FamilyChristian.com Exclusive Interview
Mark Schultz: Not In Kansas Anymore ...continued

FamilyChristian.com: Your parents are special people. They adopted you when you were a newborn. Tell me about your mom.

Mark: She's the sweetest lady in the whole world. The thing I love about my mom is [that] when you're talking to my mom, she's the same person all the time. You don't get an angry mom and then a really excited mom. She's the same every time I call on the phone. That's so good to hook into and know that she is a rock who's just there and the same, even if there's horrible stuff going on.

With my mom and dad, [I never wondered] if they loved me or said, "Gosh, they don't spend any time with me, maybe their work is more important than me." My mom worked at a fabric store and she worked at an ophthalmologist's [office] and she went to school and my dad was a Dean of Students at a community college. That was their job to make money to raise us, but their first priority was me and my brother and my sister.

My dad got up at five every morning and would jog five miles, come home and do his sit-ups and then at six o'clock, he'd start fixing breakfast. He'd get us all up and we'd have a huge breakfast every morning. He never missed a breakfast Monday through Friday. Every year, from my first day of kindergarten to my senior year in high school, he never missed a day. In high school I'd come home and eat lunch with my mom. We'd always share an apple. She'd always get sad when I went off to college [and] say, "I don't know who's going to help me eat the other half of this apple." Every night we'd eat dinner as a family. My dad said that even when we finished eating we were still going to sit there and talk for an hour. I hated that for a long time, but then I got used to it and it was ok. I realized that's abnormal for today's families to spend so much time together and I think that was a huge deal.

I think out of all the places I could have gone when I was adopted [I was very blessed] to get into that family. You can see other families and say that they must have it better because they're so rich or they've got this or that, but when you boil it down, if your parents were there for you and loving you all the time [you were truly blessed]. My dad will now say, "You are the most spoiled guy in the world. We gave you anything you ever wanted." This is not true, but [we were] spoiled [because] we had their time and attention and they cheered us on all the way. But when it came to material stuff, I wasn't [spoiled] but who cares about that stuff?

FamilyChristian.com: Are your brother and sister adopted also?

Mark: No. I'm the middle guy and I'm the only one who was adopted. I think my mom thought she couldn't have another child and then as soon as she got me it did something hormonally on the inside and the Lord said, "There you go, a little gift."

FamilyChristian.com: Did you ever feel different from the rest of your family?

Mark: My dad told me when I was growing up, "You know what, it doesn't matter. The farmer is not the person who plants the seed. You can just walk by and throw out a seed and never see it again. The farmer is the one who raises it from the time a little green sprig sticks up and takes care of it and fertilizes it and makes sure that when the wind comes, it doesn't get blown over. When the rain comes, it's not too much. It's the farmer who stays with it until the harvest." That's a great analogy.

FamilyChristian.com: How do your parents feel about your success?

Mark: They were very supportive. I left Kansas and went to Nashville following a dream. I wanted to sing and write songs. I read a book that said if you want to do that in Nashville, there's a 1% chance to make it in music. I thought that there was absolutely no way. They thought I'd go for a year or two and it wouldn't work out and I would do something else.

They didn't used to get on the Internet. They didn't even know what it was, but as soon as the record came out, they started logging on and now they know more about it than I do. When I'm on a radio program, they check in. They're going to come to the Dove Awards. What an honor to go through those years of thinking it wouldn't work out and all of a sudden to get this huge gift. [It's] then you go, "I just want my parents to take in as much as they can."

FamilyChristian.com: You turned 30 this year. How did you celebrate it?

Mark: One of the kids in my youth group [was] moving into a new house and [his mom] asked if I wanted to come by on Thursday night and check it out. I said I'd love to. I went into her house and it was just the two of us and she was showing me every hinge on every door. It was great for about an hour, but we were there for three hours. I just thought, "Why are we here?" [Then] we drove back over to her house to have dinner with her husband. I didn't even tell them it was my birthday; we were just going to hang out. I saw all these cars from families of the youth group up the street and thought, "Oh gosh, there's a youth meeting at this house over here and I've missed it and I'm going to eat dinner with these guys. Oh man, I'm going to get in trouble." I walked through the front door and said, "You're not going to believe this, but there's a bunch of folks from the church meeting up the street and I think I'm missing a meeting." And everybody yells, "Surprise! Happy Birthday!" It was a surprise birthday party for me and it was great.

For the whole nine months previous to that surprise birthday party, all I'd done is talk about myself for nine months. It was so great to go to a party where people knew me and I could just kind of phase out and just hear my friends talk about what's going on with them. I could just sit back and love not being the center of attention.

FamilyChristian.com: Is your mom bugging you for grandbabies yet?

Mark: I've got to tell you, the worst thing for me right now would be to get married and have kids. I don't know how people do it in the music business. It's not a healthy time for me to do that at all. I'm going to wait until the wheels fall off my music career, or I get to a place where I can do it. But right now it is the wrong time for any kind of commitment like that.

FamilyChristian.com: What do you like best about being single?

Mark: I enjoy the peaches out of the freedom. I get up a two o'clock in the morning and fix scrambled eggs and some toast and drive to the church and put on a pot of coffee and at about 2:45, I'm singing and writing songs. I'll do that until nine in the morning. I'm a late night person. I'm not a morning person. I like staying up late, but I like the time before the sun comes up. I don't like to stay up late and stay up until the sun comes up. So I just say, I'm just going to skip the night and just wake up and have the best of both worlds.

Today I got out of bed at two, fixed breakfast and went to the church. I was there until nine. Jumped in the car, drove with some folks here, ate lunch, did a sound check, took a nap, went for a jog, missed my interview, sang at the deal, ordered room service and watched a movie. Tomorrow, I'll get up early and start writing songs.

I'm not accountable to anybody and at this time in my life, I need to just be accountable to those things that I need to do. When God says that its time to move on to a different thing, it's going to be much easier for me to do that, because I've done this phase and I'm not going to wonder what it would have been like. I'm taking advantage of it and I'm in no hurry. I don't have that urge that says I have to get married right now. God is good to me there! If I [got married] right now, I would be horrible at balancing everything.

FamilyChristian.com: Now that you've been doing the promotional tour thing for a while, what is the question you are most often asked?

Mark Schultz by Mark Schultz

Mark: The story behind "He's My Son." Or, "So, where do you come from?" Just kind of open-ended, give us your history [questions]. That drives me crazy. I'm really tired of talking about myself. I'd rather see what they're all about. That's the hard part of being on tour is that you stop being a person and start being a reporter. It's so hard to regurgitate the same stuff over and over and have passion about it. There's a certain point where you get callous to the same question so I have to work really hard to say different things all the time just to keep me focused in on what I'm doing.

FamilyChristian.com: What question do you wish people would ask you?

Mark: Can I buy you a car? (laughs) I like the kind of questions that nobody ever asks. I'd like to go straight off the path into uncharted territory.

Jen Abbas, a writer in Grand Rapids, Mich., originally conducted this interview for Family Christian Stores' All Access music catalog.

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