Matthew West baseball dream takes a musical turn
Fri, Oct 30, 2009 
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BY MARIE HAVENGA
mhavenga@grandhaventribune.com
When Matthew West was a star first baseman for his Chicago suburban high school baseball team, he thought that's what dreams were made of.
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"Me and about 30 million other young boys growing up," said West, laughing, who now is topping the charts with hits in contemporary Christian music circles.
Looking back, maybe he was just "Going Through the Motions," the title track of his recent No. 1 hit song.
West, a frequent performer at Muskegon's Unity Christian Music Festival, will be the headliner at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday at Olivet Evangelical Church, 6790 Harvey Road, just south of Pontaluna Road.
Tickets cost $15 through itickets.com (with an additional 15 percent service charge) or $18 at the door. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
West, 32, said the roads he's traveled have been confusing, but at the same time, inspiring in ways outside of base lines.
"My brothers and I were huge into sports," said West, who has written such hits as "More" and "History."
West felt more comfortable with a baseball glove than a guitar in his youth. He thought he was destined for a sports scholarship.
"The Chicago Sun Times had listed me as one of the top college prospects," West recalled Thursday. "I thought that was my ticket, but I wound up not getting any scholarship offers. I had always been involved in music. My dad is a minister and my mother has the best singing voice. It started in junior high – teachers were saying I have that same gift. I shrugged it off at the time."
There came a moment when West could shrug it off no longer. Slugging and on-base-percentage no longer mattered.
The sidelines were calling. It was nothing comfortable, nothing that fit in his first-baseman's mitt, but something he determined to be destiny.
"Looking back, I see now that those people were put in my path to encourage me," West said in a telephone interview from Midland. "When I found out I wasn't going to play baseball in college, I had to find another way to get into college."
The budding songwriter graduated from Milliken University in central Illinois in 1999 — with a new perspective and philosophy.
"Those four years really cemented my direction and gave me a vision for what I was going to do with my life," said West, who is married with two young children. "When I was in high school, I thought baseball was a no-brainer. When I was young and in college, I didn't really consider the odds at the time. I was just diving in head-first, writing my own songs, booking my own shows, printing my own (concert) posters. I was pretty fearless."
West, who now headlines many Christian concerts, said his attitude has not changed.
He doesn't consider himself a "typical" Christian artist. He prefers to observe and reflect on life, and sing about such, rather than existing within a box or a label.
"I've felt inspired about writing songs about life but from a faith perspective," said West, who is joined on tour by his 58-year-old father. "I never have been one to beat people over the head with a message. Sometimes the greatest compliment paid is from people who don't listen to Christian music, but say I wrote something that they can relate to. That's always my hope — to write about and connect with real life."
Something more: West has released four studio albums and is known for his No. 1 hits "More," "You Are Everything" and "The Motions." He was nominated for five Dove Awards in 2005; two of which were for his major label debut album Happy.
First starting out as an independent musician in the late 1990s, he released three independent albums before signing with Universal South Records. With the release of his Dove Award-winning debut album Happy (2003) came the success of his first radio single "More" which stayed at No. 1 on Christian AC charts for nine weeks and received two Dove Award nominations. His second record History (2005) was followed by a 2006 re-release of the originally independent album Sellout. In 2007 he faced vocal issues which threatened his career and two months of prescribed vocal rest. West's third studio album Something to Say (2008) was released in January of the following year and also enjoyed chart success with No. 1 hits "You Are Everything" and "The Motions."
In addition to his main solo career, West has worked as a songwriter for many Christian musicians and groups such as Point of Grace, Mandisa and Natalie Grant as well as mainstream country acts Rascal Flatts and Billy Ray Cyrus.
