It's been a roller coaster ride for the brothers of for KING & COUNTRY. Joel and Luke Smallbone have found themselves propelled to the forefront of the Christian music scene with their hit record, Crave.

In the past few months, the brothers of for KING & COUNTRY have found themselves on the mountaintop of life experiences, with Joel's recent marriage to fellow singer-songwriter Moriah Peters and Luke's becoming a father for the first time. They've also experienced tremendous favor in the mainstream world, with various performances that were topped by their appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

They also have faced commensurate lows, with Luke's ongoing battle with a serious digestive disorder—an illness that sidelined Luke and significantly altered the vibe of for KING & COUNTRY. It's in these ups and downs that the Smallbone brothers have ample fuel for their next record, which they're currently in the process of writing.

In the meantime, the band presses forward with their recently released live CD/DVD, Hope is What We Crave, and their brand-new Christmas project, the Into the Silent Night EP. I sat down with Joel recently before his set at Creation Festival Northwest to get a "state of the union" with for KING & COUNTRY.

So you got married since I last saw you in June! How's married life?
 

Yes! Thirty-two days ago, man! We celebrated our one month yesterday and sadly weren't together for it. It's awesome. If I would be really honest, I'd say you come into marriage with—naturally you bring expectations and hopes and dreams. Also some fears. This is the first time we have ever spent 30 days roughly together, nonstop, every waking and sleeping moment. 

 

And I've got to tell you it's just been wonderful. She is a beautiful girl inside and out, and the friendship, the deep friendship and understanding that we have is just an act of God. It really is. I feel like a better person sitting here now, even beyond when we met on the East Coast.

 

 

Well, Luke has such a high voice. He usually takes the low, dreary stuff of for KING & COUNTRY and then he takes the really high, falsetto stuff. The few weeks that we've been able to do some shows together, Moriah that is and us, and with Luke being ill and his absence, she's kind of stepped on and played a few and had a bit of a cameo for a few songs.

 

It's been really special. It's bittersweet, you know, because what Luke and I do has been built up for such a long time and it doesn't replace, by any stretch of the imagination, the rapport, and the partnership and he and I have. But in his absence, if there was someone that I would love to stand on stage with, it would be her.
 

 

 

I think once, maybe. She came on for one or two songs and played acoustic and that was the extent of it. 

 

 

I've got to say this. She is a SoCal girl and I had an apartment out in Southern California for a year, so there was a moment where I had stuff at my house, she had stuff at her parents' house, I had stuff in my sister's house in the West Coast and stuff in Tennessee at my parents' place. So to bring it all together…

 

 

…And such a beautiful, rewarding thing to now have our stuff in one place.

You guys have been busy recording and getting stuff out. You've got Hope is What We Crave with CD/DVD. This is your first real official release of live footage. Looking forward to it. What can people expect?

 

I've said it before, but playing music live is really our life's blood. It's what we grew up doing. It's what we love. We love writing, but we feel like the fruition of music is to present it for people live. We feel like kids in a candy store. I was very hands-on in the process. I edited most of it. Picked the shots. Oversaw, obviously, the mixing and the way that artwork and the way the whole thing came together. Definitely when you pour blood, sweat, and tears into something, this is something that we're proud of. Something that we feel like represents. Now it was almost a year ago that we recorded it, ironically. It was in Nashville on the final night of our first headlining tour in October of last year.

 

It's lovely to have something that represents that era of for KING & COUNTRY. "Crave" obviously is the title track and simultaneously to that we have "Hope is What We Crave" coming out to radio as the final single of the record, too. It's definitely an exciting moment, and even with Luke's illness and that song on the DVD and what they both represent, and that's a very personal song for Luke. For it to be coming out now is very timely.

 

 

If there was one dream that you would always have as a musician, it would be playing a late night show. It's almost in some ways the Super Bowl of music. The credibility that comes along with it, but just the exposure of introducing you to a new audience is really significant and special.

 

It was very profound, particularly because of the fact we got to play "Proof of Your Love," and there's a defining moment right before we played that night actually. We all have our in-ears in. There's nine of us on stage and this big gate is about to raise.

 

The nerves of the whole thing, it's national television. To top it off, the icing on the cake, you've got the American Idol judges there judging you as well, because they were guests that night. The monitor engineer got on the line and he said, "Knock 'em dead. You guys are going to be great." Then he said, "We serve the same king." 

 

It was just that encouragement to go out, the unity of the whole thing. I'll not forget that night as long as I live. I won't forget that moment. They've actually since invited us back. We're trying to correlate the dates, but we're hoping to get back on there before Leno ends his tenure as Tonight Show host.
 

 

 

He did. He came through the hall. He's a gracious fellow and tries to come by and say hello to all of his guests. He came down the hall and we had just an overwhelming posse there. We had people from radio stations, from the label, our band was nine in and of itself, management. All out we probably had 25, 30 people there.

 

Leno had just timed it where we were all in the hallway together. He came and said hello and made some comment about how we have the same size posse as Mariah Carey or something like that. We spoke briefly afterwards. You got the sense that he, and particularly his crew, were just really after the fact really happy with how the whole thing came together. 

 

I think that goes to him inviting us back again. It's such an encouraging thing.

 

 

Yes! It will be called Into the Silent Night. We actually wrote a song, which is the title track, and there'll be two classics on there: "Angels We Have Heard on High," "Little Drummer Boy" and "Baby Boy," which is a song that we wrote that we released to radio last year. The two classics were really interesting because we came up with the renditions for them in rehearsals for our Christmas tour last year. We just basically transplanted that onto a CD.

 

 

Luke is a big one for us right now, his health. It's just not the same having him absent for these events. It's been three or four weeks now that he's not been with us and it just changes the whole dynamic. That's a big one for his health.

 

Then I think through the rest of this year for stamina and inspiration. Stamina to finish the race well on this record and inspiration as we begin to go in and begin looking at the future and what the next steps are, the next record. We're beginning to start writing for it this month. We've got a few songs under our belt, but the bulk of the record still needs to be written.

 

We're so busy and that's why stamina and inspiration are hand in hand. Because we've been so busy we haven't had the chance, really, to write, and because of Luke's illness we haven't had the chance to write together. Between my marriage and Luke being a father and even down to his illness and the people that we've met on the road and all the stories, there's so much there to transplant into a song.