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Flyleaf is one of those bands that struggling musicians in small towns like to remember when times get tough. The hard-working, hard-rockin' quintet from the Belton/Temple area started out playing local clubs until a gig at South by Southwest led to the band signing with Octone Records. Their 2005 self-titled album went platinum, and they recently opened for Korn on a European tour.

Flyleaf, which is fronted by female vocalist Lacey Mosley, isn't playing the NCAA Final Four Big Dance as previously announced, but you can still catch them at Sunken Garden Theatre on Friday, April 4.

210SA caught up with guitarist Jared Hartmann, 22, as he was relaxing at home in Temple a week before the show.
 

There seems to be this debate about whether you're a Christian band or not. What's up with that?

Well, we're all Christian in the band. We all love Jesus. But even among us there's debate if we're a Christian band or not. The only reason I don't really say we're a Christian band is, like, if I told someone that, they might immediately be turned off. There's kind of a negative connotation with saying you're a Christian band. People might not think you're good or just think you're fake or something. So that's why I just say, we're a band and we love Jesus, and that's what we stand for.

You do have several songs about faith. Has that helped you or hurt you?

I think that it's helped us. We get a lot of letters and people come up to us and they'll say, “the album really helped me through this time.” And that's the reason we do it, because none of us would probably do it if we didn't hear about those stories from people.

Are you working on a new album?

Hopefully we will soon. We just got done with our European tour. So now we're all home, doing stuff with our houses and just relaxing for a little bit. We're going to shoot a music video in a couple of days for our new single (“Sorrow”). Then we'll go on a two-month tour with Seether around the states, and then hopefully we'll start working on a new album.

You recently went to Rwanda. Tell us about that.

It was amazing. We went with World Vision (a Christian relief and development nonprofit). We went and we saw what our money was doing. We sold T-shirts and CDs on past tours to support World Vision, and me and my wife sponsor two kids in Uganda. We met this one lady who had AIDS herself but she took care of like 22 other people that had AIDS worse than her, which was really cool. We met some kids that had AIDS. That was really sad and really heavy. We met a lot of the genocide survivors and went to a couple of memorials. It just kind of encouraged all of us to rethink what we think's important. These people, they're just trying to survive. It was inspiring and life-changing.
 

Jessica Belasco | 210SA contributor