About the Album

Joseph: A Nashville Tribute To The Prophet

Joseph: A Nashville Tribute is the testimony and spiritual witness of some of Nashville’s finest and most successful musicians about the life and mission of Joseph Smith Jr. It is an album dedicated to those who experienced the humble beginning and subsequent rising of a restored religion.

While serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1989, Jason Deere wrote the song “Lamb to the Slaughter,” [track 19] and thus began a 16-year journey.

Deere returned from his mission in 1990, finished college, and threw himself into the grueling task of carving a place for himself in Nashville’s music scene. His dedication paid off as he is now a distinguished songwriter in the pop, Latin, and country music worlds. Then in 2003, Deere was asked to teach a youth religion (early-morning seminary) class.

 “All of a sudden, I was inspired,” Deere says. “I was reading everything I could about the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith, and the main characters of that time period began to come alive for me.  Then the songs started dropping out of the roof.  I felt a calling from somewhere.”

Eventually Deere teamed up with Dan Truman, pianist for the award-winning country group Diamond Rio, and together they set out to finish what Deere had begun 15 years earlier.

 “This project was motivated by so much more than the other music we have worked on in our careers,” Truman says. “This seemed to matter to us,” Deere adds.

Pulling together an exceptional line-up of musicians including David Osmond, Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband, Dan Cahoon, Mindy Gledhill, Little Big Town’s Jimi Westbrook, and baseball legend Dale Murphy as narrator, Deere and Truman completed recording in 2005. Rootsy, rural, and country, Joseph: A Nashville Tribute uniquely presents the stories of the men and women upon whose shoulders the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was built.   

 “If the Restoration were a statue, we, as members of this Church, know the view from the front very well,” Deere says. “But every once in a while, we come across a person or have an experience that causes us to take a step around the statue and view it from angles never before seen.  And only then does it start to come to life.  My desire for this project has always been for us to see these main characters of the Restoration without judgment, with all due respect, and with the utmost appreciation for their sacrifice and endurance.  When I began to see them this way, I began to love them. This is our purpose. This is our testimony.”