PUTTING his heart on the line has been a long-term side project for Canadian musician Joe Zambon.
For the past 10 years, the part-time musician, full-time pastoral assistant at York University, Toronto, has crafted four albums, full of sincere reflections on life.
“I try to be as honest as possible,” he said on his recent visit to Brisbane.
“I don’t write songs that I don’t believe myself, and I often write from a real personal place of struggles I have, brokenness I have, and then how the Lord has spoken into that.
“The most beautiful thing about art is that you can bring up topics that maybe other people won’t really listen to.
“I can bring up a topic that’s pretty heavy and serious but I’m putting my heart on the line, and so people are like, ‘Whoa, this guy, he’s baring his heart, and I’m going to respect that’.
“Some of the most beautiful stories I’ve heard are people who’ve really connected with an area of my brokenness, and say they’re going to allow the Lord to heal that as well.”
Mr Zambon, who says he’s “not very articulate”, found music helped him to process the valleys in his life.
“I only really started writing, I honestly think, when I started to reflect more on my life,” he said.
“I’d have things going on in my life, and didn’t know how to express it, or understand it.
“So I just found that I was sitting down with a guitar, playing music and writing songs that helped me bring clarity.
“I felt God was speaking through that, to speak a message to me of either healing, or of encouragement.”
Not afraid to bare his soul and have it on the record, Mr Zambon says inspiration for his music is always in abundance.
“I don’t write when life is going well, but again, when I’m kind of wrestling with something, so I don’t need to find time because sometimes life happens and sadness happens, disappointment happens,” he said.
“I just seem to write naturally.”
Bringing a message of healing is Mr Zambon’s greatest hope for his music, which for the meantime, will remain as a secondary vocation.
“I don’t have any big aspirations to become huge,” he said.
“I do want more people to listen to my music because I believe in my music.
“I believe in the message, I believe it can bring healing to others, not because I write great or whatever, but I’ve heard people like that say they have received a lot of healing from it.
“So my hope is that it gets into the hands of people who need to hear it, need to be blessed by it, and kind of take it one year at a time.”
Joe Zambon’s music is available on his website: www.joezambonmusic.com
