Seven Places, a band of four Christian guys, released its debut album “Lonely for the Last Time” on May 20 with the goal to encourage and challenge other Christian kids.
“We feel that if we sing the songs we’ve written and glorify God, people will be at those concerts who need to hear it and will be saved,” said 23-year-old lead vocalist Seth Gilbert. “Our name is about the seven places Jesus Christ bled from to save us from our sins. His hands cover the sinful things we’ve done with our hands. His feet cover the places of sin we’ve walked. His back covers all the times we’ve turned our back on Him, and His side, which is really from His heart, allows our hardened hearts to be softened. It’s all about His blood and the fact that we’re being covered by it at all points.”
Seven Places began as a worship band for the Tuesday night service at a church in southern Oregon. Gilbert along with guitarist Tyler Jones (20), bassist Donnie Vizzini (19) and drummer Jeffrey Gilbert (19) stood amazed as the crowd grew from 300 to 1,000 within three years.
A former youth pastor, Gilbert said, “The miracle of the Lord is that there was no promotion. We didn’t make any flyers. It was all word of mouth. It was one of those things where the Lord had His hand in it.”
Other youth pastors would ask Gilbert, “What’s your strategy, how’d you do this? Do you have free food? Do you have a skate park? What are you doing?”
“We didn’t have any of those things,” Gilbert said. “It was just an hour of worshiping and adoring the Lord. It was real simple — just a loud rock ‘n’ roll worship kind of thing.”
Rolling in to the Rock
Gilbert remembers one night when a group of kids were driving out to the lake nearby their church to go swimming, and they ran out of gas right in front of the church. “They had been invited to our church a million times but didn’t want to come in,” Gilbert said. “They didn’t want anything to do with it.”
After literally rolling into the church parking lot, they finally had to humble themselves and go out and ask for some gas. The guy who was working security said, “Yeah, we’ll hook you up with some gas; you just have to sit in on the service until it’s over.”
So they came in and sat in the service, and they all got saved that night, just waiting to get gas.
“If you lift up the Lord, people from all walks of life just show up,” said Gilbert. “Seven Places is certainly ministry-oriented. A lot of people think that at Christian concerts everyone is Christian. We’ve found there are plenty of kids who haven’t come to the Lord yet.”
This past winter Seven Places joined Kutless on tour. At a Christian club in Michigan, they saw 22 kids come to the Lord.
“I was sharing to the kids who were already saved that no matter what they had done, they were forgiven,” Gilbert said. “God isn’t mad at them or frustrated with them. He loves them and has a plan for them. The kids that weren’t saved saw that, got excited about it and got saved.”
Seven Places also makes sure everyone is having fun at their concerts. “We like to keep a balance so that kids and adults are having a good time,” Gilbert said. “Our whole deal isn’t just on stage but it’s also very much off stage, if not more off stage.”
The guys of Seven Places stay late after concerts, meet with kids, hang out and goof around. “Getting to know them and just trying to connect with them we feel is a huge part of what we do and who we are both on stage and off stage,” he said.
Loving their ‘jobs’
The album “Lonely for the Last Time” reminds people that this life, this earth is not where it’s at, Gilbert said. Several of the songs deal with the theme of heaven, including the song “It Might Be Today,” which talks about the day when Jesus will return. Seven Places’ sound is described as “alternative rock with a pop sensibility.”
Another highlight of the album is “The Western Wall,” which Gilbert wrote after a trip to Israel. “I had been a youth pastor for three years and had an amazing ministry there. The Lord really blessed it and touched it,” Gilbert said.
Questioning if he had done the right thing in pursuing a musical career, Gilbert began to write down the feelings running through his mind.
He said, “‘The Western Wall’ is about being down, and when the pressures of life start closing in, the Lord is there to say, ‘Stand up.’ The chorus is about finding your way back home.
“It’s talking about where we are in the Lord,” Gilbert explains. “Any time I walk away from that or I miss my devotional time with the Lord and I’m not in contact with Him, I feel like I’ve left home a little. It’s an encouragement for when we’re down, and we think it was better before.”
Feeling more confident now about his decision to tour with the band, Gilbert feels that his dream has finally come true.
“We love traveling. We love playing and doing what we do. It gets overwhelming at times with long drives during the day and barely making it to the shows at night. … And the next morning you’re up doing it all over again,” he said. “I think after awhile you get tired, but it’s not anything that makes us want to quit or to even think about quitting early. It’s just something we all love to do.
“We’re still learning to trust the Lord and take it one step at a time. But at the same time it really is a dream come true.” (EP)
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