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A Road Less Traveled

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Zach Dietz: 25, Rythym Elec & Lead vox
Kuhrt Cowan: 24, Drums & Background vox
Shawn Anglin: 26, Electric guitar
Chris Brown: 26, Bass
Michael Murry:27, MIDI/Programming & Background vox

Lubbock-based Christian Rock band A Road Less Traveled will be playing at Paramount Baptist Church on Wednesday, November 18, at 7 p.m.

Q&A with ARLT

Jennie Treadway-Miller: Well, I’ve done a little research on your band.

Chris Brown, bassist: Haha, is that good or bad?

JTM: Oh, it’s all good, but I want to get a little more on the band’s background. How did you get started?

CB: We got started about eight years ago, just a bunch of us guys getting together to do the worship for our church on Sunday mornings for the youth.

JTM: What church?

CB: First Baptist of Borger. We’re all from Borger, TX, right by you guys. And we got started doing that and people actually liked us, so we started doing church camps and youth events all around the Panhandle and some out of state. Just recently, about three years ago, we included some new members and have changed to playing more of the concert scene more than the worship scene. Our heart as a band is to see the lost saved and see the younger generation changed. It seems like they’re totally going downhill and people aren’t paying attention to them. Our kind of music draws a crowd for that.

JTM: Your sound now doesn’t sound like the same kind of music you might have played for worship because it definitely has an edge. Tell me how the sound of your music has changed over the years.

CB: We love the electronic sound, like mini-noise, random stuff. And when we started, we were just a four-piece band – singer, guitar, bass and drums. When we added Michael Murry, he does all of our programs, our loops, all of the techno stuff, and that’s helped to evolve us into more current music.

JTM: Who were the original members?

CB: Shawn, Zach and I were part of the original members. We grew up together in high school.

JTM: So who writes your music?

CB: Zach does a lot of the lyrics. He’s phenomenal with lyrics. As a band, one of us will come together with a cool guitar rhythm or someone will write a cool loop, and so we throw it all together and go to band practice to mess with it for a while.

JTM: Tell me about the conversation that had to happen when you decided to transition from church to stage. How did that conversation go?

CB: When we started doing more concert stuff, we noticed how much the kids enjoyed it. Of course, worship music is amazing and that’s our relationship to God, and with the lost kids, when we started doing the rock stuff, we saw such a change in those kids. They got captured by it, even if the lyrics didn’t necessarily say “Jesus.” We realized that we could be more than a worship band. We could have a real ministry and we wanted to do that 100% and do it for the rest of our lives if possible.

JTM: It sounds like you have a great fan base. When you won the award in CCM magazine, it was chosen by readers. How does that feel?

CB: It’s totally awesome when you win something like that, Best Independent Band. I mean, to find out that your fans went out there and devoted their time to seeing this band win, it’s just amazing. Every show we go to we make it a point to stay and hang out with fans and kids as long as possible.

JTM: This has become quite a testimony for you. Is that on your mind much?

CB: It is sometimes. It is hard, of course, when we play bars and some secular events. We wonder if people will shun us because of our message. But you see another kind of generation who likes your music for what it is and then we just hope our message sticks with them. Eventually, we hope the message kicks in and they’ll think, “Man, I want a life like that.”

JTM: Is Lubbock your home base now?

CB: Yes, three of us moved here five years ago to go to school. Shawn was still in Wayland going to school. We did that for a while, but we dropped the school thing because we it was hard to go to school, working our day jobs and keep playing. We have an amazing home church here, The Heights Fellowship, and God has really blessed us.

JTM: What is the family support like? It seems like such a long, hard road in the beginning.

CB: It’s difficult at times, and I’m glad we don’t have kids yet because that would take it another step. We’ve heard from other bands we’ve toured with, like Skillet and Superchick, how hard it is because they have to leave their families sometimes. For us, we’re only gone maybe two weeks at a time, but it’s still hard to leave your wife at home. I mean, we just hang out with a bunch of guys all the time.

JTM: How different has 2009 been for the band from when you came out in 2006?

CB: Just having new music and getting ready for the new music has been great. We started writing a year and a half ago, and we started playing them before we even recorded them to see the response. We noticed that the kids really liked it, and we’ve evolved as a band. The music isn’t so simple. It’s much more creative, and our producer was listening to it and really digging it. This is our sophomore album (“Of a Captive Heart”) and we’re really stoked about it. We think God’s going to do big stuff for us and our ministry.

JTM: What’s the relationship like between the band members?

CB: We’re like brothers. We can always talk to one another and have really grown from friends to becoming a family.

JTM: Tell me some of the bands goals – musically, professionally. When you look ten years down the road, what do you see?

CB: I’d love to see us go full-time traveling, to get into the national scene in the next few months or next year. Of course, we’d like to do more albums. You think that getting signed is always a good deal, but that isn’t always the case, especially with the economy the way it is. But eventually, we’d like to get signed because it would mean less pressure on us to come up with funding. We’d love to be a nationally known band.

JTM: What are the day jobs?

CB: Well, Zach and Kuhrt work together at Lifeway, and Shawn is a banker at Wells Fargo.

JTM: A banker? Really?

CB: Ha ha, yeah, you wouldn’t think that a bank would want one of us. Michael works for Gasket & Packing, and I work at home as a graphic designer.

JTM: Well, we’ll see you next week at Paramount Baptist. Thank you for your time.

CB: Thanks a lot for everything.

For more information on ARLT, visit their page on Myspace.

by Jennie Treadway-Miller

Jennie was a columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for eight years prior to moving to Amarillo in 2008. She is an avid reader, runner and writer.

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