Michael Bloodgood

Michael Bloodgood's connection with Meltdown dates back to 1992. In all likelihood, some of you reading this interview weren't even born then. This was his third time, so Saturday was a chance to sit down with him and discuss those experiences, and a bunch of other important stuff, like “Guitar Hero” and how to pick up girls. But the obvious first question was how has the ministry, and the conference, changed in the intervening years?

Well, you know, I don't know if I've been here long to see how much the conference has changed, ‘cos it's just been last night and half of today. It's great that there's a lot of familiar faces from the previous years. It looks like there's big changes coming, with Dave shutting down the main conference here at Quinta and going into “ Mobile Meltdown”, as I call it. I think it's just a great vision, and if anybody can do it, it's Dave. It's just been great to hear the stories, you know, ‘cos Les (Carlsen, Bloodgood's vocalist) came a few years ago, a lot of kids got saved, and I've been catching up with Jim La Verde, so I've been kind of hearing about the changes through my buddies in the States that have been coming over here in the other years, so I think it's awesome. I love the heart of Meltdown. It's very evangelistic. Even though it's technically music-oriented to Christian bands like that, it's always been outward focussed, and that's why I keep coming back, because one of my favourite ministries in the world is to minister to other musicians. I've been at it for a long time, and I understand musicians, and what makes them tick, so I really love to encourage and edify, and whatever else the Lord leads me to do with other players, and to be just a little bit of that over here, to me, is just an awesome privilege.

So how have you changed since your first Meltdown?

Well, the couple of times I've been here before this, there's always been a very life changing event for me personally. When I did my first Meltdown in '92, I'd never really taught a sermon before, I'd never preached or taught, and so I was on the road and Dave had given me four specific topics, none of which I really knew much about. One was on the occult, so I did a lot of research, and anyway, during one of the teachings, that's when the Lord called me into pastoring. So I've got a real affinity to Meltdown because it was here, while I was preaching my first sermon that in the back of my mind I really felt the Lord say this is where I'm going. Of course, I argued with the Lord for a long time, I go, “Lord, how desperate could you be, that you would want me to be a …?” because I had no aspirations… you would've never seen that listed as something I wanted to do, was to be a minister, to be a pastor, but you know, by the time the weekend was over, and I had the privilege of baptising a bunch of guys, that's when I knew the Lord was really starting… I didn't actually start pastoring till probably three or four years later, as an assistant, and became a senior pastor about seven or eight years later. So the Lord, it's kind of a Moses things, chose me, and where I'm going, and then the training began, ‘cos I wasn't ready then. I don't know if you're ever really ready, obviously, it's always a work in progress. And then the second Meltdown I did in 2000, when Oz (Fox, guitarist with Stryper) was here, that's when I said to myself and my wife (Marilyn, herself a two-time Meltdownee) if I ever put Bloodgood back together, I really wanna ask Oz to be in it, ‘cos we just hit it off, he's got the same sense of humour, I love his heart, I love where he's at as a person, and of course… boom! He's in Bloodgood!

So was his joining Bloodgood a direct result of being at Meltdown together?

Absolutely! Yep! It wouldn't have happened otherwise. The thought would have never crossed my mind.

It takes some getting used to, “Oz Fox, guitarist with Bloodgood”. How has he changed the band? How has he changed you?

Oz just has a whole different dynamic, you know? Paul Jackson is still playing with us, so you've got Paul, who's almost like The Edge, he's technically proficient, he is without a doubt one of the best guitar players I've ever heard. Paul is just a phenomenal player, we did our “ Out of the Darkness ” record, we brought him in just as a session player, and he was so good, we said, “Man, we want him to be in the band!” And so when you bring Oz in, who's this out-of-control, wild, phenomenal guitar player, they are just the coolest unit together. It is just a lot of fun, and we have a great dynamic. Oz has said in a couple of interviews, playing with Stryper is work, being in Bloodgood is fun. We have a blast, you know? When we're rehearsing, ‘cos he lives in Vegas, Les is in Ontario, and I'm up in Seattle, when they come up, we're all hanging out together, and we never get any sleep, ‘cos we're having such a great time together. So he's brought just a different dynamic. We've asked him to come in as a songwriter, which he doesn't get to do a lot in Stryper, so I don't even know how it's gonna change the dynamic of recording at this point. I brought him in for a couple of tracks on my worship record, but I'm really looking forward to seeing how that's all gonna play out, but it's gonna be a pretty exciting record, I think.

