Jason Jamison (left), Jeff Owen, Mike Donehey, and Scott Sanders look to combine emotion with intellect in their music to share the truth of God.

So what's located at the Tenth Avenue North address that's so significant to name your band after it?

Mike Donehey: The precious cargo located there was us! We went to college together at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida and we needed to come up with a band name for a conference we were playing. After hours of [rejected names] and frustration, I looked up at the sign with our address, and nobody objected to it.

Your music's been described as a vehicle to educate, entertain and enlighten. Would you agree?

Donehey: Entertaining could be good or bad, but I hope it's meant more in the Webster's definition of "to hold one's attention." I think that's been my desire as I've gotten older. I'm dissatisfied with writing a song where people just sit back and have a good time. I want to be more intentional about saying something—like understanding the Gospel better and letting people know they're loved by God so they can love him back.

What's your favorite song on Over and Underneath and why?

Jeff Owen: Mine is "Hallelujah." It kind of predicts the future, in a sense, by tracing the two groups of people in Revelation who will respond differently to Christ's return. One will be in fear of the glory of the Lord, the other will sing "Hallelujah" for the blood of the Lamb that was slain. When we sing it live, we get a taste of what we'll be singing on that day.

Donehey: My favorite is "Times," just because of the place I wrote it from. I need to hear Christ say those things everyday—that he'll remain faithful to us even when we're faithless.

Truth seems to be another main them of this record, though I'm wondering what you're specifically trying to communicate with those ideas?

Donehey: Jesus says there's a time coming when true worshippers will come in spirit and in truth. To borrow a concept from Madeleine L'Engle's book Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, she [suggested] that the mind becomes cruel when disengaged from the heart, and that the heart becomes over-sentimentalized and emotional when disengaged from the mind. I think that's often true of churches today, where everyone gets all emotional from worshipping to rock and roll and truth is slipped to them [as an afterthought] rather than letting truth evoke the proper emotion. I need to learn that my emotions are real, but not the ultimate truth—God's Word is. [I want to] take the steel rod that is God's Word and wrap my emotions around that, as opposed to taking truth and wrapping it around what I feel.

How do you strike such a lyrical balance in worship, between the emotional and the intellectual?

Donehey: Louie Giglio defines worship as responding to who God is and what he has done. On our record, "Love Is Here" is about what he's done, while "Lift Us Up To Fall" is about who he is, and "By Your Side" asks why we're running from these things. So [the album] progresses through all of worship in that sense. I think we sell worship short when we try to fit it into one little genre or time, when Colossians talks about worshipping God in whatever you do. And man, it's tough to break out of "Christianese," but I think it comes down to contextualizing and really understanding what you're saying. Thomas Edison got kicked out of school as a little kid when he asked "why?" too much. I feel like in church we sometimes don't ask enough, and the kids who do in Sunday school are always labeled the "problem children."

Owen: Or they don't get answers because they person they asked doesn't know!

Donehey: Or they're not willing to admit they don't know and that creates more problems! So for us, as Jon Foreman (Switchfoot) would say, "We're constantly dodging traffic at the intersection of faith, art, and commerce." And as Derek Webb further went on to say, "Faith and art is a troubled marriage. Faith, art, and commerce is a doomed marriage." We don't just want to artistically say it the way it is, we want to say it in a way that strikes your heart, but in order to effectively strike your heart, it needs to be in your mind as well.

Several record labels were interested in your group. Why Reunion?

Donehey: We were an indie band for eight years and recently met with different labels. Sitting with [Provident Music Group president] Terry Hemmings at dinner, he quoted Mark Hall (Casting Crowns) to tell us, "Our philosophy is that the Word of God is food and the meal we're serving; music is the plate we're serving it on." We just loved that analogy, and I think that's probably also the reason we decided not to go mainstream or independent.

With all the new bands to choose from, what separates you from the pack?

Owen: That's tough because I don't know how others perceive us. I think inwardly we deliver as much nonsense and humor as Gospel meat. And as serious as some of the issues are, we balance them out with letting our personalities shine. We also tried to make each song sound different and I think we and our producers [Jason Ingram and Phillip LaRue] did a good job of that.

Tenth Avenue North's national debut Over and Underneath releases May 20. Click here to learn more about the band at our site's artist page.

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

Click here for more interviews.

Click here to view our music review archives.

Visit the artist pages for related interviews and reviews.

				Try an Issue of Today's Christian Free! Name Street Address City/State/Zip E-mail Address No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only. Click here for International orders. If you decide you want to keep Today's Christian coming, honor your invoice for just $17.95 and receive five more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The trial issue is yours to keep, regardless. Give Today's Christian as a gift Buy 1 gift subscription, get 1 FREE!

FREE Newsletter Sign up now for the Christian Music Today weekly newsletter:    RSS Feed   RSS Help