Unstryped.com

September 6th, 2005
Ex Stryper bassist Timothy Gaines took time with us (IrocMusic) for a short interview with some pretty tasty facs.

(IM) Hello Tim, how´s life?

Life is great, I have nothing to complain about. God has been good to me.

(IM) You recently relocated to Nasville, can you tell us about that?

Yes, I have always wanted to live here in Nashville. Whenever I would travel
through here I always kind of felt like “this is home.” Irene and I have been coming here to work and to visit friends off and on for the last 20 years. She would come here for seminars as a World Vision International artist associate, and I would come with Stryper and King James. The people here have always been great to us and so friendly. We had the opportunity a few years ago to purchase a new home. We looked around for homes in Southern California and were very dissappointed with what we were able to afford. The cost of living in L.A. is very high, and the crime rate, taxes, and population growth, actually has made it a miserable place to live. We would look at homes in the neighborhood that we wanted to live in and would come up with single wide trailor homes for like $200,000. Single family homes in our neighborhood were starting at over $600,000. There is a scripture in Psalm 127:1-2 in the Living Bible interpretation that I like,
and it says;

“Unless the Lord builds a house, the builder’s work is useless. Unless the Lord protects a city, entries do no good. It is senseless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, fearing you will starve to death; for God wants his loved ones to get their proper rest.”

If we wanted to stay in California we would have ended up killing ourselves trying to afford it. As my wife and I prayed, we really felt God leading us to Nashville. I looked online for a year searching for homes in Nashville and trying to learn as much as I could about the area. In July of 2003 we flew to Nashville and looked at 29 homes in just two days. To make a long
story short, we ended up buying the very first house that we looked at. The Lord just opened the doors wide open and everything came together just perfectly. It turned out that our escrow closed the day before Stryper was to play here in Nashville. So I took a flight after our concert in Texas and met up with my wife and we signed the papers on our home on November 5th. We  spent our first night in the house, woke up and did the concert the next day
in Nashville. Three weeks later the tour ended and we were packing up a U-haul truck and trailor which I drove, my wife drove our van with our dog and 4 birds, and my step daughter Leah drove our other car, and we moved 2500 miles into our new life. Since we have been here we have just been totally blessed by God. He has watched out for our every move. He has brought some really wonderful Christian people into our lives, and opened
doors for us to do our music, and He has led us to the most wonderful church. All I can say is that we are totally blessed.

(IM) You mentioned on several boards that you wanted to get away from metal & that kind of music so why did you hook up with Whitecross?

Well, it is true that I am trying to get away from that style of music. Not
so much because I hate the music, but because as a talented bass player I
have to say that it can be a very limiting style of music to play. It does’nt take much talent to be a heavy metal bass player. Most of the time for me I feel very limited as to what I can play in heavy metal and where my level of talent is. For me to continue on in hard music I would have to be in a band like Sin Dizzy. I still think Sin Dizzy was a great band and I had total freedom to play what I wanted to. It was very creative for me. Unfortunately, in other situations that I have been in, I have not been  allowed any kind of freedom of expression to do anything. Someone else dictates to me how and what I am supposed to play. I am not allowed to create my own bass lines, I am not allowed to sing… I have to lip sync to sampled vocals. I am not allowed to write songs for the group. I am not allowed to speak during intereviews. Basically, I am just supposed to show up and play dumb. I am not allowed the freedom to even think for myself, let alone use the talent that God gave me for His purpose. Christ talks about the parable of talents; two servants basically double the talents that the Master had given them, and one servant ended up burying his talent in the ground. Then that servant is punished for burying the talent that the Master had given him. I feel for me to continue on with that style of music that I would be the servant who buried his God given talent. So with that said, that would be my reason for trying to get away from heavy metal. It does’nt mean that I won’t play it, but for me that style of music does not allow my talent to grow as much as other styles of music.

As far as White Cross goes, Scott and Lisa Wenzel are our friends and
neighbors. We often get together and go to the movies or do dinner or just hang out, I had worked with Rex Carrol in King James. We had toured together in Europe in the early 90’s with White Cross and Stryper and had always remained friends. I was approached by their management to see if I would play two concerts with them. I thought it would be fun.

