Imagine being raised by a pastor of the traveling Pentecostal church with two other brothers. You’ve been home- schooled your whole life and the only soundtrack you’ve ever heard was the gospel sound of beat-up instruments and soul-searching screams played and sung by your mom and Uncle Buddy while you played backup in the worship band. Just as you think your life can’t get anymore boring, things get flipped upside down and your father reverts back to his Ramblin’ and gamblin’ lifestyle that he knew as a youth. Your rock of a role model has actually turned out to be a dirt clod only to crumble into dust between your fingers. What do you do? Crumble with him, or keep playing music and open for headliners like The Strokes and U2?
    Welcome to the lives of Nathan, Caleb, Jared, and cousin Matthew Followill, collectively known as the Kings of Leon. These brothers kept playing music, eventually putting together a demo that got them signed on the same day it was played in the RCA offices. Their recipe of Southern rock consists of one part Townes Van Zandt, two parts The Strokes, scrambled together with Bible- thumping gospel soul topped with a few hallelujahs. The end result is a delicious meal fit for a king.
    It was another lovely day in San Diego, so I took the Kings to the beach. Being from Tennessee, they don’t get to see the ocean very much. Actually they never see it, and the only other time they had been there was in Coronado on 9/11, “the day of the tragedies,” drummer and oldest brother Nathan told me.
    Fresh with the smell of sea salt and cigarettes in their long hair, the boys went into the venue to do a sound check. Before sound check, lead singer, Caleb belted out his version of The Eagles “I Can’t Tell You Why” over and over again, as an attempt to get his raspy vocal chords humming. By the time the band joined him on stage, you could hear soft screams of desperation from empty shot glasses, hoping to be filled by the tales of love and pain. Caleb was ready to make the walls shiver with new songs from their sophomore release A-ha Shake Heartbreak. Three packs of cigarettes, one bloody finger, and a passionate sound check later, it’s time for dinner.
    The two oldest brothers, Nathan (24) and Caleb (22), join me for the interview and fine cuisine. As we sit down, we start talking about how Juliette Lewis, who opened for them at the Sundance Film Festival, was hanging out with their mom at one of the sold-out shows nights before at the Roxy, in LA. We discuss the differences between red and white wine and how Caleb used to like red more until he spent time in Europe. So when our waitress came by to take our drink orders, it made sense when Caleb ordered a bottle of Chablis.
    Watching Caleb obsessively tuck his hair behind one ear, I noticed he was a complex thinker with some big knots to untie. Nathan’s nonchalant mannerisms made him seem like he was the glue to the group. Their Southern accents warmed my spirit and I wondered, What if these rock princes had followed in the Followill footsteps to become pastors? But why didn’t they? Like Glenn Frye said, “I can’t tell you why, but I know two brothers that can.”

Risen Magazine: Why is love so fragile?
Caleb: I think for us the way we grew up, we’ve always been more accustomed to saying goodbye than hello, ‘cuz we were always going somewhere else. It makes you a good person. In a way it makes you be able to communicate with people, but you don’t put too much trust in relationships except the love that we have for one another. Not only as a family but as a band we go through all the s—t together.
NathaN: I don’t think we’ve ever experienced true love aside from the family but not as far as girls go.

RM: What is true love?
N: When their flaws even make you smile.

Waitress drops off apps/drinks, bottle of white wine (Chablis). She asks if we would like to taste the wine. Caleb says to pour it. Nathan politely asks for half a glass. Ready to order.
“I know what I want,” Caleb shouts out. “I’ll have the jalapeno salmon salad with dressing on the side.” Nathan orders spinach dip. After the order, Caleb toasts with his wine glass to a good night and good people.

