Interview and Giveaway

This past month I had the opportunity to chat with Carol Moxley, bass-player of the Texas-based worship band “Church Chix”. Carol was one of the first bloggers I met when I started blogging almost 5 years ago – so there is a special bond 🙂 . Find out at the end of the interview how you can get a copy of the CD (not available for sale (yet) at regular retail locations)…

1. Carol, I know you have been playing bass for a very long time. How long have you been playing together as a group known as “Church Chix“?

Iris, we’re humbled by your interest in Church Chix and we thank you for this opportunity to share our ministry with your readers here at Laced With Grace.

About six years ago, Toni and I played our guitars for our church’s women’s retreat. At that time we shared a common dream of a ladies’ praise/worship band that would be available to women’s ministries in need of music for retreats and other events. We didn’t know it at the time, but two other women musicians at our church also shared a similar dream with each other. We later found out a singer at our church also had the same calling on her heart and her college roommate (a violinist from another church) was looking for a praise team with which to use her musicianship. Later, we came across a female drummer from a nearby town with the same calling. The story of how it all came together is one of those things that is so bizarre and unexpected you know only God could have managed to make it happen. And he did! Rebecca and I are the only original members remaining – Toni joined a little later, the others after that – but looking back, we see how and why he lead the various members in and out of the group along the way. He is sovereign!

2. Can you share a little about the six members of this praise team?

Rebecca Blankenship (vocals) is married and has a 9 year-old-son and 2-year-old daughter. She’s also and RN and stays quite busy! She has experience singing in choirs and praise teams throughout her lifetime. Rebecca has been with Church Chix since our first gig.

Toni Williams (guitar & vocals) is married, has two grown sons and a 2 year-old granddaughter. “Back in the day” she played for about 12 years in rock and country-rock bands here in the DFW area. Along with her amazing voice and guitar, she brings all that professional performance experience to our group. She joined Church Chix during our first year.

Janet Duvall (keyboard/vocals) has played piano and served with praise teams for years. She’s also a piano teacher. She’s married, has four grown children and three grandkids. (Hey! Who says grandmas can’t rock out for the Lord!!!) Janet is actually our second keyboard player and has been a huge blessing to the band.

Virginia Koepsell (violin) was classically trained at Hardin Simmons University. She’s been married for two years and is also an RN. She may seem all poised and serious on stage, but behind the scenes, Virginia keeps us rolling with laughter! Virginia joined us during our third year, I believe, and her violin really sets our sound apart.

Jan Bolling (drums/vocals) started playing drums in 1992 and has played in a number of bands since then. In addition to Church Chix, Jan currently plays in a classic rock band and her church’s praise band. She has two grown stepsons, two spoiled cats, and works as an office machine technician. We started out without a drummer – just using percussion instruments. We got Jan’s tasty drumming when we were a couple years in and it really solidifies our sound.

Me, Carol Moxley (electric bass) began music ministry on the piano at age five and played guitar in my first band when I was 14. I picked up the bass some years later, but stopped playing in bands 22 years ago when I got married and had kids (now 17 and 13 years old). When I started the Church Chix, I was first needed on guitar and later moved over to bass when our original bassist moved away. I also play with other bands including jazz, blues, country and classic rock. And I’m an RN, too! (With 3 RN’s in the band, maybe we should have called ourselves “Nurse Chix!”)

All of the Church Chix pray hard, work hard, and laugh hard. God has blessed us with a ministry that we take very, very seriously – leading worship is a reverent calling – but one that can also be a lot of fun for us. Our current mix of musicians love each other dearly and we enjoy our time together. Sometimes rehearsals can get pretty silly with the practical jokes and such, but they always begin with prayer and humble gratitude that we have been charged with the calling of the Levites.

One of our biggest challenges is the fact that we are women. We have households to manage. Some of us have kids at home. Some of us work outside the home. Rebecca was pregnant with and nursed her youngest while a member of Church Chix. Virginia is praying the Lord opens her womb for her first child. I have busy teenagers. Toni and I went back to school for a while. Toni, Janet and I have individually lead many Bible studies and have served our chuches on various leadership teams. Jan currently serves her church in several different capacities. And we all have to put those responsibilities ahead of practicing, rehearsing, promoting, playing, recording, and sometimes leaving our families behind to travel for this ministry. We recognize that this is why there are so few ladies’ praise/worship bands like ours. We also know that we are privileged that we can be a part of Church Chix!

3. Do you still lead worship together at your church? Or are you only planning together at different venues in Texas?

Church Chix originally came together to lead worship for our church’s Women’s Ministry events rather than the general congregation itself. Since then, we’ve been called to lead worship for other churches’ Women’s Ministries, for retreat centers, for charity events, community events ,Bible studies, and for Sunday Morning services at other churches. We’ve even played for a baby shower! So far, we haven’t yet crossed state lines, but our prayer is that the Lord will call us to serve wherever there is a need He wants us to fill, regardless of the city, state, church or event.

