The AudioFeed Special: 5 Answers From Levi Sikes of Former Ruins
A conversation with Levi Sikes of Former Ruins.
The AudioFeed Festival is set to hold in Urbana, Illinois from the 1st to the 4th of July, 2023. AudioFeed Festival debuted in 2013, emerging as the spiritual successor to Cornerstone Festival, which happened for the final time in 2012.
What began with a group of people longing to have something to fill the void left in the absence of Cornerstone has evolved over the last 10 years into a festival with its own identity. This identity is best summarized in our mission statement: Cultivating a cross-ideology community around Jesus and music.
Tickets can be purchased through
the AudioFeed
website. Kids aged 11 and under are free, and on-site camping is included with the price of admission ($100 USD).
Bio: Levi Dylan Sikes, the songwriter behind the Indiana-based project Former Ruins, has been active since 2017, a year after the birth of his first child. “It was a kind of calling toward fatherhood, and the sense that my life was meant to be generative, as it were, that coincided with my efforts to begin writing songs again after pretty much giving up after my junior year of college,” Sikes observes. “Of course, it meant I haven’t been free to pursue music at any cost, which is probably a very good thing,” he adds. Anchored by a deeply-considered Christian vision of life, Sikes’ unvarnished baritone has since drawn listeners into his lyrically-rich world of difficulty, mercy, and wonder. Merging 80s-flavoured guitar and bass lines with polyrhythms and atmospheric textures, Former Ruins songs have been likened by one listener to "hearing Nick Cave and Flannery O'Connor share a conversation in the kitchen."
Building momentum off of a 137% funded Kickstarter campaign in mid-2019, Former Ruins produced the 8-song debut
Large Startling. Shared first with backers in February 2020, it was released widely on March 13, 2020. Indie Vision Music critic Casey Gallenberger wrote in a five-star review of the effort, "Enchanting. It’s a word that sums up only a few truly moving albums; ones that shine lyrically, consist of artisan songcraft and thrive off a powerful emotional response. I won’t mince words – Former Ruins offers all of this and more. These songs are full, emotive, and daringly forward in their lyrical content."
Dealing with themes of memory, encounter, and identity, Sikes carves steep angles into the familiar singer-songwriter genre with a broad palette of textures and instrumentation on his latest effort due this spring,
No Creature is Hidden. Supported by the co-production of Fort Wayne-based instrumentalist John-Michael Sellers, with mixing and mastering by Keith Hartman of Silver Seas Mastering, Former Ruins is poised to offer something both familiar and surprising for listeners. A song cycle as impossible for Sikes to conceive without a Christological vision as it would have been without the instruments themselves,
No Creature is Hidden carries a gravity and takes acrobatic flight in equal parts, stringing itself like a high-tension wire between the intellect and the heart. One cannot help but feel that the album–along with Sikes’ own path as a husband, father, and artist–is going somewhere, and we’re being invited along.
Introduction
Even with the things that you love, it’s possible to experience moments of exhaustion and I can admit that I’ve had quite a few of those over the last two years.
Conversations like this remind me of the reasons I chose to do this in the first place. Levi Sikes is insightful and empathic as he peels back layers of depth that intrigue and inspires in nearly equal measure. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
The Conversation
Q: Hi Levi. Can you share with us what the AudioFeed Festival means to you?
AudioFeed feels like a really special space for alternative artists operating in the Christian space. For one, I am just incredibly grateful to be invited into that space and that my work is welcomed there. Even though my songs and the songs of a good number of the other artists invited at AudioFeed might not naturally live or exist in our typical Sunday morning spaces; my hope is that we don’t position ourselves in a rivalry or at odds with that typical Christian or ‘Sunday morning’ sound.
If I can be honest, I think our common enemy — the devil — really likes to stoke up that rivalrous disposition among different subcultures of Christianity. What I affirm and celebrate about AudioFeed is that we can be more musically weird together and artistically eclectic; and yet, I’m grateful that I still feel very permitted to sing songs of affection to my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ there. I’m thankful that it can show up in conversations and it has.
