Newsboys: Shine--The Hits (2000)

(As published in the Times of Acadiana ... )

Newsboys
Shine: The Hits
(Sparrow)

Ignore the title--even in the group’s native Australia, these songs were only “hits” on the Christian charts. Still, the Newsboys are techno-popsters who know their craft, and this album usefully documents their development. That they took a quantum leap forward under the production of Steve Taylor is undeniable, turning out music far catchier than that of the band with whom Taylor eventually won his Grammy, Sixpence None the Richer. Also undeniable is that they reached a high point with last year’s Love Liberty Disco. So why is it completely unrepresented here? Probably for the same reason that the five customer-baiting new songs are included: to assure that the group gets the biggest buck for its bang. Now I ask you, how Christ-like is that? Rating: Three-and-a-half moneychangers in the temple out of five.

Randy Stonehill: Street Level-Headed (1994)

(As published in Brian Q. Newcomb's Syndicate ... )

The last time we spoke with Randy Stonehill, he had just completed Wonderama, his Terry Taylor-produced album from 1991. Aglow with satisfaction, Stonehill couldn't wait to work with Taylor again.

So why did he head to Nashville to record his new album, The Lazarus Heart, and get Jimmy Lee Sloas (PFR, the Imperials, Whitecross) to produce it when Sloas has never even been in DA, the Swirling Eddies, or Lost Dogs? And why is The Lazarus Heart on Street Level Records, a label whose imprint last surfaced when Larry Norman reissued Only Visiting This Planet in 1978?

The new Street Level, it turns out, has little to do with the old, which was more artist agency than record label anyway. Norman sold the rights to the name years ago, and Street Level Artists went on to represent many of Christian rock's finest.

Street Level Records is Stonehill's baby.

"I don't want to put down big record companies," says Stonehill, who spent seventeen years with Word's Myrrh Records, "but there's a tendency with big companies to let a lot of people handle the decisions, and your worth loses something in the translation.

At forty-two--i.e., several years past the mid-way point of his biblically allotted threescore and ten--Stonehill realizes more acutely than ever the need to redeem the time. And that there are worse ways to redeem it than by going for broke.

"I want to boil it down," he says, "and return a bit to the idealism and simplicity of the grass-roots days of this whole industry."

If anyone should know about the "grass-roots days," it's Stonehill. His first album, Born Twice, was released on the underground One Way label, and his next two were released on Larry Norman's seminal DIY label, Solid Rock. But despite the disillusionment he experienced when Solid Rock imploded in the early '80s, Stonehill still traces his Street Level vision to those more innocent times.

"I embrace a comparison between Solid Rock and Street Level," he says. "But I think one of the key differences will be that, at Street Level, all the major decisions will be made by a group--the company's three co-owners and I. And we have a board of directors, as well, as opposed to all that weight resting on one man's shoulders.

"Larry, as gifted as he is in many ways, is a fallible person, just like anybody else. As a matter of fact, in those days I'd sometimes feel bad for him when I saw how exhausted he was and how this company, which seemed to be a good idea at the start, had become such a weight. It seemed like more of a burden than a pleasure."

If anything, the music on The Lazarus Heart is the sound of burdens being lifted. Pop melodies waft through a graceful mixture of ballads and rockers, with only the tossed-off "Zurich in the Snow" to remind longtime Stonehill fans of his youthful penchant for the goofy.

And unlike Wonderama, where songs like "Barbie Nation," "Rachel Delevoryas," and "Great Big Stupid World" directed the album's energy toward external topics and situations, The Lazarus Heart finds Stonehill mining himself.

Like Wonderama, The Lazarus Heart finds Stonehill collaborating. The last time it was Taylor with whom he shared composer credits; this time it's Rick Elias, Phil Madeira, and Dave Perkins.

And the collaborating didn't stop with the songwriting. No sooner had recording started than word got out, and before Stonehill knew it, lots of Nashville talent began to drop by. "It sort of turned," he says, "into a musical party."

The partiers included Phil Keaggy (who played guitar spot on "Under the Rug"), Madeira (who contributed dobro and accordion), Gary Chapman (who loaned Stonehill guitars and sang), and Out of the Grey's Christine Dente (whom Stonehill calls his all-time favorite female vocalist"). And despite the cameos, the album sounds neither cluttered nor propped up.

Cynics, however, might conclude that the guest spot by CCM's hottest male solo performer--Michael W. Smith--on "In Jesus' Name" makes Stonehill look at least a little like a coattail-riding opportunist.

"I really thought it was the right artistic decision," says Stonehill. "As I was going over the song, I turned to Jimmy and said, 'Boy, you know what? Smitty's voice is the right one for this.'

Stonehill knows that Smith's presence won't hurt sales. But he laughs at the thought that anyone would consider it a "crass, shameless marketing ploy."

"Stylistically, what Smitty and I do is a good bit different," he admits. "When I first met him on the [1984] Amy [Grant] tour, he said, 'Now, you won't remember this, but I met you when I was seventeen at a Contemporary Christian music seminar. I came up to you and told you that I played piano and that I had dreams of having a music ministry some day. And you listened to me and gave me some advice and were really encouraging. That galvanized my resolve to do this thing.' So it was really nice that all these years later he really wanted to jump in with me on that song."

Besides, Stonehill says, one of the purposes of The Lazarus Heart was to defy expectations. "I wanted to mix things up a little bit, to shake it all down and try new stuff. And with this record I really think that came to fruition."

One aspect of the album that longtime Stonehill fans will find familiar is his confessional honesty. In "Remember My Name" and "When I'm Afraid," he lays bare his doubts about God. And in the un-ironically titled "That's Why We Don't Love God," he goes even further.

"I don't think of it as a dark song," Stonehill insists. "But the fact of the matter is, we carry far too much unnecessary weight on our shoulders by pretending that once Jesus has come into our lives our humanity is all aligned with him and that our love is as true as his, that we always have the victory. We know we should love God. We'd like to love God. So darn it! We're going to smile broadly, sing about it, raise our hands, and everything.

“But the prime example that should free us from having to parade this facade around is Paul. Here's a guy responsible for writing about half of the New Testament, but he himself said, 'The very thing I want to do, I don't do, and often the very thing I don't want to do, I end up doing.'

“The beauty there, which I was trying to communicate in that song, is in that most painful, naked moment when you can almost hear God's voice saying, 'Don't you think I know? I know you better than you'll ever know yourself because I made you, and I love you relentlessly.' When we recognize the purity and power of that mercy, that's the one thing that finally breaks our sinful hearts in a good way. And our love for God starts to come alive."

For those with ears to hear, Stonehill obviously still has a lot left to say. It's amazing then to realize that, had he not founded Street Level Records, he might never have made his new album at all.

