My name is Olly Knight, I’m a worship leader and songwriter based in Canterbury, Kent. Lockdown started in March and all my music work at conferences and photography work just vanished.
I started worshipping, singing and writing songs like never before! I’d write a new song pretty much every day.
At the same time I also started something on Facebook Live called “Come and Sing with me” I’d lead worship on weekday mornings and many people were gathering to worship online with me. Lots of people gave to me and my family to support us financially through the lockdown too.
At this same time my friends Jonny, Steve and Tom had lost all their work in the music industry because of the pandemic and I wanted to bless my friends as I’d been blessed myself. I decided to record an album of the songs I’d written in lockdown and employ the three of them to work on the album with me. We launched a Kickstarter campaign for people to pledge money towards the album. We set a target of 30 days to raise £4500. Within 14 hours we’d reached that target! I said if we got to £10,000 by the end of the 30 days I’d do an Irish dance on Facebook Live (thinking we’d never make it to that target) It turns out we got to £10,300… (I was sore for a few days afterwards). We recorded and mixed the album in June, got it mastered in July and then on 14th August 2020 “You Hold the World / Lockdown LP” was released to the world!
One of the hardest things during lockdown has been not being able to gather to sing together with other believers. There are a couple of songs on the album that center around this theme. My prayer is that God would minister to people through these songs and despite us not being able to meet together to sing HIS CHURCH WOULD STILL BE SINGING in their homes.
One of the things I’ve been wanting to sing about a lot and it comes up again and again on the album is the return of Jesus and how our hope is in Him returning to remake the earth and that we’ll dwell with him forever free from disease, sin and sadness. My prayer is that people who don’t know Jesus would hear the album, desire that future hope that Jesus offers and begin a journey of following Him!
This album has been an amazing adventure! I hope it encourages you as you listen to it!
-Olly Knight