Casting Crowns

Mark Hall, Juan DeVevo, Melodee DeVevo, Hector Cervantes, Megan Garrett, Chris Huffman and Andy Williams are the seven unique musicians who make up Casting Crowns.

Known around the world as one of America’s most original and fertile contemporary Christian bands, Casting Crowns came into being in 1999 as part of a youth group. After recording their self-titled debut album in 2003, the group quickly became one of the fastest-selling debut artists in Christian music history.

Lifesong followed in 2005, debuting at #9 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart. Both albums have since sold more than a million copies. And the band’s third CD, The Altar And The Door, debuted at #2 on its release in August 2007. Not bad for a group of people who never intended to perform in a Christian band! Casting Crowns guitarist Juan DeVevo says he wanted to be a pilot. “When I was growing up in Dayton Beach, Florida, I’d watch movies like Top Gun and Iron Eagle,” he says. “Star Wars got me interested in being a pilot. I wanted to fly for the military but I didn’t have what it took to get in—like the grades and the physical thing—so I got a degree in aviation to fly commercial jets.”

Music and ministry, however, began playing a role when Juan was a junior in college. Juan says, “I started playing guitar as a hobby and soon realised I could play for the youth group and lead worship. So between that, meeting Mark Hall (the youth pastor, and now lead singer of Casting Crowns) and making our first CD, we moved to Atlanta.”

Today, Casting Crown achieves as cohesive an ensemble sound as any act can but it is almost impossible to pigeonhole them. You can call them a worship band, a pop band or a rock band—which they are—but how do you really categorise them?

“When I play guitar, I’m into country and bluegrass,” Juan continues. “My wife, Melodee, is a classically-trained violinist. Hector, the other guitarist, grew up listening to Rage Against the Machine—some pretty hardcore stuff. And Andy, our drummer, likes funk and R&B. That’s just an idea of the broad range of influences the seven of us have. Apparently, God knew what He was doing when He threw us all together,” he quips.

Over the years, Casting Crowns’s music has woven into a resilient, richly-textured fabric, creating a sound that is as sophisticated as it is stimulating. But for the band, it is not about the music.

“We’re not trying to be innovators with our music. Our big deal is about the message— communicating with audiences, telling them the truth, and giving them songs that will build them up.”

While music takes a back seat to what they’re saying, a key to Casting Crowns’s maturity is its decision-making processes, and its grounding in the local church.

“When we make major decisions, we all come together and pray. And it’s not just the band who’s praying but everybody who knows us. We have a team here in the States who pray for us continually.

“We get a lot of offers for things but we know the most important thing is that we stay plugged into our church. For us, it’s a rarity to miss being at our local church. We have a big youth service on Wednesday nights. If we do a normal tour, we’ll maybe miss two weeks but for the most part, we’re touring Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then we get on the bus and head back home, ready to worship and hang out with teenagers at church. That’s our normal week.”

At church, Juan and his wife help with the student band ministry. “We have three bands comprising 40 teenagers. My deal with them is if I let you up on stage, I’ve got to know you’re living the life of the songs you sing.

You can’t get up there and sing ‘Jesus, you’re my everything’ when you don’t have this stuff happening in your life.

“Mark, the lead singer of Casting Crowns, is the youth pastor. Students come to him asking for all kinds of advice and he meets with them most afternoons.”

So for Casting Crowns, being active in their local church is the “key gig.” Working with young people is their “main event” and everything else is the “overflow.”

“I think our songs come out of the ministry we have [at the local church]. What we find out is that most of the things teenagers struggle with are the same as other people are struggling with. Mark will write a song and absolutely everybody identifies with it.

“One of our songs—‘East to west’—is about struggling with trying to figure out God’s forgiveness. It doesn’t matter how deep or far we go, we can’t run from His grasp. He is everywhere. When I forgive somebody, I still think about what they’ve done to me.

There’s still that residue of resentment and hurt there but God forgives completely. It’s something we can’t figure out but we can take encouragement from it and that is what everybody in Casting Crowns is called to.

“Everybody has a different calling and everybody has a different spiritual gift, so we write out of that gift.

“Some people write out of encouragement.

I’m not trying to tell everybody and every band this is how it is but I do encourage everybody to be plugged into a church and have a home base that you’re sharing your talent with.”