Drew: Angelo, thank you so much for being here! I've been super excited for this. You've had a lot going on recently... new album, campus tour, Elevation dates coming up, so I'm super pumped to get into all of it. First, I'd just love to hear how you're doing in the midst of all that. What's life looking like right now?

Angelo: Yeah, man, stoked for this. I just finished Campus nights, which was our last tour of the year, so now we're just home spending time with family and working on new music, which is really exciting. Honestly, mostly just planning for next year with our team. So that's kind of what that's looking like right now.

TESTIMONY AND BAND ORIGINS

Drew: Love it. Ok, so jumping in, could you describe your band, the sound, and then give us a little bit of a backstory on how the whole thing started?

Angelo: I think we've kind of over the years just been experimenting with different things, but now I would say if someone was to describe us, it'd be an indie rock band. That's kind of the genre that we found home in. “Indie” has so many different sounds you can do, so we kind of just lean into that. We started the band in 2017, but kind of just the idea of it.

GROWING UP + MENTAL HEALTH STRUGGLES

Angelo: It was after I had an encounter with Jesus: I grew up in church, but it was like “okay, my parents are Christian, so I just call myself a Christian, but I didn't really live out the Christian life.” I’d go to church and put on a mask when I went to church and then I'd be with my group of friends that played baseball and I was a different person and my other group of friends from school and I was a different person. I was just living this life of hypocrisy. I never doubted God's existence because of things I'd seen; I knew he was real, but I felt like I just didn't really know him. I just thought that he hated fake people… he hated the Pharisees, and I'm as fake as it gets. So I'm like, “he must not want anything to do with me.” So I kind of just drew away from church and all that and Christianity and just tried to do my own thing and try to find that as I grew older into my teen years.

I was 15 when I just stopped going to church and stuff. You kind of just have this void… at least for me, there's kind of this need for something and you don't know what it is. I was trying to find it in either a friend group or in a relationship with a girl or whatever it was. Then I realized at a certain point I'm like, man, “I'm using people for something I'm looking for.” I decided that I was just gonna get away from everything, everybody. I isolated myself, and that's when it just got like 10 times worse. I started struggling a lot with depression and anxiety, because the enemy loves when we're in isolation. That's where he could just throw the darts and get in your head. I started struggling a lot with suicidal thoughts. Especially if you're in isolation, you just kind of keep thinking these things over and over and you're just like “it probably would be better if I'm not here. It'd be better for everybody.” I was struggling a lot with that and even attempted suicide a couple times. It was just a really low point in my life.

THE INVITE

Angelo: One day I ran into a buddy… he invited me to church and he's like “hey, you should come, we're gonna have this student event. It's gonna be cool. You should pull up.” I was like “yeah, yeah, whatever. I'll go.” But I didn't really think of actually going. Then when I left, I was like, “man, what if I actually just try one more time.” I was wrestling with the idea of going back because I was like “I want to go, but if people knew who I really was, nobody would love me. Nobody would give me grace and I don't deserve it. God supposedly sees everything so he knows who I am, so why would he take me back?” But then I was like “I literally have nothing else, nowhere else to go. I've tried so many things.” At that point I'm struggling with a bunch of different addictions. I started drinking, I started watching pornography, and I'm just trying to grasp at whatever I can to numb this feeling. A lot of times before I would think like “before coming back to church, you need to be on the right track or something. You need to at least start doing good.” I was like “man, you know what? I'm just going to go, what do I have to lose?”

ENCOUNTER

Angelo: So I ended up going and sitting in the back there. The preaching passes, the worship passes the whole time. In my head I'm like “you don't belong there, what are you doing there?” Everything passes. I'm like “okay, you know what? I'm just gonna book it. I'm just gonna leave.” Before I do that, someone comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder. I thought it was going to be an older lady, but it was a young girl, part of the student team, and she was like “hey, I just feel like I have this word from God for you. I don't know you, I don't know your background, but I just feel like he wants me to tell you he loves you. He's not disappointed in you. You're not a failure in his eyes.” It's simple words, but there was just something different about it. Just the weight that she was carrying when she was saying those things, the weight that her words were carrying. As she's saying these things, I'm just thinking about when I was younger and I remember my mom would be like, “hey, we're praying for the promises of God over you.” I kind of just started thinking “man, those promises might've been for me, but because of how I lived, they're not for me anymore.” As soon as I'm thinking that, she says “and the promises that he has for you, he hasn't forgotten them.” She prays for me and leaves, and I just have this insane encounter with Jesus where everything I heard growing up just flooded back to me.

