The Christian pop music band We the Kingdom was on a roll in late 2019.
They were riding high on the chart success of their twin debut singles — “Dancing on the Waves,” released in August 2019, and the followup breakout hit “Holy Water,” which dropped in September 2019 and reached No. 6 on the Hot Christian Songs Charts.
The fledgling group had big plans to introduce themselves to the world in a series of concerts with Christian music superstar Zach Williams that was set to start in March 2020. They were a week into the journey when ...
Well, you can easily guess where this is going.
The pandemic became a thing and We the Kingdom, along with the world, put on the brakes.
But the downtime in early 2020 allowed them to finish their first album “Holy Water,” which debuted at No. 4 on Billboard’s Top Christian Albums Charts when it was released in August 2020.
The album went on to earn the family band a pair of Grammy nominations this year and a GMA Dove Award last month for Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year.
And all of this kind of spins the heads of We the Kingdom’s members, who never really imagined that a songwriting session at a summer youth camp in 2018 would lead to soldout arena and megachurch concerts including at Tucson Music Hall on Saturday, Nov. 6.
“This is so overwhelming for us,” said Andrew Bergthold. “We were making music in a basement and then suddenly ... when the first song connected with people, it was more like a stamp of approval and became our full-time job from there.”
We the Kingdom is a family affair: brothers Scott and Ed Cash, who is an award-winning producer and songwriter; Ed’s kids Franni Rae and Martin Cash; and Bergthold, a longtime family friend.
The Nashville, Tennessee-based band formed in 2018 when they were pitching in on a Christian youth camp run by Scott Cash. The members were coming off a traumatic year that didn’t necessarily test their faith so much as their trust. Franni Rae Cash, in a phone interview last month from Nashville, described it as a case of spiritual abuse that left them all pretty shaken.
“We kind of almost had to relearn who God was, who Jesus was,” she said of the situation, which she said is sadly too common today. “It took a toll on our mental health, our families. The five of us had had that shared experience together and we were able to process it together.”
And it was in that processing stage that We the Kingdom was born.
After an evening worship session at the youth camp, the five got together and someone brought a mandolin. They started sketching out a verses and lyrics that they imagined the Lord would say to the kids in their charge.
What they came up with was the inspiring “Dancing on the Waves” with a message that we’re not alone in our times of trouble: “Don’t be afraid/I am your strength/We’ll be walking on the water/Dancing on the waves.”
“Having just gone through a lot, we were in just a really tender place,” Bergthold said during that interview last month. “it really felt like He was kind of singing this song over us.”
“I think the first time we played that song, something shifted for us,” said Scott Cash. “It took us awhile to unpack that, but the first time we played that song we felt something special in that moment.”
In addition to songs from their debut album, We the Kingdom at Saturday’s Tucson show, might also slip in a cut or two from their just-released Christmas EP “A Family Christmas.”
“It’s been a real gift to play for all these people,” Ed Cash said. “We’re excited to be out.”
