Jonathan Jackson: Well, we spent the year working on the Not Alone EP as well as writing a lot. I think we got close to 50 songs in that span in between EP's. We also began playing shows over the past 10 months, including playing with CCM artist Danny Gokey and NBC's "The Voice" star Matthew Schuler from season 5 this summer. It was definitely a busy 10 months!

Jonathan: I think there's appeal for getting music out to fans and letting that music be the highest quality possible. When you release an EP, you can really focus on 5 of your best songs that you can get out to fans a lot more quickly than a regular 10-12 song project. It's also really expensive to make a full-length record these days. If you know any labels who would want to help, we would be more than happy to make one. ;)

Jonathan: We had several of our friends help out with the production on this project! Riley Friesen (Family Force 5, Jordan Feliz, Building 429) was on J. Hall (Young The Giant, Abandon Kansas) and our good friend Michael Sanders (formerly of Full Circle Music). These guys are all killer and we loved working with them on this project.

Jonathan: Glad you dig the tune! Yeah, the bridge came after everything else was written; it kinda just flowed and made a lot of sense for the song!

Jonathan: "Wasteland" definitely has a different vibe from the rest of the songs. It's one of our favorites from the EP and we feel like it speaks to where our culture is at in so many different ways: negativity on Social media, brokenness in our world -- it really feels like a wasteland sometimes, and without Jesus it really is. We felt like the song was an appropriate and accurate part of any Christian's story. Life is full of ups and downs and we didn't wanted to exclude the "down" in our story from the EP.

Jonathan: We've been playing all spring and summer and we'll see what the future holds for this fall!

Jonathan: Our goal with these songs was to give people hope and a clear picture of The Gospel as well as the ups and downs of the Christian life. Songs like "Wasteland" and "Believe" deal with the harder questions in life that many people wrestle with: Is God really there? Do I really believe? And songs like "Living for Love" and "Shine On" look at the lighter side of life and are an expression of the joy that we have as believers. The Christian life isn't all up or all down, it's both: hills and valleys, light and dark. We wanted to deal with both for this project.

Jonathan: We love this EP. It represents a lot of hard work, deep conversations about life, faith, and the hope that we have in Jesus. I think that because there is so much "music" available today that we can take music for granted and tend to forget that no matter how big or small, good or bad, music is an expression of and a reflection of our hearts, our story, and our lives. Whether we like it all or not, I think we can still appreciate the honesty, hard work, and heart that goes in to making any album. We're thankful and grateful for the opportunity to have been able to put this project out!