Dawson Hollow members were recently given a new opportunity when they were selected to perform a song for the theater release of the Christmas special episode of "The Chosen."
Based on the life of Jesus Christ and available via a free app, "The Chosen" series was released in 2019 with over 300 million viewers worldwide. This year’s Christmas special “Christmas with the Chosen: The Messengers” is the first time the series will be shown in theatres, beginning Dec. 1. The Christmas episode focuses on telling the story of Jesus’ birth through they eyes of Mary and Joseph.
Through the distributor, Fathom Events, the Christmas special has already broken presale records with over $1.5 million in sales in the first 12 hours. Locally the Christmas special can be seen at theatres in Rolla, Lake Ozark and Springfield and more theatres may be added.
“We’re huge fans of the show. We all fell in love with the show and were thrilled when they called and asked us to be a part of it.” Ben Link who is the lead for Dawson Hollow said that while they aren’t technically a Christian band, they are believers. The twelve other bands who were selected to perform songs for the Christmas episode of "The Chosen" were considered Christian recording artists.
Dawson Hollow is made of up five musicians, all siblings, who grew up playing music together. Ranging in age from 21 to 33, lead singer Ben Link, along with brothers Kyle, Aaron, John, and sister Rachel (Link) Starnes describe themselves as an indie folk rock band.
The siblings come from several generations of musicians on both sides of the family, with all the members of Dawson Hollow playing multiple instruments, sometimes at the same show. Rachel will rotate between as many as seven instruments.
“My mom was a music educator. That’s what she went to college for. She started giving piano lessons when she was 16. She learned to play watching our grandma who taught for 50 years,” Rachel said, mentioning that their mother taught music at public school for several years.
Ben writes many of the band’s songs with several other members bringing up ideas and then shaping the song as a group once it goes into production, “It’s definitely a collab of all of us,” Ben said.
The band has released two albums which they said are both “totally different” in sound, song writing and production experience. "Boy of My Youth" is the band’s first album, released in 2018, which the group said took a long time to write but when it came together, felt like one thought. Their second album, "Even When it Doesn’t Rhyme," released this summer, was a different experience.
For the complete article, see the Weekend Edition of the Laclede Record.
