Spirit West Coast at Del Mar in California marks the unofficial start to summer festival season. There to bring Saturday off to a rocking start was Destination7, a local Southern California band from Woodland Hills who seemed to really stir up the crowd. ccmBuzz was on hand after the show to meet the band and talk with lead singer Natasha Ponticelli.

ccmBuzz: What is the significance of the band's name, Destination7?

Natasha: "In this life we're on a journey as believers, trying to worship God and be our best for the Lord. But no matter what we do, we're always going to have sin. We'll never be able to perfectly worship God on earth, to be completely free of sin and able to just love who He is. So I was just kind of thinking one day, how the number 7 is the number of completion or perfection. I was thinking, 'Someday, we're going to reach that destination. We're going to be complete and with Christ, just able to fully worship Him in all of His Glory.' Our journey on Earth leads to a destination of perfection - Destination7."

ccmBuzz: How did the band come together?

Natasha: "A lot of bands know each other from church or youth group or whatever, but we didn't now each other at all. I was actually signed to a management company as a solo artist. They saw me at my church in Woodland Hills and they approached me to do music as a career. I had never even thought of it. So I started working with them and sending out ads to find band members to play for me as a solo artist. I found the guys and then it just ended up not working out with the management label, so I thought, "I've always listened to bands growing up, let's be a band." I'm not really a solo artist kind of person so."

ccmBuzz: The songs on your album, Wait for the Sun, were written over a period of several years. Did you perform on your own prior to forming Destination7?

Natasha: "Before I was a Christian, I was in a few bands here and there. I had been singing my whole life, I was writing songs, but never really pursuing music as a career. Then I became a Christian and all these experiences that I had been going through as a new believer - the first reaction of your family members and friends just not getting it. I look back on it and it's such a different perspective from a new believer's point of view of 'I'm so frustrated.' But you know what? The Bible says that everything will come out, I just need to let this go and to let God have it. All those different experiences were coming and I was writing about them, but I wasn't really performing and I didn't have any plans to. They were just songs I was writing for the Lord."

ccmBuzz: What was the recording process like?

Alan: "We prepared the entire body of work to be done within one week. The bulk of it was recorded in Pasadena over a period of a week. Natasha wrote the songs but we each put our own spin on it."

Natasha: "My songs were all acoustic. These guys really flushed out the music, made it their own. That's another reason why I was like, 'You know, this is really a band."

ccmBuzz: Can you give us an idea of what it was that brought you from staunch atheism to Christianity?

Natasha: "The power of the Holy Spirit, in all honesty. It was like a Damascus Road experience, not to compare myself with Paul, but I do relate a lot with him. I was in my car in traffic having this philosophical moment and that moment lead to deep fear. And then the Lord just interceded and said, 'I am holding you, I am the Lord'. It wasn't an audible voice or anything, it was in my heart, but I just knew that it was Jesus. I started following Him and He brought me along on this journey. It's amazing! Everybody has a different testimony and every testimony is beautiful and speaks to someone who needs to hear it. It's amazing to me how God uses all of our lives. Every guy in this band has an awesome story to tell. Maybe some of them don't think their story is as exciting as others, but the bottom line is there is somebody who needs to hear Jason's testimony, there's somebody who needs to hear Alen's testimony. It's amazing how we're all different and how God uses that."

ccmBuzz: Destination7 performs at secular venues like Whiskey a Go Go, do you find that there is more pressure in that environment to not sell yourself out or to behave a certain way as a Christian?

Natasha: "I think at first we were a little intimidated to go into a secular club. We got an e-mail forwarded to us saying that the Whiskey was looking for a last-minute band and as long as you weren't metal you could play. I wrote back right away. I thought, "We should give it our all and we should be really, really bold because we'll probably never be asked back. The Whiskey was a little bit weird with us at first, and we were a little bit intimidated, but by the second song they were bringing us beer. We didn't drink it, for the record. (laughs) But they really liked us and they asked us back and asked us back.

Jeremy: The music is really powerful so I think they were really drawn to that. Getting to know Natasha and the rest of us I think they really liked us so they gave us some more opportunities. I think God had a hand in it too, really opening the doors and He keeps opening them for other opportunities. It's just been amazing.

Natasha: Their booking manager is like, 'I'm a Buddhist, but your message touches me.' She hasn't accepted Christ but that whole staff, there's something going on. So just please pray for them. It's a really dark environment where they're at spiritually, but something is touching their hearts. It's really intense.

So now they've asked us to headline a first-ever all Christian rock night on July 6th. It's like crazy! It's one of those things where I would never have thought that would happen. I'm like, 'Do you guys know that you're not going to sell any liquor?' (laughs) I think that we just give it our all no matter where we go. I think that God put us in that situation to kind of test us to say, 'OK, you guys are ready to be who you are no matter where you are?' I don't know about other bands but I feel like time is short. You could walk out of the door from the Whiskey that night, be totally drunk and get in a car accident and die.

So if we have a minute, if we have a chance to just change that person's life then we need to take it 110% because we carry the Message that is the difference between eternal life and eternal death. We go into every gig full force no matter where we are."

ccmBuzz: What are your hopes and goals as a band?

Natasha: "Why does Destination7 exist? We exist to reach the unbelievers for Christ. We also exist to mobilize believers into missions. I'm really passionate about missions. I wrote a song called Rest while I was in Romania working with orphans. It's really all about getting people excited and jazzed up about going out there and fulfilling their duty as Christians, to carry that message and get it out there. So mobilizing believers and reaching non-believers for Christ, those are our goals."

Find out more about Destination7 at www.myspace.com/destination7project.