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The MxU Podcast. Hosted by Jeff Sandstrom, Spencer De Young, and other special guests. Join in on conversations about audio, lighting, life, concerts, and interviews with the industry’s best.
Well, hey, everybody. I'm Jeff Sandstrom, host of the MXU podcast, and I'm here today with Spencer De Young, the CEO of MXU.
Spencer De Young:Hey, y'all.
Jeff Sandstrom:You guys have not seen Spencer probably before unless you've been to one of our live events, but you'll notice that things look a little different around here.
Spencer De Young:Mhmm.
Jeff Sandstrom:We have changed up the format and the look and the feel of the MXU podcast.
Spencer De Young:But why?
Jeff Sandstrom:Well, we wanted to take a few minutes today to explain why. Yeah. We've been doing our podcast the same way for a long time, 160 some episodes over the course of 7 years now. 7 years. And, we're just realizing that it's time for a change.
Jeff Sandstrom:A lot of people like interacting with podcasts that are video based on YouTube Yeah. And other places. And so we just decided we're gonna try to come to you kinda live in person so that we can have conversations around the table Yeah. With our guests in a more maybe compelling way than before because the video aspect actually is pretty important. I think, you know, to see real time facial reactions, to kinda get some of the sort of off the cuff responses from people, I think it's just it's gonna be fun.
Jeff Sandstrom:So
Spencer De Young:And it's an excuse to get you over to Knoxville.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. So I'm obligating myself to be here pretty often. You'll notice, though, that Jay is not here today. That is not Called in sick. He called in sick.
Jeff Sandstrom:We were we were all excited to have Jay here in person, and he woke up this morning before his travels were supposed to start, and he was ill in bed. So wonder
Spencer De Young:where he'll where he will go with the airline miles from that flight.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. Well
Spencer De Young:This was all just a a scheme of his.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. He'll definitely use them. He he has airline miles schemes out the wazoo. But, anyway, welcome. You know, we're glad that you're engaging with us in this, and we just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about kinda how we're pivoting a little bit on the podcast with, you know, new segments and new ideas, and we wanna get some ideas from you too.
Jeff Sandstrom:So today is just an opportunity for us to introduce where we're headed
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And to kind of talk about MXU in general.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. A bit of a state of the union Yeah. Which yeah. We're really excited. And the hope is that Jay will be able to come up as much as we can convince him to, at least.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. I don't think Atlanta's all that far of a drive.
Jeff Sandstrom:But It's not. Well and he has, I know he has, certain tastes and proclivities that we might be able to tempt him with. So he could maybe be enticed to, to make the drive. You know?
Spencer De Young:Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:I will Not just Buc ee's beef jerky, but there may be other things that would entice Jay to be here more often.
Spencer De Young:I feel like that guy, he doesn't go anywhere unless it's by plane these days, though. So Well,
Jeff Sandstrom:he is a little bit of a snob when it comes to travel. Yeah. But he's got that great Jeep, like, come on.
Spencer De Young:Out from you.
Jeff Sandstrom:Come on now.
Jeff Sandstrom:I've earned it. I'm old. You've earned it. Yeah. That's right.
Jeff Sandstrom:But he's got that great vehicle. It's like, I'd wanna be driving that thing all the time. Especially up here in the mountains, he could come and off road and get the Jeep dirty and then do a podcast and drive home. It'd be fun.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. For sure. So, yeah, we'll we'll hopefully, with the help of the community, we can, get Jay up here as much as possible. So we'll make sure we we, make that happen.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:And then, Jeff, let's talk about the the video and the lighting podcast.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:There's been a few episodes, so we wanna address that. Yeah. Let's move on to that.
Jeff Sandstrom:So we had about a dozen of each, you know, video focused episodes and lighting focused episodes. And we've decided that, you know, since we're changing this format, we're gonna have our lighting and video friends come and talk to us in person Yeah. About, like especially if we're filming content here at HQ around video or lighting, we're gonna take those days Yep. And take a chunk out of that, you know, when we have people here in person Yeah. To just talk to you in person on the podcast.
