Third Day at the Music Builds launch partyWhile in Nashville for Gospel Music Week in April, Third Day spoke at interviews and performed at showcases in anticipation of their July release. You might be surprised at one of the media outlets that spoke with the band that week.

Revelation has already proved to be replete with newness. New musical guests. New artist management. New producer. And now there is a new cover on Billboard magazine. Apparently the June 7th edition reached a new height - first time a Christian band made it onto the front cover.

The cover reads, "Third Day Christian Crossover? Daughtry's producer. Dave Matthews' management. An inside look at longtime rockers on the verge," The issue can be purchased at larger magazine outlets, or you can read the article here. It is full with interesting discussions about the past, present, and more importantly the future of this long-time band with new beginnings.

A must read about the potential outlook of Christian music, even if you are not a Third Day fan.

For everyone who wondered if they had seen the beginning of the end for Third Day, the band answers back with its best CD to date. From the opening track they proclaim "This is Who I Am."

"I’m the son of a good man, I’m the child of an angel," read the lyrics. "I’m the brother of a wild one, and I’m looking for direction, I’m the lover a beauty, I’m father of blessings, I’m the singer of a love song, but is that all I’m good for? This is who I am!"

Rumors and factual information about a tour brewing with Switchfoot, Third Day and Robert Randolph and the Family Band have been floating around the 'net for a few weeks now. These three bands are scheduled to play a launch party (aka showcase) for the tour at this years GMA week in Nashville.

Third Day guitarist Brad Avery is leaving the band after 13 years in order to pursue solo projects, according to CCMmagazine.com and the band's official blog. Avery's former bandmates left a brief statement on the blog this week, calling the decision to part with Avery "difficult."

"We appreciate Brad's many contributions to the band's career to date, including his work on our forthcoming album, but the time has come for us to follow our separate paths," the blog states.

There are those both inside and outside the Third Day fan camp who, if they're being honest, would label the group's first five years together as their rock period and the years that have transpired since that time as... well... their not-quite-so-rocking period. While any such hard-and-fast view is true only up to a point, those who bought the Chronology Volume One album, which traced the Atlanta-based outfit's musical arc from the 1996 self-titled debut to the Offerings live worship project in 2000, found more than a little evidence to support such a claim. From the swaggering, Skynyrd-tinged strains of "Forever" to the lumbering, grunge-inflected "Consuming Fire" and majestic power balladry of "Love Song," one couldn't help but marvel at the band's seemingly effortless fluency with the rock and roll idiom.

As unlikely as it might seem to more recent converts to the Third Day fold, time was when lead singer Mac Powell and his cohorts rocked more fiercely than just about any other artist on the Christian music charts. Indeed, newcomers whose only exposure to the group is through latter-day singles like "Cry Out to Jesus" and "Mountain of God" may be shocked to learn that the outfit's first few records were described as a cross between Lynyrd Skynyrd's down-and-dirty Southern hard rock and the arena-ready post-grunge of artists like Pearl Jam. Indeed, Powell's voice was so often likened to that of PJ front man Eddie Vedder that the 3D cooperative often broke into "Yellow Ledbetter" during their early concerts as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the comparison.