Interview: Michael Barnes of RED

To be human is to wonder what happens when you’re gone and to question your existence in the meantime: Why am I here, and what will be left of me when I’m not? For the members of RED—Michael Barnes and identical twins Anthony and Randy Armstrong—the fearless search for those answers lives with them every day, on the road, in their records, and in their latest release, GONE.

“We dug a little deeper, talking about issues like what we’re leaving behind for our families, what we’re leaving behind for the people who knew us,” Randy says of the trio’s sixth studio album since their Grammy-nominated debut, END OF SILENCE, in 2006.

“If we died tomorrow, what would be the legacy that we leave behind? What would people talk about us for? That’s not just as a band but as individuals,” he says. “Everybody, at some point in their life, contemplates their mortality and wonders if people will miss them when they’re gone or what they’ll say about them when they’re gone.”

While RED has long since established itself as a million-selling juggernaut with two Grammy nods, six Dove Awards, and 17 Dove nominations, the band says they still “live and die” on stages all over the world

That’s where RED’s latest effort comes from. Since their last release, 2015’s OF BEAUTY AND RAGE, the trio sought to write what can actually be considered a live album that happened to be recorded in a studio.

“We pay a lot more attention to what a song will do onstage,” Randy says. “Instead of
wasting time writing songs that we probably wouldn’t play live on a stage, songs that wouldn’t be fun enough or exciting enough for an audience, we’re getting more tracks that we can play live than we have in the past, anticipating where we live, and that’s on the road.”

The road goes on … so does RED … and so does the desire for relevance, for living life.

Listen in as RED’s Michael Barnes takes the time while on the road to discuss the making of the latest album Gone and life on the road.