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Genre:		Inspirational/Worship, Rock, Pop
Members:		David Crowder (vocals, acoustic guitars, piano), Jason Solley (electric guitars, vocals), Jack Parker (electric guitars, keyboards, banjo), B-Wack (drums), Mike Dodson (bass), Mike Hogan (violins, vinyl)
For fans of:		Passion worship, Sonicflood, Delirious, Matt Redman
Label:		sixsteps/Sparrow Records

	Buy 'em here! A Collision Sunsets and Sushi The Lime CD Illuminate Can You Hear Us?

In their days at Baylor University, David Crowder, Jack Parker, Jeremy Bush, Mike Dodson and Mike Hogan recognized the disconnect between the church and the disenchanted, twenty-something generation, and sought to bridge the gap. And so, they helped found University Baptist Church in 1996, a community that thrives and grows today. It was as worship leader of this church that David Crowder began to write the bulk of the band's songs; songs which celebrate the goodness and nearness of God, as well as ask the corporate and intimate questions of his community. "This is where our songs get legs under them," Crowder says.

The music of the David Crowder Band brought to light the needs of a "whole new group" of worshipers, a group vastly bigger than the UBC community. Their first, independent recording, All I Can Say struck a chord with a fast-spreading base of "fringe folk": a group that Crowder describes as being "a little on the outside; they have trouble connecting with what's going on with the Christian culture or climate." The band's raw lyrical honesty and innovative, yet catchy alt-pop sound created fans out of the churched and unchurched alike. And it was this original, yet accessible appeal that opened the doors into the world of the modern worship movement.

As a revolution of worship music spread throughout the world one CD at a time, the David Crowder Band found themselves moving from the fringe into the heart of the Church via their involvement with the Passion projects and gatherings. Songs such as "You Alone," "O Praise Him (All This For A King), "Our Love is Loud" and more have become anthems for countless churches, college-aged people and youth groups. With all the traveling and exposure to various worship environments, the band was developing its voice; a voice marked by an uncanny ability to absorb the needs and joys of the people, and letting the reflections be heard through song.

It was with this voice that 2002's Can You Hear Us? (sixsteps/Sparrow Records) was born. The project was a cry of just how much rescue we all constantly need and have. It was about asking tough spiritual questions without inhibition. The project was immediately embraced by the masses: over 6200 copies of Can You Hear Us? were sold in its first week at retail, making the David Crowder Band Sparrow Records' biggest selling debut artist ever. At the 2003 Dove Awards, the song "Our Love is Loud" was nominated for Best Modern Rock/Alternative Song of the Year, and "Passion: Our Love is Loud" was nominated for Special Event Album of the Year.

Following the success of its debut, the band's 2003 sophomore release, Illuminate, launched to unprecedented critical acclaim and grabbed the No. 1 position on the SoundScan retail sales charts, selling more than 200,000 units to date. "It's a recording about light," David Crowder proclaimed. Taking the empirical facts about light and translating them into revelation about the nature of God and creation, Crowder realized that he was on to something, and light began to appear in everything he wrote. Illuminate is a journey on a darkened path. It acknowledges the darkness in which we live and celebrates the reality of Light coming toward us in the form of Christ. The song, "O Praise Him (All This for a King)," featured on the album and the band's first Top 10 radio hit, is a response to redemption: the wonder of a Redeemer who is Himself the Light by which we see. This is a recording that is corporate and intimate, with lyrical light both blazing and subtle.

As Illuminate resonated across the nation and beyond, David Crowder Band racked up seven more GMA Music (Dove) Award nominations, was featured on CNN and in the New York Times, and joined Michael W. Smith and Mercy Me for a major market national tour followed by its own and first-ever headline tour. One of the most sought after artists on college campuses and beyond, the band's Illuminate further received Worship Leader Magazine Praise Awards for "Best Worship Project" and "Best New Song" for "O Praise Him (All This For A King)." David Crowder, the namesake behind premiere guitar maker Tom Anderson Guitarworks's Crowdster Acoustic, was also the first Christian artist to foster a partnership with M-Audio/Propellerhead's Reason software.

Despite the success, David Crowder Band makes it a point to get back to University Baptist Church on most Sundays.

The making of a collision or (3 + 4 = 7)
By David Crowder

It all started with a book from the early 60s acquired by my wife from an antique shop in downtown Chicago. That, and a conversation with a very intelligent acquaintance of mine who is currently finishing his PhD work in super string theory, and who happened to mention in very whimsical tone one sunny Texas afternoon that we were, and I quote, "…walking around in the sky…" He said this while pointing to nothing in particular, "…you see, there is ground and there is sky and we are somewhere in between. We're walking around in it. Our feet are on the ground but. . ." Wait. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Like I said, it started with a book: "The Story of Atomic Energy" by Laura Fermi (decd. 1977) who was peace activist and wife of famed physicist Enrico Fermi (decd. 1954), with whom the atomic age arrived. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is home to the most powerful atom collider in the world, is located just outside of Chicago. I found it fascinating that my wife would procure this particular book from a shop in this particular city. The book's cover is pale green, definitive 60s green if you ask me, with what one would assume to be the representation of an atom in a complimentary 60s pale yellow set against it. It is the familiar depiction of a nucleus and some number of electrons swirling about. I was immediately enthused by this icon as I have an affinity toward semiotics and symbols and iconography and drew satisfaction that a book about energy had a representation symbolizing energy on its cover. No words, just pale yellow on pale green and through symbol I understood that energy was inside.

