Your Music

A Sonic Decade

It was in early 1999 when a love-struck Rick Heil, the bass player for Christian blues rock band Big Tent Revival, stepped off a tour bus and stepped behind the wheel of his truck to cross state lines to visit his girlfriend.  Fatigued and sleep-deprived from touring, he lost focus while driving 70 miles per hour on a Missouri highway and ended up flipping his truck several times.  The scene was so horrific that those who witnessed the accident actually thought Rick hadn’t survived it.  When he crawled out from the wreckage, he had two amazing sights to behold.  Behind him – a totaled truck with everything crushed except the driver’s side seat and door; before him – gleaming in the grass… the ejected SONICFLOOd pre-release demo disc he was listening to before he flipped his truck.  “The Lord spared me, so I knew it was where I was supposed to be,” recalls Rick of that fateful day.  “SONICFLOOd was doing what I wanted to do: love songs to God.”  Shortly after that, Rick left Big Tent Revival, a three-time Grammy nominated band, to join SONICFLOOd, an obscure fledging band that hadn’t yet released a single album.  At the time, this decision seemed to make little sense.  But then, not too many things about Rick Heil’s life would make much sense from a worldly point of view.  

The band’s self-titled debut album was released later that year, followed by a tour.  Edgy and invigorating, SONICFLOOd’s unique brand of worship rock was unlike anything the Christian audience had heard before, and the band soon created quite a buzz.  However, after only a year together, internal dissension tore the band apart and the original band members soon parted ways.  Rick too wanted to bail, but after praying over the situation with his new bride, CeCe, decided to take a giant leap of faith.  Rather than run from what seemed like a collapsing building, he and his wife decided to keep the band going and take on the SONICFLOOd name… and its six figure debt.  Rick also felt that God wanted the band to honor its pre-booked worship concert commitments.  He often found himself scrambling to secure musicians to play at these shows but still managed to honor those commitments.  Looking back, he believes that God was teaching him and others that it’s not about who’s playing ­– it’s about God. 

While fighting to keep the band from extinction, Rick was also fighting a battle of another kind – against Crohn’s Disease, an incurable intestinal disorder.  The disease rained down on Rick relentless and excruciating agony, making touring hellish for him.  “Some days I swore I wasn’t going to make it through the show.  I had an open sore along my waistband called a fistula – a tract going from inside my intestine to outside of my body, spilling its acidic contents onto my skin.  I had to wear a gauze pad and change it every couple of hours.  The pain was horrific because I’d have to use my diaphragm to produce notes.  I honestly believe I was closer to God at that time because I was at his feet calling him constantly.”

Over the years, SONICFLOOd has sold over 2 million albums and garnered many accolades, including 2 Dove Awards, a Grammy nomination and several ASCAP Awards.  But it’s the band’s tireless labor in the mission field, including facilitating over 10,000 child sponsorships, that makes them among today’s most cherished worship bands.  They have inspired worshippers across the land, boldly proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ wherever they played, including churches, community events, high schools, festivals, arenas, military bases and clubs.  They are distinguished as having performed the first Christian concert ever in a secular venue in modern Istanbul, Turkey, a region which is 98% Muslim.  They have truly lived up to their title, “The Fathers of Modern Worship Music,” and have changed the face of worship music forever, paving the way for modern praise and worship movements.   

Today, Rick Heil is completely symptom free from the illness that had once tormented him.  There is no medical explanation for his cure, and he thanks the Lord Jesus Christ for healing him.

IV: Rick, you are living walking proof of God’s supernatural grace and healing powers.  During your battle with Crohn’s Disease, you were walking in the deep valley at times.  Can you tell us about it?
Rick: I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease when I was 11, and dealt with it most of my life.  I had eight feet of intestines taken out.  And learned how to play the guitar in the hospital, I was in there so much.  There would be months when I was not allowed to eat anything, so I was fed intravenously or through a tube. 

The surgeon who opened me up the last time could find no sign of Crohn’s disease.  Where it should be reoccurring, the skin was pristine.  I’m praising the Lord.  When God takes away something you’ve dealt with for so long, you have to re-learn life.  When a person is in pain, that does something to the psyche; you sort of become focused inward, because all you’re thinking of is how to get away from this pain.  The pain twists the mind.  So, when all of a sudden I was walking around pain-free, I felt like air.  I didn’t know how to act, and become a person who is more focused on the people around me than myself.  Because that’s the whole Gospel: die to yourself and live as Christ.  So, God, in His grace, has allowed me to live without [Crohn’s disease.]

