Phatty: Hello, this is Phatty with Family Force 5 and I play bass

Soul Glow Activatur: This is Soul Glow Activatur and I dance around on stage and sing a little bit and play a little guitar

Chap Stique: This is Chap Stique and I play guitar and I wear snakeskin boots.

Crouton: This is Crouton, I play drums and I also sing and I sit behind a forcefield of drums! ZIM ZALA BIM! *laughter*

Nadaddy: This is Nadaddy. I do a little DJin' and a little keytar slingin' and a little hardcore tambourinin' too. And I get injuries on stage like the rest of us too. I mean, look at these bleeding bandaids right here. *displays two bandaged fingers*

Phatty: Oooo, I like.

Soul Glow Activatur: Man, uh, I can tell you a couple that don't need to come back. But I can tell you something from the 80's that needs to come back. Man, the cartoons from the 80's! Didn't they just seem way better? I mean, seriously, but like the actual animation itself was way better, the audio, the story. Like I look at Saturday Morning Cartoons now... Man, this is just absolute poop... on a stick at that.

Nadaddy: Like Transformers and Voltron... (Soul Glow: Thundercats) M.A.S.K., Silverhawks

Soul Glow Activatur: Listen, My Little Pony doesn't count. *laughter* (Amy: I have Tom & Jerry on DVD, which is amazing.) (John: Well, that's not really 80's. We just watched it as kids) (Amy: It's stuff that's hard to find now.)

Phatty: Yeah, but we're not talking about Tom & Jerry. We're talking about stuff like Rugrats and... y'know, stupid stuff like that.

Soul Glow Activatur: Did you just say 'Rugrats?!' *laughter* Look, all I'm saying is that animation started kinda sucking around about '93 or '94.

Chap Stique: It went to little simpleton drawings, like South Park kinda stuff.

Phatty: Ghostbusters.

Soul Glow Activatur: Ghostbusters. I mean, Slimer, dude! Staypuft!

Chap Stique: Begrudgingly selecting Back To The Future because hoverboards, y'know what I mean?

Soul Glow Activatur: Naw, that's II though! (John: You can do the trilogy.)

Chap Stique: The only reason why I chose it is because there are three Back To The Future's, so it's three times the glory, whereas with Ghostbusters it's only two times the glory

Soul Glow Activatur: Ghostbusters II sucked. *laughter* (Chap Stique: So it's only one times the glory) Bobby Brown was in it though. *laughter*

Crouton: I guess I'd have to say Ghostbusters cause I dunno... those two lion things at the end... they scared the crap out of me. (Soul Glow: And the chick in there man, she was hot too.) Sigourney Weaver! (Soul Glow: Yeah, name your child that) Sigourney!... WEAVER!! *laughter*

Nadaddy: I'd have to say definitely Back To The Future. The Doc making the little model and stuff, blowing up the little mini car. 1.21 gigowatts and 88 miles per hour... y'know what I mean?? There's a DeLorean!! You wanna bring back an 80's trend? Stainless steel cars! That's an 80's trend you can bring back.

Chap Stique: Flux capacitor, bring it back.

Crouton: The coolest thing about Back To The Future was that it had the actor from Willard in it.

Chap Stique: The coolest part was the 80's guitar solo that Michael J. Fox does *laughter*

Nadaddy: *laughs* Ha-ho, man. We're supposed to think about that? That's easy man, MacGyv-. Nah, I'm just kidding.

Everyone (Except For Chap Stique): Knight Rider hands down!

Chap Stique: Well, I was gonna go with MacGyver. (John: I actually like MacGyver better) I actually thought he was pretty cool. I saw that episode with Merlin in it and I really liked it.

Soul Glow Activatur: You are officially Brokeback Mountain. *laughter*

Nadaddy: Man, don't y'all know that scene where you got Michael Knight and Kit and he's facing that big semi goliath, man? That's incredible! (Soul Glow: Yeah Nadaddy, that's right!) Goin' on record!

Crouton: This is Crouton, and if you have a talking car, it's just awesome.

