Third Day chat candidly at Parachute 07
Third Day chat candidly at Parachute 07 about celebrity, stereotypes and their beliefs - not to mention trying not to sound like a slowed down Cat Stevens…
How do you equate your Christianity with celebrity?
Having fame gives you celebrity to a certain extent (even you writers!) but we’ve always tried to some degree to downplay that and keep things in perspective …we leave the sunglasses and Prada to the keyboard players! (as he puts his aviators on)
Do you talk with your fans?
Yeah, we ask the fans who we see around the place, after shows, talking to us, we ask THEM questions, and allow them to tell us THEIR stories and that’s where the connection happens.
How do you break Christian stereotypes down?
Overall, you live your life and they see that is you; you’re just real and hopefully they see that and it breaks the stereotypes. You try to be as transparent as you can with your faults and shortcomings. We’re just human; you still have to fight for your marriage and go through serious stuff. This latest album is more obviously a Christian band than our previous albums; mentioning Jesus in the lyrics, yet we’ve had more non-Christians than ever saying it’s impacted them.
How do you maintain worship with your busy schedule?
We stay plugged in and involved with our home churches in the States; we all go to different churches and are plugged in to their community. So there are all these people at home praying for us behind the scenes. Nigel is our Road Pastor on tour, and we pray before we go on stage; the five of us ray together- not that we sing Kum Ba Ya or anything- but we worship together. When we’re backstage our worship is understated, it’s in prayer, and it come out on stage. God meets us there, on stage, in a very real way. It feels like He’s really moving through us and it’s a spiritual thing happening on stage- without sounding too cheesy!
Mack, you have a very unique voice, what are the pros and cons of that?
Yeah we’ve been listening to our older songs in putting this DVD together and I don’t like hearing them, I’ve changed so much! I used to get told all the time,’ You sound like Cat Stevens’ but so different now, deeper and stronger now.
How has the band developed over time, looking back at your chronology?
What’s cool is working on our chronology, between the first five years and the next five years the divider was playing at Parachute and being a headlining band, and the transition from being an outside band to an established band. So we are left with a challenge; what are we going to do with this mantle, this blessing God’s given us?
Any highlights from your tour?
Last year we went to Hobbiton! We’re all big Lord of the Rings fans. We could’ve been an orc or something all our geek friends think we’re cool cos we’ve been there! Last time when we sang with Brooke Fraser – that was a cool memory. It’s not an easy trip to come here, financially and leaving families and long flight but on other hand it’s so great to come here as a thank you to our fans down here for supporting us over the years. It’s not just ‘checking another concert off the list’ it’s a very special time for us.
Looking back over your chronology, has it been a personal time of reflection?
There’s very little separation between our band and our personal lives. We looked at these tapes of the first concert we played- we were so skinny then! Now, we’re all married with 15 kids between us, and it reminded us of our innocence and –if I pronounce this right- our naivety. We’ve grown but we want to retain our passion, it’s a blast…we’re spoiled kids being able to do this!
Was the album you made of Christmas carols difficult to make into a “Third Day album?”
Not at all, we expected to do an acoustic album but then we started to do Joy to the World and it sounded “Like Third Day!”