For King & Country returns to Nashville for a Christmas concert with 'unity and hope'

Ten years ago, young Christian music duo For King & Country crammed into a Franklin rehearsal space with hopes of pulling off a new show in time for the holidays.

The band released a debut LP, "Crave," earlier that year and hungered for the road. They traveled in a 15-passenger Ford van, rolling hundreds of miles between shows to play for a few hundred people each night.

But during rehearsals inside the Factory at Franklin, the brothers faced one problem: They didn't know enough Christmas music ... yet.

"We had no Christmas album, no Christmas EP ... maybe a Christmas single?" said Joel Smallbone, one-half of the Australian-born, Nashville-based group that also features his younger brother, Luke Smallbone. He added, "We just showed up and rag-tagged it"

Safe to say , things changed a little since For King & Country first set sights on a holiday tour. The band now brings its annual festive spectacle to some of the largest indoor venues in North America — a fast-growing holiday tradition for families keen to make Christmas memories with a soundtrack provided by the Smallbones' high-flying tour.

And for the third consecutive year, For King & Country brings its "A Drummer Boy Christmas" tour to the Grand Ole Opry House. The band closes the holiday tour with two sold-out nights Sunday and Monday inside the Opryland hall. Those who didn't snag an in-person ticket can purchase a livestream pass to Sunday's show via mandolin.com.

"For us, it represents the finality of the year," said Luke Smallbone. "[The 19th] will be the last show we do for the year, in front of people that you love. The town that you love. Playing at one of the most-renowned venues in the world. I think it is becoming a little bit of a tradition. I hope we can make it a tradition. But what a gift to be given the opportunity for it to become a tradition."

'Pouring fuel on that fire'

Today, the band tours with moving set pieces, a floor-to-ceiling oval screen and a choreographed band that weaves between canonical Christmas tunes like "Angels We Have Heard on High" to newfound favorites like For King & Country original "Heavenly Hosts."

Audiences uniting for a night of time-tested music feels important, said Joel Smallbone — in-part because political and social differences between family members can make holidays tumultuous.

"You want to sing about peace and joy and love and redemption , but a lot of times — particularly the last few years — people coming together, there's a lot of intensity," Joel Smallbone said. "We want to offer a celebration of unity and hope ... it's really quite magical."

And while the crew may be larger and production appears more polished than in 2012, Joel Smallbone said the brothers laid a foundation for today's "A Drummer Boy Christmas" — donning Colonial-influenced garb and leaning into show-stopping percussion arrangements — during that two-day retreat inside the Factory.

It was also the first time they worked on a rendition of "Little Drummer Boy," which anchors today's show. The holiday tune arguably introduced the band to a new audience after a breakout performance on "CMA Country Christmas" in 2019.

"We could argue [the first Christmas tour] really was the most defining live tour that we ever did," Joel Smallbone said. "It seems apt and just that 10 years later we would still be pouring fuel on that fire."

More on tour tour

Although billed as a holiday show, For King & Country won't cut corners on a decade of Christian music hits that helped build the brothers' Grammy Award-winning career.

After all, that wouldn't be fair to show-goers who discovered the band via "God Only Knows," "Together," "Burn The Ships" or 2022 single "Unsung Heroes," among others.

"There's nothing worse than going to an artists' show [because] you fell in love with X, Y and Z song — and you're interested in the Christmas songs because of the ones you original fell in love with — but they don't play the ones you fell in love with," Luke Smallbone said. "We take it a little bit from the perspective of: Play the songs that hopefully people know you by that helped introduce them to what is happening."

As for closing out a holiday tour with two sold-out hometown concerts? Not bad for a pair of musicians who a decade ago felt apprehensive about performing Christmas music.

"one of the first times it was proposed we do a Christmas tour every year, I remember thinking to myself, 'Man, I don't wanna become the band that does a Christmas tour every year" Luke Smallbone said, laughing. "We did the Christmas tour and we enjoyed it so much that it was like, 'Oh, I guess we were missing out on something.'"

Find more information on For King & Country's "A Drummer Boy Christmas" in Nashville at opry.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: For King & Country return to Nashville for two nights of 'unity and hope'