It's one thing to have an incredible and engaging live show—and Southwest Florida's For A Season has that. They not only bring a ton of musical energy and passion to whatever stage in which they find themselves, but they even bust out paint brushes for a truly unique experience.

Yes, it's one thing to be good in a live setting, but it's completely another to be magnetic in the digital realm. For A Season has nailed that, too, putting as much (if not more) energy and creativity into their rapidly growing library of music videos as they do their songwriting and arrangements of popular cover songs. 

Although the men of For A Season have much going on outside of their independent (for now) band, it seems momentum is building, and the quartet is poised "for a season" of tremendous growth in their worship ministry. 

I spent some time talking with For A Season guitarist Derrick Gregory, getting to know the band before they become a household name in Christian music.

Tell us about yourselves! How did For A Season get together? 

There's a site called ChristianMingle.com. No, I'm just kidding. Some of the guys in the band played on the worship team together and we decided we wanted to start writing our own music. 

We originally started out as a rock/rap kind of thing, and realized that we really didn't want to do that too long. We ended up meeting with some of the other guys--Brian, who's the lead singer now and Patrick, who's the lead guitar player. We met them at a college/young adults group we went to at another church.

We just became really good friends and just started working on music, and now we've been together a little over two-and-a-half years and have just released two EPs. We finished up a covers project where we recorded five covers, put them on YouTube and now we're kind of in the process of working on some new material, which are songs we just wrote. 

Talk about the cover songs for a moment. What'd you do, and why'd you pick those?

The first one we did that we released is a song called "You Are" by Colton Dixon (watch the video here), and the reason I guess we chose that is we've actually kind of developed a friendship with Colton Dixon and his band. We were just a big fan of that song and we thought I'd be pretty cool and the painting idea that Josh our bass player had for it. We felt like that was a good one to start with.
 
What? He paints?

He's a speed painter. It's one of the elements of what we do is throughout the course of a live show -- not just something that we do in videos. Like throughout the course of our live show he actually paints a picture throughout the set and at a time there's kind of a reveal, if you will, but it's pretty unique. There's a lot of speed painters and things like that out there, not that I actually know a band that has someone in the band that does speed painting. 

It's another expression of your worship there, yeah?

Exactly. That's an awesome way to put it. That's exactly how we look at it.

So what were the other songs?

We did that and the our second cover song was "Oceans" by Hillsong United (watch the video here). We were just talking about what songs we wanted to cover right when that CD came out, and we remember listening to that song and just being completely blown away by the whole message of it. Josh, the bass player/painter, he's always wanted to do a video where he was painting the ocean. It just seemed to go hand in hand, so that's why we chose that one.

Then we did a Mandisa song called "Stronger" (watch the video here) and we chose that song because our lead singer, Brian, his mother actually went through breast cancer and we got this idea from what the song was about. It was cool. We had the opportunity to interact with fans and we knew a lot of people who had gone through cancer and dealt with that, so we had some of our fans film videos where they were talking about the struggle they were going through. We felt like the song tied in very well with that as far as struggles and how God can enable us and help us get through any situation and circumstance.

After that we did a secular song, but we felt like it still had a really good positive message, which was a song by Swedish House Mafia called "Don't you Worry Child."

Our fifth, which we released a little over a month and a half ago, so it's still kind of fresh, was--it's an oldie but a goodie--"10,000 Reasons" by Matt Redman. We were fortunate enough to have another good friend of ours, KJ-52, do a kind of rap in that song, so it's just kind of an interesting take on it. He goes to church actually with our lead singer, Brian. They both go to the same church and that's how we met him. An awesome dude.

Of course when anybody's in a band, there's this myth that it's their full-time gig. The truth is many people that are even signed are working other jobs too. What's your mild-mannered alter ego? What do you do by day?

We each have different things we do. Josh, the bass player/painter, he's a graphic designer. He just went independent and he does a lot of freelance stuff. Brian, the lead singer, he's in school still and he works at a church part time leading worship. I am a real estate agent by day. It's a little bit different. Patrick, who's our lead guitar player, works for a design company, and our drummer, he actually has a bunch of part time jobs and things that he does, so he's kind of all over the place.
 
Talk a little bit about the meaning behind your newest song, "Closer," and kind of the heart behind that. What are you going for thematically there?

In a sense it's kind of a worship song (watch the video here). It's talking about how we want to be closer to God and where we're at right now is just kind of not good enough. We want to constantly be closer to Him.

It's kind of a companion to your last original single, "Deeper," really.

It's funny you say that because we've got between 15 to 25 new songs that we've been working on and so be honest "Deeper," the one we released (watch the video here), wasn't really even everyone's first choice of a song to release, and then this one wasn't either, but it's funny how they kind of in some sense go together. It's funny how that all kind of worked out.

For those who haven't seen you, what's your live experience like?

We're a really young band. A little over two-and-a-half years old, and so musically our style has evolved a bit from our first EP to the second, which was the last one we just released. We were more of a rock sound--not really heavy, but a little bit more aggressive rock and our more recent stuff is toned down a bit. As far as our live show, it's different than I think a lot of stuff out there just for the simple fact of how we incorporate art into our show.

I know at one show, a couple of shows we were doing, we had like eight foot scaffolding and our bass player, Josh, was up on there with like a spinning easel. So he'd paint and then spin it for everyone to see. It's just crazy.

We haven't really started working on putting together a new show with some of this new material, but who knows. Definitely we're always thinking of new ideas and stuff, but it's always going to be something that's heavily tied in with art and that side of things.

After being together more than two-and-a-half years you probably have a glimpse from God of what this band could be. Where are you guys sensing or hoping this is all going? What's the dream here?

I feel like God's brought us all together for a purpose. It's just kind of crazy how none of us is originally from Florida. We're kind of all over the place. My parents were missionaries and I lived all over the world. Josh, he's Australian.

Each one of us is from different parts of the world, so to speak, and God has brought us together and we really feel like he's called us to be able to share the gospel and a message of hope to people, and the best way that we know how to do that is through music and art. That's what we're trying to do.
If God opens doors for this to be a way to do this full time, that's awesome. But as it stands now we're doing what we can and just trying to share the good news that way.
 
Basically it seems you guys are at a place where whatever God does, He does, and other than that you guys are content serving your communities as well, right?

Yeah. That's another big thing for us is that each one of us is plugged into our home churches to where we're serving. We feel like that's such an important part. A lot of times people think with music you've got to be playing shows and that kind of stuff, but for us our thing is obviously the community and to serve as well and a big part of that is being plugged into a church and serving other people.

What's coming up for you guys performance wise? Are you guys touring at all? Are you guys waiting to tour? You've got some summer gigs coming up?

We've got a couple things in the pipeline, some possible tours maybe; some details are being worked out. The past couple of months we've just been so busy with writing new songs and videos. We've played some shows here and there, but they just haven't been as much, but now that we're kind of at the tail end of that, we're transitioning back to show mode. There are definitely some things in the works.

What would be a dream tour or a dream venue for you guys to play?

Each of us has a different musical style and preference and probably location on where they'd like to play. I definitely know that collectively each one of us are really, really big fans of the band Needtobreathe, so I would probably say going on tour with them would be something that we'd definitely all dig. As far as the venue, personally I've always wanted to play in Australia. I don't know of any particular spot over there, but that's something I'd like to do one day.

How can we be praying for you guys in really a kind of watershed moment for the band?

I definitely say for direction. There are a lot of things that can sidetrack us, and having direction and guidance, that's definitely something that's real important.