Music
33Miles is a band from Franklin, Tennessee. They began playing in Nashville and signed to INO Records, who released the band’s debut album, 33Miles, in 2007. The album peaked at #8 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers albums chart and #16 on its Top Christian Albums chart. Group members Jason Barton (lead vocals), Chris Lockwood (guitar/vocals) and Collin Stoddard (keys/vocals) were taking a risk, giving their dreams a shot when they released their self-titled debut less than two years ago.
Validation was seemingly instant. Concerts at more than two hundred churches nationwide ensued, and radio spun several of the band’s songs into hits. Journalists also took notice, calling these humble guys “a talented and devoted group of performers who possess some amazing gifts for music” (InFuze Magazine). Soon enough, 33Miles was a Gospel Music Association Dove Award nominee for New Artist of the Year.
Now, One Life, their latest CD, reveals the heart of a group even more intent than before on loving the church with transparency. Committed family men who are as fun to meet personally as they are to hear in song, each member of 33Miles is married, and two have children. They’ve kept a constant presence at home and still managed to put 120,000 miles on the touring van over the past year, not to mention the thousands traveled by air.
The road isn’t always easy (ask Chris about the car that crashed into their dressing room and started a gas leak), and the skyways have their turbulence (ask Collin about that landing during a tornado watch), but the rewards are eternal.
Jason puts One Life in perfect perspective: “The theme of the album is simple; it is about loving God and living every mile to the fullest.”
As implied, the formation of 33Miles didn’t come without its leaps of faith. Jason was already an established studio and touring vocalist. Chris was about to enter Boston’s eminent Berklee College of Music on a scholarship, and Collin was just one semester shy of a commercial music degree. But there’s no doubt today about the appeal and strength that’s found in the sum of their parts.