By : Cindy Watts
Source : People Magazine
Joel Smallbone was lying in bed thinking. It was four days before Christmas in 2020, and he and brother Luke Smallbone, who comprise Grammy-winning duo FOR KING + COUNTRY, had just finished their Christmas tour in Florida. Vaccines were on the horizon, but the pandemic was still raging. The world was shrouded in fear and frustration when he had an epiphany.
I wonder if we’re meant to almost immediately start working on another record, Joel, 37, mused. We’re not with an acoustic guitar by the campfire just writing songs. You have to wait for the emotional kind of spiritual bandwidth to go, ‘OK, now it’s time to get back in.’
The brothers spent the afternoon with their tour manager plotting it out, and by that night, they had a plan. The Smallbones would head home to Tennessee to celebrate Christmas, and after the first of the year, FOR KING + COUNTRY planned to dive headfirst into writing their next album.