[All agree] Oh yeah! Very.
Shane: It's been too long to wait. We've been on the
road for about six months.
Now this is a question that's been plaguing me. It was
originally supposed to come out April 30th. How'd you
guys feel when the record label said, "Well, you know
what? We're going to push it back two months."? I mean
that's a long time for a finished album.
Shane: Actually they just asked us if that was ok. We
sat down with the new president of the label the second
day on the job. He was like, "Guys, I love this record. I
really don't want to just throw it out there on April
30th," because he was still putting his team together.
His marketing team. The label was basically solidifying
during that couple of months before the record was
supposed to come out. And so we talked about it, you
know, we were happy to hear that he cared about it enough
to want to give us the push he thought it deserved. So we
were like, "Sure. Push it back."
That's great that they asked you.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah. It really is.
Now, there's a lot of push behind this album and when
it got pushed back of course it had more time to gain
momentum. Does that make you nervous about it coming out?
Do you think there's a lot of pressure on it?
Mark :Ummm--not really [laughs]. I'm more excited than
anything else. I mean, if there is pressure it's you know
it's only--how to explain it? I'm really excited, period.
I guess that's the best way to put it.
The press kit compares you guys to like POD and
Incubus and stuff like that. I think that's a little too
general. What do you guys think you bring to the table
that makes you unique?
Aaron: Melody for one thing. I mean, as far as our
genre generally it's just one singer and the melody, but
you know we incorporate two or maybe three harmonies in
the same chorus. Which nobody does. Especially for our
genre. If you get more into a pop band, they start doing
that, but I think that's one thing that makes us unique
Nathan: We also bring, I think, a really different
lyrical package in the way our lyrics are written.
Especially for me in a rap/rock genre I think it's really
cool. It doesn't sound urban at all. It really brings its
own type of really poetic or aesthetic type of creations.
Mark: I think overall we really just bring a more
classical approach, you know. We're definitely on the
edge of having the hard rock or whatever sound but we've
got a lot of strings and a lot of big bombastic things,
you know with the poetic lyrics.
You've done shows on your own and you've been on tour
with Skillet, right? And I hear your showcase at GMA was
absolutely amazing. So there's a lot of talk about how
good you guys are live. What do you attribute that to?
What do you think you bring that makes you connect with
that audience?
Mark: I think a part of that is we were all involved
in drama in high school...so we know how to perform
period.
Nathan: It's like you get power in every category. You
get powerful, heavy music coming in with powerful lyrics
with pretty harmonies, powerful harmonies. I just think
there's a lot of emotion that you can tap into at our
shows if you want to.
Shane: As a Christian I have to say that God's Holy
Spirit doesn't hurt anything. [Laughter] It helps, sort
of.
So which do you prefer? Live or the studio?
(Everyone at the same time practically) Live!
Aaron :Studio was awesome, but at the same time it was
the worst experience of our lives. [Laughter]
It was the hardest challenge we have ever had, but it
was for the best.
Yeah, the production was excellent. So you don't like
having to do it two hundred times in a row?
(more laughter)
Aaron: It wasn't bad it was just...we were pressured
to change stylings just to adapt to become more than we
were before we entered the studio.
Shane: It's tough to handle direction. You know,
you're put under a microscope and sliced away and they're
like, "This is bad, change this."
Nathan: Yeah, you have fourteen days to record an album
and you have to write half of it in the studio.
How do you guys think you are different now from the
way you were before the studio, musically? Some of you
said you were really challenged in the studio.
Aaron: We're a lot more melodic and we're a lot more
open to different things. Like, we had to cope with a
certain paradigm of how do we want to sound, and anything
that's outside that little circle is not valid...so we
are probably softer now than when we entered the studio.
Which is just more beautiful.
Mark: I think what the studio helped us do is that it
sped up the progression that we already were very aware
of. We knew that we wanted to become more melodic, we
knew that we were going to have to be that way in order
to connect with a lot of people out there.
Which market (christian or mainstream) do you feel
that your heart, as a band, is with more? You know as the
Christian market becomes bigger and bigger, I think it
tries to box people in to the point where you have to
make a choice almost of whether you want to be a band
that plays for Christians or a band that plays for
non-Christians. Where do you guys feel you fit into that
whole spectrum?
Mark: Well, both.... That’s not a dichotomy we'll ever
accept. Even if that is the way it is. I mean, I've, you
know, talking back about me being in musicals, there's a
line in one, Man of La Mancha, where a character
says, "Perhaps madness is seeing the world as it is
instead of as it should be." And I don't really think it
should be that way. I don't think we should polarize it
like that. I don't think Jesus did that. I think when he
walked on Earth, what he did was he got right in the
middle of people's lives whether they were interested in
knowing him, or whether they were Jewish or not or
whatever and loved them and listened to them and
presented reason to them and himself to them, you know I
think we need to be the same thing. I think we need to be
Christians speaking to people, not, you know, either
Christians or non-Christians. Everybody needs Jesus.
Believers and non-believers.
Shane: We just want to impact the different sort of
people who are at different stages of their relationship
with God, and we just want to hit them where they're at.
You know, some people are as far from God as you can
imagine and they don't want to have anything to do with
him. We want our music to be an attractive, open door
language that they speak as well that will draw them in
and, you know, God will work with that. And then there
are those that are radical about God and we want to say,
"Hey! Get out there and help us do what we want to do."
And encourage them in their own faith, encourage them to
get out there and draw a culture toward God by making it
look good.
Now in the shows you do on your own, do you find that
a lot of non-Christians are coming to your shows?
Mark: Yeah, especially at home [Iowa]. For sure. I
mean, when we were at home, most of the shows we did were
in bars and clubs and stuff like that with a lot of
mainstream oriented local groups. Our biggest fans were
homosexuals and atheists. I had a lot of really good
conversations about the love of God for a sinful race.
The most basic concept of Christianity. But you know if
you put it in those terms to a non-believer they don't
get what that means, you know and so I was able to find a
common language both through the music and then through
talking to them later.
Now if you guys were gone next year, and you wanted
people to remember one thing about your band ten years
from now, what would it be?
Mark: That we were the embodiment of a reasonable
love.
Nathan (explaining Mark's statement a bit): Just that
we were an example of people who understood the world
around them. That understood the human condition. That
understood the objections to Christianity and the
interest to it, and were able to communicate that
effectively and... Really just rock and have a good time
and let people feel they're loved and they're cared
about. All those things together would be the best way to
express what we want people to remember about us. A group
of guys who were a lot of fun, had a lot of love and a
lot of wisdom.
