Big Daddy Weave Frontman Talks Importance of Community After Tragedy
By Movieguide® Contributor
Mike Weaver, lead vocalist for the Christian band Big Daddy Weave, joined The Matthew West Podcast to discuss how the body of Christ helped his healing process after his brother, Jay Weaver, died last year.
“That hurt in the way that I can’t even tell you,” Weaver expressed. “My little brother. My ministry partner for more than 20 years. We just thought we had more time with him. He had overcome so many things, and we had seen so many miracles. It left us at this place of ‘I don’t even know how to feel right now. I’m just broken.’”
Movieguide® previously reported, “Jay Weaver of contemporary Christian band Big Daddy Weave died on January 2, 2022, of COVID complications. Jay was 42.”
The singer explained that he didn’t doubt God, but he “just didn’t understand, and when you don’t understand and didn’t see the thing you were really hoping for, I felt like I was just on the floor.”
After his brother’s death, Weaver and the rest of the band went back to tour.
“I didn’t know what to do, but my wife, Candace, said, ‘Well, I know that the brother you want to talk to is not here right now, but you do have other brothers,’” he explained. “I thought about the rest of the brothers in Big Daddy Weave, and I thought after all this time that I never thought to call any one of them because I’d always just call Jay.”
This realization reminded Weaver that he had other family members to lean on during one of the hardest times of his life.
He recalled, “So, I called our guitar player Jeremy, who actually produces all of our records, and I just said, ‘Hey man. I’m just reaching out because I just can’t do this.’ And I just listened, and he just got it, and he just prayed for me. That was the first time I had ever called him for something like that. And it was also the moment that I realized, I’m not alone in this…I do have other brothers…And every night we would go on tour, I’m just falling apart, I’m just dying in front of everybody, but that’s when it dawned on me.”
“The body of Christ is not a token family,” he said. “It’s real family. It’s the real family of God. ‘Cause so many of them went through the same kind of thing we were going through, and it was like we just held each other every night.”
As a way to process this experience, Big Daddy Weave released “Heaven Changes Everything.”
“It’s about perspective,” Weaver explained of the song. “We go through stuff that doesn’t make sense in life. It’s hard, you know, but the idea that this is not all that there is. This is not the end…As believers, the greatest hope that we have is always ahead of us…and that changes how we see stuff today.”
Movieguide® recently reported on Big Daddy Weave’s new track, “Heaven Changes Everything”:
Weaver opened up about this perspective in an Instagram post announcing the song.
“I was at an all-time low after losing my father, my mother, and then my brother Jay, who played bass in Big Daddy Weave,” he wrote. “Then the thought came to me, ‘What is it like for someone who doesn’t know about heaven?’”
“Because we have the hope of heaven, and because Jesus said heaven is right here inside of our hearts, it changes everything about the way we see life now and the way we see life in the future. I love that when I think about heaven, everything shifts and is put into perspective. I’m so thankful that heaven changes everything,” he continued.
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