Sunday, Sept. 9 - Christian rock band Seventh Day Slumber will be returning to Susanville for an after-school concert Monday, Sept. 10 at the Veterans Memorial Hall.

There will be other activities provided including a dunk tank and bounce house that will start at 3:30 p.m. The music starts at 5 p.m. Admission is free. The event is sponsored by Community Church, Honey Lake Valley Assembly and the Gospel Tabernacle.

D.J. Jenner, youth pastor at Honey Lake Valley Assembly, said Pastor Greg Willett and the men’s group Band of Brothers will also be at the concert to pray with the students if needed.
Jenner is also helping plan the event. He said he wanted to have a back-to-school concert for the students. He said there will be good music with good lighting and effects and there will be some speaking at the end.

As part of its Small Town America Tour, Seventh Day Slumber is also brining the bands Blank Pages and The Beautiful Refrain.
Seventh Day Slumber does not back down  and is unafraid to talk about life’s issues. In its biography on Becrecordings.com it says, “Honesty and candor have been trademarks of (Seventh Day Slumber’s lead singer Joseph) Rojas’s path from the depths of a cocaine-fueled suicide attempt through miraculous salvation in the back of an ambulance to the top of the Christian music charts. Seventh Day Slumber has long been heralded as a band that refuses to sugar-coat the struggles of real life. As the band has matured over the last 15 years, they’ve faced newfound challenges head on, and today their perspective and relevancy are as strong as ever, and their anthems of praise are even more profound.”

Becrecordings.com tells the story how Rojas’s musical beginnings came from a background of pain and hurt. His abusive father left and his family was poor.
When he was a preteen, Rojas’s mother got him a copycat B.C. Rich guitar. He learned six Metallica songs and wanted to start his own band. As a teenager, he was a drug addict and convicted felon and wrote songs to help him cope.

Becrecordings.com quotes him as saying, “If I was depressed, I’d write songs about it, and they were really depressing songs. If I was in pain, hurting, struggling, that’s what you got out of me.”
But after finding Jesus, his songs are different as evident in the band’s  
“A Decade of Hope.”

Rojas said, “All the songs I had written prior to becoming a Christian could be called ‘A Decade of Pain.’ Now, I still write about hurting and how I make mistakes, but I know that God has taken us from nothing and given us hope and life.”

When Seventh Day Slumber was created, Rojas started his own label and signed his own band to get name recognition. He also got a single added to two radio stations.
He then launched a radio tour, wound up in the top 10, booked 30 shows and got a distribution deal.

According to becrecordings.com,  the band’s first independent release “Picking Up the Pieces,” sold 40,000 units out of the gate. In 2005, Tooth and Nail Records called and offered to sign the band to BEC.