coming soon

Andrew [00:00:00] Leah. Can you believe it? It's already the start of season two of Rock That Doesn't Roll.

Leah [00:00:05] Yes, I am so excited about this season.

Andrew [00:00:07] If you remember, the last episode we did on season one was my favorite musician. David Bowie's on a page of The Lion. Yes, and today it's only fair that you get a turn to feel what I felt.

Jennifer Knapp [00:00:21] Hello, my name is Jennifer Knapp.

Leah [00:00:23] Here's why I'm excited about speaking with Jennifer Knapp. First off, when I was in college, one of my roommates brought her CD home, and at that time, I think I've shared, I didn't grow up with a lot of the CCM pop music in my house, but I was a young woman of the 90s, so I had a taste for singer songwriters like Alanis Morissette and Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Merchant. And when my roommate brought home a Jennifer Knapp CD, we were all hooked. We absolutely loved it. Did not believe it was Christian music.

Andrew [00:00:59] Why didn't you think it was Christian music when you heard it? Like, what was the thing?

Leah [00:01:04] Oh, gosh. I mean, I think if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be: feminism? In the 90s, there was a marketing trend to sell music that was empowering to young women, but also the audience for contemporary Christian music that primarily suburban white evangelical moms, had a negative connotation associated with the word feminism. So there was there was music that was intended to empower. But this was in the era when Rush Limbaugh was calling feminists "feminazi's" and stuff like that.

Andrew [00:01:45] Oh, yeah, I remember that, but I remember she was super popular. Like I was a freshman in college when her album "Kansas" came out.

Leah [00:01:55] And oh yes.

Andrew [00:01:56] Everywhere. They had this poster of her from the album cover. I feel like anytime I was in a girl's dorm room, there was a really good chance that was going to be on the wall.

Leah [00:02:05] Yes.

Andrew [00:02:06] A picture of Jennifer Knapp, black and white. In that world, she had this level of fame that is like the dream for so many of these Christian artists.

Leah [00:02:15] I agree, she was iconic. And then in 2004, she gave a magazine interview where she just said she was taking a break from music and that she was going to leave her future in God's hands. And then she just moved to Australia.

Andrew [00:02:32] After all of that, that leaves us with the question, what the hell happened? From the Big Questions Project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist, raised on Christian rock.

Leah [00:02:57] And I'm Leah Payne, a religious historian and author of the book "God Gave Rock & Roll to You". In each episode, we look at how Christian music shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one aspect of that world.

Andrew [00:03:10] Today on the show, we're telling Jennifer Knapp's story and asking what happens when the poster child breaks the frame that the Christian music industry put around female stars? Would it be possible to make faith based art as a feminist?

Jennifer Knapp [00:03:29] My career as a musician started around third or fourth grade as a profoundly talented recorder player.

Andrew [00:03:38] After mastering recorder, Jennifer actually went onto trumpet and she went to college to study it. She was never intending to become a rock star. She was planning to pursue music education. She just picked up a guitar as a kind of hobby.

Jennifer Knapp [00:03:54] I made a decision to become a Christian in, like my early 20s was a little bit of a slow burn, but I was evangelized to by a lot of my Christian friends, and I was going through an extremely rough patch.

Leah [00:04:09] Unlike a lot of 1990s CCM stars, Jennifer Knapp didn't actually grow up in an evangelical community.

Jennifer Knapp [00:04:16] I had no idea about Christian culture, that there was this culture with a capital C.

Leah [00:04:23] She was a young adult in college when she became an evangelical Christian, and she had no concept of the expectations that evangelical culture put on women.

Jennifer Knapp [00:04:32] I had no idea you went to church on any day but Sunday at one hour a week. It was a one hour commitment that I thought that was going to add a little illumination to my life. It turns out there's so much more to it.

Andrew [00:04:46] Little did she know at the time, but Jennifer's conversion was straight out of a ministry textbook. This is how evangelism was supposed to work. A sinner turns their life around to follow Jesus.

Jennifer Knapp [00:04:59] I mean, there was something really appealing to me about the redemptive story of Christianity. And I think at the same time, the liberation, the concept of a life that you didn't have to be ashamed of, a life that you were happy in yourself and in your person. And I think that the thing that definitely attracted me to Christianity was this notion that God could look at me and love me in this no holds barred kind of way when I couldn't see myself that way.

Leah [00:05:28] As a Christian, Jennifer felt even closer to her Christian friends, who had been directly a part of her conversion. But soon they had some suggestions for her.

