“Relient K” kicked off their spring tour with a show at Spring Arbor University (SAU) on April 19. “The Pulse” sat down with Matt Thiessen and Matt Hoopes for an exclusive interview before they hit the stage.

“The Pulse” (TP): “When did you guys realize you wanted to do music?”

Matt Thiessen (MT): “When we started the band we were in high school. We graduated from high school and we were still playing and kind of going to college. Then a record label, Gotee Records, hit up the guy that was producing our stuff, who said they were interested in signing us. They didn’t sign us for a while, but they were interested. So at that point we were like ‘let’s have a goal.’ Our goal was to try and sell 10,000 records and open for someone on a tour and see where it went from there. And that’s how it happened. We ended up being better than that.”

TP: “Where did the name come from? We’ve heard people say it’s from a car?”

MT: “You got it. That answered the question.”

TP: “What’s the story behind that?”

MH: “I drove it in high school and it kind of became an inside joke that it was not the coolest car in the world. It was falling apart and rusting out, ran slow.”

MT: “He had just gotten the car and we were at a restaurant, and I remember it was called Friendly’s, and everybody was making fun of the K car. And I was like, ‘What’s the K car?’ Matt’s Reliant K and I was like, ‘That should be our band name.’”

TP: “Did you ever dream of ‘Relient K’ becoming this big?”

MH: “I don’t think you could ever plan on something like that. We were all pretty realistic, especially at that point. We looked at each thing as a blessing and each opportunity as something that we can be thankful for.”

MT: “We had that goal at first, to sell 10,000 records, and our first album ending up selling more than that. Everything from there on out was better than we were hoping. So we took it one day at a time and the rule was always, as long as the band is fun the band stays together. It’s still fun, so we’re still together.”

TP: “You guys are widely known as a Christian band that is in the Christian market as well as the mainstream and secular market. How do you guys balance your faith and being labeled as a Christian band and then playing at festivals like the Warped Tour?”

MT: “It’s a tough balance because Christian culture is kind of a political thing whether or not anyone likes that, so you have to be careful. And we’ve tried to be careful to a certain degree but also not too concerned with what anybody has to say about us because we’re just kind of doing our own thing. We have friends who share our beliefs and we have friends who don’t and we can hang out with all of them. Same with our music. It’s like we have listeners who share our beliefs and we have some who don’t. Fortunately they all like the music.”

MH: “I think we learned early on that you’re not going to please everyone. There’s always going to be someone with a problem with what you do. Trying to cater to everyone is just impossible. It’s not worthwhile and it’s actually not productive. So we’re like, let’s just try to be honest and try to do what we do and be who we are.”

TP: “What is your favorite song to cover?”

MT: “That’s a good question.”

MH: “We have a lot.”

MT: (turns to Matt) “What is our favorite song to cover?”

TP: “If you have different favorite songs to cover, that’s okay, too.”

MH: “I don’t know what our favorite is to cover.”

MT: “We’re really bad at picking favorite things. We like everything so much.”

MH: “It was hard to pick songs for our cover album. We ended up picking a lot of really random ones because we were like, let’s go this way. Alright, let’s do this song. It’s always been a cool thing for us to do that stuff.”

For an extended version of the interview, visit saupulse.com.

 WRITTEN WITH JESSE GENTRY

[WRITER’S NOTE: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE APRIL 2013 EDITION OF “THE PULSE”]