LITTLE ROCK — tobyMac has created some Portable Sounds and he's bringing them to a central Arkansas church that's becoming a new concert venue.
Portable Sounds is tobyMac's new CD, released Feb. 20 on Forefront/EMI Records. The album debuted at No. 1 on Soundscan's Contemporary Christian Music chart and No. 10 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart.
tobyMac got his start in the late 1980s in dc Talk, a Washington Christian hip-hop group, a rarity at the time. He now has a solo focus, but he travels with a band he calculates has nine members, including himself.
"We have the band and a few background singers," says toby-Mac (whose full name is Toby McKeehan). "We do a pretty energized little set. I've always tried to make music for everyone, and I feel like most of the world can relate to what I'm writing about and singing about.
"It's kind of a melting pot, with rock, hip-hop and melodic pop all mixed together, and it's always been sort of a mass-appeal thing, rather than going for so isolated or segmented kind of market."
tobyMac now divides his time between stints as an artist, producer, songwriter, Christian music industry leader and father of five. He features his 9-year-old son, Truett "truDog" McKeehan on one of the songs on his new album, a tradition he started a while back.
"He usually does a littlecameo," tobyMac says. "It's just a dad and his son, hanging out in the studio, for fun. The other kids haven't been as interested, I guess, except for just putting on some music and dancing to it while cleaning up the kitchen. Plus they always lend me an ear in the car, and say 'Play that one again, Daddy,' but before too long, they're ready to move on and listen to the Jonas Brothers."
As for the possibility of a dc Talk reunion, tobyMac doesn't rule it out.
"Sooner or later, there might be some kind of reunion thing, more like a tour," he explains. "There was no animosity when we split up; just three guys looking for new hills to climb, creatively."
Opening act BarlowGirl is a trio of sisters (Alyssa, Lauren and Rebecca Barlow) with a new CD, How Can We Be Silent, released this year on Fervent Records. The band's debut album was released in 2004 by Fervent, but the sisters had already been the subject of a song, when Superchic[k] sang "Barlow Girl," as a tribute to the sisters' sexual purity.
tobyMac
Opening acts: BarlowGirl, Thousand Foot Krutch 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Church at Rock Creek, 11500 W. 36th St., Little Rock
Tickets:
$25 advance; $30 day of show; groups of 15 or more, a $2-per-ticket discount
(501) 514-1717 or (501) 225-8684
Style, Pages 64 on 10/28/2007