If Maine had a contemporary Christian music supergroup, The Founded Trio & Band certainly would be in the running for that designation. The vocally-driven, inspirational group was the result of three powerhouse soloists joining forces for superior harmonies, common goals, and a supportive, brotherly atmosphere.

The trio--made up of singer/instrumentalists Peter Beaulieu, Douglas Moore and Thomas Polley--asked drummer Andrew Farrar and bassist Robbie Smith to help round out their sound. Now, the trio-plus-two is poised to take their next seismic leap as a collective with the forthcoming release of their second full-length album. 

It seems like it's the calm before the storm for this up-and-coming CCM band, and so I spent some time talking with Peter Beaulieu to learn more about The Founded Trio & Band, its mission, and what lies ahead.

Peter, we're excited to hear about the Founded Trio--what you guys have been up to and where you've come from. Tell us how you guys formed, where your name came from, the brief history of your group.

The trio consists of me, Douglas J. Moore, and Thomas Polley, and before we came together we were three solo artists who started a coffeehouse together, plus we were doing this little thing called the Christmas tour where we just had a bunch of local artists together going around to different churches and performing.

As we were doing this coffeehouse, we decided that the three of us would go out and do concerts together. At one of those concerts we decided to do some songs together, so when we started singing together we felt a connection with each other that's kind of like a Phillips, Craig, and Dean. The voices really blended well. I just felt in my heart this is what God like founded us, and that's where the Founded Trio comes from. God brought us together. That's how the trio started... in about November of 2011.  
 
How has it been shifting over the years from being solo acts to being more of a collective, and now especially with your band?

I'd say there's more of a family atmosphere, more accountability. We can strengthen each other and just be able to use our gifts and talents fully instead of just singing melody all the time.  Each one of us can switch from singing melody to low or high harmonies.  Plus we can help each other out by; two of us play guitar and one of us plays keyboard as the trio, but then we added the other two guys in the band probably about eight months later.  It was around June of 2012, so that's where we added the "& band" part to The Founded Trio & Band. 

I like your sound. It's very harmonic, very vocally driven, obviously, not unlike you mentioned Phillips, Craig, and Dean or like a NewSong. Kind of talk about your sound for people who haven't heard you.

A lot of people don't know how to describe what we sound like, because there ain't too many bands where there are three lead vocalists and each vocal can change on each song and we're always changing different parts within songs. I guess it's more towards a 4Him or maybe even a little bit of dcTalk maybe--maybe not as hard as them, but definitely some diversity in the music.

You guys are based in Maine--what's the Christian music scene like up there?

We've had a few artists come out of Maine, Unspoken being one of them, but also The Wrecking, another group Tal and Acacia, so we've had some talent. We've been able to be in fellowship with a lot of these groups.  Actually before Unspoken and The Wrecking became national artists, I was doing venues with them.  It's kind of neat to see them grow and become who they are now.

There's definitely lots of history within that, but the music up here, it's definitely blossomed, I'd say, in the past 5 to 10 years where I think a lot of local bands are trying to be more professional whereas back in the day it was kind of just like a garage band thing.

Tell us about your latest project and what you're working on. You released your self-titled EP in 2013. Is that your current project that you guys are supporting right now or is there new stuff to come?

We just completed our second project.  It's still in the process of being finalized, getting all the mixes finalized and then we've got to get it sent out for mastering, and then when mastering is done hopefully we'll have a release party and then CDs made and so forth--I would guess hopefully in September.
 
Tell us about that project and what in terms of development as artists where you've come to as far as writing for and creating the music for this new project.

I would say definitely maturity.  After our first album, we were able to play about 40 shows that year, so being able to play every week and being able to play at a level professionally prepared us for this next album. And we had learned a lot in the studio how to do things better.

This time when we went into the studio we just felt more professional. We were working with The Wrecking. They have a studio in Maine called Halo Productions and that's where we did our first project with them, so we decided to do the second project with them also and that helped us because we knew them, so we were a lot more comfortable with recording.

If you had to pick a song that would best define what you guys  are about, your mission as a band, whether it's from this new album or the first one, what would that be? Talk about that for a second, if there is one.

The first project kind of had a blend of styles between me, Doug, and Tom, because on that first project we all featured a song that we each wrote and then "Heaven and Earth" was really the song that we all wrote as a band.  

I would say "Heaven and Earth" is really what set us apart. That's the one that got on the radio in Maine here. I think that defined us to open up avenues for this next project where we got a little more modernized, with contemporary pop.



For people who hadn't heard that song, sort of lyrically themed, what are some of the big themes in there that speak to your mission?

One of them is where it said that if we are silent, the rocks will cry out, but you'll never find out. The whole point of that is we don't want the rocks to cry out. We won't be silent. We want people to hear about Jesus Christ. It's up to us to share the Gospel and if we don't do that, obviously the Bible says that rocks will cry out. It's definitely a big task for us as a band, to make sure that believers are expressing their love towards Christ and not just that, but sharing it with unbelievers too.

By night you guys are Founded Trio. By day do you guys have day jobs? Where do you guys find yourselves when you're not on stage?

Tom lives in a small village, works at a factory. He loves to fish. There's a foster child he's trying to adopt, so he's working on that and in the process of trying to get that taken care of. 

Doug is still single, but he has a girlfriend, a serious relationship.  He enjoys hanging out with friends a lot, about two hours away from me, from the Bangor area, so he spends time with other friends down there hanging out at the beach and stuff.  He's the youngest in the band.

As for me, I'm an electrician during the day. I taught martial arts for about six years, so kind of a jack-of-all-trades. I do a lot of things. Pretty much during the day I spend time with my kids and family and then I'll practice guitar or set things up for the weekend for concerts and stuff.

Rob, the bass player, he's been doing a project on his house, so he's got a lot of construction going on. Most of his time has been spent with that. Andrew, our drummer, works for Loomis. They're like Brinks. They transfer money, security to banks and stuff.

That's kind of our daily lives. We do get together and practice on Fridays and sometimes we'll go bowling and just have a night off and just enjoy time together.
 
Where does this go for you guys? Obviously we all just hang on to whatever God says to do, but have you guys been given a glimpse or a picture or an idea or a dream of where The Founded Trio goes from here?

We definitely have prayed together about the possibilities. All of us feel we all have the same vision. God has opened doors and we haven't had to try. That's the thing. Everything that's been happening has just been going with the flow and God's just been opening stuff for us.

We all have the same vision of going--if God were to take us national to tour and do that, we'd definitely do that. Our families, they all back us up, support us. We have really good support base.

In the immediate term, what's next for your guys? Are you touring? Obviously you've got the album coming out, but beyond that as far as touring and things like that, what's next for the Founded Trio & Band?

We've had a meeting with our manager. We definitely want to capitalize on this next project, so we're going to be trying to raise money for a radio promoter. We want to take it up a notch and hopefully reach the Northeast, possibly K-LOVE, see if we can just keep hammering at these places.

I do have a friend in Massachusetts who manages a radio station down there.  I always like to get his input and get insight from him because you don't want to grow too fast, but you also want to expand your horizons.

I think the Northeast is a good goal to have. I mean in reach all of Northeast or whatever God wants to lead us to, but I think that's a feasible goal. 

How can we be praying for you and your families?  

I would say pray for us to be humble and content with everything going on, as well as patience that we wouldn't jump too quickly into things, and for wisdom.