"I wondered," he admits, "after seventeen years with Word and having them let me go, if I would find myself standing on a street corner with my hat in my hand, saying, 'Uh, remember me? I was one of the pioneers of contemporary Christian music. Hey! Does anybody care?'"

Judging from his reception in Nashville, lots of people do. But Stonehill views both the good and the bad with equanimity.

"God will either let the ship of my career continue to float or he'll sink it," he reflects. "And if he sinks it, it'll be painful, but I can accept that.

“What I won't be able to live with is being haunted in my old age by wondering what could've happened with my ministry and music if only I'd trusted him more."

DeGarmo & Key: Extreme As They Wanna Be (1994)

(As published in Brian Q. Newcomb's Syndicate ... )

O.K., so Syndicate has taken the sixteen-year Christian-rock veterans Eddie DeGarmo and Dana Key to task for being jingoistic and superficial from time to time.

Er, make that often.

But that was then and this is now. Not that they don’t write jingoistically and superficially anymore, but they’ve gotten really good at it--as their new album, To Extremes (Benson), amply proves. At its best, it ripples with muscular, bluesy hard rock and lyrics forged in the heat of the struggle to live a holy life.

"We feel that our lyrics are intriguing," says DeGarmo. "If they weren't we wouldn't get the thousands of letters that we get every year."

"At the same time," adds Key, "We don't want it to take somebody an hour to figure out what we're trying to say in a three-minute song. We're in the business of communicating a message, and we want to make it as clear and unmistakable as possible."

Proof that they've succeeded in their mission can be found both in the number of award nominations they've racked up--three Doves and six Grammys so far--and in their impressively detailed Christian radio track record, a record to which To Extremes has already added. "Judgment Day" recently reached the top five, and "Stressed," one of the hardest, bluesiest DeGarmo & Key singles ever, will probably do the same.

"I'm proud of the fact that we've had over sixty top-ten radio songs in our career," says Key. "And I'm also proud that while our albums may have three or four radio singles on them, there are also seven or eight songs on there that have a great deal of depth."

"I don't think you can really make records predicting what you think other people will like,” says DeGarmo. " I think you can only make records of what you like and hope that other people will like them. We just do what we do best. I mean, we're definitely blues-influenced and rock-influenced. We're not a really good pop band, and we're not a really good rap band. But we are a pretty good rock band."

Some have wondered then, if indeed D&K's strengths do indeed consist in making "really good rock," why the duo continues to write for teens, for whom "rap" and "pop" rule. To many, after all, D&K are as famous by now for their youth-group musicals as they are their rock-and-roll muscle.

"Most forty-year-olds are paying on a mortgage, not buying rock music," says Key. "And most people, by the time they're twenty-five, have made most of their spiritual decisions. So it's important for us to reach people while they're young."

The implication is that perhaps some of contemporary Christian music's more self-consciously "alternative" bands aren't trying to reach people, that by trying not to proclaim their faith in an old-fashioned way, these bands may not be proclaiming it at all.

"Not only don't they say anything," insists Key, "but nobody knows that they're not saying anything because nobody ever buys the records."

"Many times," DeGarmo adds, "non-writers think that the challenge is to be vague and esoteric. They think that's difficult. But from a writer's point of view, that's simple. The challenge is--"

"To be concise," says Key.

The ten songs on To Extremes exemplify concision. At an average length of just over three-and-a-half minutes, they flout the CD-era wisdom that says the more the better. Yet each song packs a wallop. "Hyper-faith" chugs along atop a modified "Paperback Writer" riff, "Dangerous Place" atop a modified "Peter Gunne" riff, and "People Got to Be Free" atop--what else?--a "People Got to Be Free" riff.

“It's weird how many people think that Eddie and I wrote 'People Got to Be Free,'" says Key of the 1968 Rascals classic. “It’s scary."

"I already got blasted for that [song] once," admits DeGarmo. "I was at the Southern Baptist Convention, and this guy came up to me and said, 'Man, I love your version of "People Got to Be Free."' But then he said, 'How do you deal with the theology of "I'll do unto you what you do unto me"?' I said, 'I don't know, man. We didn't write the song. We just like the way it sounds. Quit picking it apart.'"

DeGarmo's easy-going approach to secular music doesn't stop with the Rascals. Unlike Key, who's even written a book on the insidiously destructive values of secular rock, DeGarmo practically revels in the inclusiveness of his collection and the degree to which he hasn't interfered with what his own two kids listen to.

"I've got every kind of music in my house," admits DeGarmo, "from Aerosmith to Amy Grant."

"I wouldn't have Aerosmith in my house," says Key.

"Oh, I do. I've even got the Soup Dragons. I pride myself on staying up with what's going on. I own it all, and I've never stopped my children from listening to it. Instead, I've tried to teach them what it means. We've gone to all kinds of concerts together."

"They also watch Roseanne together," says Key.

"I think I'm a pretty conservative dad," DeGarmo continues. "I've just not made that big a deal out of it with my kids. I've tried to teach them what Scripture says about those things, and I've allowed them, within reason, to come up with their own notions of what those things mean. And it hasn't become an issue. I've made more of an issue out of their learning to be like Christ and how to walk with him and read Scripture. I've always pointed to the good rather than the bad, and it seems to have worked. Not that I don't censor them from some things. I do."

Like what?

"Uh, I don't let them watch porn."

"You're tough, man," jokes Key, who also keeps up with current music, but for different reasons.

"I have a radio program where I review secular music. So I have to go get the top ten every two or three weeks to see what people are listening to and review it. But I wouldn't have my kids listen to ninety percent of it."

Has he had any pleasant surprises?

"Oh yeah. There's some stuff out there that's probably fine. You take a Pearl Jam album, for instance, and eighty percent of the lyrics are fine. It's just that one oddball song, like 'Drop the Leash' or something like that, that ruins the record."

Such records might explain the presence on To Extremes of the anthemic "Rebel for God," which begins, "I bought a brand-new CD .... The band was preachin' anarchy," and features the refrain, "Throw away the lies you're believing / Throw yourself into the Savior."

"I don't know why groups find it necessary," says Key, "to put eight great tunes on an album--and then two that use the f-word thirty-seven times."

Despite the Southern Baptist who objected to "People Got to Be Free," D&K's association with that denomination has at least one positive aspect. Along with Newsboys, DC Talk, and other Christian musicians, the duo has signed on as spokesmen for the Southern Baptist-affiliated True Love Waits campaign, a program designed to help kids abstain from sexual intercourse until marriage.

At a recent TLW rally on the lawn of the National Mall facing the Capitol, D&K performed an hour's worth of new and old material in front of twenty thousand kids. More than an electric rehearsal for their upcoming Acoustic Cafe Tour, the set served to underscore D&K's commitment to teenagers.