(IM) Are you a fulltime member of Whitecross or is it just a one show deal?

No, I am not a member at all. I am not playing on their CD’s or doing any other concerts with them other than these two scheduled shows in August and September of 2005.

(IM) It says on your website that you are “for hire”, have alot of people been interested in having you on their demos?

Yes, actually I have been doing quite a few projects. It is very convenient for me since I do all of the work here in my home studio. That is one of the cool things about the internet. Most of my work is done right over the internet. My clients and I send digital MP3 and WAV files back and forth to each other. It makes things very cost effective, and allows me to work much
faster than it would be if I had to travel around alot. It really is great to write a song and send it over the internet to a drummer in Seattle to lay down live drums. He sends it back to me and we build on the song, …. send it to a guitarist and have him lay down a solo… and so on.
Not only do I write this way, but I have people hiring me to play bass on their demos and CD’s. Most digital studios operate using WAV files so even though I am using Nuendo software, I can share files that were created using Pro Tools or other popular programs. Most bass songs get completed in a day. I will get an MP3 sent to me and I dump it into Nuendo. Then I sort of map out what I am going to play and record my bass lines. After I make sure everything is cool with my part, I save my bass line as a WAV file and send it back to the client over the internet and send them a hard copy on CDR. Pretty cool way to do things, and it gives people more access to hire me than if we did things the old way. I have really only been operating my studio now for a few months in this capacity, but I am getting booked up. I have spent the last year and a half building the studio. At the moment I am in the middle of an album project for a wonderful sax player named Tim Coleman, plus we are working on my wife  Irene Kelly’s music, and cowriting songs with some other Christain artists. I just pray that I will be able to continue to have work come in to pay the bills. If not God will open other doors for me to work.

(IM) Can you tell us about the future of Tim Gaines, musically and personally?

That would be easy…My life is in God’s hands. I have had prophecy spoken over me that I could be used by God as a great speaker some day. Now most people that know me personally know that I am about the quietest person around. I just don’t speak. I feel like I want to speak at times but I can’t get the words to come out. I just keep it all in and listen alot. I think because I am so quiet that people have at times taken advantage of me
emotionally and spiritually. I do have a vision of being in ministry in some capacity and always have. That is why I felt led to join Stryper in the first place. But I think with everything that I have been through. With all of the trials and tribulations. With being on top of the world one day and down in the gutter the next. With having a close relationship with the Lord,
and then turning my back against him, and spitting in his face, driving the spike deeper into his hands and feet, and he still says “I love you my son. Welcome home.” I can appreciate the grace of God and his restoration power in my life. My wife and I have been through similar experiences in life  where we have both been burned by friends and family in the name of
Christianity. Burned so badly that we would walk away from Christ himself.

Yet, even though we left Christ, he never left us. He was with us the whole
time allowing us to stumble and make mistakes and still keep us under his
protection, knowing that we would return to his love and grace. So I feel
that the Lord is going to place us into a restoration music ministry. Most
of our songs deal with hurting and the love of Christ. There are so many people who feel they have done the worst things in life, and that God would not forgive them, but it is a lie. God is always willing with open arms to receive anyone who is willing to repent and turn from their sin. When we play out live, so many people are touched and moved by the music, and that
is because the music is Spirit filled. When we play, the Holy Spirit shows up and ministers to the hearts of the hurting. So as God opens doors, we will walk through. Where he closes doors we wait to see what door he open next. It is living our lives in total faith in God. I had someone close to me say that “you can’t just blindly trust in God, you have to use common
sense.” I have to say that until you learn to rely on total faith in God, your common sense will lead you astray. The Lord God has never let me down, but following the advice of many people who say they speak for the Lord, I have been let down and hurt almost everytime.

(IM) You have been playing alot of different styles of music during the years, what style is it that you handle the best and likes to play most?

