Tony Cummings spoke to Nashville's ELLIE HOLCOMB about her life and music

Ellie: It definitely felt like a trail of breadcrumbs. Each song I wrote was the promises I needed to sing to my soul. I was finding that amazing mystery - the video you watched, that song "Find You Here", it comes from Philippians 4:4-7 - 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again, rejoice! Don't worry about anything but in everything with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses understanding, will guard your hearts and minds.' That feels like a hard command at times, to rejoice.

Tony: It feels at times it's like praising God through gritted teeth.

Ellie: It does. I love the next part: 'Let your gentleness be evident to all.' That, for me, has been the mystery of peace, when you choose to raise your hands and praise him in the midst of things that make your teeth grit. He is right there in the middle of all of that. This record feels more declarative for me because I've seen him, over and over, show up in the middle of broken, shattered, not easy places, and draw near. I'm so grateful for that; I'm so grateful I get to sing about it.

Tony: Was the recording process for 'Red Sea Road' a long one?

Ellie: It was more drawn out that we planned it to be. I got to make this record with my dad, Brown Bannister, and another wonderful producer, Ben Shive. It was in the middle of recording that my dad got the cancer diagnosis and had pretty intense surgery. So it was a really sweet thing that I recorded the vocal for "Find You Here" the day my dad was going in for surgery. I actually showed up to the hospital that night with an MP3 recording of the song. It was so sweet because I wrote that song about the unexplainable peace that my family experienced as we praised God in all the unknowns of that cancer diagnosis. It's such a gift for our family to sing that song together. The vocal recorded on that day, while my dad was having surgery, that's the vocal: we never re-cut it. We kept it because we felt like it captured a moment.

Tony: I love the video for "Find You Here". I gather it was filmed on site by a team of ladies.

Ellie: Lindley Atkinson, Shelby Goldsmith and my manager, Sam Steele. It was an amazing experience to make that video: the Lord drew near. There are so many amazing stories about making that; I'm really grateful for how it turned out. We got to be surprised and delighted by the Lord.

Tony: I know that all your songs are your children and it feels wrong to have a favourite, but are there one or two that feel particularly precious to you?

Ellie: "Find You Here" is probably the most precious: it was just so personal for me and for my family. That is near and dear to my heart. "Red Sea Road", the title track of the record - we walked through a lot of heartache with our dearest friends. A lot of loss, and a lot of suffering. "Red Sea Road" is a song that I wrote to proclaim how I was seeing God meet us even in the midst of impossible grief. That song is what I needed to sing to my soul. The songs that usually mean the most to me are the songs I needed to sing the most to my own soul. So "Red Sea Road", "Find You Here" and "Wonderfully Made", which comes out of Psalm 139, are probably the three closest to my heart.

Tony: Do you have any idea yet what the next six months or year might hold for you?

Ellie: I get to do a lot of really wonderful things - women's events, conferences. So there's a good bit of that coming up. I'm in the listening process of following the Lord. There's a song on the record called "Fighting Words", which is what I call my Scripture that I memorise - I fight the lies of the Enemy with the truth of God. I think there's something ahead helping people utilise God's Word to fight the lies we so often believe. I'm not sure what that'll look like, so I'm listening and I'm picking up breadcrumbs along the way.