VOTA

What’s a band to do? There’s only so many things you can cast into the sea of Christian music and the Crowns were clearly winning the battle of name recognition on a Globetrotter level of success. So the artists formerly known as Casting Pearls were left to wonder what to do with their brand – continue to build and hope or hit the reset button. Little did I realize that the shift to VOTA had more behind it.

In fact, miscommunications, label miscues and contract issues frustrated the band and led them to INO Records, where a name change and a new band member would complete the metamorphosis and allow for an absolutely clean slate. It’s a sigh of relief for a (now) quartet just wanting to make music and impact lives without the worry of peripherals. Vocalist Bryan Oleson sat down with us recently to tell us about VOTA, the latest band member and how they’re able to “lay low” until the new year.

Soul-Audio: Was that a difficult time to have to rebirth or was it exciting? I’d love to hear about the morale through that process.

Bryan Oleson: It wasn’t that difficult. To be a little more candid, we had some unfortunate circumstances with our first and label experience. We never officially signed our deal and our record basically went out without our consent. I think during that whole time, we were smashing our heads and that we’re finally taking the leap and signing and it didn’t go very well. For that to happen in the sacred clouds of making your first record, you’re wondering what God is doing and you come out the other side.

When we signed with INO Records, they said it’d be a lot easier if we just ended up changing our name. It also didn’t help that another band with the name ‘casting’ in it had already taken over the music industry. It was more frustrating to hear people saying Casting Crowns when they were really meaning Casting Pearls at times. So this allows us to be who we are a bit easier. The only annoying thing is telling the story over and over, which actually isn’t annoying. It isn’t that difficult. And our fans have been great and they’ve come right along. Some of them prefer the old name and some love the new name. So it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Soul-Audio: Did that process change the band’s mission at all?

Bryan: Well, the music was kind of evolving anyway, so no matter if we had kept the name Casting Pearls or not, there would definitely have been a lot of changes as far as the elements we’re adding to our music. So I don’t think the name has much to do with the music. I know in the Christian music world, a lot of revolves around, ‘Well, what does your name mean?’ And just the name of your band is something that should be so big and important and it should have this big Christian meaning. With our band, we were looking for a name without any meaning attached to it. It makes you curious if you hear our name and it makes you wonder what the music is. And that was the desire for us.

The music itself, our first national record was basically songs with drums, bass and electric guitars. We really wanted to let the songs dictate, rather than us force things to happen. And I wanted an album that was a good listen all the way through – something that we just didn’t feel the same formula song after song. And I think we really accomplished that. Some bands record their album one track at a time; they’ll create all the drum tracks, then move on to bass. It helps a budget to get it done that way. But we wanted to do it differently, so we did one song in its entirety and that helped to keep it fresh. It’s a little more expensive for sure, but it was a good challenge on this record.

Soul-Audio: Did adding someone change the band chemistry?

Bryan: Yeah, we only basically added someone to help, especially going through this record. Halfway through recording these songs, we realized that having only three people on stage was going to be very difficult for us to pull off live if we wanted all of the elements to be there. So we wanted somebody that could add those guitar parts and the keys and piano and even give me a break where I wouldn’t have to worry about guitar at all, where I can just sing. That added a whole new element to our band and live show as well. So the only change was just the addition of the guitar player and who could fill the shoes of all of that to help in the live show.

Soul-Audio: So the chemistry has gotten better, at least live?

Bryan: Yeah! Definitely better. One of the things I’m most excited about with these guys is they take each portion of our business, our ministry, our music seriously. They worked as hard as they could on the record. We did everything we could do to make it great and we do the same thing with the live show. For our level of a band, we’re fully invested in professional sound and lights. We take it wherever we go. A lot of bands get lazy or tired and as long as it’s a church or promoter, they’ll go and don’t really care much about those elements once they get there. We are really involved in all aspects of that, and having another live player keeps our show as high quality as possible.

And you know, for us, we invested in those things early on because of the ministry we do in public high schools all across the country called the 180 Tour. We go in and talk about decision making and character and schools don’t have any sound or lights, so we invested in those early on so we could bring those into schools and then translate that into an evening event we do as well.

Soul-Audio: The digital release has already happened for the new album, but the physical release isn’t until February. What’s the strategy behind that?

Bryan: [Laughs] I don’t know. That was the label’s idea. They have a good reason for it, but I can’t remember what it is to be honest with you. One thing that was our idea that we are excited about is that we have a digital version of the album through a download card before it was available on iTunes. We sold these cards across the country through Disc Revolt and people could buy the album after they put in the code on their computer. We went to Kenya with Food for the Hungry last August and we were just trying to make something unique we could do with the record.

Labels are always wanting as many pre-sales as they can. Instead of getting focused on that, we thought we could do something to help these people. So we recorded 13 songs on this album and we knew the new album would only have 11. So we decided to put all 13 on this pre-release download card and give money to Food for the Hungry for their project in Kenya. The great thing is that the U.S.A. matched every bit we raised for Kenya, so for every album sold, we were able to send quite a bit of money to Kenya because of the matching program. And that program is still available until the end of the year and just in two months, we raised $40,000 for this project. That’s exciting!

Soul-Audio: Tangibly what are you guys doing now? Anything the rest of 2008?

Bryan: For the rest of this year, because we worked so hard earlier this year, we were trying to take the month of December off. We’re leasing out our equipment of a bus and full production to David Phelps and that kind of pays our bills and salaries so we can stay at home. Then we can start back up in January and then a spring tour. We’re able to lay low the rest of this year and our families are very thankful.

• www.votaband.com
• www.myspace.com/votaband

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#1 Thursday is Thursday News « Christian Music Zine on January 29th, 2009 at 5:07 pm

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