I thought I'd tell a brief version of how Jesus I come ended up becoming my first single, because it's a kind of cool story.
My dad had been working on a family genealogy and has since published it. It's really interesting, I'm related to all kinds of historic people. In his research he came across a couple of hymns written by my great great great great uncle, William True Sleeper. He asked if I would record one for the genealogy. I set it on my pile of songs to work out, as one of the worship leaders at my church I thought it might be cool to sing it at church someday. Well it sat there for a long time, then early one Saturday morning I was awoken by a text from Rebecca, the flautist on our worship team, saying she had woken up with this melody in her head from her childhood, looked it up online and found it was written by a Sleeper, was I related? (Rebecca posted her story beautifully, I've added it in the comments below)
I took this as a big hint that I'd better get to work on the song, so I got up and went right to work on making an arrangement. By breakfast I had It worked out. I brought it to our worship team to play that following Sunday. The Saturday night before I was visiting my dear friends and bluegrass recording artists Amy Gallatin and Roger Williams. When I told them the story Amy responded by dragging me right downstairs to record it, and that's what we did. Over the next couple of weeks Roger, JD, Sharon and Carol recorded their parts and the song came to life.
Although we originally intended the recording to be for the genealogy, as things progressed Amy and Roger decided to release it on their record label, Happy Appy Records! And so there you have it, leaving out lots and lots of details, the story of my first single!