Hello everyone! This is Casey here, and I figured I would share a little about how our band came to be. Josh and I started playing for the youth group. We wanted to start a full band, but found it hard to find other people with musical gifts and a passion for Christ. We both were self taught guitarists. I had been playing for about five years at the time, and Josh was fairly new at it.
In the fall of 2009, I got a call from a friend of mine, Nathan Hendricks. He was a drummer that previously played in a local Christian band. He wanted to start something up, so I got Josh on the phone explaining that we had a drummer. Nathan called up a friend of his, Cortney Howell, to play bass for us. Thus, Cross Covenant was born. However, we were completely unaware of what we were getting in to. All the pieces were in place, and we had three weeks to prepare for a fifth quarter that Hemingway First Baptist, the church Josh and I attend, had planned.
With God’s help we managed to pull off the fifth quarter. At the time, Cortney had just started learning how to play bass. We had to get someone to fill in for Cortney at bass, because he wasn’t quite ready. Nathan had to ride across a couple states that day to get a new drum set that he ordered, because the only descent drum kit he had at the time was electric. When he got back, we had enough time to get set up, but no time to do a run through of our set. We couldn’t get the monitors to work, so we couldn’t hear what we were doing that well. It was rocky, but God was with us.
After a couple of months, Nathan had to drop out of the band. At the time, we were preparing for a youth rally. We had to get the drummer from the other band playing at the rally to fill in. After the rally was over we started our search for another drummer. Even without a drummer, we still had practice. We kept the faith that God would provide us with a drummer and he did.
In February of 2010, Christian Love joined the band after hearing about us and giving Josh a call. He’s an outstanding drummer and fell right into the group perfectly. When we had no idea where to look, God came through. We’ve all been playing together since and have become like family.
Recently, we’ve added a new member to the family. Tyler Perry is now aboard as an additional guitarist. He came to youth group and we realized his potential, so we decided to pull him in. He hasn’t played a gig with us yet, but he is very enthusiastic. I know that he will be a good asset to the band. Josh's wife, Ashley, helps out as much as she can, and sings on one our songs. We have a very talented group of individuals, and God has blessed us more than we could have asked for.
That’s pretty much the basic story of how we got started. It’s been a good learning experience, and we definitely had some growing pains along the way. Most importantly, we’ve built good friendships with each other and have grown closer to Christ. It hasn’t always been a smooth road, but iron is forged in the fire.