Jeff Sandstrom:So, you know, people like Jeremy Bagwell and Jeremy Lamory and, you know, Alec Takahashi and some of our other lighting friends, like, they're gonna be here filming content in the next few weeks. Yeah. So why not leverage that opportunity, bring all the podcast ideas under one umbrella? Yeah. And so if you're looking for episodes in those other channels, you know, they'll still be there.
Jeff Sandstrom:The existing episodes aren't going away, but any new content will show up here on the MXU podcast because we're just covering all aspects of production and leadership and trash talk and friendship and all that under one umbrella.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. Filmed right here in Knoxville. I think we our team realized, you know, we're filming just about every week now
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:Content for the platform. So we have all these amazing people coming through, and we felt like, man, we need to take advantage of the opportunity of being in the same place together.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:And, yeah. So it's it's gonna be a exciting season ahead bringing all those folks into one place. And I think audio guys will learn from video guys and vice versa, and we'll be good.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. It's great. You know, another big change for us this year has been our approach to live events.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:You know, last year and the couple years before that, we had big live in person events that were starting to feel like, you know, a conference for production teams. Last year, that's what we did, and it was awesome. Like, we loved having production teams, worship and production, in the room together, learning and getting better. Because, really, you know, getting better together is what MXU has always been about. Yep.
Jeff Sandstrom:But this year, we changed the format up a little bit. Now anybody who's listened to the podcast lately knows that we've pivoted, and we moved to what we're calling MXU pop ups this year.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:We're hosting 6 of those throughout the year. We've done 2. We've got 4 more to go, and we're super excited about what the response to that has been. But let's talk for a minute about just live events in general and kind of why we made the shift and
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:How it's been.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. You know that we get asked this a lot, because our events have changed so much back from when you and Andrew and Lee first started the events.
Jeff Sandstrom:And Yeah. It was 20 2016.
Spencer De Young:2016 was the first one. And my answer to folks is always, hey. We kinda take it year by year. Yep. We we are, at the highest level, most interested in doing what is helpful to the community.
Spencer De Young:And, therefore, every year, we we try to gain as much feedback as we can from the local church of, man, what do you feel like you're missing? And headed into this year, we just recognize, man, there's some great conferences out there, Philo, Salt, and some other ones that are specifically for the church production community.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:And as we are talking more with folks, they're saying, man, we come to these events because we just wanna wanna get to meet new people, wanna wanna connect with folks. And so we felt like going into 2,024, put together an event where we can do that, hang out, and, still talk shop over what we're facing in the ministry, but, also, let's go to a Topgolf and hang out together. Yeah. So yeah. We'll, we'll address that as as, we approach 2025.
Spencer De Young:We'll address that that this fall. And there's, any feedback the community has as far as, man, come to our city. We wanna do this event or that, or we really wanna hear this or see this. Please share. Like, we we take that, feedback.
Spencer De Young:Yeah, we it means a ton to us, frankly. Yeah. And and it's kinda how we make our decisions around here.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. You and the team here talk to churches every day. Yep. Literally, you're on calls
Spencer De Young:Yep.
Jeff Sandstrom:All day every day Mhmm. Just getting feedback from churches, not only about what they need from the MXU platform
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:But what they need for their team and their leadership and their community. So these events have really been designed around building community among local churches in a particular area. So we're going to 6 distinct cities that we've never really been before.
Spencer De Young:Mhmm.
Jeff Sandstrom:For the exception of Dallas, we've never been to Columbus, Ohio. We've never been to Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. We've never been to Seattle.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. You
Jeff Sandstrom:know? So that's just a few examples of some of the places we're headed this year just to try to connect people in those local churches
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:In a way to kinda come together and network and learn from each other, learn from our partners who are subject matter experts. You know? So we're talking about things that are technical, but we're not sitting in front of a console learning how to twist the knob.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. We
Jeff Sandstrom:have a video library of almost a 1000 videos
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:To teach you how to turn the knob. And we're really proud of that product. So it's like, hey, let's let's leverage that resource for the tactical, practical mixing and switching and focus and all those things. When we're together in person, I think it's important to just learn, hey. How are you celebrating your volunteers?
