The Newsboys emerged as a rock band full of energy. While they are still full of energy, their musical style has evolved with each album. Their first album was a limited release entitled Read All About It. They then got a deal with Star Song and released Hell Is For Whimps and Boys Will Be Boyz. Their latest effort is Not Ashamed.

What is special about Not Ashamed? "The big difference," explains drummer, Peter Furler, "was just doing music that we wanted to play and a style of music that we've wanted to do for a long time. Besides, just doing music that [tries] to reach people can sometimes hurt you because you're not really being true to what you really are. So, with this new music that we're doing now, it's definitely what we feel is what we like. Luckily, it's paying off. People are enjoying it more than anything we've done before."

Also different on the album was the producing. Furler invited Steve Taylor to help in the production of the Newsboys' latest project. Furler describes their reasoning, "When you do a record, you've got to bring everybody together and it's not just produced by so-and-so and produced by so-and-so; it's everybody coming together and putting in their little bit of genius and coming up with something that's real cool. It was excellent, because, he's [Taylor] done a lot of stuff and he's always been one of our favorites in the Christian music industry and it was just good to get to meet him. He was a lot of fun. He's everything you see on stage. He's a bit of a wildman himself, so we had about 5 or 6 wildpeople in the studio and it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of unity between us and him which made it real exciting."

If you've seen a Newsboys concert lately, you noticed that Furler was not behind the drum kit very much. He states, "I sang quite a bit on the new album. A lot of them, we felt it was more natural for me to be out there and singing them than just being behind the drum kit and singing them and having nobody at the front. It was something that's been fun to do. We try to not do it too much because we are a band and so it was something that was a hard decision for us to make. It definitely determined what songs we were going to play live, because if we played all the ones we wanted to play live off the new album, then I'd hardly be on the drum kit, so we had to kind of choose what we had to play. It's made it hard in some ways, but I think the crowd, as you see, hasn't minded. If anything, it's probably gone even better."

You will also notice that there have been a couple personnel changes for the boys from Australia. Guitarist Vernon Bishop recently left the band, which has prompted the return of Jibba (Jonathan Geange) to the band. Jibba was a member when they first came to the United States several years ago. He played with the group for a while and then returned to Australia. Furler explains why, "When we first came here, Jibba had never played in a professional band. He'd never done many live gigs. I think it scared him-coming over here and playing. He was very young, 18 years old, and playing; I think it kind of burned him out for a while. We could just tell that it wasn't moving forward with Jibba. So we let him go for a year, actually a year and a half and got Vernon to play for a while. We had always said to Jibba, 'when you kind of relax and you know what's over here and you know what you've got to do to play and you know what's involved, then give us a call,' and he called. So it worked out great because it was the same time Vernon was going off to play with Kim Boyce. So, I think he's definitely playing a lot better than what Vernon was for especially the new stuff. It's taken us a step up. He's not quite as crazy as Vernon, but he definitely puts a lot more into his actual guitar playing than just running around."

Bassist Sean Taylor recently left the group to return to Australia. Furler continues, "Sean has been with us for getting on 8 years now. It one of those things where we've had members leave before for certain reasons. Sean was just more come to an end of a road. People have to move places in their life. Sean was a very casual kind of cat. We talked about it with him for a long time. He knew it was time for him. He just felt he'd done his job here with the band and he just felt the Lord was taking him into other directions. Spiritually, he just wanted to go back and get in with the church and get involved in a bit of mission work where it was something, also musically; he was getting tired of the road. Many things add up and when you're not happy where you are then you can never force someone to stay or be with you. We were real sad to see him go, but we were real happy that he's going to be doing what he wants to do. Sean's been a good friend of ours for many years."

Their new bassist is named Kevin (who seems to keep his last name secret), who as Furler tells, "was playing with a group called The Noisy Little Sunbeams. They came out and supported us for about five dates. We saw him and it was more of a personal thing than what sort of bass player he was-it was more of a personal thing. We were hanging out with him and it was like we had the same vision and unity. It was real cool. It was something where we knew straightaway he'd be great for the band."

So the Newsboys are now set to keep touring as they play their musical style
and tell the world that they are Not Ashamed.

J. Warner Soditus

Article originally appeared in THE LIGHTHOUSE January, 1993
Copyright ©1993 THE LIGHTHOUSE and Polarized Publications