Brian Welch Leaves Korn for Christ

The lights in the sanctuary stayed low even after the last song faded. I stood near the side aisle with a stack of bulletins still in my hand, watching the altar call draw people forward in ones and twos. A man in a black hoodie kept his head down near the front row. He had come in late, sat alone, and now he moved when the pastor asked if anyone needed to lay something down.

That was the first time I saw Brian Welch up close. Bakersfield knew the name. Korn had sold out arenas, and the local papers still ran pieces about the hometown boys who made it. Most of us had heard the stories that came back from the road: the money, the pills, the nights that stretched until morning. Welch looked thinner than the posters on the music-store wall. His hands shook once when he reached the carpet.

He stayed at the rail a long time. Pastor Vietti spoke with him quietly, then the two of them prayed. When Welch finally stood, his face was wet. He did not look around for anyone. He walked straight out the side door into the parking lot where the February air cut sharp.

Three days later the radio station played the clip. Welch told the morning show he had chosen Jesus Christ as his savior and would dedicate his music to that. The band’s website posted a short note the same afternoon. They said they respected his wishes. No one in the church crowd acted surprised. We had seen the hooded figure every Sunday for a month, always in the same seat, always leaving before the final hymn.

The week after that he stood on the same stage without the hood. His voice carried to the back rows without a microphone. He said he had tried everything else first: clinics, books, promises to his daughter. Nothing held. He described rolling up a bill in a closet one afternoon and stopping mid-line. The prayer he prayed was simple. He asked for one parent who could stay clean. Then he threw the rest of the drugs away and waited to see if the want would come back. It did not.

People in the pews shifted. Some wiped their eyes. Others sat perfectly still. A high-school kid near me, the one who worked at the guitar shop, started crying hard enough that his shoulders shook. Welch invited anyone who felt the same weight to come forward. Nearly two hundred did across the three services that day.

The following Tuesday a group from the church boarded a plane for Israel. Welch traveled with us. He kept to himself most of the flight, reading a small Bible and making notes in the margins. In the mornings he walked the old streets of Jerusalem with the rest of the group, sometimes stopping to take pictures of the sky. On the tenth of March we reached the Jordan River. The water ran brown and fast from recent rain. Vietti waded in first, then motioned for Welch. They stood waist-deep while the pastor spoke the words. When Welch came up, he wiped his face with both hands and looked toward the far bank as if he were trying to fix the moment in his mind.

Back in Bakersfield the phone calls started. Old friends from the music scene wanted to know if the stories were true. Welch answered most of them the same way: he had found something that worked where the rest had failed. He began writing new songs in a rented studio, testing riffs that sounded nothing like the down-tuned Korn tracks. He said he wanted the music to help kids the way nothing had helped him.

By summer the first single was finished. He played it for a small crowd at a festival in Illinois, then handed out flyers for a skate park he planned to build with whatever the record earned. The crowds at those early shows were small. Some nights only a few dozen people showed. Welch stayed after every set, signing whatever was put in front of him and asking each person what they were carrying. He never promised quick fixes. He only said the same thing he had said at the river: the weight could be handed over.