Tony Cummings spoke to JJ HELLER about her music and her new album 'Unto Us'

JJ: God's love seems to be a theme in my songwriting. The song goes through different scenarios of feeling unworthy somehow, and not speaking up and using our voice. The thing is, knowing Christ means that we don't have to be afraid to be who we are. His love is our safety net. No matter what - whether we make the worst decision in the world - it doesn't matter in God's economy, because we are so valuable that he came to die for us. The song is just a reminder that no matter who you are, what you look like, how talented, how much money you have, you are loved because you are God's child.

Tony: Cross Rhythms didn't play anything from 2014's 'I Dream Of You' because it was an album of lullabies. How did you come to decide to do that?

JJ: At the time I had a three year old and a baby, so it just fell with the time of life I was in. These are the songs that were on my heart. It's funny because I felt like we were taking a break from deep, spiritual, theological content to do this light-hearted thing for children and parents; but it felt like what the Lord was asking us to do. As we put it out into the world we heard so many stories about how God has used it in families. We've heard from so many adoptive families that they've played it every night, the same song, to remind their children they are loved more than they could ever know. We've heard a lot of women struggling with postpartum depression, how it helped them to bond with their new babies. We've heard stories of people playing it for their children when they were going through treatment in hospital. So we decided a few months ago that for every 'I Dream Of You' album we sell we're going to donate a copy to a hospital. We've donated five thousand copies in the past five months to hospitals all over the US.

Tony: A track we've been playing from 'Sound Of A Living Heart' has been "Let Down Your Guard". Tell me about that.

JJ: It's kind of the same theme as our song "True Things" where sometimes we feel like we have to put on a show for people, pretend that we have it all together. That's not how the Lord wants us to live. We don't have to put up our guard with him, ever. He is our safe place.

Tony: You'd probably have had more success if you'd been signed to a major label, but you seem to have come to terms with being an independent artist.

JJ: It definitely has its own set of challenges, but because I am in a sort of unique scenario where my husband always plays shows with me when I travel, we need to figure out what to do with our children. That's one of the main reasons I love being an independent artist, because I get to decide how much and how often I travel. If I was with a label, they would constantly be pushing for me to tour more - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I would feel a lot more pressure to do that. I would feel caught in the middle, disappointing people on the label, disappointing my kids. Also, we get to make the music that we want to make. We try to be wise about it, and we've built a bit of a team around ourselves who can be a sounding board so that we stay on track. But if we feel like we're supposed to make a lullaby album then we can just make a lullaby album. Even though on paper, it doesn't seem like it would be a big commercial success, we can do it anyway. That album in particular has been a huge surprise to us, and it's been amazing to see how God used it to bring comfort and healing to families.

Tony: Are you optimistic that the Christmas album will have the same impact?

JJ: I feel like it will be fairly similar to the impact the lullaby album has made. It's not impressive but it's really beautiful and peaceful and comforting. It fills my heart with joy to think of families coming together at Christmas time, or decorating their Christmas trees while our album is playing. All of my Christmas memories are tied to the music I was listening to as a kid, so to imagine that this album will hold that special place for so many children and so many families is just such an unbelievable honour. I can't wait to get it out there into the world. We do have three original songs we're really excited about. We did a ton of writing for it, but we wanted to keep really high standards. What most people want to hear at Christmastime are the songs they're already familiar with. We ended up really loving three songs that we wrote; they're some of my favourites on the album and feel like they complement the rest of the songs. Actually, we kinda wrote three and a half original songs, because we wrote sort of a bridge section for "O Little Town Of Bethlehem". It's the traditional verses then a new bridge or chorus that we really like.

Tony: Tell me about one of the original songs.

JJ: There's a song called "Christmas Is Here". I remember sitting up on the second storey of our house around Christmastime and looking out on the rooftops and watching the snow gently falling. There was something really magical about it.

Tony: Snow? Didn't you grow up in California?

JJ: I did grow up in California, but I now live in Tennessee. There's something so special about Christmas that I wanted to capture that in a song. "Let us adore him/Lift up your voices/Sing it out loud/Sing it out clear/Christmas is here." I love singing at Christmastime; I love that there are carollers who walk down the street. The song is about singing at Christmastime, experiencing all of the wonder - lights on the houses, snow, the gathering together of loved ones. I can't wait for people to hear it.