Inside a small, but comfortable, tour bus The Chimes had the opportunity to sit down with four of the five members of Eisley: Sherri, Stacy, Chauntelle and Garron DuPree. Their relationship as a family could not be denied. Their obvious love for music, each other and God gave them an outstanding personality and welcoming aura. The girls could not have been more encompassing, friendly, and personable.
The spring concert hosted by Associated Students on Saturday night featured both Eisley and mewithoutYou.
Q. Tell us about the origins of Eisley
Garron: Well let me tell you, [chuckles] It started at birth: Chauntelle first, Sheri second, Weston third, Stacy fourth, me fifth from a different mother, and father, and it kind of all just went from there.
Sherri: Yeah, we started playing together in our rooms…kind of just playing songs, playing guitar, we weren’t really writing music, just learning and playing with friends who were writing songs; we had never really thought of trying it ourselves.
Stacy: So it inspired me, because they were a lot older. I was really eager to be involved with what they were doing. It inspired me a whole lot so I wrote a little crappy song and played it for Chauntelle.
Q. Talk about the new album …
Stacy: We went through a lot personally in the last year. Sherri and I especially did with divorce, breakups and disengagements. So I guess the record was written at that time, through all that.
Sherri: It was written right in the middle when all this crazy kind of turmoil in all our lives was happening.
Stacy: It was a dark time.
Sherri: But it was good, it all happens for a reason obviously. And we got this really amazing record and it all turned into this beautiful experience … You know there’s peaks and valleys in life and to be very literal, that was kind of the inspiration. It was literally just a portrait of what was happening in our lives at the time … It’s about heartache and loss, and love and rebirth, and finding yourself and I think a lot of people grab on to that like, “I feel you.”
Q. Do you consider yourself a Christian band? Why or why not?
Sherri: We definitely are Christians, yes. We were raised in the church and it’s a very important part of who we are, and it’s part of our identity and our faith, but when we started out we didn’t just want to be marketed as a Christan band just because it’s very …
Stacy: It’s very close minded.
Sherri: Well yeah, it’s not a very broad market and we feel like Christians kind of only listen to Christian music, and it’s its own kind of genre, and even Christian music has its own style now too …
Chauntelle: And we’re not very into that.
Sherri: We just want to go out and reach everybody.
Stacy: We wanted to be normal people. Just regular people.
Q. How do you see God at work in the studio, on tour, and in your lives?
Sherri: It’s part of everything we do. Inspiration and life and energy, it keeps everything tumbling.
Stacy: It keeps us alive and feeling refreshed, it’s so easy if you’re not praying or reading your Bible to get absorbed with everything — with interviews with pictures, with people. Then you lose focus; it’s important to keep yourself renewed.
Sherri: To have that in your life keeps you grounded. When you travel all the time you can’t be home and go to church every Sunday. But it’s cool because since we all share that faith, it’s good. It keeps us going.
