Interview with Bread of Stone [Gourmet Music Report #41]

One of the up-and-coming bands on the Christian rock front is Bread of Stone, having toured with The Newsboys, Building 429, Petra, and Stellar Kart (among others). Earlier this year, I talked with founding members of Bread of Stone and brothers Ben and Bill Kristijanto, who originally hail from Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. Here's part of our conversation:

DT: When did you sense God was leading you into full-time music ministry?
BOS: The calling started about 8 years ago. Our dad said to us "I feel like the Lord wants you guys to start a music ministry." At that time neither one of us played, sang or was involved in any sort of music - so it caught us by surprise. We're like, "Dad you better be right on this one because that's not our forte." So we just started taking lessons, and about 4 years ago we started the band. The Lord began to open doors to us to be able to minister.

DT: Your latest project is called "Letting Go." Do you have a theme for that album?
BOS: When we started working on the project with the songs and stuff we didn't know what it was going to be titled. The more we were working into it, what kept sticking to our hearts was the theme of surrender. One of our songs is called "Letting Go" - so we knew that was going to be the album title. Basically the album all goes around the theme of being able to surrender to God.

DT: Are you working on any new material for 2010?
BOS: Yeah, actually we have been working on new materials. We've got some new songs, but we don't know yet when we'll be working on a full length project. We are working on new songs and just trying to get into the studio and doing more demos and writing more new materials. [laughing] If you want to hear the songs you'll have to come out and see us.

DT: Tell us about the story behind your most downloaded song, "I Want"?
BOS: "I Want" was written by a friend of mine. When I heard him working on it, I told him that it was a great song. We go through living life and sometimes we're not exactly sure if we're feeling the Lord here. There's a desire of our heart just wanting to be with Him. We might be saying, "Lord, something's going on here, I just want to be close to you right now. I just want to be with you." That's kind of the desire that I want. That song has the feeling of wanting to be intimate with the Lord.

Starting today (12/15/09), UTR is releasing a special podcast-only episode with Bread of Stone on a mid-week edition of "Under The Radar".  This is available for free at the UTR website of by looking up "Under The Radar" in the iTunes Store.