Well, it kinda just happened naturally. When I first moved to Nashville to go to Belmont University - I first played in a local regional hardcore band for a year and a half or so. After that, I played in more of a emo hardcore band for another year. It was near the end of that band when I had started leading worship at a church I helped start in Nashville called The Anchor Fellowship. In the beginning, it was just really stripped down - acoustic guitar and such. it was just me singing worship songs and strumming the acoustic in someone's living room with like 15 people or so. It was incredibly inspiring to me though. It wasn't intended to be a band or a touring act or anything at first. I didn't really expect to be playing outside my own church. But, I began writing my own worship songs, and recorded a worship CD with 5 of my own songs on it. That's when my songs started to gain an audience with people outside of our church.
Would you describe your band as praise and worship?
I know that what we do has kinda fit into the praise and worship genre up to this point - simply
because of the lyrics and how things are sung. I know in the music industry - we always like to label types of music and such. And ours has fit in best to the "praise and worship" category. I would prefer that our music not be labelled any certain way, because I think the "praise and worship" genre a lot of times limits who would actually listen to the music. You wouldn't normally find fans of Underoath heading to their local christian bookstore to search for a "praise and worship" CD.
Despite the labels, our intention with every song we do and every event that we play, is to lead people straight into the presence of God. We are not interested in "performing" - so that we can get famous. We are not interested in just doing music to make money. We are interested in connecting with God. So, whether we label this as "praise and worship" or not, our main focus is to connect with God through our music and art.