Jennifer Knapp [00:05:37] I never aspired to be a performer or musician, but I would sit around with my friends, you know, I'd grab my acoustic guitar and I play a couple cover songs, and I would play Tracy Chapman or Cowboy Junkies or, I remember noodling around with some Indigo Girls.

Music [00:05:54] [Indigo Girls "Closer to Fine" plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:06:03] You know, I didn't think anything of it at the time. I'm just playing songs that I liked. And my Christian friends were like, you know, now that you're a Christian, instead of listening to this secular music, which is the first time I'd ever heard any of my music that I listened to or enjoyed referred to in that manner. You need to listen to Christian music, songs about God. You can't listen to any of this other stuff.

Andrew [00:06:28] But it wasn't just negative messages or friends shared. Yes, they thought you should cut out secular music, but they also thought Jennifer could write her own songs.

Jennifer Knapp [00:06:38] It just had never occurred to me to be able to take what I was learning in my faith life and to to spend time writing it.

Leah [00:06:45] Without these friends and this moment, Jennifer's career could have taken a completely different trajectory.

Jennifer Knapp [00:06:52] That was kind of like one of those culture clash moments where it, it was very much decided, at least at the time, that you couldn't have both. It had to be all leading toward this discipleship kind of idea about your life. And I think I took that seriously. It ended up, you know, being something that I spent quite a lot of time doing. My friends very much enjoy the music that I was creating.

Andrew [00:07:15] And Jennifer very much enjoyed discovering the world of CCM artists that she'd never been aware of before.

Jennifer Knapp [00:07:22] I came across artists like, Margaret Becker, who was another chick with guitar, which and if you know anything about contemporary Christian music, they're kind of rare. You know, us chicks with guitars. Ashley Cleveland, another female acoustic player. I loved, Out of the Grey and Susan Ashton and all the great songwriting from Wayne Kirkpatrick, which I was absolutely in love with, would leave me in tears.

Music [00:07:56] [Susan Ashton "There Is a Line" plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:08:05] Oh, and I should say a lot of the West Coast stuff like the 77s, uh, Dakoda Motor Co.

Music [00:08:10] [Dakoda Motor Co. "Wind An' Sea" plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:08:20] And I was doing a lot of, like, coffeehouses in the Midwest. So groups like Sixpence None The Richer were coming through, and I was getting chances as an amateur to open up in and around those guys. And I was like, oh, this makes sense to me. A lot of those artists I would say to me weren't trying to be something else. They were telling the story when and where they were at. And I thought, oh, I can do that.

Leah [00:08:52] I have a question about your first song. You know what it was like to write a song that was in conversation with those new friends and what maybe what it was like to perform it.

Jennifer Knapp [00:09:04] Oh, it would have been bad. You know, one of the, one of the earliest songs I can remember. It was a song called shine. I did a recording of it and a music video that went along with it that we made. It was kind of fun where I was working at Hardee's and flipping burgers in the video. Just hard working girl. Just trying to get right with the Lord. The chorus was something like, "shine on me, once a slave to sin, but now your blood has set me free". Ugh, I hear that now and I cringe. And even at the time I cringed, like it was not the way that I wanted to write.

Andrew [00:09:48] At this point, Jennifer had only been a Christian for like a year, and her Christian friends were cajoling her into writing songs about faith. So it makes sense that her first attempts would emulate the language and expectations of the people around her.

Jennifer Knapp [00:10:05] And the result of doing that, it was a challenge to me that I think inevitably led me to a path of actually challenging me as a songwriter, because the only people I could sing that song to were the people in, in my circle of Christian culture, to go home and play that to my family, to go out to a pub or a bar or a street corner or anywhere else in the world, to play that song would have just seemed as cheesy as it felt to me. And so that the challenge of that really, I think, inspired me to kind of try and find a way to communicate something that actually really did mean a lot to me.

Andrew [00:10:57] Even though Jennifer isn't proud of her earliest songs, her Christian friends kept encouraging her to make more music, and they spread the good news about Jennifer Knapp to anyone who would listen.

Jennifer Knapp [00:11:08] It really was my friends that were were pushing me in that direction. I mean, I didn't have these designs of signing to a Christian music label. And at the same time, it's worth saying that because I was this convert to Christianity and then had an ability to speak about it in a particular way that was moving to others who understood this tradition, that, you know, I was somewhat of the poster child in this little space. It was like, oh, look at this sinner turned saint. This is an amazing conversion experience, you know, tell us your testimony and tell us all about the bad thing so we can see how good you are now. And even that was just like, I don't know if I really want to market myself in that way. There's more to me than that story.

