Music

Hard times drive brothers of For King & Country

Brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone head up For King & Country, the opening act for this year’s Winter Jam Tour Spectacular.
Brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone head up For King & Country, the opening act for this year’s Winter Jam Tour Spectacular.

They were nominated for two Grammy Awards, but when the big night came, Luke and Joel Smallbone, the brothers behind the band For King & Country, weren't at the ceremony with the glitterati.

Instead, they were in Nashville on the Winter Jam Tour Spectacular with a lineup of contemporary Christian artists.

Winter Jam Tour Spectacular

6 p.m. Friday, Verizon Arena, North Little Rock

Tickets: $10

(501) 975-9000

jamtour.com

Joel was in a car with his wife and parents-in-law when he learned they had won both awards (Best Contemporary Christian Music Album for Run Wild. Live Free. Love Strong. and Best Contemporary Christian Music/Performance Song for "Messengers"), something he describes as "flabbergasting."

For a band whose self-proclaimed mission is standing and fighting for something greater than yourself, the fact that they missed their big night shouldn't be surprising.

"That was a prior commitment before we were even nominated for the Grammys," Joel Smallbone says. "We wanted to stand by that."

Their father was a concert promoter in Australia and his children grew up surrounded by music and the music business. But when the family moved to the United States in 1991, they hit a very rough patch.

"Dad lost his job," Smallbone explains. "We really had to pull together as a family."

Prayer and help from friends and strangers carried them through. Then, when eldest sister Rebecca St. James began her music career, it was a whole-family affair.

"We joked that Dad needed cheap labor," Smallbone says with a laugh. "He put his five preteen boys to work as stage manager and lighting director and all these different roles. That's when we finally learned the craft of music but fell in love with the art and the heart of music."

Those hard times they had as a family and their experiences touring with their sister gave them a real respect and appreciation for the power of music when the brothers began to collaborate.

"It has a way of bypassing the head and going straight for the heart," Smallbone says. "It was natural that if we were going to lean into this, that whether it was writing love songs or writing about God or writing about a friend who was struggling with depression that we were going to write purposefully."

Their most recent album, Run Wild. Live Free. Love Strong, was written in the shadow of two big events: Joel's marriage and a severe illness that threatened Luke's life.

"Those themes of love and hardship -- physically, mentally, spiritually -- are sort of laced into the record," Joel Smallbone says.

Early in their career, For King & Country had a 10-minute, preshow slot on the Winter Jam Jingle Ball tour, a valuable experience that gave them a lot of exposure. This year, with two albums and two Grammys to their names, they're a headlining act. Others include Skillet, Jeremy Camp, Francesca Battistelli, Building 429, Family Force 5, NewSong, Blanca, About A Mile, Veridia and speaker Tony Nolan.

"To come back and open the show with the lasers and ladders and streamers and all the rest of it is preposterous and exciting and fun," Smallbone says.

This past fall the group was able to launch its first real, solo tour to promote Run Wild. With a new record, they had enough material to do a full show, and that prepared them for the Winter Jam experience, where each of the 10 bands on the bill gets 15 minutes to show what it can do.

"It's like a preview to a film almost," Smallbone says. "You want to put the best and most exciting and most connecting bits in."

Fifteen minutes may not sound like much, but it's an intense, compact 15 minutes of four songs and all-out performing.

As Smallbone explains, "Seven of us are in the audience for one song. I'm climbing a ladder in the middle of one song. It's efficient. I get offstage after 15 minutes and I'm pretty done in."

They use that time to share their music, but also to send a message.

"We say to ladies, 'Hey, girls, don't let any man disrespect you in a relationship. Don't ever settle for second best.' And we say to us men, 'Hey, guys, as young men, it's time for us to step up and stand out. Chivalry is alive and well. Treat these ladies as they deserve to be treated.'"

With everything from hard-rock to hip-hop, Smallbone says about Winter Jam,"There's really a lot for anyone. If you want a night of meaning. If you're in that point in your life where you are asking questions, you are searching, I think there's something very uplifting about this night."

Weekend on 03/26/2015

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