Soul Glow Activatur: MacGyver only talked to himself, "If I only had a rubber band and a paper clip then I could escape from this bomb!"

Crouton: And it had an awesome theme song, man! *starts mimicking the tune*

Soul Glow Activatur: Yeah, everyone could sing the Knight Rider theme song, but what's the MacGyver theme, huh? (John: I actually could sing it) Well let's hear it! (John: No way man!) *Phatty starts singing a mock theme, "I deal with paper clips!" Amy then insists on trying to sing the tune, as the band cheers her on, but John plays a ringtone of the theme on his cell phone* Turn that polyphonic crap off! *laughter*

Nadaddy: Alright let's go around the room! C'mon!

Soul Glow Activatur: Plastic all the way man.

Chap Stique: Plastic is better for the environment.

Crouton: I'd have to say paper because if you're ever caught in a storm and you couldn't get some T.P...

Nadaddy: I have to say paper cause paper makes cardboard and cardboard makes places to dance... AND (Phatty: It also covers rock!) back in 1988, I remember making a costume out of cardboard boxes that was a robot and on the front of my robot, was a huge box and there was another box attached to it where you had to stick the candy. Everybody was like "Where's your bag for the candy??" I was like, "Yo, right here!" *laughter*

Soul Glow Activatur: Plus cardboard's one of the coolest things ever made by paper.

Crouton: And you can also make really cool drawings on it. (John: That's true.)

Phatty: Paper, rock, scissors, man.

Nadaddy: Too LOOOONG!

Crouton: That is a GIRL question! *laughter* Hey! I love fried chicken, I'm not gonna lie. Fried chicken is one of my favorite things in life. Yes, it can kill me if I keep eating it everyday like I do with all the salt... intake... *pretends to slowly die*

Soul Glow Activatur: We know our bodies are temples, but man, this temple's gotta have some fried chicken every once in awhile! *laughter* No, it will lead to your death if you eat it everyday. Same thing with any kind of fast food, y'know? I mean, Family Force 5, we're about fried chicken. And it's apparent in our "Kountry Gentleman" song.

Nadaddy: If you take the skin off, it's a lot less fat, y'know what I mean? But who really wants to take off the skin when you're eating fried chicken? I mean c'mon... if you wanna grab the leg, you just BITE IT OFF! (Phatty: It's extra crispy, baby! Gon' get some chicken wiiiings!) It's like going to a fair and getting a turkey leg and saying "Oh hold on a second I don't need the skin on it!" They ain't gonna cook you a special turkey leg at the fair! *pause followed by laughter*

Soul Glow Activatur: Nadaddy: Speaking his mind about the fowl!

Nadaddy: This is Nadaddy on the record, baby! *high fives Crouton* (Soul Glow: Dude, you sounded like DJ Maj right there, man.) I ain't DJ Maj... I'm DJ Nadaddy or Etch'A Scratch or whatever you wanna call me!

Crouton: Nothing!

Soul Glow Activatur: *laughs* We did a few things. (Phatty: Worked at McDonald's) Musically, we had this band called Ground Noise. Ground Noise was a... (Crouton: BOOOOO!!!) *laughter* Ground Noise was kind of a (Phatty: Third Day) Yes. Kind of like Third Day, but not. Like a very, very bad version of Third Day. It was kind of southern rock and it was something that was kind of pushed on us and we just didn't want to do it and we finally ended up doing Family Force 5. (Crouton: *whispers* No secrets!) (Phatty: It wasn't a secret) In between there, we went to school a couple years, met Nadaddy. Did the college thing. (Phatty: Nadaddy was in a band called Blue Collar Server) Yeah. Had a couple odd jobs that we did. Worked pushing carts around for Ricky Martin, Celine Dion, Bette Midler and all these huge shows that would come to Atlanta. (Crouton: All the great ones... Cher, *NSync) Yeah, we pushed around carts for them, worked at a jewelry store, worked at a big church and ran sound there. Not kinda cool stuff. Lots of fried chicken was eaten in that period. (Phatty: We never gave up fried chicken. We gave up music for awhile.) Yeah. Couple of relationships didn't work out, wasted a lot of time. Lot of painful stuff between The Brothers and Family Force 5. The Brothers was like... *impersonates their singing, Crouton impersonates vocal changes, followed by laughter* (Crouton:The Brothers hit puberty!) *laughter* Then we hit puberty and then we were like "Alright, let's be rebellious and grow our hair long and talk back to mom and dad." It was definitely a growing period. We had to find ourselves and find out who we were in music. And that's what we did. "Peachy" is the very first song we ever had that sounded like this different music that we do. This thing that we call crunk punk or crunk rock or whatever you want to describe it as. But that's how we discovered it. We wrote that song "Peachy" and were like, "Man, this sounds different! We should do something like this all the time, instead of this bad version of Third Day music that we have" It ended up being something that we all absolutely love cause we love anything that's very beat-oriented and very rhythmic. And it just happens to be awesome.

