Today finds the second major release of Cool Hand Luke, a unique band in
today's music scene. Most of the songs on their newest release, The Fires Of
Life, which releases this week, are over five minutes long. All of them
feature beautiful piano and guitar with touching lyrics. And where else have
you heard of a band whose lead singer also plays drums? Yes, this band is
different, but in this case, different is good. Check out our great
interview with them below.

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COOL HAND LUKE INTERVIEW
by Kim Flanders

cMW: Your music does not fit into the "radio friendly" category. Sometimes I
wonder if the definition of "radio friendly" will ever change. What do you
think?

Mark: We have been talking a lot about that today. I honestly do not think
it is going to change that much. It is just going to take people not relying
on radio quite so much to find out about music. To me, I think the standards
for Christian radio is a lot more narrow than general market radio, which I
guess is neither here nor there. Our songs tend to be straying further and
further away from being three and a half minute pop songs. I don't really
see any new trends of radio music changing. It seems like people keep
recycling the same formulas. I'd like to think that maybe it will change,
but it hasn't in a really long time. I think we are just going to have to
rely on word of mouth and other avenues of music besides radio.

cMW: The new album, The Fires of Life has more piano. What led to this
decision? Will we hear this on the live tours?

Mark: Since I am the drummer and the singer, as far as the music goes, I
don't really have the melodic input into our songwriting process unless I
hum something, which is what I have done in the past. I have been interested
in piano and have been playing just for fun. It ended up when I would come
up with a melody or a lyric I would put piano to it instead of trying to hum
it to the guys. Because that is how the song was presented, a lot of times
that is what the song ended up being. It was structured around a piano part.
So that is why there is piano on the new record. I think that will be a
consistent thing from now on because it seemed to work well. We are praying
and looking for a piano player right now and we do intend on taking one out
on the road and have piano live. We are just waiting to figure out who that
is.

cMW: Your guitarist recently left to pursue other interests. I have noticed
a lot of changes recently with so many bands. What helped make your decision
to replace your guitarist rather than calling it quits?

Mark: Jason gave us a good six months of notice before leaving the band, so
it gave Brandon and I a lot of time to think and pray about it. Brandon and
I actually did not even discuss it at all it at first I think because we
just wanted to pray and find out, "Ok God, what are you doing? Are you
wanting us to continue this?" Because we did not want to talk with each
other and get ourselves—you can talk yourself into things and we just wanted
to make sure we were waiting on God. I honestly thought the band would break
up at first, but after praying about it, Brandon and I both felt like God is
using the band and we would like to continue doing it. We felt like that is
what we are called to do.

The first conversation we had about it, Chris's name came up immediately
because we had known him for a few years. His heart was in line with
ours—and what our ministry is about. And we knew that he was a really
excellent guitar player. So we approached him about it and asked him to pray
and over the next few months. God just started lining things up and making
it clear. It ended up being a really smooth transition. The first time we
practiced with Chris he knew all the songs that we played—literally better
than we did. In fact, he had to correct us on a few things where we weren't
playing like the record!

Read the rest of the Cool Hand Luke interview at cMusicWeb.com:
http://cmusicweb.com/modernrock/coolhandluke/interview.shtml

Find out more about Cool Hand Luke at cMusicWeb.com:
http://cmusicweb.com/modernrock/coolhandluke


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AVAILABLE TUESDAY, MAY 25 (at cMusicWeb.com or your local music store)

PURCHASE THIS MUSIC AND MORE AT GRASSROOTSMUSIC.COM:
http://www.grassrootsmusic.com/?associateid=249

THE FIRES OF LIFE - COOL HAND LUKE
One of Christian music's true artistic groups, Cool Hand Luke does not bow
to the rest of the industry's trends but insteads crafts epic, emotional
rock. Although this PICK OF THE WEEK is not for everyone, we highly
recommend you give them a listen or two.

FOUND - TODD PROCTOR
>From the label that brings worship artist Rita Springer comes the debut of
worship artist Todd Proctor. Proctor has been worshipping for almost a
decade and sings new worship songs together with a couple of classics. The disc
also includes apperances by Tim Hughes and Crystal Lewis.

SONGS 4 WORSHIP: FE - VARIOUS
The Songs 4 Worship series expands to Spanish-language worship with this
release.


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