Leah [00:11:54] For a few years, Jennifer played small gigs at colleges, maybe a church, a coffee shop, playing for 1 or 200 people at the most.

Jennifer Knapp [00:12:05] They're really small, they're really social, and we're in close proximity to one another. So in that sense, you there is more pressure in some ways to kind of fit in, but because it's not seen on this global scale, because it is in the room on that day. So you have this luxury, strangely enough, to really connect to people and say something that's really authentic.

Andrew [00:12:32] Later on, Jennifer would look back on these days with fondness, when her fan base was exponentially larger, but somehow she felt more alone. If it hadn't been for her manager, Byron Funk, she probably wouldn't have done any of it. Her career only built momentum because it was propelled by the enthusiasm of friends like Byron.

Jennifer Knapp [00:12:54] He was sending those recordings that we did to record labels, and showing them my schedule and showing them that I was really actually building a community of people throughout the Midwest. I didn't really know that Byron was doing this initially. One day is like, you know, we've got a couple of people who are really interested in meeting you and signing with a record deal. And I was like, dude, what are you doing? I don't even know if I want to do that.

Leah [00:13:18] One of those tapes had found its way to Gotee Records, the label founded in 1994 by Toby McKeehan, TobyMac the rapper in DC talk.

Jennifer Knapp [00:13:28] Byron, I think, knew somebody who knew Toby McKeehan. They're like, yeah, here's some tickets to the backstage. You're going to meet DC talk. And all my friends are freaking out. And I'm like, Who's Toby McKeehan? And I didn't know. But, you know, like, I didn't mean that in a bad way. I just I didn't have my finger on the pulse of what was happening in CCM at the time.

Andrew [00:13:49] Secretly still listening to Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman.

Jennifer Knapp [00:13:53] A Lot, yeah, a lot, yeah.

Andrew [00:13:55] On paper, Jennifer Knapp, TobyMac and DC talk don't seem to have much in common, but TobyMac wasn't just an artist. He was a businessman with a keen eye for what kinds of music would appeal to CCM audiences. And in some ways, DC Talk's 1995 blockbuster Jesus Freak cleared the way for more individual expression in the mainstream Christian music industry.

Jennifer Knapp [00:14:23] When the Jesus Freak record came out, it absolutely changed the landscape of CCM. It it gave permission to the rest of CCM to kind of, you know, put some holes in their jeans and go to church in military boots. And it really gave permission to those of us like, oh, the rocking thing that I'm doing is, is okay. Toby was an intriguing person to me because he was a signed artist. I mean, he was eating sushi in the green room and getting ready to go on stage, putting on belt packs with wireless microphones. And I'm like, wow, this is like rock and roll, man.

Music [00:14:59] [TobyMac music plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:15:09] And I probably only had a dozen songs that I'd written at that point, and that there's around 94, 95 somewhere in there. So, I signed with only enough songs to do the first record. I think one of the reasons why I signed is I figured I'd, I wanted to live in the moment, you know, you don't get a lot of opportunities like that. And as I told my mom when I dropped out of school to go do my first tour, I said, well, you know, I'll be back next semester.

Leah [00:15:34] So Jennifer has a record deal and a debut album, Kansas on Gotee Records. They're printing thousands of posters with the album cover, but beyond that, she has no idea what lies ahead, and that in just a few years, everything she thought she knew about herself would be in question.

Andrew [00:15:58] Coming up, Jennifer finds herself sharing the stage with her musical heroes.

Jennifer Knapp [00:16:04] Female recording artists and touring artists that you're going to write down and you know the names of history that people aren't going to forget. And my name's in the middle of that. And that was pretty a pretty big honor.

Music [00:16:14] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Andrew [00:16:20] Before that record came out. Did they ever like, I've heard about like Motown would send artists to like a finishing school or something? Did they ever send you to, like, you know, CCM celebrity finishing school or anything like that?

Jennifer Knapp [00:16:33] Or like, oh, how I wish they had.

Leah [00:16:36] Oh my gosh, wait a minute, wait a minute. If you were to have given yourself a class on like, CCM finishing school, what would you have told your early 20s self about, like how to comport yourself?