Soul Glow Activatur: We started out as Phamily with a "P-H," and [we found out there was] some produce company in Texas. And Prince had a band called The Family with an "F" and they said we'd run into problems if it was like "Hey! Here's 'Love Addict' from The Phamily!" and then Prince and his whole crew would come over and *laughs* I don't know... pop a cap in us or something. *laughter*

Soul Glow Activatur: "Family Force 5" sounded like a big giant robot, basically. People are like, "Dude is there a big spiritual meaning behind it?" (Phatty: Nope.) *laughs* (Crouton: Basically it's a ROBOT!!) *laughter* We're a family, we're a force to be reckoned with and there's five [of us], but I'd say there's a way better description and it's that it sounded like a big Voltron robot. We feel like... Soul Glow Activatur, Chap Stique, Nadaddy, Crouton, Phatty, (Phatty: Jake, do the battle call) and all five of those people connect.

Crouton: And our hype man, Xanadu. So when we get home, and we're all dispersed, and we all have our own lives. The way he gets us back is he pulls out a bullhorn and goes *does a bullhorn impression* and we all come like the lions in Voltron and connect. The sword is our van and trailer. (Chap Stique: I'm one of the arms) (Soul Glow Activatur: That's the Force call.)

Nadaddy: We could add a tail I guess.

Phatty: Well look at our hype man, that puts us at six people. (Amy: I know, but he's one of you guys, but he's not...) I see what you're saying.

Chap Stique: We could get someone to put the light up, sorta like the Bat signal (John: You gotta put him in the pictures.) (Amy: Yeah! He's not in the pictures!)

Soul Glow Activatur: You're right. I think it does limit us. Five is a good number. (Phatty: We're happy with it) Five is a good number. I'd be uncomfortable with six. It's an evil number. Seven would be a great number. (Crouton: Seven's the perfect number but it's too many on the stage) (Nadaddy: Too many people!!) Four's not enough. I mean three, it's just us. We already had that band.

Crouton: If it was just Chap Stique and Nate, they'd have to like adopt us to come into their band. They'd probably be called like... I don't know. (Soul Glow: Laser Tag!) Laser Tag or something, y'know? (Nadaddy: It'd be the Chap Daddy 5)

Soul Glow Activatur: Pretty much anything that has a beat to it we love. But that is a lot of music... (Crouton: Hey! I'm gonna take a nap while he lists all of those names) Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Rage Against The Machine, Depeche Mode, Gary Newman, (Nadaddy: Prince) Prince, big time Prince, Duran Duran, Talking Heads big time... Man we just pull from a lot of influences and it just all fits together. *The other guys jokingly raddle off random artist names*

Soul Glow Activatur: Soul Glow Activatur came from... (Phatty: TobyMac gave them to us) No. *laughter* It actually all started out as a tongue-in-cheek kinda thing that we did on stage and we were like, "This is hilarious." But our fans started calling us that and we were like "No, man 'this' is who I am!"... I can't give away my real identity right now on tape. (John: Solomon.) *Soul Glow glares at John and the guys collectively go "Ooo!"* This interview is OVER! *laughter* But y'know, people started calling us that. Soul Glow Activatur came from a movie called Coming To America and there's a hair care product people used called "Soul Glow"... (Phatty: Well people know his name now so he's fumblin' up) Basically Soul Glow, you put it on your hair and it jheri curls, but it's got to activate. So I got a lotta soul, it glows, and I'm the only one that can activate it! That's my name.

