Archive

Jennifer Knapp is an open book

Jennifer Knapp is a household name in the Christian music community, which has come at a cost for the 40-year-old musician. A singer-songwriter who got her start playing in her local church band, Jennifer was an award-winning and best-selling Christian star until she took a hiatus and, after much speculation and several years in Australia, came back to the States and announced she was a lesbian.

That was four years and one album ago, and now Jennifer is telling her life story in Facing the Music, available in stores today. Her new album Set Me Free follows on October 14 from Righteous Babe Records. From her childhood as a twin in a broken home in rural Kansas to her current life in Nashville with her partner, Jennifer details her struggles to fully come into her own but how finding God and music were of equal importance to shaping who she is today.

Jennifer said that writing Facing the Music fits rather well into a pattern that seems to be her life: “Which is, I think there’s no possible way I could ever do that and therefore no, I’d never do that. But it’s a breadcrumb trail that keeps happening that I end up falling into.”

“I think ever since I came out in 2010 the immediate call was that I was some kind of lesbian genius that had something to contribute to the LGBT conversation when, in fact, I was just trying to sort that out,” Jennifer said. “There were immediate calls to write a book and tell us how that went and I didn’t really know. It took a long time for me to process that and I kept pushing the idea of writing a book aside even though I had several invitations to do so.”

When she decided to publish with Simon & Shuester under its new Christian imprint, Howard Books, Jennifer worked under a tight deadline, which she said was “great for an Aries. We love deadlines otherwise we never get stuff done.” She wrote the book in six month’s time and found it was not so unlike songwriting.

“I think the idea of the book was so big and enormous and long and drawn out that it was hard for me to get my head around. So in that way the songwriter part of me was really a comforting thing to have,” Jennifer said. “I kind of had an idea of how to spend time getting into making a narrative and I think those skills are really helpful in writing a book. But I really did kinda do some investigative reading to see really how someone does this.”

The biggest difference, Jennifer said, was having to work on the book even when she wasn’t feeling particularly creative. That’s where having that deadline came in handy, helping her push through the writers’ block.

“For songwriting I wait for a moment where I’m inspired,” she said. “With the book I had to go to a place and then ask the inspiration to come in. I got up every day from 9-5 and said this is a time to write, this is what you have to get done and get accomplished every day. So in that sense it was incredibly different and required an endurance I don’t think songwriting requires. Songwriting is a lot shorter. I might spend a day on a song but I can leave it and there’s no pressure to come back. I might finish it a year later. But a book demanded that I sit and I listen a lot and process and rewrite not just a line which would become cumbersome, even though the songwriter in me wants that line to be perfect, poetic and wonderful and beautiful, when I had to remind myself that I didn’t have a lot of time to do that. So it was kinda fun to allow the two skills to play on one other. I learned that the time and patience and dedication it took to write a book in more of a drawn out way is probably skills I’ll take back to my songwriting in some way.”

Conversely, songwriting must have informed how Jennifer writes words that aren’t necessarily set to music, as the book is a prettily-penned timeline of what she’s endured as part of the Christian community and industry and, later, the larger music industry as a whole. Now a public figure that speaks on behalf of LGBT people as well, there were (and continue to be) certain pressures stacked on top of the woman who found both music and religion healing in different parts of her life. When being confronted with former fans who mail her their albums with hateful letters and preachers that use her as an example of how not to be a good God-fearing girl, Jennifer has had to find answers to the questions people have for her and the condemning statements they want to make. She said that writing the book was “a good exercise” in finding the way to answer those concerns.

“Yeah, I was super aware of it actually so much so that I had a sheet that had all the questions that people have ever asked me,” Jennifer said. “I had to put them someplace because at some point in time they start to become your master in a weird way. They’re important questions and they’re valuable in the sense that we all come to the water cooler because there’s something there that draws us, some commonality.”

Most readers of Facing the Music will likely want to know how Jennifer reconciles her queerness within her Christianity, which she doesn’t go into much more detail than she doesn’t see her God as being a homophobic or hateful one.

