Courtesy of Michael Mullenix
Lacey Sturm, the former frontwoman of Flyleaf, has released a commentary video explaining in more detail the reasons why she left the band. The video also promotes her upcoming book, The Reason: How I Discovered a Life Worth Living. While the book is due to be released October 7th by Baker Books, and Sturm has released promo videos for it previously, this video attracts the attention of Flyleaf fans since she focuses on why she made her exit from the band.
“So I toured in a band called Flyleaf for ten years,” she says by way of opening the short, three minute video. “And it was an amazing journey and we saw amazing miracles. Like I said before, I couldn’t believe all the things that God could do with our music, that we wrote in our garage from our heart. It was just an outpouring response to life,” explains Sturm. What happened next was that little thing called life.
“We were on our second album when I got married. And the album was called ‘Memento Mori.’ And ‘memento mori’ means remember you’re mortal, remember that you’ll die and remember that your life is short and precious and so are the lives of those around you,” Sturm explains, and goes on to explain how that idea stayed with her, and continues to affect her life decisions.
“For two years I toured with my husband and it was amazing and then after those two years we ended up getting pregnant with my son,” Sturm says with a small smile. “And I recognized that my priorities were gonna change even more and that message of memento mori and that message of how short your life is was really weighing on my heart.
“We toured for ten years,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. “I mean, we weren’t home for more than a month, probably within a year. So for me, I just felt really blessed to be pregnant and to be in a place where I could stay home if I wanted to. And we asked that question, ‘How is this gonna change my priorities, how is this gonna look?’”
“We had a few things happen that really brought that message home, but the one that hit the hardest was the death of our sound engineer,” Sturms, says, her voice getting softer as the memory of Rich Caldwell’s passing starts to bring tears. “We did one last show as Flyleaf as a benefit for his wife, Katy and their son Kirby. It was really hard to do a show without him and it was really hard to think it might be our last show,” she recalls. “So I was looking at my son, after Rich had passed, and just wondering to myself, ‘If this was the last year I had with my son, how would I spend it?’”
“It was really good to recognize this season changing in my life, and the freedom that I was gonna be able to focus on my family. And I’m so thankful for that time, although it was really hard, I’m thankful. And that’s the reason I stepped down from Flyleaf,” Sturm finishes softly. If you’d like to watch the video yourself, you can view it here.