So there is a new Bloodgood recording in the pipeline?

Oh, yeah, we've been writing for it for a couple of years, absolutely. I've been co-writing with David Zaffiro (former Bloodgood guitarist) and Chris Eddy, who's Duane Eddy's son. Jim La Verde and I are gonna try and get together and pen something out.

Bloodgood has been around, what? A good quarter of a century?

Yeah, the idea of Bloodgood came before there was anything such as Christian metal, which is why it took me a while to actually realise that's what God was calling me to do. Officially we've been together since '85, but David and J.T. ( Taylor ) the first drummer, and I were actually rehearsing in '84, and praying about it clear back to '83. But as far as a unit, when we were cohesive and began rehearsing, it was '85.

So don't you think it's time to retire gracefully and let some of these younger guys have a go?

Well, the funny thing is, I did retire with the band! You know, after '93 we did our last German tour, and I really felt that it was time to stop.

 That was when you released “To Germany With Love”…

 Yeah. Yeah, right. And so I kinda knew it was time to hang it up. I knew God was calling me to pastor, so I didn't break the band up, we just kinda retired it. I had a lot of people wanting to put the band back together as the years rolled by, but I just said no, it'd be too much of a distraction, I've got a ministry now. But, that kinda changed in 2005, you know, I almost passed away, I got very sick, and one of the many results of that was I really felt God was asking me to put the band back together, because through MySpace, and now Facebook, we just got this continual reaction of not just old fans but brand new fans just discovering metal. You know, there's a whole group of teenagers that really love metal! They want to see real guitar players, ‘cos there really haven't been any! We just did our Norwegian shows, and Swedish shows, and it was all teenagers, and they were just crazy about the band! I'm thinking, “Oh, my gosh, this is awesome!” It's almost a second wind, you know, because of the cultural changes, or whatever it is, that now our ministry is vital, and young kids are hearing about it, and getting saved, and excited about the band.

 So are you saying that after twenty five years or so, with new, young bands coming up that are taking their ministry seriously, we still need bands like Bloodgood?

 I think absolutely, because rock ‘n' roll, who'd have thought, is kind of transcended generations now. I mean, my eighteen-year-old is just as fired up about seeing Van Halen and the Rolling Stones as he is about seeing Pearl Jam or Creed or backtrack to even younger bands, because it doesn't matter if Mick Jagger's sixty nine, or the lead singer's twenty nine, or nineteen, you know? If the music's great, they wanna hear it. And Bloodgood, we've always been very aggressive in our message, in our lyrics, and I think kids need to see that. I'm still influenced by bands from twenty years before, because you catch something, you take it and you make it your own. And hopefully as a Christian band, we encourage these young guys to get out there and be bold.

 You mean, if it was good then, it's still good now?

 Yeah. I mean, when Dave brought me in in 2000, I said, “What did you bring me over here for?” The band hadn't been together for seven years at that point, and he just said, “Hey, man, you know, good music's good music, and what you did, you did it.” So for him, it wasn't even an issue. So I'm going, “Ok… praise God!”

 In 1988, Doug Van Pelt declared that outside of Stryper , Bloodgood , Barren Cross , Whitecross , and Leviticus were the four largest Christian metal bands. Was that a fair statement?

 Was that a fair statement? I think in that time period, in '88, that would've been pretty accurate. I mean, there were a lot of other bands, but Stryper, because they were on a mainstream label, they're in a world all of their own. But as far as the Christian bands on Christian labels, I think that would be that would be… I mean there were other bands that we played with like Messiah Prophet, Bride, and all that, but as far as that named recognition, that would definitely be the bands that would probably pop up.

 Who do you think has those positions now?

