Coming of age

The band gets together in high school, plays a few gigs as teen-agers and then disbands as the responsibility of adult life catches up to it. It's a story every high school in America sees, every year.

In a sense, that's what happened to Foreign. But that doesn't even begin to describe the four guys who still jam together -- four young men who actually lived up to that "Friends Forever" signature on each other's senior yearbooks.

Nathan Chud is married now, and he goes to college full-time in Kansas City. Casey DenBleyker is married, too. Jake Davies went off and joined the Navy, while Peter Tegeler is engrossed in music studies at Central Washington University. The four boys who used music to spread the word of God in high school have now grown up into established young men.

Since their Colony High School years, their lives have spread out across the world. Their friendship has never traveled farther than their hearts, however. While they don't get to see each other as much as they did growing up -- they were like brothers then -- they still remain close.

"I guess the hope for the band is that our friendship will keep us in close contact with each other all the time," Chud said. "We may not be playing together as a band, but we'll always be friends. That's most important."

While playing together, Foreign wasn't an average garage band. The four members are dedicated to music -- and more importantly, dedicated to God. They put out two very professional looking and sounding CDs, the second of which, "At the End of the Day," was released earlier this year.

"We wanted to get the songs out there as a ministry," DenBleyker said. "I still pop in the CD and think, 'This is us. This is cool.' Hearing it makes me miss playing with these guys."

For Tegeler, hearing the music while at school gives him a sense of pride.

"At school, my friends have given me nice compliments about the CD," Tegeler said. "I've been really blessed. It's exciting to be able to show my friends there this part of my life in Alaska. They can see and hear a part of me growing up in Alaska."

Chud echoes that sentiment.

"The band and those CDs hold a lot of our childhood," Chud said. "It's like our last glimpse of childhood."

While none of the young men will come out and say Foreign's days are over, there is that sense of reality in each of their minds.

"You can look through the two CDs and see how much we grew then," Chud said. "We're still growing. We've talked about keeping it together, but every year we grow older, it gets a little more difficult. Foreign has always been more than a band to us. It's been us hanging out as friends, and most importantly, it's been a ministry."

Even though they aren't officially together as a band, all have remained close to music.

"Music has gone from a pleasurable thing to a survival thing for me," Tegeler, a music major, said. "I'm still in music because it's the only thing I can see myself doing."

DenBleyker still plays drums at Crossroads Community Church, and music is a large part of Chud's life still.

Through their separate lives in music, they have come to appreciate what they accomplished as a band.

"It's neat to see how much we all have grown, and how music has stayed with us," DenBleyker said. "It'll stay in our hearts for a while."

Second CD available around town

When four friends get together to do two things they really enjoy -- music and praising God -- the result is local band Foreign's second album, "At the End of the Day."

The album is the second for the band comprised of former Colony students Casey DenBleyker, Jake Davies, Nathan Chud and Pete Tegeler.

Released earlier this year, the CD has 14 tracks that the group wrote as a music ministry.

"We worked all last year to get it out at the beginning of this year," DenBleyker said. "It has been a challenge because we are relying on word of mouth."

The CD is available in local Christian bookstores, DenBleyker said. Shalom and New Song bookstores are carrying it, and DenBleyker said he believes copies are also available at Last Frontier Book Store.

The four friends are not performing together locally, although they developed quite a following during the past few years.

Two of the band members are now full-time college students, while a third is stationed in San Diego with the U.S. Navy. They released the CD before everyone left the Valley last winter.

DenBleyker is the only member of Foreign still in the Valley, and he has been handling much of the marketing and doing the legwork involved with the CD project.

"I did a solo gig in Washington and sold four copies, but I don't think that's helping out as much as Casey [DenBleyker] is," joked Tegeler.

For more information about the band or the two CDs, interested people can e-mail Foreign at foreign_m_m@hotmail.com.