Copious Notes

Red's Michael Barnes plays to a cheering crowd at the 2010 Ichthus Festival.

More: Click here to listen to our chat with Red’s Anthony Armstrong.

In 2006, the band Red released its debut album, hoping someone would listen.

The group wasn’t even on a label at the time, but slowly people tuned in to the hard-rock sounds of the disc, which spawned the hits Breathe Into Me, Break Me Down and a couple of other chart-toppers. The album ended up nominated for the Grammy Award for best rock or rap gospel record.

Five years later, Red doesn’t release albums quietly.

Quickly after the Feb. 1 release of Until We Have Faces, Red was hovering near No. 1 on iTunes’ sales charts, and the band was booked on TBS’s Conan and NBC’s Tonight Show With Jay Leno, national television debuts for the band.

Red guitarist Anthony Armstrong.

“We can’t even believe the numbers that are coming in,” guitarist Anthony Armstrong said a few days after the album’s release. “Some amazing things are happening.”

For Central Kentucky fans of Red, one of those things is a slot on the Winter Jam tour, which comes to Rupp Arena on March 12. The bill is topped by the resurgent Newsboys, the David Crowder Band, Kutless, Francesca Battistelli, Jason Castro, Chris August, Sidewalk Prophets, KJ-52 and tour hosts NewSong.

But Red is easily the hottest band at the moment on the show, like many other bands successfully crossing the line between mainstream and Christian venues.

“We try to play the same way whether we are playing in a church or a bar,” Armstrong said at last summer’s Ichthus Festival. “We want people who see us to say, ‘Those guys are the same no matter where they play. They’re not putting on an act or trying to hide anything.’”

One thing Red showed very well at Ichthus, where it was the Friday evening main stage opener for Skillet, was that it could play to a huge crowd — sort of like the one it will see in Rupp Arena, where last year’s Winter Jam drew 14,756 fans.

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Red guitar player Anthony Armstrong. Copyrighted photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

If you think the rise of Red‘s career, playing the main stage at Ichthus on only its second album, was pretty fast, you are not alone.

“It feels pretty fast to us,” guitar player Anthony Armstrong said backstage at Ichthus on Friday. “The past four years have been a whirlwind.”

Ichthus alone has been an example. They first came in 2007 playing the Deep End Stage with their first album, The End of Silence. That album ballooned, and Red returned to the Main Stage the next year, closing out an afternoon. This year, with hit album No. 2, Innocence and Instinct, Red was back opening the evening card for Skillet.

Bassist Randy Armstrong

And fans crammed around the stage like the were Skillet – 15-year veterans with a catalog of hit albums – or something.

“We know there are bands out there who have been around longer than us with more ablums who haven’t made it to this level,” Armstrong said.

Drummer Joe Rickard knows one of those bands well, The Wedding, which he used to be part of and says he still has tremendous respect for.

“It’s a blessing,” he said. “This is somehow part of God’s scheme … to spread the word.”

Bassist Randy Armstrong wants to be something else: an inspiration to young music fans like all the guys in the band were a few years ago. It’s tattooed on his arm: Inspired.