MercyMe’s Dickies Arena show to feature ‘inhale (exhale)’ songs, plus transcendent hit
When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country in March 2020, MercyMe was in the middle of a tour.
But the sudden end became something of a positive for the band, which plays Dickies Arena Sunday night, their third show on a tour that opens Friday in Tulsa.
“We had already started working on a record so we essentially just kind of rolled straight into the studio and spent the majority of last year working on our new record that just came out,” Bassist Nathan Cochran said via phone.
That album, “inhale (exhale),” which was released on April 30, is the 10th studio album by the award-winning Christian rock band. They’ll play 30 cities on the tour.
The break from touring was an odd change for a group that has been touring constantly since forming in 1994 in Edmond, Oklahoma. But it allowed them to finish the album they had started working on in 2019. Early on, the album was going to be called “Spaceman,” which correlates to the song “Almost Home.”
But the enormity of the pandemic proved too strong to ignore, which turned into the title song “inhale (exhale).”
“We weren’t sure we wanted to write about the pandemic per se, but it felt foolish not to write about this moment that we’re all in,” Cochran said. “That turned into what became ‘inhale (exhale).’”
One of the reasons the band was hesitant to go all in on pandemic-related songs, Cochran said, was because of the deluge of heavy-handed songs other artists were posting on social media.
“It felt like for a while every artist was doing gut-wrenching song after another. It got real heavy. We kind of got to the point we thought about swinging the other direction and making a dance record,” he said.
And MercyMe did that to some extent with the album.
“If anything, we wanted people to take a deep breath in, a deep breath out, and relax for a minute,” Cochran said. “And just know there is hope. I think that’s ultimately what we are trying to get across with ‘inhale (exhale).’”
The break also gave the band some rare extended time with their families.
“I think we all realized that none of us in our adult lives have slept in our own beds as much as we have in the last year, which has been good. We weathered the pandemic itself well. Everybody handled it well,” he said. “I know that hasn’t been everyone’s experience so we’re certainly grateful for the time at home and time we’ve had to work close to home.”
But like any traveling band, the itch to perform never goes away, Cochran quickly added.
“But we’re absolutely looking forward to getting back on the road. It’s been too long,” he said.
Their show, which will include entirely new visuals and staging, will be filled with a batch of new songs, and, of course, their transcendent hit “I Can Only Imagine,” which is the best-selling Christian single with more than 2.5 million copies sold since its release in 1999.
The song inspired the film of the same name in 2018. It’s the kind of song that has transcended genres. At first, the song was so personal to singer Bart Millard and the band declined to play it at shows. But someone eventually asked to hear it. So they played it. Twenty years later, it is still a staple of every MercyMe show.
“To have a song like that, that has become very important to people and people have kind of taken ownership of, it kind of transcends us,” he said. “The song is bigger than us. It will outlast the band, which is an amazing thought.”
Playing it every night might seem like it would become redundant. But it doesn’t, Cochran said, because the audience is different every night.
“So that keeps things fresh for us. We don’t see the exact same faces every night. People have different reactions to different songs,” he said. “There are still people discovering that song. What an amazing legacy we have to be able to look back on.”
Cochran said the band used to view it as the band’s private song, since it was so personal. But now, he said, it belongs to the world.
“To have something like that that has some longevity and to know that it’s something that genuinely means something to people,” he said. “We’re not always sure how to respond to that, how to be grateful for that. Even though we are extremely grateful.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 3:51 PM.
