Living Proof consists of Jonathan Thrift (guitar, mandolin, banjo, and dobro) and his wife Melissa on the bass guitar. Making up the rest of the group is Josh Parker on rythm guitar and his wife Kathleen on the keyboard. Jonathan and Melissa's children, Rebecca and Benjamin, are getting into things by playing the "shakers"!
Influences
We have a lot of amazing influences in our lives in the realm of music. The Rochester Family out of Blacksburg, S.C. is probably to blame for Living Proof being in existence! Ben Rochester was Jonathan's inspiration for picking up his first instrument. The rest is history after that! Their music is a tremendous blessing to many people across the country and we count it a privelage to have these amazing people as our friends and mentors. There are many groups that have a wonderful Christian testimony that we learn from constantly and we thank God for them.
Sounds Like
As I said in our bio, we really kind of have our own sound...a little southern gospel, a little bluegrass. When you have a banjo, you are automatically labelled bluegrass. But we also have a keyboard, which you don't traditionally have in bluegrass. So, you will just have to listen and decide for yourself!
We are a local church ministry out of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Texas. We desire to be a blessing wherever we go and to help bring a spirit of worship to the service. We started the group back in 2000 with on of our founding members, Rodney, being asked to write a song about the printing ministry at our church. At that time, Jonathan started picking on the mandolin. God definately had a plan. Little did we know what amazing things would come of it. Our sound is a little different than any you may have heard before, but would mostly be described as a mix of southern gospel and bluegrass. There is a banjo involved so it must have a touch of bluegrass! We mainly travel on weekends to churches that invite us since we all hold down full-time jobs during the week. Recently the group went through some changes. Rodney, having surrendered to preach a couple of years ago, is now a youth pastor at a nearby church. To show how the Lord works in wonderful ways, Kathleen married Josh Parker a year ago and he has jumped right into Living Proof. He has taken up position playing the guitar and it has worked out perfectly! We are working on new songs and a new sound and God is greatly blessing. Our basic desire is just to serve the Lord with whatever talent he may have given us, and to bring all the glory and honor to Him.
Mike was bragging on you all this past weekend ~ he said you were all excellent and he couldn't have been more proud of you!!! Just wanted you to know that ~ love you all!!!
Hello my little sweeties!!! I just wanted to swing by and say hello and I still love that song, "I Believe In the Church!" I hope you are all doing well!! Love you all!!
