I interviewed Jonah33 during GMA week in Nashville. The interviewees were Vince Lichlyter: vocals & guitar, Joshua Dugan: drums, Pete Eekhoff: bass, and Jon Kellum: lead guitar.
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The Interview
Randy: How long have you guys been together as a foursome?
Joshua: Two years.
Vince: Um...two years. John's the newest addition. He's been with us--
Jon: Almost a year.
Randy: Almost a year. So did you play on the CD or did you come right after that?
Jon: I came two weeks before the CD was released.
Joshua: So, yes, he did play on the CD.
Randy: It was a quick job. You moved back--we all know the story if we've followed the band--were you moving back from, was it, the Seattle area?
Vince: Yeah.
Randy: And then, ended back here. Did you meet these guys then at that point or did you know any of them before you'd gone out there?
Vince: No, I had actually talked to him first--Pete, the bass player--
Pete: Hello, everybody.
Vince: --um, I talked to him... After we made the album I was just trying to piece together a band like a last minute frenzy type situation. So, I met him through a thing called Visible School in Memphis, Tennessee. It's just like a school for musicians that love the Lord type situation. And then, I met him (pointing at Joshua) through a music store there in my hometown. The old drummer for Skillet worked at that store and I wanted to ask him one day, I was like, "Hey, I'm in a desperate situation, blah blah blah, here's my story." I asked him, "Do you know any drummers?" And he said, "Yeah, you know what, as a matter of fact, I do."
Randy: So you're saying you got him because you were desperate?
Vince: Yeah. This is an entire desperation crew right here. And they have absolutely been through thick and thin with me and hell and high water.
Joshua: $5,000 at Starbucks.
Vince: Down the drain. And then this guy came along (pointing at John) because he was friends with him (Pete). So he's basically on a free ride. He didn't even have to try out.
Jon: Actually, they got a new van and guitars came with it.
Joshua: He had van...
Jon: I'm the band mechanic and I play guitar.
Randy: Well, it's important to be multi-faceted, right?
Pete: Yeah, he's a real renaissance man.
Randy: You mentioned Skillet. Of course there's a big contribution there with some songs from the Coopers--have you known them for a while? Or did you meet them through Ardent?
Vince: Yeah, we met through Ardent. Actually, back in the day when I first got saved--I'm about ten years old in the Lord, so I got saved right, like literally, a year or two before the big Christian rock movement. When I got saved, people were still digging on Carmen and Whiteheart.
Randy: There were rockers before that--Resurrection Band.
Vince: Yeah, Rez Band, no doubt. I'm talking about like--
Randy: I wore my Glenn Kaiser shirt to your show.
Joshua: Allies?
Vince: Dude, Glenn Kaiser--he's The Man.
Randy: I saw him two weeks ago.
Vince: Did you really? Where at?
Randy: In Denver. He comes out there pretty often. He's a friend, he's a great guy. Awesome. Have you ever heard any of his new blues stuff?
Vince: Uh huh.
Randy: Check it out. On the newest one he's got a guy named Dave Beegle from Colorado that's a really good guitarist that plays on it. But also the guy that used to play with Edgar Winter and Johnny Winter. Pretty well known guitarist (Rick Derringer). My mind just went blank. Anyway, he plays on it as well. He's got some great urban electric blues. Stevie Ray Vaughn kind of sounding stuff. Just go to the website: www.glennkaiser.com. He's got great tunes.
Vince: You're not a fan at all are you?
Randy: Not at all. In fact I'm making a DVD of the show. It was a benefit deal--speaking of mechanics--a guy had a car fall on him while he was working on it. Ended up in a coma. Not trying to give you threats.
Joshua: Where'd that come from?
Randy: The benefit show where I saw Glenn. Glenn flew out to do a benefit for this guy--the mechanic who's car fell on him. He had been in a coma for a while, has an eleven-year-old daughter and they're trying to raise money for medical fees and things like that. And so, ya got to be careful. Block it up before you work on it.
Jon: Always!
