During the latest edition of V-103’s Sunday Morning Praise, Larry Tinsley caught up with Kirk Franklin to talk all about the past year’s difficulties and struggles he’s had to face, how’s he’s coping, and more.
LISTEN NOW: Kirk Franklin on Sunday Morning Praise
“For me it wasn’t even an idea of position as much as it is to just try and pursue I guess… just try and pursue truth and try to find my way through it and that’s why I kinda wanted to let the documentary be something that would help tell the story of what I was going through, while doing this music.”
“It was a very interesting season in my life, very painful season in my life," he continued, "and I wanna say we were able to get through it, but I’m still in it. But you know it is the reality of my new existence.”
Parts of Kirk’s journey this past year included meeting his biological father Richard Hubbard for the first time and reconciling with his son Kerrion after a rather public fallout. Both of which are seen play out in his documentary film, Father's Day: A Kirk Franklin Story.
Discussing what it felt like to meet his father for the first time, after all this time, Kirk said, “It was a myriad of emotions, because I wasn’t looking for him, I thought that I had a father. And the father I had was not there, I was adopted, and I hated the man that I believed to be my father. And I wasn’t in any space thinking there was somebody else, and so you know it is a very out of body experience,” he continued, searching for the right words. “And so I’m still trying to find my way through it.”
While Kirk was going through all of those personal matters and filming them, he was simultaneously working on his album, “all at the same time,” so also naming that project Father’s Day, was more than fitting.
“It was all happening together… it was this perfect storm of experiences that made them synonymous in their emotion and expression… It was a space creatively that I was in already and so just by default I was capturing what was happening in my life in real time.”
For Kirk the process became about “capturing truth” more than it was about trying to find this "kumbaya moment,” or “mending” relationships, “because life isn’t always that realistic… life is full of messy experiences that are beautiful painful journeys.”
Kirk continued sharing with Larry about all that and more. To listen to the entire candid conversation press play on the interview above.