Shaded Red consists of brother Jamie (vocals, guitar) and Jon (guitars, bass, trumpet, piano) Roberts, and Paul Kieser (drums). Jamie and Jon, the founding band members, are originally from Denver, Colorado. Their name comes from a poem Jon wrote called "Shaded Red". It dealt with the reality of Jesus Christ's death on the cross and how now He sees us, the ones He died for, through "shades of red" because we are made clean through the blood He shed. Their self-titled debut came out in 1997, but they've been a band since 1993.


Life hasn't always been easy for Shaded Red. On January 11, 1998, the band got in a serious car accident. The drummer at the time, Chris Yeomen, died in the crash, and Jon Roberts had to spend months regaining the use of his legs when his pelvis shattered.


Jon tells Cameron Strang in an interview published in the July/August 1999 7ball magazine, "All along, I was just fighting to get my life back...my first therapy was to lift myself off my bed and sit in a chair two feet from the bed. It took about 25 minutes to get to that chair. I'd sit there for five minutes and then they'd carry me back. I had to struggle that hard. I sunk into it with all I had because all I could rely on was the hope that maybe the band would work again. Maybe I'd walk again...."


As seen, the crash affected the guys so much that they almost stopped playing music. Jamie talks to Cameron about his hardships, saying, "After the accident, I wasn't able to play my guitar for about three months...I just had no heart for music. I was trying to decide if Shaded Red should go on. Both of us didn't have a clue; we were just trying to survive. I felt enormously pained and guilty. Just going through my head was, God, are You there? Do You love me? I needed forgiveness, I needed innocence. I needed fresh things to happen in my heart because my heart was broken."


But healing did take place. Jon regained the use of his legs and God restored Jamie's love for music. The song "When God Ran", originally written by Benny Hester, was the medium that brought Jamie through. He tells Strang, "I started to play it, fumbled over the words and cried uncontrollably because God just used the chorus to touch my heart. I needed to know at that point the love of God in my life like that."


Shaded Red then made their second album, Red Revolution. General market publications such as Billboard Magazine picked up on the album because of its unique musical arrangements of Spanish trumpets, orchestra arrangements, pop, and rock. The band traveled to Abbey Roads studio in London to record the songs "Wait" and "When God Ran".