Passionate Hearts
04-14-2008
by Kevan Breitinger
It’s immediately clear when talking with Re:Zound’s Jason Anderson where his passion lies; it’s not first with the band’s hard-rocking music. The call of God means even more to the Arizona-based rockers.
Re:Zound (Jason Anderson): Hi, this is Jason Anderson from Re:Zound.
CMCentral (Kevan Breitinger): Hey Jason, how you doing today? I wanted to start off by thanking you for your devotionals. The first one went up today.
Yeah, I was thrilled to do that, because writing those is something I like to do.
Yeah, I could tell, you made it very fun. So you guys have really taken an interesting path to your present situation. I know your band has been around for quite a while, but what lead you to sign finally with Vertical Shift Records?
That’s our home church’s record label.
Oh, I didn’t realize that.
So it’s a very easy fit. We’ve been ministering at this church for ten years. Having a label that distributes through EMI is a big step for us, because it will make our platform bigger, help us to reach more people.
Though it’s hard to imagine you getting out any further than you have (laughing).
(Laughing) Yes, God’s really blessed us. But we’re trying hard to stay in the position God has assigned us, which helps us to find more favor and open roads to do His work. He’s placed us in the position of spreading the gospel, in evangelism. There’s two phases to Re:Zound. One, where we lead worship, which we love to do. And there’s the touring part of Re:Zound which is presenting the gospel in an environment where the music is drawing people together.
Well, I know you found great favor with MTV, when “Angel” hit the charts back in 2001.
“Angel” was a very independent release. In fact, our band name at the time was Switch. But there was another band from the 70s that released a record around that time, and we received one of those cease-and-desist letters.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, we found ourselves making a choice then about who are we, an identity choice, because we were getting some 
calls from secular labels interested in us. But they didn’t want to do the Christian thing. So we had to make a solid decision about who we were gonna be.
It was around that time that a missionary (Dick Bernal) visited our church, and asked us if we would be interested in doing the music for an outreach he was doing in India. I didn’t know anything about that sort of thing, but after praying we decided to go. So we raised up our own money and went, but being there, being a part of that… I found a pool of desire in my heart that had never been stirred before suddenly was aroused. And we knew from that point on, this is what we do. So that has become our focus: we raise some money, go overseas, and put on a rock crusade, and tell people about the Lord. We like doing tours in America too, but we are very drawn toward that work overseas.
Yes, I know our readers would love to hear about your work in Viet Nam; that’s an amazing story. How did you ever get permission to go into that country to do that kind of work?
It was really a miracle of the Lord that came about through our missionary contact, Benjamin Komanapalli. He asked me about India over lunch one day and I said I really have it on my heart to do three cities, but not India. All I know is it will be three different countries. He said the Lord had really been speaking to him about Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. So we decided to do that tour, which he worked out in about 8 months.
He has tremendous favor with the Lord. He liked the rock crusade idea because he noticed in India that the typical crusades were only reaching audiences over 40. He wanted to do something for the young people who speak English and are highly educated. He found the premiere music school in Phnom Penh that wanted to do a culture awareness week, and so they brought us out, an American music band, and Benjamin shared with them that part of our culture is our faith. So that allowed us to share our music after we sent our lyrics to be scrutinized first. We weren’t allowed to talk about God or Jesus in between the songs, but they let us play for two nights.
The first night we just worshipped before a crowd of 10,000, and we got to a part of the song that said ‘every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Jesus as Lord.’ I asked the people to sing along with me, and we were amazed. They weren’t really singing, they were yelling over and over, Jesus is Lord. It was so moving to see their passion but it also showed us how oppressed they were. There are underground churches in Viet Nam and some of those kids came forward and said it was the first time they had ever publicly worshipped.
The next night I really felt the Lord put it on my heart to move out. After all (laughing) we’re in Viet Nam. It’s a long flight, we’ve come all the way here... I should present the gospel. So I spent about 15 minutes talking about the Lord and what He brought. And I asked them at the end of it, how many of you received the Lord tonight? Many were cheering and raising their hands to heaven, and it was televised on their local TV. It was staggering to see, really awesome. The government stopped the concert right after the gospel was presented, shut us down. The Lord and I went round and round about that that night but I believe we made the right decision.
Absolutely, that’s a phenomenal story.
It was all the Lord, because we were way over our heads. I’ve given a lot of altar calls because that’s something we’re very committed to, but this one was way out of the park for us.
I read about your story in preparing to speak with you, and it was very clear to me that the Lord has an amazing path set for you. I mean past just selling albums or being noticed by the MTV crowd, which you were in a big way.
I totally believe that David was empowered to do his work by the anointing of the Lord, and when that happens the Lord will give you favor and take you way beyond what you might be able to hope or dream on your own. So I’m sticking to that, and the band is excited about continuing on in that.
I spent time with the new album this weekend, and loved the big classic rock feel. But another thing that’s fresh about your sound is the detuned guitars.
We did do a lot of detuning on this album, even between songs. There’s a lot of strange detuning to add more color to the music.
Yeah, there is some nice flavoring here. I noticed on “35 Weeks” even a few jazz moments which I really enjoyed.
That’s funny you bring that track up, it’s one of my favorites.
It was mine as well. I was interested too in the altar call woven into the last track.
Yeah, I went through a slew of preachers online, trying to find the one that really moved me. I wanted this CD to be like a tract, because you can get music into countries that won’t let the Bible in. So someone in Viet Nam could actually receive the Lord after listening to that track. But that message from Kenneth Copeland had everything I wanted to say.
What would you like to see the album do?
I’d like to see the album make our platform bigger, so that when we present the gospel, there are more people to present it to. And that is honestly the only reason we’re doing all this. We’re fine without all the success on the radio and all that, but if we can reach more people for the Lord, then I’m into that.
I think it will have that power overseas. It’s so overtly Christian that the MTV people aren’t going to listen anymore.
No (laughing), they won’t like us anymore.
But that’s OK, right? I really enjoyed talking with you, Jason, and thanks for your teacher’s heart. I know your devotionals are going to speak to our readers also.
Praise God for that, it was a neat thing for me. Thanks, Kevan, God bless you.
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