Last year, I was grateful for a couple of conversations with some fellow performers and some attendees who are earnest in their pursuit of the truth, who is Christ, and pursuing Him as disciples; and yet we listen to music that is not really going to show up on a Sunday morning. I was grateful that there was charitable attitude even in the midst of the relational dynamic and I think that’s what is special about AudioFeed.
My hope and my prayer is that we can create this space that is a little off-the-radar and artistic expression that does not fit the Sunday morning mould, and yet not react with that air of superiority that can sometimes creep into these spaces. I really think our common enemy delights in stoking up divisions around aesthetics when there is a deeper substance we can have a unity around and in the same breath, I am grateful that AudioFeed exists to make some space for the kind of aesthetics I can operate in and other artists too.
Q: As a returning artist, what new experiences in your life and art are you bringing to the 2023 edition and in what ways do you hope your music impacts the folks who attend?
As a returning artist, I bring with me this past year which has seen the release of four songs [
Editor’s note: five at the time of publishing this conversation
] almost to the day that I released the first two singles — Doxology” & “Sparrow Eyes — that will eventually live on this album No Creature Is Hidden which I am at the very last bit of post-production with.I have two songs that I am doing final edits on that will then be mixed and mastered, and the other songs are more or less ready to go. It’s all very exciting and feels like the end of a very protracted and somewhat intense chapter of my life. I had a job transition with my day job this past fall, and I feel like as I’ve attended to the Lord in the midst of that and tried to be a steward of my time in making this album, I feel like the Lord has impressed on my heart the need to do all things well and work heartily as unto the Lord and not by the way of eye-service.
It’s been a little emotionally intense trying to navigate both of those callings, to be faithful to both my music and my day job that supports my family even as I have my eye on the day that — I pray and hope in ways known to the Lord — my music, my art and this calling to evangelize through my art can become what supports my family so I can devote more of my daytime to that and not burn the candle on both ends nor struggle with that as I have been.
I feel refreshed and I’m looking forward to bringing the fruit of this year and a half; I will have an album in my hands at AudioFeed and that will feel like a good close of one chapter and an opening of things yet to be revealed to me. Also, a month before AudioFeed, I will welcome my first son. We have three daughters and are all excited to welcome this precious baby boy and I see the deadline for this album grow right before my eyes every day.
We are about 8 weeks away [
Editor’s note: at the time of this conversation
] from his entry into this world and we are praying for a safe healthy birth. That said, I feel like it’s time to finish up this album and get it out there because I need to be present with my family in a very hands-on way in the coming month.As for the impact my set has with listeners at AudioFeed, I hope it prompts us to pray. I’m not trying to pump anybody up, be antagonistic nor provocative yet I can’t really think of any better outcome from sharing my songs and my art with any group of listeners than it promoting them to pray and to seek after an encounter with their Creator and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
Q: I’ve been an avid follower of your music for quite some time and I’m looking forward to the new album with a lot of expectation. From the singles released so far, it’s clear to me that this album is moving in a different direction from Large Startling or Fruit of Winter. What are the themes that tie this new project together?
Thank you so much for your encouragement and for following along as I’ve released the first four songs [
Editor’s note: five at the time of publishing this conversation
] of the ten songs that form the full album. The themes that tie it all together began with the title, No Creatures Hidden, which comes from Hebrews 4. The broader context of the Scripture is about the Word of God being a double-edged sword that divides between soul and spirit and joint and marrow and it goes on to say that no creature is hidden from God’s sight but all are naked and exposed before Him to whom we have to do. It comes through in a line in Sparrow Eyes that says, “you see me and you know me and that can be a terrifying thought but you I am as real as a rabbit in a fiery field and my best hope is getting caught.”This theme encompasses recognizing that a mind, sight and eternal love have preceded you. They’re there around the corner, waiting for you to encounter you and it can be startling, terrifying even, especially in those moments of vulnerability when we feel cornered or weak. We enter into the knowledge God already has of us both in our spiritual poverty and the recognition that we are oftentimes directed and enslaved to passions and desires to right reason and truth, beauty and goodness. Yet, we feel captive in them and seen by God in them.
Yet, that sight of God welcomes us into mercy. It really came through in a conversation I had with a friend after college once. He was an atheist and we really developed a friendship. He made the comment once that the thought that there is a God who knows every single thing we think and almost demands to be so intimately acquainted with all our thoughts and actions was the most nauseatingly terrifying thing. It struck me that this thought is my greatest consolation.