"A lot of those kids look to us as heroes and role models," says DeGarmo. "This was a chance for us to look up to them. I respect those kids. They're going against popular culture to say they're not going to sleep with their boyfriends or girlfriends. Obviously, that's not what the movies or rock bands or rap bands teach."

"We said a few words of encouragement," says Key of the performance. "Basically, though, by the time we came on, it was to celebrate the fact that there were 211,000 pledge cards, on which kids had made a commitment to remain abstinent until marriage, staked to the ground."

The kids, in other words, were taking things "to extremes."

And after sixteen years as extremists themselves, DeGarmo and Key couldn't be happier.

* * * * *
Dana Key died on June 6, 2010.

It's a Great Big Stonehill World (1991)

(As published in Brian Q. Newcomb's Harvest Rock Syndicate ... )

“This project has been the best recording experience of my career,” says Randy Stonehill of his newest album, the just-released Wonderama (Myrrh). “I’m not saying that all my other sessions were just shooting in the dark. But this one felt as if somehow God was at work, allowing the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place.”

At this point, of course, there are many pieces to the Stonehill puzzle. Emerging twenty-two years ago with an underground Jesus Rock classic, Born Twice, he quickly became--along with Love Song, Andraé Crouch, and Larry Norman--a primary mover in the burgeoning Jesus movement, even landing a cameo role in Billy Graham’s celluloid tribute to the era, Time to Run.

Then came Welcome to Paradise, his first official album. Released in 1976, it set a standard by which the majority of Contemporary Christian singer-songwriter albums have been judged, Stonehill’s subsequent releases included.

Lots of folks, however, feel that Wonderama sets a new standard.

“One thing that’s really special to me about this album,” Stonehill says, “is that it holds together as a concept record more than anything else I’ve ever done.

“There’ve been times,” he explains, “when I wanted to make a concept record. And you can put a bunch of songs together and say, ‘It’s a concept record.’ But it may not necessarily feel like one. This one does.”

Perhaps the most significant piece in the Wonderama puzzle is the all-important artist-producer relationship. Working with his good friend and fellow CCM legend Terry Taylor for the first time in ten years, Stonehill tapped into a creative vein that turned out to be a mother lode.

“All of us really looked forward to coming to the studio everyday, even when we were exhausted. And I’d go back into the studio tomorrow with Terry just to see what else we could do.”

And what is it about Taylor that Stonehill finds so stimulating?

“He has an idea a minute,” Stonehill says. “He’s very inventive. At the same time he’s sort of like a big little kid. I mean, here’s this gifted writer and producer who loves animated Disney films, children’s books, and whose favorite time of the year is Christmas. And he has a great sense of humor.

“Basically, we both have this skewed worldview, and we really bring it out in each other.”

Those familiar with Stonehill’s oeuvre know plenty about his skewed worldview. For years goofy satirical songs aimed at human foibles from cigarette smoking to excessive-makeup wearing have leavened his albums’ more serious numbers. What’s different about Wonderama’s “funny” songs is the way their wit gives way to wisdom, the way the jokes become more than comic relief for the pious.

“Great Big Stupid World,” for example, besides taking potshots at Elvis worshippers and New Age airheads, follows our obsession with sensationalized nonsense to its logical conclusion: Jesus on the Oprah Winfrey show.

“Once Jesus intervenes in your life,” he explains, “it can’t help but cause you to be an observer. You see how mutated things have gotten without Jesus as the central theme, that we can spin out into some really strange and ludicrous territory because what we’re actually doing, perhaps without knowing it, is looking for substitutes to give our lives some sense of meaning.

“So when you see this bizarre circus parade waltzing by you everyday, you have to say something about it. For me, a song like ’Stupid World’ comes from having these observations and insights build up to a place where I feel as if I’m going to explode.”

So would Jesus do the Oprah, so to speak?

“I think that the nature of the format would be insulting. So much of that is based on titillation, just to get you to turn the TV on long enough to see the commercials. I don’t know if that’s a format he would swing with.”

Wonderama’s other satirical song, “Barbie Nation,” lampoons the glamour industry. Like all satire, it’s open to charges of painting a complex subject with too broad a brush. After all, do fashion models, beauty queens, and leading ladies really deserve to get baked in the same shallow pie?

“I think women are victimized,” Stonehill says sharply. “The song is really about how culture and men in particular oppress women. We slowly but surely force them into a mold that has very little to do with God’s original intent for them.”

Still, one can’t help questioning how “forced” and “molded” leggy supermodels like Elle McPherson and Claudia Schiffer feel as they rake in money, fame, and adulation.

“I’m not saying that some of them don’t take advantage of the situation and manipulate it to their own benefit. But I still can’t help but feel that if you were to scratch a bit deeper you’d find that they were being wounded.

“Maybe some,” Stonehill continues, “would feel happy with their lives. But whenever you take the design of God and mess with it, you’re bound to do damage. The fact that some of them can feel attractive and accepted--that they can garner power or financial gain--probably lessens the sting of having to compromise the wholeness of their humanity. Nevertheless, I believe that’s what’s happening.”

Chief among “Barbie Nation”’s charms is its music. It’s a hooky, buoyant sort of folk-pop that’s arguably the most infectious music of Stonehill’s career. And like most of Wonderama’s songs, Stonehill and Taylor wrote it together.

“That wasn’t even intentional,” says Stonehill of the songwriting teamwork, “but it was really delightful the way it worked out. I’d have a piece of a song and say, ‘Tell me what you think of this,’ and we’d just start working away at it. It was really effortless.

“So anyway he kept on coming over to the house, and we’d kick around these ideas. And after we’d written about three of the songs--at the end of a session when he was going out the door--he turned around and said, ‘Man, this is great. And I have to tell you, I’ve never written with anybody before.’

Taylor--who founded Daniel Amos and the Swirling Eddies--had never collaborated?

“My jaw dropped. I said, ‘Now wait a minute. Didn’t you--?’ And he said, ‘Even with the bands I’ve been in, they would usually bring in a piece of an idea, and I would take it home, flesh it out, and come back. But I’ve never sat down, face to face with somebody, with two guitars and a blank sheet of paper, and said, “Now, what should we write today?” But I’m having a ball.’”

It was, in fact, Taylor who came up with the album’s title.

I’d always wanted to make a record with the word wonder in the title,” Stonehill says. “It’s a very powerful word.”

Albums such as Bruce Cockburn’s World of Wonders, Van Morrison’s A Sense of Wonder, and the Choir’s Wide-Eyed Wonder only fueled Stonehill’s wonder envy.

“Then Terry smiled,” Stonehill explains, “and said, ‘Yeah, but there’s never been a Wonderama.’

“The whole idea of Wonderama is that we can still retain some sense of innocence and childlike wonder, that s you look at life through the eyes of faith, you can see all the little miracles around you everyday.”

