[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's Mark and Brittany with you on the morning journey. You can see Mercy Me, Matthew West, Toby Mack, all in one night. This is gonna be a great concert. That's October 4th in Charlottesville at John Paul Jones arena. Details
[email protected] Mike Schweitzer with Mercy Me is with us this morning. Good morning, Mike.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hey, guys. How's it going?
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Doing great.
So we did a ticket giveaway for this concert. I have to tell you, people are so excited to be going.
We had the winners. When we would call them, the. They were literally screaming on the phone in excitement when we picked up the phone.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Stop it.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah. To let them know they win. So the listeners are excited after all these years.
Mercy Me, you've been together for so long. What still excites you about the concerts?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: The fans, Honestly, like, we.
A lot of these songs we've played for literally decades, and sometimes it just kind of is muscle memory and you're going through the motions, but when you see somebody in the audience who's completely engaged and singing along, it's. It's. It brings you back really quickly.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Yeah. And you've been doing this for so long. Do you ever still get nervous?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Last night, I literally, last night, I had, like, shaky, shaky knees because I was. We played a couple new songs, and I just. I haven't spent enough time with them, like, personally, like, to where I really felt comfortable in them and coming out of the gate with the first new song as the first song on the set, and it was like, oh, no, I'm going to totally train wreck this. And then even after we got through it and it went great, it took me, like, six more songs before I was finally, like, relaxed. So, yeah, every now and then, yeah. Still get a little nervous.
[00:01:45] Speaker C: It's good to know that the professionals still have nerves about the things that they're doing.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: When you're on tour, what is something the band members like to do for fun or maybe you like to do just personally, to kind of get away from the. If you will, the industry business part of it?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Like, when we're on tour, we go play golf. When we're off tour, we're just home with our families and we're. We.
I would say we scatter. Like, we. We're still involved in each other's lives and texting all the time and sending each other, you know, silly memes. But, yeah, we just. Norm. I mean, we just try to spend time with our families and create those memories.
We don't bart's probably the one who does the most, like, talking to the record label because he gets a. He gets more excited about that than the rest of us. I just. I just like playing music with my friends.
I don't care. I don't care about the record label side of it. Let them do what they do. They do it well. I'll stay out of the way. Yeah.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Who's the best golfer?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Probably Robbie. Really?
Or our merch guy, Mark. He's unbelievable. He was actually a PGA caddy for a few years.
[00:02:59] Speaker C: What?
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our mark was. He was a PGA caddy for Paul Stankowski for a couple years.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: And they went to church together. And Paul's like, hey, why don't you come out and be my daddy? Because they played golf two times. And my favorite story is that caddies actually get endorsements too.
And he had a company reach out to him and said they'd pay him $20,000 to wear their shoes on the golf course. Wow. And it was Crocs.
That dude was squeaking up and down the 18th in sweaty crocs.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: But he's like, it's $20,000. I'm not gonna say no.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: That's true. That's probably what it would cost me to wear Crocs, actually.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Oh, they're wonderful. Come on.
[00:03:39] Speaker C: I'm not a fan. No, thank you.
So who in the band takes the longest to get ready?
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Bart, I would say probably.
Yeah. Yeah. Not for any reason other than he's just gonna drag his feet until the last possible minute. That's funny.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Just a little procrastination there.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: So the movie, I can only imagine two, Scheduled for a February release. Can you tell us a little bit about it and how it picks up the story of the first movie?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny, when they said they wanted to do a sequel, we're like, how do you even do a sequel to that movie? Like, Bart's dad died, and we went on as a band. Like, it would be a really boring movie if it was just following the band the whole time. But they saw something in the song even if. And felt like that story needed to be told. And they did an incredible job of tying the two movies together to really make it feel like a sequel.
You know, the first one was a father son relationship. Bart as the son. In this one, it's a father son relationship with Bart as the dad.
His son, Sam Wesley, who's a young up and coming artist, he actually is opening for us on this tour, and in the future. Awesome. And he's done some shows with us in the past. Yeah, he's great.
He was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes right before he turned 3.
And Bart trying to be a dad and a doctor and nutritionists and all of those things just did. Did not go well. And he. He kind of spiraled for a lot of years. And by the time Sam was a teenager, we had a. One of our closest friends kind of came into this. Into the picture. Guy named Tim Timmons. He's a singer, songwriter. And Tim's story is that he was diagnosed over 20 years ago with this super rare type of cancer where the doctors were like, you might be dead in six months. We have no idea what's going on.
Have a great life. And 20 years later, he's still here.
But Bart was venting with Tim one day after a bad season of dealing with Sam's diabetes, and he kind of vented and said something along the lines of, you just can't imagine when it's like, to live with this, you know, incurable disease. And Tim just kind of starts laughing and. And Bart gets mad and leaves and whatever. And Tim called him later. It's like, man, I wasn't trying to laugh at your situation, but, like, I. I've lived with cancer for 20 years. I know exactly how you guys feel. And I actually started writing this song years ago, and I've never been able to finish it. I think you need to. And he sent in the chorus to Even if.
And.
Yeah, so that's kind of the general story behind the movie. They just do a whole lot better job of telling it than I do.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: That's awesome. Excited to see that for sure. And excited for your concert coming up here in just a few days.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Yep. October 4th.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Yeah, we can't wait.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah. October 4th in Charlottesville at John Paul Jones Arena.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it'll be good to be back. It's been a while since we've been there, so we're looking forward to it.
[00:06:47] Speaker C: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate you.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Thank you, Mike.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, guys.
