As challenging as 2020 was for everyone, it was possibly more so for ReSound, a young southern gospel music group working to grow its name and share the message of God’s amazing grace. State restrictions on gathering sizes meant very few opportunities to perform at church gatherings or other singing events.
So how did they respond? They worked to produce their first album, “That Step of Faith,” available first as a CD released last year. That album within the last couple of weeks has become available on most major digital distribution channels, such as Apple’s iTunes, Spotify and more.
Now, the music and message of the Red Bay-based group is being heard not just regionally, but around the world.
The group, consisting of Adam Seahorn (tenor), Kody Madden (lead), Colton Corum (baritone) and Dylan Hester (bass), has been singing together since first being asked to sing at a memorial service at their church, Red Bay Free Will Baptist Church, in 2018. They were then asked to sing in Belmont and, Corum said, the group just took off from there. However, they took a break from singing together around Thanksgiving of 2018. It wasn’t until a church group trip to Winter Extreme in Gatlinburg in early 2019 that they decided to fully pursue the group.
It wasn’t long, though, before they realized they needed to work on their sound.
“We were not singing parts,” Corum said. “Then we were all just singing lead together. I’d never really sang harmony parts.
They performed between 35 and 40 dates in 2019, which is a lot considering it wasn’t a full-time ministry. That amount of work, though, allowed them to work on their sound and their voice roles.
Working on the album
The group’s first run at an album in 2019 was an eye-opening experience. Corum and the other group members started work on their first hymns album in August of 2019, hoping to have something ready to distribute at the North Alabama Quartet Convention the following January. However, it just wasn’t quite right.
“It was really a struggle for us as a group,” Corum said. “Some of us were ready and some of us weren’t.”
“I wouldn’t say it fell through,” Seahorn said. “We could go back and probably do those songs now, but we just put it aside and wanted to grow and mature as vocalists and develop our sound to make it sound the way we wanted it.”
While the group worked on growing and maturing, they also were busy reaching out to songwriters and making connections. The songs on their album were selected from dozens submitted to them by various songwriters.
Then came the spring and summer of cancellations. While the group didn’t have to cancel any of their performance dates, many of the hosts did. However, that gave the group additional time to work on their album, with songs of their own, and to put out a musical experience that would bring honor and glory to God and introduce ReSound to the broader world.
A little help
Corum, Hester, Madden and Seahorn have made a host of friends and connections in their time as a group, and those connections helped them in getting their first album produced. It didn’t hurt having family members who are experienced in the business. Hester’s grandparents are Roger and Debbie Johnson of Heaven’s Mountain Band. The group has also grown close to others who have helped them along the way, including Living Faith Quartet from the Cullman area. Bill Worley, of Masterpiece Quartet, gave the ReSound copies of Masterpiece’s CDs. They talked about stage presence and the on-stage performance as well, such as how to get an audience involved and energized. However, each member of ReSound is quick to point out none of the performance efforts are meant to bring attention to themselves.
“We don’t mean, ‘hey, look at us, look at us, you know,” Corum said. “We’re there not to sing about us; we’re there to sing for our Lord and Savior who’s blessed us with these songs. And if it wasn’t for Him, it wasn’t for Him blessing these songwriters with the songs. He we’ve been able to sing. If it’s about us, then we might as well just go to the house. Cody preaches that every time before go on stage.”
Balancing act
Each member of the group has a balancing act to perform in life. Hester and Corum are both in college; Seahorn and Madden both work fulltime. Add to this that Madden is engaged to be married this year.
“We all have different obligations, whether it’s work or personal life or whatever may be going on, but ultimately we try and be conscious of the things each one of us have going on, whether it’s something with school or work or relationships or family matters,” Madden said. “But we always find time to either practice throughout the week and we always try and make sure that whenever we do schedule a singing or a booking somewhere, we always make sure that it’s good for everybody and it correlates with everybody’s time and that it doesn’t conflict with anything else. And so, we’re all pretty good about just knowing when to schedule things with the right time.”
It helps that the group is close-knit. With an age range of 18 (Hester) to 27 (Seahorn), the guys have known each other for many years and in some cases are related to each other. That doesn’t mean, though, that everyone always agrees with the other.
“We love each other, but there are times when we disagree and there have been sometimes where we just had to walk out and come back in,” Corum said. “But at the end of the day we’re always back to loving each other and being a group like we should be. We’re not just a group; we’re brothers.”
