

It’s a privilege and an honour to be talking with a very talented musical composer, songwriter, and probably other things as well. Cody Curtis is our guest on the show for this week. Thanks so much for coming on the show!

Thanks so much for having me.

A couple months ago now I came across this album online called Romans. Underneath the word “Romans” was this little word called Psallos. I was like “Hey, this kind of looks cool!” And I began to listen and actually really enjoyed what I was listening to. It was pretty much this musical journey through the book of Romans. I was like, “Wow, that’s intense!” So, upon exploring a little bit more about this musical group called Psallos, I came across this guy, or one of the guys behind the project, and that is who you’re listening to, his name is Cody. He’s here with us today.

But before we spend a few minutes digging into musical worship and creative musical worship as well, Cody, why don’t you share with us briefly who you are personally and then also how Psallos came about.

Yeah, so my name’s Cody Curtis. I live in Jackson, Tennessee. I work at a school called Union University here, it’s a private Christian school. Great university. I’m married to my wife, her name is Melody – very fittingly, her name is Melody. We have one child, a daughter named Elowen. She’s sixteen months right now, so she’s a lot of fun. I graduated from Union with an undergrad in music theory, and I did my Master’s in composition at the University of North Carolina, and I just in May 2016 graduated with my doctorate in music composition at the University of Memphis. So, I love music. I’ve really enjoyed all my training.

I love writing music in particular. Let’s see. I got into music when I was young, kind of late in the game, but went through all the steps to catch up. My wife and I, when we were in North Carolina while I was doing my masters, I was writing music for the school, but we just had this desire to write music for the church. I had grown up like most teenage guys, writing songs just, love songs, and the Lord really matured me during this time theologically – understanding the power of Scripture and what Christian worship is. So, we just had this desire to write music for the church – music that was artistically excellent, clear and edifying in the way that the lyrics were written and that was consistent with sound theology as the Scriptures show.

We started Psallos in 2012. It was really just a small thing – my wife and I. Our first album was almost entirely my wife and I doing all the playing and all the singing.