Let us be your alarm clock!
"If we have one emphasis it's waking people up", says Chris, "everywhere we go we want to wake people up to the reality of Christianity--to what it's all really about."
It's an ALTERnative to what most kids think Christianity is--Nathan adds, because we're up there on the stage, and we love God, and we're obviously enjoying living our lives for him and having fun with our music and we're 8 guys from very different backgrounds coming together to bring a message of God's love. God loves you no matter where you are in your life, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done. And you don't have to change before you come to him. You come as you are, and then let him change your heart. And it makes a difference, rod explains--it made a difference in each of our lives, and it makes a difference in the lives of kids we meet. We got an e-mail from a kid a couple of weeks ago thanking us for taking the time to talk to him after a show. He said if it wasn't for our influence that night, he probably would have committed suicide. But God changed his heart and gave him hope. He saw Christ living in us, and he found something real to hang on to. That's why we do what we do. That's the bottom line.
When we wrote these songs we dug deeper inside our own hearts and lives than we had before. [nathan]. Most of the songs are about lessons we've learned or struggles we've gone through. People are going to see where we're coming from with these lyrics and they're going to say `Man, I can relate to that. I struggle with that too.' It's going to help people to open up and realize that they're [chris] not the only one going through a certain place. We think that approach is a whole lot more persuasive than just pointing fingers at other people and saying `you need to do this!'.
8 guys including a horn section flipping jumping sweating running into each other playing their guitars and falling all over the stage `we just don't stop. There's one section in the show where we do sit down, let the polyester cool off, and sing some praise songs and share from our hearts and from the word of God, but everything before that and everything after that is full-out superdriving guitars, choreography, and everything happening at once. We never stop moving".
So, Dave, as the fella who sings, dances, plays trumpet, and does back flips on the stage, we've got a very important question for you: Do you always land on your feet? Not always. I miss every now and then, and I've landed on other people's feet pretty often too. A couple of times I've even landed on other people's heads. Thankfully, they're a very forgiving band.
Reality Check have so much energy, that they actually broke a stage at a festival. The whole thing collapsed under them. (and they kept on playing...)
no matter what happens with this record, now matter what happens with this band over the next year, we've already been successful. We've completed what God has called us to do up to this point. There are now well over a thousand kids that have come to know Christ through this band over the last five years. You can't say that's not successful. If we leave today, if it ends today, it's been successful.
What do the three original members of Reality Check pick as their favorites from the new record?
Rod-----my favorite song on the record is "Speak To Me." It's like David in the psalms, crying out to God, wanting to hear his voice and know his will. That's how I felt recently when I moved to Nashville with just eight dollars in my pocket, and my `79 Rabbit loaded down with all my belongings. I wanted God's guidance in a personal way.
Nathan---"Know You Better" talks about my own human nature, the sinfulness inside me, and the pull to always head in the opposite direction from where God wants to take me. But the chorus of the song tells my true desire: I want to know God better, I want to love him more than I love myself, I want to give him everything. It's a prayer to God to draw me closer to himself.
Chris----There are times in life when I've been hurt, and afterward I was afraid to open my heart up again because I didn't want it to get trampled on. The song The Way I Am asks "Will you love me the way I am?". I see it in myself, and I see it in our culture, that a lot of things we do are motivated by a desire to be loved and a fear of rejection. We try to find that unconditional love in so many places, but it can only come from God.
Responding to Reality almost everywhere we perform, youth pastors, mothers, fathers, or even grandmothers will come up to us afterward and tell us how they love us and support what we're doing. Even if it's not their favorite style of music, they look at our hearts and they see our burden for their kids. Kids are going to listen to music that's current and that sounds good, and the parents appreciate the alternative we provide to the lack of moral standards in a lot of popular music.
We don't want to come in and do an intense show, get everyone pumped up and then leave them hanging. We want to see kids get saved, but then we want to make sure they have Bibles and other materials, and that they get plugged in somewhere where they can grow. We like the Billy Graham model of ministry where people get saved, get counseled, have follow-up, and get planted in local churches. Reality Check is here to help the local church. Whatever they want us to do, we'll do. We've changed shows, we've rearranged songs, we've done all kinds of things to fit the programs of particular churches. Several of the members in the band were Youth Ministry majors in college. That's what we want to do. We just want a chance to preach the gospel.
" It's obvious to all of us that God brought each of us into this ministry and joined us together," Chris says. "We've got a drummer who is so focused on the word of God that he's never afraid to exhort us or rebuke us if we need it. We've got another guy who's so into music that he spends his free time charting out songs and pushing us all to a higher level musically. The different personalities work together.
"We're like eight brothers," says Nathan, "we might have small disagreements sometimes, but there's not a lot of ego. No one thinks they're a superstar, so we enjoy being together. The diversity of our backgrounds and our spiritual histories adds an overall depth to the group, too, because any time a kid says `Well, you don't understand what I'm going through', chances are at least one of the eight of us have been through that same thing ourselves and we really do understand where that kid is at."
Reality Check was selected from a field of almost three hundred solo artists and bands, to relieve the Academy of Gospel Music Arts' Spotlight `96 Best Artist award in 1996. They were also the New Talent Showcase winners at AtlantaFest for two years running. But you could hardly call them the new kids in town. Even before they won these awards and signed with Star Song Records, they were playing an average of 100 concerts per year.
Discography
