RF: It seems pretty rare to find an independent band that has had as much success as you have.

Mike: We get a lot of bands asking us “How come you guys play so much?” We work really hard. It’s all God, definitely! But we had our part on working really hard. When we started, we just played wherever we could: money, no money.

Chad: We’ve had a passion to see lives affected and transformed by the gospel. So in doing, and as a service to the Lord, (the music was great), we could perhaps share our hearts and the power of the gospel with people.

RF: You both (Chad and Mike) are married, how is touring having a family at home?

Chad: It’s definitely a hard thing because our wives are part of the group but it’s really our group. I’m sure it’s hard for them to go to the same place, hear the same set or the testimonies five nights a week and be excited about it for the next week. The Lord’s good, man, He’s gracious.

Mike: We have our priorities very straight. We’re not gonna put the band in front of families.

RF: And they (your wives) are here with you now, correct?

Chad: Yeah. My wife’s pregnant. She’ll be due on March 15th, so that’s a whole new ball game.

Mike: My wife will be pregnant in like 5 years and 3 months and two days.

RF: Is it hard going around touring knowing that you’re wife is pregnant? Is that on your mind a lot?

Chad: As long as she’s comfortable. It’s my responsibility to try to make sure she’s comfortable and feels good. She’s following my dream. It’s not necessarily her passion to play music. She loves Jesus. Its not so bad. If I were just self employed I’d be gone a whole bunch anyway. There’s struggles and hardships and wonderful things in every marriage, and all that good stuff.

RF: Your website is called “itwasyou.com” What does that mean?

Chad: Go ahead Jon.

Jon: It was probably, what, about 5 years ago you [Chad] wrote that song called “It was You”

Chad: Probably like 7 years ago.

Jon: 7 years ago? It basically talks about how “it was You,” “You” obviously being God not you or you (indicating around the table). I don’t’ know. Chad wrote the song so. . .

Chad: We tried to get Unspoken.com but it wasn’t happening for us and then we couldn’t get anything that we really liked…Basically it was out of necessity we had to take itwasyou.com because the one we really wanted was taken.

Mike: We wish we had a really cool story behind it but we don’t.

RF: Besides Soulfest, any big plans for the summer?

Mike: Yeah, the summer is gonna be packed.
We might be taking a trip down to Mississippi, which is pretty exciting because we’ve never been there. We have a couple concerts—one of them with Jeff Deyo who is a very sweet worship artist who I like a lot. It’s gonna be cool to be able to hang out.

RF: When you were playing with Casting Crowns, Toby Mac, Third Day, what were some of the most encouraging things that they said to you?

Chad: I really can’t say anything about many of the bands except for Casting Crowns. They were just wonderful brothers and sisters in the Lord. Really sweet, just taking the time to invest and just hang out with us for a few minutes and talk to us.

Mike: It would be sweet to go on tour with one of these guys because we’d get to meet a lot of people and that’s our ministry. But we’re happy. Tonight we’re gonna play before 25-30 people in this college. That makes my night! We can get to know, personally, some of those people and hear from them too.

RF: Was “Unspoken” the first name you came up with for the band or were there others?

Chad: There was this name that we had it was like “Hashem.” It’s a Hebrew word that means “The Name” and its basically how Jews refer to God.

Jon: I first came on and you guys had the whole thing about “We’re basically there to speak what goes ‘unspoken’ about God.” I don’t know if you guys remember the quote from St. Francis of Assisi where he says “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.”

RF: Is it hard when you’re on stage to make the performance about the Gospel and God then about yourselves?

Mike: Not at all. A guitar doesn’t make me a minister. I’m a minister of the Gospel with or without a guitar. We’re not just ministering when we’re on stage. I can be here in this restaurant and I can easily strike a conversation with somebody and just tell them about Jesus.
It’s just a daily thing for us. It comes really natural actually. We just keep praying that God will give us something fresh. We go back to the same places but the message seems to be unchanging.

Chad: We were in a bar one time and we didn’t even. . . (to Mike) do you remember that? They told us “Look, don’t preach” so we were like “Okay, we won’t preach” and I think I shared just like a few things about the songs. It was just about a hope that I had or whatever. And they got all huffy and puffy and the room cleared out as we were singing our songs.
But the cool thing was even there, there was a girl, one of the girls that invited us to come. She actually ended up getting saved right after that.

Mike: It was awesome.

Chad: And she’s still walking with Jesus today.

RF: How did you two [Chad and Mike] both come to know the Lord? Your basic testimony?

Mike: One day I was tired of people telling me who Jesus was so I bought a Bible and I read the whole New Testament by myself without even stepping into a Christian Church or anything.
So I went one day to church in this house, and all these people were worshiping God—no worship team or anything like here in the States, you know? It’s just my friend with a guitar and everybody just singing.
And it was very, very awesome. I’m like “Wow, God is real” and then I invited Him to come and my life changed completely (not that I was a druggie or anything).

Chad: My testimony is I basically grew up in Jon’s Dad’s church there and knew all about the gospel and really couldn’t care less about the Lord.
One guy kinda put it as basically “he gave the finger to God.” I really could care less… just giving Him the middle finger in his heart that was kinda me but I definitely believed in Jesus….
I got into a huge mess with no way out and came to the realization. I needed to delight myself in God and give everything over to him.
I figured the only way I could do that I really felt God was calling me to go somewhere and just get out of wherever I was and just read the Bible and pray. That’s it.
My brother gave me this card. He said, “Hey! Maybe you should go here. These guys came to our church a while ago.” Give them a call. So I did, and somehow they said “Yeah, come on down (to the DR) you can help us for a couple months.” So I just went down. I started reading the Bible and the Lord changed my life.

