Considered Rubbish not the average traditional Christian band

Although the members of Considered Rubbish think of themselves as a Christian band, they don't try to preach with their music.

Lead singer Drew Wilson said they take influence from bands that play the same kind of music as Rubbish.

"It's a weird thing to be a Christian band right now," he said. "A lot of people hear that and think 'Oh, they'll suck,' and others really perk up when you mention it. We draw inspiration from bands like Thrice and Switchfoot. They are incredible writers but they aren't trying to preach to you. They just really have thought provoking lyrics and that's really what we're going for here."

Considered Rubbish is made up of four guys who came together to make great music. Members Tyler Peppard, CJ Mobley, Justin Pohlmann and Wilson are currently working on their as yet unnamed second album. Each brings a different influence to their songs, and they hope it shows.

"Justin is originally from Louisiana and is our drummer," Wilson said. "He's been a really incredible drummer from the start. He has a really interesting style that really stands out. CJ, who is my cousin, plays bass. He's the youngest member of the band at 19 and goes to college in Tyler. He and Justin have a harder sound, and it really makes whatever I do on guitar sound like it has a hard edge. He's an incredible musician who can play guitar, drums, anything really. Tyler is one of the guitarists and is probably one of the best that I've ever had the opportunity to work with. And I sing lead and mainly play rhythm guitar. I feel like I'm the middle ground - I like hard music but I also like acoustic stuff. When four people come together to make a song, you're going to hear the influences from all of them and hopefully you'll hear that in our songs."

Rubbish has had the opportunity to play with some well-known bands but also with up-and-coming ones as well.

"Over the past couple of years, we've played with The Afters, we opened up for KJ-52, and we played with a really cool band called Midnight to Twelve who has been featured on MTV-2's up-and-coming bands," Wilson said.

Considered Rubbish originally formed in 2000 and played worship music but as members have come and gone, their sound has changed and they've started to play more original music. Their first CD was called "Break the Glass."

"It was just seven songs. It was recorded in a half home studio kind of thing in Lufkin and it was done rather quickly," Wilson said with a smile. "The songs were ones that we had played for a while. It was very raw and not well produced in the sense that we just threw down the chords and went. It's not really the most intensely musical album in the world but we had fun doing it."

Wilson said he loves many things about being part of Rubbish.

"The coolest part, I think, is to see something that starts in my head and to see it come from a tune that I may hum or play a guitar part to the intermediate stages and now to see it recorded," he said. "It's like, 'Wow, this is a song that started with a little hum or that guitar part that I probably recorded on my phone, and now it's a song.'"

Another one of his favorite parts is playing live.

"Really the live stuff is so much fun," he said. "You can't beat it when you have a good crowd. Just being able to rock out and play some good music in front of people and just act dumb, it's just a blast."

Peppard echoes Wilson's sentiments about playing live.

"Growing up, I played in church where you have to stand really still and play the right stuff and it can't be too loud," he said. "With these guys, they're really changing the shape of Christian music. It's like, they have the message but they're not afraid to rock out, too. It's fun to have that outlet that I can go and just rock out on stage and jump around like an idiot."

Wilson said their new album is going to be different from the first in many ways.

"With this new album, I like to have stuff that's kind of quieter and pop rock, stuff on the hard edge, and also stuff in the middle," he said. "The process has been taking some songs we've been playing for a while, some songs we've never played before and lots of things in between and just patching stuff together. It's much better produced than the first in that it's a lot more technical and we are trying to be more intricate with the way we are constructing all the songs. We are just trying to make it a lot more musical that the last one."

He said this CD has a lot of cool moments, and that it's going to be fun to see how people react. Wilson said with this album, they just wanted to make something fun and easy to sing along to.

One thing Considered Rubbish is trying to do is grow the music scene in Nacogdoches and surrounding areas.

"Not a whole lot of music comes through here, but we're looking for opportunities to open up for bands and take our scene a little bigger with this new album," Wilson said.

"We're trying to do more outside and around Nacogdoches because as we know, there's not a huge music scene here."

For more information about Considered Rubbish, visit their website at www.consideredrubbish.org or their MySpace at www.myspace.com/consideredrubbish.