Even when Christian rock’s Stellar Kart decides to cut loose, its four members still wind up seeming pretty wholesome. In between studio albums, they decided to record a short, goofy EP for release this summer.
The subject matter? Disney, of course.
“We’re all fans of Disney, and I have a 4-year-old daughter that I’ve took to Disneyland several times over the years,” singer Adam Agee said. “We started playing ‘Whole New World’ last summer at festivals, and people loved it. That was the most memorable moment of the set for some people, and we are fine with that. We wanted to record it for people to have, and decided to pick a few other favorites to do along with it.”
The “Whole New World” EP also features covers of tracks from “The Little Mermaid,” “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It was a fun endeavor for an act otherwise concerned with more weighty ones.
Stellar Kart formed in 2002 when Agee and drummer Jordan Messer — inspired by Audio Adrenaline, Green Day and Jimmy Eat World — just wanted to learn their instruments to lead church worship services. They ended up doing a lot more than that.
“I never thought we’d be playing internationally, flying all over the world and playing music for a living,” Agee said.
Kids latched onto to Kart’s poppunk sound with a positive message; for Agee, that’s what it’s always been about.
“God just happened to be what we wrote about. We grew up in the church, and that’s what we wanted to do,” Agee said. “Whether we were a Christian band or not, I could have never made music that had some sort of hope. Music that is empty and doesn’t have a point ... they don’t really do anything for me. The songs that connect propel us because they are helping people.”
Stellar Kart has done that. Letters and emails come in all the time, thanking the band for a certain song that helped them get through tough times. In one case, it even saved a girl’s life.
Agee said the girl had decided to kill herself and went to a friend’s MySpace page to leave a short goodbye. When she heard the Stellar Kart song playing on the page, she stopped and listened all the way through. She started to cry, then called that friend to talk about what she just heard, instead of following through with her original intent.
“It kind of validated everything we’ve done. We don’t make tons of money, and we spend a lot of time away from our families,” Agee said. “It’s tough to keep going, then you hear stories like that. Even if she’s the only one, it makes all that we’ve done worth it.”
