Starting strong: For King & Country kick off Relate Tour in Toledo

Oct. 3—Joel and Luke Smallbone hit the drive-in theater circuit last year, an unanticipated pivot prompted by unprecedented circumstances in the music industry.

To call these socially distanced concerts a "necessary evil" would be too strong, said Luke Smallbone, thinking back on them in a recent phone call as he and his brother prepare to resume a tour schedule full of traditional indoor venues.

But they left something to be desired.

"When you're at a concert, indoors, you can see what a song means to someone based on how they sing, based on their face, based on their enjoyment, that kid dancing in the aisle," Smallbone said. "That obviously didn't take place during the drive-in."

Suffice it to say the brothers are looking forward to playing Toledo's Huntington Center on Thursday. Their in-town concert kicks off For King & Country's Relate Tour, which will ferry them across the country through mid-November. They're planning setlists packed with fan-favorite hits and some new music, plus the recently released single, "Relate," which Smallbone said is expected to thematically anchor a new album anticipated next year.

To start it all — or restart it all, really — in northwest Ohio is in part some logistical luck for Toledoans, Smallbone said. But he also sees Toledo as "a great place to start."

IF YOU GO

What: For King & Country

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: 500 Jefferson Ave., Toledo

Admission: Tickets are $20 to $120.

Information: huntingtoncentertoledo.com

"Of all of the states that we've played over the last several years, we've probably played Ohio more than any," he said. "So we're always grateful to come back to see old friends."

Luke and Joel Smallbone have been For King & Country, as they style the name of their two-man act, since 2009. But they've been enmeshed in faith and music since long before their debut album. They were born in Australia, where their family for a time attended Hillsong Church, before their father relocated the family to Nashville in 1991.

He was a concert promoter coming off a tour that hadn't panned out, and he was angling for a fresh start with a job offer in Music City. But in the meantime, the family had little.

"It was the church that furnished our first home," Smallbone said. "They were the people who would help us with our utility bills ... they were the hands and feet that loved on us."

Their older sister, who's known as Rebecca St. James, went on to break into the music industry, and her younger brothers spent formative teenage years traveling with her. When Luke was 19 and Joel was 21, they formed a band of their own and laid the foundations of For King & Country.

As for For King & Country, they've been building a following of their own since a debut album, Crave, in 2012, which attracted the attention of the Gospel Music Association. It awarded them the Dove Award for new artist of the year, and gave them nods with six nominations.

By their second album, Run Wild. Live Free. Love Strong in 2014, they won a Grammy Award for best contemporary Christian music album, plus another that year for best contemporary Christian music performance or song. And likewise for their third, Burn The Ships in 2018, which netted the brothers another two Grammy wins in the same categories.

Today they're known for genre chart-toppers like "God Only Knows," on which Dolly Parton joined them for a remix in 2019. And even those who aren't plugged into Christian pop may know their popular rendition of a holiday classic, "Little Drummer Boy," which Smallbone said they play for fans year-round whenever they perform live.

They were mid-tour in Canada at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, 2020. That, of course, abruptly shut down the tour — the sort of moment of reflection for those whose livelihoods are tied up in the music industry, Smallbone said, where things like faith "get serious" and when "we have to practice the things that we say, practice the things that we preach."

In hindsight, Smallbone, who was speaking after a recent vocal chord surgery that he described in similar terms, said he saw the shutdown as a catalyst for creativity.

"I think it was an opportunity for us once again to look at things a little bit differently, and to have an opportunity to do things a little bit differently," he said. "Sometimes I think we get caught in ruts in the music industry. You have that single that comes out, and then you tour that for a little bit. Then you have an album that comes out. You fall into these patterns.

"I think the pandemic forced us to innovate a little bit."

There was the drive-in tour, which he said was especially gratifying in the feedback they heard from immune-compromised fans who described their show as a rare opportunity to safely get out and enjoy themselves. There was a deluxe release of Burn the Ships, and a concert film.

And they've been working on new music, he said, with plans for the release of a new album tentatively in the spring. He said they plan to play some of this new and not-yet-released music on the tour: "We're probably going to play two or three new songs that nobody has heard before," he said.

Just last week they released a single, "For God Is With Us," and, in August, they released "Relate."

"Relate" lends itself to the name of their upcoming fall tour, and Smallbone said it's a thematically important one for their upcoming album.

"'Relate' was a song that came from a place of asking the question: Can you relate to someone even if you haven't experienced the exact same things that that person has walked through? What does it look like to have compassion for another? What does it look like to relate to another?" he said. "Those are kind of the themes of the album."

"There's a reason it was the first one out of the gate," he continued. "It's the one that kind of tipped our hand to what the rest of the project is saying."

"Relate" includes lyrics that are almost secular at surface, a characteristic that's not typical of their entire body of work, but that does in some ways reflect an industry that's increasingly seeing the lines blurred between traditional genres like pop, country, or Christian.

Smallbone said they aren't thinking about genres, boxes, or charts when they write.

"Our goal is to just try and write songs that hit people where they are," he said. "Whether or not you're a Christian or you're not a Christian, we're still humans. We're still going through the journey of life. ... I think we're trying to write a song that communicates hope to all people."