April's print cover story is Relient K: The 5-Minute Guide. Consider this your bonus. Here are five more Q&A’s with Relient K covering the new record, spirituality and new band members. Don’t say Breakaway doesn’t treat you right.
1. Breakaway: What can we expect from Five Score and Seven Years, the new record that released in March?
Matt Thiessen (lead vocals, piano, guitar): Let’s see, it covers the gauntlet.
Dave Douglas (drums, vocals): Gauntlet? I thought it was gamut.
Matt T.: Gamut. Gauntlet. On our last record, Mmhmm, we kind of figured out what our ranges are. We did mellow stuff; we did heavier stuff, and then we did lots of stuff in the middle. I feel like this record might reach a little bit farther, enlarge the scope a little tiny bit. But it’s kind of what you’d expect at the same time. Hopefully people aren’t expecting to get what they expect.
Dave: Wow.
Matt T.: If you’re expecting to not get what you expect then you’re actually getting what you expected—
Dave: if you weren’t expecting it.
Matt T: if you weren’t expecting it.
Dave: Find a way to write that.
Matt T.: We have a mellow song in it—not just acoustic, there’s pedal steel guitar and harmonica, stuff that you’ve never heard from us before. But it’s not like we’ve gone off the deep end.
We have a track that’s acappella, “Pleading the Fifth.” It’s kind of an intro song, not really a real song. All the drums were my voice; we created a drum kit, individually recording kick, snare, symbols, toms. We put it in a sample thing and played it like a kit. That’s something a little different.
2. What are you favorite songs?
John Schneck (guitar, banjo, bells, vocals): My favorite song, one that I probably had nothing to do with at all is called “Deathbed.” It’s the last song on the record. Matt could probably tell you about it lyrically, but it’s a long story about a dude and his life. It’s not theatrical, but an odyssey, a journey. Musically it’s great. Matt really hit it lyrically. It’s about love and spirituality and things like that about how this guys is jaded and kind of comes around and finds himself in the end. It’s a cool journey.
Dave: Being in a band and touring and playing and recording, especially when you start working with a bigger record company and bigger producer and this and that—everything is trying to push you to make a better pop song. So a song like “Deathbed” is way the other direction; it’s completely different As far as goals of the song, it’s not gonna be this hip song or anything. It’s something other people in bands can really enjoy. It’s not your typical pop song. There’s a lot of stuff in it that will make everyone appreciative if you can stand 11 minutes. But it’s a short 11 minutes, if you can believe that.
Matt T.: The songs start off with the chorus. The chorus is basically this guy on his deathbed about to die. So I’m writing the chorus, and I think what would be cool is the guy dying at 70-something years old, let’s talk about his whole life and what got him to that point. So that’s what the verses are. It’s him at 8 years old, 14 and 21 and after he got divorced and when he’s an alcoholic and all this stuff. But at the end of the song, or three-fourths of the way through, Jesus shows up and reminds him there was this time in your life when you repented and got down on your knees and asked me to come and be part of your life. He’s like, “You’re dying, and I’ve been here the whole time.” So then he dies, and there is this two-minute instrumental section that’s basically supposed to be his journey to heaven (even though I know it happens fast). Then the very end of the song is one of my favorite lyrics, which is the verse “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Jon Forman [of Switchfoot] sings it: I am the way; follow me and take my hand. I am the truth; embrace me and you’ll understand. I am the life, and through me you’ll live again. For I am love. That’s the end of the song and he’s in heaven.
Matt Hoopes (guitar, vocals): I really like the one we play live: “Devastation and Reform.” It’s a little bit darker one, but it’s got a catchy melody and a sweet riff that I play.
Matt T.: “Devastation and Reform” is a song about how positive things don’t really come out of life unless there’s conflict. As human beings and as me personally, my whole life is about destroying things and then putting them back together. It’s a theme we’ve written about before: repentance and forgiveness and grace and getting back on your feet when things don’t go the way you want them.