 From the current list of bands? You know, I don't even know. I don't know who would be on that list now. I have no idea. In some ways I'm kind of removed from a lot of the stuff, because when you're doing it the next time around, you're in a different space mentally, and older. I'm a family guy, I don't have anything to prove, I don't care if people like it or don't like it, this is what God's called me to do, I just go out and do it, it's just like being a pastor, you know? This is what I do. Obviously there are a lot of Christian metal acts who are getting a lot of mainstream attention now, which is really positive.

 And Stryper still are.

Yeah, in a different way, though, you know? It's not like it was then. But their tour from what I understand is doing really well, Oz says it's pretty pumped, and what's good for Stryper is good for the rest of us.

 Going back to 1987, your Greenbelt set nearly didn't happen because Mark Welling, your drummer, got beaten up the night before by the Jesus Army. What happened that night?

 Well, one of my band rules is, you don't go out by yourself, which he did, and I don't think he realised that where we were was a rough part of town, even though we were staying in a very nice hotel. So he went out, apparently in full garb, and these guys from the Jesus Army cornered him, and I think Mark was even carrying his Bible, and he said he was a Christian too, and they took offence at that. I guess they're like a neo-nazi… I don't really know what they are! And they just… they beat the snot out of him (yes, those are his exact words…) , they knocked him over, they split his lip, all the way up to his nose, they kicked him in the ribs, and he was really mugged. I was actually sitting in the lobby of the hotel when he came back… he was a mess, so I got to spend the next eight or nine hours in a British ER ward in Northampton, and it was a nightmare. And then we had to do the show, and Mark's on painkillers, so it was a rugged show. And as I remember too, we had some tech at Greenbelt that kept unplugging David, like twice during the set, so it was… I mean, there was twenty thousand people, we were pretty alarmed, so there was a lot of mixed emotions going.

 Who decided to go ahead and do the show despite Mark's condition?

 Well, we left it up to Mark. I mean, obviously, if he couldn't do the show, what were we gonna do? He was, “No, no, I'm gonna do the show, I'm gonna do the show.” So he was a trooper, and his face was out to here, he was a complete mess, but he said, “No, we're here, God's called us to do this, let's do the show.”

 How important is the theatrical side of the show, with its visual impact, to your ministry?

 It's huge, it's kinda one of the things that defines Bloodgood and maybe makes us different from other bands… Les is a Broadway-trained actor, you know? He was the lead in “Hair” . I don't have near the qualifications, but I was drama club president in school, I love the theatre. And to me, it always seemed a very natural combination to put hard rock and heavy metal with theatrics, because you know, songs come and go, but I've always said, you see that image of Pontius Pilate, or Jesus being whipped, it just really brings it home.

 You mentioned earlier you're a family guy…doesn't that contradict the rock ‘n' roll lifestyle?

 Well, maybe the magazines might say so, but another thing that's defined Bloodgood is we bring our families. My wife's with me, and if I could get my boys out of school, they would be here with me as well. At our last German thing, I brought my youngest son, Mark David, with us. I don't want to be a statistic, I mean how many Christian artists can you point to who are divorced because of touring? I like my wife, I love my wife, she's my best friend, my soulmate, and I'm not gonna leave her for four to six weeks at a time, ‘cos that's idiocy. So she comes with me, she's part of what I do, and always will be, you know, from the church to Bloodgood, and it's the same thing with Les and Joyce. To me it keeps you centred, it keeps you where you're supposed to be and I think it totally complements, because it's not about rock ‘n' roll, it's about Jesus Christ. Rock ‘n' roll's the tool, and I love rock probably more than most people do, but that's not what it's about, my identity is not being a rock ‘n' roller.

 So you have no ambitions for a Bloodgood “Guitar Hero” then?

 Oh, I'd love that! I mean that'd be a blast! Are you kidding? Who wouldn't want to see themselves as a cartoon? (slight interlude for laughter) Is that my ambition in life? Nooo… but if somebody did it, I think it'd be awesome, because I think it'd be another way God would use the music to reach somebody.

 So you and Marilyn have been married how long?

