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An Exclusive Interview with Gospel Artist, JONTEZ
by Anita S. Lane  

Jontez is living his dream and grateful for every moment. Raised in a small town in Texas, he never imagined he would be leading worship at The Potter's House, a 28,000 member church led by Bishop T. D. Jakes. Then Jontez joined the group "God's Property" and became part of gospel music history when the group, produced by Kirk Franklin, recorded the single, "Stomp" in 1997. The song became an instant success and even went into rotation on BET, The Box and MTV.

Since releasing his debut CD "And So It Is" in the fall of 2005, Jontez has toured with Rachael Lampa, Bryan Duncan, Martha Munizzi, Kurt Carr and Heather Powers for December's Joy to the World Christmas Celebration tour.

Today, Jontez is singing solo and has released his debut CD entitled, "And So it Is." With God illuminating the way, no doubt, this is just the beginning for this talented and gifted young man.

Click "Play" to listen to the Audio version of this interview...

KFF:  Jontez, it's such a pleasure to have you today.  Thank you for
joining us.

JONTEZ:   Thank you for having me.  I've been looking forward to meeting you, so I'm excited about it.

KFF:   That's great.  Congratulations on your debut album.

JONTEZ: Thank you.  Thank you so much.

KFF:  It's really good.  I can't wait for everybody to hear this.  You
have a lot of really nice cuts on there and you wrote most of them
yourself.

JONTEZ: I actually wrote all of them except the very last song which is
Rising Sun, but I definitely had my hand in this album.

KFF:  I noticed that.  I thought that was phenomenal for a debut album.

JONTEZ: I was really surprised at it myself, only because it's not the
norm. They normally don't let you get into it, but it worked out that way for me, so I'm glad that it did.

KFF:   Do you have any favorites on the CD?

JONTEZ: No, they're all my babies, every single one of them.  I think the whole album in itself is my timeline and if you listen to the music you can totally tell.  I'm telling all my business in the album--that's what it is.  So, yeah, each one of them tells a different part of what I've gone through in my life, so I'm proud of the whole thing.

KFF:   So tell us about Jontez. How did you get started in gospel music?

JONTEZ:   I got my start performing with God's Property--and
even before then I was singing over at The Potter's House with Bishop T.D. Jakes in Dallas and then I got involved with God's Property.  So my first initial influences were BeBe and CeCe Winans.  When I first heard them they were doing a concert over in Texas and I went to go watch the Imperials and BeBe and CeCe happened to be performing that day and that's when they were first coming out, and after that day that's when I got really excited about gospel music and really wanted to get involved in things.  So when I moved to Dallas I started singing with God's Property then.  So that was an amazing, amazing experience for me.

KFF:   You were part of God's Property at the time when Stomp became a huge hit.  What was that experience like for you?

JONTEZ:   It was exciting, to say the least.  It was really, really neat
to be part of -- I look at it as being able to be a part of history for
gospel music because that particular group and that particular album really made an impact on this nation, you know, to where you had kids that never went to church-- singing these gospel songs.  And that to me it was an honor to be a part of that.

KFF:   And that was produced by Kirk Franklin, of course.
 
JONTEZ: Yes, produced by Kirk Franklin, absolutely.

KFF:   Now, you served as a part of the worship ministry at T.D. Jakes'
church, and that was prior to Stomp?

JONTEZ:   Yeah, that was prior to God's Property, actually.

KFF:   That must have been an exciting time.  What was that like for you?

JONTEZ:   It was, I mean…you take a little country boy from the sticks
and put him in front of 80,000 people, and it's overwhelming!
It was overwhelming at first, but again, it taught me a lot of the ministry aspect of worship and how to engage into worship and to get the people involved into worship.  I got great training there aswell.  So it just seems like God has just been preparing me throughout my life for what I'm doing now.  So I'm grateful for it.

KFF:   Well, at what point did you decide to go solo?

JONTEZ:   It was after we had gotten done with the tour with God's Property I wound up going to California for, it was just like a week or so, and it just so happened to be that the music director of God's Property was there as well and we just started talking about it and one thing led to another.  He was doing the music, I was writing the song, and it just evolved into me starting doing a solo project.  So that's how it all came about.

KFF:   That's great.  And it is a wonderful project.  Are you already
working on your next project?

JONTEZ:  Yeah.  Actually, we're starting to work on a Spanish album.

KFF:   Oh, that's wonderful!

JONTEZ:   I'm getting excited about that.  Right now we're only
in the song selection mode so we haven't gotten started on the production side yet, but I'm excited about it.  And now that the tour has come about, I have to put it off until I get back, but I'm excited about that.

KFF:   Now, are you writing pieces for that album as well?

JONTEZ: No, no.  You know, what's funny is that I wasn't so fluent in Spanish -  I'm a lot better now, but I wasn't fluent in Spanish at all until now that I moved to California.  Most of my friends there, most of my friends that I grew up with in my school years, they were all Anglo-Saxon.  And when I moved to Dallas all my musical friends were African-American.  Now that I’ve moved to LA, all my friends happen to be of Latin descent—whether they're Columbian, Cuban, Dominican, Mexican, whatever, it's just like, okay, can I get a mixed crowd here?  But that's just the way it's worked out, so they're training me on my Spanish now, so I'm getting better in that now.