The challenge was, it’s our fifth record. We love writing about spiritual life, but when you get around to number five it gets tough not to repeat yourself. But I think we did a good job of not saying anything exactly the way we said it before. The songs are catchy and relevant.
3. How do you balance being Christians and musical artists?
Matt T.: Well, I guess it doesn’t really need to be a balancing act. I mean we were all Christians before we were in a band, so that’s who we are. I guess we never considered ourselves artists when we started, so it’s kind of kind of hard to consider it art. It’s fun. It’s rock and roll, but there’s a certain amount of creativity to it. You know, I think bands like Switchfoot and POD show it’s easy to be who you are and be a Christian and make music, art or whatever, that’s relevant to everyone. I guess we’re just trying to follow them.
Matt H.: I think it’s not as much of a balance. I think whatever job you have in life, whatever place you find yourself, whether you’re in high school or have an office job or in a rock and roll band, that kind of stuff is just secondary. You just try to figure out how to make who you are the first priority and not change, like staying who you are without being changed by your surroundings. I think that’s an important thing.
4. How do you guys keep things fresh spiritually and musically?
Matt H.: At times it’s a struggle. You know you can get really burned out being on the road everyday. It’s not the hardest job in the world, but it’s hard to be away from family and loved ones. Four out of five of us are married, and Matt T. has a pretty serious girlfriend.
Matt T.: As far as keeping it fresh, I feel like a lot of times I’ll be onstage and I’ll go through the whole 40-minute set and not think about anything that I’ve sung from the spiritual standpoint. If you’re a worship leader or something, by the third time you’re hitting that same song on a Sunday morning, you can easily get detached from the lyric and the meaning. That’ll happen to me, but every four or five days, something might hit me. I start thinking about it, and that’s really edifying to me. Even though that seems like a negative thing, when it does impact you and you’re singing about it and kind of having a moment like, it keeps it fresh and it doesn’t get as stagnant. But it only happens every once in a while which is probably necessary. If it happened every day, if it impacted me every day—
Dave: You’d be an emotional wreck.
Matt T.: Yeah, and it’s good to have those things happen out of the ordinary. But like any job, it can become stagnant.
Matt H.: It’s kind of cool when you can make good friends with people who are in other bands touring with you. Sometimes that can be helpful if you meet people who are really positive. I know we’ve made friends with a lot of people on tour, like the guys in Emery on this [Nintendo Fusion] tour. Sometimes you talk to a kid at a show or people will tell you that the song you played helped them through a hard time. That’s really cool, too.
5. What it’s been like for John Warne and John Schneck to come into the band and help shape it as it moves forward?
John W. (bass): It was, for me at least, not too drastic a change from where I was already from a relationship perspective because I had played in a band [Ace Troubleshooter] and toured with Relient K tons. I got to be friends with these guys, so when Ace Troubleshooter kind of fizzled, and Relient K asked me to join, it was just like going out and getting to play songs with my buddies. It just felt really natural, and I think that’s the way God works a lot of times. It’s a huge opportunity to be able to do this, but more than that it just feels like God’s put people in my life for a reason. It’s good.
John S.: I couldn’t say it better than that. That was a very good explanation.
Matt H.: I think it’s been super natural—I mean, really natural. We were really good friends with both of them before.
Matt T.: The biggest challenge has been the fact that now two guys live in Nashville, Tenn., two in Ohio and one in Denver. After we get off this tour, we’ve got to do some rehearsal and stuff like that, but I also want a week off or two. So it’s kind of a bummer because we can’t go home just practice. I’ve got to fly somewhere whenever we want to get together and practice. That’s been hard for me personally, especially when I am writing or something like that. I really wish I could call Hoopes and say, “Hey, come over and try this guitar part with me and let me know what you think.” I have to get on my computer and track everything and then send it out and say, “Tell me if you guys hate this or not.” But definitely, these five people together are the most functional and I feel the best live and the best friends by far. 