Then I'm like, “okay, Lord, I don't know everything. I don't know a lot. I come to you as I am. I repent of the way I've lived. I don't want to live that way anymore. Everything I do, I want to do it for you. I want to know you, I want to follow you.” What he did on the cross, his love just really encountered me that night. So then I gave my life to Jesus. After that, I go to my brothers. I'm like, hey boys, let's have a meeting.

STARTING THE BAND

Angelo: On the music side, we never liked music growing up. Then I heard this John Mayer album when I was 13. I fell in love with music. At that point I already liked music, but I'm writing whatever I'm feeling, the love song, I'm mad, I'm sad, whatever, just to get stuff out. Right there I go to my brothers, I'm like “hey, guys, what do you think if we start a band?” They're like “no, we don't want to. What the heck?” I was like “no, hear me out.” I was basically telling them, “what if we make music, we write these songs, we write songs that just point people to Jesus, that just spread the gospel through music. My whole life, I've been living this fake life and I just feel like our generation's a generation looking for truth and authenticity and this truth that I've found, Jesus. There's nothing more true than that. There's nothing more real than following him. So why don't we just make music authentic to us, lyrically authentic to us, sonically, and let's just go for it.” They're like “all right, you know what? Yeah, sure, why not?” So yeah, then we started the band. I know that's a long answer, but that's kind of how the band started and the backstory of it.

SIMPLE OBEDIENCE

Drew: Very cool, man. Thank you for your vulnerability there and going into that, I really appreciate it. I have a small question before we move on to a different topic, but did your friend who invited you to that, was he aware you were going through it or was it just kind of an offhanded thing?

Angelo: No, he was not, not even close. It was an offhanded thing and I never spoke to anybody about any of it until even after I gave my life to Jesus. I still held those things for a couple years, one day I just spilled the beans to the worship pastor at my church who was mentoring me. That's when I realized how important community and accountability is. When it says in the Bible to confess to one another, it's not like you have to get it out or because you have to, it's because he knows it's good for us. Telling that person you trust and you know loves you and loves God and has wisdom and all this stuff.

Drew: That's cool for me. And that's encouraging. I feel like that's a pretty clear testimony to, it's like you never know what a person's going through. Just reaching out, maybe God put it on his heart to invite you and he went with it in obedience. Or maybe he just felt pressure from his youth pastor to invite people. But either way, he had no clue that you needed it as much as you did. I feel like that's encouraging for me, even when I don't know people that well just be like, “hey, come and check this Jesus thing out.”

Angelo: Yeah, man, you never know, because I'm sure I looked at him with the ugliest face, like I was just done with everything. Just a simple act of obedience, like him letting himself be used by God, it changed the course of my life. It's crazy how just one little act of obedience, even if you don't know what it's going to do, what it can do.

PLASTIC WINE: ALBUM BREAKDOWN

Drew: That's so cool, man. Love it. Now that we got some backstory there, I'd love to dive into where the band is at right now, and specifically talk about Plastic Wine. Could you talk us through the journey of the album, where it started, what it was like making it, and what it means to you now?

MAKING THE ALBUM

Angelo: Compared to our last album, the making of this one was kind of different… On this one I feel like we had more of a foundation. “flowers dressed in blue” was the last song on our last album. That's when that transition happened; we tried rock out and it was like “okay, this connects with us. It connects with people as well. It's so much more fun to play live… let's lean into this more” and we just fell more in love with it. After that album finished, it was like, okay, let's lean into this sound more of rock.

BEHIND THE TITLE

Angelo: When we do music, we want to be authentic to what we're saying and the life experience we're going through. Secret Place was kind of like that raw first encounter, that wonder. The second one is kind of like “okay, I want to know more, I want to go deeper into this.” The reason we named it Plastic Wine is because one time we were taking communion with the little plastic cups and styrofoam bread. We do this around once a month at our church and the congregation, including myself, would always just kind of do the thing just to do it, say the words just to say them. My pastor realized it and was like “hey, before we do it this time, I just want to tell you guys how special and beautiful this is. When Jesus was doing this with his disciples, it was in remembrance of him. There was this beautiful intense moment that was happening and we get to be a part of that. Let's not take it lightly. Let's understand what we're actually doing.” When he said that, I was just like “dang, how many other things in my life has there been an invitation of something deeper, like this little plastic wine cup, but I'm just taking it as it is, like a little plastic juice with styrofoam bread. I don't want to take it just like that. I want the real thing. I want the deeper thing, the meaning behind it. That was kind of the concept of the album, just like we're going deeper into it.