One of the not-so-little miracles surrounding the writing and recording of the album concerns Rachel Delevoryas, Stonehill’s real-life grade school classmate and the eponymous subject of Wonderama’s most plaintive ballad.

In the song, Stonehill describes Delevoryas as an awkward, unattractive girl whose gift for playing the violin is far from adequate to the task of defending her from the mean little boys who call her ugly. But as the song unfolds, she grows up into a confident woman who becomes a first-chair violinist “dressed in a beautiful gown, / standing onstage with the symphony.” In essence, it’s the Ugly Duckling story all over again, with a similarly happy ending.

Almost.

“Shortly after I wrote the song,” Stonehill recalls, “I was playing somewhere in northern California. And Rachel’s sister, whom I’d never even met, came to the concert.

“It must’ve been like a Twilight Zone experience for her. She’s sitting in the audience, and all of a sudden I start singing a song about her sister!

“So she called Rachel that night and said, ’Do you remember a boy from grade school named Randy Stonehill? He was a musician who became a gospel singer.’ And Rachel said, ’Yes. As a matter of fact, I will never forget him because he was the only boy in my class who didn’t pick on me and join in with the others in teasing me.’ That just broke my heart when I heard that.”

Stonehill went on to learn that there was more to Delevoryas's childhood gracelessness than he could ever have guessed at the time.

“Her parents were classical musicians, and they were very conservative. They isolated her from the social mainstream. They didn’t even try to teach her to speak, I found out, until she was four.

“But even as a kid I could see past her gawkiness and that she was a special person who was suffering. I wish I could say I’d had the guts to go and punch the bullies, but I can’t. But I was always polite to her. I treated her like an equal. Later on, her learning skills really kicked into high gear, and in high school and college she passed everybody up.

“Anyway,” Stonehill continues, “her sister told her about the song, and Rachel said, ’You’re joking.’ And her sister said, ’No, Rachel, I’m not. Now, Rachel, it’s a beautiful song, but it really tells the story as it was. It’s a hard song to hear. But you come out looking really good in the third verse.’

“So Rachel sent a note backstage to tell me when I was playing in her area. It said, ’Well, you finally got my attention. Would like to talk. Rachel Delevoryas.’

“We talked for a couple of hours after the show in my car. And the pinnacle moment was when she said, ’I still carry a lot of the scars from my childhood, and it haunts me, even today. I really need to deal with it. So if you have any suggestions as to how I might do that, I would really like to hear them.’ And I thought, ’Yes, God!’”

So what has come of what had to be the easiest evangelism of Stonehill’s life?

“We prayed together and agreed to stay in touch. And when she finally heard the song, she wrote me a Christmas card that said, ‘It hurt to hear it, but it’s very beautiful. Please keep playing it. Perhaps it will speak to some of the cruel little boys and girls.”

Obviously, following up an album as rich with special moments as Wonderama will be no easy task, but it’s not something Stonehill worries about.

“This record has just come out,” he says, “and I want to see how people respond to it. I’m really enjoying playing the material in concert. I’m just in the middle of this record’s life.

“On the other hand,” he admits, “I really feel that Terry and I have just scratched the surface of what we can do and of what I’m hopeful we will do in the future.”

John Austin: Moody Blues (1992)

(As published in Brian Q. Newcomb's Harvest Rock Syndicate ... )

"I wrote all the songs on this album in a bathroom underneath the chapel at Moody," confesses Glasshouse recording artist John Austin. "The acoustics were great."

The album Austin's talking about is his recently released debut, The Embarrassing Young--"another dose of melancholy for the Christian market," as he calls it--and "Moody" is the venerable Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, where Austin earned a degree in theology when he wasn't jamming in the men's room. Now, at twenty-three, Austin considers himself a former singer-songwriter because he's putting together a full-time rock-and-roll band to enrich his Windy City live shows.

"We have a band basically," says Austin. "We just keep going through bass players."

One can't help feeling a little sorry for those bassists. They have to live up to the standards Austin became accustomed to while recording his LP with the likes of David Miner (T Bone Burnett, Leon Russell) and Tim Chandler (DA, the Choir). "I felt totally spoiled working with them," says Austin, "and with [the guitarist] Buddy Miller. Buddy didn't even listen to an entire song before throwing down these incredible hooks."

What spoiled the novice album-maker even more was the producton savvy of Mark Heard, who oversaw the five sixteen-hour workdays into which the entire recording process was crammed before his untimely death last August.

"The album was meant to be a demo tape to shop to major labels," Austin explains. "I hooked up with Dan Russell, who's a publicist on the U2 tour right now, and he set me up with Mark. I borrowed six thousand dollars and flew out to L.A. for a week to make a demo, and we did ten songs.

"But by week's end we were in a position to avoid further debt, I thought it would be the smartest thing just to sell it to Glasshouse. They reimbursed me for the money I borrowed, and that was fine with me."

There was, however, one glitch in Austin's rapidly developing career scenario, a glitch that most serious musicians, Christian or otherwise, become acquainted with sooner or later.

"Glasshouse was pretty happy with the first ten songs," says Austin, "but they said, 'We need two more songs to sort of justify this album being in our market. We need a radio single.'" So Austin flew back to Los Angeles and recorded the plaintive "We All Need Love" and the infectiously upbeat "Back to the Garden."

"It's definitely not overproduced," observes Austin of the finished product. "Mark wasn't into that. He liked the raw. I think Glasshouse was sort of scared of that. They wanted to hear more mysterious textures."

Perhaps Austin's new live band will add those textures.

"I'm excited about the sound that's coming out," he says. "These guys have great stage presence. They're all a bit older than me, but there aren't any ego problems because they've been through it all.

"They just want to make good music."

Poor Old Lu (1993)

(As published in CCM magazine ... )

Astute readers of C.S. Lewis may notice something familiar in the name of Seattle's latest quartet of alternative-Christian rockers, Poor Old Lu.

"It comes from a quote in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," explains Aaron Sprinkle, the band's nineteen-year-old guitarist, keyboardist, and spokesman. "I think it's in Chapter Three. Lucy has just come back from Narnia for the first time, and no one believes she was there. So they say, 'Poor old Lu. Been gone so long, and no one noticed."

The story of the band is also similar in another way to the magical adventures of Lucy and her friends: With seemingly no more effort than it would take to walk into a wardrobe, Poor Old Lu has gone from a group of woodshedding Christian kids on Washington's Vashon Island to a nationally signed band whose new Frontline album, Mindsize, exceeds the alreday-high expectations of their growing, underground following.

"God really laid this deal in our laps," says a bemused Sprinkle. "We weren't even pursuing Frontline. They'd heard of us from our first demo, but they were one of the last labels we'd considered because we were more into the Blonde Vinyl kind of thing."