I really love and appreciate all styles of music. But I think that what I do best with is any style that I feel a spiritual and emotional bond with. I would say that it is even more spiritual than emotional. I can play a certain song and just feel like I am at one with it. Like when I play with
Irene Kelly, everything just flows so beautifully. So it is really a matter of what music allows me to worship? Because ultimately that is what I am doing when I play. The focus is always on God and the gift of music that he gave me that I can give back to Him. And that can happen with any style of music. It does happen more when I am able to actually use my talents in that
capacity. That happens with Irene’s music, it has happened on certain
Stryper songs, especially on More Than A Man. It happens with the Sin Dizzy
songs. It’s all about the worship. It’s all about when God shows up and he
is blessed by the worship, and in turn blesses us. When I was growing up in
the church I was emersed with traditional Hymns. Huge choirs and pipe
organs. I didn’t care for it when I was growing up, but today I have a
great love for the Hymns and for worship music. I also have a great
appreciation for the music styles I listened to when I was growing up that
were on the 60’s and 70’s American Pop Radio. That music is what formed me
as a bass player and musician.

(IM) I read on your site that you bought back a “Status graphite series 2000″ custom painted
bass, why did you part with it in the first place if you decided to buy it back?

At the time when I sold it, Stryper had been over with for 6 years. I had
collectors offering me all kinds of money for Stryper related items like
stage costumes, basses, sound equipment… I really thought that I would
never use it again, and I had so many basses already, and I had two of this
particular model. The other one was just a plain old black one, and I could
use it more in other bands or projects than I could with the custom yellow
and black stryped version. I thought why not sell it. I had someone offer to
buy it so I went ahead and sold it. Of course not too long after I sold it
Stryper started doing the expo’s, and then we played in Costa Rica. Then I
ended up selling my second Status because I was not using it. Then next
thing you know, Stryper is back on tour and I don’t have a decent bass to
play. I always loved my Fender basses but live, they just don’t cut through
like the Status Graphite. My wife always gets mad at me for selling my
stuff… I can’t help it. I just get tired of a certain bass and I sell it.
Well this one I sort of regretted selling from the beginning. So when I was
alerted that it was up for auction on eBay, I bought it back immediately.
When it arrived at my home, I opened the case and it was exactly how I had
left it when I sold it to the collector seven years earlier. He had’nt
touched a thing. It was great to get it back. Now I am not in Stryper
anymore so what will I do with it? Who knows, maybe the Lord will open the
doors for me to once again play it with them?

(IM) Do you work alot with your wife in the music scene now or was the “If you were here”
album a one album thing?

Irene and I have been working together since 1996. We started playing around
LA in churches, coffee houses, and clubs. From there we recorded her debut
CD in 2000 and continued to perform. We have been writing new songs to
record a new CD with, but we actually have two CD’s in mind right now. One
of which is more worship oriented, and the other is more commercial adult
rock music with a country flare. We are really writing in all genres to see
where we fit in the best. For me personally, I think the worship music is
what we do best. Anyhow, we are working on two CD’s and the problem with
having a home studio is that you are continually tweaking and changing
things so it never seems to get finished. Irene has also been part of Bryan
Duncans Nehosoul band, and has been busy singing backup for him, as well as
singing in a country band here in Nashville called The Apocalyptic Cowboys.
So between all of her side projects and my own, it hasn’t given us much time
to work on our own stuff. We are actually in the beginning stages right now
with management and booking to get us going in the direction of music
ministry. We are trying to get the new music finished, so that they can
start booking us into churches to lead worship and perform concerts.

(IM) After listening to the album “If you were here” several times I  just got stuck at the
song “Blues Jive”, that is just an amazing song with such massive bass sound, can we expect
more songs of that caliber in the future?

It’s hard to say. I probably will not be doing any solo’s on the next two
CD’s, but I will be playing my fretless on most of it, so at least the
feeling will be there. Most of the bass lines I come up with are very
melodic, almost like there is a separate solo part going on underneath the
melody. I think also, that for many of the new songs that we have come up
with, I have come to the project as more of a guitar player, piano player
and backup vocalist, rather than a bass player. I am trying to focus more on
the vocals and the song as a whole, instead of soloing the bass to make it
stand out more.

(IM) Okay Tim, any final comments?

I always try to end with my favorite scripture Philippians 1:6 - “being
confident of this very thing that He who began a good work in you will be
faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”