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:What are you doing to engage new people? Yep. How are you having hard conversations with leadership? Like, what does your budget process look like? I mean, there's a ton of opportunity to learn from each other Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:As we try to become better leaders Mhmm. As well as better technicians. Yeah. That's what MXU has always been about. Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:I think it's just been sort of behind this idea that we're just about technical training. Mhmm. Now we love technical training, but we want to be helpful in so many other ways as well.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. Man, that's really good. And that's what I mean, personally, that's what we want.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. Exactly.
Spencer De Young:And and that's what's been cool going into these pop up events is and it's energizing for us. It's one of those things we can go into and and be able to look forward to the time we get to spend with folks and go, you know, a mile deep versus, you know, mile wide and an inch deep Yeah. Which sometimes it can feel like when you show up to an event where there's a 1,000 people.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:So that's why we've capped these events at a 100 attendees. We're trying to keep it small and intimate Yep. In a place where we can, build deep relationships.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. There's a ton of time during the day for conversation around tables, a ton of time for q and a.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:So we really feel like it's a chance for people to, like you say, go deeper instead of just wider. Yeah. You know, I think when you're sitting in a a workshop or a technical training and somebody's just demonstrating a skill, whether it was, you know, us talking about mixing over the years or whether it's somebody going through a PowerPoint presentation on, you know, whatever workflow, I think there's a just a a layer of disengagement sometimes because, you know, if you've got 500 people in the room, it's really hard for somebody to raise their hand and ask a specific question
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:Without interrupting the whole flow.
Spencer De Young:Yep.
Jeff Sandstrom:Well, here, we're around tables with 8 people. Mhmm. And we can actually dig in for 20, 25, 30 minutes sometimes
Spencer De Young:Yep.
Jeff Sandstrom:Talking about real specific problems Yeah. You know, real specific issues. And people can get real help, which is great. We've seen Yeah. You know, we've seen young people who've shown up to these things.
Jeff Sandstrom:I remember I'll never forget Sam from a couple of weeks ago.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:This 12 year old church volunteer who is just soaking everything up like a sponge, asking great questions, so curious. It's like, man, we we never would have known about somebody like him
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:If he were just sitting at the back at one of our large events.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. And it was his, his student pastor that took him Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:To the event Yeah.
Spencer De Young:Which was pretty cool. Yeah. So, yeah. Go wait. We've got 4 pop ups left.
Spencer De Young:Go check them out on, the website getmxu.com. Get your ticket. They're selling out fast. But the next one is in Columbus. Yeah.
Spencer De Young:So, yeah, we're pumped. Alright. So, Jeff, there's a a a pretty big topic we need to talk about that we've got a lot of questions about over the past year. Lee Fields
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:Has, one of our founders, has not been on the podcast for over a year now.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:And, yeah, it's it's been a a year that we'd love to to give you some insight on that we can hopefully provide some clarity to the community, and then also provide clarity on how we wanna move forward. So, yeah, let's let's if you could provide some insight into Sure. To that situation.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. So, Lee has decided to sell his interest in MXU and move on to pursue other things. You know, he's still mixing and, you know, doing a lot of great work. I think, you know, one of the things that's most important to me is that we acknowledge the fact that Lee is a huge part of why we're even here.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:I mean, my partnership with him, my friendship with him, and Andrew over the years, you know, we really launched into this to figure out how we could challenge each other to get better. Yeah. And I think, you know, nobody in my professional life did that for me better than those 2 guys. Yeah. Like, I was I became a better engineer and just a a better, I think, musician even
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:Because of the way, you know, their friendship and their, you know, iron sharpening iron in terms of how we do what we do shaped how I approach mixing. So I am forever grateful. And I think, you know, this community would not be what it is without Lee's influence in a lot of ways. Yeah. So so as he's moving on, you know, I think we just wanna honor Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:You know, his contribution and the legacy that he's kind of contributed to this community. Yep. And, I wish him nothing but the best.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. Yeah. That's ultimately the the the desire the the true desire for us in, addressing this is, again, so many questions have come up. And and over over the past year, as as as you could imagine, a a sale of lease portion of MXU takes time and figuring all that out that our our true desires to to honor him in this moment.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. So for anybody who's wondering, like, why didn't you say something sooner and all that Yeah. We weren't able to. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:We were trying to figure out, you know, legally how the agreement was gonna go and what everybody's role was gonna be and so we're just trying to protect, you know, the integrity of the process. Yep. So now that we're through the process, we can acknowledge it Yeah. And, you know, we're celebrating where we're headed. Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:I wanna celebrate him and his contribution
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And we're gonna move on in great ways.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. Yeah. And it's you know, you had you had mentioned, you know, MXU wouldn't be here without Leaf Fields. And it and it'd be it's very personal too, man. Because even for myself, I wouldn't be here.
