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For the first time, Joel Vaughn is bringing his music north of the border with his Where Grace Begins Tour coming to Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg this week.
Vaughn got his start in music as a young child by singing in church. "You would bring a cassette tape to the front and they'd put it in the player," he says. "I started leading worship with my brother when I was a teenager."
While the music bug stuck with Vaughn, he says he really started to write his own music around 2003 to 2007. "My first signed song in 2015 and my first record deal in 2016. We moved to Nashville and have been going since."
While he says he's living the dream now, his success did not come easily overnight. "Now it wasn't a thing where I just started and then boom, I was on a tour bus, that took a long time for me to get to that place."
A surreal moment for Vaughn came in 2017 at a music festival, that for KING & COUNTRY were also performing at. "I went backstage to get a banana. I noticed it was really dark backstage, I'm at craft services, which is behind and there's nobody there. I'm eating my banana and I look over to my right. Suddenly, boom lights, and then it goes dark. And I was like, 'Oh, show's starting. This is cool.' And then suddenly, I'm standing there with my banana. And this cloth just drops. I see 70,000 people in a field and I'm standing here with a banana and I'm like I am not in the right place. That's my surreal moment."
The title track of Vaughn's tour, 'Where Grace Begins,' was written through a period where he actually walked away from music. "I wanted to know who Joel the person was and who God says I am. I had worn a lot of shame and regret and pain from my past. For the longest time. There was anger and other sin issues that I had to deal with. But I also had to come to grips with I can't save myself. I'm not the one who makes my salvation happen. That's Jesus Christ. And so we have to lay all of that stuff down at the foot of the cross at the feet of Jesus where grace begins."
When he looks toward the tour in Canada, Vaughn says, "I'm really excited to get there and meet the people. I've never had the chance to visit and it seems like a total God thing that it all worked out and came together."
Vaughn will be sharing the stage with Manitoba native, Nathan Keys at both shows.
The Where Grace Begins Tour kicks off in Portage la Prairie at First Baptist Church on Thursday, November 21 before coming to Winnipeg on November 22 at The Salvation Army Heritage Park Temple.
Tickets for both shows can be won in the CHVN Ticket Window.