Somewhere in the world, a mother is singing her child to sleep. And sometime, maybe accidentally, she is instilling a deep love for music in him. Maybe she strums a guitar and plays right before bedtime. Maybe she sings songs instead of reading books, because with music, there is no dreading the uncomfortable practice of storytelling. And eventually, her child can owe his fame to his earliest influence.
The five members of Beside Still Water were raised in Fargo, North Dakota, where honesty keeps easy company with rock music. It is a place where hard work and strong morals earn an edge in the workplace, where a simple name-drop returns a brightened look and an unfounded mention of a certain movie. Being from the Midwest automatically means you’re nice. But in an industry where the fake and deceptive are worshipped, where the mean and the liars almost always prevail, a musician’s beliefs are not readily received.
Beside Still Water use integrity, in their lyrics and their lives, as motivation. Though many bands with a political or religious theme find themselves labeled by such, the band claim an infectious message that reaches beyond Christianity and into the hearts of all listeners. It is the pure truth, the music, that people listen to, not the label it fits. Being Christian does not determine the flesh of BSW’s music but is simply a part of each member's life; an artist’s identity appears in his or her work, however influenced by cultural or authoritative notions of how things should be.
“I think when someone listens to a song, the reason they attach themselves to the artist or song is because they relate to it in their own life,” says Meyer. “I believe writing music should be something the writer puts his/her whole heart into. [The song is] a glimpse into the writers own mind. Honesty is the key. To be honest with what you’re feeling at that moment, because odds are you’re not the first and only person to ever feel like that.”