Spencer De Young:My family wouldn't be in Knoxville, Tennessee. We wouldn't be here at MXU without Lee Fields. I look back to, man, it was, I think, 13, 14 years ago that I first met Lee. I'll I'll never forget. I was scared to death.
Spencer De Young:I was playing drums at our church at Bayside in in Granite Bay, in California. And Lee was good buddies with my brother, Tyler, who's the worship leader at our church. And, so I I'd known a little bit about Lee, but I remember drumming and just being terrified. It was after, our first service, Lee came up to me, looked at me in the eyes, and just shook my hand and said thank you. And I'll never forget that moment.
Spencer De Young:It was funny. I was And
Jeff Sandstrom:you were, like, 12.
Spencer De Young:Oh, yeah. I was yeah. I was
Spencer De Young:yeah, I had had to change my pants after that moment. But all I have to say, I, I went on our Instagram. It was, it was earlier this morning. I gotta find it because it it really hit me. We posted this a few years back, and it was a quote that actually, Lee had posted on Instagram.
Spencer De Young:The first time we greet the band should be with a handshake, not a talk back mic.
Jeff Sandstrom:Man.
Spencer De Young:And so it was really interesting because I was like, he meant it. He did that with me. Yeah. That's so cool. And anything I've ever anything I know today about audio was from my time atuing with Lee and and spending time with him.
Spencer De Young:And and so, yeah, there's so many so many reasons, not just for MXU and what we've been able to do for the community through MXU, but just even me personally that I'm Yeah. Really grateful.
Jeff Sandstrom:It's funny.
Jeff Sandstrom:I met Lee for the first time about it was 10, 11 years ago. Yeah. And, I was mixing at a Chris Tomlin concert. I I don't remember exactly where it was, but it was some conference. Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And we were in the middle of it, and I looked back, and Lee was standing behind me. You know, I didn't know that he was there. And Did you know
Spencer De Young:but you didn't know him at that time?
Jeff Sandstrom:I knew of him, but we hadn't really gotten to know each other yet. Yeah. And, it was as as you were talking about your experience, I'm thinking back. And, you know, I remember during the set looking back and he was just like, if you could get Lee bobbing his head along with what you were doing, you knew it was a good mix. Something right.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. And so then that led to really getting to know each other and, you know, us connecting with Andrew and really just in our effort you you guys have heard the story before, but in our effort to challenge each other to find a way to get better, you know, I was touring. They were both managing big teams at big churches. We didn't have a way to kind of get in a room together and talk about mixing. So we decided to do that and that's where MXU was born.
Jeff Sandstrom:And so, you know, I'm just I'm so grateful
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:For the time and the friendship and the partnership over the years.
Spencer De Young:So Yeah. And I know the community is grateful as well, and I I I wouldn't, shy away from letting Lee know that as well as he moves forward.
Jeff Sandstrom:You know, we might need to just do a little kind of walk down memory lane.
Spencer De Young:I'm down.
Jeff Sandstrom:Instead of just telling stories, I think, you know, for those of you who are MXU subscribers, obviously, you see Lee in dozens and dozens and dozens of videos. Yeah. But there's a couple of kind of highlights that I've been thinking about lately Yeah. That I thought we just might wanna revisit. So you remember the wing?
