Tony Wood
12 min read ⭑
“I love as much as I ever have the challenge and thrill of walking into a room on a weekday morning with two other people and beginning the quest for what the song that day should be! So many factors to consider — what we feel like God is saying, what message the artist is passionate about and what they feel called to put out for the next season. I will always love that chase.”
Tony Wood has written more than 900 songs for Christian recording artists, 30 of which have topped the music charts at one point or another. So it’s no surprise that he’s won multiple Dove Awards and was nominated for the Dove Awards’ Songwriter of the Year. Still, he remains humble about his journey, giving God all the credit for his success and recalling with down-to-earth humor his early days as a 15-year-old songwriter fumbling through love song lyrics. Ever a wordsmith, Tony is also the author of two books: Lord, Help Me Pray for My Kids and Manger Throne, a 28-day Advent devotional based on Christmas songs he’s written.
Keep reading to get a peek at Tony’s co-writing process, learn where he gets the inspiration to create 125 songs per year and the reading habits that feed his creative soul.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
It’s funny what this question stirs in me. The simple answer is that I’d love any little family-owned “Meat & Three Diner.” The plate would have fried chicken and some combo of turnip greens, fresh (never canned) peas, Brussels sprouts and carrots. Growing up in a rural Virginia farm town, this is the good stuff that feels like comfort food to me.
Yet I realize that, because of where I grew up, there was a limited menu of activities, opportunities and food options. I have lived with that feeling of “there’s got to be more.” It wasn’t until late in my high school years that I had my first meal of Chinese food. Wow! An undiscovered world. So the other side of my answer for a favorite food/night out would be: any ethnic place I haven’t been before, if I’m going with someone who has been there, loves it and can help guide me as I stumble my way through the unknown.
Comfort and adventure — in so many ways, an apt illustration of my professional creative journey!
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QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
I’ve had a couple of conversations recently where the topic of hunting came up. I was asked if I liked it. As a kid, I did it a few times. I liked the stuff around it … being outdoors, being in the woods where an animal could wander by at any point, the challenge of myself vs. the beast! But there always came that time of settling in, sitting down, being completely quiet for an undetermined amount of time. I got bored with that easily. I got fidgety. What I liked so much better was fishing. Although it offered some of the same “me vs. nature” challenge and a fair slice of quiet, it also included a degree of activity and movement … the cast, the reeling, check the bait …
As a writer, silence and stillness are familiar companions. I love them. Though no teenager is great with them, even at a younger age, I was reflective and introspective by nature, so I was comfortable being alone with my thoughts. But I also need motion … movement. It is known to my closest co-writers these days that if I am really into the idea we’re chasing, I will pace. That takes some real doing in some of the small 10-foot-by-10-foot rooms when there are three people co-writing!
These days, I love open road driving — that thing far from a city when you’re cruising along with little traffic and just music, a podcast or even silence. The act of driving requires that you stay engaged, but it’s easy enough that your mind is free to drift down some roads of creativity or honest, out-loud prayer conversation with God. I’ve found that mowing my yard accomplishes much of the same thing.
My newest discovery that does this — and one my wife just mentioned we may need to do in a few months when spring arrives — is power washing! Oh, I love it! I doubt I will stop with our back deck. I’ll probably do our sidewalks and driveway … then I might see if any of our neighbors need something power-washed.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
Growing up in a small community, at about 15, I was bitten by the songwriting bug. I wrote the obligatory half-dozen crappy love songs that a young man writes whenever he first sits down with a piano or guitar and starts to put his feelings on paper. My local church was such a significant part of my life. I then began to write about what we were learning about God in our youth group Bible studies.
James Baldwin said, “Aren’t writers the worst? They just raid life.” I began to do that. I mined my friends’ lives and experiences. (I hope I always did it with great care and respect.) Twelve years after I began writing, I set out for Nashville. I wanted to see if I had what it takes. Showing up in Music City, I didn’t know another songwriter.