Phatty: My name is Phatty and I was a portly child growing up so my brothers tagged me with the name "Phatty" and it stuck. (John: That's not nice.) It's not nice. It scarred me! I still have bad dreams. (Crouton: He used to put knives through my drum heads!)

Nadaddy: I'll reveal my real identity... my name is Nate or Nathan. Y'know, a good Biblical name. So there's the "Na" part. "N-A," y'know? Last part is "daddy" and I'm not a daddy or anything, so that don't really go real well. (Soul Glow: Yeah, but you're Mack daddy!) I'm a MACK DADDY, WHAT! No, it's Nadaddy, just so all y'all know.

Crouton: Basically my name came from... Well, I'm not gonna lie. I was eating a gangster salad one day and I looked down and I saw a gangster crouton and I said, "Man, that's gangsta! I'm gon' name myself CROUTON!" So I made myself "Crouton"... with a hint of garlic. *laughter*

Chap Stique: Y'know, I was the newest guy in the band and when I first got in, they said "You gotta have a name" and so we went through some names and first we got was Teen Wolf to go with the 80's theme. I thought the coolest thing was that the record label actually had a meeting about it. (Soul Glow: They did. Maverick called us up) About whether or not this was the best marketing strategy or not. (Phatty: No, they just thought that we could come up with something "better.") So we changed it to "Laser Show." Laser Show was pretty cool, but then it just became apparent that I needed to be Chap Stique. It's always with me, it's always on my lips. (Soul Glow: Fans throw it at him now.) Fans throw it at me -- in a cool way. (Phatty: They come out and they throw lard at me.) (John: You'll never have to buy it again!) Exactly. I haven't bought it since I changed my name. (Soul Glow: You're glad you didn't name it like Tater Salad or something so they'd throw potatoes at us) (Crouton: People have been throwing croutons at me!) (Phatty: That'd be GREAT if they'd throw Soul Glow Activatur at you) *Amy removes several sticks of Chap Stick from her purse and everyone teases her that Chap Stique is her favorite of FF5* Sometimes I throw it into the audience. It's a give and take relationship, y'know? (Phatty: Yeah, we had to cue in another insurance policy because they had to write in another one for Chap Stick.)

Soul Glow Activatur: Speaking of insurance policies, the Gotee Showcase that you guys came out to last night -- it got sold out, thank you very much Jesus! -- we all happened to get hurt... and they were good injuries. Pretty good significant ones. If you could see right now, Nathan's cut up his hand pretty good... I mean "Nadaddy!" Crouton fell off his drums and busted up his knee really hardcore. (Crouton: *Groans* I'm hurting!) (Chap Stique: He was dancing on the drum throne) Chap Stique took a good spill trying to pull off a David Lee Roth move, so he hurt himself a little bit. Phatty cut himself. And Phatty hurt me incredibly much. I was bent over screaming onto the mic and he swung his bass around and the big meaty part of it hit me on the top of the head... as hard as he could. I know he was doing it on purpose! Just to get a show, trying to show off to TobyMac... again. No...

Phatty: One time I caught Nadaddy in the eye with one of my tuners. (Soul Glow: Almost ripped his eye out of his socket!) Almost ripped his eye out. (Nadaddy: I got a big cut and a black eye and everything... Rock n' roll, baby!) And Chap Stique caught me with the top of his guitar and it went from like my Adam's Apple up to my chin.

Soul Glow Activatur: Dude, whatever! Remember the time... We do this song called "Numb" where we do a lot of breakdancing or "attempt" to breakdance and we brought out this HUGE boombox at Creation East '05, put the boombox on stage and it fell over and some of the parts came out. Well some of those parts are very sharp. So he (Phatty) went to go do the centipede, and his hand landed on one. When he got up, it was bleeding like crazy and there's fat and guts hanging out of his hand... it was really cool. He had to get stitches.