And here is why this simple thing would inspire a collection of songs: this model is improper in its depiction of particle matter. We know in fact that electrons do not circle in elliptical paths around a nucleus. And this is the difficulty with symbols. They are never quite proper. They are always a bit broken. And as I held this book in my hands, frozen in the middle of an intersection in downtown Chicago, while this inadequate drawing roused simultaneously both hope of discovery and reminiscence of destruction in my chest I thought, "This is the essence of art. We are creating broken containers."

Then came the Eschatology of bluegrass. One evening, after hearing our band play in Dallas, Texas, the grandfather of one of our guitar players stated, and I quote, "You boys should do a bluegrass number as it is the superior variety of music!" And so it was that we stumbled into this vast genre of song, written, in a religious sense, almost exclusively in regards to the ever after, the sweet-by-and-by, or flying away to glory. I was at first troubled by what seemed a glaringly unbalanced doctrinal depiction of the Kingdom of Heaven as I have the fear that this approach to Christian living has lead many a person's head into the clouds and allowed for justifications of neglect in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into the here and now. Then a close friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. It had spread. It was everywhere. Liver. Brain. Lymph nodes… Everybody wants to go to heaven.

We settled on "I Saw the Light" by Hank Williams, by way of Johnny Cash. What I am about to relate is nothing short of miraculous. We met the fabulous Marty Stuart at the Dove Awards a year ago. At age thirteen, mandolin protégé Marty Stuart found himself on the road with bluegrass legend Lester Flatts and peers in the likes of Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe and Grandpa Jones. After Lester's death in 1979 the next band he would join was Johnny Cash's (decd. 2003). Marty is a living history of country music. And there he was backstage wearing a black suit, aglow in rhinestones, sparkling down both sleeves and spanning the back of the jacket in the shape of a very large cross. His hair was flawless and bigger than mine. He wore shades. None of this would have been entirely strange if not for the fact our guitar player, who's grandfather's fault this whole bluegrass thing was, had suggested exactly one day prior, "We should get Marty Stuart to help us with the bluegrass number." We gathered around a microphone in Johnny Cash's cabin and recorded the song with Marty just outside of Hendersonville, Tennessee; two of Hank's verses, the one of Johnny's and one of mine.

The rest of "A Collision" was recorded in Waco, Texas, in the barn behind my house. The barn was built in 1885 by the then Waco corner drugstore owner and local alchemist Wade Morrison. Its color is the most perfect of faded barn reds, very close in color to that of a Dr Pepper can holding the delectable beverage whose origins are Mr. Morrison's corner store. Local lore has it that this barn was home to Morrison's horse, incidentally named Pepper.

We documented the whole process online with weblogs and four (a significant number for us) webcams running 24 hours a day for four weeks. Near the end of our tracking I posted an invitation, to all who were tuning in, to join us in the barn for a hoedown and some group singing. And our friends came in cars and planes, from California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, and more extraordinary places far and near. I wish you could have been there! There was a BBQ smoker in the shape of a pistol 10-feet tall (the meat goes in the chamber and the smoke comes out of the barrel.) It was true Texas culinary indulgence met with ocular and aromatic stimulation. We ate. We laughed. We shook our heads at the distances traveled. And we sang. We sang at the top of our lungs. These good folks sang like they meant it.

For the past two years I have ended most nights in concert with the following statement: "When our depravity meets His Divinity, it is a beautiful collision." This recording is about that collision. It is the collision of our fallen state and our Maker's transcendence. It is a rendering of our mortality and eternal life. It is about the tension that exists in the living of life, here, where the sky meets the broken earth. It is about a tsunami in East Asia. It is about a sunrise over Hiroshima. It is about too many who know too intensely what pain the word cancer holds and the words of my friend whispered in my ear, "It's ok. None of us are getting out of here alive you know." It is about victory. It is about the joy that comes when blood tests come back and a miracle is announced. It is the hope in a rescue that has come. The hope in a rescue that has found us. And the relentless hope in a greater rescue that is still coming. One that has not yet arrived but is no less present. This music, broken, improper and inadequate in its response, is rooted in that hope. The Kingdom of Heaven is here and now and coming.

"…Here it comes, a beautiful collision is happening now."

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