Spencer De Young:Yeah. It was didn't we may we basically I don't know if we made him, but, I maybe maybe Lee drew the short straw in filming a course on the wing.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. It was when it first came out. Yeah.
Spencer De Young:And
Jeff Sandstrom:we got a hold of 1, and it was when MXU was still based in California. Yep. So this was in our office
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:At the old MXU HQ, which, you know, you'll see our this video looks a lot different than our current product.
Spencer De Young:Looks a lot different.
Jeff Sandstrom:Lee took on the challenge of building a mix on the wing and was honest about how he felt about it, which was great. So let's take a look and see what what that had to offer. Yeah.
Lee Fields:Okay. That's about it. You know, I'm pretty happy with that overall. There's a couple things I'd go back. Like, that the keys were a little hot.
Lee Fields:Snare's probably a little loud. Maybe that vocal's a little too loud, but overall, I'm pretty happy. The console's got loads of features. Once you start mixing, it can make mixing on the console pretty fun. Setting it up is a completely different story.
Lee Fields:It's got, like I said, tons of features, but to get to those features can be a painstaking process sometimes with the console. But it's definitely doing things that no other console is doing. The ability to put the types of plugins that you can right in place of console EQ and console dynamics is pretty great. And, obviously, for the price, this is certainly something that lots of churches should look at and doesn't I
Jeff Sandstrom:love that.
Spencer De Young:I love that.
Jeff Sandstrom:I love it because it's like yeah. It's not terrible.
Spencer De Young:Well and and if if, you're now seeing that for the first time or you weren't with us, I think that was 2021, go on YouTube, and then you'll find the the great YouTube duel between you and Lee and Jake Gosselin.
Jeff Sandstrom:That's right. The church front guys
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:Were they did a review of Lee's review. Yeah. And then that turned into a lot of back and forth. But, actually, the great result was we were actually able to ship that console to Churchfront
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And they gave it away to a church who could really use it because Yeah.
Spencer De Young:Because we didn't know anybody who could. Well and it was it was interesting, because Lee yeah. You should definitely go on YouTube. It's very helpful. Lee, in some ways, kinda crucified the console after the fact, because we had so many issues with it during that shoot.
Spencer De Young:So it it was just a fun it was a fun time. And but I will say that mix is pretty great.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:And the fact that, you know, I think this is a great example of, hey, a console that lead to this day, I would say, he he he loathes. He he does not appreciate the Behringer wing yet can still put together a great mix.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:And I I think there is a lesson in there for a lot of churches. Totally.
Jeff Sandstrom:You know, one of my favorite moments was when we did the whole series of Lee, your mix sucks.
Spencer De Young:Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:Well, because he basically came to us and said, you know, I've really been struggling. I feel like my mix has drifted over the years. So this was a long process. It was during COVID.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And I think there's a lesson there too. Right? In the middle of COVID, we're still trying to figure out how do how do I get better? How can I
Spencer De Young:Yeah?
Jeff Sandstrom:How can I kinda reboot, refresh, get back to kind of the basics of what I want my mix identity to be? Yeah. And so we went through this process. I was in Greenville. He was in California.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. So he's mixing over the Internet, cross country, and I'm listening, and we're making comments. So we basically deconstructed his mix from where it was to Yeah. What he really liked from his mix way back in 2012.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And then we created a new version, an update of his sort of baseline starting point for 2021. Yep. And I I think the results are pretty dramatic.
Spencer De Young:Well yeah. And not to mention, we set up in his garage.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:Like, I remember we were having these ideas It
Jeff Sandstrom:was the most COVID of all COVID things.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. And and we were yeah. In in the middle of conversation of how do we pull this off? How do we bring you into that conversation? Where do we film?
Spencer De Young:I think this was before we had had an office yet, and so we're all working from home. It was, well, we could just set up in my garage. And so we brought in a Yamaha desk and put some pipe and drape. That's real church style right there. Get some piper drapes.
Jeff Sandstrom:And You
Spencer De Young:know, put a deer skull in the back, and, let's mix. So, yeah, we should let's check that out.
