Relient K: Let no song 'B' left behind

Relient K vocalist/guitarist Matthew Thiessen has a matter-of-fact view about holiday albums, specifically his band's release, "Let It Snow Baby ... Let It Reindeer," which was re-released Oct. 7.

"Christmas comes around every year, so you might as well put the record out every year," Thiessen said with a laugh during a recent phone interview.

"Because I'm not into putting out the same record every year, we're going to tack a couple more songs onto it this year. We'll probably tack more songs onto it next year. It's just this whole idea that we had for our Christmas catalog, pun intended: Let it snowball every year and add to it."

In between tours, the Christian popsters recorded three new tracks -- "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Silver Bells" and "Oh Holy Night." CDs come with a card enabling fans to download the additional songs for free.

However, Relient K is now on tour in support of "The Bird and the Bee Sides," a collection of unreleased tracks, some new and some from the band's vault. The album's release was basically out of necessity.

 "We had one album left on our contract with our first record deal we signed in '98," said Thiessen, who will marry in the Detroit area next year.

"We had 20 B-sides just sitting around the cutting room floor. We chose 13 of those songs and put them on the record. With that mentality, we said, 'Let's throw a couple new songs on there too so it's not just B-sides.' We ended coming up with 13 new songs as well."

The 26-song album is selling for $10 at shows, he said. "That's a pretty good deal for 26 songs. It's something we did for the summer. We do like to try and put out new material once or twice a year if we can. It fits the bill for that."

Thiessen explained he and the rest of the band -- guitarist Matthew Hoopes, bassist John Warne, guitarist Jonathan Schneck and drummer Ethan Luck -- are unsure for which label they're going to record their next album. They were previously signed to Capitol via Gotee.

"There's definitely a lot of talk of re-signing and reformatting the whole contract," Thiessen said. "There's talk about being able to take over an independent record label of our own, being able to put out our material and have it be a subsidy of Gotee which is our former label. But nothing's signed yet so I can't really confirm anything. We'll announce it when we can."

Christian Music News Source