I don’t think I ever put on airs or pretended as though I thought I was good. I didn’t think I was good … a couple of early songwriting rounds I attended at the Bluebird Café confirmed that to me! It wasn’t until a number of years later, when a few nice things happened — a few songs on records and radio — that I began having opportunities to write with other writers who were having some significant success. I thought they were great — and I still knew that I was not. Fear set in, the fear of being found out as the guy who didn’t really belong in that room. It didn’t cripple me, but it was an unwanted shadow on a lot of days. It was never discussed but was certainly always a part of how I viewed myself.
One of the sweet parts of co-writing is the intimate friendships that are formed from hours spent in honest conversation, wrestling truth and belief onto the page. I don’t remember the exact conversation, but I will never forget the buddy who, one day at the end of a session, said something to the effect of, “No matter how long I do this, I always feel like the guy who is going to be found out as a phony and a fake!”
That honesty was oxygen. That confession was life to me. He did what a great song does: he named something true about himself and gave me the gift of being able to name it for myself. Since then, I have intentionally initiated that same conversation with dozens of people I admire and respect. They have convinced me that I am not alone in my insecurity … that it is the path most every creative walks daily. OK then, I can press on!
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
When I was about 18, I remember I first prayed, “God, could there ever be a time when all I do is write songs about you?” I didn’t get an audible response that day, but if I had, it likely would have been, “Yeah, that’s possible, but it’s probably a good ways out!” That would have been so hopeful to hear. Nonetheless, I pressed on. Through various seasons of life, writing moved from a hobby to a part-time job to, ultimately, my full-time vocation.
In my early years (30 years ago), co-writing looked more like two people setting up an appointment, getting in a room and writing what they felt was the best idea they had for the day. A song would then get turned in to a publisher. If the publisher liked it enough, they would order a demo (demonstration recording) to be made of it, and then the publisher would shop the song around to artists who seemed like a good fit.
These days, with the dwindling income streams for a writer, it has become much more expected that an artist will be involved in creating their own material. For me, most days, it means walking into a room (usually someone’s bonus room or room above their garage where their recording rig is set up) to meet with an artist and a producer/music guy. I work far more on the lyrical side of song creation. Usually, there’s a bit of get-to-know-you or catch-up time, and then we’re off getting two or three ideas we feel passionately about onto the table. After a few minutes of evaluation, we all usually agree on what feels right for the day, and we set off to build the song together.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
It’s funny — anything that anyone creates is evaluated subjectively. What is in someone’s all-time top 10 is in someone else’s list of all-time least favorites. Years ago, at a songwriting conference, a clinician was getting feedback from a friend of mine, and they began to defend their not-so-well-crafted song by saying, “God gave this song to me.” After a moment of silence, my friend replied, “Well, I’ve heard God write better!”
There are certain songs I recorded decades ago that I would have credited God for if you asked me at the time. Now, I look back on them and bear the blame for their subpar craftsmanship or weak theology.
These days, I’m aware of the Spirit’s presence in the writing process when there continue to be truths or ideas I passionately desire to craft to the best of my abilities and get them out into the marketplace. After writing around 125 songs a year for 30-plus years — most of them with a faith theme and only a small portion of them actually making it to the marketplace — there is still so much more that I want to write about. I believe this will only continue. I understand that our God is inexhaustible in his attributes. Even with 10,000 or more songs about his faithfulness, we will only have begun to scratch the surface of any one of the countless wonders of who he is.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
Reading has remained the spiritual practice that has most shaped me. Each morning begins with time spent being still before the Lord, reading my way through both testaments and offering prayers of praise, confession and intercession.
It occurred to me years ago that, as a creative, I was hoping to continually have something worth saying to the church and the world. It seemed, then, that I needed to take responsibility for what I was putting into my heart and mind since that is what I would process internally and, eventually, portray in my writing.
Although I’ve always been a reader and kept a decent-sized stack of “books I want to read,” I decided that I needed to also keep an ongoing stack (smaller!) of “books I ought to read.” These were books that I had seen endorsed by people in ministry that I respected, as well as books that may prove a challenge to me. I gave myself the assignment of reading two books a year from that stack.