 This year was our thirty fourth anniversary. We're becoming the exception to the rule these days. And again, I think that's a great role model too, you can rock hard and get out there, and love your wife, and be a good dad. You know, they don't contradict each other! We were high school sweethearts, and I think I won her over with my guitar… She was dancing, I was in drama, and I was doing music, and I had a band, and it was just a little thing we were doing for a talent show, and we needed a female singer, and so… and by the way guys, this is a great thing… you go around all the good looking girls in your school, and say, “Can you sing? Would you like to come by my house for an audition?” It worked! So she came over and auditioned, and the band lasted another two weeks, and here we are many years later. But she loves the music, she loves the band, and she loves being in it.

 On a more serious not, everyone connected with Meltdown is aware Marilyn's dad has recently passed away. Can you tell me a bit about him, and the influence he's had on you?

 His name was Lloyd, I met him, who knows how many years, forty years ago. So it's been a really difficult process in so many ways, because we're in Washington State and he's down in California . He was on his third wife, so it's really hard to make everything connect, so it was very difficult for us to get everything on the same page together. We had just lost a dear friend at church, a guy named Mike Thornhill, from brain cancer, which is what my father-in-law passed away with, it was a melanoma, and his last MRI, he had like thirty tumours, and things were pressing against nerves, and it was really awful. But God, in his way, because we had just been through the same thing with Mike Thornhill, although his battle lasted almost two years, we kinda knew what was coming, we understood it… actually I'd been at Mike's side a couple of hours before he passed away, and his death in some ways had more impact because we were just there the whole time. In fact, we do a homeless outreach to the people in Seattle , we call it “Project Thornhill” now, named after Mike, because even in his deathbed, he was still, “we gotta get some more stuff,” you know? He was just an awesome man of God! So in some ways it's been an interesting contrast between the two men. Marilyn has two sisters, and an older brother, so yeah, it's been very difficult. We were flying back and forth to California four times over the summer, and I didn't know if I was going to get to Meltdown, because we didn't know how much time Lloyd had, I mean, who does, right? And of course, as it worked out, God has his timing, and here we are, doing an interview.

 Does your faith suffer when death is neither quick nor easy?

 You know, I have probably a different perspective, because I was so sick, back in 2005, I didn't think I was going to make it, and it's like Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I've never felt so close to the Lord, and I know when you are in those times, the Lord really draws close to you. I would never want to do it again, but I wouldn't trade it for the world, ‘cos the Lord literally changed my life, and that was almost preparation for me to minister to Mike Thornhill, ‘cos as a pastor, you don't want to be in the bedroom, at the side of the bed, ministering, but all of a sudden when you're in the bed, being ministered to, it was a little bit different, a switch for me. Obviously I didn't have terminal brain cancer like Mike did, but I understood how awesome it was for him too, and he was such a testimony up to his dying breath, to us as a church, his friends and his family. It was an amazing thing. You know, we can question God, but God is so infinitely above all we can know and understand, really, that's where your faith comes into practice. That's when you really find out what you do believe. Because when you're in those situations, where they suck, and there is no way out, and it's painful, and you don't know if you're gonna make it, and I'm thinking about not seeing my grandchildren, or not seeing my kids graduate high school, or whatever it is, that's when God really gave me peace I just realised he is in control, and I'm gonna let him do whatever he's gonna do, even if he takes my life.

 What exactly happened to you?

 I had a Spontaneous Carotid Arterial Dissection. One of the veins in my left side that brings the blood into your brain, part of it decided to collapse for reasons which to this day are completely unknown. If I had been thrown through a windshield, or a bungie jump that was two inches too long, or something, it could happen, but it just collapsed, and when that happened, the area where the blood was flowing had to flow somewhere else, so it just dilated, and that's when it pinched off my left vocal cord, and my left tongue and my left swallow. It took them almost a week and a half to figure out what had happened to me, because nobody, including the neurologist, had seen this in their careers. It was so rare. Everybody though I'd had a stroke, and I kept passing the stroke test with flying colours, and they're just going, “We don't know what happened to you. We don't know why these nerves aren't working,” and finally it was the radiologist with an MRA that stuck the dye in there and took all the pictures and could see, “Oh, my gosh, look!” So I was like the poster boy… they loved me! “Cos, you know, I was too young for this to happen, none of them had ever seen it in their careers, so they were all thinking this is pretty exciting! Then if I'd have a blood clot because of that, or because I couldn't swallow, then I'd go into pneumonia… anyway, it was a nightmare. Well, that part of it was, but it was one of the most awesome experiences of my life. I got a lot of sympathy for the voice (trust me, it was rough!) but actually that was just a by-product, it was all the headaches, and I lost eighteen pounds in a week, I couldn't sleep for a month, it was torture. But in all that, God was just speaking to my heart and changing my life over it, so I'm glad it happened, in a weird sort of way. And I'm glad I'm still here.