Enter Sprinkle's father, an associate pastor at Seattle's Calvary Fellowship and, as it happens, a friend of Randy Stonehill.

"About a year ago, my dad gave Randy our demo, but we never heard from him. Then finally he gave my dad a call and apologized. He'd never listened to it, but his wife had and made him listen to it. And he really liked it. The next time he came up, he said, 'I'm having lunch with Terry Taylor tomorrow, and I'm going to make him listen to it."

Equally impressed with the foursome, Taylor and then-Frontline head of radio promotion for alternative music and metal Brandon Ebel pitched the band to the label. One live showcase later, Poor Old Lu found itself with a contract.

Shortly thereafter, they found themselves with Taylor in the studio. Having grown up in awe of Daniel Amos, Sprinkle, his younger brother Jesse (drums), Nick arber (bass), and Scott Hunter (lyrics and lead vocals) couldn't have asked for a better hand at their controls. It comes as no surprise then that Mindsize boasts a sonic clarity and depth that belies the quartet's rookie status. Each of the twelve tracks works a haunting variation on indie rock's obsession with minor chords, abruptly shifting tempos, and oblique lyrics sung in cool, detached tones.

"Terry taught us a lot," admits the elder Sprinkle. "He would help us take out parts of songs that were redundant and that made the songs boring. But the memories I have of recording with him aren't of doing a guitar track or working on music. They're of hanging out and having fun. We got to see sides of him we didn't know about. We got to hang out with him as a friend and a brother in Christ."

According to Sprinkle, Poor Old Lu is only one of Seattle's several first-rate alternative Christian bands, meaning that, like the secular scene spearheaded by Nirvana, a similar Christian scene has sprung up in the Northwest.

"When Frontline was up here the first time, I was shopping all these bands that were my friends to them. And they looked at me and said, 'What are you doing? We've never seen a band--especially one that we're coming to sign--shop other bands!' But I thought, 'Why wouldn't I want them to have the chance to reach more people?

"There's a band called Soulfood, a rap band called 3NP, a hardcore band called Blenderhead, and a funk band called Don't Know. We have parties where we play and pack the house with hundreds of people. And tons of unsaved people come. There's almost a revival thing happening."

Poor Old Lu, says Sprinkle, plans to tour next spring with Adam Again and Mortal, at which time other regions of the country will have the chance to experience Sealttle's almost-revival-thing for themselves.

Filling Holes with Ric Alba (June/July 1992)

(As published in Rejoice! ...)

"My obsessions? I have some unhealthy musical obsessions," confesses the former Altar Boy Ric Alba when asked about the music he likes most.

"The Smiths, the Psychedelic Furs, Siouxsie and the Banshees--I like the way all of them play."

The proof is Alba's late-1991 solo debut, Holes in the Floor of Heaven. The first disc released on Glasshouse Records (the label recently established by Christian rock's premiere act, the Choir), Holes draws heavily on the atmospheric, driving, and densely layered sound of Alba's favorite bands.

But it goes further. Alba's unflinchingly intimate lyrics, his surprisingly-strong-for-a-longtime-sideman singing, and his commitment to high audiophile standards combine to give Holes a hopeful, otherworldly glow not usually associated with post-punk cynicism. Indeed, in songs like "See You in Person" and "The Secret World," Alba's yearning for a deeper, more meaningful reality practically rings with blessed assurance.

So what exactly does he enjoy about groups such as the Smiths, whose lead singer, Morrisey, titled one of his solo albums Viva Hate?

"Morrisey is so willing to just spit out anything that he's disturbed about," says Alba, "and he does it in a very clever way. Sometimes his cleverness seems very cynical and negative, and maybe there's something in me that likes that. I don't know.

"But people do wax cynical from time to time. And if they're willing to sing about it, great. They're certainly not preaching it. Secular music is very different from Christian music in that way."

Alba knows all about the sometimes awkward marriage of preaching and music that Christian rock has fostered since day one. As a charter member of Undercover, one of a handful of underground Christian rock bands playing and recording under the auspices of Maranatha!'s Ministry Resource Center in the early '80s, he stood on the front lines of the war waged by evangelical rockers for the souls of America's youth.

"We did the whole thing," says Alba. "Altar calls, lay counselling--we were an evangelical package."

But the then-twenty-one-year-old bassist found the hectic life of an evangelical package wearying, and by twenty-two he'd left the band, although not without new insight into the nature of ministry, insight that would significantly affect his later work.

"Presenting a gospel message at the end of a concert was how we'd always seen it done," he says of his Undercover period. "It was how we were trained to do it and how our church, Calvary Chapel, did it. That's why we did it that way.

"Nowadays, a Christian rock band doesn't necessarily need to minister exactly like that. I see now that a band could minister in hundreds of different ways. But then the opportunity for a high-school student--Christian or otherwise--to hear the gospel in a rock situation was not abundant. So there was a hole that Undercover filled."

The word hole pops up a lot in Alba's work and conversation. When he left undercover and joined the Altar Boys, for instance, one of his motives, he realizes now, involved the filling of a hole that began forming during his childhood.

"Growing up, I had severe emotional and social problems," he says, "and from the age of thirteen, I coped with them by diving into music, into being in a band.

"My problem was that I had a hard time feeling adequate. As a kid, I felt inadequate to work hard enough to please my family. They're involved in real-estate development, and we all work in that field. I felt inadequate to that, inadequate in school, and inadequate to play extracurricular sports.

"But in my music, in my garage band, I could totally focus myself. That was my way of coping. In the middle of that, I became a Christian, and the next thing you know I'm in Christian bands doing the same thing."

After several years in the Altar Boys, Alba began to see the way that he'd used music to combat his feelings of inadequacy, feelings that--as a Christian--he knew he should have somehow combated more directly with the help of God.

So between Altar Boy tours, Alba took thirty days off and, in a particularly un-"Contemporary Christian"-like move, checked himself into a psychiatric hospital.

"I got some much-needed instruction on ways to think clearly," he says of the experience, "on ways to relax. I got a lot of encouragement and some practice in knowing what my needs are and being able to ask for them."

But some of the most valuable lessons Alba learned during his hospitalization had to do with the core of faith itself--one's relationship to God.

"I realized that I don't have to go through life alone. God is there to help. But because I'm imperfect, I can't perceive the perfection of God. I can only perceive it through the filter of all the disppointments and pressures that I'm used to.

"What this is all about," he points out, "is healing relationships--my relationship with myself, my relationship with other people, and my relationship with God. Generally speaking, we don't have working relationships in those three areas."

On Holes in the Floor of Heaven, Alba channels his concern for this healing into a dozen songs that vibrate with a tension rarely found in Christian recordings. Much of the credit goes to the Choir's Steve Hindalong, who produced the disc, and Alba's engineer, Dave Hackbarth, whose "grappling with technology" played a similarly large role in the success of the Choir's latest album, Circle Slide.

