Join the Journey!
Bring the Inspiring Story
of Brother Joseph to Everyone!
Join the Journey!
Bring the Inspiring Story
of Brother Joseph to Everyone!
Bring the Inspiring Story
of Brother Joseph to Everyone!
Bring the Inspiring Story
of Brother Joseph to Everyone!
Each song costs about $5,000 to produce. Your contribution will go a long way to enabling us to hire the professional talent necessary to bring each song to life. Let's share the story of the restoration in a whole new way!
Powered by
Thanks for stopping by to check us out! We exist to tell the story of Joseph Smith and the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through music and theatre. We are looking for help funding the production of the music so we can complete a "Concept Album" prior to launching the stage production.
There are 29 songs in the show, of which only a handful have completed production. As production wraps on each song, we will publish them on SoundCloud so you can hear them here.
Please find below a PDF with the complete list of songs for the show. More to come!
For many years I felt the passions that enveloped Joseph’s life would be best conveyed through music; that words alone, while often beautiful, lacked music’s ability to connect directly with the soul. Everytime I read about Joseph's life, I would hear music. So a few years ago, I finally gave in to the persistent and unrelenting promptin
For many years I felt the passions that enveloped Joseph’s life would be best conveyed through music; that words alone, while often beautiful, lacked music’s ability to connect directly with the soul. Everytime I read about Joseph's life, I would hear music. So a few years ago, I finally gave in to the persistent and unrelenting promptings to write a musical about his life.
“Brother Joseph” spans 26 years of Joseph’s life from the age of 12 to 38. Through experiencing the show and hearing the music, it is my prayer that you will feel the powerful testimonies of Jesus Christ held by the early believers, as well as the fear and intolerance of the anti-believers – while also, maybe, understanding why each felt and acted the way they did. I believe there is a message in Joseph’s story that transcends time, place and religion. We could all stand to be a little less fearful, a little more tolerant and a whole lot more loving to those we don’t fully know or understand.
Let the record show that I am a believer. I joined the church as an adult at the same time as my wife. I have spent an enormous amount of time studying the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith and have a firm belief that he was everything he claimed to be, and saw everything he claimed to have seen. I also believe that Jesus Christ did not qualify his promise when he stated, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”[1]. In other words, no matter what you believe today, if you seek to find reasons to not believe, you will find them; contrariwise, if you seek to find reasons to believe, you will find those as well. For me and my wife it simply boils down to this: in living the precepts of the Gospel as revealed through Joseph Smith, our lives are infinitely better and happier than they were before. We choose to believe and as we seek to draw our souls nearer to the Lord, we seek and find more and more reasons to continue to believe.
I feel my Savior’s love everyday and I am grateful to Joseph Smith for suffering through all of his afflictions so that I could come to experience the joy of knowing Jesus Christ through His restored gospel.
[1] Matthew 7:7,8; KJV
The immediate goal is to take all the music that has been written and get it professionally recorded and produced. Once that is completed, we will release a "concept album" for the musical. With some faith, a few good prayers, and a little luck we hope to garner enough interest in the endeavor that we can then stage a full production of
The immediate goal is to take all the music that has been written and get it professionally recorded and produced. Once that is completed, we will release a "concept album" for the musical. With some faith, a few good prayers, and a little luck we hope to garner enough interest in the endeavor that we can then stage a full production of the show.
For now we are focused on the next best step: producing one song at a time. At some point, a new next best step will reveal itself -- and when it does, we will do that!
Thank you for considering helping us! Every dollar is helpful!
Born in 1805, Joseph Smith, Jr. is clearly the most controversial religious figure to have ever graced the American stage. Claiming to have been visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ when he was just 14 years old, from a very early age Joseph’s contemporaries fell squarely and passionately into one of only two camps: Joseph Smith was
Born in 1805, Joseph Smith, Jr. is clearly the most controversial religious figure to have ever graced the American stage. Claiming to have been visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ when he was just 14 years old, from a very early age Joseph’s contemporaries fell squarely and passionately into one of only two camps: Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and the mouthpiece of the Lord – or he was a dangerous charlatan and needed to be locked in prison or, better yet, killed. When it came to Joseph Smith, there were no fence-sitters. In the end, the latter camp eventually won the day seeing him murdered for his testimony of Jesus Christ when he was just 38 years old.
Nevertheless, in those intervening 24 years between his first vision and his martyrdom, Joseph was able to establish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He restored dozens of doctrines to the faith, many of them controversial to mainstream Christian believers, such as: Christ’s “Plan of Salvation” which is so merciful that it provides salvation even to those who are non-believers; the belief in Heavenly Parents, both a Heavenly Mother and a Heavenly Father; and the doctrine of eternal progression. Today, the Book of Mormon is published in 115 languages and, in 2021, the church Joseph established provided nearly one billion dollars in humanitarian aid to projects in over 180 countries.
In his lifetime, Joseph was continually persecuted for his beliefs and teachings. He was tarred and feathered, repeatedly beaten, illegally thrown into a dungeon for five months, had all his personal possessions stolen from him by mobs (more than once) and saw one of his children die after he was attacked in his own home one winter night. By the time Joseph himself was killed, he had already outlived six of his nine children. One can only imagine the pain and suffering his wife, Emma, endured as well.
Joseph led an epic life. Poor and barely educated, the odds against Joseph doing anything worth remembering were substantial. Yet, from the time he was 14 years old, hardly a day passed that something significant did not happen to him. His journey is one worth remembering and is one that is eminently applicable to our day.
This is why we work to tell his story.
"If you are in a totally pitch-dark room and there is the smallest element of light then that light chases the darkness; but the darkness cannot overrule the light."
“Sometimes receiving inspiration is like a foggy day. … You can see just enough to take a few steps ahead into the cloudiness…
“I don’t know about other people, but it occurs that way for me all the time. There’s enough [light] to just take a few steps, and then the light continues to help me see just far enough ahead that I can continue to press forward.”
"And I went forth not knowing beforehand the things which I should do."
1 Nephi 4:6
Content & Music ©2022 Gunnar Michael Andersen-All Rights Reserved
J.Smith images©2022 TonyReilly–All Rights Reserved