Disciple

The timing is funny. Kevin Young insists it’s perfect. For more than 15 years, Disciple has been rocking as many stages as they can and making disc after disc of their southern-tinged hard rock. Mostly the Knoxville band has flown under the radar, never breaking through like some contemporaries making music half as long. That is, until their last album, Scars Remain, released nearly two years ago to critical and commercial acclaim. The album sold over 100,000 units and landed two Dove nominations, giving Disciple their strongest showing yet on the charts and radio.

So what do they do? They add three new members. But vocalist Kevin Young truly believes things are better than ever. With a new album, Southern Hospitality, being released and an infusion of new talent, Young seems rather excited about the days ahead. In this interview, he tells us all about the new music, the new members and the new fan stories that kept the band moving ahead through confusing times.

Soul-Audio: The new album is called Southern Hospitality. Is that a nod to the music found on the disc?

Kevin Young: Yeah, it seems the songs that we’ve been starting to write have that southern rock sound and we’ve always had songs that had that element to it. That title was actually a name of a tour that we were doing in the Southeast last year. We had wanted to call it the Southern Hospitality Tour and when the songs that we were writing had that southern flair to it, we realized it sounded good as an album title, too. So we just transferred it over to there and everyone seems to like it a whole lot.

SA: When you’re dealing with expectations for this album, how do you plan for that? The last album had the Dove nominations, radio and sales success, etc.

Kevin: We were having so much fun while writing these new songs that we didn’t have any time to think about doing this or doing that or writing this type of song. We really had the most fun we’ve ever had writing on this new album. There was no struggling for lyrics or music. It just was flowing like crazy. So now that we’re doing interviews, I’m wondering what the answer is to that question. People are asking what we’re trying to do here and we’re really just trying to write good songs.

SA: What do you credit that source of new inspiration to?

Kevin: We’re always trying to write songs that are real, that are genuine. I think one of the best ways to do that is to write songs about whatever has really happened to you, whatever is really a part of your life. I also think being creative is important as well - just pushing your creativity is always good. So I think we have both of those things. We have some songs that are so real and genuine and personal, dealing with issues that have happened in our lives, as well as a good amount of creativity.

SA: Andrew Welch, Micah Sannan, Israel Beachy. One from Falling Up, one from Staple, one from Capital Lights. Are these guys you’ve toured with? What’s the story with three new members?

Kevin: Man, there’s a huge long story for each one of them. But I can summarize the shortest version for you… Andrew is from Capital Lights and he was actually someone we met in Germany last December. Whenever we knew we were going to be needing a guitar player, he was working for Pillar for the time and we’d heard he was a fan and a good guitar player and we asked him to learn a couple Disciple songs while in Germany. He came over to our hotel room and played them for us right there on the guitar without an amplifier. We listened to him play and thought, “Awesome! Let’s do this!” We liked his personality and everything and so we added him.

Then, I don’t know if you know this but a guy who was playing with Kids in the Way was playing with us for awhile and he landed a job with Third Day, so we were like, “That’s awesome. Go do that.” So we had to look for another guitar player and I immediately thought of this guy who used to play for Falling Up who is probably the best performer I’d ever seen. When you’ve seen somebody do backflips off their guitar amp, you’re like, “Okay, that guy’s good.” But I don’t even know if he could play guitar or not, because I was always watching him perform. He was such a great performer, I never knew if he could play. So I called Micah and asked if he’d want to try out and he said, “Yeah, of course!” So he learned the songs within days and totally impressed all of us. He’s a real young guy and a lot of fun to be around, so it was a no-brainer.

Israel, the bass player, used to play with Staple. He was the easiest decision of them all because we’d been on tour with Staple years ago - several times really but the last time was three or four years ago. Sometimes when you’re with a band, there’s always going to be one guy where you’re like, “Man, I’d love to be in a band with that guy.” And Israel’s always been that guy for me. He’s such a cool guy so when the opportunity came, I was like, “C’mon man, you need to play with us.” And he came on. That’s the shortest version of all those stories. All of them are really a lot longer, but that’s the short version. [Laughs]

SA: Did they have a good understanding of who Disciple was or was that up for grabs with so many new members?

Kevin: Yeah, I think we just grow from where we were and build on what we’ve done. As I said, Israel has toured with us before and Micah had, too. Andrew was a huge Disciple fan and had actually been to a bunch of shows as a fan, so we actually meant something to him on a personal level. That’s different having somebody in the band coming from that perspective. So we just started from where we were and everybody knows where we’ve done and what we’ve been and I think we can build on that and become a new band.

It’s a unique dynamic that we have - to have a member [Brad Noah] that actually is a very active member but stays at home while we’re on the road, but that seems to be working. As I said, it’s the best place we’ve ever been live and in the studio. We’re just at a better place. You always want to be improving and going forward and doing better than you did last time and I know we’ve done that.

SA: How many shows have you done with the new line-up?

Kevin: We’ve been playing since March. We went on tour with Superchick and did all the festivals this summer and we’re looking forward to supporting the new album. We’ve done around 100 shows and they’ve been amazing. The beautiful thing is that it’s different. When people come to watch us, you’ve got three guys who are new and really put on a great show every night. We always have people coming up to us after a show and telling us that they’ve never seen a Disciple show with this much energy or that it’s the best Disciple show they’ve seen. That makes you feel good because there are moments you’re scared and wondering whether you should go on. But we felt like God was pushing us and letting us know we were supposed to go on and that lets you know you made the right decision.

I’ll tell you a quick story, even though you didn’t ask about it. Whenever we were thinking about going on, I was asking God, ‘Should we call it quits?’ We prayed that prayer a lot. Every band goes through this at some point and we wondered if it was our time. He answered me through a 14-year-old girl a couple nights later in Colorado. She walked up to me and said, ‘Can I tell you my story?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ She said, ‘Two weeks ago, I decided to commit suicide. I was going to take my life and prayed, ‘God if you really love me and care about me, tell me and I won’t take my life.’ She turned on the Christian radio station and the next song she heard was “After the World” from the Scars Remain album.

The song is written from the perspective of God speaking to you and the words are: “I’m the one you’ve been looking for / I’m the one you’ve been waiting for / I’ve had my eyes on you ever since you were born / I will love you after the rain falls down / I will love you after the sun goes out / I’ll have my eyes on you after the world is no more.” She said after she heard those words, it was like God was speaking to her telling her that He loves her. She decided to live that night and tears are going down both of our faces. That night was God saying that we’re not done yet - we still have more of these to happen. And believe it or not man, just a month ago, the same exact story happened again a month later. It was a 15-year-old guy this time with the same thing. So it’s just God reconfirming over and over that we’ve made the right decision to keep going. It’s all about impacting lives. Without that, it’s just music.

• www.disciplerocks.com
• www.myspace.com/disciplerocks

↓ One comment

#1 tyler h on October 24th, 2008 at 10:05 pm

just my two cents, but it would be nice if these sweet interviews were featured a lil bit better on the front page.

and this article totally made me want to listen to disciple again…so i did.

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