But credit also belongs to Alba, who, far from serving up stanzas full of Christian code words, conveys his fears, hopes, memories, and commitment to spontaneous, intuitive associations. "With the exception of the title cut," he explains, "the lyrics came pretty quickly and were edited later.

"See, when I recorded the demos, I did them at home with a four-track and a drum machine. And to make it sound good, I had to put a vocal down before I put the bass and a second guitar down. If I wanted to finish a song that day, I needed lyrics to work with. So they usually came pretty fast. And a lot of the lyrics I wrote very quickly have the most impact on me."

Yet despite the speedy nature of his writing and his willingness to let his songs reflect his struggles, Alba succumbs neither to artless sloppiness or artful pretension.

"It's not heavy," he says. "The topic may be heavy. It may be serious. But to be direct with something that's heavy--it's just not something I want to do. I just want to make it listenable."

Inevitably, as in the case of other Christian musicians whose talent sets them apart from the pack, the question comes up: Does Alba want to--or expect to--ever "cross over" and enjoy secular success?

"Right now," he says, "I'm not trying to be the next big thing." One reflective pause later, he adds: "Maybe one of the little things."

Then, again, the "h-word" pops up.

"The way I see this record is that there's a hole among Christians that this could fill. I don't feel that it's being wasted on Christian ears. For it to fit nicely into the Christian market is not a waste. It's definitely doing its job."

And after this one he wants to do another--and maybe more.

"As I continue my journey, I'd like to continue singing about it if I can. I learn so much from it. I learned a lot about myself making this record."

And while, as he puts it, he hasn't "arrived at inner healing" ("It's not something you start and then stop," he says), he has made great strides toward filling the holes in his self-image that created his
need to withdraw.

"As a psychology major, I learn a lot about these things. I also get counseling on a regular basis. There's a whole world of help available out there. I never knew it. But now I do.

"So I have no excuse if I don't do everything I can with the resources that God sends my way."

Phil Keaggy & Alan Shacklock: True Believers (1995)

(This story was supposed to appear in Syndicate, the title under which Brian Q. Newcomb's Harvest Rock Syndicate continued in its last years. And appear it did--in the last issue of Syndicate ever published and in a form so truncated that it made almost no sense. I felt bad not only because my byline was attached to such a deformed piece but also because both Keaggy and Shacklock had given me a lot of phone time. Not surprisingly, I've had no contact with either of them since. There was, however, a happy ending of sorts. During our conversation, Keaggy admitted that he was moving back toward his Catholic roots, and the subject of Malcolm Muggeridge and his latter-day conversion to Catholicism came up. I offered to send Keaggy a book I had about Muggeridge's view of scripture, and he accepted. Two years later, he appeared on EWTN's Life on the Rock show, performing six songs and discussing his spirituality at length. I'd like to think the Muggeridge book had a little to do with Keaggy's ending up where he did.

Below, you--and, I hope, Keaggy and Shacklock--can finally see the story as it was supposed to appear..)

....................

The critic Robert Christgau once concluded a review of a T-Bone Burnett album by writing, "I'm a sucker for a humble man with a proud guitar."

He was referring to Burnett's Proof Through the Night, but he could've just as easily been referring to Phil Keaggy's True Believer (Sparrow), the excellent new recording by one of the humblest wielders of a proud guitar ever.

"I think it's more of a tighter-fit type of album," says Keaggy. "It fits more like a tuxedo than like the loose, baggy clothes of Crimson and Blue."

Keaggy laughs, referring with typical self-deprecation to the lukewarm critical reaction engendered by the jam-oriented nature of his last album.

His self-deprecation also extends to the credit he's willing to take for the tuxedo-like nature of True Believer. To hear him tell it, the credit belongs to Alan Shacklock, the English pop producer and founding member of the art-rock '70s act Babe Ruth, whose involvement on True Believer marks his official entry into the American Christian-music scene.

"Peter York, my A&R guy at Sparrow, was aware of Alan's production skills, and he wanted to see me come into a kind of artistic expression and a style of album that was different than the direction in which I had been going. Alan has a track record for coming up with good-sounding songs that are radio friendly."

As if Keaggy himself doesn't. How does he think he's managed to maintain a twenty-five-year recording career?

"II write songs," he admits, "but I don't work them over or craft and hone them to fit into a specific radio format. I've never been good about that."

If Keaggy's unwillingness to toot his own axe borders on the incomprehensible--this is a man, after all, whose vast discography Guitar Player magazine recently characterized as ranging "from exciting, fusion-tinged rock to sweeping acoustic statements"--Shacklock is more than willing to expound on the guitarist's gifts.

"I've worked with a lot of the big ones," Shacklock explains, "and Phil is every bit up there with them. He's a genuine artist, and I'm just so blessed that he's working for the kingdom of God because, with the technique, the voice, and the writing ability he has, he could easily be on the other side."

Some of the "big ones" whom Shacklock has worked with since he began producing albums in 1980--coincidentally, also the year of his conversion--include Roger Daltrey (Under a Raging Moon, Can't Wait to See the Movie), Jeff Beck ("Wild Thing"), Meatloaf (Bad Attitude), Steve Gibbons (Saints and Sinners), Dexys Midnight Runners (alas, not "Come On, Eileen"), and the Alarm (Declaration). It was, in fact, Shacklock who buttressed the Alarm's 1983 "Sixty-eight Guns" single with an everything-but-the-cuisinart wailing wall of sound that still sounds Jericho-esque today.

"When I became a Christian," Shacklock recalls, "I expected the Lord to take me straight into Christian music. In fact, he took me in quite the opposite direction, right into secular music, where I hope I was salt and light."

In England, according to Shacklock, the Christian-music industry barely exists. Therefore, it wasn't until he moved to the U.S. that he had the opportunity to work with other believers. Ironically, it was an album by a fellow Englishman, John Perry (who also wrote the chart-topping "Be in My Heart" from Keaggy's '89 album Find Me in These Fields), that allowed Shacklock to get his feet wet.

"John said, 'We should ask Phil to play on this.' So he called Phil, and Phil came along and played some beautiful solos on a couple of tunes. That's where I met him."

According to both forty-something rock-and-roll veterans, they hit it off from the start.

"There are parallels in the music we grew up listening to," says Keaggy. "He was into the Shadows in England, and I was into the Ventures here. But we also loved the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley."

"We sort of went to different schools together," Shacklock laughs. "He had Glass Harp and I had Babe Ruth. So I could look at that history and say, 'Where does Phil Keaggy need to be now?'"

In Sparrow's opinion, Phil Keaggy needed to be in a place from which he could broaden his audience beyond the 90,000 guitar and CCM devotees who normally buy his albums.

