NRT's Jake Frederick catches up with Kutless' Jon Micah Sumrall while on the 1-Night Music Circus Tour. We talk ministry projects, tour life, and worship.
In March of 2004, I made a six-hour drive to Boulder, CO to attend my first concert—the “Sea of Faces” tour, named after Kutless' sophomore album. The tour featured Thousand Foot Krutch, FM Static, and Falling Up, with Kutless headlining. Concerts have changed dramatically in the last 15 years with more advanced sound equipment, video, and production elements, but this concert will remain one of the best that I have attended.
I’ve seen Kutless live many times since the “Sea of Faces” tour. At every show, you can see the passion they have for music and sharing the gospel through song. I recently had the chance to attend their show on the 1-Night Music Circus tour as it came through my area. The night showcased everything I remember loving about seeing Kutless live. Before the show, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Jon Micah Sumrall, lead vocalist of the band.
What’s been the highlight of 1-Night Music Circus tour?
I think the favorite part of every night is when we’ve been able to share the gospel. Everything culminates to that point in the night. Most of these shows are in churches and the audience is made up of predominantly churched people, but even still, we're amazed at how many hurting people there are and how many people who need to come back to their faith. Or there are people who just came with a friend and happened to end up in a church with a buddy at a concert. It’s been neat watching people respond to the gospel every night. That's really why we’re out here and what brings us back.
I’ve seen a few of your shows over the years, and you’ve done the Mannequin Challenge before it was popular and other memorable hijinks. What do you do on the road or on the stage to break it up and keep it fun?
What’s funny about the mannequin challenge is we were doing the freeze on stage long before that became a social media thing. It was pretty funny. Then it became a craze, and we were like “Oh, we’ve already been doing that. That’s old.”
As we’ve gotten older, we’ve got a little mellower. We used to have a lot of games, and it was ridiculous. We had one tour where airsoft guns were the game. That got pretty brutal because it escalated as it always does. Man, this tour, honestly, it’s been pretty chill. We’ve been watching a lot of hockey, we’ve played a lot of Playstation hockey. The Disciple guys love hockey. We’ve had a lot of hang out time. It’s a really good group guys on this tour. It’s been really mellow, but also really good. I’ve got my son out with me right now and he’s learning how to tech a little bit and help out. I’ve been helping with his homework, he’s been doing online school to stay in it. For the Kutless guys, we’re only doing around 40 shows a year now. We’ve really backed off our touring schedule. We all have picked up other jobs at home with churches leading worship and other things for when we’re home throughout the rest of the year. There’s been a lot of responsibilities with that too, checking in and shooting emails. Trying to find time to work out, trying to beat up in the weight room or the hotel, just trying to get a workout in. The schedule is surprisingly full.
On stage, we have our moments in the set where we get the crowd going. The guys used to do guitar spins, but we broke too many guitars doing that. They’ve got really nice guitars and they don’t want to hurt their guitars. We’ve done a lot of things over the years. What’s interesting about this point in our career, we have so many songs that have been successful enough that we kinda need to play them at our concerts, but they’re predominantly mellower. Contemporary Christian Radio lends itself to the more mellow songs. So, we have a pretty sizable portion of our set now that is dedicated to worship, songs like “What Faith Can Do” and “Strong Tower.” Our set is a little bit more serious right now than the old days when we used to rock out the whole time and be crazy and wild, but I think it’s taken on a maturity and a depth, and hopefully an impact on people that’s lasting long beyond just the night.
How do you keep growing your faith while you’re on the road?
We just had a road pastor out with us for the last week who has been pouring into our lives and making himself available. His ministry, Lights Out Ministries, is basically being a road pastor to bands. He’s a great dude. Individually, we have people that pour into us and we check in with. They have the free license to challenge us and have the ability to say, “Hey, how are you doing in this area?” We keep those surroundings. The other great thing about technology today is podcasts. We have the ability to keep up on a lot of bible studies, even though we’re on the go. We’re still able to stay fed in that regard.
In between the rock albums, you’ve taken time to produce worship albums. How important is the worship side to you?
We actually started out in college together as a worship band playing worship together at our school. That’s really what got us playing together originally. We were practicing for a worship set one night and we were talking. I was like, “Man, it’s really been on my heart to do original music and concerts and use that as an outreach tool.” We thought, well, we have a band, let’s do it! That was really the foundation of our band and that has carried over throughout our career.
We still love rock and roll. That’s our favorite style of music. That’s what we love to listen to and love to play. However, the worship component has always been a big part of of what we do and who we are. We’ve tried to combine those two elements a bit, too. I like to think most of our worship records are a little more edgy than what you typically find in the sphere of worship music. It’s part of who we are and what we do. I think it will always be that way, and I think there will always be an element of that and we’ll always do both.
How has your ministry evolved and grown over the years?
The music industry has changed completely from how it was 15 years ago. There’s a lot of things that are different today. Everyone’s trying to figure out what that looks like and how it works. At the same time, we’ve been doing this for a long time. You begin to ask yourself: What’s next? What do we want to do? Where are we headed? What do we want to do for the next 10 years? Back in 2012, as we were working through some of those questions, we began to really pray about the future, where we wanted to head, and what we wanted to focus on. We really felt that evangelism was the best use of the platform we have and we can use it to share the gospel.
