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Billboard’s top-selling band Casting Crowns maintains a perfect run at radio with its new single “East to West” claiming the No. 1 spot this week atop R&R’s Christian AC Monitored, Indicator, and INSP charts, Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs and CRW’s AC chart, marking the band’s seventh consecutive No.1 song in its four-year career. “East to West” is off the act’s historical third project The Altar and The Door released as the highest debuting album in the nationlast week at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 chart with 129,000 scans, a new record for a Christian artist without crossover promotion in the mainstream market.

Jimmy Wheeler, Vice President of Sales for Provident Label Group, held to his pre-album release promise to shave his head if sales hit 100,000 in the first-week. Wheeler willfully participated in a public head-shaving ceremony in the Provident offices on Friday, Sept. 7.
“When I made the ‘hair proclamation,’ it was stated to really stretch our sales and marketing force to achieve a monumental goal for all of us. Fortunately for our company, but unfortunately for my hair, we met and hugely exceeded that goal, and I personally had a week I will not soon forget,” says Wheeler. He adds, “I am humbled and honored just to be a part of the outstanding team at Provident.”
Second on the chart behind the High School Musical 2 soundtrack, Casting Crowns’ The Altar and The Door was the top artist release overall for the week ending Sept. 2, according to Nielsen SoundScan. This surpasses the group’s previous chart-high with its GRAMMY-winning, Platinum album Lifesong released at No. 9 in 2005 with 71,000 first-week scans.
Casting Crowns’ lead singer and songwriter is full-time Youth Pastor Mark Hall, who is serving his 16th year as student pastor at Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in Atlanta. All seven band members remain active in student ministry in the Atlanta-area and tour part-time around their local-church duties.
The band will visit 36 cities during its The Altar and The Door Fall Tour. For tour dates and more information, please visit www.castingcrowns.com.

During its four-year career, Casting Crowns has been honored with a GRAMMY Award, two American Music Award nods and multiple Gospel Music Dove Awards serving as the industry’s “Group of the Year” for the last three years. Casting Crowns has been the most played artist on all Christian radio formats combined, with seven consecutive No.1 AC radio hits, and the group has sold nearly 3 million albums to date. Earlier this year, Casting Crowns set an RIAA record as the fastest Christian music artist in its career to have its first two albums certified Platinum, and only the second in RIAA history ever to achieve it (the other being Jars of Clay in 2000).
Beach Street Records, an imprint of Reunion Records, a unit of Provident Label Group, was launched by Mark Miller, founder and frontman of the multi-platinum country music act, Sawyer Brown. SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT’s Provident Music Group is one of the world’s leading Christian music companies. Provident Music Group operates under the umbrella of Sony BMG Nashville.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Casting Crowns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.