For over a decade now, Jordan Janzen’s name has been synonymous with inspiring Christian music in Manitoba and far beyond. Since 2012, he has seen tremendous success with The Color, a trio of talented Juno-winning musicians. These days, Janzen has also embarked on a journey of his own.
“It's a little confusing to everybody, maybe even to myself, but some new doors have opened over the last couple of years, and I started to release some songs on my own,” says the singer-songwriter from Winkler.
Janzen says that his solo music lately is a “full circle” moment — his career began with him singing alone. Even so, fans of The Color will be pleased to know that the band is still together.
“We're still making music as well, but this is . . . another extension of what we do and really more so focused in the U.S., which is where we’ve been spending most of our time this year.”
Janzen says that his solo music provides him with an avenue to explore a different side of his music. He is also faced with the task of defining his sound relative to the music that The Color creates together.
“When it's a band dynamic, . . . I can write from a place of my own experiences, but it's also representing everybody that's on stage. The mentality [is] more so focused on, ‘what do people need to hear?’” he says. “I think the shift for me has been what's been going on in my own life. What [I can] pull from my own struggles and victories and how [I can] write that in a way that will hopefully connect with as many people as possible.”
For Janzen, navigating this new terrain is exciting.
“[I’m] definitely trying to separate the two things sonically and . . . even some of the messaging,” he says. “It's been kind of fun to just kind of move it in a new direction.”
Although his career has kept him across the border lately, Janzen was happy to be back in Manitoba for a few days for a Harvest Festival performance on August 11th.
“One of the biggest struggles with being on the road so much has been being away from our families, and so, to be able to be home . . . with our kids and our wives is really great,” he says. “We get to be home for a couple more days before we head out and keep doing [our] thing.”
At the festival performance, Janzen invited his home crowd to be involved in his music-making process. Audience members participated in filming a music video for his latest song, “Kindness”; not only was the Harvest Festival crowd in the song, but they also helped film it.
Jon Steingard, a former lead vocalist and guitarist of the Christian group Hawk Nelson, is the creative mind behind the structure of the music video. He is now a freelance music video director.
“We just basically wanted to make a music video that involved a large group of people,” he says. “It came out of the idea for “Kindness.” Kindness feels like such a relational, personal thing, [so] I loved the idea of making a music video that didn't look ‘professional,’ but felt very personal, like the way that so much stuff on social media feels more personal when it's not professionally shot.”
For Steingard, the local angle was important to tease out for “Kindness.”
“I wanted to . . . involve a hometown crowd,” he says. “I haven't seen the footage yet, so I have no idea if it worked, but as of right now, 370 people participated, so I feel pretty good — [it’s] going to be good.”
Apart from performing locally in Winkler again, The Color has also been touring with Christian music legend The Newsboys. For Janzen, the experience is overwhelmingly positive.
“It's a band that's been around for 35 years and has written songs that are sung all around the world,” he says. “To be able to partner with them, to share a night with them, to enter into their world for the last four months — it's been really incredible. They've been very kind. It's been a good perspective for us of what it looks like to tour for a very long time. We've been a band for over a decade and it's long, but it's not as long as what they've been doing, and so it's been pretty special.”
Janzen has fond memories of the Newsboys from when he was a child.
“I remember being in my living room when I was very young, watching DC Talk videos and seeing this guy, Michael Tait, dancing around and thinking, ‘man, I don't think I could do that because my head would hurt too much.' Now he's the lead singer of the Newsboys, [and] has been for 15 years,” he says.
Ultimately, amid all the projects that Janzen has on the go right now, Winkler’s participation in his music video was a moment of fitting and meaningful partnership; he seems to love the community as much as it loves him.
“Without support, it's a pretty lonely journey, and this community has been very, very supportive of me and of the band over the years, so we're very thankful,” he says. “It's good to be here.”
Watch the complete interview with Janzen below.
~With files from Robyn Wiebe and Abby Wall~