SAY, WHAT was a Christian rock band like Third Day doing opening for Southern boogie kings Lynyrd Skynyrd?
"We've always had a core hope and vision for this band to have music that's acceptable by the whole culture," says Third Day bassist Tai Anderson. "We jump at those opportunities. Opening for Skynyrd [last year] in Alabama, which would be culture shock for anybody north of Alabama, was great. We're not used to people holding up a Budweiser in one hand or a No. 8 Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. banner in another, but people were clapping and having a great time. It's a challenge for us, but if you can get up there and hold your own and rock, people will go for it."
With its Southern rock sound, Third Day has become a mainstay in contemporary Christian music, winning awards and fans. The group is on a 110-date tour that runs into 2005.
(Marina Chavez)
|
|
Co-founder and lead singer Mac Powell asks a different question: "Being a believer, do you make music just for the church or do you make it outside of that? We had no agenda [at the concert]: just play some music and hopefully not scare them away."
As it turned out, just playing music was not enough for some hard-core Third Day fans. About a month later, as the band was traveling on its tour bus, the musicians were catching up with fan mail.
"And one guy who came to see us at that concert just totally ripped us apart," Powell recalls. " 'I was so embarrassed that you did not share the gospel from the stage. All you did was play your music and get off, and you didn't say anything about Jesus and how dare you? I'm so ashamed of you guys. It felt like a kick in the teeth. I will never listen to Third Day again.'
"And the very next letter was from a girl who was at that same show, and she said, 'I'd never heard of you guys before, but I loved your set so I went and bought your record for my birthday. And I loved it and some of the songs really encouraged me, and I've started to go to church now and seeking God.'
"For us, that's the reason we did that show," Powell says. "It wasn't for the guy we couldn't ever meet his expectations. It was to encourage someone there in their faith. That's what we did, and that's what we want to do."
Powell, Anderson and the other members of Third Day -- drummer David Carr, lead guitarist Brad Avery and guitarist Mark Lee -- have been together since the early '90s and made their debut in 1995 with a self-produced, self-financed, self-distributed album (repackaged a year later by Reunion, then one of the major Christian music labels). With its sophomore effort, 1997's "Conspiracy No. 5," Third Day started getting mainstream attention, with Billboard praising the group as "not only one of the best Christian bands of the '90s but one of the best rock bands, period."
Third Day quickly became a mainstay of Christian radio -- "Sing a Song," from last year's "Offerings II: All I Have to Give," recently became the band's 20th No. 1 in that format -- but also got some airtime on secular stations. It doesn't hurt that Powell has a husky, rough-edged baritone or that the band has a muscular Southern rock sound. Third Day also has won a Grammy and a flock of Doves -- the Gospel Music Association has bestowed 19 of those awards, including three straight for group of the year. Make that hardworking group of the year: The band recently kicked off a 110-date tour that runs into 2005.
May brings Third Day's latest album, "Wire," its first with up-and-coming rock producer Paul Ebersold.
"It's not anything we haven't done before," Powell says. "It's just better, hopefully."
"It better sound different because we worked a lot harder on it," says Anderson with a laugh, pointing out that the new album is a world away from Third Day's debut. "We made that one for three thousand bucks that we'd scraped up over six months of shows. . . . That was our most profitable record, we didn't have much of a bill to pay back!"
On a more serious note, Anderson explains, "We're a band from Atlanta -- American rock but definitely tending towards Southern rock -- and we were just ready to make a great rock record. And we were really impressed with some of the stuff Paul has done with 3 Doors Down and Sister Hazel, pretty similar bands as far as where our influence would be."
Though they are now leaders in that field, neither Anderson nor Powell listened to Christian rock while growing up. Anderson lists his favorite bands as "U2, R.E.M. and, being from Atlanta, Black Crowes and Indigo Girls, and all the cool stuff my dad would play for me -- the Beatles, the Byrds, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers. U2 was my favorite because they so seamlessly blended spirituality with their music.
"As we started, none of us was really familiar with Christian music," Anderson adds. "We had heard of a few artists, but we didn't know there was this whole other genre, though we quickly learned that there was. We wanted to write our own songs, and faith is just a big part of our lives so that's what we were writing a lot about. And we found a market and an audience that really appreciated it."
The Ebersold connection will hopefully break Third Day outside the Christian music scene, though Anderson is quick to affirm the band's loyalty to that community.
"When you start out as a musician or actor or writer, you never say, 'I hope I can put a ceiling on my career or that what I create will only be heard by people who have these values or define themselves this way,' " Anderson says. "Any Christian artist that you talk to would love to see it expand and grow. You see Creed and Sixpence None the Richer and P.O.D., and I think they decided, 'We don't want to be known as a Christian band because it is so limiting.'
"For us, this is where we had our roots, these are the people who've given us a livelihood. What we're trying for is not crossover success but spillover success. We want to make records that the core audience that's been our foundation love because they're looking for that heart message. At the same time, we want to make music for people that don't go to church, for people who say, 'This is a great band, this is a great sound, this is as good or better than anything else I'm listening to.' "
Powell suggests that, historically, contemporary Christian rock has had to overcome perceptions about its quality and "the assumption of people who don't listen to it that's it's not going to be good, or that it's cheesy . . . and that's sometimes been true in the past. I didn't listen to Christian music, so perhaps I had those assumptions also. I just simply wasn't educated about it, but the assumptions I had then, most people, I'm sure, have today also."
In fact, the music and the market have both improved dramatically in the last decade, as the Christian/Gospel genre, traditionally the sixth- or seventh-largest-selling overall, has often outperformed other genres. According to a Recording Industry Association of America survey, it accounts for roughly 6.7 percent of all music sales, outpacing jazz and classical combined. And although the genre has been affected by the industry-wide downturn of the last several years, religious music was the only category to show significant growth between 1993 and 2002, with sales more than doubling in that 10-year span.
Anderson notes that many -- in fact, most of the biggest -- Christian labels are owned by mainstream companies, which has improved the production quality and promotional budgets for Christian music. "Even though that's not the spiritual answer, it's one of many reasons that it's become better," he says. There's also a huge range of Christian music that wasn't as prevalent when Third Day was getting its start.
Still, there's always a delicate line between outreach and entertainment, Powell says.
"I've heard people say in concert, 'We're not here to entertain you, we're here to share this message with you,' " he explains. "It's really not a good thing to say because if you're not there to entertain someone, why are you playing music in the first place? You should be standing on the street corner or preaching from the pulpit. If we're musicians and we want to play music and yet we have a message to share, the first thing to do is know what we believe and why, but as far as the music side, make quality music that is going to open up people's ears to hear that message. I'm not saying the music is more important, but you better make some quality music or people are not going to want to hear you, period, whether you're a Christian band or a mainstream band. If you want to say something, you better say it in a good way that people want to hear."
THIRD DAY -- Appearing Sunday at the Patriot Center with Tobymac and Warren Barfield. • To hear a free Sound Bite from Third Day, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8101. (Prince William residents, call 703-690-4110.)
