Tony Cummings spoke to Chris Llewellyn, lead singer with "folk on steroids" band REND COLLECTIVE

Chris: Usually just at the time we're about to drop it from the set we're getting feedback about how everybody loves that song. It's true that we don't have a great temperature gauge for what's going on.

Tony: Is the new album coming out on vinyl?

Chris: It certainly is. There's big plans for it, anyway. We've been talking about it, and it's hard for us because we want to take a step forward but we really love our folk roots as well, so we're already talking about doing a 'Campfire 2'. It would be folk renditions of 'As Family We Go' and some things off 'The Art Of Celebration'. I think that might be more your jam, Tony. Worship exists in all kinds of different colours, different shades. The Church is not at all about uniformity, but it is about unity. We can say the same amazing things about our God in a whole array of moods, and that's what we stand for in Rend Collective, trying to bring a bit of colour to the whole thing.

Tony: I was talking to a chap who organised the Northern Ireland Gospel Music Awards in 2014. I thought you'd have walked away with some of the categories, but he told me you aren't really Ireland-based anymore. How much time are you spending in the USA?

Chris: He's not entirely wrong, but he is mostly wrong. We spend two-thirds of our time touring in the States, but our primary residences are all still in Northern Ireland. Our tour schedule is hectic, but we're still Ulstermen through and through: we shouldn't be barred from our Northern Irishness.

Tony: You're signed to an American record label. Is there any pressure to target certain songs to American Christian radio?

Chris: There are definitely voices in our lives that would love us to target things towards radio. What Rend Collective is is a challenge to radio. The UK's up for playing whatever, but in the USA there's very distinct formulas that we don't match. It's something for our integrity that it's really important for us not to drift our mission towards that: it's not ever what we set out to do. We're a worship band who writes songs for the Church to sing. Sometimes writing a song that the Church would be able to sing necessarily means it's not as hooky as it needs to be for radio, or it doesn't carry the kind of messages that radio audiences want to hear. We have to stand firm on that. We write worship songs based around Scripture that give the Church something to sing that we feel God is saying to the Church at that time. If that happens to align with radio, which it does very occasionally - we've had good success with "Build Your Kingdom Here", a totally uncompromised song that just happened to go well with radio - that's great. But there's no way we're going to start trying to guess what Christian radio wants us to do. I think that's a recipe for disaster. All we can do is listen to God's voice and respond to it the way we have been. We're a worship band through and through; we're not a USA Christian Contemporary Music act.