Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Cobb.
Caroline, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I started writing songs in high school. I had gone out on a date with a guy who sang me a song he had written himself. My mom had taught me a few chords on the guitar, so – as he was playing I thought “Hey, maybe I could do that!” That night when I got home, I wrote my first song. Although it didn’t work out with the guy, I can’t seem to quit writing songs!
At the beginning of my twenty-ninth year, I got this crazy idea: to write a song from every book of the Bible before I turned thirty. But what began as a fun goal, perhaps just a way to end my twenties with a bang, changed the trajectory of my songwriting.
As it turned out, I absolutely loved writing songs from the Bible: delving into a passage, putting myself in each character’s shoes, trying to understand how this one small story connects with the whole, then coming up with a way to communicate that story with melody and rhythm and lyric. The songs from that year of writing eventually turned into the Blood + the Breath, an album that traces the theme of redemption from creation to the second coming of Christ. But, like any good story, the Bible demands to be read and retold again and again. So, I kept on writing songs from scripture, looking at this same Story from new angles, turning the diamond to let each slant and gradient shine some new light. Four years later, I was back in the studio – this time in Nashville with producer Gabe Scott – recording a new album. My latest album is called a Home & a Hunger and it focuses on the tension between ache and hope.
My husband and I live in the Lake Highlands area and have three kids (8,6,4). I love tacos, good coffee, adventures outside with my family, and a good fantasy story (think Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings).
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I love to write songs that tell the stories of the Bible, creatively and faithfully. Scripture is full of all of these little narratives, but they are all really telling one Big Story. Jesus is the lynchpin, seen on every page of the Bible. And there are countless other threads, themes and images that weaving this metanarrative together, shadows that grow more and more opaque as the story unfolds. Each song I write comes from a particular narrative – Eve’s temptation, the parting of the Red Sea, the last few chapters of Revelation – but they are all connected, telling one cohesive metanarrative.
These songs are telling God’s Story, not mine. I am just a narrator. And yet these stories from scripture have traveled through me, breathed life into my darkest places, brought me to a place of humility and then lifted me up again. In this way, they are deeply personal. My hope is that these songs would be a fresh retelling of these old stories from the Bible, and that they would ring true in a deeply personal way for you as well.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
Success isn’t about attaining more popularity or profitability, but about being faithful to do what God has put right in front of me to do: to write songs that tell the Story in a creative and hopefully beautiful way. When an artist gets distracted by numbers or getting noticed, or when they forget why they started creating in the first place, the joy of it all dissolves quickly. For me, success is about staying true to the original reason I started writing songs.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
You can find the music on Spotify and Apple Music, or anywhere you stream or buy songs. I also play concerts in the DFW area around twice a year.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1qjWvtEJlR1dAEAL4A3IOM?si=O_ZSw6P5QHW1_QGgnL5gIg
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/caroline-cobb/163133623
Contact Info:
- Website: http://carolinecobb.com
- Email: info@carolinecobb.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/carocobbmusic
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/carolinecobbmusic
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/carocobbmusic
Image Credit:
Album artwork by Nicole Rim
Concert Photos by Sara Sanders (SaraDear Photography)
Other Photos by Park Bench Photography.
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