Soul Glow Activatur: *The guys begin joking shouting out the names of girls they knew* "X-Girlfriend" is about... we actually made that song before a lot of relationship stuff started going downhill for us. So it was weird, cause we wrote it about other friends going through that stuff... (Phatty: And then lo and behold, it jinxed us!) and then it kinda happened to us... "Drama Queen" is a totally different thing. That is about some of the past jobs we've had to work. It's actually written about a guy and we had to change it to a girl, because it just... (John: Drama King.) Yeah, Drama King wouldn't work. (Amy: Unless you actually called the guy "queen") *A unanimous "Ohhhh!!" breaks out* Y'know, that's a total 'nother territory that you guys can handle on Jesus freak Hideout. (John: Yeah, I'm not sure that's a good idea.) But yeah, "Drama Queen" is about one of our bosses we had to work with and it was about him being two-faced, and we just didn't dig that. So we wrote a song about it.

Nadaddy: Well, it's hard to pick, y'know what I mean? I'd have to say... I'm doing the keys thing, I think I like "Lose Urself" cause it's real new wavey and I'm totally into the new wave sound thing. If I'm doing the tambourine thing, which is only one song... I am the pioneer of hardcore tambourinin' if y'all didn't know, you better recognize... and that would be "Earthquake."

Crouton: I think mine is still "Drama Queen." I love that song. I LOVE IT!! And... that's it.

Chap Stique: I think my fave is "Earthquake." I mean, you just give absolutely every bit of energy you have because it's almost always the last song and you know that if you die on that song, it'll be okay cause you won't have the rest of the set to play dead. It's normally the one where you get hurt the most, and where Nadaddy and I would normally fight during the song. (John: That wasn't serious fighting was it?) (Soul Glow: Yes it was.) It's only on that song we hate each other. (Crouton: *Puts his hands on their shoulders* Wait guys, wait. Don't fight... Ghostbusters.)

Soul Glow Activatur: My favorite song right now to play is "Love Addict." I like just everything about it. It's just fun to play. And it's got a little metal edge to it. I get to scream a bunch and dance around like an idiot and not play guitar which is a good thing to do.

Phatty: I probably have to say "Love Addict" and "Earthquake" would be my favorites right now. But, y'know, I like to play 'em all.

Crouton: Cause "Replace Me" replaced it.

Soul Glow Activatur: That's really it. Both labels didn't want thirteen songs, they wanted twelve songs, and we thought "Replace Me" was better than "Color Of Water."

Soul Glow Activatur: The Family Force 5 believes that we love all people and it doesn't matter what venue it's in, if it's in a club, or in a church. We love these people no matter what. We give them the same show, same message, same interaction, same way we're gonna hang out, no matter who they are - if they don't love Jesus, if they do love Jesus. Because that's the only way that we can reach everyone. And that's the way we're planting seeds in people who don't know Jesus. So that's kind of where our hearts lie on venues. It's not a big deal. I love it when a crowd's going crazy. Doesn't matter if it's a club or if it's at a Christian event. The thing is we're still worshipping God no matter what. So it doesn't matter what house we're in. That house is the Lord's house.

Soul Glow Activatur: Yes, we've actually lead a couple people to the Lord. We talked to this club owner in Ohio and he's like, "Man, I don't go to church at all and you guys didn't really seem that 'Christian,' but I know you are. Cause I can tell just by the way you guys were walking and stuff." And he said, "Is that right? I've never done any background checks on you so I don't know anything about your band but for some reason, that's what it seems like. Is that true?" And I'm like "Yeah, we love Jesus. That's what we believe in." He's like, "If more Christians were like you guys, that's something I'd really get into." And I said, "Man, you don't worry cause there's a whole movement of our kind of people that are more loving and more accepting of you immediately. You don't have to go to church, but if you want to learn more about this kind of stuff, hit us up with an email or give me a call on my cell phone." So there's those kinds of conversations that we're able to carry on with people that don't know Christ. We get those witnessing opportunities all the time at clubs. But, y'know, at the churches too. The thing is you can't let your guard down no matter what. It's like "Oh, I'm not gonna work as hard cause I'm in a church and all these people people are saved." It's not true. There are people there who are not saved.

