Recorded by Phillips Craig & Dean and then later on by Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. The story behind this song will always be one of my favorites. In 1997, Phillips, Craig and Dean were looking for songs for the “Where Strength Begins” project and called Don Koch and me to talk about some ideas. Shawn Craig described a picture in his mind of a boy who had lived his whole life on an island with a wall around it. He said one morning the boy went to where the wall was only to see it gone. He said, "I picture him standing there at the edge of the water and lifting his hands and saying, So this is how it feels to be free.” He asked if I had any ideas how to start a song like that.

 

He could not have known I had written a verse several years earlier but was having trouble knowing where to go with it. I said, “What about this?” “There’s a wall that has been standing since the day that Adam Fell. Sin is where it started; sin is why it held. Speaking as a prisoner… etc. His jaw about hit the floor, and it was the only time in my life someone thought I was brilliant. I let it lay there for a few minutes before I told him it had been written long before that morning. The entire first verse was recorded without changing a word.

 

Even though the song is 20 years old, it was just recently someone sent me a link to a video clip of Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir singing this song inside a prison. It wasted me, amazed at how words I had helped write took on a completely new depth of meaning.

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https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/this-is-how-it-feels-to-be-free/716629544?i=716629627