Jennifer Knapp [00:16:52] You know, I don't know that I would tell myself that much different. One of the things I love, actually, about my naivete and my ignorance of of CCM was that I walked into every room being the best version of myself I knew how to be. I wasn't trying to live into anything else, or kind of try to impress everybody else and to other people, I was a little bit too loud. Or for me, you know, femininity was always a big deal because, you know, everyone was like, wow, she's not Twila Paris. I'm like, no, I'm not.

Andrew [00:17:27] For those who don't know, this is Twila Paris, a favorite of evangelical church ladies of the 80s.

Music [00:17:34] [Twila Paris music plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:17:43] I think people were suspicious of me for a long time because I wasn't I wasn't going around kind of looking for like my husband and I wasn't talking about the future that I wanted to have as a wife. So I learned on the clock. I hadn't I never done interviews before, and nobody trained me for that. All of a sudden you've got a microphone in your face or somebody's writing down what you said, and you said that and you're like, oh, I did say that. Now it's in print for everybody to see. You know, that's kind of one of the side effects of siding with a smaller label. A lot of what an artist ends up being in the public sphere is really who they are. Like, there's no big major money machine behind them trying to craft them so that you will be this purchasable product.

Andrew [00:18:21] Like her musical heroes, Jennifer's guiding principle as an artist was authentic self-expression. She felt fulfilled when she connected with her audience on a human level.

Leah [00:18:34] The bigger goals of the CCM industry influencing teens to stay within the evangelical fold. They didn't matter to Jennifer, but when Kansas was released, it did well, really well. It went gold, selling 500,000 copies.

Andrew [00:18:49] And that put her on the radar of evangelical leaders hoping to shape evangelical children into ideal evangelical adults, and one of the most efficient ways to do that was at massive youth conferences. And suddenly Jennifer was getting booked at those and performing for:

Jennifer Knapp [00:19:08] Tens of thousands of teenagers. You know, being drawn into these arenas to be, you know, to be able to have this cavalcade of stars. So anywhere from, you know, authors and ministers and musicians is all rolled up into one this massive conferences. And, of course, you know, I was going, going and playing.

Music [00:19:28] [Jennifer Knapp music plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:19:33] One of the components inside of that was always the altar call. You know, every head bowed, every eye closed, and the culmination right of all of this messaging to try and get kids to commit their lives to Christ. And you always hear conversations inside of youth groups. You yeah, don't have sex before you get married. It was pretty soft sell, but it was a consistent sell through any of my time in hanging out with youth groups. But it started to become much more targeted. And it was one day at hanging out at the one of these major youth festivals. And I don't remember who did it at the time, but it was a pastor doing an evangelical, you know, come to Jesus call, an altar call, and literally sex shamed the entire audience in order to get people to turn like you're talking to a bunch of hormonal teenagers. And he says, if you've ever had an impure thought about another girl, if you've ever touched yourself for pleasure. If you girls have ever let somebody touch you. Now is the time to let Jesus heal you, to let Jesus make you pure again. Don't be a disappointment to your parents. Don't be disappointing in the eyes of God. Tell me, a kid in that 10,000 group thing that didn't have their hormones completely raging, that this wasn't going to be an effective kind of bait and switch to a degree like a false truth, to kind of coerce a deeply meaningful spiritual response by by targeting an idea of sexual shame. And I remember seeing that and I was like, at the time, you know, I'd been doing this a while. I've had sex. I know what it's like to be in Christian culture and have everybody go, you've had sex outside of marriage. You're, you know, you're not as good as you could be where, you're a second class citizen. And, you know, I saw that happening. I was like, what am I doing here? Because I didn't want anybody to ever be, ever walk away from anything that I'd ever told them, thinking anything less of themselves. Be a good person. Trying to treat the other person across from you with respect and dignity. Treat your body in the same way. We weren't having any of those conversations about ethics or morality, or what good health might be, or good mutual respect would be for another human. It was just like this black and white. You're in if you're a virgin and you're out if you're not. And I was appalled.

Leah [00:22:06] So operating within the Christian music industry was getting uncomfortable for Jennifer because her goals didn't match up with the industries. At the same time, her big following in the Midwest got her invited on an important tour outside the Christian industry.

Archival Tape [00:22:22] We are here at the Lilith Fair tour and this is the concert answer to all this testosterone at other concerts , you know, like Lollapalooza and Horde and Roar. Well, this is over 60 women on different stages across the country proving that women are doing it for themselves. And they can sell just as many records as the boys. We'll be catching up with women like Fiona Apple, Joan Osborne. We may even get the creator, Sarah McLaughlin to have a word or two with us.