Phatty: The approach, though, is a little different. It's about building a one on one relationship with the person and just kind of meeting them where they're at and just having the interaction of being able to talk to the person and be accessible to that person. Not being, "OK, I just got off stage, I gotta go over here..." You gotta spend time with them and then they'll hit you up on MySpace or something and we're able to talk to them there. And we get a lot of questions through our personal sites on MySpace and get a lot of time to talk to different people that way as well.

Soul Glow Activatur: I would say, in my life, God has been teaching me patience. We have to wait on certain things. Waiting on what He wants us to do. There are so many times when you're like, "God, could you just hurry up! Make 'this' happen or make 'this' happen" But, man, anytime I've ever done that, looking back on all of the cool things that have ever happened, it's all about His timing. Cause it really is. It boils down to He knows what's best for you. And although my selfish desires are like "I gotta be here at this time! God, if this doesn't happen, we're not gonna be a success!" Y'know... "I have to have a million-dollar Lamborghini as my car now, and if You don't bring it..." That's not what it's about. It's really waiting on Him and seeing what He's got. Because He's gonna roll out this plan that's gonna be awesome, because He's always provided for me. And I know if I stay obedient to Him, He always keeps his promises. And that's what's cool, man. I know He's got stuff in store for Family Force 5, and that's how He's personally been speaking to me... I don't know about the rest of these guys cause they're heathens. *Gets up and walks away* I'll see ya. *laughter*

Phatty: I'd probably say the same thing as him, but then also just living everyday as your last day. Cause you don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring. So make today count! *Jokingly runs to the window and pretends to jump out... followed by laughter* (John: You don't want to do that cause that's gonna be on their bill for the room...) (Soul Glow: Yeah, it would really mess with Gotee's insurance I guess that would.)

Chap Stique: For me personally, I just finished reading a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Letter and Papers from Prison." It's a really cool book, he's a preacher in Germany who was taken into a prison during Nazi Germany because of being suspected for being part of a plan to assassinate Hitler. And it's just a whole bunch of letters he writes between his family and one of his best friends and his fiancè, while he's in prison and it's incredible to see this guy's persistance and to see his optimism. Because he was just completely falsely accused of a lot of things and was living at a time when religion was the probably the most questioned thing, but it was on everbody's mind, y'know? Even moreso than it is today, I think. It was cool, because he kept talking about how he was growing more in prison than he ever grew as a minister. And don't get me wrong, there are things like church in our Christian surroundings, that are incredible, but he was finding things on his own and finding things through life itself. It was just a really cool book about persistance and optimism through the absolute worst conditions you can imagine.

Soul Glow Activatur: *laughs* So we have really bad conditions? Are you growing in this prison? *laughter*

Chap Stique: We got great conditions.

Crouton: Wow... let's see... *Phatty jokingly pretends to jump through the window again, followed by an outburst of laughter* (Chap Stique: It's the joke that keeps on giving.) This is Crouton and God always teaches me laughter. He teaches me to have a good time. He's teaching me perseverance right now and to be patient. But, laughter.

Nadaddy: For me, God's really teaching me how to appreciate the little things. I mean, you're on the road and you got clothes stackin' up that are soakin' wet and stank from last night's show, y'know. And they just kinda permeate the rest of your suite case. And you go to your hotel room and there's roaches in the bed. Stuff like that, y'know? More seriously, when you're home, you really get to appreciate just really small things like being able to go and hangout at a bonfire, or chat with friends that you've had for fifteen years or something like that. He's really teaching me to really appreciate each moment and stop being so preoccupied with what's going on in the future or what's coming next. It's kind of a 'stop and smell the roses' kind of thing on a more detailed level.

*Crouton starts singing "Kumbaya" and the guys join in... prompting Phatty to dive toward the window*

(Left to right: Phatty, John, Crouton, Amy, Xanadu, Soul Glow Activatur, Nadaddy, Chap Stique)