connorsearle.com

 

A Bit of Background On Me:
 

    My name is Connor Searle, I am a Acoustic Rock singer-songwriter with a passion for Christ. This acoustic solo project (occasionally referred to as "In Vain or Worth" or "Vow"), is a blend of driving acoustic rock and mellow worship... or driving worship and mellow rock, which ever comes out.

     I am a passionate person, that's probably what first really attracted me to hard rock in the first place. I spent a lot of time learning the style and eventually when things fell apart with my worship band, I started a rock band in it's place. Slowly but surely I got swallowed up by the lifestyle, and I found myself going down a "road that is wide and filled with self-love" As TobyMac puts it. The sad part is that I didn't really care. It's a classic prodigal son story, and it took a intervention by family and friends to put a stop to it, and a passionate worship artist who I befriended at a work-camp in Vermont to set me back on the right path.

     More recently it happened again, when I joined a Metalcore band called "This City Shall Burn". Despite us being a Christian band, and despite my attempts to stay in the word I found myself infected with the same selfish disease as before, so, once again I left.

      As I said for me it's all about the passion, and after listening to an live acoustic version of In the Light by DC Talk and hearing the raw passion in their voices I found myself thinking who's to say I can't do that?

     I am to let my passion for Christ shine through in my worship music in obvious ways, and to write songs that both a someone who listens to folk music and someone who listens to metal could enjoy and worship to. I also write about topics, be they emotional, or political that I am very serious about.

     Recently, for example, I wrote a song called To Carry You Away, a link to the lyrics can be found below this section. It's about a girl I knew who fought with depression, I started writing this just to get how I was feeling out, I figured that If this is how I felt, then God must feel it many times over. At first I didn't want to perform it because it was so personal, but my friend (who it was about) told me that people needed to hear it, to know that they are never alone.

     I try to incorporate variety in my music, experimenting with my guitar playing and using everything from fingerpicking and jazz chords, to power chords and alternate tunings; sometimes all in the same song . My vocals tend towards a Jeremy Camp or Charlie Hall form of singing, mostly belting things out, but also experimenting with falsetto and vocal distortion. Some big influences in my music have been:

Aaron Gillespie, Paramore, Fireflight, Relient K, Skillet, Kutless, U2, Steele Croswhite,  DC talk and after their hiatus Michael Tait and TobyMac, Jeremy Camp, Tenth Avenue North (their vocalist really knows how to rock an acoustic guitar live), Saosin, Kids In The Way, The Myriad (amazing voice!), Charlie hall, Matthew West (just an amazing Vocalist, and Andrew Muller (the worship artist I met in Vermont).


 

ACTS 20:24 : BUT NONE OF THESE THINGS MOVE ME; NOR DO I COUNT MY LIFE DEAR TO MYSELF, SO THAT I MAY FINISH MY RACE WITH JOY,  AND THE MINISTRY WHICH i HAVE RECIEVED FROM THE LORD JESUS, TO TESTIFY TO THE GOSPEL OF THE GRACE OF GOD

 

The Name:

    I occasionally get the question: "what is up with the name In Vain or worth? Does it mean anything?" The answer is yes, and that is simply this: It refers to my personal struggle with my past and my experiences with heavier music in which I found myself falling away from Christ. After coming out of it I found myself asking God, is all this time I've spent on music in vain or can we make this worth something, together? The answer was yes, and so it was my "Vow" to no longer live my life or play my music in vain but to make my life worth something, not to me but to God, and his ministry. So, I sometimes call this project "In Vain Or Worth", abbreviated V.O.W.

Lyrics:

My Soul Waits

Rise, Shine, and Fall

To Carry You away

Recordings:

My soul waits live at Crossway CC

Email:
Questions. Comments. Encouragement. Coffeehouses. Whatev.

mypillaroffaith@yahoo.com

Gear:

    For my live performances and leading worship I use a Taylor 114 acoustic  and a Sure beta 83 mic. Usually I plug the mic into the local PA system stick it on a boom stand and turn it all the way up... even though there are more complicated ways of doing this I find that this effectively picks up both vocalists, (me and Merridith) as well as my guitar and occasionally a set of bongos. Of course I also enjoy the high portability of the rig, and the ease of set up!