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FamilyChristian.com: Where did you get the name downhere?

Marc: The name comes from the title of a song that I wrote about four years ago. Jay and I had a friend [who] died in an accident. After the memorial service I sat down at a piano and wrote "Down Here." The song expressed my frustrations with the whole situation…not being able to understand why a guy like that would be taken away. Later on, when Jay and I were in dire need of a band name after we finished our independent release, we decided to go with downhere because it had a lot of implications for us. Living downhere in light of up there.

Jason: We wanted to have a name that would hold us accountable to our mission. We want to make God's priorities our priorities.

Jeremy: We want to challenge people to think through the choices that they're making down here and to make them in light of God's priorities. The choices we make will have eternal consequences.

Jason: When we picked the name downhere, we wanted a name that would remind us to be real with people. We'd seen bands as kids that would go hide after the show. You never get to put a personality to the music. We wanted to dispel that and take ourselves off the stage.

The name has carried implications further than that, like when we're on the road. When Jesus came down here to earth, how was his ministry played out? He came as a servant. He came to meet the needs of the people that He was ministering to. He'd meet their physical need first before He met their spiritual need. So we want to be servants that way. Our name is an accountability.

FamilyChristian.com: So let's get to know the guys of downhere. Tell me about Jeremy.

Jason: Jeremy, he's a Mennonite. He was raised as an evangelical conservative Mennonite. He comes from way up north. He's got a really cool family. Artistically, he's rock solid. That's interesting because that kind of carries over into his personality. He's kind of like a train.

Glenn: He looks like a train too. [everyone laughs]

Marc: He has a real passion for leadership.

Glenn: Jeremy's also a really positive guy. If you're ever down about anything, you can talk to Jeremy. He's always on the positive side of pretty much everything. He takes everything with less than a grain of salt. Nothing seems to bother him.

Jason: He makes sure that we're keeping really short accounts with each other. It's like, "Okay, let's stop. Let's get this out, guys" if there's anything going on-which is very seldom actually. That's Jeremy in a nutshell.

FamilyChristian.com: Let's move on to Jason.

Glenn: I met Jason about a year ago. We've hooked up as really good friends right away. He's passionate about what he does and his writing.

Jeremy: He's extremely creative. He's the production force behind us. He did a lot of the production on this album…just a fountain of creative ideas. He hears stuff in his head that you go, "Man, how is that going to sound good?" and then you play it and it sounds cool.

Living above reproach is something that's very important to Jay. You can see that in his own life and he challenges us, too, as a group, to make sure that everything we do, whether it's applying for visas or just the simplest things, that every choice we make is above reproach.

Marc: He's very idealistic in the best sense of the word. He doesn't shy away from doing things just because it's the harder way to do it [if] it's the way we should do it.

FamilyChristian.com: Tell me about Glenn.

Jason: Glenn's a married guy, like myself. He's got an awesome sense of humor that totally cracks me up all the time. I think he adds a lot of life to the band. He's just a little on the edge as far as insanity sometimes. One thing that's really cool is that he's willing to go out on a limb. We've seen that practically recently when we moved from Ontario to Franklin, Tennessee. He and his wife took a paycut to join this band. He's obedient to God's call in his life.

Jeremy: Our first gig with Glenn was GMA [an industry trade event in April] and we had just a couple days to practice before that. We sent him a CD and he showed up in Franklin with all the songs typed out, chorded out, everything. He was ready to go from square one. That reflects in his whole life.

Marc: And musically, he brings a new flavor that Jay and I don't have naturally. He's got kind of this jazzy, funky ability to his playing, which is really cool. It's something that I think will really fit into our music.

FamilyChristian.com: Let's talk about Marc.

Glenn: Marc's an interesting character. I want to start because I don't know him as well as the other guys. For people who don't know him, they get confused because he's a difficult man to read. In normal life, he's laid back and sort of introverted but once he's on stage, he's an animal. It's really very cool.

Jason: Marc and I, we've known each other for six years. He was in my wedding party and we're best friends. He's got amazing musical abilities, vocal abilities, creative abilities, technical abilities and he looks good on stage. He challenges us theologically because he really knows his Bible well. He takes the lyrics of our songs seriously to make sure that they portray what we're trying to say.

Jeremy: Little known fact about Marc that people don't know. He played high school football and baseball and basketball. He's a jock as well.

Marc: I used to be a jock. Now I'm just a pansy lead singer. [Laughs].

Jeremy: One of Marc's passions is worship. One thing that is important to us as a band-partly because Marc is spearheading it-is that we help educate people in terms of what worship actually is. From our viewpoint and from what we believe is the biblical viewpoint, worship isn't 20 minutes of singing together in church every Sunday and Wednesday night. Worship is a lifestyle.

downhere by downhere

FamilyChristian.com: Just from scanning song titles like "Calmer of the Storm," "Protest to Praise" and "Great Are You," one can see that your debut is full of hope in the midst of the struggles of life. What inspired the song "Breathing In"?

Jason: I was in Ontario when Marc wrote the song "Down Here." That same weekend [that Marc's friend died], another friend of mine died and the two knew each other. [They were] from the same school. So those two [deaths] together really shook up this whole eternity thing, [we spent a lot of time] reading passages in the Bible about what heaven is like. There's not a whole lot of them. It's interesting that the Bible actually talks about hell more than it talks about heaven. But the times that it does talk about heaven, it's kind of in these loose terms. I just thought, "You know, I'm really looking forward to whatever this poetry is about." I think probably the key line in the song is "As I wander the streets of gold and talk to all the friends I've known/ We'll go adore the Master King and then, only then, I'll be breathing in." It's like life isn't really life. I mean, life is important here on earth, don't get me wrong, this time is pivotal obviously. But for me, being free from the conflicts we have in [this] life, that will truly be life, that will be breathing in.

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