Lee Fields:K. Make sure the band's all on on this. Okay. I'm a little afraid to hit play, to be honest.
Jeff Sandstrom:So we're going back to 2012?
Lee Fields:2012, and then I'll recall 2020. I wanna make that snare a little more aggressive. It's gonna add a hair that 3 k back in. Little more top end. Little more bottom.
Lee Fields:Sorry, Aaron Padilla. I know you don't like that bottom mic when I turn it up loud. Check it out now. That's better. Feels pretty good.
Lee Fields:It feels better.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. It does. Yeah. We it's funny. We both had the head bob going.
Jeff Sandstrom:It's funny because when you first so you went back to 2012, and it was like, okay. This is cool. Yeah. And then I'm in in ears, of course. And so when you hit the new file, it was like I mean, not like mind blown, but just like everything just kind of came alive in a different way.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yep. It was you know, what we liked about the 2012 was the clarity and the presence of kick, snare, and vocal, particularly. But what it lacked in my now that we're comparing, it lacked some cohesiveness that we have now. It's like the whole mix is one thing now. It's not a bunch of separate pieces working together, but it's like it's one thing working together.
Lee Fields:Yeah. It really is. And even those last adjustments I made to the snare, like, brightening up a little more, that that put it over the top for me.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. Like, if I get a
Lee Fields:snare drum right and I'm happy about it, like Yeah. That's half the mix for me, a snare drum. Track. Absolutely. Yeah.
Lee Fields:And it's a great sounding drum, so that helps.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. That's funny. Well, what I love about that is that it does sound great. Like, it anybody, even a studio engineer would be happy Yeah. With that kind of result.
Jeff Sandstrom:Like, I I think just the desire to continually just find find what's a little better, find what's next. And I you know, there's no denying those drum sounds. Like
Spencer De Young:I, yeah, I I I would dare to say that there are a lot of snare drums out there in church that sound different today because of Leafields. Yeah. Like that, there's a even I was laughing when he was tweaking the snare just a little bit because there's just always something to take it to the next level
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:Especially in the realm of drums, which I would argue is the most fun. So But there's still a lot
Jeff Sandstrom:of snare drums in churches that sound like crap. So go watch it. Getmxu.com. Sign up for free today to get your drums sounding as good as they could be.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. No joke. But, oh my gosh, that I I love I love that video. Okay. So one of my favorite things about Leigh Fields to this day are his hot takes.
Spencer De Young:He is, notorious for having a hot take.
Jeff Sandstrom:And What's funny is we created a segment on the podcast Yeah. Particularly for Lee and Andrew. I contributed a little bit, but for them, the soapbox moments on the MXU podcast were some of the best because they each had an opportunity to just rant about something.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. And I I it was always kind of a joke in the early days of MXU because Lee did a lot of our social media. And so I'd always tell him, like, bro, I love your hot takes. Let's keep keep them coming. But then it'd be, like, after Lee goes home, you know, in the afternoon or whatever.
Spencer De Young:And later that night, I'm on Instagram, and I'm, like, oh, he posted a video. What did he say? And there's that little internal, like, what was he gonna say? But this is one of my favorite moments, and I think he was spot on, of a hot take, Lee. Let's pull up that video, Austin.
Lee Fields:Alright. I've been thinking about something. Churches all over the world have just upgraded video systems. I mean, I'm seeing churches that have didn't even have cameras before, and now all of a sudden, there's a camera guy on stage. He's got the drums.
Lee Fields:They're out of focus. They're in focus. We pan over to the bass guitar player, and then the guitar player in the background comes into focus. He walks over on that side of the stage, then he gets the keyboard player right as soon as he plays the melody on the turnaround. And then another cool shot like that and another one and another one and another one.
Lee Fields:But there's none of the worship leader singing anymore. Isn't the whole point of what we're trying to do to get people to engage in worship and in song and the words that they're singing? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing super cool stuff and have great shots. I I love it. I love so much of it, but I'm seeing too much of it.
Lee Fields:Does anybody else feel like this? We need more shots of the singers just singing the words. Like, help a soccer mom out. What do you guys think?
