And it seems like we're the ones now that are just telling good stories.

Yeah, man.

I mean, look, everyone will have a different opinion, right? My opinion is the religious arts were so foundational in framing Theater, cinema, music.

Like, it was all church music originally.

It was all stained glass windows and Sistine chapels.

Even early in the movie-making world, Steve, if you go back to the beginning, it was, you know, it was the Ten Commandments.

It was Ben-Hur.

How did you navigate that with this story?

What unloaded that? What unpacked that box inside your heart? How did you discover that? Yeah,

it's so fascinating, Kevin, because, you know, Luke and I've always done music together.

But even before we started doing music together, my older brother, Ben, our older brother, Ben, we would do movies together, short films, bad spinoffs of movies.

you know, Indiana Jones and little videos for our youth group and whatnot as we were teenagers.

And so, you know, music and movies have always been synonymous.

So as much as it might be surprising, like, oh, these guys are stepping into, you know, the movie, the cinematic universe.

It's like for, I think even for Luke and me, it's always like with our shows and with the band, it's always been something we've been trying to sort of inject into our music videos and whatnot.

But, but it is my, is my analogy far off from that? Like in that scene

Maybe Luke.

yeah yeah well i think look you know coming i remember in high school i had all these uh friends of mine that were coming and they were talking about you know we need to go to this country because that country and the way that they do things is so amazing it's you know it's it's better than america or whatever it might be and i remember asking them have you actually been to that country.

And I was privileged growing up, obviously coming from Australia and I've traveled a lot with our older sister.

And they're like, no, no, no, no, we haven't.

And I said, what you got to understand about America that makes America so very, very special is America is the land of opportunity.

It's the land where you can take two brothers like ourselves, we can come here as children and we can say, hey, we have this idea of becoming a band, you know, and that ends up becoming what we kind of call our day job as Fakir country.

And then along the way, we have this idea of, hey, what if we get into films? and all of a sudden now this is our third feature length film.

And it didn't feel like... didn't feel like a musical you know what i mean it didn't like it was like you know sometimes you're you know musicals will be like and i'm gonna sing about nothing and you're like okay all right i got it uh and i like music i love that yeah thank you um but this was just so appropriate and so good in the ensemble with the way you were playing it in different scenes where you know mom and the two kids are in different places and they're all i mean it's really good really good

Yeah.

It's interesting because I, and by the way, before we go, I have a gift for your viewers and listeners.

So remind me before the end.

Oh, yeah, you bet I will.

I've dedicated my life to music, but I don't love musicals, if I dare say either.

So this film is interesting because it's like, it's, you know, it's an hour and 20 minutes of live action.

It's probably 20 or 30 minutes of music.

No spoilers, but give me a little bit more about the storyline here.

you know.

And so part of the economics of this film was going, it has to be a story.

It has to be a movie.

You know, it has to be Pride and Prejudice and The Patriot.

And yes, Hamilton and Greatest Showman at the same time.

So that was really the charge.

I felt confident that with the great ensemble of writers that we had for the music, we could land the music in the right spot.

Was that something you wanted to make sure that we address every character as needed, we make sure that that story is fleshed out well, and that on the page it works, and therefore on the screen it will work?

Would you talk about the piece of freedom and how complicated that that can be?

Yeah, good question, Jimmy.

I love that you reference all these characters that are really, because it's a film about identity, and that identity is so tied to whether we're sort of free or enslaved inwardly.

So you have these different characters.

You have Balfour, for instance, who's played by Charles Esten from Nashville and Outer Banks.

He's got his own interpretation of what freedom looks like, which would be sort of being in charge.

Or Ambrose, who is such a beautiful character, played by Ian Glenn from Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey.

Which is the song that you find yourself singing the most?

Well, I do that

all the time.

Even in the Bible, think about all these pivotal moments.

Like Jesus shows up and what happens? His legion of angels comes and sings to the night shift workers that were the shepherds.

