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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Christian pop/rock quartet Newsboys keep things fresh on latest tour

The Newsboys will return to the INB Performing Arts Center in Spokane for a concert Sunday night. (Courtesy photo)

After 32 years as a band, Australia-born, Nashville-based Christian pop/rock quartet Newsboys is always looking for ways to keep things fresh - for them and their fans.

The band’s latest means of switching things up, the ongoing “Love Riot” tour, which brings Newsboys to INB Performing Arts Center Sunday, does away with the typical opening act and replaces it with a theatrical performance called “God’s Not Dead! Live.”

“It’s definitely fresh for our industry, and we wanted to bring that side of the arts to what Newsboys do,” drummer Duncan Phillips said. “It’s definitely different, but I think people are really, really enjoying it.”

“God’s Not Dead Live!” will, as per a press release, “answer the question ‘Can God really make a difference?’ and take the audience on a journey to an infamous music venue where stars are born, rivals are met and no one leaves the way they came in.”

“God’s Not Dead! Live” was written and produced by John and Sarah Bolin, the couple behind The Thorn, a theatrical look at the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and features original songs from Newsboys collaborator Juan Otero.

“God’s Not Dead” is a message that’s been connected to Newsboys since the band released an album of the same name in 2011.

Shortly after its release, the people behind production studio Pure Flix Entertainment reached out to Newsboys, having been inspired to incorporate the band’s songs, and the quartet itself, into a film they were writing.

The movie, also called “God’s Not Dead,” was released in 2014 and tells the story of a Christian college student who debates God’s existence with his atheist philosophy professor.

The members of Newsboys play themselves in the film, meeting with a blogger named Amy Ryan (played by Trisha LaFache) and performing the song “God’s Not Dead (Like a Lion).”

“We’ve got to play a lot of really big tours over the years, and typically on any tour you might get to play in front of five or six hundred thousand people,” Phillips said. “But the first three weekends of that movie, we got to quote-unquote play in front of six million people who saw the movie.”

“God’s Not Dead 2” was released in 2016 and also featured a Newsboys cameo.

The band members also strive to keep things fresh each time they record an album, including last year’s “Love Riot.”

To do so, the band keeps its ear to the ground, taking note of the music fans are listening to and the music that’s popular at the time and incorporating elements of that popular music into its own sound.

“It’s still going to be Newsboys because it’s going to be us four guys on the record,” Phillips said. “It’s going to be new and fresh, but it’s still going to be our version of that new and fresh.”

For Newsboys, it’s a matter of balancing the sound fans have come to know them for – anthemic vocals, big percussion and even bigger guitar riffs – with the goal to reinvent themselves each time they release an album so as to keep progressing sonically.

But Phillips said the band is always aware that if they stray too far from that sound, shedding its identity and becoming unrecognizable to fans, those fans won’t stick around.

“Every record, you’re reapplying for your job,” he said. “It’s not like ‘We’re just going to do a record and it’s going to sell a million copies.’ If it sucks, it sucks… Even though you’ve got all these fans and do these movies, if you’ve got a record that doesn’t connect, people ain’t going to come to your shows. We’re continually striving to out-do ourselves.”