Spencer De Young:Help a soccer mom out.
Jeff Sandstrom:What I love it is that it sounds like he's throwing shade, but he's talking about really talented camera ops doing great shots. Yes. So it's I love it. It's like spicy Lee at its finest.
Spencer De Young:Oh my gosh. And just the conviction. We don't have enough convicted people, especially in our community of just wanting to make people better.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:Right? And and it's not just for the sake of getting better. It's to help the church. Right. And and so, man, what a there's I mean, if you haven't gone to see him, there's dozens and dozens of moments like that, and I know Lee's still doing that today.
Spencer De Young:And,
Jeff Sandstrom:What what I love is that it just reminds us all that there's a difference between having an opinion about something
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And having a conviction about something. Yeah. Like, I think if we would all just sort of let go of just ranting about our opinions
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:And actually filter some of what we say on social media through the idea of, how can we actually help each other? Yeah. Like, how can this be beneficial? How can this be something that's actually you know, it can be funny. It can be assertive, but it does it can be helpful too.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. Right? It doesn't have to be critical. Yeah. It it comes from a heart of going, man, I really I want this to be better.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. Yeah. And I love that.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. It's really good. So, hopefully, that takes some of you down memory lane. If if some of that's new to to some of the community, encourage you. Man, there's a lot of Leafield's content out there on the MXU platform to go check out.
Spencer De Young:I actually heard Lee might be starting a podcast, which is pretty sweet.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah.
Spencer De Young:So go check out that. And he's still very much so active in the community. I would encourage you to to, get as much knowledge from him as you possibly can as he continues to to help the local church and beyond. So, yeah, we're super excited for him.
Jeff Sandstrom:It's good.
Spencer De Young:Well, hey. With tomorrow, we have a new course dropping on the MSU platform Yeah. From our buddy, Todd Elliott.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. So Todd Elliott from Philo was here a few weeks ago filming some content just around some of the basics of leadership and how to lead a healthy team and how to build into volunteers, and we covered a ton of topics. There are several courses that are dropping over the next little bit about, you know, how to do that. Yeah. So we thought we would kinda tease a little bit of that content today so you can see what's coming tomorrow.
Jeff Sandstrom:So check it out.
Lee Fields:Yeah. Value production in our churches. I mean, you can't look on social media without seeing it's everywhere. I mean, church today, the way church happens, we can't really do it without production. It's unavoidable.
Lee Fields:We need it, and our churches function around it, and so there's really no way to avoid production. The challenge is is that, generally speaking, production has the opportunity to really enhance what's happening from the platform, but it also has the ability to distract from what's happening on the platform. And so we can't just use production however we want, but it needs to be, at the service of what matters to our church. What is what is our church about and how does production play into that? And I think it's so easy to look at what other churches are doing and say, well, we need haze, we need moving lights.
Lee Fields:We need the newest console, the newest line array, the best video cameras, whatever it is. But the reality is we need to look at how is production best utilized by our church and our context. And for a lot of us, it's totally different than what we see, in people's Instagram posts. It's stuff that's very simple, that's basic, that helps, the mission of our church. I often tell people, you know, if your church is all about feeding the poor, not about big productions, maybe the goal is to think about how does production help in our ministry to serving the poor.
Lee Fields:You know, maybe it's more about how do we make the mother's room TV and sound system work best versus, you know, how do we, reach a 110 decibels in our services. And I think it's really important, to have a great idea of what it is that our church is about and then how do we come along side that. I think it's really important to like, if we're gonna bother doing it, let's do it well. Let's not mess around. Let's not, do it halfway, but how can we take the resources that God has entrusted to our local church and, use them, to help support the mission of our church through production in the most excellent way we possibly can.
Lee Fields:I think it's really easy to just want the next biggest thing, the the newest, shiniest piece of gear, but really, I believe that God's calling us to value production in our current situation, the present moment. What do you have now, and how can you use it to best support the mission of your local church?