"Their desire," Keaggy remembers, "was that my music appeal to a larger audience, one that would include housewives, ladies, and even kids."

As the father of three kids and the husband of both a housewife and a lady, Keaggy knew a little something about the audience Sparrow was talking about.

"One thing Phil said to me," Shacklock recalls, "was 'I want my fifteen-year-old daughter to like this record,' and I got the point because when the Who came here in '89, Roger [Daltrey] invited me down, and standing in front of me was a fifteen-year-old kid singing every lyric of 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' I wanted it to be the same with True Believer. And I think a lot of the younger fans will appreciate this record for the young element in it."

One way in which Shacklock and Keaggy sought to include the "young element" was to emphasize hooks over guitar solos. The album's catchiest songs--"Wild Heart," Shacklock's "Only You (Can Wash My Sins Away)," "Don't Let Go of My Heart," and "Son of Man"--embellish Keaggy's natural tendency to evoke memories of vintage Paul McCartney with a production style that that's as deep as it is slick. Shacklock's tube bells, for instance, on the chorus of "Only You" subtly draw attention to the other instruments and effects swirling just beneath the surface.

And in "Be Thou My Vision," Shacklock simply pulls out the stops: Keaggy sings the well-known hymn over a chockablock mixture of chants, weird percussion, and otherworldly sounds and rhythms. The most interesting element of the performance, however, is the story behind Keaggy's inadvertent transformation of the line "Nought be all else to me save that thou art" into "Nought be all else to me save that thy art," a slip of the lip that should sound familiar to those who know Van Morrison's performance of the same song on Hymns to the Silence.

"Alan was attempting to write new lyrics to it," says Keaggy, "because he didn't really know the words and I didn't have a hymnal."

"I used to sing that song in school with different lyrics," Shacklock explains. "In English schools, we sing hymns because the church and the state are one. But that tune came back to me, and I thought, 'That would be great for Phil to do.' So I said, 'Listen to this melody. Do you know it?' And he said, 'Oh, yes. I know it as 'Be Thou My Vision.'"

At which point, without a hymnal, Keaggy enlarged the lyric page from the Morrison CD booklet, convinced Shacklock of the superiority of the 'Vision' lyrics, and proceeded to record it, Morrison-esque pronoun gaffes and all.

"Van Morrison can get away with it because he's Irish," laughs Keaggy. "I'm only half-Irish.".

As usual, Keaggy exaggerates his shortcomings. But his willingness to acknowledge them combined with his refusal to take credit for the strengths of True Believer underscores the degree to which humility has become a deep-rooted part of his personality.

"I was very honored to be asked to work with Phil Keaggy," says Shacklock. "He's a unique man."

And how does this unique man account for the seemingly inexhaustible abundance and quality of his ever-growing body of work?

"All I know is that I manage to stay active at what I do because people keep requesting to hear me. It seems to me it's all been God's graciousness, and it's something I'm aware of daily.

"However long it lasts, I'm grateful."

"Plain Ol' Joe," or the Greatest Contemporary-Christian-Music Song of All Time

(As published in The Door--in 1995, I think)

You can count on one hand the number of great contemporary-Christian-music songs. You can do this even if, like Phil Keaggy, you don't have all your fingers.

No one really denies this, least of all the contemporary-Christian musicians themselves. As any issue of CCM magazine will show, these artisans pride themselves on their humility. "I just have to keep remembering that it's the Lord and not me who's making these anointed albums that are blessing so many people," they say. "When I look down from the stage at all those youth groupies wearing T-shirts with my smiling face on them that they just paid thirty dollars for and see them cheering me on, I think, 'Without the Lord I wouldn't be half as talented or blessed with good hair days as I am.'"

In other words, by the admission of the musicians themselves, the music alone doesn't amount to much more than the Jerusalem dirt that Jesus spat on to make the mud that healed the blind man. Why, the church might just as well listen to Ted Nugent should Jesus ever quit spitting on Sandi Patty. CCM's a lot like punk that way.

Even some of the people who buy the music would secretly like to gob on it. Many of them wouldn't listen to it at all if not for the fact that they belong to youth fellowships or Baptist Student Unions that require initiates to sign a statement of faith stating that they've participated at least once in the ritual destruction--by fire if possible, by sledgehammer if necessary--of "secular" CDs and tapes.

The behavior of the music's older adherents also puts the lie to its staying power, for unlike fans of the Rolling Stones, Dylan, or the Bay City Rollers, veteran CCM listeners seldom, if ever, return to "classic" albums for rejuvenation. If for some reason they ever should happen to hear Leon Patillo's I Used to Be in Santana or Scott Wesley Brown's When I Sit Around the House again, they'll almost certainly react with a hearty "I can't believe I used to listen to this crap!"

In fact, the whole process of CCM assimilation bears a striking resemblance to the process by which the citizens of Oceania in George Orwell's 1984 convince themselves that the oily bilge they call gin really tastes good going down. It goes like this: Little Joe Biblethump, having heard one if not one dozen too many sermons about how the music of Green Day and Pearl Jam inoculates him against God's love, decides he needs to listen to something else when he's studying for history class. First, he tries nothing, but the sound of facts pouring unfiltered into his head proves too harsh. So he tries the next best thing--music that sounds like Green Day and Pearl Jam, but with words that, played forward, extol Bible-reading, church-going, and prayer; backward they extol subscribing to Campus Life.

Sure it's lame, but it's either that or backslide. So the kid pretends to like it, and before long he finds his small talk peppered with arguments about why Guardian outrocks White Cross, and his private thoughts devoted to wondering if he was always this way.

And obviously "the world" doesn't think much of CCM. If they did, they'd buy it. As the situation stands now, record stores devote as much floor space to CCM as they do to Albanian Blues, Lesbian Folk, and Menudo simply because CCM cash barely registers.

But to avoid misunderstandings, let's get a few things straight: First, I know that some CCM musicians read The Door--simmer down! It's the ones who don't read The Door that I'm talking about. Second, I'd gladly agree to get paid for writing stuff like "Yet Thorn-N-the-Side consider their music a ministry first and entertainment second" myself if CCM magazine would have me. Third, people shouldn't confuse CCM with "black gospel," a genre that, at its best, sinks some serious fang into Satan's butt while shaking its own big bad one.

And fourth, even someone who pitches for the Seattle Mariners finds the strike zone once in a while.

Which leads us to the CCM pioneer Chuck Girard and his song "Plain Ol' Joe," which he recorded for his 1977 album Written on the Wind (Good News 8106). A Carl Wilson look-alike and founding member of Love Song--the best-known combo in the post-Woodstock days when people called CCM "Jesus Rock"--Girard honed his craft over a series of well-produced solo albums that for some reason always featured members of the big-time art-rock band Ambrosia. At his best, he demonstrated a knack for hanging Beach-Boy-styled vocals on hooks that almost certainly would've imbedded themselves into the Billboard Top 100 if they hadn't supported words like "Who ever thought I'd be a rock 'n' roll preacher / Singing my song so you can hear the good news?"

