Third Day - History

History

In 1992, Mac Powell and Mark Lee were playing at Lee's church the same night that David Carr & Tai Anderson played with a band called Bullard Family Singers. Once introduced, the group took to each other quickly and Carr & Anderson were invited to join the band.

In 1993, while remaining in school, the band started playing more aggressively around Atlanta and saved $3,000 to record a full-length album. Also, during this time, Wilkins, who was working full-time as a school teacher, decided to leave the band. Third Day continued to work on their album, recording at Furies Studios in Atlanta. With the production help of Carr, Long Time Forgotten was finally released in 1994 with 2,000 copies available. In 1995, the band started looking for a second guitarist and after hearing Brad Avery play with singer Chris Carder, Avery was asked to audition with the band. After playing Consuming Fire during their first rehearsal, Avery was officially asked to join the band.

As the band rounded off its line-up, at that time, Mark Lee had made difficult decision to quit the band, yet never really went through with it, to pursue a full-time college load at Georgia Tech. So the band was found by and selected guitarist August McCoy. McCoy later went on to write & recorded with artists such as Sammy Ward, Brothers-n-Christ, and Sunsol; he is also seen reuniting after 13 years on the 2007 "Revelations" CD/DVD combo release. August McCoy is officially "The most forgotten & left out of the Third Day Legend" since he 'was' an official member at that time and appears in the line-up on the "Contagious" CD release and is firstly thanked in the subsequent Gray Dot release of the band's next self-titled release) August McCoy ended up being the one to leave for college, exiting the band, when they started playing more steadily in venues around the Southeast. While playing in Marietta, Georgia at the Strand Theatre, the owners offered the band a contract to sign with a new independent record label called Gray Dot Records. With recording contract in-hand, the band released the album Third Day, which ended up selling 20,000 copies. Shortly after, Reunion Records bought out their Grey Dot contract and signed the band to a multi-album deal.