Starfield (band)


Starfield is a Canadian Christian music group from Winnipeg, Manitoba. The group has songs and albums that have charted in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They have won multiple GMA Canada Covenant Awards, received four Juno nominations, five Vibes, and the Prairie Music Award for best Christian album.

Origins

The band was started by Tim and Jon Neufeld who were leading worship at their small church in Winnipeg. They started out making demos in a friend's basement, resulting in their first two independent albums Starfield and Tumbling After, which sold more than 20,000 units in Canada alone. "The fact that we sold any CDs to more people than just friends and family, or that we won any awards, still blows my mind," Tim said "we really just thought it would be fun to record some stuff for memory's sake. What has happened is just an amazing testimony to God's faithfulness!" The band's vision in music is: "To lift up Jesus so he is impossible to ignore."
The name "Starfield" was adopted from Bruce Cockburn's 1976 song named "Lord of the Starfields".

History

The release of their self-titled debut album introduced the band to a whole new audience in the United States. When it came time for recording the follow-up to the critically acclaimed record, Starfield teamed up with Bronleewe for a second time while also enlisting the talents of GMA Award-winning producer Ed Cash. The end result was, Beauty in the Broken.
"When we began writing songs for Beauty in the Broken, our goal was to make a corporate worship record an album for the church", explains Tim Neufeld, the groups primary lyricist. "However, as we got deeper into the process of music and lyric, we couldn't get away from our need to first address the often nagging disconnect between us and God its tough to march right into a song like Great is the Lord without first acknowledging the distance that exists between us and God. At the end of the day we felt like Beauty in the Broken was an incomplete worship record without songs like "My Generation," "Captivate," and "Shipwreck" that fess up to the pain, condemnation, and doubt that often get in the way of true intimacy with Jesus."
Beauty in the Broken was followed up with I Will Go in 2008 and The Saving One in 2010.
The band concluded their record deal with EMI/Sparrow in early 2011. Rather than enter into a new record deal, the band went into the studio and recorded an independent record, covering all their own recording costs and negotiating distribution agreements. The result of those sessions, "The Kingdom", released on January 31, 2012.
The band was on a hiatus from 2012 until the early 2019 cross-Canada Starfield Reunion Tour, with Canadian band The Color and Brooke Nichols.

Abbotsford church floor collapse

On April 25, 2008, Starfield was performing a concert at the Central Heights Church in Abbotsford, British Columbia, when the floor collapsed and a lighting scaffold fell under fans dancing in front of the stage. A number of concert-goers, mostly youth, fell through the floor into the basement. More than 40 people were injured, several seriously, but there were no fatalities. During the event, singer Tim Neufeld asked the crowd to cease dancing. When the floor collapsed, Neufeld threw his microphone aside and jumped down about to help the victims below. As a result, a concert scheduled April 26 in Burnaby, British Columbia was postponed and a concert scheduled April 28 in Red Deer, Alberta was cancelled. The Abbotsford concert was rescheduled to June 7 in another venue, while the Burnaby concert was rescheduled for June 6. Tickets purchased for the show of April 25 were redeemable at the rescheduled Abbotsford show.

Personnel

Starfield was originally formed by brothers Tim and Jon Neufeld, both from Winnipeg. Shaun Huberts and Gordie Cochran, both of Victoria, British Columbia, had then joined the band. Shaun Huberts left the band August 9, 2006, after his last performance at the DCLA Convention in Anaheim, CA. His replacement was Dave Crisp. The band moved back to Canada in the fall of 2006 after several years of living in Nashville. Soon after their North American tour with Shane and Shane, both Dave Crisp and Gordie Cochran moved on. Cochran is now playing drums on a worship team at Christian Life Assembly in Langley, British Columbia and has produced the GMA Canada Covenant Awards. James Johnston and Dave Lalonde joined Starfield to play bass and drums, respectively. Both Johnston and Lalonde had played with the band on and off for the past eight years before signing on full-time in September 2008. As of June 2011, Starfield has a show-to-show hired bass player and drummer. Johnston left just before his first child was expected to be born, and Lalonde left just after the band's East Coast of Canada "Saving One" tour.
Former members
Gospel Music Association Canada Covenant Awards
Juno Awards
Shai Awards
Western Canadian Music Awards