Big Daddy Weave bringing ‘Jesus I Believe’ Tour to Cedar Rapids in November

Before making the 2012 album 'Love Come to Life,” circumstances in Big Daddy Weave reached a point where band leader Mike Weaver started to seriously question whether he should end the group.

In a recent phone interview, he said he had grown to feel disconnected from God and that he was merely reciting the same messages from show to show, and not doing enough to help bring fans closer to God and better live their lives through God.

'For me ...

you get in this place where you can literally get up there and share something and not even be connected to it,” Weaver said. 'And I've got to tell you, there is nothing quite as yuck as sharing something that is hopeful when your hope is hurt.”

Some practical issues were only adding to Weaver's frustrations.

'We were about 60 grand in the hole,” said Weaver, whose band plays Nov. 8 at the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids. 'We were just making it from tour to tour. It was like we could never dig out of this thing we had.”

But in a single night, something fundamental happened to change the course of the group's career and help Weaver reverse what had become negative attitudes about himself, his self-worth and his trust in God.

'It was one night, I'll tell you,” Weaver recalled. ' ... It was super-low attendance and I just felt like I was regurgitating the same old thing. But I had a friend I was sharing my frustration with, and I said, ‘I don't know if it's over for us.' ... He came to the show and I said, ‘Man, sometimes I just want to shoot down the whole thing and just pray for people.' And he just points at me right in the face, and he says ‘Mike, you should do that tonight.'”

Weaver heeded his friend's advice, and during the show, he stepped off the stage to speak to the audience.

'I said, ‘Man, we're all hurting. Maybe you're hurting, too,' I said, ‘I don't got any kind of wisdom for you, but if you want to come down here, I'll pray with you.' And I was thinking everybody would probably be too scared to come. And people just started coming," he said.

'What turned it around for us was not feeling so ‘Woe is me. Why is this (band) not working?' We started praying for other people and then God literally restored us in that process.”

Since that night, members of Big Daddy Weave have made listening to stories from fans and offering their prayers a fixture at the end of every show.

Along the way, they turned around their career, achieving their highest level of popularity on the Christian music scene in a career that dates back to 2001. That's when the original band members - lead singer/guitarist Weaver; his brother, bassist Jay Weaver; guitarist Jeremy Redmon; and sax player/keyboardist - formed Big Daddy Weave after meeting at University of Mobile in Alabama. (Drummer Brian Beihl, who replaced original band member Jeff Jones in 2013, completes the current lineup).

'Love Come to Life” became a breakthrough album. It featured four songs that topped the Christian music charts, including 'Redeemed,” a song that spent 11 weeks at No. 1 and became the signature song for Big Daddy Weave. It also opened the door for the lyrical themes on the band's current album, the 2015 release 'Beautiful Offerings.”

On this latest release - which went Top 5 on the Christian album chart - Weaver and his bandmates tell listeners that the forgiveness for their past promised in their monster hit, 'Redeemed,” is only part of what redemption involves. Redemption also gives people a path to a better present and future.

'The thing is, we're redeemed from something, but we're redeemed for something, too,” Weaver said. 'And I think the next part of that is the part that for me I wanted to write about. That's where so many of these songs (on 'Beautiful Offerings”) have come from, or just a place of what does that (redemption) mean for us now? It means new life.”

The messages of the songs have grown so important that Weaver is now finding the words he shares and the connections he makes with fans are now the highlights - and the focus - of Big Daddy Weave's live shows.

'As we have gone along, we've always enjoyed music, but I think in this last season, more than anything, we have just really enjoyed seeing God just move in the lives of people in a really powerful way,” he said. 'Really, from the beginning to the end (of the show) we want it to be about just sharing the fact that God loves people. He really does. He's not mad at people. ...

There's a second chance for everybody, man," he said. 'I need more than a second chance.

"So all of these songs come from that place of grace and that place of acceptance, that place of learning about our identity in God.”

Get Out!

WHAT: Big Daddy Weave: Jesus I Believe Tour

WHERE: Paramount Theatre, 123 Third Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids

WHEN: 7 p.m. Nov. 8

TICKETS: $23 to $78 VIP, Paramount Ticket Office, (319) 366-8203 or Paramounttheatrecr.com

BAND'S WEBSITE: Bigdaddyweave.com