God Vs Hollywood: for KING & COUNTRY with Michael Knowles
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Join Michael Knowles as he sits down with the chart-topping band for KING & COUNTRY to delve into the heartfelt and inspiring journey behind their new movie, "UNSUNG." They discuss the impact of faith and family values in shaping their music and this cinematic venture, providing a fascinating contrast to the usual Hollywood storytelling.
- Yeah, well, boys, get in line. - I wanna make sure I get this right.
My guests, I want to get every number right here, my guests have Four Grammys, an American Music Award, a Billboard Music Award, 10 GMA Dove Awards, and 17 K-Love Fan Awards.
Their 13 number one songs have produced two billion career streams.
Now, I would like to point out, and I am not bragging, in 1995, I was awarded the most mature camper at the Bedford Hills Summer Camp.
So, look, I'm familiar with awards.
We all, you know, we all know about awards here.
My guests Joel and Luke Smallbone.
Gentlemen, thank you for coming on the show.
That might be the most unforgettable intro that I've ever had.
The camper one was what got me.
It was a good turn.
It's a good turn.
1995, what an era.
I don't want to brag.
I say it really in true humility.
By the way, I've left out a ton of your accomplishments too.
Your story is completely wild.
I was talking about all this music stuff, but actually I've invited you on to talk about this movie.
You have a movie coming out April 26th.
It is Unsung Hero, and it's about you and your crazy story and your crazy family story.
So tell everyone about it.
Well, it is a fascinating tale.
Luke and I were very young at the time, but our dad, speaking of music, was a concert promoter in Australia.
Lost what would be the equivalent of half a million dollars.
Lost the house, life savings, the car, everything.
Got offered a job in Nashville, and to sort of salvage a dream, Went to mum and said, what if we, you know, took our six kids, 16 suitcases, mum was six months pregnant and moved continents and only to arrive and lose that job.
And so with no way to get back to Australia, no car, no insurance, no way for our sister to be born in a hospital with a high risk pregnancy.
We found ourselves banding together, raking leaves, mowing lawns, Breaking child labor laws, probably.
And overcoming together.
And that's really where the story kind of picks up.
It kind of chronicles our parents and our sister, Rebecca St.
James, as she steps into music.
But as you mentioned, 1995.
This is even preceding that.
This is 1991.
It's a 90s film.
It's a film Let's celebrate mums and music and miracles and the local community coming together.
Luke produced it, I co-directed it, and I play our dad in the film, which I've dubbed a very expensive therapy session.
That is, I'm glad you're getting a return on your investment there, at least psychologically.
That's got to be the hardest type of role to play.
It's difficult to play any role, convincingly, but the layers of that, I can't even imagine.
Obviously, you guys have met all sorts of challenges in your career.
You mentioned seven kids, so I have to ask, Catholic or Mormon?
You know what's funny?
There's a joke in there where we come to the border patrol agent, and Joel's playing my dad.
He says, hey, there's six kids.
And the border patrol guy goes, you're Catholic?
So you know what?
Just Christian, which is Catholic.
Right?
At the end of the day, it kind of goes round and round, right?
So, yeah, you wouldn't believe it, but one of the famous quotes that we're actually using in the film is a Catholic phrase from Mother Teresa, all right?
Because I think so many people are looking to change the world.
Right?
And they want to change the world.
They think that they have to have a microphone.
They think they have to be like you.
They think they have to have influence, a stage.
But Mother Teresa says, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family.
And that's part of the reason why we made this movie.
Because we feel so strongly that family is that powerful.
It's just that powerful.
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So not to spoil the movie, but you know, that's pretty tricky circumstances to find oneself in.
A new immigrant in a country, no money, no job, ton of kids, one on the way, difficult pregnancy.
Without spoiling anything, how did your parents pull themselves out of that?
Well, maybe there'll be some spoilers in here, Mike.
But Lionsgate is putting this film on 2,800 screens across America, which is incredible.
But not only is the release date of this film, it celebrates their longevity of love, but it's also their 49th wedding anniversary.
And we didn't plan that.
That was Adam Fogelson.
So, man, their story is a testament to... Mom had found her dream.
She always wanted to be a mom.
And so she was living out her dream, and she really lifted up Dad and went literally and figuratively to the ends of the earth for him in search of his dream, which was to find himself in music, specifically Christian music.
And out of that, unexpectedly, there's another phrase in the film that says, your family is not in the way, they are the way.
Out of that was born Our sister, Rebecca St.
James, and her musical career, and then us with The King Country.
But I have to note that this is so much more than just our family.
I mean, we've always made a habit of telling stories and writing songs that were really close to our hearts, because we've always felt like the closer you go to your own heart, the further it reaches out to someone else's.
And that's our intent with this film.
The real unsung heroes of this film are mums.
The real unsung hero is family.
And we're just excited To make Family and Moms potentially the number one conversation in the United States coming into this weekend in the theaters.
I love it because first of all, the family is under attack in a way that it probably has never been in all of history.
I say that without hyperbole.