 Getting back to the band, with Oz joining and Paul staying, is there any tension between the two?

 Not really. Before, when I knew I was going to put the band back together, the first thing I did after I talked to Les and got the thumbs up, I talked to Paul and said I'd really like to invite Oz into the band, and he didn't hesitate, “You kidding? That'd be awesome!” And they spent a couple of days together, just woodshedding, you know, lead solos, and just adding something, tweaking things around, and they just… they're best friends. And they're so different, they're such a different dichotomy on stage. I don't know how you could not get on with Oz anyway! I mean, seriously! He's just a capital human being.

 You've used a lot of session players, apart from Paul Jackson, throughout your history. Are you still in touch with these guys?

 Well, Craig Church (rhythm guitar for the Alive in America/Shakin' the World tour) engineered my solo project, my worship album, so Craig and I have been friends for many, many years. The other guys, as far as session players, Brooke Lizotte, we brought in to do keyboards on a couple of albums, I mean he's not a mate of mine, but he's good friends with the producer. The album we really used session players on was “ All Stand Together ”. We brought in ( Tim Heintz), keyboard player, and (David) Huff on drums, but basically we've always been a pretty intact unit for the most part.

 What brought about the change in direction between “ Detonation ” and “ Rock in a Hard Place ”?

 I think we decided, at that point, that we didn't want to just keep doing the same double-kick genre, and just kinda get pigeon-holed. We all had a lot of interests, musically, and we wanted to be a little bit experimental, so we ended up bringing in a producer that really wasn't a metal guy, but was a rock guy, Terry Shelton. We wanted to keep it heavy but move it into more melodic, more open. We were always a bit of a dynamic band, we'd bring it up, bring it down, but we wanted to bring it in and maybe make it a little more orchestral. My only regret with “ Rock in a Hard Place ” was it was just mastered so poorly. You can't hear the bass, you can't hear the kick drums, and for being such a transitional record, it stills bums me down. Sonically, it got squished, and it was mastered incorrectly.

 But that was a common problem with Christian bands from that period, wasn't it?

 Yeah. Well, there was just no budget! You're trying to compete with guys that have budgets, they spend that on a video, and you're trying to do a whole record, and master it, and market it, and everything else. I mean, we did our fist album for about $6000! You know? We had no money!

 Do you think that was due to Christian bands being naïve about “Christian” labels?

 It was the Christian labels being naïve, not the Christian artists. The way of thinking in those days was, you only spent usually about $10000 or less, and the album had about a three- to six-month life capacity, then you just move on to the next one. There was no promotion, there was just nothing happening. Frontline (the band's label for their first three albums) was probably the most aggressive Christian label in existence at that point, I mean, you could go into mainstream stores and find our records, they were a lot more aggressive than their peers were at that point. Everything was just kind of self-contained in a little Christian Bookstore Association. So you just didn't have the backing and the funding. In those days it would take about $10000 - $20000 in the mainstream, to break a band in each market area, while you got $10000 and that was it for the whole world! And like I say, a lot less than that for some of these records. You can't really compete on that level, because you don't have the distribution, you don't have the exposure, you don't have the adverts, you don't have any of that stuff.

 Was this because the Christian labels were made up of well-meaning people who didn't really know what they were doing?