4. I had the pleasure of listing to your self-titled debut album “Church Chix”. What was the process of selecting the songs? (by the way, my personal favorite is “Psalm 63”).

Thanks, Iris! I’m glad you enjoy the CD. Psalm 63 is one of our favorites as well. Mars Hill Church in Seattle gave us permission to freely use that song and we are grateful for their generosity.

Psalm 40:3 says, “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.” That’s one verse that guides our song selection; “a new song” and “many will…put their trust in the Lord.” That’s what we pray He will use Church Chix to do through the songs He leads us to prayerfully select.

We do a mixture of music, crossing the various Christian genre lines. Each of the Church Chix has our own musical preferences from the most traditional hymns to hard, Christian rock to country/gospel, and so on. From the young, newly married to the young-at-heart grandmothers, our band’s members cross generational lines and we know the congregations we serve do likewise. We prayerfully tailor our song choices to meet the needs of the event’s topic and the demographics of each individual group we lead to God’s throne. Hopefully, the selections on the CD reflect that.

“Come Ye Sinners” is a hymn written by Joseph Hart in 1759, although Church Chix opt for the more contemporary melody on our recording. Chris Tomlin’s contemporary “How Great is Our God” is also on the CD, but we tucked the hymn “How Great Thou Art” into the middle of our arrangement to create the “How Great Medley.” The lyrics to “Psalm 63” come straight out of the Bible, but they’re set to a rockabilly instrumentation which makes it appealing to just about everyone. Throw in the upbeat, gospel sound of Selah’s “Deep”, the worshipful, country-ballad quality of “The Lord is Gracious” and the slow, hard rock feel of “Jesus is the Lord” and you get a pretty good sampling of our sound.

5. Do you plan on distributing the CD to Christian radio stations to get your name out (personally I think you should)? Or are you planning to stay locally in Texas?

We haven’t given much thought to getting radio air time, actually. If that’s something God wants us to do, I trust He’ll let us know. Right now, the purpose of the CD is twofold: first, to have a decent recording (demo) we can send to those interested in booking us to play their event, and secondly because at every event people ask if we have a CD they can purchase. For years, it was embarrassing, albeit humbling, to have to admit we couldn’t afford to pay even the most inexpensive studio to record us.

Because we rely solely on donations and love offerings, and because sound equipment and other expenses to keep a band going are so high, buying professional studio time was way far out of reach for us for the first five years. We kept praying, though. And God opened the door for us to record the CD in His time. Although it was often frustrating to wait on Him, we see now that His timing was perfect; recording a CD would have been a huge mistake any earlier. Now we’re just thrilled to have something tangible we can give to those who donate to our ministry!

6. Is the team planning a second CD?

You know, recording the CD was so exciting and so much fun for us, we would absolutely love to go back in and add another six or seven songs to our existing recording, making it a full-length CD. (The current one with its six songs is really just an EP.) So, yeah! We’d love to hit the studio again. But, again, we’ll have to wait until He provides because we spent every penny we had on this last one! (Actually, I think we had about $3 left in our account when it was done and we still need about $2000 worth of sound equipment.) Paying for studio time, the engineer, recording rights, CD duplication, disks, cases etc. is again out of reach for our little David of a band, but we know God will perfectly provide if it’s in His will.

Carol, please share anything else you would like our blog readers to know about your praise team and project.

One of the most frequently asked questions we get is “How much do y’all charge to lead worship for an event?” I’ll just go ahead and answer that now:

Church Chix operates exclusively on donations. Each member of the group donates our time, our talents, our personal equipment, and often our own monetary resources to keep the ministry afloat. To date, not one of us has ever received a dime for serving in this ministry; it has all gone for equipment and recording expenses. If God one day provides for us to the point we can start paying ourselves a little for our service, then Amen! But for now, we do it because we were called to serve Him and we love doing so.

When we play for a group, we do ask for travel expenses if it’s more than an hour’s drive or involves overnight stay. We’ve always been blessed with love offerings for our service, the amount of which we trust the Lord to determine. God has been so gracious and we have been so grateful for each and every opportunity He has provided Church Chix to lead others to worship at the foot of His throne!

Thank you Carol for taking the time to answer my questions. I am thrilled to have two extra copies of the CD “Church Chix”. How can you win the CD? Simple: visit Church Chix’s fan page on Facebook to become a fan. Come back here to leave a comment (please make sure that your email address is valid so we can contact you) – that’s it 🙂

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