Brio: You say this album is about doing your best with what God’s given you. What does that look like?
Jon Micah: The Bible’s really clear about being good stewards with what God’s given us. For me personally, with music being one of the things I’ve been privileged to do, I take it seriously and do my best to write and perform to the best of my ability. And not just to do it, but to learn and develop and get better. As a professional, there’s a tendency to sit back and think, I’m a pro now. I try to remember to be constantly learning and getting better.

How do you deal with the times when you’re tired and spiritually dry, but you still have a show to perform?
One of the hardest things is that we’re not able to go to church consistently because we’re constantly traveling. When we’re on the road, it’s a little more difficult to actually get to church.

Hanging out with people every night and sharing with them every night [after a show], you can feel really empty very fast, because you’re just giving out a whole lot and not always taking in a whole lot. That’s why it’s so important to stay in the Word daily. And we’re encouraging each other and keeping each other accountable. We also have some people from our church who come out on the road occasionally to encourage us and lead Bible studies.

We love what we do, but everyone has those days where you think, Man, I’d rather be home right now. But I’m stoked that this is my job. And it’s not all fun and games like it appears to be, but you just have to buck up and go for it and remember that the music and concerts are about more than me. It’s about a much bigger picture.

With this album, you went through a lineup change, adding Nick DePartee on guitar after Ryan Shrout left. How did you see God bring unity to the band?
It’s been a really great thing. Nick DePartee, our guitar player, joined us about a year and a half ago. He’s a great, talented guy. It was cool, because he had worked as our guitar tech for a whole year before he joined the band, so we were already familiar with him, and we’d lived on the road with him. He was a big part of the songwriting process, and I feel like his addition helped to freshen up the sound a bit, because he had a little different flavor than some of the things we’ve done in the past. Yet he fit really well into what we were doing.

What inspired the song “Complete”?
On this record, we approached songwriting as a little more of a group effort. So I’d been working on the lyrics to the song over and over. I’d written probably two or three different versions, and none of them was really happening; I just wasn’t feeling it. So we were all thinking about it while we were on our acoustic tour, and it was getting late in the game—we needed to finish up the new album in a hurry. So we were all in the back of the tour bus talking about it, and some of the guys came up with a few ideas and tweaked some things and rewrote the lyrics. And an hour and a half later, we had the song rewritten, and it was a group effort on everyone’s part.

There’s a bit of irony in the fact that people spend their entire lives searching to be complete, but they can’t ever find that until they first find Christ. And once they find Christ, becoming complete falls into place. Ultimately, it’s He who completes our lives, because we were created to worship Him.

The song “I Do Not Belong” talks about putting our trust in God and not in the world. How do you do that?
The day we live in can feel scary at times. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on, and the more I realized what a dark place this world can be, it inspired me to look to heaven and to look to the hope I have in the future. This isn’t my home; I’m going to a better place, and that’s where my treasure is. I really believe that keeping your eyes focused on Jesus and keeping your eyes focused on the hope of heaven, if you approach life with that kind of intention, it will change the way you live. It causes you to be more heavenly focused, where you’re caring about the important things in life and not the things that are superficial. It’s about eternity and where we’re headed ultimately.

You recorded this album in some interesting places, including a hotel room, right?
We were running a little late, so we ended up having to finish the record on the road, while we were on our acoustic tour. So we recorded wherever and whenever we could. We were playing at a church, and there was a little closet under the baptismal. So we traced some vocals in there. We did some tracking in hotel rooms and put some mattresses up on the walls to deaden the sound. It was pretty crazy!

The guys recorded some guitar in the bathroom of an ice-hockey rink. But one of the cooler places where we recorded was Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded. We recorded the string sections for a few songs with members of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra. They form this supergroup for recording sessions, and it’s the same group that recorded the strings for The Lord of the Rings soundtracks. To be able to record at Abbey Road, as a musician, is a big deal. To work with some of the finest string players in the world was an awesome privilege.

Back-to-School Memories
Did you bring or buy your lunch?
I brought my lunch almost every day. When I was in elementary school, my parents let me have hot lunch one day a week. It was like a special treat, until I got into high school, then I realized it wasn’t so special.

Favorite subject?
Can I say P.E.? As far as actual academic subjects, history. I did well in school, but I didn’t really like it that much.

Did you play sports or join any clubs?
Soccer was my main sport. I ended up doing that all the way into college; I got a soccer scholarship. But track was the other sport I excelled at the most.

Did you ever get any tardy or detention slips?
I got quite a few tardies! I went to a Christian school for my freshman and sophomore year, and they were a lot stricter as far as getting into trouble. I got in trouble a little bit, like not wearing the proper attire on chapel day. When I switched to a public school, you had to do really bad stuff to get in trouble there!

In your high school yearbook, you would have been named “Most Likely To ____________”?
The one that I got was “Class Best Singer,” which is what I do now!