The Tale of Tenth Avenue North
By Mike Donehey

All right, if you want to get personal with Tenth Avenue North,
There are some things you should know.
First of all, Jeff is a cyborg. Half human, half robot, half Irish, half Asian.
That's a whole lot of halves, but if you do the math you'll see it all adds up.
We call him half-and-half for short.
Jason can build things with his hands.
Big things. Complicated things.
Things like magic lockets, cars, houses, and babies.
Not real babies, but ones that look real,
and would probably look good on an old lady's porch next to the yard gnomes.
My name is Mike, and I am a Native American.
My Indian name is Squatting Moose, and according to ChaCha,
I could beat Al Roker in a fight.
Roker may have the power of the weather behind him, but I have the power of God!

And Scott, well...Scott can teleport.

We met in sunny West Palm Beach, Florida, almost a decade ago,
at Palm Beach Atlantic College.
And that was before it became a university,
and before Tenth Avenue North was more than just a street name.
That all changed though when Jason and I moved into some student housing
off of that street and named our band after it.
That's where the magic happened after all, and we don't ever want to forget it.

Jeff came down to Florida from Indiana a few years later.
He was new to the south and he even admits that he had a hard time fitting in at first.
What with being part robot and all, can you really blame him?
If you think humidity messes with your hair, you should see what it does to
a central operating comprehensive mainframe!
But after a few years, a few bands, and several member switch outs later,
he came to be at home with himself and with the Florida weather,
and eventually became the permanent electric guitarist and fixture for the band.
And that all happened just two sweet years ago.
Scott materialized almost a year before that, and started playing with us
through a common position at a local church called Christ Fellowship.
He was a techie back then, but when a long time member left the band,
Scott teleported in and has been laying down nasty sick grooves
and rad piano parts ever since.

At present,
We're just trying to find our way in the Christian music industry
"dodging traffic at the intersection of art, faith, and commerce,"
as Jon Foreman once put it.
We all come from church backgrounds and families, and therefore,
are not satisfied saying the same old things in the same old ways.
What we're hoping for with this music that we're making is to not just entertain people.
I think it's safe to say that we already have plenty of that.
What we're wanting is to see people encounter truth.
Remember, we all worked at a church for some time,
and there we saw plenty of emotion. We saw plenty of people having a good time,
but it wasn't long until we realized that if emotion isn't being evoked by truth,
well, then it just doesn't last. And we want this love in hearts to last.
I guess you could say we're done just trying to get emotional from blast beats
and hip guitar lyrics. Instead, we desire to be cut to the heart.
To be honest, genuine, and faithful to what we believe is truth.