TobyMac 'Hits Deep' with latest tour stop at Verizon

Meetings. Christian pop superstar TobyMac is in the middle of a day full of them. It's early January and he has been meeting with his creative team about his ''Hits Deep'' tour. Then there's also a get-together with the tour's promoter a little later.

It's not hard to figure out which one he prefers.

"I have a six-hour creative meeting ... but I love it. It's a creative meeting," he says from his home in Franklin, Tenn., where he lives with wife Amanda and their five children. "The business meeting's the one I don't want to go to. If we can interview real long, I can just kinda skip that one."

He's joking, mostly, and is anxious to get back on the road with "Hits Deep" tour. The traveling Christian music spectacle makes a stop at North Little Rock's Verizon Arena tonight.

"The 'Hits Deep' tour is a different concept altogether," says Toby, 52. "We searched for acts that we love that also have radio hits. It's called the 'Hits Deep' tour because it's songs that not only hit you in a deeper way, but is also just literally deep in hits. I hope that people will hear songs that are hit songs all night long."

Along with headliner Toby, the bill includes Matt Maher, Mandisa, Mac Powell, Capital Kings, Ryan Stevenson and Hollyn.

Born Kevin Michael McKeehan in Fairfax, Va., Toby knows hits, at least in a Christian pop sense. As a solo artist and member of the groundbreaking DC Talk, he has sold more than 11 million albums and picked up six Grammys along the way. His latest album of new material was 2015's This Is Not a Test. Hits Deep Live, inspired by his set on the tour, was released with an accompanying DVD in October.

As with any TobyMac show, the energy level will be about as high as the building's rafters, mixing praise and unadulterated, arena-ready entertainment.

"It's always my desire to connect with people in a deeper way, and also entertain them," he says. "To make them leave there feeling a little different than when they walked in, a little happier, maybe a little more stirred up inside."

With so many other acts on the bill, Toby says there will be plenty of collaboration.

"There's a lot of guests on each other's sets, especially on mine," he says. "I try to have everyone out. That's one of those things you can't really re-create, so it's special for the people there. It takes a little more work, but it's worth it."

Backstage with all those musicians, including his band Diversity, is also its own little creative village, he says, and the goal is to have that vibe spill out onto the stage.

"It's like a family back there, with all that comes with a family -- laughing, crying, screaming," Toby says with a chuckle. "What happens backstage is the richness of an artist's life. When you walk onstage, that should be the overflow of what's going on backstage."

Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, Toby was drawn toward hip-hop and reggae.

"Without a doubt, Run-DMC," he says of his early influences. "The Police, Bob Marley. It was sort of reggae, funk and hip-hop for me, which kind of equals pop at the end of the day."

As for Christianity, his early years weren't spent much in the church.

"My mom would sort of drag us to church every few Sundays. My dad didn't really go. Faith wasn't important to him. But when I was 13, everything changed." That was when his father accepted Jesus.

"Everything sort of turned around. It was whiplash," says Toby, who was already on his own path to faith after attending a summer camp.

"Someone reached out to me and I made the decision to follow God," he says.

It's a story he explores in the single "Love Broke Through" from late last year.

"I've never really shared that experience," he says. "That [song] is all about that moment in my life."

As for a new studio album, it may be a while, he says, especially with the tour stretching deep into summer.

And in the meantime, that business meeting awaits.

Weekend on 02/23/2017