by David Dodd

They’re one of the few Christian bands combining an array of sounds for Our Savior as they mix rock melodies with R&B, metal, hop-hop grooves and a string section to create their unique sounds with compelling lyrical messages.

The Albany, Oregon natives received great support from fellow Oregon natives Kutless while they were still in high school figuring out where God’s Direction would place them in the music scene. 

A few years later, after three releases, they’re anticipating their fourth work, Captiva, set for release in October.

In the meantime, Apostles That Rock sat down with lead singer Jessy Ribordy to talk about their music, their message, the Light of Christ, hometown guys, Kutless, and of course, the dork derivative of their name.

During your live set, you speak so freely of Christ.  It absolutely radiates from your hear. 

Being a Christian band you can easily get caught up in what you’re supposed to do, what you’re supposed to say.  What you’re not supposed to say, and that’s the thing just like you said earlier, Christ had no boundaries, you know?  He didn’t follow any kind of rules whether it be what the ‘sinners’ would think He would do, or what the Pharisees would think He would do.  He was out there doing his own thing.  It was awesome.

So in reflection of that, that’s what we try to do.  When it comes to our music, if you take away the lyrics, we try to be like as far as breaking the rules when it comes to what people expect a rock band to be, whether it be in the mainstream or Christian, just trying to be something different. 

You have no fear in combining various musical styles on your records.  The diversity in the music is really refreshing.  

I don’t know if musically, we’re ahead of the time, stylistically, or if it’s behind the time, stylistically, but wherever it is, it’s not presently what’s cool. Maybe I’ll find out later that it was a couple years behind, but I’d rather be a couple years behind because it seems that the 80’s are getting really popular right now you know? 

And our lyrics, and just the way that we present ourselves as a band, we can sit up there and do a simple church message and tell people the typical thing you would expect a Christian band to do but I’m not a pastor, I didn’t go to a school of ministry and get my degree.

I’m just a regular guy.  I grew up loving music, we all grew up loving music, and we decided to be in a band together and through the band our lives are showing and the Light’s coming out. 

That’s when I get up on stage and I just say, ‘Look guys, I’m not a pastor, I don’t have this message in a three-point sermon planned out for you guys, but I’m going to tell you what’s on my heart and that is Christ loves you, Christ loves me, and that’s all the matters to us.’ 

Lyrically, your writing style is very diverse as well. 

We try not to sit down with a song and say, ‘this is what we’re going to try to write about, this is what we’re going to try to get across to people,’ because I believe in free writing which to me is sometimes I just write whatever I’m thinking, even if it doesn’t make sense, and for some reason it always seems like the Holy Spirit is just pouring onto the page, He’s inspiring everything when you don’t use your brain and you don’t use your logic and what you’re supposed to be doing like, ‘wait, I should write a song about abortion, or I should write a song about suicide and try to help people who are going through those things.’  When I don’t think about that stuff and I just pour out, I know that God’s inspiring that, and God’s saying this is what you’re going to write if you just let go, and that’s what it’s always been with us.  

Both lyrically and musically, there seems to be such an array of artistic flow in your music, especially throughout the Dawn Escapes record.  

Dawn Escapes is kind of based off of the book of Revelation, not as far as the end times craziness, but the fact that it’s the revelation of Jesus Christ.  It’s a very, very important book that is crucial to our lives as Christians, but it’s so memorizing and mysterious.  That’s what makes it interesting.

When you think about Christ making parables all the time, it made realize how smart  Jesus is.   He  wasn’t just going to say,

‘this is what it is,’ because, He was following a certain rule, He was super smart, He fell into this artistic, poetic world that I believe He foresaw. 

I really think we’re in an age of art where it’s so confusing about what’s real and what’s not real because there’s so much art in the world, and I think that Christ saw that, He knew that there was going to be a very artistically driven world and a very free-spirited world in the future that He was going to need to succumb to the rules of that art and be mesmerizing within that.

You get approached a lot after your shows.  Kids want to talk with you, share their thoughts with you, pray with you. 

We always tend to run into kids that are basically like us, easy to talk to.  I think it comes with the territory with our band the way we present ourselves to be that a lot of people, it’s almost like they’re drawn to us, without knowing that we went through their same life experiences, but they can relate. 

A lot of the kids that have come up to me struggle with identity.  The main problem in their life is because their friends aren’t accepting them, so they turn to other things.  But the root of no matter what they’re doing at the time, whether it’s drinking or smoking or doing drugs – whatever - it’s always based off of that they’re not being accepted by someone and they don’t feel like they’re fitting in with people.

I think that a lot of mistakes people make is they tell these kids, ‘you don’t need to worry about it, you need to focus everything on God,’ and that’s true, but, we need to hear someone saying, ‘look, you need to focus on God, but we’re humans, and we need to focus on each other, and if we’re going to work things out, just like the Lord says, loving Him is loving others too, showing love to others,’ and that’s why I think kids need to hear that.  You can be accepted by your friends and your family and people that you love and people that love you because it will get you to Christ. 

I think that people isolate that so much when they say, no, no, no, no, let’s just focus on church, let’s just focus on God, and it’s like we kind of focus on what’s the main core of the problem and that is you don’t feel accepted by your friends and you don’t feel like you have an identity.  Let me make this very clear: you do have an identity and that identity is freedom in Christ.  If you are who you are in Christ, then your friends are going to accept that no matter what.  

The name of the band came from the very first song you wrote when you were a freshman in high school. 

Yes, it was such a dorky song!  But the bottom line is we all fall short, we’re all messed up all the time, but there’s hope in the blood of Christ and that’s what the song was about.  It was such a dorky song!  I’m kind of embarrassed by the song, but it was also a very humbling and unique kind of thing.  That’s what we are, a little dorky.  It’s funny, and we don’t want to take this too seriously because we’re just a band and the most important thing is what’s coming through the band, His Light that shines through us.  That’s what Falling Up means.

In the beginning you had some incredible support from the guys in Kutless.  Not only did they take your demo tape to their record label and rave about you, which resulted with you being signed to that label, but prior to that, they were a great support to you as brothers supporting brothers. 

They were awesome to us!  I remember they went on their first tour for about a year and we were still practicing.  We hadn’t even gotten signed or anything and we were just trying to make it in our little hometown.  They came by our rehearsal room and they dropped off tons of sound gear that they didn’t need anymore because they were on tour.  They were like, ‘you guys can have this, this is our blessing to you.’  There gave us a ton of equipment to bless us.  It was incredible!  We were like, whoa!