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We sure didn't get successful overnight," says lead singer Mark Stuart with a soft smile. "Some bands get successful really quickly, but for us it's been kind of slow, you know what I mean?"

I'm sharing burgers with the Audio Adrenaline guys at Max & Erma's, a restaurant with a kind of a retro-'50s feel. We've been talking about the band's latest album, Some Kind of Zombie (ForeFront), and the 60-city "Zombie" tour. It was the first tour Audio Adrenaline had ever headlined.

Until the Zombie tour (which ended in May), Audio A seemed "doomed" to be the other band's "opening act." Not that being a warm-up act was all bad. After all, they've opened for some top artists, like dc Talk and Steven Curtis Chapman. Even so, the Audio A guys often wrestled with their "we're number two" status.

Then, after six years in the music biz, they finally got their big break—a break that came with a ton of hard work and struggle.

I asked the guys about their long road to success. Here's what they had to say about the past, the present and the future of Audio A …

Campus Life: Did you ever say, "This band thing is not going to get off the ground"?

Bob Herdman: When we first got our record deal, our record company [ForeFront] told us they thought we would be the next huge band. But sales on our first album weren't great, so I think the record people were like, "Oh, boy, why did we sign these guys?" I kind of thought it was over for us.
Will McGinniss: For a while, it seemed possible that our record company might drop us. But I didn't feel threatened by that. Musically, I knew we weren't the best band out there. But in our weakness, I believed God wanted do something great through us. I believed that if we were humble and faithful in little things, God would bless us with bigger things.
Mark: We had another big problem about the time our record company was thinking of dropping us. I caused a pretty bad accident in Illinois. I was pulling a 5,000-pound trailer behind our van when we crashed. I came to a stop sign, but the brakes wouldn't work, so I went right through the intersection and hit another car. I put some people in the emergency room because of that. They ended up being all right, but I felt so terrible. Legally, I still can't drive in the state of Illinois because of the accident.
Will: We've had our share of problems with vehicles over the years. We were in Canada when our fuel line froze up; we were stranded out in the middle of nowhere in minus-40 temperatures. Then there was the time we fixed up a semi-truck and trailer to use as a "tour bus." The exhaust system was bad and some of us almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning!

Are you serious?

Will: Oh, yes. We all ended up in a hospital emergency room. It was very serious.

Wow. You guys have been through a lot. Have there been other difficult times?

Mark: It was really tough when our former lead guitarist, Barry Blair, told us he was leaving the band. It was during the fall of '96, right before we began recording Zombie. Barry said he was leaving so he could become a record producer. I knew he'd been thinking about making a change, but I never really thought it would happen. He'd been with us since the beginning. But he felt God was leading him in another direction, and we supported him in his decision. It was a real hard time. After all, Barry was a big part of our guitar-rock sound. He was also a good friend.
Will: Barry also played a big part in our songwriting. Our record people were wondering if we could continue to write songs without Barry. But the rest of us got to work, and the result was Some Kind of Zombie.
Ben Cissel: There was also a time I thought we were going in a really bad direction that could only hurt our career. But I was totally wrong.

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