RM: What’s the difference between pride and confidence?
N: Pride would be you have to tell yourself how good you are. Confidence is brought on by other people telling you how good you are.
C: It’s an inner thing. I know this sounds a little dorky, but the Bible says, “Pride comes before the fall.” It’s one thing to be proud of the people you love, but to have a pride that comes off as arrogance, it’s two different things. It’s almost this thin line, but it’s a tall thin line. It’s a bit of a hurdle from pride to confidence. We have confidence, but none of us are cocky, or we try not to be. When you’re on the road for two years and everyone’s kissing you’re a-s, after a while, if you don’t watch yourself, you start to believe it. I think that’s what’s good about our success that we had in the U.K. and Europe first. Because we had to rise and become those people that we hate, then we came home and we’re nothing, so we wrote a record about the people we hated that we’re becoming. I think that’s why we’re humble. We’re down to earth. We realize we’re human and that we all f—k up, and no one’s perfect.
N: Everyone talks about being streetwise, but your idea of streetwise is way different than what streetwise really is. You come to find out streetwise is understanding the closest people around you working with you have an agenda. Everyone’s got an agenda, everyone’s got a purpose they’ve gotta fill. Everyone’s gotta go up the ladder, it comes with the territory. I guess you gotta deal with it.

RM: Do you guys have depressive tendencies?
N: When we come off the road, I would say we’re all kind of down.
C: We have our moments; we had a lot more in the beginning with always being away from home. Being in England where the sun never shines, that alone can get you really down. Like I said, I think we’re getting better at what we do and I’m not talking about us playing, but better in the way we’re taking it, taking all this s—t in stride. If it gets too bad we’ll fly our mom into town. Honestly, we were in England and it had been raining well over a week. It was so gloomy and we were all in our rooms almost crying. We were feeling a depression we had never felt before. When our mom came to see us, there was the most beautiful sunshine for three days, and as soon as she left it went back to gray. Those kinds of things inspire us. That’s what made us write this album. On our first album we were talking about the places we wish we could go and the girls we wish we had. Then we came home and wrote songs about people and not about celebrities. It’s what really goes on. This album was all about emotions, even though it comes off as melancholy at times. But this is the s—t that you go through.

RM: Townes Van Zandt seemed to have an idealistic mission to save the world when he wrote songs. Do you feel you share the same mission?
C: I would hate to ever be the band that thinks that they’re the voice of their generation, but I do think that we are part of the voice of our generation. All these bands that had this great education but didn’t know what they wanted growing up. Being a band that’s completely opposite of that, we’re coming from a different place than most people. Where someone can take their education and make artsy music, we’re gonna take what we know and make completely honest music. We know all these magazines are gonna say whatever they want to f—king say to sell their magazines and they’ll talk us up like were some model f—king cocaine using blah blah blah, this and that. But after this was all said and done we came home and we were like if everyone wants to get so f—king personal, let’s get more personal than they could ever imagine. There’s not many people writing songs about not being able to get it up. The funny thing is if the people knew these women we couldn’t get it up for, they would s—t themselves.
    Here comes the first oyster shooter boys.

RM: What was the first song that gave you guys goose bumps?
C: [Coughing from his Tabasco oyster shooter] Wow!...Excuse me.
Well, I would have to say gospel. It was a gospel song named “On the Wings of a Snow White Dove sung by my uncle Buddy… Badass, it’s a song I want to cover. The other song besides that was “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and The Shondells. It blew my mind. My uncle went out and bought it the next day. The song freaked me out. I had never heard production before. Growing up with the broke-down church beats and clangy pianos that aren’t even in tune, and so when I heard “Crimson and Clover” in the backseat, I was like, What the f—k is that?... Man, you have got to do an oyster shooter. It will take your voice away for a second, but it is uuunnnn-believable.
N: I started drummin’ in church when I was seven. So I never really had one song. My mom played piano, my dad played guitar and they needed a drummer.

RM: What is the importance of family?
C: We’ve always been really close with our family, like our uncles and aunts. You go through a time when you all love each other and you’re proud of your family, and then you go through a time when your family embarrasses you. But I think the older we get and the more f—ked up we get as people by relying on things that we used to frown upon, our family for relying upon it makes your love totally change. I love having my mom and dad at a show with celebrities like Courtney Love and Juliette Lewis. You have celebrities walking around thinking they’re big-time and within 10 minutes our parents are the biggest stars of the party. Our big, jolly dad and our country mom that plays dumb half the time. These other people don’t know what it’s like to be real; these are real people you can tell immediately.

Our meal is served. Nathan tells the waitress that he also had ordered a spinach artichoke dip that he w