Who is Justin Jarvis of Jesus Culture

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At first glance, Justin is somewhat of a quiet person.

He’s nice, genuine, and always down for a laugh. But after a few days of hanging out, it was clear that there was a mountain of psalm-like thoughts churning inside. And all it took was a delicious cup of coffee to let all those thoughts loose.

Surprising notes? He’s a self-described foodie and Dave Matthews Band fan, even though he hasn’t listened to them in years. (Who isn’t though?)

Justin! Tell us a bit about where you are right now.
I’m in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I’ve been here going on 12 years. I’m originally from Birmingham, AL. I was born in Texas, but I moved to Birmingham when I was pretty young. I grew up there, went to high school, went to college there.* And right before I left, I was involved with a church plant there where I met most of the guys that I work with now. Two years into that, we moved down to Ft. Lauderdale to plant a church. That’s what brought me down there. I’ve been overseeing the worship and creative stuff here at the Harbour Church.

Did you grow up in a Christian household or were you sort of left to your own devices to figure out your own path?
Yeah, I grew up in a christian home. My parents didn’t grow up going to church but they had grandparents that were strong believers. And so when they started having kids, their grandparents on both sides started chiming in, “You gotta get those boys in church!” I don’t even know if they knew Jesus or not at that point! But they said, “Yeah! We should get our boys in church!” So we just started going and never stopped. I was probably 4 or 5, and I don’t remember a time when we weren’t there consistently.

Did you also do the whole Christian school thing as well?
No, I went to a public school growing up outside of Birmingham. It was an awesome environment, and arts at our school were huge. It was really well funded and well supported by the community. So it was cool – it was a public school – but probably closer to a private school.

Is that where you decided to pick up music? Did you do any sports at all?
Yeah! I ran track year round. I would do cross country in the fall. I was involved in a lot. And I sang growing up all during elementary school, middle school, and high school. I was in all sorts of choirs and singing groups.

You were one of those choir guys!
Yeah! It’s kind of funny because at our high school, we were involved in a lot of midwest choir competitions- where show choir and choir are similar to football in the south. There’s a whole sub-culture of people that are stoked on it. We would do huge competitions out there and stuff. All the singing I did in school was full of great experiences – I miss it a lot sometimes. I totally loved singing chorus with large numbers of people. (Justin pleads: “Don’t use this stuff, Darren!”)

But yeah, I grew up singing. When I was a freshman in highschool I got my first guitar, and that’s when I started to play.

Was it around this time you thought about playing worship songs too?
I hit freshman year, and I got a guitar. But I had just never payed attention to any sort of music up to that point. So I started listening and got into stuff like Dave Matthews Band, Counting Crows and Pearl Jam. They had just released their first records. So really before I ever started making music in the church, I was getting inspired by those guys.

I felt such emotion in what they were doing and a real depth in some of their lyrics. And actually with those first two in particular, I got really into collecting their live shows. And I would listen back to these recordings, and I was fascinated by them because they would take their hit songs and they would change them when they played them live! They would do spontaneous intros or outros or bridges in the middle of the song where they’d be making up stuff. That paired with the lyrics and emotive arrangements, and it just kind of hooked me. It grabbed me somewhere inside and never really let go, ya know?

And my first push in music was just falling in love with that stuff and learning how to play it – and that pushed me into songwriting really quick. It was pretty amazing to me that these guys could write songs with such depth and emotion, and at the same time they could play them live but in a creative and unhinged way. And that whole jam band thing was pretty big back then.

For me though, it wasn’t that whole genre, but just a few specific artists that grabbed me early on and were really a part of me building that foundation of a love for deep lyrics, emotive music, and the spontaneous.

I learned to play guitar on DMB’s first three records so I was kind of a nerd at learning their stuff. It’s kind of sad though because I haven’t listened to those albums in a really long time! And in college, I found bands like Coldplay, Radiohead and U2 and eventually I just moved on. Those bands got me more hungry for a sound that moves people. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was a shift in my love for music. Early on, I was playing all of that stuff and just trying to emulate the things I was hearing that I loved. And I think in a lot of ways, that’s how I learned to write songs.