Casting Crowns is one of the most popular and famous bands today in the Christian genre. Starting as a student worship band in Florida (Daytona Beach), in 1999, they became the worship leaders of a church in October 2001. The members of the band included Mark Hall (lead vocal), Juan DeVevo (guitar and vocals), Melodee DeVevo (vocals and violin), Hector Cervantes (guitar and vocals), and Darren Hughes (production manager). Chris Huffman (bass guitar), a former student from FBC, Daytona, and Megan Garrett (keyboard, vocals, accordion), joined the band once they were at the church. Then about a year later, Andy Williams (drummer), joined the group.
The bad began by recording two independent albums that were distributed and well received in the Atlanta region. Casting Crowns did not, at least at that time, want to become a band that tours around, is well known amongst a large chunk of the population and so on:
“I’ve been a youth pastor for about 12 years, and every church I’ve been in, music’s always been a part of it,” Hall says. “We’d usually start up a band made up of students so we could lead worship in our Wednesday night programs, and as the student ministry started to grow, the band would go off and play and do things in the area.”
“I had the thought that maybe I could write for other bands,” he says, “because traveling around playing was not something I thought I wanted to do.”
Chase Tramont, a student in Daytona gave one of the Casting Crowns CDs to Mark Miller – the lead singer of Sawyer Brown. Mark Miller, deciding that he would support the group anyway he could, hives Mark Hall a call. In Miller’s words:
“The first thing you hear, before you sit there and digest the lyrics, is Mark’s voice. I knew a couple of things when I first heard it. I knew they couldn’t afford to go in and mess with his voice, so what I was hearing was what he could deliver, so I was pretty blown away by that,” Miller continues. “Then the songs were really different to me, they came from a different viewpoint than what you would normally hear within Christian music. The lyrics would immediately make you think, ‘This guy’s a hard hitter.’ He’s makes no bones about it; he’s not hiding from anything. For me, in Christian music, that’s a rarity.”
From there on out, Casting Crowns have grown to become one of the most popular Christian bands around singing songs that convict, convince, and lead one to worship God. Some of their most popular songs include American Dream, an uncompromising song about a father who ends up neglecting his family in the quest to materially provide for them. Some of the other songs include If we are the Body, and Does Anybody Hear Her? The motivation behind the songs? Mark explains:
“I really feel a burden for the church,” Hall says. “Right after somebody gets saved, right as they’re starting to grow, they essentially have the wool pulled over their eyes that tells them that religion is what they have stepped into. ‘Here are the laws that relate to this, here are the rules for this other thing, here’s your discipleship notebook, here’s you T-shirt and this is what you have to do.’ And the feeling is that when you come to church; if you did fail at whatever, don’t let anybody know it.”
“So they show up acting like everything is fine and are surrounded by people who aren’t fine, and that’s what religion is. The world simply wants nothing to do with that. They want to see people that are real. It doesn’t bother the world that we mess up, what bothers them is that we act like we don’t,” Hall says.
Casting Crowns is one band that you simply have to listen to, Christian or not.
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