We started a non-profit evangelistic ministry called EOTA Ministries. EOTA is a vehicle for us to be able to do free crusade-style outreach events. We got to do a handful of events in countries around the world and a few here in the US. It’s been a really neat thing: free events that are open to the whole community and sharing the gospel.
Technology has really changed the way we communicate. We’re trying to develop new techniques for following up with discipleship using mobile apps and connecting people via common interests. We’re investing in that and trying to get that going. We’re trying to be relevant to this generation, trying to meet them there and that’s been neat.
That’s a big part of what we do today, where our hearts are, and what we’d love to do more of.
Speaking of EOTA, where is EOTA heading in 2019?
I don’t know yet. We are always looking for new opportunities and what doors might open. In the past, we’ve had some pretty cool opportunities open up. We’re prayerfully considering that now.
It’s an interesting deal because it’s one of those things where you can have a big event and things go great, and then the event is done and then you’re like, “Ok, what’s next?” We’re trying to create some consistency and getting into more of a rhythm with opportunities and events. We’re still figuring out how that works. We’re restructuring things with our executive board at the non-profit. Financially, it’s a big challenge because you’ve got to create a fundraising base. It’s a difficult thing to accomplish. In this day and age, everybody’s got something going on. Our primary goal is to figure out how to create a sustainable financial model to continue doing these free events.
Kutless has been doing the Kutless Military Mission Project (KMMP) for a few years now. How did that get started? What speared you to pour into our military?
Over the years, we’ve had a lot of interaction with military families. Through conversations, we realized that there were similar struggles. Some of these soldiers are away from their families for a long time. Fortunately for us, we’re not deployed for a year straight, but we’ll be on the road for a month or two at a time away from our families. We know what it’s like to be getting ready to hit the stage and having a bunch of people counting on us. Your wife calls from the side of the road saying, “Hey, I have a flat tire, and the kids are all sick.” You’re like, “How do I manage this with my family and being away for my job?” There was just a lot of things that we felt that we could relate with these guys. Not to mention, we are are really thankful for what these guys do to preserve the freedom in our country by literally putting their lives on the line around the world on a daily basis. We just appreciate them, and feel like we get a little bit of a taste about hardships of family life having to be seperated. We really have a heart for them and we started looking for opportunities to give back and love on them.
We started out providing free tickets for military guys and their families. We really wanted to encourage date night. We wanted to be like, “Hey, we’re here, don’t let anything stop you. Just come out, enjoy a night with you and your wife, come and hang out with us.” We just wanted to love on them and hopefully give an opportunity to be encouraged. We started with that and we’re still doing that.
We had some other opportunities open up, it’s been really cool. We’ve been going up to a town in Alaska, Port Alsworth, for years. Some good friends of ours up there have a lodge called Farm Lodge and we’ve gotten to go up and hang out with them. A few years back, Samaritan's Purse started a ministry called Operation Heal Our Patriots (OHOP) in a town called Port Alsworth, Alaska. I was like, “Theres no way that’s the same Port Alsworth that our friends live in.” It’s a bush village. The only access is through old prop planes on a dirt runway, and there’s maybe 200 people that live there year round. Very very small, rural Alaska. No way it could be the same city. Sure enough, I emailed my buddy Glenn up there and asked him if this is happening, and he’s like, “Yeah man! It’s awesome, you’ve got to check it out.” So, we’ve had the opportunity to go up and spend time with those guys and do music for them when we’re up there.
The thing I love about OHOP is that they take wounded vets and bring them to Alaska. It’s a beautiful lodge that they bring them to. They don’t just take the veteran, but they bring their spouse as well and they do marriage counseling. They spend almost a week up there with these guys just pouring into their lives. What’s so neat about it is it’s the first ministry that I’ve seen that includes the spouse into overall counseling and recovery process. They go home with new shared experiences with their spouses. They’re able to externalize some of the difficulties that they’ve had: PTSD, lost limbs, wheelchairs and trying to deal with that. Your spouse should be your first line of defense, they should be the ones there with you. For a lot of these guys, they get home from the front lines and their marriage is their next battlefield. Their wife is like, “I don’t know you anymore, you’ve changed.” There’s that stress and pressure. It’s been really neat to see marriages healed. At the end of the week, they do a rededication if you want to rededicate your marriage and your vows. We usually get to be a part of that and support these guys. There’s baptisms at the end of the week and a lot of guys get baptized. Just an awesome program and we love supporting them.
Part of our sales goes to supporting that ministry. We support them physically when we can go up there and do music and hang out with those guys. It’s been really, really neat and we really enjoy it.
You can get more information about KMMP, and service members can get tickets to Kutless shows at kutless.com/kmmp.
Jake is a longtime fan of Christian music, Jesus Freak Cruiser, a techie, and a softball player. He lives in Texas with his wife and daughter.
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