Grey Holiday: Forever Friends
10-23-2007
by Kevan Breitinger

I hit paydirt with my recent Grey Holiday interview as all four band members were on the conference call: Matt Minor (vocals, keys, guitar), Steven Bedingfield (guitar, electronics, programming), R.T. Bodet (bass), and Josh Fenoglio (drums).

CMCentral (Kevan Breitinger): I’m glad you made the time for the call, I appreciate it. I listened quite a bit to the new album, and noticed immediately the strong sense of focus and mission. Where is that coming from?

Matt: That’s something we were striving for, so I’m glad you saw that in the album. We feel a strong sense of purpose, and feel like we have something to say. We know what we want to say to kids and we feel like it’s important.

What is the main message that you want to get across to kids?

Our main goal with a lot of our music is encouragement. We feel like high school up to college age is probably our main audience. We’re all around 25 years old, so we just got out of that age group ourselves, and their situations are real fresh to us right now. But the first message of the new album has to do with finding your purpose and living in this world as a Christian and, secondly, maturing enough to slow down and finde God’s plans for you. So a lot of it is about purpose. We’re all just out of college and are trying to find out what we’re to do with our lives, but we’re also trying to figure out what God is calling us to, and trying to slow down enough to listen to Him.

That’s a timely message for every age.

Sure, yeah.

Matt, your lyrics are really one of the album’s strengths. Can I ask you how long you’ve been writing?

Well, a relatively short amount of time, actually. Before we recorded this album, I was very immature (laughing). But because I wrote with our producer Jason Ingram, I feel like I’ve grown a lot over the last couple of years. He’s really been a song-writing mentor for me. I feel like I’ve grown up a lot as a songwriter in the last year or so.

I’m sure that’s true. I did wonder myself, how does a new up-and-coming band hook up with giants like Jason Ingram and Mitch Dane. How did that come about?

(Laughing) That was the miracle. We met Mitch a couple of years ago when we were making an independent album, because we were really involved with Young Life when we were in high school and college, and Mitch Dane is a Young Life guy. We were introduced to Jason by our label. We were very fortunate the way it all came together.

Yeah, it’s a great match, isn’t it?

Totally, we love those guys a lot.

Anybody want to tell me the significance of the band name?

R.T.: When we were making that indie album we need a name, but we spent the entire recording process without a name. On the very last day we decided on Grey Holiday just as two words we liked together, with no meaning at first. But as we sat with it, the meaning has come to us. It really goes back to Jesus’ last day, how it was the worst of times, but also the best of times, a very gray holiday. And because we get to see our name written and hear it said, it reminds us that we were bought at a price every time we hear our name. It’s been pretty cool.

That’s very cool. I had no idea bout all that, but it’s very powerful.

Yeah, we like it a lot, it’s been great for us so far.

I read that R.T. and Josh had to learn their instruments in a hurry. Is there a story behind that?

Josh: Basically, Matt and Steven were playing some coffee shops and decided they wanted to make a full band. We’re all best friends from elementary school and middle school. They were in Austin, and we were in College Station, in different colleges, but we had been driving back and forth just to hang out as friends. So they decided that instead of getting good musicians, they wanted us (laughing).

Well, that is a good friend, but it seems like a choice that paid off for them because you’d never know from the album that you guys were new players.

(Laughing) Well, it didn’t pay off immediately, it took a while. We were not very good at first.

(Laughing) But they were patient with you?

Yes, they were.

It’s a great story, the four of you making it together. Did y’all come up together in church too?

We didn’t all attend the same church, but we were all best friends in school. Our church basically at that time was Young Life; that really became the Body of Christ to us. We all found Christ through Young Life and became good friends as well.

Wow, that’s a great plug for a very cool program. Is there anything else that you wanted to make sure to get across?

Yes. Steven is very good-looking.

(Laughing) Yeah, I could tell that. But he seems like the dark, silent type.

Yeah, he is, our quiet guitar player.

Well, thanks, guys, for talking with me.

Thank you.