They were the soundtrack to youth groups, summer camps, late-night sporadic worship services in your friends first apartment, and countless church stages. Songs like “King,” “Treasure,” “Look What You’ve Done,” and their Dove Award-winning rendition of “Blessed Be Your Name” became woven into the fabric of modern worship during the early 2000s.
Then… they disappeared.
After what was intended to be a six-month sabbatical turned into nearly fifteen years away, founding vocalist and songwriter John Ellis wasn’t sure Tree63 would ever return. Burnout, life, family, and a season away from music left him believing the band’s story might already be finished.
Instead, it became the beginning of a new chapter.
With the release of Voyage, Tree63 returns with its first full-length album in nearly eleven years. But as I quickly discovered while sitting down with John Ellis, this isn’t simply an attempt to relive the past. It’s a record written by someone who has actually lived through the years between those classic albums and today.
“I thought I was done. So, to be sitting here talking to you about a new Tree63 record years later is pretty wild. I’m excited and very, very thankful.”
Ironically, it wasn’t an industry meeting or record label phone call that brought Tree63 back together. It was an old friend in South Africa who challenged Ellis to stop hiding behind cover songs.
“He said to me, ‘What are you doing in the corner of the venue singing Bryan Adams? You’re the guy who wrote these Tree63 songs. What are you doing?’… Suddenly God was kind of prompting me and going, ‘Hey, this thing that you do… it’s time to sing those songs again.’”
Bringing in a new lineup, with the blessing of the original bandmates who are now all over the globe, the band was reborn from the ground up. Ellis is joined by Deon Knipe and Angus Warden and spent an entire year simply rehearsing before recording a single note.
But the biggest surprise of our conversation wasn’t about the music. It was about who this record is actually for.
So much of Christian music naturally focuses on introducing people to Jesus. Ellis still celebrates that. Yet after decades of ministry, touring, and personal struggles, his heart has shifted toward another audience.
“This is an album by somebody who is 20 years on from his initial walk with Jesus… looking around at people my age who have, one by one, lost their faith…I feel real hard for people who’ve been through the mill, been through life, been through divorce, been through death in the family… and have walked away from their faith thinking that God wasn’t there for them when they needed Him most.”
That led us into one of my favorite moments of the interview.
We talked about how Christian music often celebrates the excitement of new believers. We remember youth group. We remember camp. We remember those first moments of faith.
But what about everyone who has lived twenty or thirty years since then?
Ellis believes that’s the conversation *Voyage* is meant to have.
“We both know what it was like to be in a youth group or a young people’s meeting in our early 20s. It was exciting as all get out… But what does it feel like to be a Christian in your 30s and 40s and 50s? We don’t talk about that level of faith. We talk about our young, exciting days and then death. There’s a lot of life in between… The miracle isn’t getting saved. The miracle really is keeping going and staying on that voyage… It’s great to get born again. It’s fantastic. It’s life changing. But staying in it when you’re 30 and 40 and 50 and after going through some stuff. That’s miracle stuff.”
Ellis isn’t trying to recreate the soundtrack of your youth. It’s written for the people who have actually lived long enough to discover that faith isn’t one defining moment, it’s thousands of ordinary steps taken over decades.
By the end of our conversation, Ellis summed up Tree63’s return with a simple statement that perfectly captures this season of his life:
“I still have a guitar, I still know Jesus, and I’ve got some songs to sing. That’s all that really matters for me.”