Drew: So cool. Did you have that title in mind, kind of the whole time in the process? Or did that come later?

Angelo: No, that came later. That came probably midway through the process of the album.

Drew: Cool. So it was more just, “let's lock in… we know what we sound like, we know we want to go a little deeper and we'll see what happens.”

Angelo: Yeah. It was like we knew what we wanted. We knew what the songs were going to be about, but we just didn't have a title. Then when that happened, I'm just like, oh, name it Plastic Wine.

COLLABORATORS

Drew: I was looking at your collaborators for the process and seeing some familiar faces and people I've covered on The New Wave. Gable Price and Josiah Queen are two awesome artists. Then it looks like you also wrote with this guy Nestor Manuel. Do you have any stories from working with these guys?

Angelo: Yeah, dude, it was awesome. I think “oasis” was the first time I wrote with Gable. When we were on tour with Josiah Queen, we wrote a bunch of songs… that's when we started “oasis for my soul” then we were like “hey, why don't we bring Gable into it, see if he has any ideas.” I didn't know him at the time, but Josiah did. It happened with both of them at the same time. I thought that was really cool. We had so much fun writing it. After that, we've all been writing a lot together ever since. That was cool. Nestor's actually my mentor, my worship pastor, and we wrote that at our church after a worship set. There was a piano in the green room and we just started writing it.

Drew: So cool. I love that. I think people don't really dive into who made stuff and that background, but I saw that and I was like, we have to talk about it. I'm a huge look at the credits guy too. That feels like an Easter egg, that the GOAT Josiah Queen is on here as well as these other two homies.

STANDOUT SONGS

Drew: This is probably a hard question to answer because it feels like picking children, but do you have a favorite track or one that stands out to you?

Angelo: Oh, man. I'd have to say, I think I do love all of them, but the ones that might be my favorite by just a little bit more are probably “oasis for my soul” because of JQ and Gable, and “good shepherd.” Those two are probably the ones that I really, really enjoyed. With “good shepherd”, that song was kind of just a moment for me of realizing that Jesus is a reward, like he's everything. At that time I was getting so caught up on what's going to happen in the future, planning this, planning that. That song was kind of more like a prayer of just like “wait, no, you're all that I need, you're everything to me.” It just kind of refocused me on the why of why me and my brothers do what we do. I think that's why both of those songs are probably my favorite on the album.

I THANK GOD - SURF ROCK VERSION

Drew: Love it. How'd y'all decide to do the surf rock “I thank God?” What was the story there?

Angelo: Actually, I didn't want to do it. I was like, “I don't want to make a cover song.” I've always been against that. My pops was kind of just like, “no, you should” because we would play it live all the time as a little surprise for people. Eventually after a bunch of weeks of him telling me a lot, I was like, “all right, why don't we do it?” Then I ended up liking it. I did like two takes because I was just so over it. I did two takes, we did everything just super quick and people have been liking it, which is really cool.

THE NEW WAVE OF CHRISTIAN MUSIC

Drew: The rest of the album as a whole, it feels very, it's just fun, you know? It's good to have Christian music that just feels good and is authentic like this. I can tell the production feels like someone who actually listens to indie rock music, not like a CCM producer trying to make a rock song.

Angelo: Right. I can definitely appreciate that. That's the problem there because CCM, no hate to them, but I just, I have never enjoyed listening to it.

Drew: Yeah man, I resonate with that a lot… that's why I'm doing this new wave thing and why—

Angelo: I love it, bro. You're killing it. It's so sick. I'm like “finally there's an account that's doing cool stuff like this.” When you sent me that DM I was like “we gotta do this.” I'm a huge fan.

Drew: Thank you, bro. I appreciate it.In my head, you're one of the front runners of the new wave of Christian music going on right now. There are so many different artists just doing really cool things that are massive or smaller, anywhere in between. And you're right, there was no hub for all of it. Everything was just kind of pocketed and I was like “it'd be cool to have one place for people to find stuff that they actually want to listen to.”

Angelo: That's what I love about what you're doing, because like you said, there's so much cool Christian music that's out there, but it's just so underground. I'm finding new artists every day on my Instagram, I'm like “this is a banger. This is so sick.” I think making home for all that music is just so cool.

Drew: Thank you, man. That means a lot. I really appreciate it.

TALKING MUSIC BUSINESS

Drew: I'd love to move into the business side a little bit. I have a good amount of up-and-coming creatives that engage with my stuff, but I also think it'd be helpful for non-music industry people to understand a little bit of the behind the scenes. So I'd love to hear, are you with a record label? Are you independent? Do you have any kind of team behind you? What has that journey been like?

