From lead singer to faithful follower, the story of the Texas Music Revolution with founder Joshua Jones and pastor Tony Villanueva 

Joshua Jones is the founder of the Texas Music Revolution festival and the general manager of KHYI (The Range), a country music radio station based out of McKinney, Texas. Tony Villanueva, former lead singer of popular country music group The Derailers, left his band in the early 2000s to follow God’s call into ministry. The Texas Music Revolution documentary comes out globally on June 5th, 2026, just in time for the 30th annual Texas Music Revolution festival. To access the documentary, click here.

(Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full conversation above.)  

Nyah Phillips: Can you tell me about the Texas Music Revolution documentary? What is it about, and why tell this story now?

Joshua Jones: There’s this music festival in Texas that started in 1997 when I was living at my parents’ house. I’d just finished college. I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. And I just thought, “I’m going to throw a concert.” When you’re 22 and you don’t have kids, and you don’t have a mortgage, you have this ridiculous amount of courage.

So I ran with that idea, and it was great. The second year, word got out to Nashville, and all these bands started contacting us. So that really helped us become an institution.

Five years ago, we were commemorating the 25th anniversary. The average lifespan of a music festival is less than three years, so we wanted to do something special. We threw all these ideas out there, from coffee table books to commemorative belt buckles. The one thing we kept coming back to was a documentary. So we began that journey with Troy Paff, who is an award-winning cinematographer from the TV shows Dirty Jobs and Bizarre Foods. We began that journey in early 2021 on the heels of the pandemic. It’s been a five-year journey of making the actual film. We’ve had the pedal to the metal these last few months to get ready in time for this year’s music festival, which is coming up this weekend.

Phillips: Are you doing a documentary for the 30th as well?

Jones: No. We’re still smitten with the documentary for the 25th. I’m so proud of the movie. We’re not doing anything that big for the 30th anniversary. Kiefer Sutherland is flying in from London to help us commemorate it, so we have some things like that. But I told Troy Paff after we did this, “I never want to make another movie again for the rest of my life.” I just had no idea what I was signing up for. It’s a lot of work.

Phillips: Different genres of music speak to the soul in different ways, and obviously you guys are very connected to country music. What is it about country music that speaks to you guys personally, and what would you say to someone who is maybe less inclined to listen to country music?

Tony Villanueva: It speaks to me, because it’s what I remember growing up with. It was the soundtrack of my life. It was what my mother always had playing on the Zenith console, and my grandfather on his radio. It spoke to me organically. But most importantly, I liked the stories it told and the way the music conveyed feeling. And so that’s what grabbed a hold of me. For people who won’t get it, it’s just one of those things. Maybe go to a live show and see if that strikes a chord.

Jones: My family owned and operated a small country radio station for most of my childhood. I grew up hating country music, because everybody else around me loved it. I don’t know if it was a need to rebel, but I was an apostle against country music growing up, even while playing in rock bands throughout college. Then I remember very distinctly having a yellow Sony cassette Walkman. I’d been living in England going to school for almost a year, and a buddy of mine had made me a tape of Dwight Yoakam. I was on a train on the east coast of Britain, and I remember being so sick of all my other cassettes that I finally thought, “I’m just going to put in this Dwight Yoakam cassette.”

I think one of the first tracks was “Fast As You” off his This Time album. I just remember thinking, “Oh my goodness, I had no idea there was such cool country music out there.” I had lumped it all into this stale, crusty, uninteresting pile. But I remember having this country music conversion experience with a yellow Sony Walkman and a Dwight Yoakam cassette. My mind was blown, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Phillips: You’re kind of like Paul when it comes to country music.

Jones: Yeah, that was my own country music road to Damascus. But to Tony’s point, I think people will discover in the movie that there’s great country music out there.

A lot of times country music can really get homogenized. It becomes the same 20 songs by the same 10 artists over and over again, whether you’re in Tacoma, Washington, or Clearwater, Florida. There are other options out there. You just have to dig a little deeper for them.

Phillips: Tony, you continued engaging with music after leaving the band and following God’s call to Oregon. How is your mission work intertwined with your music?

Villanueva: I continued playing, because it’s something I’ve always done: playing guitar, singing, and writing songs from an early age. The first song I learned on guitar was “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

“I am weak, but Thou art strong. Jesus, keep me from all wrong.” If I follow that every day, it’s a pretty good day. Also, in the ministry, we were teaching children Bible verses and memory verses. It was difficult at my age to remember verses, so I would put them to music.

Also, the Lord gave me a song that described the ministry we were involved in, and I would sing that whenever I was invited to share about the ministry at a church.

Some people involved in the ministry with me also could sing, and they said, “Why don’t we form a little band called Sunday Feeling and do some songs here and there?” So we’d do benefit concerts for the ministry, and that was a lot of fun. It’s been a good outlet.

Phillips: Music had been your life for so long. When God called you to leave that world, how difficult was it to obey that command? And how were you able to shift your identity from music to God?

Villanueva: It was very easy in some ways. But the day I was making the call to our record label to tell them I was going to quit, it was a struggle.

We had some very bright prospects for the next album. My meeting with the president kept being delayed, and I started thinking, “Well, maybe it’s God’s will for me to do one more album.”

When I thought about that seriously, I believe the Holy Spirit reminded me of a couple things. One was my grandmother. When I told her I was thinking about leaving music and following the Lord’s lead, she stared at me with her steely gray eyes and said, “Don’t let anything distract you.” As I got one of those delayed calls, I was in the middle of studying for a Bible study that night. I believe it was Luke 9:62, where it says, “He who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.” But the particular version said, “If anyone lets himself be distracted.” That took me back to the conversation with my grandmother.

The next delay, I started thinking again, “Maybe I’m supposed to make one more record.” But then the Holy Spirit brought a song back to me, “I Surrender All.”

I surrendered my life right there and then. I was like blind Bartimaeus, so happy to see and be saved that I wanted to follow him wherever he wanted me to go.

That’s how it’s been since then. He’s been so good to me. He’s been so good to our family. He’s given us such an amazing, vibrant life with him that it was really easy to forget about the past and follow him into the things he had for us going forward.

Phillips: One last question. What do you hope audiences take away from the documentary?

Jones: I hope the Lord uses this movie to get people thinking about their eternity and their relationship with him.

I hope a secular audience is inspired and stirred to think about their eternity and their relationship with the Lord. I hope a spiritual audience is encouraged and inspired by Tony’s story.

I hope there’s something for everybody, wherever they are on that redemption arc. I know that I’m inspired by Tony’s story personally. So hopefully people who watch the movie will be inspired one way or another.

Find more information about the Texas Music Revolution festival and documentary here: https://tmrfest.com/documentary