Kim: Hi Todd. How are you doing today?

Todd: I'm good. It's a little warm, but it is awesome to be out here.

Kim: This Fragile Breath is doing great ... and it's off of your debut CD no less. The song is just awesome.

Todd: Thank you. It's really unexpected for us. I cut this album independent and wasn't even planning on being in this industry at all. I was a worship leader and traveling, doing all kinds of different things. God just opened this door and I really felt like to be obedient to Him fully I had to go through it. This Fragile Breath was the last song added to the record, six months after the fact. Right at the last minute everybody said, you know, we're gonna save Grace for the second release and we're going to release This Fragile Breath to kind of get us in the door a little bit so that Grace can have a fair shot. And now, here it is, having the success that it's having and God's using it. It's just an amazing thing. It's a real treat and we can't take the credit for it at all. God has to get all of the glory. It's just an honor to be a part of it.

Kim: I am really looking forward to hearing you perform it live. What do you have coming up in the near future?

Todd: We're actually on the road with NewSong all year. We're doing Summer Jam with them right now. We're going to do the NewSong Fall Tour and then we'll actually be on Winter Jam when that takes off in a few months. We're all part of our home churches in Memphis. We're part of our worship teams there. We lead a Bible study for young adults and college students in Memphis on Tuesday nights. We'll be doing that as much as we can. We've been playing some solo shots here and there. Basically, whatever door God opens, that's where we're going.

Kim: Well, I know you're getting ready to take the stage. Anything you'd like to say in closing?

Todd: We're just excited to be a part of this. To see the different aspects of the media, whether it's radio or web or print ... just to be a part of this and to see how God is using all of those people is really an honor. We just want to make sure that we deflect as much glory as we can to Him because we don't deserve any credit for what's going on in our lives right now. We're going to go on stage and try to do that again today.

The speaker wasn't quite finished so we got a few extra minutes with Todd.

Todd: You know, I totally grew up on Christian rock. I'm one of those kids, I was saved when I was five and grew up in the church. So as soon as Christian rock came around I just fell in love with it. That's why it was such an honor to start working with Ardent because the front man for Ardent, and our guy, is Dana Key. And so the first time they said hey, we're going to be working with Dana Key on something I was like, Dana Key? How do you know him? "He goes to our church. He comes to hear you play all of the time." I'm like "oh my gosh!" (laughs) So we went out to lunch one time and started getting to know each other and now he's a real mentor for me. I totally grew up on this stuff. Obviously in the beginning there was Petra and that's about all there was. Then there was Stryper and Whiteheart. The Freedom album was an amazing record. I grew up with that, then of course, there was the pop stuff, like Michael W. Smith. I went around in my torn up jeans and my little vest and stuff. I loved it. It's an honor to be a part of it now. It's kind of a weird thing. We were really the first generation that got to grow up on Christian rock music and then turn around and play it. Some of these young kids, they grew up on Third Day. I'm like, I'm 32, I'm not one of the kids. I actually grew up on that first generation. I had the first Petra album.

Kim: Music is so universal that you can have people in their 30's and 40's still reaching the kids with God's music because He's giving them the message and the means to do it.

Todd: One thing we're finding out is that for so long in the churches they said, "well young people like rock music. Older people like traditional hymns". What we're finding out is that if people that grew up away from Christ, they can be 55 years old and they grew up on the Rolling Stones. There's this whole generation of people in Memphis, an older group, that doesn't relate to the music that's in most of the churches. They started doing a service with rock music that was geared to reach the younger crowd and they reached this whole crowd of lost adults. You know, you just walk in there, and there's this older generation with gray hair and pony tails and they'll just walk up to you and go "man, I love this! This is what I grew up on. When I came to church I thought I was going to have to sacrifice the music that I love for God because I didn't see it anywhere. Now, all of a sudden here you are, playing the music that I love and it's glorifying God". We're finding that God has a plan to reach everybody and we don't need to put God in a box in any kind of way. We just play whatever we can to reach whoever we can. If we're going to go play at a nursing home, we're probably going to play hymns on a piano. But if we get to play somewhere else we're going to try to reach them with whatever we can.

Kim: I know the apostle Paul said that you have to try to be all things to all people and what better way to do it than through music?

Todd: Right. Music is such an amazing media. It's so diverse that we can use so many different things to reach people. We try to do that with a little jazz, a little blues, a little rock... you know, whatever it is. (laughs) I'm not much of a country one, but we'll try to use everything else. Well, we're getting ready to go on stage for real now, so I appreciate ya'll.

Kim: Thanks again Todd.