The Fray is my all time favorite band. I love their lyrics, their music, Isaac Slade's voice, and the fact that they come from Denver. Sometimes when I tell people this, they ask me if The Fray is a Christian band. I never really knew how to answer that. "Sort of?" I would say hesitantly. After all, they have songs like "How to Save a Life," which certainly seems to imply a Christian idea. They play it on Christian radio stations. But I never knew where they stood, until I found this article from thefish.com. Here's my favorite excerpt, with quotes from Isaac Slade, the lead singer, and Ben Wysocki, the drummer.
"The band avoided Christian record labels, saying God called them to the secular market instead. 'I feel he would be disappointed with us if we limited ourselves,' Wysocki says. Slade says he used to 'write all Christian lyrics' until he had an epiphany while working a shift at Starbucks: 'None of my friends outside the church understood any of my songs; we had a different set of vocabulary,' he says. 'So I went home and threw away all those songs.' He adds, 'If I handed somebody a double grande mocha latte and told them, 'Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,' they might throw it back on me.' If we grow up in the church, it's easy to think it's our Christian duty to preach to every single person because God is the most important thing. And he is, but I'm a musician first. This is my job. We're not pastors. We're not preachers. We're not even missionaries.' Slade likens his job to any other. 'If you're a painter, paint, but you don't have to have Jesus in every picture. Paint well, and if you paint well enough, they might ask you why you do that.'"