Randy: So Glenn did a show and I taped the whole thing and I'm doing some editing on it and making a DVD. The proceeds will go to the benefit as well. Anyway, back to John Cooper...
Vince: Right after I got saved it was like immediately following that was the Skillet revolution and Grammatrain.
Joshua: That's a big word for a band--revolution.
Vince: Anyways, so I was technically a "panhead" back in the day. And then I started developing my own stuff and blah blah blah. Skillet definitely had--because it's on the same label--a lot of influences, like how we got formed and kind of gave us some direction. I remember several times on our very first tour we played like three shows as a band and got shoved out on a three-month tour and on that tour I called John Cooper all the time. He can vouch (pointing at Jonathan Steitz), because he was the road manager.
Jon: We stole Skillet's manager.
Randy: Oh, yeah?
Vince: Yeah, he was with them for six years. I called John Cooper all the time: "Hey, what do you do when you're in this position?!" Just all the time, just crying, and sucking my thumb. But, he totally helped out. It's kind of weird. Ken Storts the original guitar player, he started the Visible school.
Pete: We've been friends for years. Years.
Vince: And then Trey McClurkin the drummer was friends with him (pointing at Joshua) and they did the music store. It's kind of weird. God definitely did a work there.
Pete: And his old band copied Skillet (pointing at John).
Joshua: As big of goobers as Skillet actually are, they're awesome people. And I think we'll all eternally be panheads without ever really admitting it. Kind of the same genre, I think we are all like really huge fans but we can't really say it.
Randy: I think you just admitted it.
(laughter)
Joshua: Crap!
Pete: Cripes!
Randy: Speaking of Ardent, I'm an old guy as you can tell and Dana Key was one of my favorites. Glenn and Dana were kind of the two original... They were the first, Rez had the first metal-type stuff, but DeGarmo & Key was the first real progressive rock with some scorching guitar solos...
Joshua: The robes. Who wore the robes? Big frilly robes...
Vince: Eddie DeGarmo.
Randy: Yeah, Eddie had a lot of interesting looks.
Pete: That's a good way to put it. Nice and neutral.
Randy: When I saw him the first time I was up at Knott's Berry Farm in the early 80's when I was in college they had these Christian nights where you pay. Back then, you pay twenty bucks and you get like twenty bands from nine o' clock till one in the morning or something on New Year's or Christmas. They'd do them at Disney and at Knott's and I'll never forget the theatre there. They had the curtains closed and they're playing a little bit of the acoustic stuff from the first album and then the curtains came up and they were rockin' into "Go Tell Them."
Vince: Nice!
Randy: I was second row from the front, middle aisle on the aisle. They were about where you are (pointing at Joshua).
Joshua: Nice!
Randy: So, that was very cool because they were definitely legends.
Vince: No doubt. I think they still are. They paved the way for a lot of acts...
Randy: Staying active in music, a lot of the bands from back then, who knows? They went on, maybe to be youth pastors or drop-outs or who-knows-what. But, they obviously stayed active in music.
Vince: He's a very, very, very wise man.
Randy: Did he work pretty directly with you? I saw he co-wrote one of the songs.
Vince: It's kind of funny--as soon as he offered me the record contract he brought me to Memphis and he took me out. I'll never forget it. It was like Dana Key...
Joshua: Dana 101!
Vince: I was like, "Oh, man, he's going to take me to lunch." And so I'm thinking like, I don't know what I'm thinking. Some five-star hotel restaurant or something like that. He takes me to KFC and buys me a chicken wrap. I was like, "Dude, you're the man." Anyway, he took me through Dana 101 in like five hours. He rattled from the beginning--it's like a stopwatch--'cause you say "click" and five hours later you "stop". And that whole five hours he just rambled. Bam! He shot out everything. It was just a crash course in Christian music industry, songwriting, secret formulas for hit songs, all this kind of stuff. He researched number one songs for fifty years. All the way back to like 1950 and like what it took to make a number one song all the way up through. So apparently I didn't listen to him well enough...I'm just kiddin'! But, we had a good time. He's definitely played a large part in the creating of Jonah33.
