Mark Lowry is 'retreading,' but not retiring

• Tickets for Mark Lowry's 7 p.m. show at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre are $18-$35 and are available through ticketmaster.com or the MPAC box office. Call 334-481-5100 for more information.

You may know him from singing and performing with the Gaithers, or from his stories and witnessing the gospel, or from his humor and his music. He’s also the author of the hugely-successful Christian song “Mary Did You Know?”

"‘Mary Did You Know’ has even been done in a disco version,” said Mark Lowry. "And when I heard it, I thanked God because you could understand every word. It played in bars and dance halls and discos all over the world one Christmas."

That song is one of Lowry’s tools, and he’s got a lot of them. They’re tools of faith, each of which is tied together by a single thread of Christian truth that he said is more important than anything else.

"My one goal, my one thread that runs through everything i’ve done, whether it be write books, write songs, tell stories, write children’s books. What else have I done? A podcast. An interview with you. I’m not saying this to sound righteous or anything, but the thread is that a man rose from the dead,” said Lowry. "That is the thing that I’m trying to convince or persuade or cause the world to believe, that a man rose from the dead. If I can do that, I’ve done my job."

Lowry is coming to Montgomery for a 7 p.m. show on Feb. 25 at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre. He’s bringing piano player Stan Whitmire and country and gospel recording artist Chris Golden. “I’ve not worked with (Golden) before, so that’s going to be fun,” said Lowry.

Lowry said he can’t wait to see all his River Region fans. And if they want to see him in person, 2017 is probably the year do do it. As of next year, Lowry is slowing down on live appearances. "I’m not retiring, but I’m retreading,” said Lowry. "I won’t be touring anymore. I’ll just be doing spot dates here and there. I’m going to be slowing down.”

But before that happens, he’s got a year of amazing events already booked. He said the MPAC performance will be like an evening with Mark Lowry.

“It gives me more time to pontificate and run down rabbit trails,” he said. "My concerts are like an ADHD rabbit trail. I know what the first song is going to be, and I know what the last song is going to be. But no telling what’s going to happen in between, which keeps it fun for me. It’s not the same program every night.”

Lowry recently talked with the Montgomery Advertiser about his career, his humor and what’s next for him.

What was it like working with the Gaithers, and do you still get a chance to meet up once in a while?

“Oh, yes... You know, I left the Gaither Vocal Band. I was with the Gaither Vocal Band for about 30 years. I’m not in the vocal band anymore, mainly because I can’t keep up with Bill (Gaither). Even though he’s 80, his schedule is wide open. I was ready to slow down and do what I wanted to do, and talk about what I wanted to talk about. Tell stories and sing songs that I wanted to sing. But still, I’m with them at Family Fest every year. I go on their Christmas tour. I’m doing the Alaska cruise with them. When you leave the vocal band, you never leave the homecoming family. It’s like a big, big family. Everybody on those videos that you see, we really feel like it’s a group. We’re in a special club, because we all love each other. We support each other. It’s a good family to be a part of.”

I’ve watched a lot of your acts on your videos. You’ve talked about your health a lot through the years, from the motorcycle wreck and other things. 

“I wouldn’t call that health problems. I’d call that accidental stupid problems. My health is great. If I could just keep from breaking bones, I would have had a perfectly healthy life. Except I’ve had a couple of tumors. I guess that kind of counteracts what I just said. But they were when I was younger, and they were benign. I just look at them as little adventures along the way. Fortunately, my tumors were just little adventures and not catastrophic. But, yeah, the motorcycle wreck. I told a story years ago called ‘Pivot on Your Good Foot,’ which is a story about when I broke 11 bones in a van wreck when I was 19 in college. I got a good 20 minutes out of that. And then I got about 20 minutes out of the motorcycle wreck. I told myself when I was going down on the motorcycle head first without a helmet, I told myself two things - this is going to hurt and stay awake. Stay awake, because I hate to miss anything. If I’m unconscious, I’m going to miss the story. I stayed awake through it all, and I got a great story. I asked God recently, please give me some new material that doesn’t hurt.”

How’s the “Dogs go to Heaven” CD/DVD release going? 

