Casting Crowns began as a student worship band in Daytona Beach, FL in 1999. After 2 years of serving at First Baptist Daytona Beach, God called Mark Hall (lead vocal), Juan DeVevo (guitar and vocals), Melodee DeVevo (vocals and violin), Hector Cervantes (guitar and vocals), and Darren Hughes (production manager) to Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, GA in October of 2001. After arriving here, the Lord led Chris Huffman (bass guitar), a former student from FBC, Daytona, and Megan Garrett (keyboard, vocals, accordion), to join the band immediately. Then about a year later, Andy Williams (drummer), joined the group.
There, you have Casting Crowns.
At the core of Casting Crowns is Mark Hall, a man who never would have thought leading a band into the wilds of the business of music would enter into his calling. His place, he thought, was to serve young people.
“I’ve been a youth pastor for about 12 years, and every church I’ve been in, music’s always been a part of it,” Hall says. “We’d usually start up a band made up of students so we could lead worship in our Wednesday night programs, and as the student ministry started to grow, the band would go off and play and do things in the area.”
“I had the thought that maybe I could write for other bands,” he says, “because traveling around playing was not something I thought I wanted to do.”
The band recorded two well-received independent records, distributed mainly in the Atlanta area. “There was the temptation to send our CDs to record companies,” Hall says, “but we prayed about it and came to the realization we needed to keep doing our music our way.”
