Lauren Daigle brings show of joy to Dickies Arena after fighting pandemic-related darkness

Expect the unexpected at Lauren Daigle’s show Friday at Dickies Arena.

In some regards, even Daigle doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen from night to night during her Kaleidoscope Tour.

“The show is full of love, excitement, joy … lots of joy, lots of color, a lot of energy,” Daigle, 32, said during a recent phone interview with the Star-Telegram. “Just genuine all-around fun. It’s a night for every person in the family. If you’re the grandmother, grandfather, mom or dad, or the kid, there is space for everybody at this show.”

The Christian music artist is touring in support of her self-titled fourth album, “Lauren Daigle,” released in September.

She discussed the tour, the new album, and the devastating bout of depression she battled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it helped redirect her career.

What type of show can fans expect on Friday?

We’ve had some legitimate surprises. Each night I’ll pick somebody from the crowd to come up to dance or do something — it always varies — but every single time someone comes up on stage, it’s something different or something profound. The other night we had a little girl jump up there and shock us all. She was dancing, and I told her, ‘You’re an incredible dancer. Do you have anything to say to everybody watching?’ And the thing she chose to say was, ‘I’m so excited to be here, I was just adopted.’ And the crowd just erupted. We’ve had people come up and breakdance; some have done gymnastics down the runway. It just depends on when I see people when it happens, but it’s really cool.

What was your inspiration for the current tour?

When I was a kid, I had all these dreams or visions of different shows and performances, and I wasn’t even singing. I’d be brushing my teeth in front of the mirror, and then all of a sudden, the mirror would turn into a [collage of] pictures. I remember saying, ‘God, is this real? Is this you, or am I going crazy?’ I was sick at home with an autoimmune illness for two years. I remember thinking, every business decision I have to make, everything I have to do, I’m going to make sure it lines up to the pictures I was shown when I was a kid because I feel like that was purposeful, that it happened for a reason.

You perform most of your new album during the show, why did you use your name as the title?

We were sitting at dinner with friends, and I was asked what I was going to call this record. I genuinely believe this recording process transformed me. COVID presented a lot of growth for me in some ways because of the level of disappointment I felt from not being able to do our shows and the ache of that — and everybody went through something different in their own experience — I watched friends and family lose jobs that they had worked on for years and years. So many things catered to the ache of the age for me.

You’ve been open about your battle with depression when the COVID pandemic derailed a massive worldwide tour and sent you into a personal crisis. Why did it affect you so profoundly?

We had 72 shows booked, and we were 10 shows in when COVID happened. It was like a dream of a lifetime. We had sold out Madison Square Garden, We had shows all around the world — South America, Africa — it was going to be my first time doing an Asian leg. And we got the phone call that it all had to shut down.

The weight of the disappointment of it all really did me in. I went through a pretty intense season of depression, and it was pretty rough.

What helped you recover?

I ended up coming out of that only because my manager flew down to my house and was like, ‘I need to know if you’re ever getting up again because I need to figure my life out.’ I said, let me just try and I started writing with this guy named Jonas Myrin. I thought, ‘If this goes south, I’ll have to figure something else out.’

Why did the pandemic have such a profound effect on you?

It was the animosity of the time with everything we were experiencing. To see the lack of kindness really startled me in a way. I definitely felt I had the rug pulled out from underneath me because we had seen a kind of joining of sorts through the tragedies of 9/11. Our country came together and found ways to support each other. So I think I was kind of expecting we would get through this together, and then when we saw the weight of people’s anguish released on each other, that was really tough to navigate. I felt life is not what I thought it was. I feel that’s part of growing up; when you realize this is not quite the life you thought it was. I need to dig deeper to find the things that once gave me joy.

Are you going to re-book Asia and all of those places?

That’s our hope. I hope with all of my heart that I can do that. Things definitely changed in some ways after COVID. My plan is to basically do everything I missed during that time.

What type of artist do you view yourself as?

Well, according to the Grammys, the Inspirational category.

Isn’t all music inspirational?

Yeah, I definitely believe that. I would 100% say that I am a Christian who does art. So whatever you want to take that as. I feel like there are a lot of Christians in other genres of art, and I’ve seen some genres starting to shift. Jon Batiste just released an incredible record and I watched this interview where he actually mentions that he’s creating a genre-less lane for people to run through. And that’s exactly how I feel, where art will be created, and if you want to categorize it as anything, that’s up to you, but I am just going to continue to make music that I feel like God is putting inside of me to share with the world hope that is real and lasting, especially in the times we’re all in right now.

You co-wrote all 23 songs on new album; what’s your writing process like?

Typically when I go into a co-write, sometimes I’ll go in with the chorus written.

Other times I have an idea, and we write together the whole thing. It varies from song to song. A lot of times I’ll hear the vocal melody and the lyric together as I’m getting an idea and then I’ll take it in and see if we can write music underneath it, can we supplement chords underneath that will work with this vocal melody and with these lyrics. The writers I worked with for this record are among the best writers I’ve ever been in a room with. They were so incredible to allow me the time and space to curate my ideas and bring those in. And I think because of that, I ended up getting to write from a deeper place and bring things to the table that were more advanced than maybe things I’ve had in the past.