Search as you may, you won't find Girard's lyrics scrawled on bathroom walls (even at Christian colleges), chiseled onto tombstones, or swelling the pages of The Norton Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry. This omission has less to do with society's overriding secular bias or the quality of the lyrics than it does with the fact that the words tended toward the predictable. They told you Jesus was to blame for making Chuck happy ("You Ask Me Why"), thanked Jesus for making Chuck happy ("Evermore," "When I Was Ready to Listen," "So Thankful," "Thank You, Lord"), and told you to let Jesus make you happy, too ("Lay Your Burden Down," "Slow Down," "Callin' You," "Return").

But he also wrote another type of song: the narrative. And in these he flirted beguilingly with unconventionality. In "Tinagera" (Chuck Girard, 1975, Good News 8102), for instance, he sketches a portrait of a teenage prostitute who goes by the name of her hometown, the Tinagera of the title. True, Girard can't resist evangelizing her ("There's a Way, my Tinagera!"), but considering the commotion Brooke Shields would cause three years later with her role as a Tinagera herself in Pretty Baby, the song takes risks.

Then there's "Old Dan Cotton" (Glow in the Dark, 1976, Good News 8103). A mysterious combination of Grizzly Adams, Grandpa Walton, and Jed Clampett, Dan is so old he's fought Indians and outlived a wife or two, and whenever the ol' ticker commences to actin' up, he gets house calls from Doc Jones. Anyway, one day he wanders off into the woods, finds God (Girard doesn't say how, exactly), and goes to heaven when the big one finally comes.

But "Plain Ol' Joe" is the best of all. It starts with Girard softly playing triplets on a piano with the pedal all the way down, but it soon turns out that more than the pedal's depressed. A few measures in, in an eerily somber voice, Girard begins singing this tale of woe:

He lived in Cincinnati, was born in '29.
His life was uneventful, not a bit like yours or mine.
His mother raised him proper, and his dad kept him in line.
He lived in Cincinnati. He was born in '29.

Then Girard gives us a "Hmm-mmmm" from which the bottom drops out, and all of a sudden only the assurance that he's going to get Plain Ol' Joe as saved as Old Dan Cotton makes the melodramatic melancholy of the descending chord pattern and ghostly production bearable.

He went upstate to college. He got no honors there.
He had a lot to offer, but no one seemed to care.
He'd visit home on weekends, and his folks would see him then.
They never asked him what he'd done or where he might've been.

Then another "Hmm-mmmm," but --holy Harry Chapin!--almost unnoticeable amid the pity party comes that "see" at the end of line three, a verb that in this context connotes something truly awful. "Sized up," "saw through," and "looked down upon" only begin to get at it.

He met a girl along the way. He thought it was romance.
He started to come out a bit. She'd given him a chance.
For a week he couldn't find her. Then he finally got the news:
She married an old boyfriend, and she moved to Syracuse.

"Hmm-mmmm." Syracuse! I mean, could Schenectady have been any sadder? With one well-chosen city of 200,000, Girard captures the same ineffable loss as Dylan does in "Tangled Up in Blue" with "Some are mathematicians, some are carpenters' wives. / Don't know how it all got started. / I don't know what they're doin' with their lives."

He holds the hurt in nicely, so you'd never ever tell.
Outside he looks like heaven, but inside he feels like hell.
He's cryin' out for something that he'll never ever know.
And everyone ignores him 'cause he's just a plain ol' Joe.

No "Hmm-mmmm" this time, rather those Beach-Boy-styled vocals wailing over and over, "Oh, oh, plain ol' Joe!" And for what serious Christian does the haiku-like "Outside he looks like heaven, but inside he feels like hell" not resonate?

At this point, the tug of war that Girard has established between the song's tear-jerking scenario and the optimistic swelling of its singing and production threatens to tear the song in half. But the struggle survives yet another upcrank in intensity as it reaches the bridge:

Everyone around him seemed so self-assured.
Everybody seemed to have it made.
Everybody acted like you never lived.
You're just a guy who never made the grade.
You're just a guy who never had a real friend.
You never seemed to ever really bloom.
But you finally made the papers just the other day
when they found your body in your lonely living room.

That's right, Joe dies. And not only does he die, but he dies alone. And not only alone but unsaved. And not only unsaved but unevangelized. And not only unevangelized but invisible, making him the Bartleby the Scrivener--and in some ways the Camus-esque Stranger--of CCM, a genre that by definition (and by abundant evidence) refuses to acknowledge such people exist. And dig the oxymoronic use of "living room."

But, you say, surely Girard goes on to resolve his tragedy the way Petra would two years later in "For Annie," the titular heroine of which kills herself only to provide Petra's Bob Hartman with an excuse to urge us to evangelize.

No, none of that for Chuck. All he gives us is a reprise of the first verse with the last line changed to "He lived in Cincinnati, and he died in '69." End of song. No heaven, no hell, no purgatory--zilch.
True, the next song on the album, "Harvest Time," resumes evangelical propriety by decrying the dearth of witnesses to the Gospel, and the remaining songs--"Fool for Jesus," "Hear the Angels Sing," "Peace in the Valley," "The Warrior"--betoken more of the same. But in light of the long look into the abyss that Girard braved in "Plain Ol' Joe," what else would you expect? You think any self-respecting CCM pioneer would put two songs about existential despair on one album?

No, and as things turned out, Girard wouldn't put two songs about existential despair into one career, either. Two albums and a best-of later, he disappeared from the scene, resurfacing only within the past year on the Love Song reunion album (Word/Maranatha) that a lot of people seem not to have noticed.

The only call I felt like putting through to Word's PR department was answered first by a woman who said Maranatha Records had no publicists, and second by a woman who, after apologizing for only working there three months, took my info and said she'd get back to me after she told her supervisor to tell Girard's people what I wanted.

Girard's people? A guy makes one, maybe two, albums in ten years that nobody knows about or buys, and he has people? Needless to say, a few months after the call, I'm still on hold. Funny, you'd think saying I was with The Door would've gotten someone jumping. I mean, do we or do we not have six-thousand subscribers?

But I have an idea about how to flush Girard out. Since Written on the Wind has been out of print for years, and since "Plain Ol' Joe" isn't on Girard's aforementioned best-of, I don't see why The Door can't enter into a for-a-limited-time-only agreement with him the way we did with the legendary Wauhobs ten years ago.

Maybe the smell of the millions to be made on this project will convince the man behind the greatest contemporary-Christian song of all time to finally tell us what inspired him to such heights in that long-ago summer of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and the Clash.

After all, a guy's gotta pay his people.