Rockers make special stop in memory of Canfield boy

By John Benson

Capital Lights will play in Columbiana to benefit the Nick Avery Role Model Scholarship.

Capital Lights lead singer Bryson Phillips admits he’s never been to Northeast Ohio, but when his group was asked to play the Nick Avery Role Model Scholarship benefit concert Saturday at Main Street Theater in Columbiana, the Oklahoma native said he and his band mates couldn’t refuse.

“Yeah, this concert is not even a touring leg,” said Phillips, calling from his Sooner State home. “It’s a benefit for Nick Avery, who I guess passed away a few years ago. So it’s kind of cool. I knew his sister through MySpace.com. I met her on the Hawk Nelson tour, and a few months ago I was talking to her and I found her brother’s Web site and saw that so many of his friends still leave him comments even though he’s passed away.”

In December 2005 during his freshman year at Heartland Christian School, Avery, of Canfield, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. He died a year later.

“Everyone still talks through the Web site, and I thought it was really cool,” Phillips said. “So the next thing we know we were asked to play at the benefit they do for him. All the guys saw it too and wanted to go play, so we’re just driving up there to do that one show.”

These are exciting times for the members of Capital Lights, which in a previous existence was actually a screamo band. However, the group eventually evolved into its current power-pop contemporary Christian music style, which can be heard on the band’s recently released debut, “This Is An Outrage.”

So far, the band has toured nonstop in support of the project, which includes radio singles “Outrage” and “Out of Control.” Aside from playing the summer festival circuit, the quintet just came off the “Creation Tour” with headliner Kutless. Though Phillips said his band is decidedly Christian in spirit, he admitted the outfit can be conspicuous alongside its peers.

“Like on the ‘Creation Tour’ we did stand out a little bit because we were a bit different,” Phillips said. “For the most part we play with a lot of other Christian bands, whose songs aren’t necessarily strictly about God or anything like that. For us, we are going to write what we write. It’s one of those things where we’re not writing bad songs at all. In fact, we like playing for church and youth pastors and youth groups, so we might as well keep the Christian label on us.”

It’s this spiritual energy that Phillips hopes Capital Lights will be spreading at its upcoming visit to the Buckeye State.

“Oh man, just come and hang out and have fun,” Phillips said. “We expect to play a really good show. We don’t plan on standing there. If that was the case, they could just listen to the CD and look at a picture of us. We jump around, throw our guitars around and stuff like that.”