KFF:   That's wonderful.  That's just so that God can use you even more, right?

JONTEZ:  Yeah, he's doing something.  He's still working on me.

KFF:   Now you're keeping very busy.  You're headed out on a military
tour, a long tour, I might add, that's going to take you all the way to
Japan and back.  Can you tell us about it?

JONTEZ:   Yes.  I'm really excited about the opportunity just to go out
there.  My brother is in the Air Force, my brother-in-law is in the
Marines, and so I've kind of got a soft place for the military.  So I'm
excited to go out there and see the faces and just touch base with these people, because they're the ones that are doing the real hard work out there for us.  We're just getting prepared now to do that and it's going to be, you know, the band that we're using or the band that I'm using is from Texas, and so we're here now rehearsing for it and getting ready for it, so I'm excited about it.

KFF:   That's going to be wonderful and a great type of ministry to those that are serving our country overseas.

JONTEZ:   Absolutely.

KFF:   Now, you're not married?

JONTEZ:   No.

KFF:   Do you hope to settle down with a wife and kids one day?

JONTEZ:   Absolutely, yes.  I definitely want to do that.  My mother of
course keeps giving me the question of "When am I going to have my
grandkids?"  I'm like, mom, chill out with the grandkids.  There's five of
us, there's five siblings. And my younger brother, I've got a niece, we've got a niece in the family, so at least we started filling her need to have these grandchildren.

KFF:   Well, she's got five kids and only one, I can see where she's
beginning to wonder here.  And you've got a song that says you're willing to do anything for love. Now you know, it's going to take a big time commitment—you have to hold to your word.

JONTEZ:   That's good.  You're the first person that's brought that one to my attention.

KFF:   Yes.  We just had to “go there” for all the ladies out there who
are going to see your picture and hear your music and think, "Is he
married?"   Well, what's next for Jontez?

JONTEZ: Really, right now it's just working on this album and just
continuing to work just to put it out there.  I had no idea, you know,
this would be for all the readers, the listeners who wanted to get into
music and have a dream about it, it's a great thing to do, but it's a lot
of work.  And I had no idea, I had no concept of, you know, you think you get up and get behind the mike and sing and that's the end of it, and it's so much more than that.

So it's a lot of work putting these albums together, getting them out
there and now doing the tours for them, it's a lot.  But it's what I want
to do, it's what I love to do.  It's my passion, it's my heart, so I can't
call it work, but it's - it is work, you know, and it takes everything out
of you to do it.  You've got to be really dedicated and you've got to
really know, in my opinion, you've got to know that you have this calling on your life.

You really have to know that, because it's not -- I heard one time Whitney Houston was on a television show back in the 80's and she said, she made a comment and I didn't understand it, but she made a comment.  She said in order to be doing music or in order to be in this business you have to really be in love with music.  And so, you know, young as a kid you're thinking yeah, I understand what she's saying, and I had no idea what she was saying until now, like I've got some kind of idea what she was talking about.  And you really have to be in love with what you're doing, it's got to be a priority to you.  And most importantly, you have to know that again that you're called to it, that God has anointed you to do or appointed you to do what you're doing.  And with that, it's allowed me to go and do this wholeheartedly and not get bombed out because it's not going the way I thought it should, or something like that.

KFF:   And you have to at some point have to be grateful for the
opportunity because a lot of people don't get the opportunity to do what they love and what they've dreamed of doing, so it's really an honor.

JONTEZ:   And you know what, I've heard a lot of people say that to me, like wow, that's awesome that you're doing what you love to do.  And honestly, I don't understand the other side of it because I've always done this.  I mean, from the time I was 12 I've always been involved in music and I didn't expect it to be any other way.  You know, I don't know if that makes any sense, but I really honestly didn't.  And so when I hear people say that, I'm like, you know, I do thank God that I'm doing what I'm doing, no doubt, but I don't know any other way, you know.

KFF:   See, you've been privileged to live the purpose driven life and
there are a lot of people that are doing things outside of their purpose and its unfulfilling and they just do it because they have to get a paycheck.  So count it a privilege, you know.

JONTEZ:  Yeah, it's totally understandable.  You have to do what you have to do to get the bills paid, and for me I guess it's an easier task
because I don't have the wife, because I don't have the kids, I don't
really have too much overhead.  You know what I mean?

KFF:  Right, you're low maintenance.  That's great.

JONTEZ:  Yes.

KFF:  Well, Jontez, it's been such a pleasure and a privilege interviewing you and spending this time with you.  Thank you so much for giving us a call and we look forward to your next project, even if it's in Spanish, you know, we can still enjoy the music and I can work on my Spanish.

JONTEZ:   Yes, and I'm doing that too, myself.

KFF:   Thank you so much and we wish you the very best in all of your
endeavors.

JONTEZ:   Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2006 by Keeping Family First.  

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