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Jonah33 – Biography of Former Christian Rock Band Jonah33

By , About.com Guide

Jonah33

Jonah33

Courtesy of: Ardent Records

Meet Christian Rock Band Jonah33 :

Jonah33 was ...
  • Vince Lichlyter - lead vocals, guitar
  • Josh Dougan - drums, percussion, background vox
  • Jason Rooney - lead guitar, background vox
  • Cory Riley - bass, background vox

Jonah33 Bio:

(courtesy of Ardent Records)

This band is real. This band's been around the block a few times. This band scrapes and bleeds and sweats for its vision-a vision that's been forged and tempered in the gritty fire of real-life trials. This band screams what it believes and believes what it screams. This band from Arkansas couldn't care less about Madison Avenue image-makers and the power they wield with the cash they throw around.

This band is Jonah33. (And it's headed for your neck of the woods.)

Vince Lichlyter, leader of Jonah33, has four passions in life-his music, his wife, his son and his hunger to share the gospel of Jesus. He wants to reach people who are running blind in the dark world he once inhabited on the edge of suicide and murder.

"I grew up in the midst of the whole grunge explosion," he says. "My parents and I went our separate ways when I was 17." Though he was "into drugs, violence and sex" and leading "a trash of a life," Lichlyter has a coming-home story.

"Toward the end, I was living with a crank dealer, and after a bad deal, we got a call saying everybody in the house was gonna get killed," he recalls. "So the dealer split…but I stayed in the house for two weeks. By this point I already ran off all my friends and my parents, and I was sitting in this house, completely wasted and freaked out, and contemplating suicide. Finally I called my dad, and we talked about it. He paid for a round-trip plane ticket and let me come home to live with them."
But there's a twist in the tale: Home for Lichlyter's parents was now Wickes, Arkansas (pop. 500). "The culture shock was hard enough without the first few days I spent detoxing," he notes. "But the plane ticket my dad got had an open-ended return, so I could go back to Seattle whenever I wanted."

That would never come to pass. Once a local youth pastor took Lichlyter to lunch and told him about Jesus, the future rock singer wasn't going anywhere.

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