"I think it’s going real well. It’s basically the tour that I did with the Martins. They’re amazing too. Another family trio. It’s the tour that we’ve done for a couple of years. We made a video of it, and we added that dogs go to heaven clip. And then the record company wanted to name the whole thing that because that clip got like 5.1 million views. And that was something just to kill some time at the Dove awards. I did that, and it went viral. Somebody posted on my Facebook page that dogs go to heaven, and said Psalm 36:6. And so I had to go look that up. (Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.) From that scripture, I wrote that monologue.”

Unlike a lot of celebrities who hire people to do their social media, you’re doing your own Facebook posts now, right? 

“Oh, yeah. I’ve only been on Facebook (@markalanlowry) for three or four years. I’m not sure. But I remember when Hugh Phillips, my road manager and assistant and right-hand man in my ministry and all. He is younger, of course. He knows Facebook. And I didn’t want to know any more people. I’m 58. I already know too many people. I can’t keep up with all the people I already know. Why would I want to get on a social media thing and meet more people that you cannot keep up with? You understand what I’m saying? And so, I didn’t understand it. He got me on there, and then I started realizing that I could think of something in the shower, because that’s when the Lord and I talk the most, and run out, get on Facebook, say whatever I thought of in the shower, and within minutes people are saying, ‘Oh, I needed that.’ ‘Oh, my goodness. That was something that I needed to hear today.’ I thought, oh, I see what this is. This is another great tool to where you can reach people instantly. And I love that. I’m ADD. I love instantaneous gratification. And every ADHD kid does. This is just another thing God placed in my life. Now I’ve got 300-and-something thousand people who potentially can hear whatever I’m wanting to say that day. I don’t abuse it. I think you can abuse it. I try every day to say something if I think it’s worth saying or showing or whatever.”

I saw where you announced that you weren’t retiring, but you were “retreading” your career. Tell me a little about what you’re planning. 

“I’ve been good about saving my money and making sure that I’m not a burden to anybody. I don’t have any children, so I don’t want to end up penniless. Through the years I’ve put money aside. So I asked my financial planner, ‘When can I retire?’ And he said, ‘Well, you could start today.’ And I thought, well, why not? But I have a year of bookings, so I’m going to fulfill those. And then at the end of the year, I’m not going to retire, because you never retire. What I’m going to do is start living off of that… I’m going to sell the bus, sell the sound systems. Get rid of all that overhead. And then if I want to go do Jeff and Sheri (Easter’s) Homecoming, I’ll just get in a plane and go do it. Not because they’re paying me, but because I want to go do it. If someone still wants to hire me, they can still book me through my booking agent. But instead of coming in with a bus and a crew, it’ll be me and my iPad under my arm, and I’ll be on the fly. You know what I mean? It’s just going to be a scaled down version. It’s just going to be back to me, I guess. Really, this is the first time I’ve heard me talk this through, because you’re really the first person to ask me. I don’t know what is going to evolve. I’ve done this before. I did it when I was 40, when I left the vocal band the first time. I thought I was done then. I thought, you know I’ve told the gospel every which way I know to tell it. If you need to hear it again, put in a video. If I come see you, I’m going to be saying the same thing that’s on that video, but not the same way. And so I went away for two years and lived on a houseboat, when I was 40. During that time, God started teaching me new stuff. I started reading books and living my life, like I normally do. Running across people who know stuff about God that I didn’t. I’ll take their thoughts and roll them over in my brain, and then spit them back out in a story from my life or whatever. Basically, this is not a retirement, but it is a retreadment. I’m going to slow down a minute. I’m going to be doing a video podcast called ‘Dinner Conversations with Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer.’ Andrew Greer is a young contemporary Christian artist that sees life from a younger, different vantage point. And we’re going to have guests, and we’re going to eat dinner, because that’s where the best conversations happen. We’ve already shot some of those. It’ll be released in the fall. I’m going to be doing that, talking about things that are funny, things that are important, things that we don’t get to talk about in concerts. And then I don’t know what else I might be doing. I might go be a Walmart greeter."

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Tickets for Mark Lowry's 7 p.m. show at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre are $18-$35 and are available through ticketmaster.com or the MPAC box office. Call 334-481-5100 for more information.