“One thing I’m sensitive about is the LGBT issue and my situation that I often come into play with is the religious conversation,” Jennifer said. “I hear this from a lot of LGBTs there’s a pressure to justify your sexual orientation to some kind of sustainable point. … I didn’t want to feel obligated to have a finite answer that when everyone would read would say ‘Of course! We get why you’re a lesbian now!’ The questions are important, I think, because they guide a narrative. They tell you where to begin. But I wanted to be careful not to spend more time answering questions than I did in telling the story. Hopefully it creates more questions and reshapes the negative spaces that a lot of the questions tend to come from.”

Jennifer doesn’t blame people for being curious, though. She said she doesn’t think that it comes from a “sinister place,” and that helping those who might not understand to be more conscious is only a positive thing. So even if those who used to love her now throw homophobic epithets her way, she is at peace knowing why they act how they do, and how they could change if only they were more open to conversations. That’s one reason why Jennifer created Inside Out Faith, a non-profit organization that sends Jennifer and other artists/speakers into churches to have discussions on how LGBT people fit into religion.

“When I first started getting back into music this idea that I would have something profound to say,” Jennifer said. “I don’t know that I’ve lived up to that, but the thing that I have recognized is that the religious communities are in need of is to declare faith spaces as positive spaces-that they’re not all anti-gay. I talk about this in the book is that when we have a negative or misunderstood experience we tend to throw out the baby with the bath water. When in fact, coming out can be a really spiritual process. I don’t mean it has to be a Christian process, I mean it’s a soul-searching thing when you find yourself in a minority for the rest of the world. I am different I know that I am different and the implications for that needs to be a healthy and positive way to deal with that. So having people able to talk about safe spaces is really valuable.”

Jennifer said that her experience has been that there are “supportive and affirmative communities in all kinds of faith” and that she hopes IOF can put a spotlight on these places.

“If I had my way there would be tons of opportunities for people to go into places and share their real life stories. What is that experience like for you, where do you need help and then connecting the churches, clergy, lay people? All the people who want to change the script on homosexuality, to recognize how brave it is to be your own self. In terms of action, I’d love to get more people into more churches, getting actors and artists that we know that are willing to stand up and show solidarity in historically difficult places to do so, and be able to publicly affirm that safe-place,” Jennifer said.

This platform that Jennifer stands on all stems from her musical skills, though, which fans will happily hear more of October 14. Set Me Free is a mix of old and new, as some of the songs Jennifer says she wrote as long ago as 2007.

“I very rarely sit down and go ‘I’m gonna write a record,'” Jennifer said. “If I do that its because I think I need to put one or two songs in there to beef up what I’ve done in recent years. Piecing this record together, they all have relational elements to them. Lover to lover, enemy to enemy, daughter to father-all these roles that we play. They are always in pairs, listener and talker, talker and listener. So it’s all about those interpersonal dynamics. I’d like to say I was brilliant and I wrote into it, but that’s kinda the narrative that happens for me a lot. All the sudden I get to this place and they all piece together to teach me something.”

With Set Me Free coming out on Righteous Babe Records, Jennifer said she was able to meet and perform with label owner Ani DiFranco, and it was super exciting for the teenage fan inside of her.

“Talk about a childhood freak out moment!” she said. “Ani Difranco invited me to come up and do an opening spot so we could have an excuse to meet one another and hang out, so I got to meet her and I tell you what-that’s a moment. When you remember back to your 16-year-old self and listening to Ani thinking she’s so badass, never in a billion years would I imagine that I would have anything to contribute to the ongoing conversation she has.”

It’s a perfect match and Jennifer is poised to reach new listeners that may have trouble getting over the stigma that being a Christian music artist can sometimes accompany. But as someone who has dealt with a lot of assumptions and judgments in her career, she said she understands that mentality.

“When I was younger I thought I wanted everyone to like me. As opposed to now, I get that,” she said. “I’ve heard so many stories and I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it, what a hurdle religion can be and all the bullshit that surrounds it. … I always say if it works for you, great. If it doesn’t, that’s fine, too. I don’t need for it to have to work for you. And that’s why I’m excited to be stepping away from Christian music. I’m a lot more comfortable because I never wanted to be the one to say that Christianity has to work for you. So the short answer of that is people have the ability to step in and take in what they need from the art they want to listen to. And not be offended if you’re not the art they want to listen to.”

She laughs and adds, “But it sucks, too!”

Facing the Music is available now. Set Me Free comes out Tuesday, October 14.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button