Twice as nice: Christian artist Crowder performs at Rio Rancho Events Center for two dates

Rio Rancho is getting a double dose of Crowder this fall.

The Grammy-nominated Christian artist is coming to the Rio Rancho Events Center for two shows. The first is part of the MercyMe “Together Again … Again Tour” at 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27, that also features Cochren & Co.

Crowder will return to the same venue at 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 17, as part of the “Air1 Worship Now Tour.” That show will also feature We the Kingdom, CAIN, Passion, Jon Reddick and special guest speaker Louie Giglio.

Crowder said it’s unusual to play in the same venue at such close dates, saying there’s usually a radius clause that would prohibit something like that.

“That’s great. I can own MercyMe,” he said. “I can be like, ‘My people, I’ll see you in, like, a month.’ … We’re going to be right back home, know exactly where I need to be eating lunch that day.”

But if the musician had followed his original path, he probably wouldn’t be stopping here at all.

“I really did want to work for my dad,” Crowder said. “He had an insurance agency in Texarkana, Texas, where I grew up, and I thought he was the coolest dude on the planet, and I wanted to be just like him and take over the family practice, and the music thing just came unexpected.”

That “music thing” began during his college days at Baylor University, where one of his friends started a church and asked him to help with the music.

“At first, my role was just basically find players and find songs for us to sing together,” Crowder said. “I didn’t start writing until about a year in, when the same guy who started the church was like, ‘Hey man, you should provide some songs on our behalf’ … and it led me to start writing music.”

From there, things began to snowball. The college kids would take recordings of the music home with them, and Crowder began getting calls where he was asked to play at retreats and other events.

“I was obviously thrilled to do that, and by then I had started singing, but it is only because of the players I would find to sing wouldn’t show up, so out of necessity I would have to sing since I knew the stuff … and everything just really grew up out of that,” he said.

That was in the mid-1990s, and out of that, the David Crowder Band was born.

“Once we started playing together on a Sunday morning, something really clicked, and so when we started getting opportunities to play,” Crowder said. “They would be the guys that I would have come with me to play at this thing or that thing. And then, we started making albums because there was something that really clicked.”

It’s also how the band got its name. When people would ask who would be performing, people would respond, “David Crowder and his band.”

“So, I guess, we’re (the) David Crowder Band,” he said, noting that it was during the same era as the Dave Matthews Band and others named for their lead man.

Eventually, in 2012, Crowder went solo, which was also the point in time he began going by only his surname.

“Once life started shifting … we wound up in Atlanta, Georgia,” he said. “We were just in a different phase of life, and I didn’t know if I was going to continue to make music because it was all so natural coming out of the college scene and at the church there. But the songs kept coming.”

Again, his music came out of the church he was a part of, making music with the pastor. In fact, the pastor and his wife funded the first album.

“And so, as I’m starting to write more songs, it just made sense to keep putting them out and see if people resonate with them in this new phase of life, and then that began this Crowder endeavor,” he said.

After so many years in the business, Crowder doesn’t feel done yet. His latest album, “The Exile,” is the second in a series of three with themes of promise — “Milk & Honey,” “The Exile” and “The Return.”

“I’m really excited about this season,” he said. “‘The Exile’ and ‘The Return’ kind of came at the same time, but I’m still writing songs for ‘The Return,’ so we don’t know when it’s going to release, exactly, but sometime toward the front of next year is what we’re thinking.”

“The Exile” fits well with one of Crowder’s favorite stories of the Bible, that of Daniel, who was himself an exile.

“Daniel just demonstrates that we can be a student of culture, we can understand culture, we can be in the middle of culture,” he said. “We can relate to people, be in a relationship with people and understand that God is at work in spaces and places that we might not ever suspect.

“It helps me understand that there is a tension in the world, not of the world, but the whole point of the Gospel and the story is that we change and interact with our surroundings in a way that’s transformative and that’s really been a driving force for everything I’ve been trying to do as a human and as a writer.”

And for him, that is also relevant in today’s world, where there’s so much division and disbelief.

“I feel like now, more than ever, there’s a real space for people to talk about grace and forgiveness and loving your neighbor,” he said. “What an amazing opportunity to demonstrate what the Gospel is trying to carry, and that is what’s really inspiring to me right now. It feels like there’s a real opportunity for us to be very vocal and announce what it means to follow a person so countercultural as Jesus, because he does crazy stuff like offer us forgiveness when we are undeserving of it.”

Crowder hopes his music takes people on a journey to transform their lives.

“I hope there’s some ability to identify themselves (in my music),” he said. “I hope it changes someone’s complete trajectory … where a song pulls somebody to the side of the road and literally turns them 180 degrees from where they were headed to someplace better. That would be my real hope.”