And so I love a movie that isn't even polemical, you know, about the political issue of the family, but just really celebrates family and the love between a husband and a wife, a love that naturally and With a little supernatural help, if we think of it sacramentally, becomes so real that it actually produces other people.
And this gets to something.
When I talk to my friends who are hesitant to have kids, slow to get married, and then, you know, I don't want to have kids, they live the dink lifestyle as long as they possibly can, and they say, well, I don't know if we can afford it.
I don't know if, you know, it doesn't totally work with my lifestyle of, Going to brunch and, I don't know, traveling to Europe or something.
And I just don't, can we afford it?
And my friend Andrew Clavin gave me this advice when I was, well, I wasn't going to have my first child.
My wife was.
I was somewhat involved in the process.
Yeah, you helped, right?
It was a good experience, right?
I had the most fun part in the whole process.
But Drew told me, when I was a little worried, I said, do I have enough money?
Do I have this, that?
He said, don't worry about it.
Kids are like little money bags.
You think that you're going to be impoverished.
You will not be impoverished by your kid.
You're going to work more.
You're going to figure out a way.
It is kids are going to add.
He said life is going to go into 3D.
You are not going to lose anything that is not worth losing when you have a kid.
And it just seems your family's story seems to speak to that in spades.
Man, I think this, you know, it's funny you say some of those things, you know, in the Bible, when it talks about blessing, occasionally it talks about financial blessing, but you know what it talks about the most?
If you want to be a blessed person, it's actually through kids.
It's an arrow in your quiver, right?
And I think for, you know, for mom and dad and for us as a family, we've gotten the gift of seeing the blessing of, you know, my brothers, man, there's seven kids, obviously, there's four, five boys, I got four brothers and then two sisters.
I mean, they're all my best friends.
You know, and so to be able to have family and have a close-knit family, we're a functionally dysfunctional family, mind you, because I think all families are dysfunctional.
It's just whether or not you fight for the word functionally in front of the dysfunction.
That's what health is, because family is complicated, but family is worth fighting for.
Family is just that powerful.
You look in a lot of places and people put a lot of faith in governments, but in my humble opinion, if you put a lot of faith and effort into family, if that was to become something that just took over nations, the government, it'll take care of itself.
There won't be any problems.
Right, because when we talk about politics and government, I guess now we always reduce it either down to the individual or we talk about the government, you know, just in Washington, D.C.
But as far as I'm concerned, and as far as classical political philosophy is concerned, the basic political unit is the family.
That's where politics starts.
That's how we all first learn to live together and figure out what we're really after in society.
Yeah, you're so right, Mike.
And that was honestly, that's why we're so we were very young when we moved.
But one thing we're so proud of to tell this story is that it's really those indelible years as, you know, kids that were shy of 10 years old, but we learned to compromise.
We learned to collaborate.
Our sister went out on the road on tour and we all piled into a 15-passenger van, broke more child labor laws, and we became the road crew, you know?
It set up the stage and did the background vocals.
And I believe that's why we're still in this as a family today.
It's not just Luke and me, it's a whole family affair.
So man, we're Hand in glove with you.
We're excited to put family on the silver screen and I just hope, our big hope and prayer this weekend is that this thing will rise.
We're in an interesting spot with, you know, this weekend in box office where There's a film, the challenger, if you will, to our film is a film called Challengers that is a hard R and kind of, I don't know.
Maybe it's a little raunchy.
We'll put it out.
And so you've got this balance of family being in a theater and then you've got, you know, these, these other ideals in the theater.
And so we hope that, um, so much so that we're calling tomorrow family day.
We hope that folks come out in droves and if they love their mom and if they love their family, that they'll, they'll show up in the cinemas this weekend.
I think we have the trailer for the movie.
Okay, stay close. stay close.
Let's go.
How y'all doing?
Are y'all from England?
Australia.
Australia.
Wish I had an accent.
Dad, I wrote a song.
Thought maybe we could ask her an audition.
Oh, that's great, honey.
Let's take it one step at a time.
Kay tells me you're a promoter.
You know someone looking for one.
Well, I may know somebody who should be.
She's been given a beautiful voice.
It's a miracle.
She's a special one, son.
Your family, they're not in the way.
They are the way.
There's no food, and we're almost out of money.
We need to make some changes.
Kids, we need your help.
This is everything we have.
And sometimes it's gonna grow, and sometimes it will shrink.
but it cannot be allowed to disappear.
I wonder if he's right.
Maybe I'm not meant to sing.
Or maybe you're not meant to sing other people's songs.
It's gonna be dangerous and scary.
And giving up, giving in, it's not an option.
Whatever your dream is, I know you can achieve it.
Please welcome, my big sister.
My dream is to be like you.
It always has been.
I want to record Dale.
- So do I. - Yeah, well, boys, get in line. - It does start to make sense when I hear a little bit of your story that you guys do everything, you know, and you sing and you've got all these kind of musical acts and won all these awards and then you make movies and you do this and I guess you mow lawn too. and you sing and you've got all these kind of One acquires a lot of skills when one is tested at a young age and really trying to scrape by.
How did you, you know, when you hear stories of Young people getting involved in the music business, or families getting involved in the music business.
