- CCMMagazine.com

You know them for quirky songs like “Sadie Hawkins Dance,” “My Girlfriend” and even a punk rock cover of the “Charles in Charge” theme song, now find out a little more about the often ironic and extremely exuberant guys in Relient K in our CCMmagazine.com interview.

CCMmagazine.com: Your last CD came out in August. Are you guys working on new material already? Tell me about it.

Matt T. : Yeah. The new material on the new record; we’re real excited about it. It’s obviously our favorite stuff to date. Usually bands, when they’re working on new stuff, it’s their favorite. It’s good; it’s maturing a little bit, even more than Anatomy was, but kind of heading in the same direction that we’ve been going. It’s sounding pretty good. We’re just excited about it.

CCMmagazine.com: I was surprised when I listened to Anatomy to hear so many slow songs, and ballad kind of things, and hear you actually sing.

Matt T. :Yeah, it’s just something we like to do. Next record, we’re still gonna have some slow stuff on it, but we’re not gonna do it exactly the same. We don’t wanna repeat ourselves.

CCMmagazine.com: So what are you guys listening to these days that may or may not be influencing what you’re doing?

Matt T. : I just got this really cool new CD. This band called Pie Bald. That’s really cool, so that will probably be influencing me a little bit. I don’t know. Just a bunch of stuff.

CCMmagazine.com: Are you guys hitting the festival circuit hard this summer?

Brian : Yes, we’re doing I think 20, or so. We’re doing pretty much all the major ones.

CCMmagazine.com: So has your live show switched up at all or have you pretty much been following the same routine that you’ve been following?

Matt H: I mean, we don’t play the same show everyday. I don’t know. We change some things, Bring in new songs all the time, but don’t really go to elaborate. We don’t have rotating drum risers.

CCMmagazine.com: So you’re not the Newsboys?

Relient K: (in unison) Definitely not. No.

Matt T. I’ve got some tricks up my sleeves, I’ve just got to get the other days to let me do them.

CCMmagazine.com: So what kind of tricks?

Matt T.: Well, I want to have big trampolines on the stage, and I just wanna…

CCMmagazine.com:CCM Magazine.com: Would you work some choreography into that?

Matt T.: No. But just jumping really high and jumping into the crowd.

CCMmagazine.com: There might be a lot of lawsuits involved with something like that.

Matt T.: Lawsuits? Hopefully, no, but space suits – that’s how high we’ll be.

CCMmagazine.com: You probably don’t want to talk about this yet ANOTHER time. But what about the whole Abercrombie & Fitch thing. What happened with that actually? What’s the real story, or what can you say?

Matt T.: We don’t really know exactly what happened, 100 percent, but a quick gist of the situation would be: A & F got a hold of our record label, and they were interested in working with us. Actually, I think, something got hooked up, they got in touch with each other, and it looked like a really good opportunity to just – they were gonna play our songs and put out some videos and stuff that they were doing. So it’s just like a really good situation, but we don’t really shop there. And the first thing Dave said when he found out about it was, ‘I don’t know if I really want to work with those guys because they have some controversial things about them.’ I was like, ‘Yea, but it won’t get into that, it’s not like we’re endorsing them, it’s just like, you know…’

CCMmagazine.com: It’s just another exposure thing…

Matt T.: Right, and when you’re a ministry we have definitely kept it in mind to not just play for youth group kids. We’re not the most down-your-throat band, so it gives us an opportunity to play for kids who normally wouldn’t listen to Christian music and stuff like that. And I’m sure you’re heard that a million times, but that’s just where we are at, and so the Abercrombie just sort of fit in with all of that. But unfortunately, when we sent out a press release about it, of saying, ‘Hey check this cool opportunity out,’ a lot of people were like, ‘That’s controversial, so.’ So it wasn’t a good time. Did about like 10 interviews a day about it. It was crazy you know, but…

CCMmagazine.com: Damage control?

Matt T.: Right, so we ended up… Some people were talking about boycotting the band, or boycotting the record label, and stuff so, it’s one thing to boycott our band, but we can’t like have anybody boycott our entire label, so we backed out of it, and that was the last I heard about it. That’s all I know.

CCMmagazine.com: It was just so silly to me. I couldn’t believe it. That people would freak out like that. It’s like if you partnered up with any other store it probably would have been cool.

Matt T.: It’s ok though. It’s to be expected. It’s kind of cool, controversy let’s us learn how to deal with stuff.

CCMmagazine.com: Hey, negative press is still press. People are making waves about you guys. [laughter]. I won’t make you talk about “Marilyn Manson Ate My Girlfriend,” are you happy about that

Relient K: (in unison) Yeah!