Randy: Well, I was from a small town-we had a couple hundred people in our church, but we had eighty in the town. So it was a small town. I had a '49 Mercury pickup truck with a good stereo in it and I used to crank up DeGarmo & Key and Rez Band and drive around and get in trouble with all the country fans there.
Vince: Didn't they sing "Boycott Hell"?
Randy: Yeah, that was way later. That was after they mellowed out, though.
Vince: Oh, really?
Randy: Their glory days were--Straight On...
Vince: We need to dig up some DeGarmo & Key stuff.
Joshua: They've got some at the pawnshop. Or Goodwill.
Randy: The best album was Straight On in terms of rock.
Pete: The Pawnshop--
Joshua: Goodwill.
Pete: Well, they're in pawnshops, too.
Randy: They did re-release them all on CD I think. I mean, pretty much everything came out.
Joshua: You can't find anybody with a copy of them.
Randy: There's later ones that have good lyrics and good sound, but if you want them when they were edgy...
Vince: What do you think about Dana's new stuff?
Randy: How new?
Vince: Newer stuff.
Randy: I haven't heard anything in the last couple years. Has he done another new one?
Vince: No, no, I'm talking about like, what's the name of the album?
Pete: Five years ago.
Randy: Oh, yeah. I thought it was fine, but it's obviously not edgy anymore.
Vince: You're a rocker.
Randy: He's gotten old and he's a great guy.
Pete: You like edgy don't you? I'm sensing that.
Randy: I like a little edgier. And it's good stuff, I love a lot of their mellower songs later like "Casual Christian," good songs of commitment and things like that. But, I liked them when they scared people.
Joshua: So, what other music do you like? I mean, what are you digging on right now?
Randy: Well, my older side, of course I like the old blues rock like Kaiser stuff, I like you guys. As far as current stuff I've reviewed, I like some of the alternative stuff like Anberlin, some of that stuff. I've enjoyed reviewing some of them. As far as bands, I liked Tait last night, Sanctus Real is a current band I like a lot, and I like the guys too, they're cool guys. I got to interview them on the See Spot Rock Tour.
Vince: Cool.
Randy: If I want to listen to something a little heavier I enjoy Pillar, and some of that kind of stuff. It's kind of funny because it used to be my parents saying, "Turn down that DeGarmo & Key and Rez Band!" Now it's my daughters saying, "Turn down Pillar!" or whatever. They like stuff like Relient K, and you know, more that kind of stuff. I like stuff a little heavier. My boys are kind of just, whatever. They like a little bit of everything. They're young still, thirteen and ten, so it's hard to tell where they'll go.
Vince: Right.
Randy: I've got good variety. I obviously have plenty for them to choose from. Getting CDs every day in the mail. And I've probably got a couple thousand Christian CDs. The thing I like is that my kids are all into Christian music. I like Thousand Foot Krutch and my daughter likes FM Static. Two sides of the same coin.
Pete: Hah! Right.
Randy: But FM Static's got more of the high school kind of songs, you know. "Bumped into you in the hallway" kind of stuff. I'm a little bit past that kind of stuff except when I was teaching high school.
Joshua: What did you teach in high school?
Randy: Right now I don't teach, but I've taught English, Math, Geometry, History, Computer Science, Bible, Government, you name it. I work in a childcare in now. High fivin' little kids like your boy.
Vince: That's where it's at!
Randy: Which came first, the band name, or his name?
Vince: The chicken.
Randy: The chicken or the egg!
Vince: The story goes that we named him, my wife and I named our son, then shortly thereafter, Jonah33 came into existence. And we went through the grueling process of trying to come up with a name. And the guys were like, "You know Jonah's a cool name." And I was like, "I don't know about that." 'Cause I didn't want the band named after the lead singer's son. They were like, "No, we mean it, it's a cool name." I was like, "All right, I'll look into it." There's a band in Portland named Jonah. There a secular band out of Portland. I called them up and asked them if they'd be interested in sharing a copyright 'cause they just copyrighted like a month before we came up with the name. They were like, "No, you moron! That's why we copyrighted it!" I was like, "Sorry!" Literally, we were walking up, we were playing a show at John Brown. Was it John Brown?
