The Promise (CD)

Through two electronic security gates, up a curving road that spoons a palm-tree-studded expanse of green, past an enormous stairway straight off a Ziegfield Follies set, one finally arrives at Chartmaker Studios.

"David and the guys are at Pizza Hut," a pretty young assistant says, and the utter normalcy of the remark comes as something of a relief. This Fantasyland, tucked in a corner of Uber-producer David Foster's Malibu estate, is where the five members of Plus One have been holed up, polishing harmonies and test-driving songs in their bid to become Christian music's Next Big Thing. That something as pedestrian as a pepperoni pizza could infiltrate the rarefied air here is a good sign.

Indeed, the buzz that has preceded the launch of Plus One has raised expectations and eyebrows from the get-go. Alternately hyped as Christian music's first "boy band" or the genre's new model for multi-platinum success, the truth is considerably simpler: these are five church guys whose lives have been transformed virtually overnight into the California Dream. How on earth did they get here?

Interestingly, Nate Cole (age 18), Gabe Combs(20), Jeremy Mhire (19), Jason Perry (17) and Nathan Walters (21) have come together through an odd mix of coincidences, near misses, and could-have-beens that has them all in agreement: This band is definitely "a God thing." Little wonder their heads are spinning.

"We always say," Cole says, "there's going to come a point where someone is going to sit down with us and go, This has all been a really big joke!"

"There are so many moments that are really surreal," adds Mhire, who hails from Springfield, Mo. Sure, like singing "America The Beautiful" which has oddly become their signature song--before a crowd of 18,000 at a Los Angeles Kings hockey game, or for Vice President Al Gore at a fundraiser. Or performing at Carole Bayer Sager's Christmas party and seeing Jack Nicholson, Goldie Hawn and Dustin Hoffman in the crowd. "You just sit there going, Wait a second! Wait a second!" Mhire marvels.

While all five are seasoned performers--they've been singing, playing instruments and leading worship in their respective home churches for years--most were, until recently, ordinary high school and college kids just beginning to wonder what they were going to do with their lives.

Walters, at 21 the group's eldest, is the lone exception. With the chiseled good looks of a TV soap star, Walters had already decided to leave his home of Lakeland, Fla.--where he'd been leading worship at the humongous Carpenter's Home Church--and pursue a music dream in Nashville. Once in town he got a day job at a shoe store, toured briefly with Janet Paschal, and basically tried to meet as many people as he could before trying out for Plus One.

It was with some initial misgivings that he auditioned for the group. Having moved to Nashville to make it as a solo singer, songwriter and producer, the idea of a pre-fabricated "boy group" initially turned him off.

"I thought maybe it was going to be cheesy or something, so I put this wall up," Walters says. "I prayed about it and then Mitchell, our manager, called again. He told me more details about it and I thought, Wow! This isn't what I thought it was! This could be a cool deal."

It's easy to see why Walters was initially wary. Pre-fab pop groups--that is, put together through the audition process by a manager or producer--have usually received a bum rap, viewed as more image than substance. All of that started to change when pre-fab groups like Backstreet Boys and N'Sync started racking up Grammy and American Music Award nominations, along with multi-platinum sales and No. 1 singles.

Mitchell Solarek, who owns a San Francisco modeling agency and manages such acts as Natalie Grant, Selah and Greg Long, put Plus One together with music executive Barry Landis. Solarek had a very selfish reason for wanting a Christian "boy band"--as a father of two young children, and a Christian, he was concerned about the lyrics his kids were hearing.

"Backstreet Boys--they're considered wholesome, but the lyrics of one song is 'am I sexual'--and my 6-year-old daughter is singing that! I don't want my daughter singing, 'am I sexual!' So I said, I'm going to get Christian CDs for her. Her taste in music is Backstreet Boys, N'Sync and Britney Spears--and the reality was, there weren't any [Christian acts like that]."

Meanwhile, halfway across the country in Nashville, Landis heard a similar call. As head of Atlantic Records' Christian music division, he wanted not only to produce successful pop bands--and in this day and age, that means "boy" groups and "girl" groups--he also wanted to create a new model for sending this music out into the world. Partnering with general market labels, like David Foster's 143 Records, has opened many doors for the Plus One guys, even before their album was recorded.

"Promoting to the whole [Christian] subculture and preaching to the choir is one idea, but my personal view is that Christ commanded us to go--He commanded us to be light and salt," Landis says. "For us to do that I really believe that we have to penetrate the darkness, and that's a really difficult thing to do. But I think that means we have to be involved in partnerships that give us opportunities we've never had before."

Working with David Foster--the hitmaking producer behind Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men and Celine Dion, to name a few--has handed these guys a platform that usually takes years, and many hit albums, to create. Who else could get a Christian band singing "America The Beautiful" aired on influential L.A. pop station, KIIS-FM? Most Christian artists, no matter how established, will never reach Plus One's starting point.