At a recent conference I was speaking at, as we were talking about “feeding the writing muscle,” I heard myself say out loud, “Read more books by dead people than by living people!” I laughed at myself at the time, but as far as books in that second category, I’ll stand by my off-the-cuff remark.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
In the church where I grew up, I recall that the sermon cycle was always one of two or three pet topics that seemed to be all we ever heard preached. This created a crisis moment for me later in life when I was made painfully aware of my lack of Bible knowledge. A mentor introduced me to expository teaching. The sermons of John MacArthur became so significant in my grounding and growth. It took over 20 years of putting books from his “New Testament Commentary” series in my “ought to read” pile, but a few years back, I completed the task of reading that collection.
A pair of books I have gone back to often are A.W. Tozer’s “The Attributes of God” and A.W. Pink’s “The Attributes of God.” Both have increased my awe and wonder in response to the majesty of who God is and left me with a greater sense of reverence. Also closely associated with these two books is Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy.”
I have long loved quote books — just little random bits of wisdom, insight and perspective, like billboards along faith’s highway that told me something true and significant. A few gems from the journey:
“So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines.” —Steven Pressfield
“No life can surpass that of a man who quietly continues to serve God in the place where providence has placed him.” —Charles Spurgeon
“The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job at hand. They didn’t waste time waiting for inspiration.” —Ernest Newman
“Take care of the depth of your ministry and leave the breadth for God to take care of.” —John MacArthur
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I love as much as I ever have the challenge and thrill of walking into a room on a weekday morning with two other people and beginning the quest for what the song that day should be! So many factors to consider — what we feel like God is saying, what message the artist is passionate about and what they feel called to put out for the next season. I will always love that chase. I will always consider the session as a sacred appointment to, first and foremost, care for the people involved and, secondarily, pursue the song.
Over the last few years, I have had a few opportunities to write books published through Focus on the Family and Tyndale House Publishers. The first was “Lord, Help Me Pray for My Kids,” a 365-day guided book of prayers for parents to pray for their children.
The second book was “Manger Throne,” a 28-day devotional beginning on December 1. Each day features a scripture reading, devotion and prayer. Each day’s devotion is based on a Christmas song that I’ve written either with or for a popular CCM recording artist. The book comes with QR codes that link to playlists of all the songs so the reader can listen along to the song that each day’s devotion is built on.
Both of these books started out as fearful steps into new and completely unknown creative territory for me but came to feel incredibly life-giving along the way.
It may have seemed strange to read that Tony — who has written dozens of chart-topping Christian songs and hundreds more for successful artists — still wrestles with insecurity regarding his craft.
The nagging doubt that eats away at self-confidence has a name: impostor syndrome. And Tony is far from the only person to have ever struggled with it.
Although it’s not an official diagnosis, experts define impostor syndrome as someone believing “they are undeserving of their achievements and the high esteem in which they are, in fact, generally held.” Some say up to 70% of people wrestle with it.
But as Christians, we don’t face impostor syndrome empty-handed. We have a weapon far greater than any psychological warfare we could wage: God’s truth, planted in our hearts.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” And as Philippians 2:13 adds, “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
Who we are and even what we do (whether it’s our passion, our ministry or our career) isn’t about us at all. It’s about the King of Glory who works through us — the one who loved us before we took our first breath.
Tony Wood is a multiple Dove Award-winning songwriter and lyricist of over 30 No. 1 hit songs. He’s written more than 900 songs recorded in the Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) market by top artists like Michael W. Smith, Dolly Parton, Zach Williams, Phil Wickham, Reba McIntyre, Francesca Battistelli, Keith and Kristyn Getty, and more. Tony currently works with Curb Word Music Publishing and is the author of Lord, Help Me Pray for My Kids and Manger Throne. He and his wife, Terri, live in Tennessee and have four daughters.