2 of 2

You mentioned tours. You're about to embark on a tour with Good Charlotte and Simple Plan. I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry.

Thiessen Well, uhhh, we … I don't know. There's only a few things you could say in the press. I'm not really into those bands. That's not something I could go out and say in an interview because it just wouldn't be tactful. But the opportunity is good. We hope that most of the kids every night haven't heard of us and that we get to make some new friends. That's the whole point of it. It's just a marketing tool. The opportunity was presented to us, and it's not like we could even take a vote and say "no." Everybody [at the label] would've been very upset with us. People on the business side of things.

So it wasn't by choice. It was given to you.

Thiessen Yeah. But it's hard to talk about it without being honest, so I'm not going to say much.

How have your fans responded? They tend to get very defensive when their favorite band goes out with bands of that caliber.

Thiessen Some of them are debating. That's the thing When people think we're selling out or we're changing just for going on this tour, that's ridiculous. Plus, it's just an opening slot. If the fans want to see us, we're not telling them to come out and see us on this tour. We'd like them to come, so that new fans can see that there are people who are into Relient K. Our main incentive is to meet new people and for our music to be a positive influence on people.

But in many ways it feels like a step back, since you're going from headliner to opener. That doesn't bother you?

Thiessen When this tour was presented to us, a lot of thoughts went through my head. In order to make new fans, you have to play in front of people who haven't heard you before. We've been trying to open for bands [we like] in the past two years, but we haven't been able to. We've been begging MxPx to take us out. We want to go out with all these bands, but there hasn't been chance.

Are you really gaining a footing in the general market, or is it still mostly Christian kids still buying your music?

Thiessen I'm on the Internet a lot to see how we're doing in the general market, and some kids are into it. I think this new record is going to give us a little more cred with the non-Christian kids than our previous albums.

What do you mean by cred?

Thiessen A lot of people think our previous records weren't cool.

What do you mean?

Thiessen There was poor songwriting on a few levels. There was poor production on a few levels. There were a number of factors that made those albums not what we would've wanted.

So is this one IT? Is this your de facto debut? Should we forget about your past?

Thiessen We're definitely not ashamed of where we've come from. We're a band. We were kids. We started writing when we were 15 or 16 years old. There's nothing wrong with leaving a trail behind us. Our last record just went gold. If I were ashamed of that, that'd be kind of weird. It goes back to, "Are we influencing the world in any way?" Putting out that last record and then having it go gold, it's an indicator that we are having a positive influence.

For more about Relient K, visit our artist page for this band. There you'll find past interviews and reviews, including our take on their recent album, mmHmm. Visit Christianbook.com to listen to sound clips and buy their music.

© Andree Farias, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

first page |  2 of 2