Get to know: Logan Walter of the band Dutton
I’m always asked, “How did you get started as a worship leader?” Well, here’s the answer…
My dad, Jeff Walter, led worship in a band called Gabriel before “worship leading” became the trend in Christian music. In fact, Louie Giglio once told me that my dad was the first “worship leader” he knew. So, although I’m 25 years old, I’ve had my sights set on becoming a worship leader since, oh, 1991.
This dream became a reality in 1997 when I started leading worship for my 7th grade Sunday school class in Mansfield, TX at Walnut Ridge Baptist Church. I was not good.
In 1999, my family moved to Waco and I became the back-up acoustic guitar player for my youth minister, Bob Johns, who was leading worship for the FBC Woodway youth at the time. By the end of my freshman year at Lorena High School, Bob decided to let the back-up acoustic guitar player take the reins. Bad decision.
Fortunately, I met a “college” freshman, named Shane Wilson, who seemed like some sort of older, wiser guitar wizard. This helped. Shane and I led together at FBC Woodway until my senior year of high school when I discovered that Shane had been cheating on me with another worship band called the “Nathan Jennings Band” (Nathan being the drummer of the band). Eventually the Jennings Band hired me on as their lead singer, so we became “The Nathan Jennings Band featuring Logan Walter.” Too many syllables.
So how did Shane, Nathan, and myself start leading worship at Crowder’s home church?
Well.
Bob Johns, legend of youth ministry, has a close relationship with Chris Tomlin and David Crowder, so I found myself being led in worship by these two several times each year. I even had the opportunity to go on a trip to Tennessee with Crowder during the summer of 2002 to observe the “high life” of worship leading on the road. Lots of sitting in a suburban.
But from this experience, Crowder developed enough trust to put me in front of his church as the back-up worship leader when DC*B was on the road. The church, Ubc, is located on Dutton Avenue. “Dutton” has eleven fewer syllables than our original band name, so it was the logical choice.
Dutton is now our full time job, but this was not always the case. During my college years, Shane taught 5th grade math and Nathan taught 5th grade gym. To get his teaching license, Nathan was forced to miss our first camp of the summer in 2004. Brian Patterson was the replacement drummer. We soon realized that Brian could play every instrument well, so we kept him around to play guitar and keys.
At this point, Ben Dudley, community pastor at Ubc, and Tye Barrett, Ubc mascot, were also a part of the team. But Ben soon left to focus on our beloved church and Tye (bass guitar) departed several years later to focus on graduate studies at Baylor.
So we needed a bass guitarist.
I called my friend Taylor Johnson (guitarist for Robbie Seay, Shane & Shane, Phil Wickham, David Crowder, Brandon Heath, etc) searching for a bass guitarist recommendation.
Taylor: “Josh Hicks”
Me: “Where does he live?”
Taylor: “North Carolina”
Me: “Thanks for nothing.” (CLICK! …dial tone)
But as providence would have it, we played at a camp in Florida the next week and guess who was playing bass guitar for the band next door…Josh Hicks.
We asked him to fly out to dallas for a few practices, we were all in a near fatal car crash together, I wrote “In Control” from the experience, Josh moved to Dallas a month later (October 2008), and the band was complete.
God is good.
Any other questions?
