opening doors , giving me opportunities . I ’ ve kept playing in bands and producing .
In my twenties , I started producing and touring with Alex Campos as well as producing for Marcus Witt and Guano . I also started playing at Lakewood Church on Sundays in the main sanctuary . Since then , I ’ ve been going hard on the music industry and God ’ s continued to give me opportunities . He gave me seven Grammy nominations , two Dove Awards . It ’ s just been nonstop .
[ Doug ] Awesome ! Andrés , what about you ?
[ Andrés Castro ] I don ’ t have a huge background like Chris , but I ’ ll do my best ! I started playing guitar when I was ten , but I didn ’ t have a teacher or anything like that . When I was eighteen , I received Jesus as my Savior . I ’ d had a few teachers that taught me the the basics of the guitar . A huge thing that happened was that I went to a big church that had 10,000 young people worshipping with electric guitars and making rock music .
I had no money to go to university , so I spent all my time in my house playing the guitar . On Saturdays I would go to church and would watch the guitar player . Then I would go back home and try to play and find the sound . That ’ s the way that I learned guitar . A few years passed and I became a real guitar player , and they give me the opportunity to play with that youth band . That was huge for me . After that I was playing in front of 10,000 people . When that came to an end , we began a new project .
The idea of the project was just to make music for young people to follow Jesus . We were not thinking about money or tours , just to make music to help the people worship Jesus and to make the name of Jesus grow in the world . That ’ s the only thing that we had on our minds . That band grew huge with millions of followers and millions of views on YouTube . And similar to Chris , some Dove Awards and that stuff .
[ Doug ] Can you describe the journey that led to starting the camp together ?
[ Andrés ] I met Chris fifteen years ago when he came to my church in Bogota , Colombia . We became friends , talking about guitars and pedals . After that he was in a concert with Miel San Marcos and we said hello again . He helped me get in contact with the people at Gretsch so I could become an endorser . Then at NAMM in 2020 Chris talked about the idea of doing something online for the people to learn guitar , so we recorded the videos and started our online program . The idea after that was to meet in person with some of the people from the platform and that ’ s how it happened .
[ Doug ] Chris , what are some of the specific areas you wanted these camps to speak into ?
[ Chris ] I ’ ve had a few things that impacted my
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