The Lex Buckley Interview – part 2

The Lex Buckley Interview – part 2

We recently interviewed singer songwriter Lex Buckley for our blog. This is the second part of her interview where she talks about a wonderful new resource for women worship leaders as well as her ethos on writing and recording songs as a local church. You can hear one of Lex and Paul’s new songs over at the Female Worship Leader website.

Tell us about the new website

Equipping-the-Female-Worship-Leader1FemaleWorshipLeader.com was something that I felt God put on my heart quite a while ago. I started writing my book Rise Up And Sing: Equipping The Female Worship Leader in 2008 and quite early on in the process I felt excited about starting an ongoing resource to encourage, equip and empower female worship leaders. So often women in leadership feel discouraged, isolated, in need of encouragement or to connect with someone who’s passionate about the same stuff, and my desire has always been that the site would be that for the ladies who visit it. I blog regularly and have loved it, Beth Croft has become a regular blogger recently too (I LOVE that girl!) and there are also guest blogs every month, articles, new songs and community. I’ve really loved involving a range of people to contribute – all amazing ladies. The site was only launched a couple of months ago so its still in the early stages, but my hope is that it will, along with the other great resources out there for female worship leaders, encourage and inspire the women that check it out!

We at Musicademy heard a sneak preview of your new album – we loved it. How did it come about?

Over the past few years our church here in Florida has produced three albums of original songs – the third (RCC//THREE) we are actually in the process of getting mixed and mastered.

The reason we started recording songs with our church was because we started writing songs and leading them at church, and people from our congregation kept asking where they could find the songs to listen to so our pastor encouraged us to record them so we could get them out to our church. Initially there was no funding so Paul and Ed (another Brit and good mate of ours who also works in the worship department here) used their own gear and purchased some basic recording gear so they could get started on RCC//ONE. They could only record 2 channels at a time and so we had to track each drum separately! Since then we’ve just done the albums when we’ve had the songs, and we’ve used the money that the albums made to purchase more recording gear to improve the quality of the albums. It’s been a great learning experience for Paul and Ed in particular as they’ve had the opportunity to learn about recording/mixing/editing etc. and it’s been fun to have creative freedom and see the songs shaped over time.

The goal has always been to resource and bless our local church as many of the songs have been written out what we’ve been through together, so it’s seemed natural to keep it homegrown. It’s been so great to have a song journal of the journey our church has been on over the past few years. I think there can be such a pressure nowadays to be writing songs that are sung all over the world or feel that you need to be recording with certain people in order for songs or an album to have value, but Paul and I have really just taken that pressure off. In the past I’ve had the privilege of recording with a Christian record label and that was really fun, but I’ve also loved doing the RCC albums too. There isn’t one way to do things – both have value!

RCC//THREE has the most co-writes on it, and Paul and I have loved writing together. Some of the songs were written out of us intentionally taking time to sit down and write together, others became co-writes because Paul took a chorus/verse we’d written ages ago and put it together with sections he wrote more recently, and others we started  separately and then tweaked them together. When we get together and write, although we’re both playing instruments Paul will tend to come up with the music and I’ll come up with the melody and initial lyrics. Then we go away and separately work on lyrics. Paul is a way stronger musician than me so I love writing with him as I can be limited by my lack of musicality sometimes! I am definitely very blessed to be married to him!

What does the future hold?

To be honest, we have no idea! We recently decided to move on from our church here in Jacksonville (sniff sniff) as we feel God calling us on, however we have no idea where or what to yet! We’re leaving the US in December and taking a sabbatical, and will be splitting the time between London UK and Melbourne Australia. We’re going to spend time with family and friends, get refreshed and seek God about the next step. So hopefully by the end of that time we’ll know a bit more about what the future holds! We are definitely going to take advantage of having the grandparents around to babysit our kids and will take time to song-write while we are away though, and we’re excited about that!

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Lex previously worked for Soul Survivor Ministries in the UK as one of their worship pastors, alongside Tim Hughes and Ben Cantelon. Lex has sung on albums such as Matt Redman’s Facedown, released an EP with Survivor Records, Through the Valley, and is the author of Rise up and Sing: Equipping the Female Worship Leader and recently launched a website for female worship leaders (www.femaleworshipleader.com). Lex and her husband Paul now live in Jacksonville, Florida where they head up the Worship Department at River City Church. She is the happy mother of Bella and Finn.