Like many other artists, local musician Russ Mohr has had to pivot his creativity because of COVID-19 prevention efforts. He’s started performing through Instagram Live and hosted the first in his living room. At 8:30 p.m. this Saturday, he’ll perform live from his backyard patio.
Beyond entertaining followers with virtual performances, Mohr is also using his faith-based music to bring a bit of peace. He’s released a new song, “Someday Soon,” which he calls a comforting message during these hard times. The song’s proceeds will be donated directly to the “Giving Grace” fund, started by St. Louis restaurant Grace Meat + Three to provide free meals for local food service workers and families.
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On Instagram, Mohr wrote that the lyrics in “Someday Soon” capture his “hopeful anticipation of the day when we finally emerge from our homes and reunite with friends and loved ones. It is a lovely thought by itself, but as I imagine what that day will be like, it causes me to reflect beyond this current season to the day when all of our fears and suffering will be no more. Our experience coming of isolation will pale in comparison to the glory of that day.”
The song builds off of the message of Mohr’s most recent album, Kingdom Sessions, a 14-song compilation about faith with more than 70 singers and musicians on its credits. (“I wanted it to express diversity. I can’t have a record that celebrates diversity that’s written by one white dude all by himself,” he says.) Much of the album’s inspiration came from Mohr desiring more faith-based music with messages the average person could relate to. Since then, he’s launched The Kingdom Sessions Podcast to further his discussion on how faith, music, and life intersect.
Although he’s a faith-based musician, Mohr admits: “I don’t listen to Christian radio,” and adds that the contemporary Christian music he was seeing wasn’t encompassing everyday life, warts and all. “There wasn’t a whole lot of music out there that gave me language to express my desire to see us speak out against racism or injustice,” he says. “They are things that are important to the church and talked about a lot in scriptures, but I didn’t have access to a lot of music that expressed what I was seeing.”
On how his faith-based music might differ from the genre, he says that religious music is often thought of as only inspirational. “They’re not necessarily getting into sort of the hard realities of life that people are really dealing with.” He doesn’t discount listening to the “positive and uplifting” music, as he describes it, but he says, “you’re not hearing what the average Joe in America is fighting or struggling with.”
He felt he needed to express his voice and perspective as a person of faith on harder topics like police brutality, mass shootings, and women’s rights. “I’m wrestling through this and processing all of this. [I thought] I should invite other people into that process as well,” he says. “A lot of times, we feel like the church shouldn’t mix itself up in things that are viewed as political.”
In all, his goal is to use music as “a vehicle to bring people together and to express the beauty of diversity and what happens when we put our differences aside,” he says. “Come together with one common voice that says, ‘Through the lens of our faith, we want to make the world a better place.’”
