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The Lifestyle Mixed With Kids - Part 3 - submitted Thursday, May 04, 2006

...Continued from A Relationship With A Real And Living God.

Kim – Does the whole family go out with you guys when you’re on the road?

Jason – Families are allowed to go out with us anytime on the road. No other group does that. It’s usually the men go and “I’ll see you later”. What used to happen in the group, a long time ago, is that the guys would travel all of the time and then they would set aside one or two trips a year where the families could come along. We’ve changed and expanded that. The families can come anytime they want. They’re welcome to get on the bus and come with us. (laughs) They don’t! Not all of the time anyway. Like my wife – she actually likes being at home. We have a 19 month old little girl and she likes being at home, taking care of the baby and being a mom. That’s fine. In fact, they just went on two trips with us and that was the first time that my daughter has traveled with us.

Kim – How did she do?

Jason – Actually she did great. I was blown away. I thought she would be a lot worse than what she was.

Ian – We don’t feel like you can be a good Christian witness and a good Christian father if you exclude your families from your lives. If you only see them three days a week, what kind of spiritual guidance are you giving them? What kind of spiritual leader are you?

Shannon – This lifestyle can tear families apart and it has. I know at least a couple of guys in the group have said at least once, “Man, I wish I had of had a lot more time with my dad.” Two or three of us have had parents that traveled a lot or did similar types of things and we don’t want to do that with our kids. At the same time, I’m not going to lie, we love an occasional weekend trip with just the guys. It’s a lot of fun. A guys week out.

Kim – No watching what you eat.

Jason – And video games galore! We’re video-gameaholics.

Ian – We’ve got four Xboxes on the bus.

Jason – We’re disgusting. In fact, Ian and I carry game systems with us wherever we go now. We’ve got the new hand-held game things. We’re never without a system.

Ian – You can put in there PSP because we’d like to look cool among our peers. (laughs)

Jason – Exactly! Seriously though, I guess another thing that is close to our hearts is World Vision. We’ve partnered up with them and we absolutely believe in what they do. Trying to change the world, one kid at a time is just …

Shannon – Over the past year we’ve seen about 700 or 800 kids sponsored through our ministry, which is really cool. We don’t play large crowds most of the time because we’re mostly in churches, so our average crowd is usually maybe 500 people. But we share the need and we’re blessed with people responding. We really believe in it and we all sponsor kids. It’s just a real cool thing. In fact, I just got an email from one of the representatives and they want to find out where all of our kids live because they’re making plans to take us to a spot where we can actually meet the kids that we’ve sponsored and get some video of us with the kids.

Ian – As long as we’re talking about side ministries, let’s hook our wives up for a second. They’ve been involved in a jewelry ministry that has been supporting an orphanage in Nicaragua for the last couple of years. They’ve sent down $10,000, right along the lines of World Vision. They hand make the jewelry. I tell you that to say that our wives are as much a part of this ministry as we are. I’d like to give them some encouragement.

Shannon - But even if they didn’t do that, anybody that has spent any time in ministry knows that if you’re wife isn’t in support of your ministry, then you just can’t do it. It’s a different lifestyle and a different calling. I don’t consider it a burden at all though. I consider it a privilege. I think we all feel that way and I think our wives do too. But at the same time, it’s not a “normal” lifestyle. It takes a special wife to be able to be supportive of it. And special kids too. My kids are 14 and 12 and they’re very supportive of it. My son goes along all of the time – he’s our roadie. He’s a hard worker.

Kim – Getting the whole family involved makes a big difference. My husband is my photographer and we rotate the kids as gophers! The kids love it and the upside is that they get to see that the artists are real people who don’t want to be on pedestals.

Shannon – Oh yeah, I’m normal. I get to leave here and go mow my yard! But you’ve got to be somewhere, right?

A Relationship With A Real And Living God - Part 2 - submitted Thursday, May 04, 2006

...Continued from More Than Just Showing Up To Sing

Shannon – Then Armond came to hear Ian sing and he said, “Man, you could listen to a thousand singers and you wouldn’t hear a better one so don’t waste your time looking any further.” So we hired him pretty much on the spot. But still, there was this sense of how do we re-introduce this group. It’s now four young guys. People don’t look at our picture and immediately say, “That’s the Imperials” because there’s not a face that they recognize. So we’re trying to build that back. The Imperials have been ministering in the local churches for about 10 or 12 years almost exclusively. One of the things that we’ve found out as we’ve tried to re-introduce the group is that people are saying, “Well, the last thing I remember about the Imperials is that they were filling up Civic Centers and Auditoriums, not churches. Why are they in churches? What is their ministry?” I’m really glad to get that question because we have a ministry. All four of us are ordained or licensed ministers. The ministry is very close to our heart. Do we want to be back in Auditoriums or Civic Centers? Absolutely. But it’s because we want the ministry of this group to be heard by a lot more than a few people. We want it to be heard by the world. I think our ministry really is two or three things. Number one – God has given us a message to bring courage and strength to Christians. I think if you look over the history of the Imperials for 40 years and 42 albums, my life would be so much poorer spiritually without the history of the Imperials music. It’s been a daily encouragement and we want to continue that trend of just providing daily strength and encouragement for Christians with great Christian music. Of course, in a live concert, that happens as well. The other thing that we’re trying to do (and I think that we really stumbled into this because God made this each of our personal mission statements), is to let people know that Christianity is not about religion. It’s not about legalistic kind of traditions and things that people do just because they think that is what Christians do. We want to let people know that it is a relationship with a real and living God through His Son, Jesus Christ. That’s really all it is. That’s our passion. That’s our heartbeat. That works whether you’re in a church of 50 – 80 year olds who have been going there all of their life and might have been lulled into thinking this is just what I do and they need a refreshing in their relationship or with people who never even really had a relationship. We want to minister to them all the way to the young person who’s turned off with the “church thing”. We want to say to them, “It’s not about the “church thing”. It’s about a relationship with Jesus Christ.” That relationship will only develop and grow in the context of a healthy church family, but that’s probably our biggest single message now. That relationship with Jesus Christ is the only thing that really matters.