Joshua: Yeah.
Vince: John Brown University. We were walking on stage to play the show and Pete said, "Chapter 3 verse 3 says blah blah blah blah." Actually, it doesn't say "blah blah blah blah." It says--
Randy: But that was the closest he could come?
Vince: "Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh." So, we went on that night and introduced ourselves for the first time as Jonah33. Kind of funny. It just stuck.
Pete: We used to be known as "God-o-Matic." (laughing)
Randy: God-o-Matic. Slices, dices.
Pete: Not seriously, though.
Pete: Daily Choice. Vitality, Vital. We've been known by all those.
Vince: Fever Pitch was probably the coolest one.
Randy: I think you ended up with a pretty good one. Do you have another project planned in studio?
Vince: Yeah, we're actually working on demos right now. The direction that we'd like to go in is just a touch, just a little bit lighter, to bring it down a notch.
Pete: Go for the high school crowd.
Vince: Just for the sake of when we perform live, we want to make sure people understand what we're saying.
Randy: To me, that's always been the big challenge. I've been going to concerts for...well, since the 70's. Especially Christian concerts, a lot of times that is a problem where, you can enjoy the music, but if you bring a friend, he's not going to get anything out of it.
Vince: Yeah. Might as well go to a Korn show.
Randy: Well, on one hand, if you get them interested in the band, and they start listening to the CD, they can pick up stuff. But it still is nice if some of it gets through at the concert.
Vince: Right, right.
Randy: And, I can't tell with you guys, because I already know the songs. If you know the songs, it all...you know it.
Vince: Right. Totally.
Randy: But if it's something new, than you find out, You know what, I can understand everything they say--not you guys, one of the shows last night when they got to a new song, I think they said either "God" or "gosh" or "good" or something. I picked up a word or two. It depends on the style. Where do you see your ministry in terms of on stage, when you do a full-blown show, do you preach, talk a little bit, or do you just play?
Vince: Absolutely.
Randy: I've seen your lyrics, obviously a bigger focus on a totally clear, uncompromising message than some bands. There's not a lot of songs written with cross-over intent. Obviously you're getting the message through."
Vince: Yeah.
Randy: Which is one thing I liked with bands like DeGarmo & Key and Resurrection Band, there was no doubt you were listening to Christian music. I think there's a place, you know, artsy stuff. I don't have a problem with poetic songs, I don't think you have to hammer it home every song. But, when you pick up your CD, no one's gonna wonder if you guys a Christian band or not. Do you see that as a key part of your calling in music ministry instead of just being a band that happens to be Christian.
Vince: Yeah. When we got into this thing, it wasn't really a thing where, we decided to have so many "Jesuses per minute" in every song.
Randy: Every down beat you have to say a spiritual word.
Vince: Right. Right. The whole purpose behind the human race is to worship God. Worship comes in all different styles and formats. So I think if we were going to write a song, if it's not in some way in correlation with God or the Kingdom, my personal opinion is that it's a waste of breath because we were created to worship God. It doesn't necessarily mean you've gotta preach repentance every song. I think the biggest part of our calling is to, A) Be obedient, do what God wants us to do, and B) It's like we were talking about earlier, we need to be relevant to what kids are dealing with and going through. If you just offer them the fact that, "Hey, we can empathize with what you're going through," that doesn't help them. We need to say, "Hey, we can empathize what you're going through and this is what we found works." Jesus Christ. So that's pretty much it. If God wants to take that to the next level, fine, if not, fine, I don't care. It doesn't really matter.
Randy: I haven't seen your schedule or that as far as how much touring you've been doing. Obviously, even if a lot of it's local, you're still going to be a part from your son, and being a dad in the band, how have you found that?
Vince: Ironically, we're based out of Memphis but him and I live in Arkansas, and in two years, we may have played ten shows locally. We're pretty much coast-to-coast. We spend a lot of time away from the families.
Joshua: We've been to Ohio a lot for some reason.
Vince: Yeah, we do. Have you noticed that? Ohio, dude.
