A Musical Ministry
Local songwriter travels globe for Christian CD project.
by Camie Young | Gwinnett Daily Post | June 26, 2014
I will sing of your love and justice; to you, Lord, I will sing praise. — Psalm 101:1
From the time she was born, Stacy Marie Walker’s life has been centered on music and ministry.
Parents Alice and Larry Trammell were performers with Trammell the SuperBand, which opened for acts that ranged from Shirley Jones to Charlie Daniels.
But more importantly to the family, for much of Walker’s life they opened worship services, leading people in house churches to praise God.
As a stand-out choral student at Duluth High, Walker received a scholarhip to a prestigious music program, but instead, she chose to attend a Biblical program which combined music and discipleship.
Now as a local piano and voice teacher at her Buford home, she continues to heed the calling the Lord put on her life, to spread the Gospel through song.
For more than a decade, Walker has been faithful to that pursuit, writing hundreds of songs and preparing for a journey that would take her to eastern Europe to produce a trilogy album, “Transcend,” which tells a story of tribulation, transformation and transendence.
“I’m just being faithful to God,” Walker said not long before leaving earlier this month for a crowdfunded, three-month trip to meet with a collaborator in Romania.
“God said, ‘For him who has an ear to hear, let him hear,’” Walker said, adding that she has been amazed to see the reaction of people to her message. “Music is a gift, and it expresses what words cannot express. … People don’t remember sermons, but they remember lyrics to songs.”
And that is where Walker’s mission lies, in using music to minister to people.
“The heart of all this is to heal people and help them to hear the truth that will set us free,” she said of her CD project. “That’s what ‘Transcend’ is about. It’s overcoming, rising above. It’s about living for eternity in the here and now.”
A faithful person will be richly blessed…
— Proverbs 28:20
With his picture on the mantle of her Buford home, Walker can’t talk about music without talking about her dad.
Larry Trammell, who died in 2004, taught his daughter through example, and she couldn’t help but follow in the footsteps of the man named Georgia Songwriter of the Year in the early 1980s. She began picking up her own pen and sitting at the piano by the time she was a teenager.
“We were born for this, and the Lord made sure we grew up in a family that made sure we would use our talents for Him,” Walker said of her life journey, chronicling both the triumphs and trials of life as a Christian in her songs.
“Writing, for me, is journaling through life,” said the 35-year-old who met her husband while ballroom dancing.
In the beginning, Walker wrote songs as they came to her, exploring emotions as she encountered them, such as grief at her father’s death.
“To me, every song has something to say,” she said. “You can’t simplify it too much.”
She didn’t know what God intended for the work, but she kept going, writing and singing and sharing with friends and family.
Before long, Walker knew that she didn’t just have a collection; she had a story. And through prayer, she believed that God wanted her project to glorify Him.
“This has been about 10 years in the making,” she said of the project, explaining that the chords and melodies have been written, but she found that she needed help in “filling in” the songs with production details.
“It’s an epic in that it tells a story,” Walker said, feeling humbled by
comparisons to Handel’s famous “Messiah.” “(Both) are scripture to song. It (‘Messiah’) tells the story of Jesus. ‘Transcend’ is telling the story of the church, his bride. …
“It’s like a baby I’ve been entrusted with,” Walker added. “It’s kind of unfolding as I go. … I just know that it’s big, and I’m grateful to be a steward of it.”
With more than 100 songs to choose from, Walker and her husband hosted a potluck piano party and she began playing the tunes, getting her friends to vote for their favorites to record onto a CD.
Talking about the results that night, her husband questioned: Why not make it a trilogy?
“I had to be faithful with what I was given,” Walker said. “A lot of people shut down because of fear. I just took heart, and I took courage. I did not have to be afraid. I just had to be faithful.”
A half a world away, a man with a tenuous connection found Walker’s videos on the Internet. Cornel Olar immediately heard the orchestration that was missing, so he reached out, and within weeks, the pair knew that the Lord was blessing the connection.
Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then said I, ‘Here am I; send me.’
— Isaiah 6:8
Decades ago, Walker and her family set off on a mission trip to a number of European countries. Years later, the Belgian family who acted as translators later moved to Romania to minister to gypsies, and there, their daughter Shari met and married Olar, an accomplished guitarist, who won the local Hunedoara’s Got Talent competition.
“I was praying for a guitarist,” Walker said. “He just reached out to me as a friend, and it ended up growing to where he could contribute a lot to the project.”
The two began working through Skype and FaceTime, using technology each night to try to make progress. Walker visited Romania and Olar visited Georgia, and the trips did a lot to rekindle friendships as well as create a renewed passion for the project.
“I come up with the meat and potatoes, and he adds the cheese and the garlic,” Walker said of working with Olar, who has years of professional experience in the studio.
Walker knew that the decade-long journey needed a kickstart. So she turned to Kickstarter.com, beginning a campaign earlier this year.
“We put everything we had on the line. We put all the resources we had,” she said. “Both of our families have given everything for this.”
Through the crowdfunding tool, Walker raised more than $35,000 from across the globe, money that could be used to fund her three-month trip to Romania and to give Walker and Olar’s family the resources to devote to the project.
“I’m pretty excited for working for these final steps,” Olar said during a Facetime conversation before Walker’s departure, “And it’s nice to have a friend over.”
Olar describes Walker as a “hard-core worker.”
“All along our hearts were to just serve, and make it possible for you (Walker) to bring this to the people,” Olar said. “But we did become a part of it. We came to a place where our hearts are in the same place.”
The project became Olar’s personal mission, as well, although he continues to follow Walker’s vision with the music.
“The message of the songs is very strong,” he said. “It challenges us to live … in total surrender to the Lord.”
Walker isn’t sure how her vision will finally be realized.
For now, she wants to complete the three CDs — a huge task since her trip to Romania is likely to only finish the first.
But at a release party in 2012 to help further the work, Walker and others worked to create a stage production for the first section of songs, with a full orchestra, dancers and even an artist creating a painting on stage.
Who knows? she says, a musical tour and production could be what happens in the long term. Only God knows at this point.
And Walker pledges to be steadfast in prayer for the answers.
“Maybe by people hearing the story they will be called (to complete their own project),” she said of her journey of faith. “We all have dreams.”
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