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So, you trusted his judgment?

CarrSometimes we'd question things. One arrangement sounded like the same thing we had done six months earlier on the demo, and we said something like, "You're producing this album, so why aren't we changing it all up?" But he reminded us that because we'd been doing music for so long, there wasn't a reason to change a good arrangement. Then we focused on the fine-tuning.

Can you think of a specific song that stretched you all the most?

Carr"Blind" definitely was the biggest stretch for all of us. It's a really cool song. We wanted to put an edge on it to make it an in-your-face rock song. Before that, it was more of a pop/rock type song. So, we were in there all day hashing that one song out. We had this cool riff the guitar guys were playing, and it just never quite jelled as we were jamming on it. It didn't feel right for some reason.

It was getting very frustrating. Then we hung it up that night and didn't get anything recorded. We decided to start from the ground up on that song the next morning, from the way we originally did it on the demo. That's when we realized how good it felt the way it was. All that time we were going down this rabbit trail, but it was supposed to be like that—a pop/rock song—all along.

But what we had been working on the previous day was a really cool piece. The music sounded awesome. So, we took that and made a whole new song out of it, and it ended up becoming the first song on the album, "'Till the Day I Die." The stretching was well worth it for us.

Mac, how were you stretched?

PowellI believe I stretched myself quite a bit in my songwriting. There are several songs I'm proud that I wrote, because they're totally different than anything I've written before. I'm not saying they're so much better or "out there" different. It's just that most of our have been serious as far as talking about or faith. They haven't always been very personal.

But on this record, there are quite a few songs that are a lot more personal, because I've studied our past songs, looking for what I need to be doing that I'm not. We've had a lot of songs that are right in the middle, and not a lot that were on the ends of the spectrum—personal songs on one end, and fun, tongue-in-cheek songs on the other . This record hit both ends of that spectrum more than any other record we've done. There are songs called, "Rock Star" and "Billy Brown" that convey those ends of the spectrum. So, if anything, I think we were stretched more in the songwriting process than musically.

"Rock Star" is a fun song, but I heard an important message there too. What would you say it is?

PowellThere are many times kids come up to us and say, "I want to do exactly what you're doing." I was the same way growing up. But "Rock Star" is a song that hopefully encourages people where they are. There's so much more to life than being a rock star or movie star or some sort of celebrity. You need to know who God created you to be and to learn to be content in that. That's what I hope the song says to people.

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