IV: For those out there living with pain, illness or depression, what encouragement can you offer them?
Rick: Lay it down at the Lord’s feet.  I thought, in my pride, that I could handle it myself.  And I grew up with the misconception that God didn’t care, that God wasn’t going to do anything, that He couldn’t do anything.  That was Satan’s lies to me.  God does care.  He has never lost his power to heal, to raise from the dead, to restore, to make whole.  When I finally got to the point of brokenness, when the doctors were saying I was going to die, when I had no more energy to carry around this bag of pain with me, I had no where else to run except into God’s arms.  I said, “Lord, I give it all to you.  I lay it all down at your feet.  Let Your will be done in my life.”  At that point, I didn’t care if I lived or if I died.  I was just tired of carrying it.  But that’s when my life changed.  That’s when God began the process of healing in my life; first with my heart, in my understanding of Him and His power.  When I realized that God could restore my heart that was as hard as a rock and turn it into a heart of flesh, and give me peace and take away the desire to kill myself, then He was able to heal my body.  So, I started on this exploration into God’s character.  I came to realize as Psalm 103 says, “He forgives all my sins and he heals all my diseases.”  The Word is full of promises to us that He loves us so much that we could never fathom His love, that He is willing and capable and desiring to make us whole.  God reprogrammed my mind through His Word.  I realized I was holding offense toward God.  You can’t grow in a relationship if you’re holding offense against somebody.  So, I had to let go of those things.  It was a time of humility, and when you’re broken, humility comes easy.  In that time of humility, God is able to work; He’s able to speak to our spirits freely.  He’s able to work our change from the inside out.

I’d encourage your readers to know that He is the One who works miracles.  We all need a miracle everyday.  Like the Israelites being fed enough manna for that day, God provides enough for each day.  The joy of the Lord is our strength, and it’s only Him that we can put our trust in.

IV:  I know one project that’s been near and dear to your heart is Call2Fall.  For those in our audience who aren’t as familiar with Call2Fall, can you share how this ministry got started and what we’re looking to accomplish through it.
Rick: We were invited by a 15-year-old kid to come down to Florida, because the ACLU had sued the school because teachers had prayed with the students outside of school time.  Whenever the students assembled to pray, the teachers had to turn their backs toward them.  They ended up settling out of court, but this 15 year old kid wrote us asking us to come down and lead them in worship, pray with them, encourage them, and we brought with us a law professor from Liberty University.  She got there and told them their rights as being followers of Christ and students in a public school.  It doesn’t mean that you leave your Christianity at the door.  Then following graduation, this past May, all of the students remained standing and recited the Lord’s prayer after the principal had told them to sit down.  It was really encouraging.  This community came together.  It didn’t matter what denomination you were, if you were a follower of Christ, you were involved.  A quarter of the population came out, and it made us think we’d love to see the body of Christ united for a cause greater than any one church.  We really need to come together in these last days as God’s people, to humble ourselves and repent for our sins so that our land will be healed.  This country is in a world of hurt.  So, we were thinking about all of this, and I started doing some research and found out about the Family Research Council, who was doing this Call2Fall campaign this past July 5^th where they were calling all the churches to have a moment of getting down on their knees in repentance and prayer and crying out to the Lord for the country.  So, we got involved, and thought we’d love to get this on the road and get more people involved for next year.  We’re praying that by next July 4^th we’ll have at least 2 or 3 million people signed up and committed to falling on their knees and crying out to the Lord for this country’s sake. 

