Known for honest songs that tell personal stories of freedom in Christ, Big Daddy Weave fans have long admired the band for their real-life, real-person openness. With songs like “My Story,” “The Lion and the Lamb,” “Overwhelmed,” “Redeemed,” and from their current album, “Alive,” “I Know,” and “All Things New,” Big Daddy Weave has become one of the most beloved bands in Christian music.

Millions have taken their anthems of Jesus’s chain-breaking love as their own and sung along to songs about the radical act of redemption. The men of Big Daddy Weave, Mike Weaver (lead vocals, guitar), Jeremy Redmon (guitar, vocals), Joe Shirk (saxophone, keys, vocals) and Brian Beihl (drums), found themselves needing those themes of comfort and assurance at the beginning of 2022. Founding member and Mike’s brother, Jay Weaver, went to be with the Lord on January 2, 2022.

In the first few days, the group wondered how they could go on. After Jay’s funeral and testimony after testimony of how Jay and the group have been used, the question became, how could we not go on?

Big Daddy Weave is answering that call to minister through music and word both live and in new songs and recorded music being created now. The band’s openness to go through whatever doors God opens for them has kept them going since their early days as students at the University of Mobile. Their spirit of dedication to their calling and their craft shows up
in everything they do.

“We challenge each other about what we’re going do with that,” says Mike, “saying, we’re alive and we’re here. How are we going to use this time?”

Big Daddy Weave’s testimony is about a deep and personal faith in Jesus, no matter the circumstances. It’s one thing to sing about trusting God in the midst of trials, but the men of Big Daddy Weave have learned what it means to truly live by faith and to trust in a God who makes all things new.

When he was an 18-year-old youth group kid, Austin French drew the short straw for his church’s youth-led Sunday service. He was prepared to play guitar and lead worship, something he was comfortable doing. Instead, he was assigned to deliver the message. Wracked with nerves, Austin searched the Bible to find something he could teach. He landed on Luke 7, the story of Jesus interrupting a funeral. The story is significant because for spiritual teachers of the day, participating in a funeral would make them ceremonially unclean. When Jesus saw a funeral procession going by, He ignored the custom, went and touched the coffin and said, “Arise.”

“It’s a parallel for our own lives,” Austin shares. “We are all dead in our sin, without a hope or a savior. Jesus says to us, get up, wake up sleeper.”

Austin’s newest project, Wake Up Sleeper, is inspired by that early sermon, a reminder that Jesus is ever present in whatever situation we might be facing. With catchy hooks and impassioned, Spirit-fueled lyrics, Austin hopes to inspire those who may have become disillusioned with Christianity or perhaps have left the faith altogether, something he’s all too familiar with himself.

“I grew up in church, was surrounded by church culture, but I hated Christians for a long time,” Austin says. “Our family was the family that pretended to be perfect on Sunday but was falling apart behind closed doors. As an eight-year-old boy, I was living two different lives, expected to be perfect on Sunday and then living in fear at home.”

It was at a church music camp at the age of 13 where Austin’s life was changed forever. He went to camp to learn to play guitar, hoping to impress girls. Instead, Austin heard this message from one of the camp leaders: Don’t judge Jesus on the broken people He came to save. The words described his life perfectly. He’d been judging Jesus for his own family’s brokenness, being hardened by the people around him whose faith was anything but authentic. Austin made the decision there at camp to not only commit to music, but to follow Jesus with his whole life. “I knew I wanted music to be a part of my life, but I also knew I wasn’t going to do it to get girls. I wanted to write music for broken people.”

He’s stayed true to that first conviction, writing songs filled with a joyful energy that calls all people, believers and unbelievers alike, to open their hearts to God’s amazing grace. Title track “Wake Up Sleeper” challenges listeners to be fully alive with Jesus. Drawing on the sermon he delivered as a teenager, the song speaks

directly to anyone sleepwalking through life. There’s a rich sincerity in his voice, a lived-out testimony, as he sings wake up sleeper / come to the light / Christ is alive / death don’t live here anymore.

“Rest for Your Soul,” is a song written from a place of personal exhaustion. Dad to three kids ages five and under, rest is hard to come by on a good day. Every available moment is filled with the constant needs of his young children. While wrestling with bone-deep weariness, Austin came across Matthew 11:28, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” He wrote “Rest for Your Soul,” trusting that his heavy burdens weren’t meant to be carried alone.

“All of us can find our spot in that, needing rest,” Austin says. “But He says, come to me and I will give you rest. We don’t have to wonder if it will happen, because it’s something He’s said He will do.”

“Jesus Can,” a vibey story song about his growing up years, is Austin at his most vulnerable and most redeemed. Writing the song brought up so much pain (and ultimately healing) from his past, he decided to expand the idea into a book. “I’m an artist whose life has been radically saved through a very desperate situation,” Austin says. “That’s the goal of the book and this song, to share my history and my story. When you think you can’t make it out, Jesus can make a way.”

One of the brighter spots on the project is a cover of “Ooh Child,” originally recorded by The Five Stairsteps. The recording came about in response to the 2020 pandemic. Austin was on tour with Winter Jam, a dream since he was a boy, when everything began shutting down due to COVID-19. Things were so uncertain, and Austin was overwhelmed with worry about what was going to happen to his family and his career. “When I listened to this song,” he says, “it brought back joy. I knew my circumstances weren’t going to last forever, that I didn’t have to believe in fear. God was working all things together for my good. If that was true, this song was true. Things are gonna get easier, better, brighter. This isn’t the end.”

It’s an apt addition to the project and fits perfectly into Austin’s primary message, a message that’s carried through on every track - lean on God through the hard times, let Him carry the heavy burdens, choose to be alive in Him. As much as Wake Up Sleeper is an autobiographical story of growing up and finding God, Austin hopes it’s also a legacy for his children, each song is a heart-filled encouragement that the best it yet to come.

In the three years since her debut release Overflow, singer/songwriter Hannah Kerr has walked through a formative season, navigating college and young adulthood and the challenges that coincide with figuring out who you really are. The road has not always been easy, but on the other side, Hannah seems to have found her voice.

“I feel like God really grew me so much as a human being, not just as an artist,” says Hannah, reflecting on the last four years she spent at Belmont University where she received a degree in Christian Leadership in May of 2019. “I understood more about him, I understood more about myself and went deeper into my faith in a way that I hadn’t before.”

Overflow, which Hannah released when she was just 19 years old, was a strong debut, including radio hits like “Warrior” and ASCAP Christian Award-winning “Your Love Defends Me,” co-written with Matt Maher. With the successful release of her Christmas album soon after, you got the sense that Hannah Kerr was not an up and coming artist, but rather an artist who had already up and come. But Hannah had more growing to do—a process she chronicled through her songwriting on her 2019 EP, Listen More. The result is an EP that is genuine, honest and vulnerable with a new, fresh sound that’s a little more pop, a little more worship, a little more Hannah.

“I feel like I now know what I want to sound like, who I am as an artist, and I’m excited to share that with people,” says Hannah.

“Vulnerability comes with being more confident in who I am and being more confident in who God is,” says Hannah, “that God can handle the messy parts of me, and God can handle all of me. I don’t just have to show him the best parts or the pretty parts, but I can show him everything.”

Being where she is, growing into who she is, the release of more music will reintroduce Hannah as an artist who has grown and who has rooted more deeply into her sound, her voice and her purpose. It is truly a new chapter for Hannah as an artist and as a person, and now listeners will get to come on the journey where, in her words, she is “figuring out who God is, and in the process, really figuring out who I am.”

-Bio by Andrea Lucado