Rush of Fools was riding a seemingly unstoppable wave of momentum. But just as things began to peak, the band was forced into hiatus by business matters surrounding their label which were outside of their control. Over the course of the last two years, the boys in Rush Of Fools experienced the greatest valley of their lives as they waited for resolution. With their futures hanging in the balance, they were forced to look deep inside to discover their true character, both as artists and as human beings.

Many have folded in similar circumstances, but the band emerged as men of mettle with their third, and undoubtedly, their most remarkable installment, We Once Were. This is Rush Of Fools at their most creative, vulnerable, and cathartic.

NRT’s Bill Lurwick sat down with guitarist Kevin Huguley to talk about the journey Rush of Fools has taken over the last few years, and how that has translated into their newest music.

Kevin, reading the bio on the project, it really struck by the line that you said, “We can’t go back to what we were before because we’ve been so heavily changed by the events that have occurred along the way.” What’s happened along the way for Rush of Fools?

Wow. We really have to look at it in two aspects. One is in the physical and in the literal. When this band started years ago and when we first began as Rush of Fools, I was the oldest at 23 years old, and the only one married. My drummer was 15. That season of life compared to where we are now is so different.

Now there are three of us that are married. There are children in families. It’s just life is in a different place. So, in and through that your songs sound different. You write different. You live different because you’re in a different season of life.

So, that’s one aspect. The second aspect is just the seasons that we’ve walked through as a band. Our drummer’s mom walking through cancer and we had to go through that with her and she’s in remission now, which is awesome. We walked through things like that from the personal to having our trailer stolen with thousands of dollars of gear inside.


We bought a little motor-home/bus thing that ended up being a huge money pit for a very small band like us. We had issues with our former record label, which shut down without telling us. Driving down music row in Nashville, Tennessee, I passed the building where our record label was and there’s a for lease sign in the window.

I called the number and it’s been disconnected. You go, “Okay. This is probably not good.” You never want the people that are promoting your record to not have a building or a phone number anymore. We walked through that together and in and through that we’re reflecting on this new record called We Once Were.

These songs that came out of those moments of life of going, “We have to trust that there’s a much bigger story going on, that’s bigger than just the guys in Rush of Fools. It’s bigger than just a few songs.” There’s a love story that’s being written, but the love story can have heartache moments and it can have bad moments. In and through that it’s changed who we are. So, looking back now we really see that we’re not the same people that we once were, so that’s kind of the heart behind that idea.

I love the song on We Once Were called “A Civil War,” which really is about that internal struggle we all face, right?

If you look at church history, there are some amazing hymns that hymn writers and songwriters have written over generations, but one that I always have difficulty singing is “I Surrender All,” because I just go, “Really? Do I?”

I’m glad that that person was spiritually in the place that they were, but I’m lying if I sing that most of the time. So we wrote from almost the opposite perspective going, “I’ve got to figure out how to bow out. I’ve got to figure out how to give this stuff over and give it up because I’ve got this fight within me, this war that is waging within me.”

We’re always very excited to share the meaning behind that song because we’re from the South, Alabama, and we’re like, “We have to talk about the Civil War.” It’s all from the spiritual and just from the perspective of going, “We have this internal struggle.” Musically what we did with that is what are the sounds of war, so we started off with that marching snare. We wanted the music to wrap into the idea of where we were coming from lyrically as well.

There’s a real worship theme in the song “Beginning to End.” Can you talk about it a little bit?

We kind of live in a weird dynamic as a band because in the summertime and around the wintertime when there’s camps and conferences, we feel very comfortable with going in and being the church praise band.

Now, some of this record is not vertical or people go, “This isn’t very worshipable for us.” “Beginning to End,” though, is pretty intentionally a church song. People see the title and they go, “Oh, they’re singing about Revelation.” No, not necessarily.

If you believe the Word of God is true, you have to look at it and realize God has written this story from before the foundation of the world. We reflect on that and that doesn’t frighten us. That gives us comfort. That doesn’t scare us. That gets us excited to know that even on those days when we don’t like what’s going on, we know that there’s a bigger picture at hand and there’s a better story at hand.


Everybody claims God is sovereign, but when reality punches us in the face, when life is not grand and happy, there’s something within the innards of our soul that go, “God, what are you doing?” So, for us, this song is reflecting on not just when the life is grand and good, but in all times and in all circumstances God does reign. He does rule from beginning to end.

Your album cover for We Once Were caught my attention. It’s not just a picture of the band. There is what looks to me like a dandelion in different phases fading away. Is that correct?

It’s close. It’s a matchstick, but that could work as well, actually. We had this idea of metamorphosis. Obviously you’ve got the caterpillar to butterfly, but that would seem too obvious.

There’s something beautiful about using a matchstick because before it’s lit is one thing and once you use up a matchstick, it is changed. It’s literally a chemical change. Once you light a match and once a match has been lit and a match has run its course, that match in the end can’t go back to being the match that it was. It is impossible for that to go back.

Even spiritually we once were dead. Now we’re alive. We’re not going back to being dead. That just doesn’t happen. We’ll die physically in one sense, but from the spiritual realm you don’t. You go from dead to being alive.