 Um… you want me to be brutally honest? I think it was just a lot of greedy people, who were lazy, and didn't want to take the chance to really put it out there. That's really what it was. It was a way to make fast money. A lot of these guys, they saw a trend, they'd jump on the bandwagon, they'd wanna be cheap and nasty, and so, seriously, a lot of that stuff, I didn't think was all that well-intentioned from the get-go. It's business! You know? It's get in, get out, make a profit. And so you'd get these artists who are hopefully ministering, it's kind of a clash. It could be a disaster.

 When did you decide you were going to do a solo album?

 I never did! Craig Church, he was on my worship team, and he wanted to get involved, and I have this nasty little habit of, kinda like we're seeing here at Meltdown, I change the music. So I'll give him a CD of the song, so he kinda knows what the melody is, but the arrangement, and everything's completely different. So he said, “Let's do a work tape of the way you've redone all these songs, plus your original ones so when people come into the worship band, we can hand this to them and say this how we really do it”. You know? I mean, this is a Matt Redman song, this is the way Michael Bloodgood does it! And that's kinda how it started, very innocently. I laid down about sixteen or eighteen tracks, just to do this, and then as we began recording Craig had this new Sonar studio, and it began to take on a life of its own, so we started to produce it, and all of a sudden it was a kind of a Frankenstein, we sorta created his monster! We started really getting into it, and then I got sick. I couldn't sing for a year and a half. I couldn't speak for almost twelve months. And so all of a sudden, we had all this going on, and that's when I started bringing in, you know, my son whose singing on there, and I brought in Les, and of course I'm singing as well, I was able to start tracking later, so we just started kinda treating it like a record, really not knowing how I was going to deal with it, and our then-management company said, “Hey, there's not a new Bloodgood album coming out, let's put out your solo record, your worship record,” which I was very hesitant to do, because I never had any intentions of making an international release of this worship record, but we said, “Well, why not?” It was fun, I played it for a lot of people, and people seemed to be really blessed by it. It's very eclectic, it's definitely not a Bloodgood record! It's just fun, I've got all my Beatles stuff coming out, and funk, and kind of what happens is, your first solo album, and you wanna get it all out on one record. You know, I've got a lot of ballads, but I've got Rickenbackers and Gretsches, and box amps sitting down there, and they needed to do something, and that's been my passion since I was a little boy, so I kinda got it out, you know, I wrote my twelve string George Harrison solos for some of the songs, and I had an absolute blast, ‘cos I even play drums on the record, I'm basically playing everything on the record, which is a really huge challenge for me, I had to write string parts and perform them as well, so for me, it really, really stretched me. The project went on for years, because I was basically working on it on Wednesday nights for three or four hours a week, so it was an ongoing project of love.

 Would you do it again?

 Er… not that way! No, I would go and do a record! You'd have vacations, people would get sick, I got sick, I mean it just went on for years! So no, it was torturous at the end because I wanted to get it finished, I wanted to move on, because by that time I was writing new stuff. But I'm glad I did it, and gotten a great response, and I think people are enjoying it, so it was fun.

 You're Senior Pastor at Calvary Chapel, Redmond. Does your church support your ministry with the band? Has it always done so?

 No. I started the church in late '98, and I didn't put Bloodgood back together till 2007, or 2006. The church is at a point now where they totally get what I do, and they totally do support it, but it wasn't always that way. Now they just realise this is who I am, and this is what I do, and I think they're kinda pumped about it. It's kinda cool, “Hey, my pastor's over in England speaking here, he's playing in Norway ,” and I used to bring back a bootleg, and I'd play it for them. It's not a rock ‘n' roll church by any means, we have some guys who are rockers, but we've got a nine-year-old gal, Eunice, that we love to pieces, it's a very eclectic group of people. But that was my vision, that I was going to have a church like that, but it took them a long time to figure it out.

 Is it important for a band to have overtly Christian lyrics, mentioning Jesus at every opportunity, or is it ok to be more subtle, or even not have a Christian content at all?

