Mike Rimmer quizzed the leader of the PAUL COLMAN Trio.

Paul Colman Trio

Mike: You have a bit of a reputation for being intense, don't you?

'Intense' to me can be good or bad. I personally like intense people. I prefer someone that makes me think and someone that's a little bit uncomfortable. I grew up like most people, in a place where everyone was afraid of conflict and afraid of saying what they really felt and tried to just please everybody. I think I just rebelled from that for a fair portion of my life. I just thought, Stuff it! I'm not gonna hang back. Why should I pretend?! What I really am intense about is wanting to know God and wanting to communicate his truth.

Mike: Why don't you write more worship songs?

I'm not a super-worshipful person to be dead honest. That's one of the things in my life that I'm trying to increase. My dad was a big-time worship leader in Australia, and I think somehow in my youth I decided it wasn't going to be me! I think I missed out on a lot of goodies. I think sometimes my life has been more in my head than in my heart. I think you need to do some stuff about people's minds as well. We need to worship with our minds a bit more. The album 'One' is more in that direction.

Mike: How has working with American Christians affected you?

We've spent a year and a half now in America, which is the world's largest Christian nation and I guess there is a problem with calling America a "Christian" nation. This is a country that is rich in resources and Christian heritage and yet is the world's greatest distributor of pornography and kills more babies a year! It distributes great aid but it's also phenomenally rich. There are a lot of paradoxes in this country. I'm not one to just stand there and make some kind of cultural criticism but as I travel around, I think America needs a good shaking up.

Mike: That idea is contained in the song "Live It", isn't it?

"Live It" is an anthem that says if we're going to talk about this, it's got to be in our lives! We have to live it. People are sick of religion, they're sick of hypocrisy, they're sick of people of religious thinking being out of touch. So the song really asks a very general question, "Do you know how it feels to connect with something that is real?!"