The image that comes to my mind is, you know, the Jackson 5 or something, and all these just horrifically abusive, dysfunctional kinds of stories.
Did any of those pitfalls ever present themselves to you?
How do you navigate those waters, especially as a As a family in the industry.
Yeah, I think that, man, there's a lot to what you just said, right?
We've heard a lot of difficult stories about families working together.
And look, that will always remain, right?
For every good family story about a son coming and taking over the business, you're going to hear another one where it goes, you know, sideways.
But I think that the thing that has, you know, my wife Courtney and I, we've got four kids ourselves.
We're not Catholic, but we could almost be, right?
You're on your way.
What we've talked about in our family is if you want your family to stay in some sort of harmony and unison, you have to learn how to do two things.
You have to learn how to resolve conflict, and I think you have to practice forgiveness.
Because the truth is, even Joel and I, We're very, very close.
But we are going to come on opposite sides of some sort of issue.
And if I hold to my guns and he holds to his guns, you're going to end up in something that's kind of nuclear.
And that's when you start to realize your family is always kind of on the precipice of, I don't want to say breaking up, because your family is hopefully a little stronger than that.
But you realize that family is that fragile at times.
And the other thing I've realized about family is someone's always got to go first.
So, if there's a strainment between a father and a son, someone has to have the courage to say, hey dad, can we go chat about something?
Or a dad saying, hey son, can we go and chat about something?
You have to work at resolving conflict because struggle is inevitable.
It will find every single one of us.
But it's what you do to overcome disappointment, what you do to overcome struggle, to use my dad's phrase, that separates the men from the boys.
It's a great bit of advice, because sometimes you hear this very glib phrase, especially as it regards marriage, you'll hear, happy wife, happy life.
But that's kind of the cheap synthetic version of what you're talking about.
So basically, oh, if there's a conflict, just kind of ignore it, let it go, don't dig into it, it's fine.
But, you know, over time, that tends to build up resentment.
And then, you know, I don't know, someone eats the wrong bag of potato chips and it's World War III.
It's a huge blow up because there's so much that's beneath it.
But I think you're so right in my own experience of marriage.
I haven't been married that long.
And of family broadly.
There has to be an agreed-to process for resolving conflict where you're all on board.
And then that point of forgiveness and charity and just always, you know, willing the good of the other and trying to be as gracious as one can be, even when conflict arises.
Those two ingredients absolutely indispensable and you look at how broken the family is in America today.
This is not just, you know, mamby-pamby sort of, you know, nice saccharine advice.
This is urgent advice to resolve a major social problem.
Well said, Mike.
I feel like the, you know, I love that you're, I'm 10 years into marriage.
How long have you been married for?
About, I should have been quicker on the answer now.
I hope my wife isn't watching this right now.
I guess coming up on six years.
Okay, there you go.
Hey, you were covered.
So, you know, marriage is the great equalizer and the great sanctifier, right?
And you asked about our parents and how they made it through and how we made it through.
Honestly, one of the key components to their marriage is that they did actually, they were fortified as a couple.
I've seen a lot of marriages sort of pin kids against each other or pin other family members against each other.
But our parents, to this day, they will fight for each other beyond anyone or anything else.
And I think there was such great... two of seven kids, man.
We were economically unsafe, we were financially unsafe, we were literally physically unsafe at points, but we felt safe emotionally, spiritually, relationally inside their love.
And it's because they were safe with each other.
And I think that's another sort of trickle down of the issue here.
No, you're probably right.
Happy wife, happy life is not the truest sentiment of the statement.
But I do think, you know, A happy, beautiful marriage where you're best friends and you're in this thing together and you understand that this is the one institution that God passed down to humanity.
Everything can sort of follow out from there, all your relationships, including the relationships with your kids.
And we're, man, we're just, we live it in different ways, Luke and me and the rest of the kids, but we're really proud of the fact that, again, tomorrow being 49 years for our parents, they have modeled that idea of just tenacious, Longevity and consistent choosing one another against all odds.
When I think about this with my grandparents' marriage, they were married 69 years before my grandpa died.
Six kids, you know, the whole shebang.
And I say they had a kind of tyrannical normality to them.
They were absolutely determined to the point of death To have a good family and a good marriage and to do the right thing and to, you know, love one another.
And it really pays off.
A great way to, you know, commemorate this providential release date that coincides with the anniversary is for everyone out there to go and see the movie Unsung Hero.
It's got a rather wide release.
2,800 theaters is terrific.
So make sure, look it up, go out there and find it.
Gentlemen, thank you both for coming on and I have no doubt that you'll win many more awards for this and all of your endeavors into the future.
Hey, man, if I get a camping award for taking my son and he like survives the night, that'll be my greatest achievement.
Hey, thank you, Mike, for having us.
And so the marketing people don't kill me.
If you love the 90s, if you love your mom, if you love movies and you love miracles, go to unsunghero.movie is where I told all the information is for Showtimes and all that.
We'll see you.
We'll see you in the cinemas.
unsunghero.movie.
Go get your tickets, and in the meantime, I will see you all later.
