Higher Note Blog

Jason Dunn, front­man and founder of Hawk Nel­son, is leav­ing the band in May. Hawk Nel­son is cur­rently on tour with the Rock and Wor­ship Road­show, which hits Col­orado Springs on Sun­day, Feb. 19. | Pho­tos by Eliza Marie Somers

Hawk Nel­son front­man and founder Jason Dunn is leav­ing the Chris­t­ian pop/punk in May to pur­sue his own project. I had a chance to chat with Hawk gui­tarist Jonathan Stein­gard, who has been with the band since 2004,  this past week about the band and what the future holds for Cana­dian punk rock­ers. Hawk Nel­son is per­form­ing with The Rock & Wor­ship Road­show, which hits Col­orado Springs on Sun­day, Feb. 19 at the World Arena. No tick­ets required. $10 at the door, which open at 6 p.m.

Higher Note: You guys are all from Ontario. How did you get together as a band, and how long have you been with the guys?

Jonathan Stein­gard: I replaced the orig­i­nal gui­tar player, who departed right after their first CD, so basi­cally I’ve been with the band since the beginning.

We all grew up in south­ern Ontario, and we were all in dif­fer­ent bands at the same time. My cousin was actu­ally in a band with Jason and I was in another band.  We were all in high school  just hav­ing fun and goof­ing off.

HN: Trevor McNevan of Thou­sand Foot Krutch and FM Sta­tic, who is also from Ontario,  helped you get started. How did that rela­tion­ship start?

JS:  Trevor McNevan was in group at the same time –TFK — and a few years ahead of us play­ing in the States. He really took the band under his wing — help­ing up with song­writ­ing … He was hugely, hugely influ­en­tial. We’re still friends; we call on him a lot.  He’s gen­uinely a great per­son.  He wrote a lot of the songs on our first two/three records.

“Jason is grow­ing up in his own way. And that is some­thing dif­fer­ent than the rest of us. You can’t be effec­tive as a band if you all don’t want the same things.” — Jason Steingard

HN: You’ve been together as a band since you were in high school, how has your music evolved over the years?

JS: We are all approach­ing our 30s. It’s kinda dif­fer­ent approach­ing 30. It changes the way you think about your music and mak­ing music.  It’s funny, now a major­ity of our fans are younger than us. But we’ve been super blessed, and we are thank­ful we’ve been a band for almost 10 years, we fully real­ize that’s a long time.

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Grow­ing up in a “Blood neigh­bor­hood” in Den­ver, LeCrae wanted to emu­late the gang mem­bers that roamed his streets and lived life on the edge of prison. Raised by a sin­gle mother, LeCrae looked to these gang mem­bers as role models.

Now, at age 30, the Chris­t­ian hip-hop artist, who will be play­ing in Col­orado Springs on Sun­day at the World Arena ($10, doors 6 p.m.), is influ­enc­ing main­stream urban musi­cians along with a gen­er­a­tion of young men with a mes­sage of hope.

Just this week, LeCrae left The Rock & Wor­ship Road­show tour to return to his home in Atlanta to help a friend deal with the death of Whit­ney Hous­ton at the Grammy Awards on Saturday.

“I have a writer friend who writes for Ali­cia Keys and other big stars, who is hav­ing a hard time deal­ing with this (Houston’s death),” LeCrae said. “It’s been very painful for him. He was at a Grammy party in the same hotel, and the party just kept going even though peo­ple knew the police were upstairs. They were like, ‘Oh, she may be alive, she may be dead.’ But the party didn’t stop. ‘It’s the Gram­mys. The Gram­mys must go on. This is our time.’ He’s the main rea­son I came off the road to help him get through this.

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