Jon: Well, I grew up, my whole life in the church. My dad was the pastor so… heh heh.
I kinda—as they say— “grew up into my salvation.” Probably as a teenager, I really realized just because my parents believed this doesn’t mean that it’s my own. I gotta make it my own. I gotta decide.
So probably around age 12 or 13 I decided I’m gonna serve God for myself (not just because my parents say, or church says, but because I wanted to find out who God is.
Through that relationship with Him, I ended up going off to college, studying music there. Of course I had known Chad from before. He was the druggie so we never really hung out.

Chad: The bad kid!

Jon: The bad kid.

RF: So, you went to school for music?

Jon: Yeah.

RF: We wanted to ask you guys: any other degrees?

Mike: I have an associate’s in hotel administration and tourism.

Chad: Heh heh. Yeah.

Mike: That’s it. I’ve never used it. It’s in my house. Something I did for my
Mom pretty much.

RF: What about you, Chad?

Chad: Not me

Mike: But our drummer is an architect.

RF: Do you have any phobias?

Chad:
I hate bugs and spiders. I’m not kidding you… snakes.
When I got married to my wife, I told her, “Look, I love you, but if there’s bugs or mice or spiders or anything in the house, you’re getting them.”

Mike: I sincerely fear the immigration patrol.
Nah, I’m just kidding… (I don’t wanna be deported).
I don’t really have any phobias… I’m sure I have some, but I can’t really think of it right now.

Chad: Jon?

Jon: Nothin’ I’ve experienced yet.

Chad: You’re a better man than I.

RF: Are you related to Mark Lowry?

Jon: No! But I actually met him. I was down in Nashville for the GMA Awards. I went down there a couple years ago with our old record label and I went to a seminar that he and Gloria Gaither were teaching about song-writing. And I went up and I was like “Hey, my name is Jon Lowry.”

Chad: Is that the “Mary-Did-you-Know” guy?

Jon: Yeah.

RF: What is one activity that you cannot stand to be interrupted while doing?

Chad: Probably watching TV.

Mike: I don’t like to be interrupted while I’m responding to emails

Chad: I don’t know. I’m interrupted so much with the lifestyle we have that I don’t think there’s much..

Jon: When I’m sitting down reading a book when I’m really zoned in on it

RF: Have you read any good books since you brought that up?

Mike: Yeeeahh. I read this book, When Heaven Invades Earth by Bill Johnson… amazing… Also, that Blue like Jazz book was pretty sweet by Donald Miller.. that’s about it.. That’s the latest I read.
Although I was reading one at Chad’s house How Wal+mart is Destroying America.. oh, that was good, I couldn’t even put it down.

Chad: I’ve got a thousand books in my house and I’ve never read one of them. They’re all my wife’s… I know I should read. It would help my lyrics It would help my writing and all of that, but I don’t… I’m too A.D.D. for that.

Jon: I’ve been reading this old book called, The Christian in Complete Armour by William Gurnall. It’s an old book (like 17 or 18 hundreds) but they rewrote it with modern English so we can understand it.
It’s not all “yea and they” and “thee and thou”

Chad: Oh yes, that’s the holy language You know what book that has ministered to me? It’s a little devotional—

RF: —can I guess what it is?

Chad: Yep

RF: My Utmost for His Highest

Chad: That’s exactly what it is. It really has ministered to me in certain seasons of my life. I don’t read it every day.
It doesn’t matter, it definitely is such a challenging book personally and that guy is sweet. I’m not trying to be cliché….

RF: What ways do you think you guys can grow?

Mike: Physically, we’ve grown a lot

Chad: Yeah, I’ve put on 40 pounds since I started… food on the road you know? It’s like “hey we got pizza again!” “We got pasta, wanna go out to Mick-e-dees?”

RF: But is there anything you’re still learning?

Mike: Yeah, yeah. We have a lot of areas we can grow: in fellowship amongst ourselves. It’s so hard to be our own little church unit. We hang out together all the time. And when we go home everybody does their own thing and we disconnect until the next weekend or practice. That’s one area we can grow

RF: We have one question that we want to get in if we don’t talk to you later, it’s kind of a rap-up question: What advice would you give to yourself in fifty years?

Jon: I dunno if we’ll be around!

Mike: I think I’d be 89.

Chad: That’d be awesome, Mike’s still rockin’ out

Mike: Ohhhh, what was the question again?

RF: What advice would you give to your future self in fifty years?

Mike: Keep loving people, keep loving Jesus, keep reading the word and praying

Chad: Yeah, pray more!

Mike: Spend more time in the Word.

RF: Is yours any different?

Chad: No, That’s really the only thing that would make your life more full… allow you to love people more. Just pray more. Spend more time with the Lord.

Jon: That’s really our whole message, “Read the Word and pray.”

Chad: Right, that’s it.

Jon: Fifty years from now, it’ll still be the message.

Chad: Because it’s such an important message.
The transformation of our hearts and minds occurs supernaturally through the Word and spending time with Jesus through relationship.
If we can do that more and more and more, (not that we’re earning God’s love or anything it’s just something that supernaturally happens as we hang out with the Lord) that’s the best thing…. Get involved. Serve others. Love others.
You can’t love others unless your loving Jesus and spending time with him.
It’s just impossible.