Kim – Didn’t I read that ya’ll are actually in different denominations?

Shannon – Yeah. Ian is Southern Baptist. I’m from an independent background that was very legalistic.

Jason – I basically grew up Assembly of God, nondenominational, Word of Faith. Jeremy grew up Church of God. We don’t even look at denominations anymore. The waters can get so muddied up. There isn’t one good one or bad one. It’s all kind of …..(shakes his head).

Ian – One of the things that I think makes our ministry more real to people and more identifiable is that unlike a lot of other groups out there, we have a real camaraderie. When we’re away from the road, we’re not going, “Let’s take a break. It’s the weekend and we’ve spent our time together.” We’re all great friends. That makes us more identifiable to people because they see that relationship. It’s a pretty cool thing that a lot of people don’t have. We consider ourselves fortunate in that.

Shannon – We have a lot of different hats that we’re wearing. We’re business partners, ministry partners and best friends. Honestly I can’t think of three other guys that I love and appreciate more than the three guys that I sing with.

Jason – Our wives say that we talk more than women do because we’re on the phone with each other three or four times a day.

Shannon – That’s not to say that we agree on everything.

Ian – We’re more like brothers. We get frustrated with each other. We’re real and we don’t care if people see that.

Jason – We’re not so high and mighty amongst ourselves that we don’t accept other people’s opinions either.

Shannon – We might not agree on a lot of things, but we’re open to each other. Whether it be right or wrong….

Ian – (laughs) Yeah, if they’re right and I’m wrong, I’m still right.

Shannon – Ian’s our resident comedian. He’s a funny guy. He’s great on the road.

...to be continued. Interview by Kim Jones

More Than Just Showing Up To Sing - Part 1 - submitted Thursday, May 04, 2006

I got to sit down at GMA Week 2005 and talk to the Imperials. They are a great bunch of guys and you'll enjoy reading what they had to say.

Kim – Hi guys. You have a lot going on. You’ve got the Southern Gospel News Awards, where you’re up for the best Industry and Artist web site, a first baby on the way for Ian and Megan, lots of big stuff. When is the baby due?

Ian – September 25th and we’re going to have a little baby!

Kim – So what else is going on?

Shannon – Well, we’re working on a record deal and that’s been a kind of an interesting process just finding the right situation that works for us. We thought we had that nailed down just a couple of weeks ago, but it fell through. We’re not back to the drawing board though. We’ve got some really great guys on our production team that are working with us and putting some things together. It’s exciting. We just found out this week that we’re going to be appearing at the GMA Festival at Estes Park in August. That’s an exciting thing. And really, probably, for this group of Imperials, it’s probably our first GMA industry event. We just recently signed with a booking agency named the R. Bowles Group here in Nashville. This past year has been a year of transition from Armond Morales, who was with the group for 40 years and owned the group, turning it over to us. So we’re in transition from being hired singers to actually running, managing and owning a group. We’ve spent the past year really working on those things and getting our foundational things put together with a board of directors that we’ve put together for our ministry.

Kim – A lot more work now than just going out and singing isn’t it?

Shannon – It’s a lot more than just showing up to sing.

Kim – Out of your two singles, “It’s A Beautiful Day” and “Holy and Acceptable”, which is your favorite?

Jason – My favorite would be “Beautiful Day”.

Ian – I think Shannon likes “Holy” better.

Shannon – I can’t choose. They’re very different songs. “Beautiful” is more contemporary and it really appeals to the youth.

Kim – Since you’re the new generation of the Imperials, how daunting is it to look at the footsteps that you’re following in?

Jason – It’s more an honor than nerve-wracking. We look at it like we have these huge giants that blazed a way for all of Christian music, period, and we get to follow in their footsteps. We get to, hopefully, blaze a new trail again and try to keep it going for another 40 years.

Shannon – And not trying to sound arrogant, but we feel like we’re up to the task. We want to do and we feel like God has put us here at this time and has a job for us to do. We’re excited about it.

Ian – I don’t think that any of us are trying to necessarily fill the shoes of the person that came before us. Shannon isn’t trying to be Russ Taff. Jason’s not trying to be Sherman Andrus. I’m not trying to be Armond and Jeremy’s not trying to be Jim Murray. We’re all just trying to bring a new pair of shoes into the picture. You know, just give a new face to the group.

Kim – That’s a good way to look at it. You guys bring so much more into this than just great music.

Shannon – You know, people wonder where have the Imperials been for the last decade. And some people say, “Oh, it’s really cool that you guys started this up again”. It never stopped. Three of us, other than Ian, sang with Armond. Basically as people left the group, Armond would replace them with a new face. Of course, Jason is Armond’s son and I suppose he had a special “in” there but he still had to interview and audition for it. He never really wanted to sing. One day they were looking for a baritone and he said “Dad, I can sing. I know all of the parts. Why don’t you let me try?” And he did and Armond was like “Wow, this is great!” So they sang together, father and son, for a few years. Then when Armond stepped aside about 18 months ago we were like, man, how are we ever going to find anybody to fill this guy's shoes. Ian was the first guy that we called. He was the only person that we auditioned. We heard him sing and we loved him as a person. We loved his wife and figured that if he could find a wife that nice then he must be a good person (laughs), so we hired him!

Ian – She’s actually the reason that I got the job.

...to be continued

Interview by Kim Jones

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