William McDowell: “I’m Just the Vessel”

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog.

Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, William McDowell attended the Queen City’s storied Southern Baptist Church. There, the minister of music made an indelible imprint on the pre-teen’s life.

“When I was there, [Southern Baptist Church] had a college student as its minister of music,” McDowell recalled during an interview with TBGB. “I’ll bet to this day he has no idea that my genuine and deep love for gospel music is because of the choirs he was directing at the church while attending the Cincinnati Conservatory.”

The minster of music? A young Donald Lawrence.

“I have been deeply influenced by some major people in music,” McDowell stated.

In fact, during his formative years, McDowell, himself now a music minister (for The Gathering Place in Destin, Florida), had a Forrest Gump-like ability to be in the right place at the right time.

“When I turned twelve,” McDowell continued, “there was a community choir in our city called the Greater Cincinnati Choral Union, which was part of the Thomas Dorsey Convention. The leader of the group when I was there was Rodney Posey. The worship pastor at the church I attended during my teenage years was Senior Pastor John W. Stevenson. The worship team there did a critically acclaimed project called Nation of Praise in about ’92 or so. That team included Darwin Hobbs, LeAnne Palmore and a bunch of folks who are doing big things now. We were all on the same worship teams together.”

McDowell later moved to Florida and became the music director and a keyboardist for Ron Kenoly. During this time, McDowell started Delivery Room Studios. In the seven years the studio has been in existence, the artist has worked with several Grammy, Stellar, and Dove Award winners, including Israel Houghton and Martha Munizzi. “I’m the owner [of the studio] but I’m really the owner/steward,” McDowell explained. “God has sent the people through. It’s pretty amazing to watch.”

In February 2009, McDowell released As We Worship, a recording of one of his worship services. “I was determined before we ever got [to the service] that I wasn’t going to think about recording that night. I was going to be a worship leader and if we had a good night, we would have a good recording. So I didn’t lead worship for the CD, I led worship for those in the room.  The result was that God showed up and it was captured.”

Distributed by eOne Entertainment Music Company and Light Records, As We Worship is “what it was like to be in the room. It was an encounter with God. The songs are in the order we did them in, there are no changes. The rest is what He’s doing with it.”

The rest includes the album’s current single, “I Give Myself Away,” which has garnered more than one million hits on YouTube. 

McDowell composed the song during “a prayer service at my church. I was on the keyboard, and we began to sing a portion of ‘I Give Myself Away’ that night in response to what God was saying. I spent the evening meditating on what the Lord was saying to us, and what we were declaring as a body, and wrote the majority of the song the next morning.” 

He put “I Give Myself Away” on YouTube before the CD came out, but not for marketing purposes.  He simply wanted those who were unable to attend the live recording to see and hear it. 

“Honestly, I put it up there and forgot about it, and now we’re talking about over a million hits,” McDowell exclaimed.  “I am near speechless.  Some songwriters write a song and think it’s really going to be something.  I almost didn’t record that song!  I had no idea that it would do this. Now to see what’s happening with it is beyond belief. That an ‘in the moment’ song would go from a private song to a church song to an international song is amazing.”

McDowell added, “It still catches me off guard when I go [on YouTube] and read comments like ‘This song changed my life,’ or ‘I can’t stop crying,’ or ‘I watched this all day.’ I feel very inadequate trying to talk about this sovereign move of God because that’s clearly what it is. He’s doing something in the hearts of people that no man could ever do, no songwriter could ever hope for. I’m just the vessel He used to release the song.”

He added that “after I listened to the CD the first time, I thought that if something would happen to me and the Lord called me home, my love for God is captured.”

As far as any future projects, McDowell “has some other things in him,” but for now, “I know my purpose.”

Meanwhile, McDowell and wife LaTae plan to spend some time in the Delivery Room, but not the singer’s studio.  They are expecting their first child this month.