Todd Agnew is a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. He'll get to the point and tell you how it is without apology. He does that partly because of the way God made him, and partly because of his 12 years playing as an indie musician before signing with Ardent Records. His national debut CD, Grace Like Rain, has had wild radio success, but that wasn't even the plan. Rarely will you find anyone who consistently turns nearly every conversation back to a story about God's work in his life, but Agnew is one of those guys. He plays numerous styles of music with quality, sincerity and transparency—traits that marked his comments in our recent interview with him.

How would you describe yourself?

Todd Agnew: I try to be about Jesus Christ and his cross as much as I can. There's not a whole lot about me that's really worth knowing, so I try to be as normal, real, and as transparent as I can be. Part of that is just being who I'm made to be. That's what I want people to encounter; I want them to encounter God in what we do. Sometimes we do that musically, and other times it's just sitting around and hanging out with people before or after a show. I hope that's something that will happen throughout my life—even out of music.

You say you try to be transparent. How?

Agnew: Just be honest about who I am and about what my life's like—especially my mistakes. I just admit, even from the stage, that I struggle. It helps people to think, Okay, you're real. For me, it's about finding out who I am and being that person.

For a long time I thought, The rock star thing is fake, so I'm not going to do that. But what I've learned is that it's not. Some people are legitimately rock stars; that's who God made them to be. They want to fix their hair when they wake up in the morning and put on glasses like Lenny Kravitz, and a British flag jacket, even if they're only going to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. That's just who they are. And for them, that's real.

For me it's not. I just throw on a T-shirt and jeans and go do what I do. That's who I try to be all the time, whether I'm on or off stage.

Can you tell us about a "defining moment" in your life?

Agnew: Sure, and I'm gonna choose one that's different than what you'll probably expect. Because it happened when I was a few days old, when I was given up for adoption. When I was born, my parents just left me at the hospital. So I was just hanging out there in the little tanning bed—basically a kid who would eventually end up going to some orphanage. Not a whole lot of hope or future for me there. But a couple came in and they said, We love you. Not because of anything you've done, and you can't earn it. But we want you to be a part of our family.

That's a huge defining moment for me for two reasons. For one thing, it's because I'm no longer that baby who was born there—that hopeless person without a future or a family. I am an Agnew. I'm a result of that family, I resemble them; their input into my life is who I am. So it's definitely defined who I am. My parents are godly, amazing people, and their choice of taking me into their family formed who I am.

At the same time, as I grew up, it was really easy for me to understand adoption into the body of Christ because I know what it means to not have anything to offer—not to be able to deserve that and just to be adopted because I'm loved.

Did you ever want to know who your biological parents are?

Agnew: I really didn't. I've talked with a lot of people who were adopted, and I've found that's a common thing. But for me, I don't know if it's just the blessing of God, but it never really crossed my mind. The only thing that ever interested me at all was that I know I'm Native American, but I don't know what tribe—and I'm a big heritage guy. So I just loved Indian stuff when I was a kid. I think it would be really cool to find out more about that part of my life and background.

You don't even know the tribe?

Agnew: No. They just said, Hey, you're Native American. All right, see you later.

How did you come up with your musical style?

Agnew: It's definitely a hodge-podge. A smorgasbord, if you will. I grew up listening to all kinds of music sitting in the garage with my dad on Saturdays. We'd listen to NPR, jazz, and classical music. Then I'd listen to pop and rock music with my friends. I'd hit all of the spectrum that way.

I've been fortunate that God's plan was for me to be an independent artist for 12 years before signing with a record company. You just do what you want top do on the independent side, so we just made music that we liked. Over the years it became a little bit of every kind of sound, as long as it was focused on God and what he was doing in our lives. We expressed it in whatever kind of musical style happened to fit for each event.

Fortunately, because it was all my heart and my music, that sort of tied it all together. And people have accepted that about us. We now feel a good amount of freedom with the next record to continue to do it again instead of trying to find a specific marketing plan and to hit a certain group with one main style.

One thing I appreciate about your music is that you take contemporary styles while expressing a love for the traditional.

Agnew: Yeah, that's huge for me. We have a heritage as Christians. You look at the last 15 years of the secular realm, and you see a generation that's lost. They don't have a place anymore. But Christians aren't lost; we're a part of a huge tradition and a heritage that God has placed in the church. Hymns are a part of that.

The heritage of music in the church is deep and it teaches people. I think we should continue to use that and continue to write new stuff too. We can take those old hymns and make them relevant in some way to people now, so they can understand those things again.

Those songs are deep. I mean, I can't write "Amazing Grace." I can't do it. I'm not in the place of my life where that's gonna come out of me. I can't write as well with my soul. I can't write "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," because I'm not there yet. But if I can take them and apply them to me and my generation, then we want to get the chance to do that.

"Grace Like Rain" was very successful on radio. Did that surprise you?

Agnew: Yeah, it was a huge shock for us. When we created that independent CD that later became Grace Like Rain, we were planning on selling 1,000 of them at camp. Then Ardent stepped in and told us they really believed in the project, so that was a huge encouragement. But even then, we were just hoping the song might get on the radio so we'd sell a few thousand so Ardent wouldn't be upset about signing us. That's all we were expecting and hoping for, that God would use this to open more doors to play at more places, to reach more people.

So the shock still hasn't worn off yet?

Agnew: This past year is overwhelming seeing where God has taken us and how he's chosen to use us. I don't know how to make anything like this happen. This has been God putting all of the pieces in place so he could get us into the right places to create the right relationships between us and the people we've been able to meet. That's kept us in check, so God gets all the glory for everything that happens. He gets all of it.

For more about Todd Agnew, visit our artist page for him, where you'll find a review of his hit album, Grace Like Rain. To listen to sound clips and buy Todd's music, visit Christianbook.com.

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