A lot of people blame a lot of other things for the situation we’re in as a country, but I blame the Church.  I blame us… first of all, for not taking care of the poor, and turning it over to the government, making the government pick up our slack.  That’s outside their jurisdiction.  It’s the Church’s job to take care of the poor, the stranger at the gate, the widow.  That’s what God had called us to.  He’s called us to be His representatives to others, and have His heart for the poor and needy.  We’ve failed in that area.  We need to pick that back up, and be a Church of action.  We have to be held accountable for the sins going on in our country.  Well, there’s the fact that we’re committing them personally, maybe some of us are, yes, we’re all sinful, we’re all fallen.  But we need to be salt and light.  Back in Biblical times, salt was a preservative, but it had to be rubbed into the meat so that it wouldn’t spoil.  We as God’s people need to be rubbed in to be effective spreading the Gospel of Christ and living it out in these dark times.  So, Call2Fall is just basically a call to God’s people.  You know, 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”  That’s all we need to happen.  We need this land to be healed.  We need God’s people to come to a place of humility and repentance to really seek God’s face, being the voice for the innocent, standing up for the Word of God and what it says.  When I think of the Church, I think “anemic.”  When you’re anemic, you have no energy, you’re pale, you just kind of mope around.  Man, we need to be filled with passion.  We are living in a generation of skeptics who don’t know who to trust.  The only way they’ll trust us is if they see Christ in us. 

IV: On behalf of all of us at InnerVoice, congratulations on celebrating the 10 year mark of your music ministry and thank you for taking the interview.  We look forward to seeing you in concert in our area soon.  SONICFLOOd has been an inspiration to us all.

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Meet the Band

Chris Knight (Drums)

IV: Is there a significance to the lower-case “d” in SONICFLOOd?  
Chris: It's my understanding that it wasn't in our budget to get all the letters capitalized.  So, we had to pick one letter to "take one for the team."  Thanks, "d."

McKendree Tucker (Keyboards/Vocals) 

IV: As a keyboardist, who was your biggest musical influence?
McKendree: My biggest influence for the piano has to be the mainstream artist Ben Folds.  My biggest influence as a worshipper has to be Martin Smith of Delirious?

Branden Taulbee (Bass/Vocals)

IV: I’ve read that you and your wife had your first child in August.  How is the baby doing?  How has fatherhood changed you? 
Branden: My wife Deanna and I were blessed with a little girl, Leah, in August of 2008.  She's now 14 months old, and is walking and trying to talk.  She's all girl, she loves bracelets, purses and hairbows.  She also loves to strum on any basses and guitars that are left lying around, which is a common occurrence in our home.  Fatherhood has changed me in that it radically changed my perspective on my relationship with God.  My desire to protect and provide for my daughter, as well as the unconditional love that is realized between us causes me to be much more aware that my Heavenly Father looks at me the same way.  If I, as a flawed human, can love and care for my child like this, how much more is God the Father able to love us and keep us in His care? 

Rick Heil (Lead Vocals)

IV: I heard you in concert a while back sharing about how amazing it was to be a dad.  How is fatherhood treating you and what has fatherhood taught you?
Rick: It’s definitely been a learning experience. It’s really helping me to understand God’s love.  I can’t imagine loving someone so much that I’d be willing to sacrifice my own son for them.  God’s love is so deep that He would sacrifice His own son to reunite us to Him.  And He had the power to stop it, but He just tied His hands so that we could be set free.  That just freaks me out, man.

Phil Baquie (Guitar/Vocals)

IV: Originally from Australia, how does the American church culture compare to the Australian church culture?
Phil: Well, I've lived in the USA for just over 10 years now.  One of the first things I noticed when I first moved here to America was the difference in the way political leaders speak.  Here in the USA it seems more socially acceptable to acknowledge God, whereas in Australia that was not as predominant as it is here.  Something I have noticed after traveling around much of the world is that God is moving amongst His people everywhere.  

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A Letter from Phil Baquie of SONICFLOOd

I am being mobilized & have to report November 15th 2009 to Ft. Benning, GA for Operation Enduring Freedom.  This means I am being deployed to Afghanistan for about one year.  

To say I am in shock would be an understatement and I was not anticipating this happening anytime soon as I'm in the Inactive Ready Reserve.  Having said that, I will serve my country with honor and am grateful for all America has done for me and do still feel a sense of duty to serve in the areas I have been trained.

This means my last gig with SONICFLOOd is October 31st.  I write this with tears as I have loved being a part of this band and believe in everything it's trying to accomplish.  I hope that the position of guitar/bgv will be held upon my hopeful return from Afghanistan.  

I love you guys so much and am believing that God is in control and has amazing things planned for SONICFLOOd and the journey he has me on.

To God be the Glory and God bless America, 

Phil