Dana Isles & Facedown is an independent, New Jersey based band that has been gaining traction through a succession of bigger and bigger festival stages, bringing their soulful rock sound across the country. Even as they continue to see new doors open, the band remains fixed on the aim with which they began: spreading the simple but life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ.

I had the chance to sit down with the group shortly after their performance at Creation Ichthus on a hot summer afternoon in Lexington, Kentucky. The group gave me some insight into what-- or rather Who-- they're all about.

Could you introduce the band and tell us a little bit about what you guys are about?

Dana Isles: My name is Dana Isles, and the name of the band is Facedown. We started about ten years ago, and we have been going in one form or another since then, with some personnel changes.

What's the band about? In a nutshell, we're all about Jesus, and that's the truth of it. We believe that it's very important to uplift and glorify Jesus. That is pretty much the only thing that we do. We worship Him and try to do it as He has called us to, in Spirit and in truth. And that's our deal. 

The name of the band came out of Scripture. As Ezekiel 44:4 says, "I looked to the heavens and saw the glory of the Lord fill the temple of the Lord. And I fell facedown." So we consider facedown as the ultimate posture of worship.

How would you describe your sound?

Tammy Vaughn: A lot of people say that Dana's voice sounds like Tina Turner. But we've got a mixed vibe of worship and rock, and sometimes it's bluesy, with a little gospel added in there. Rock and soul would be a good way to put it.  

I think the heartbeat of every song comes back to a place where we were all broken and Christ healed us and set us free. And man, if we can continue to worship in that and help people to get ahold of that, that's what we're about. We long for people to understand the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

Where can people find your music? Is there a new record they should look for?

Jonathan Maness: Our music can be found on our website at danaislesandfacedown.com. Our most recent work was actually produced out of Tennessee by Dove Award winning producer Travis Wyrick. That was right before I came on board, literally a couple months before. They went down and really put together a different sound. 

We have three CDs out, and this newest one really rounds out the three styles. Some of the earlier CDs are harder rock, some of them are contemporary. This newest one has a nice blend of rock, pop and worship. There's a wonderful tribute to "Break Every Chain." Every time we've played it, at just about any event but in particular the addiction recovery setting, it's just amazing to watch God work through that song. We see people with the tears flowing, leaving all of their addictions right there on the altar.

So you're playing Ichthus festival. Have you been doing other festivals? What has this year been like with playing live shows?

Dana: We've been doing other festivals, we've been touring around. Last year we did Creation Northwest. This year we just came from Northeast a week or two ago. We'll be at Sonshine in Wisconsin, and we'll be at the Northwest Creation again this year as well. 

In between we have our own schedule that we try to keep up as well. We're from New Jersey, so we play a lot in New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York. So it's a lot of northeast and east coast. The Lord has been opening doors for us recently, taken us kind of across the nation. So whatever doors He opens up we're certainly willing to go through.

What are you looking forward to? What excites you guys?

Tammy: Well I would say that if we had the opportunity to do this full time, we would love to do it. We all have jobs other than this, so we're praying that God opens the door to do this full time. But in the future we would like to continue to open and be on stages where God would have us to be. And that seems to take us from small coffee houses to this summer I think we're directly opening for three major headliners. We're pretty excited about that.

I think also we have a heart for addiction and recovery, for people that are really struggling-- depression, anxiety, sexual sins, all kinds of stuff. So whatever doors open for that, that's where we'll go.

If you had to describe to somebody in one or two sentences the most important thing about your band, what would you say?

Dana: The most important thing about our band is that we each individually have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and we're pretty much sold out for Him. It was interesting, one time we played someplace and we were accused of being overtly Christian. And we took that and said "well thank you!" 

But that's it, that's all we've got. We don't want to give anybody ourselves. Every time before we play we pray, and we ask that the Lord would fill us with His Holy Spirit, that that would be what comes out, what people experience, what people see. I think the special thing about our band is that we've got no agenda other than the Lord's agenda. We seek Him often to find out what that is, and we try to follow that as best we can. I think that that specifically is what makes us special.

At least, I'm very proud of that. If I could be proud of one thing, that's it.