He knows me with a knowledge that is more interior to me that I am to myself — that’s kind of a gloss of St. Augustine. But those notions come through in 1 John 4 where it says that whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and He knows everything. I interpret Him being greater as His Word slipping under the locked door of our shame, unforgiveness of others and ourselves and being already there. It behooves me and it’s wise to repent and to enter into life with Him because it is kind of folly to resist the One who knows me best, who has all authority to tell me who I am, who gives me my directives and prescribes to me what my duties are as His beloved creature in this life.
So, this album’s theme is a summon to return to that kind of divine intimacy and to recover some of those dynamics of repentance, trust and living according to our identity as beloved creatures who have been redeemed by His blood. I mean, these are themes — and language — that I feel have been neglected or unspoken in some corners and I think we must return to that vocabulary of faith lest we fall away frankly. That’s my theme for the album and I hope it resonates with listeners.
Q: How significant do you think it is for the Christian music community for festivals like this one to exist?
I think it important for festivals like AudioFeed to exist for the community because there is a breath to artistic expression that I think is very legitimate as a Christian that you can’t really shoehorn into every Sunday morning gathering appropriately and I am completely okay with that fact.
I think there can be a temptation to be embittered about that or think that’s unfair or to criticize that but I don’t see it that way at all. When you consider the early church, they met together for fellowship, the breaking of bread, the apostles’ teaching and the prayers. It wasn’t just some freeform prayers gathering and I’m sure that in the group of those early Christians, there were some potters, probably some dancers and songwriters and I think what bound that community together wasn’t that they all had the same aesthetic or preferences but something so much deeper than that.
I think if festivals like AudioFeed exist, it will allow some of us Christians who are off-the-beaten path when it comes to our aesthetic and things that move us or speak to our souls artistically push that pressure release valve, hang out and be together. As long as we remember, this is not the be-all nor end-all as there are a lot of wonderful people with such good-will who this will be totally lost on, and that is really okay because I’m going to spend everlasting life with a lot of people who this AudioFeed would have never registered with. Yet, I’m grateful that it exists because this kind of expression is a part of my life and it registers with me.
Q: On a final note, can you share a lesson or word from Scripture that has been a source of comfort to you in recent times?
I would point to that Scripture I’ve referenced earlier about working heartily unto the Lord not by way of eye-service or as a people pleaser. I think that combined with recognizing that the only appropriate response to mercy is a total reformation of your character. Wherever that mercy has struck, you will feel the pinch because that is the sword that divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow. You need to allow some of that woundedness by the beauty of mercy to happen and in that enclosure of safety before the Throne of Grace which we approach with confidence — which can be found in Hebrews, a core book of the Bible that has themes embedded in this new album. Within that enclosure of mercy, abandon yourself totally to the Lord and say “not my will but your will be done. Teach me, change me, heal me. My Healer.”
Whatever area of life that you feel ashamed of, the solution is not to simply embrace it or welcome it but bring that to the One who heals us of the origins of our shame which is sin and disobedience — our own sins, the ways we are sinned against and how that wounds us. He also heals us from the effects of shame which can be isolation, distance and self-hatred.
That’s my lesson and I’ve felt that really acutely lately as I’ve felt that woundedness of mercy and it disclosed something about me that I was very uncomfortable with admitting. Yet, I was left with the choice of whether to receive it or not. Receiving it is to renounce self-hatred and to move forward, as it beckons me to amend my life which is not in my own strength. With Christ, I truly can and I’ve experienced an interior and holistic healing of my mind, body, soul, spirit and person. He is a healer of persons.
A big thank you to Levi Sikes for taking out time to answer these questions.
Tickets can be purchased through
the AudioFeed
website. Kids 11 and under are free, and on-site camping is included with the price of admission ($100 USD).
Listen to Former Ruins here:
Apple Music • YouTube • Deezer • Other Links
Connect with Former Ruins here:
Website • Instagram • Facebook
Connect with AudioFeed Festival by following:
Instagram • Twitter • Facebook
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His voice does not sound remotely as I expected