When brothers Cameron and Chandler Wood started making music together in 2012, they did so out of the overflow of their hearts. The songs they created originally were intended for their church plant in the Jackson, Mississippi area, but it would seem God had other plans.

The Wood brothers, with the addition of drummer/programmer Kody Gautier, became Seeker & Servant, and that band name serves as a reminder that while they sought God and served Him at the local church, He had bigger plans. It seems He always does when we least expect it.

Now, the band has released its debut project, Into Your Love I Go, which blends unhindered worship with progressive and post-rock tendencies, and it is stretching people's expectations of what "church music" can sound like. 

I caught up with Cameron Wood recently to learn more about the band, the new record, their influences, and life of a seeker and servant.

Tell me about you guys and how you came together.

A year and a half ago we stared Seeker & Servant. We were asked to be worship leaders for a church plant where we're from in Jackson, Mississippi, and it started with my brother and I, who have been previous musicians in other local bands, and then we incorporated an old friend of ours to do programming and percussion and really out of that Seeker & Servant was born.

You guys have an epic, kind of full-sounding worship sound. I mean, it's big sounding and there's really only 3 of you, right? Talk about who does what and how you guys make this big sound.

It started out more as singer/songwriter, so you have my brother, who's all the guitars, and he does background vocals. He's really like the sole writer. Then you have myself. I do keys and then some pads and just different sounds like that and then where the big sound really comes from is the programmer, who is Kody Gautier, and he does percussion as well as programming.

I guess those three elements combined really create the sound. When we approached it, we really wanted to create something kind of different, more atmospheric, a little bit of something you could lose yourself in and that's what we tried to create when we went to finish these songs.
 
I couldn't help but feel like a post rock kind of vibe. Do you guys like that kind of music? 

We do. We listen just as much as we listen to probably music with vocals we listen to just as much music with not. We love post rock music. If you hear that influence, it's probably definitely coming out from the music that we listen to in our daily lives and that would be one of the genres that we do like.

Into Your Love I Go is the debut. Kind of talk people through that album and what you were going for, and even what it might sound like to people who don't know anything about it.

A lot of this music comes from where we [my brother Chandler and I] were at at that certain time of our life and we both had left music for a little while because I had just gotten married in July 2012. We kind of joined the normal workforce life and stopped for a little bit. Working's not bad. It's a great thing. For us, just where we were at, it kind of weighed on us. We started feeling a little distant from God where we were, and so really a lot of this is our own personal devotion time. It's kind of just trying to find God, I guess you could say, and the deep relationship with Him that our hearts desired.

So most of this music, if you listen to it, it's almost like a journey, that journey of reacquiring what that is or seeing what that love looks like and we didn't necessarily intend for it to be a journey, but as the record was written and it began to unfold, it turns kind of into it. ...That when you are part of God, when you enter into God's love in a sense, nothing else is better and that's what the record is.

Are you guys still involved in worship ministry at your church?

We actually -- when we started [the church plant] we were there for about eight months. The church is still going great. We're still friends and connected with the pastor. The pastor is a good friend of ours. It was just God had us there to set up what that church needed at the time and then moved us on. Seeker & Servant has taken on its own identity, I guess, entity in a sense that we are doing this now full time rather than just being at a church every Sunday. 
 
What can people expect from a Seeker & Servant experience? What are your shows like?

They're homey, let me put it that way. They're down to Earth, really relaxed. If we're hired to do it, we'll put on a full set, which is like when you hear Into Your Love. That's what you're going to get when you come to a show or an event, but even still, the atmosphere that we try to create is one that is down to Earth where we can be level with you.

We'll spend a great amount of time in our sets doing as much as we can to make sure that the Gospel is heard, that Jesus Christ is lifted up and not ourselves, and that doesn't necessarily mean just open up the Bible for five minutes out of the set to read a verse. I mean sometimes that means God's there working for 30 minutes as almost a sermon is going on.

It's real down to Earth. It's just like a church service everywhere we go and that's great. That's what we want to create with it. While it's not directly worship music, it's just crazy to see how many people can relate to certain songs that are on the record and that they come because they want to talk to someone who also knows what it's like to be broken and we can relate to one another that way.

For us that's really what it's about. We love that. We love to be able to encourage and lift up other believers and not just believers, but even to encourage and lift up those that are lost, to bring them to Christ, to help bring them to Christ to see the beautiful thing that the Gospel is. That's really what it's about.
 
What is next for you guys and how can people be praying for you guys as far as touring or recording or anything like that?

We're just leaving to head for our Northeast tour. We always need prayer. Pray that God will continue to humble us, put Himself -- raise Himself up in the sense that we're aware that we need to be humble. We need to kill our pride so that He can do the most work. 

Pray that our flesh doesn't get in the way of what's really important and then also just pray for our individual families, especially my family when I'm gone because it's hard. It's hard for anybody. Even on the scale that we tour, which is not that much compared to some people, it's still difficult.

And pray for the people that we come in contact with, whether lost or saved.
 
Where is this all going as far as you understand or maybe as far as what God's shown you? What are you guys sensing is next for you and ultimately where this is going?

I wish I had a sure answer sometimes. Right now where it's going is exactly where God wants it to be. I have a family. I have a daughter and a wife and then Cody, who's our percussionist, is getting married next year. We have families.

I guess our hope would be that this could be something that just provides the needs for our families so that we can continue doing this, but at the same time really we're just trying to learn and understand God's will through it all. 

I mean as much as Seeker & Servant, I feel like God uses for other people to hear and in a lot of ways that's a sanctifying experience for us three. In a lot of ways it's growing our relationship with Him too just as much as it may be to someone who is hearing the record. 

I guess what we hope all together out of it is that that's what it continues to be. Whether it blows up to where we're playing every Christian music festival under the sun every summer or we're on tours with the people that you just know off the top of your head when you think about Christian music. If it goes that way, then great.

We're just learning to trust God in that those things may not be a real thing in the future and understanding that that's OK too. I think a lot of times bands get discouraged because they feel like the music that they're creating is not really being heard. The music is for people, but it's also for the Creator and the biggest audience that you'll ever have is Himself. As long as you're doing that and you're passionate and God's working through you in that way, then you'll never stop doing it.

I mean I know jobs and life and responsibility, you have to do those things. God wants those things too, but if that's in your heart, if that's what you know you must do and God is working through you in that way, then it is just as important as the big names you see in every record store across the country. 

Those big and small things don't define who we are. It's our relationship to Christ that does.