 Well, we've certainly done all of them, we've done everything from just in your face, “You need Jesus, you're gonna die without the blood of Christ,” to “ Lies in the Dark ”, which is a Christian world viewpoint, basically about premarital sex, you know, we've done a lot of music that's not just about “You need Jesus” in every lyric, because obviously a band like Bloodgood, the majority of our audience are probably Christians. So I'm not gonna just preach to the choir in every song, absolutely not! The downside of that, a lot of bands, especially in the 90s, I call it the “Nirvana Plague”, you know? There was nothing Christian about their lyrics! I mean, you wouldn't even know if they were a Christian band by watching them, or looking at their lyrics, or anything, so I wonder, what's the point? I mean, if you're gonna be a Christian band, then be a Christian band. I mean, you can say, “Love'll find a way,” but what does that mean? U2? They've kinda done it. It's there, but they're not an evangelistic band, per se. But a lot of guys, like Dave was saying today, they're using it as an excuse to not preach the gospel. But we are in the end times, this may be the only shot we've got with that particular audience that we have, and if we're gonna miss that opportunity, ‘cos you don't have the chutzpah to say, “Jesus dies for you, and he is the way, the truth and the life,” then you've gotta question why you're even doing what you're doing. But that's an individual, and a band, thing, which is why a lot of bands break up so soon, because you've got different visions for what they're supposed to do. But if you just wanna play rock ‘n' roll, then just go play rock ‘n' roll, you know? Don't use it as a cloak. If you're going out as an evangelical band, if you're putting this band together to reach people for Christ, then that's what you should be doing. How are you gonna do it, if you're not being overt? It's like the apostle Paul, was he beating about the bush? No, he went for it! And all of us as Christians, yeah, I know I minister to people between songs and all that, or when we're having a pint, or something, whatever. I think a lot of times it's just kind of a bad excuse. If God's called you to be a musician as your vocation, that's what you do, don't be ashamed about it. But don't call yourself a Christian band if you're just… I don't know… you have to be honest about why you're doing it.

Do you have a favourite Meltdown memory?

 Oh my gosh! A favourite memory? The one I mentioned before, when the Lord was calling me to pastor, was very powerful for me. I don't know if I have any specific memories… when I think of Meltdown, I think of sitting down in that coffee bar and just getting to know people, and talking one on one, and encouraging guys, you know? No lightning bolts coming out of the ground. It's always exciting for me to be hanging out with you, and stuff like that. You know, six thousand miles apart from each other, but because of Jesus, there's this commonality, we come together, and we're ministering together, and I think that's so awesome. And just to see Dave just remain faithful for twenty years! I mean, how many guys do we know who've flamed out by now? They've reneged their faith, they're not doing ministry anymore, it's like John said, it encourages your heart to see people still walking in the truth, and still going the distance, ‘cos it's hard out there.

 This year is different because, due to changes in British law, you're not allowed to contribute, and Pastor Bob wasn't even allowed into the country.

 Right… the dearly deported Pastor Bob! It's bizarre… I knew God wanted us here, and I feel like we've been handcuffed, between Marilyn's dad being so ill, and then the day before we're coming we get the frantic email about these law changes, and Bob's been deported, and I just said, “Man, the devil's working overtime!” So to me, it's heightened my expectations and I'm looking for opportunities, you know, God's got us here! One of the things I didn't realise, one of the reasons the Lord brought us over here, was that he just wanted to bless my wife and I, I mean we have just been treated like royalty. We got to spend a few days in Liverpool, my “ Mecca tour”, you know? The Magical Mystery Tour, the Cavern Club, the Hard Day's Night Hotel, and all this stuff, and I'm going, “This is so cool! I'm here!” But I'm kinda used to being under attack, so nothing really surprises me anymore. It saddens me to think that this is happening, and it's going to be happening in the United States , under the cloak of immigration, or whatever. But we as Christians are in a whole new phase, we're becoming the persecuted. In the Unites States, we have the whole “tolerance” and “political correctness”, which means you tolerate anything except Jesus Christ, but to me it's exciting, because the darker the world get, the brighter our light's gonna shine.

 It's easy to stand up and be counted when there are no real challenges.

