It's been six months since the newly reconfigured Hawk Nelson, with new lead singer Jonathan Steingard, released the critically acclaimed new record, Made. Led by hit first single "Words," the band has shown a more mature, grown-up side, although their live shows prove they still have a ton of energy and still love to get crazy on stage.

Now, after a summer of touring, adding a new guitarist and debuting new single "Faithful," I thought it would be a good time to see how the men of Hawk Nelson are feeling about this latest season of music and ministry.

So where do we find Hawk Nelson in 2013? Give us a state of the union.

Jon: The record is out now, which is something that we were excited about for a long time, about a year in the making. Especially with all the changes in the band, it's fun to have a record that you can put in someone's hand and say, "This is who we are." It's been cool to see that "Words," the single, is sort of connecting with people in a cool way. That's been really exciting. Playing shows has been really fun. In the last two or three months it feels like we're starting to hit a stride. It feels really good.

Daniel: And Jon dropped the guitar. Not like he… he didn't break it, but he's not playing it as much these days.

 

Jon: Yeah, less to think about. This is Micah [Kuiper]. Micah plays guitar. He's killing it. 

 

 

Micah: February. 

 

Daniel: What do you think of it? 

 

Micah: Hate it. (Laughs.) 

 

Jon: We're talking about doing a quarterly review.
 

 

 

Jon: We were visiting a radio station in L.A. and we played live on the air the song "Faithful" from our record, which is the new single. That song is really all about trusting God through the ups and downs of life and knowing that He's been faithful in the past to redeem even the hardest stuff and knowing that He will be faithful to do that in the future. We played it on the air and talked about it for a second and the phone lines at the station kind of lit up after we played. A couple of people called and were really, really encouraged by the song and said they wanted to communicate that. 

 

There was one woman in particular named Yolanda who said, "I just had to pull over and praise the Lord because that was something I really needed to hear in that moment." It was a really cool experience. We don't always get to hear stories of how God uses the music that we make in people's lives, so it was cool to have that direct feedback that time.

 

Daniel: Not to mention my mother-in-law is always singing me the song. She loves it. She never really liked Hawk Nelson before. (laughs)

 

 

Daniel: When you start off in high school you're really excited to get up there and be entertaining and fun and that's great. Then you start to realize your music can actually have an impact in people's lives. This season we got a break. With Jason leaving we had a break to actually reexamine why we do this.

 

I feel like ever since Made's come out it's just confirmed that God is breathing life into our songs and He's working through them. That's exciting. That's a new aspect to this band, the whole idea that there's ministering going on through the music. Although Jon is singing the words and we're doing the work, it's really God doing the work, the ministering part through them. It's really interesting to have the dynamic now and we're still entertaining, hopefully.

 

Justin: I was thinking about the same thing. I was thinking about that time we had a break. We were really able to – just reiterate what Dan said, but be intentional about what we were doing and assess because again when you start in high school it's just like a bunch of bros getting together and you want to travel and play music for whoever will listen to you. Well, 10 years down the road you're married, you have families and there's more in the game than there was when you first started. I feel like it was a good period of time for us to reevaluate a lot of the things that when you get on the road and you kind of get in that mode of just going to different cities every day you get in autopilot I guess in some ways.

 

It was a good opportunity for us to take a step back, reassess the situation, and we decided this is something we really want to continue and that we believe in and when we go out and do this, let's be sure that we're intentional with everything that we're doing because otherwise we can all just go work at Starbucks or something, if there's no purpose behind it.

 

Jon: There are easier ways to make a living.
 

 

Jon: Man, I love being in a band. I have no plans to do anything like that. I write a lot, and so stuff will pop up here and there. There's a rock band called Silverline. "Lights Out," their first single off that new record, I wrote with them. Little things like that.

 

Justin: I think Dan and I are secretly wanting him to continue solo stuff because we always just love listening to the record.

 

Jon: Travel is a big factor. You travel too, but we've been doing a bunch of radio visits this week. Just honestly for like stamina. Full disclosure, I'm so tired. We've been getting up really early and visiting a lot of stations and there's also a factor of like when you're talking about stuff behind the songs and stuff, you want to really dig deep into stuff and doing that on a daily basis, sometimes it's just exhausting. The strength to be able to be effective in every situation and to really be hopefully a vessel that God can use.