"They are one of the few Christian bands to be asked to be involved in things that Christian artists aren't typically involved in," Solarek notes. "To be singing in front of the CEO of Time Warner and Kevin Costner--what an amazing opportunity to share the faith in action! I'm so proud of that more than anything else."

Being so successful so quickly does have its downside for the guys. "There's not someone in charge of us," observes Cole, a cherubic 18 year-old from Sacramento whose father heads the Capitol Christian Center there. "No one's telling us to wake up Sunday mornings to go to church."

"It all happened so fast, it was like, BOOM, I'm gone," says Perry, at 17 the youngest band member. The last to come aboard, Perry literally had days to decide whether he would join the band or finish his senior high school year in Indiana. A "preacher's kid" like Cole, Perry says his father's career kept the family on the move, so moving to California initially looked like a no-brainer. Today, he takes correspondence courses and hopes to graduate with his class in May.

"I didn't realize what moving out of the house meant, because you're done as far as your parents raising you goes," he notes. "A month after I left, my parents and I really realized what had happened and started adjusting to it. I talk to my mom every day."

Combs, the group's third PK, recalls, "My dad really wanted me to go to college. He has a master's degree, so he was like, You've got to get your doctorate! I wasn't really college material," he laughs--Combs' dry wit makes him the group jokester. "But I love music. And my mom was more of a musician, so she understood."

While Plus One hasn't exactly come up through the ranks, Solarek has initiated several bonding opportunities. For one thing, they have been roommates as well as bandmates since June. They also volunteered at a family shelter in San Francisco and went to Selma, Ala., to work on a Habitat for Humanity project back in August. Both experiences were eye-openers. On top of that, there's been a sort of "boy band boot camp" of dance lessons, demo sessions and such that has brought the guys close together, so they now refer to each other as brothers and best friends.

"I needed to build unity to where they would stand by one another and be accountable to one another," Solarek explains. As for the volunteer work, "it was as important to put together a band that had a real heart for people and the culture that they live in as finding five great-looking guys that can sing good.

"It lost that whole 'boy band' thing for me--it was about five guys who loved the Lord and watching their hearts really become empathetic to people who lived in the city, cultures they were not aware of before."

Solarek may have lost the "boy band thing," but the guys know they can't escape it. With their GQ looks and hip hairdos, they've already been stopped by strangers who think they're the Backstreet Boys.

"Hopefully, it's something we're learning to embrace," Mhire notes. "Hopefully we'll have something unique, just like every other boy band--they each bring something different to the table. Ours is definitely our message."

The members of the group, Landis, Solarek and even David Foster all agree that Plus One must be a Christian band first. Although they're being launched through mainstream artist development maneuvers like mall tours and teen magazine promotions, no one is trying to make Plus One anything it's not.

"It is at the point of the lyrics, at the point of the message of the songs, that we have to be more careful," Landis says.

Fortified by pizza and inspired by a trip to the record store--Cole has picked up a Stevie Wonder greatest hits collection--the five hunker down to work. The studio's walls are covered with Gold and Platinum albums bearing familiar names--Whitney, Celine, Brandy, All-4-One, even Carman. Working with Foster has perhaps been the biggest pinch-me-now-so-I-know-I'm-not-dreaming part of the whole thing.

"Everybody knows our group works with David," Cole says. "When we're with other producers or writers, they're all like, How's it working with David? I hear he's real intense!"

To the contrary, they all say Foster put them at ease from the beginning. Still, he pulls no punches. Tonight, Walters is nursing a head cold and his vocals are off. "You sound great but you're flat," Foster tells him repeatedly, as he tries to nail a harmony part with Mhire.

"I love that he knows he can always get better out of me," Mhire says later. "He'll say stuff like, Good job guys! That was really... mediocre!"

Foster is only producing a few songs on their debut, but because it's his label helping launch the act, he has more than a passing interest in the outcome. Foster is accustomed to seeing some impressive sales numbers from his artists, a feat few Christian acts accomplish without crossing over; still, he has no plans to push them mainstream.

"I am kinda used to those big numbers a lot," Foster admits with a laugh, "with a lot of the people I work with! But if the crossover happens, it will happen naturally, it won't happen because we're forcing it. I think we'd look like idiots, and I think we'd be disrespectful to the genre."

Back in the sound room, with Walters's vocals not cooperating, they decide to forego recording and play Foster some new songs they've been writing. The guys hope to have at least one cut on their debut, and from the approving sounds Foster's making, he likes what he hears.

Winding down the road away from Chartmaker toward the Pacific Ocean, a look back reveals a strange sight--a huge, white cross, alight in the hills above the Foster estate. It's a familiar Malibu landmark, part of the church-affiliated Pepperdine University campus. Considering the work underway just up the road, it's also a very good sign, indeed.