 Well, it separates the wheat from the chaff. It's the persecuted church that's the powerful church. Not that I was really excited about it happening in my lifetime necessarily, but it is, and this why God put us here, and we've got our work cut out for us, and it's beginning to cost to be a Christian now, which I think is very exciting. In the United States , everybody was “We're all Christians, right? Our money says ‘In God We Trust', we have the Ten Commandments in the court,” and everybody thought they were Christians. Now, obviously, nobody's standing up and saying “I'm a Christian!” It's really becoming a frontline. But I think it's great, and we have to rise to the challenge.

 Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?

 I don't know that I do. When I was a young Christian I had a guy whose favourite saying was “I'd rather try and fail, than never try at all,” and that's kinda been my life motto. As a musician, there's a lot things I'd like to do, I'd like to have this instrument, I'd like to go and spend a day with Paul McCartney and trade licks with him, stuff like that would be great to do, you know? As a fan, I would love to do stuff like that. I really have a heart for getting into South America . We seem to have this, for whatever reason, this whole contingency of people from Mexico and South America that are translating all of our videos into Spanish, and I'm thinking maybe there's gonna be a whole opportunity. So I guess my ambition is to be able to take Bloodgood even more globally, get into the east, get into South America , places where we haven't gone before. That to me would be really exciting! I'd love to do that.

Any regrets, anything you'd do differently if given another chance?

 No, I don't think so. I don't have a life of regrets. I'm happily married, we've got great boys, I think I've done a reasonable job of being a dad, I don't really have any regrets, I don't think I've screwed up… too bad! No, I can't say that I have any regrets. I feel like God has just blessed me, and I'm going forward.

 What advice would you give to a young band, just starting out, maybe the next Bloodgood?

 Pray. Listen to God. Be accountable. You have to have something to share with people, and if you're not in the Word, if you're not a student of the Word, if you're not being fed in a good church, you need to get yourself in that situation, ‘cos you're not gonna have anything to say. What are you gonna do, John 3:16 for six records, or something? God has something to say, you're his vessel. And if you're not a good vessel, if you're all clogged up and stuff like that, then he's just not gonna use you. It doesn't matter, you may have this awesome testimony about how you got saved, but if you're still nursing on a baby bottle, God's not gonna send you out and do anything with meat! So your biggest responsibility is to be, and Dave was hitting on it today, to be fired up, being accountable, and having something to tell people, and living the life. If you're living that life, it's gonna just spill over into your music, and into your lyrics, and where you're gonna go. Make sure you have a common vision for where are you gonna play, what kind of music are you gonna play, is it gonna be originals, covers, are you gonna play pubs, are you not gonna play pubs, will you never play a church, I mean, what's your vision as a band? And make sure that you guys are cohesive, ‘cos a lot of these bands, you talk to them, it's six months later, “Bill wanted to do this, and Fred wanted to do that,” they never even talked about it! They just met because they're players, which is fine. But as far as really putting a band together for Christ, to be effective… J.T., the original drummer, we'd played for almost a year and a half before I even put the band together, just praying for God to lift up each member (and we didn't know who was going to be in this band), and that we would be so clear. By the time Les joined … I knew Les was supposed to be in the band before he did! Les came in, I had a little advert in a magazine. He didn't know, “No, this isn't it,” but I knew he was the guy, and the three of us started praying, David and J.T. and I, for Les, and Les, I don't know how many months later, he calls me up and says, “What's this deal about Bloodgood? I'm trying to put this band together, and every time I'm driving on the freeway, the Lord says ‘Bloodgood, call Michael Bloodgood'. I'm sick of it!” I go, “Les, it's because you're supposed to be the singer!” “Well, I guess I am!” So we literally started Bloodgood without even playing. Because we were so convinced that God had put the four of us together, we shook hands and hugged, and we hadn't even played together. And that's how we started Bloodgood! And then you've got something that God's going to use, it's powerful. Whether you're the greatest players in the world or not, and that's the other thing I would say, be the greatest players, rehearse, get good at your instrument, study it, so you don't suck, ‘cos you're going to be more effective if you're a good band, and you've got a good heart on top of it!

 Michael Bloodgood, thank you for your time.

 Yeah, it was fun!

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