2 of 4

That part of it has been an interesting journey for me. When you're so close to someone and you're both relatively younger, you just don't fathom such an accident occurring. But we're surrounded by electricity every day. It's not a tame thing—this stuff is ridiculously dangerous. We live so close to it, especially those of us who are regularly surrounded by serious sound and lighting equipment, and yet [the danger] of it never crosses our mind.

I've loved that side of contemplation, enjoying the fragility of where we sit in this world as humans. That's really healthy for us to consider. But one of the biggest troubles I'm having with it all is how it also ties in with [our album].

When the album released, you said A Collision is a response to death.

Crowder: Right. See, Kyle wasn't just our pastor. We grew together at Baylor University, we've known each other for ages, and if I had to pick a best friend, he'd be one of those I'd bestow that title on. He's been incredibly influential on the band's music, and he had a prominent role in assembling this record—content wise as well as flow, before we even played a note. [A Collision] first existed as a Word document that I had put together from discussions with Kyle and other people.

You mean conceptually?

Crowder Well pretty much a script. It was really bizarre how we developed it. Note for note, as a whole, the record was pretty much mapped out in this file before we recorded anything.

As an essay or an outline?

Crowder A little of all of that, actually. The first page is, "Opens with [Loretta Lynn's] 'Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven.'" And then details about the room size, the mic placement …

So, literally the sort of stage direction you'd see for a play or film?

Crowder Exactly. It was just an idea fully fleshed out from start to finish, and Kyle played a major role in developing it. We had several friends and relationships within the church and outside that were all coping with death at the time, particularly cancer. So we found ourselves in the same sort of conversation we're having right now, and cancer became this sort of "antagonist" in the story, so to speak.

The album gets released, suddenly Kyle is gone, and then our church is left with a soundtrack of what we're going through—what we need. Yet he was the one that helped put it out there.

That's so bizarre. It's almost like he was the finishing touch or puzzle piece to help you through the subject.

Crowder As selfish and strange as this sounds, after all those phone calls that day in Orlando, Mike [Dodson] our bass player said, "What have we done?" Did it really need to go that far? We had to ask ourselves if we really believed what we were singing about or not. Is it just a collection of nice thoughts about our faith, or is it something more? We didn't know what we were supposed to do, so we decided to just go play our music [on tour, as planned] and see.

next page... |  2 of 4