Joshua: There's a lot of Christians in Ohio.
Vince: We live in the Bible Belt!
Pete: It's number four, population-wise.
Vince: Anyways, it takes a toll, and I've often wondered, one of my biggest problems right now is trying to figure out... 'Cause Jonah, I saw him last night, two and half years old, he's getting into that "Daddy-clingy" stage.
Randy: He's very aware when you leave.
Vince: When I'm gone, it comes out on his behavior and it's driving my wife crazy. I'm just like, "All right, Lord. What do you do? I mean, You called us to do this, and I can't do this." I feel a stronger calling than getting up and singing for kids. It's a more important calling to be a good husband and father.
Randy: He who doesn't care for his family is worse than an infidel.
Vince: Right. With that in mind, how do you justify walking out the door, leaving your wife and kid behind? Luckily--no, not luckily--by the grace of God, I was placed with a wife who... she struggles with me being gone, but she totally knows why I'm gone. More often than not lately, she's been pushing me out the door.
Randy: I think ever marriage is... it takes effort when you've got two fallen human beings living in the same place. Sometimes it can be a good mental break for everybody to be away for a little while.
Pete: My wife, in particular, enjoys it when I leave.
Vince: We were talking with her, and we're like, "How do you stand living with Pete?" She goes, "Why don't you guys take him away for a little while, give me a break?"
Randy: Have you guys ever heard of ApologetiX? Christian parody band.
Vince: Yeah.
Randy: J's a great guy. But what they try to do, they play a lot of weekends and are home during the week. But he said, "Even though we're gone a lot, I'm really home just as much or more than a guy that works on 9-5, becuase when I am home, I'm home all day, doing stuff with the kids." I think I'm sure that's a part of it. Finding time to maximize time there instead of going out and spending time with the boys.
Vince: There is no boys.
Randy: These guys.
Joshua: These guys.
Randy: When you get home you're more than happy not to spend time with them.
Vince: I got two accountability partners. And a bunch of acquaintances at church. I see them on Sundays, when I'm home for church and everything else is home.
Randy: When you're on the road, what do you find as far as, do you have any kind of structured set-up as far as devotional time or study time when you're away, or are you each just kind of on your own?
Vince: Nothing structured. We try to...
Randy: Do your own thing?
Vince: Yeah. We try to make this a personal relationship walk type situation. Every now and then we're like, "All right, dude. Let's dig into this." But most of the time, we spend... it's kind of funny, we calculated the other day with miles we put on our old van and this new van, or newer van...
Pete: It's got 200,000 miles on it.
Randy: Spankin' brand new.
Vince: With all the miles combined, if you could take all the time we've spent on the road and lump it all together in one sum, just in two years, and there's a lot more bragging rights out there in Christian music, but just in two years, we've spent four months.
Pete: Driving straight.
Vince: 24 hours a day. So with that, a lot of times you're driving through the night, you know, 2 AM in the morning...
Jon: We have deep conversations at 2 AM in the morning.
Vince: A lot of times we just, you get tired of talking about farts, or the latest band craze or whatever. And nine times out of ten, the conversation always steers into some sort of devotional topic.
Pete: It comes naturally.
Jon: And what's funny is, that time we're supposed to be taking shifts sleeping we all get caught up in this deep discussion. You know, everybody's sitting there going (leans forward, as if listening intently).
Vince: Next thing you know you're driving for six hours, "Wait a second! I got ripped off!"
Randy: That's one advantage to having lots of kids now. We go on trips I got a couple daughters that can drive. I find it's a lot easier to do the old go to California to go to Disneyland thing and visit friends. "Daughter's driving, I can sleep!" My wife, it freaked her out at first, "How can you sleep with a sixteen or seventeen-year-old driving?" It's in God's hands.
Pete: They've got to learn sometime.
Randy: They've got to learn and if it's my time to go, I'm going. Right now I'm going to sleep.
(Laughter)
Randy: Thanks for the time, guys.
Note: I got to see Jonah33 a few months later in Colorado. Interview II will follow eventually.
:: Randy Brandt ::
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