Jeff Sandstrom:Man, so much wisdom. Good. I think you're really gonna love hearing from Todd through this whole course. I think, you know, that idea though at the end of, you know, using what you have, maximizing the stewardship of that
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:As a means of serving your local church's vision for that local community. I mean Yeah. If we could all just learn that lesson
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:I think we would be maybe more focused and certainly less enamored with what the guy down the street or what the guy on Instagram is doing.
Spencer De Young:Yeah.
Jeff Sandstrom:Because some of that is just you know, it's it's great to be aspirational, but a lot of it is unattainable. And so it it leads to a feeling of being defeated Yeah. When it doesn't really have to. I think he does such a good job of encouraging us in that.
Spencer De Young:Oh, yeah. And and I'd you know, I'm so excited about this course. This is just a snippet of it, but this as a tool to be able to set a kind of a foundation with your production team of, why are we even here? Yeah. You know?
Spencer De Young:It's there's obviously for for all you leaders of production ministry, it's great. A lot of this would be a great reminder, and some of it, there's gonna be new, revelation. But I would say to use this with your team as a a pillar for your team to stand on
Jeff Sandstrom:Yep.
Spencer De Young:I think that's why we're so pumped about it because yeah. Helping, leading a team and being able to set vision and and make sure everyone's on the same page of why we're here can be challenging at times. So Yep. The hope is that this can help in that process as you as you lead your team. So, yeah, we're excited.
Spencer De Young:Check it out tomorrow on the MXU platform. If you're subscribed, it's available right there, and we'll be send sending an email to y'all as well just letting you know. But, yeah, stay tuned. And,
Jeff Sandstrom:Yep. So I think, as we move forward, you know, we're gonna have a couple of other kind of segments that are a part of the MXU podcast coming up. You know, we're gonna like I said earlier, we're gonna have interviews with some of our friends and subject matter experts. What are some other things that we're talking about kinda populating into this?
Spencer De Young:Yeah. Well, we were, our team came up with this idea that, Jeff, you agreed to, so we're holding you to it. But we're gonna actually ask that some of the community send in mixes for Jeff to review, which will be pretty fun.
Jeff Sandstrom:So we did turn down for MXU Yeah. For quite a long time, and we'll still do some of that. So send us your sound complaints. We wanna keep kinda plugging away at those because that's a lot to talk about. But this is gonna be more of like a turn up for MXU.
Spencer De Young:A turn up for MXU. I don't know if that's the official name, but it sounds nice.
Jeff Sandstrom:Well, we'll see. But Yeah. It's a chance for you guys to kind of get some feedback. And Yeah. Hopefully, it'll be helpful and constructive.
Jeff Sandstrom:But we're excited to hear kinda what you're doing, whether it's, you know, for a a broadcast to another part of your church, whether it's just a front of house console recording for just giving yourself feedback or whether it's a broadcast mix that's going out to the web. You know, whatever your level of kind of recording is, we just love to be able to kinda give you some thoughts and encouragement and maybe some tips on how to make it better.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. Yeah. That's gonna be a fun time. We're also, I think we had mentioned earlier as as we have people coming here through Knoxville for, filming for the MXU platform, We'll be bringing them in here and going a little bit deeper into what they talked about here at HQ. So you get a little bit of a sneak peek before before things come out to the MXU platform and maybe have a little more context than you would have prior.
Spencer De Young:So it'd be fun too.
Jeff Sandstrom:It's great. Yeah. We're excited. We've already got kind of our next few episodes planned, so you're gonna hear from a lot of our friends. We've got Phil Bledsoe who's front of house for Sam Hunt.
Jeff Sandstrom:We've got Jeremy Bagwell from Ross and Jeremy Lamory Yeah. From Fox Sports who are also serving in their local churches. So they have kind of a dual context. Right? They've got this high level professional, you know, real world manufacturer experience and then, you know, the needs of what a local church camera op and video director need to know.
Jeff Sandstrom:So I can't wait to hear what they have to share. It's gonna be it's gonna be so good.
Spencer De Young:Yeah. So, stay tuned, but we can't wait to to move forward with you all, and, we'll see you next time.
Jeff Sandstrom:Yeah. Thanks for tuning in.