Or like right before Jesus goes actually in the sort of most radical moment of his whole life when he's about to go to the Garden of Gethsemane to sort of sacrifice his life.

They sing a hymn.

Or what happens right before the day of Pentecost when they're about to go out and proclaim sort of the way, the good news.

So, hey, what else you got? What else is

Where did the film start?

Since before we met, man, because we were together seven years ago, I think.

So there are, you know, it's the age old question, right? Do you write the movie or does the movie write you? Does the movie write you? And there's never been a movie that's written me more than Drummer Boy.

It's like, I mean, think about it, Cameron.

We came up with this rendition of the little Drummer Boy, the 1960s song, you know, at the beginning of our career, which really indicated the way we approached rhythm as a band.

And then we're called for king and country, which is a British mantra.

We wore these sort of revolutionary type uniforms for many years, sometimes still bring them back.

I mean, it just, I'm

Is it all completely fictional? Are there any true aspects? Have you used any stories from the past to help build the story? Yeah.

Well, it's obviously historical fiction in the fact that all of the tenets of what was going on in the world, the Declaration of Independence and people migrating to the United States from Britain, I think one of the things that's really surprising that was actually historically accurate is the American Civil War gets really big pin for like the brother against brother narrative.

But actually, it was really happening a lot in early wars too.

You had loyalists and you had patriots.

And so we really were fascinated when we dug into it.

I was like, oh, gee, this was actually happening.

And so all all the little kind of layers of, you know, the characters were much more sort of fictionally based.

Well, and

And

it's the same with this.

Does the music write you or do you write the music? Does the movie write you or do you write the movie? And I just look at this film and I'm like, from the beginning of For King Country, the band I'm in.

This song, The Little Drummer Boy, the Christmas classic, has just followed us around.

It's been such a defining song for us.

We did our own rendition.

We put a bunch of drums on it.

That was incredible.

Um, and I was curious about this, but did it all start with the song?

I feel like you gotta go back to the beginning of the band because when Luke and I started, you know, we'd released our first album Crave and Proof of Your Love, and we'd done a full tour built around that album.

We kinda were so excited that we could tour.

We were like, "You know what? Let's do a Christmas tour." We had no Christmas single.

We had no Christmas album, and we spent two days, and we came up with all these Christmas renditions of sort of spiritual favorite Christmas songs.

One of them was Drummer Boy, and man, while we didn't, we really didn't think much of it.

We were like, "Okay, that's cool." Like, it's a song about a boy playing drums.

Yeah.

star of the movie for king and country joel oh my gosh okay first of all i love this movie because it's about family forgiveness division you know all the things that affect so many people why do you think that message is so important right now

Well, goodness me, 250 years of the United States of America.

You know, the slogan of the film is forgiveness is revolutionary.

It's like exploring these themes of forgiveness and freedom and what does it mean as a family in our towns, in our nation, in the world to practice these kind of the incredible ideals of what it means to be human.

I just...

Sometimes I feel like you've got to look back to know where you're going.

And so to go back to 1776, to go back to the origin story, you know, as immigrants who love this land, who married Americans and Luke's created four half-American children, it's like we believe in this idea.

guys i think you guys pulled it off i think people are going to love this film it could be the film for christmas time so just if you would like just tell us the whole heart behind putting together a musical that tells this story this was a big

good.

We can either put it on a pedestal and say it's all about the ambition or the flip side is go, it's not about ambition at all.

It's about like go to a monastery and dedicate your life and off you go.

But I think it's the framing, like what's the why behind the ambition for us, you know? Like if the why behind the ambition is genuinely to like, I mean, Sean, I look at your journey and I'm like, I feel like you inspired a whole generation of young women to like overcome and to, you know, take it seriously.

And like some of the greatest like depictions of discipline of like what it takes to be great at anything in life.

I mean, that's incredible ambition, but the fruit of that ambition, I feel like it was like, and you're probably still living in the legacy of that.

I imagine was like that, that you, you, you called people to be higher and to be stronger and to be better.

were doing the