STAYING INDEPENDENT

Angelo: We're an independent band. Just recently we had the opportunity to sign. Nothing against record labels or anything… I don't know, maybe we might sign one day. But after praying and fasting about it, we just kind of felt like God was telling us not yet. The reality is, a lot of record label deals are just the worst things ever for the artist. For us, we're kind of like, “no, we need to build, we need to build, we need to build” and build it to a place where it's favorable for us. We felt like we got there, and then it just felt like God was like “no, that's not what I want yet.” So I don't even fully know why, but I'm just like, “okay, we're going to keep rocking indie.” We have two managers and a booking agency with us right now, so that's kind of the whole team and we're rocking it. We do a distribution with a small label called Heaven, but we're not signed, we don't have an artist deal. It's kind of like a DistroKid kind of thing, they help upload the music and that's pretty much it. We're rocking it indie right now.

UPCOMING MUSIC

Drew: Love it. So any upcoming music next year, you're going to stay indie and just go from there?

Angelo: Oh yeah. That's the best part, we can release as much music as we want. The goal is to hit 20 songs next year. We're trying to release a ton of music. This next album, I've never in my life been more obsessed with music and Jesus, and so it's like, I've been listening to a lot of different kinds of things now, like Backseat Lovers and Tame Impala and some other great musicians and artists. The idea for the next album is for the musicality to come up, and just a little more raw and musical. I don't know if that makes sense, but a little more real. For this next project, we want to roll it out like a legit album. We want to do a legit release, document stuff, document the whole process for posts on YouTube or Instagram or something like that. We're really excited about next year and we're taking the end of this year to just plan for it. We have an amazing team behind us who believe in us. We got really lucky with the team that we got and I know that's not the story sometimes for some people, but it's a very scary place, the business side of things sometimes. So you really have to rely on Jesus for that.

Drew: For sure, for sure. That's a great album teaser, gets me fired up for what's coming next.

Angelo: Let's go. I'm stoked.

WINNING A DOVE AWARD

Drew: Okay, we're running out of time here a little bit, so I'd love to land the plane with another question or two. I saw that y'all just won a Dove Award for Rock/Contemporary Recorded Song. Congrats on that. Would love to hear the journey with that, any thoughts on that, how that felt, that whole thing.

Angelo: The Doves? Yes. Honestly, the way that Doves work is you have to submit your songs, but we didn't, it was our distribution, so we were kind of just surprised by it. We were just like, “oh, okay.” It was actually funny, we got nominated for that, and also Christian Rock Album was one of the nominations too, but it was for a Honeydew EP that was on Apple that was supposed to be a waterfall release. It wasn't even supposed to be an EP. We were like, “no, let's take that back” and basically the Doves were like, “no, we can't anymore, it's already submitted.”

Just to keep it a buck, I kind of have my thoughts on it, but it was a lot different than I thought it would be. It was really cool just being there and meeting other people who are making art. We don't even have it with us right now. I guess we're supposed to get it somehow, but we haven't made the effort to go get it. I don't know where it is. For us, I think it's just a cool reminder that the music's connecting with people, but it definitely isn't anything like “oh, we made it.” It's just a piece of whatever. For us, it is just kind of like “okay, that's cool, but it doesn't mean squat.”

I think it's a cool place of, at least what we saw, just people celebrating each other and making it about that. Honestly, the whole night, they were just making it about Jesus in the process of the music they're making and the testimonies that have come out of the music and how it's impacted the church. I thought that was really cool because I kind of went in thinking it was going to be how award shows usually go. It was nothing like that. I was like, “oh, wow, this is actually really cool.” Josiah was performing, so we were like, “bro, we gotta support our boy.” He killed it and it was a good time.

Drew: Cool, man. I love that perspective. I was wondering what your thoughts were there, especially with there's plenty of discourse around this year's Dove Awards. I'm largely with you. And that's encouraging to hear that from the artist's side, that it felt healthy and centered on Jesus.

Angelo: Oh yeah. It was really cool. At least in my experience it didn't feel like there was ego. It kind of felt like a barbecue or something. I don't know how to explain it. It just felt like a lot of people getting together just to celebrate. It didn't feel like a competition, at least from my point of view. I thought that was really cool.

Drew: Love it, man. Thank you for being willing to take this call. I love what y'all are doing. I think it's very needed and it's connecting and even in this conversation, it feels clear to me that you just love the Lord and want to glorify him with music and are just excited that it's connecting with people.