Christian Band For King And Country, which is a duo made up of Luke and Joel Smallbone, played a sold-out (socially distanced) show at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tennessee. The show was also live-streamed on the Mandolin platform. Some shows at the Ryman Auditorium and the Listening Room Cafe are being livestreamed on Mandolin.
For King And Country have released a Christmas album called A Drummer Boy Christmas was released on Oct. 30. Most of the set featured traditional, religious Christmas songs such as the title track and Go Tell It On The Mountain.
The set also featured some original songs such as Heavenly Hosts, which was dedicated to a lady who had leukemia and was watching the show online. For King and Country also performed “God Only Knows” during the show. The song earned them and Dolly Parton a Grammy award earlier this year.
The Smallbone brothers are originally from Australia. During one part of the show, the audience was told that Christmas falls during the summer and therefore there is no snow or cold like is mentioned in some popular Christmas songs.
The audience was also told about their father moving the family to Nashville to take a job. After their father lost his job a short time after relocating, the family was very poor. They were thankful about neighbors and other friends who helped their family.
Most Christian artists take time during their show to talk about Compassion International and invite people in the audience to sponsor a child with a monthly donation. The organization gives sponsors a picture of the child they are sponsoring and they can write letters to that child. In a typical year, audience members would raise their hand and someone would bring information their seat. This year, they invited people to text the word “Drummer” to 83393 to get a link to a picture of their child.
For King And Country have performed some drive-in concerts since the beginning of the pandemic, but there have have not been a lot of in-person concerts. There have been at least one Grand Ole Opry performance every week, but audiences were not permitted to attend the Opry shows until recently.