How a Bible Study and Boy Band Inspired Musical Group GENTRI

Published: December 22, 2023

How a Bible Study and Boy Band Inspired Musical Group GENTRI

By Movieguide® Contributor

Singer Casey Elliot recently explained how the idea for his dynamic musical group GENTRI came from his wife’s Bible study.

Elliot grew up in a musical family, with parents who were composers and songwriters. Their garage was a band studio, and music was a part of their life. However, he became more interested in theater during high school which led him to Weber State for college as he pursued a career in acting.

“I did that for about a year, and after that I decided to actually switch majors to business. I met my wife at Weber State, we got married, and I got into the business school up there,” he explained. “I actually loved it; I kind of discovered this new passion but I was still doing musical theater.”

Halfway through school, however, he took a break to join the opera “Aida” for a year-long tour. When Elliot returned to school, he continued with his business classes while doing musical theater on the side. It was during this time he would meet the other members of GENTRI.

“So the official GENTRI story is that we all met during ‘Les Mis’ at the Hale Center Theater, which is true, that was the first thing we all did together, but we all kind of knew each other from different things…” he explained. “[But] ‘Les Mis’ was kind of the first thing we all did together.”

One weekend, during the same time Elliot was working on ‘Les Mis,’ his wife returned from a weekend faith retreat and told him about a boy band who had been there performing.

“She was telling us about it, she was like, it was good, they were good singers, but they’re all young 20s and they’re talking to these middle-aged women, just about life, and things that kind of seemed beyond their years,” Elliot recalled. “And she said they were very much like boys. At the time, I was like, almost 30, 29, or 30.”

“[My wife] was like, wouldn’t it be cool if you guys just start a group, being older, being more, you know with families or whatever, it just would resonate better with that group of people,” he continued.

“And so as we talked about it, my other friend, she lives in LA, she was like yeah, like the dating scene in LA, it’s really tough because so many of the guys…she’s very, very conservative, very traditional, and she’s like, a lot of the guys are not like that in LA; pulling out a chair, the art of being a gentleman, paying for the date and opening doors and just the chivalrous types of things, that she wanted, she wasn’t seeing,” he added. “So the more we talked about it, we were like, yeah, that’s something that’s kind of getting lost in our day and age where masculinity is like, looked down on.”

The group decided that their focus would be on being a gentleman and traditional masculinity while performing musical theater pieces.

Ten years later, the trio has found immense success with many Billboard-topping songs and albums. Christmas tends to be one of the busiest times of the year for them.

“It starts to ramp up a lot this time of year with rehearsal, and making sure we get all the production stuff pulled together,” Elliot said.

The group is currently on this year’s Christmas tour with a special performance scheduled for Christmas Eve on Great American Family.

They are also getting ready for an Easter celebration coming this spring.

“We have exciting news! We will be putting on an Easter celebration March 26-27 at the @liveeccles. We will be featuring music from our new upcoming hymns album! Our hymns will be brought to life with a 60-piece orchestra and choir,” the group shared on Instagram.