Andrew [00:22:45] For female artists, Lilith Fair was a huge affirmation that they could attract massive crowds without the good old boys of rock and roll. But as far as festivals went, Lilith Fair was seen as comparably tame, a lineup with lots of folksy...

Leah [00:23:02] Acoustic performances.

Andrew [00:23:03] Earnest lyrics, patchouli in the air, you know? But like you look at Woodstock 99, the same year that, Jennifer Knapp went on Lilith Fair. It's like drunken riots.

Leah [00:23:18] Mosh pits.

Andrew [00:23:19] Deafeningly, loud electric guitars.

Leah [00:23:22] But despite all of that, for the CCM establishment, Lilith Fair was vaguely threatening. Lilith, known as the first wife of Adam, by the way, before Eve was considered to be a demon by folks like Jerry Falwell and the women attending the festival weren't being encouraged to be traditional wives and have traditional values like cooking and cleaning and submitting to their husbands.

Jennifer Knapp [00:23:47] I joined the Lilith Fair in like, Michigan and Ohio. I was actually in, in my minivan, driving on my way to a Lilith Fair, gig and, rolling through the radio dial then, because we weren't streaming or listening to satellite radio, was all it was on the FM radio. I came across a Christian radio station and I'd heard Jennifer Knapp. So I stopped and I was like, what is going on? There's this talk radio thing that was going off their nut about how I was going to hell, because I had joined up with the Lilith Fair tour, and so people were calling. It was this full on hour of people on the radio calling in and having a conversation about me and about my state, about my witness, about, you know, whether or not I was a lesbian because I had signed on to the Lilith Fair tour, it was clearly a sign that I was going to like other women. Turned out it made me gay. So, yeah.

Andrew [00:24:43] Lilith Fair, made you gay?

Jennifer Knapp [00:24:44] Yeah it did. I wasn't gay before I went, but now after after I went in 1999, that probably sealed the deal. About that time, the internet and bulletin boards and chat groups and blogs and things were starting to happen around that time. And then all of a sudden, you know, you turn on the radio and there's this controversy swirling around, and people were calling me out and were concerned about whether or not I was seriously Christian and probably, you know, assuming that if I was hanging out at Lilith Fair that I was like, hardcore hooked on drugs. And no, I called into the show. I was like you may not realize, yeah, you may not realize this, but I can hear you. Like, you guys could have at least called me. Ask me a couple of questions before you started, you know, like doing this. But I am on my way, and I'm fine. Just so you know, you're not just talking about me. You're talking about the 14 year old girl who's listening to this program who has. Has a pinup poster of me on their wall. Who actually thinks that I'm really pretty? You know, you're shaming her into this space, and I won't let you do that while I'm here. And I won't let you use me to do that. Or, you know, the hundreds of other kids that you're shaming around the country by trying to use me as an example for that. I won't let you do that. And that's one of the roles that I'm happy to take.

Andrew [00:26:06] Coming up, how did Jennifer go from the topic to your on talk radio to the biggest musical opportunity of her life?

Jennifer Knapp [00:26:13] I'm expecting them to hate me like the animosity that people have toward Christianity. If there's any animosity to be had, I expect it to be directed toward me.

Music [00:26:23] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music sting]

Andrew [00:26:28] Can't imagine rolling up to Lilith Fair having just listened to that conversation. That must've put you in such a weird headspace.

Leah [00:26:36] Oh my gosh.

Jennifer Knapp [00:26:37] So there's that side right from the the Christian culture side of it. But then I'm rolling into Lilith Fair, where it's seriously like there's a nice cloud of pot smoke over the air, and I'm playing with these guy, you know, there's there's a quote, there's literally like a 40 gallon ice chest full of beer in my green room, which never happened. I'm like, can I drink this? Like, what happens, right?

Jennifer Knapp [00:26:59] One of the first things I did when I rolled up to the very first Lilith Fair that I did was a press conference. So I'm sitting right next to-- I'm between Sarah McLaughlin and Sheryl Crow. I'm like, what is happening? I don't know, and I'm expecting them to hate me. Like the animosity that people have toward Christianity. If there's any animosity to be had, I expect it to be directed toward me. I expected them to not take me seriously as a musician. You know, I expected to be looked through, walked over, disrespected, you know, not necessarily-- you know, and even myself, like, as a musician, I'm going, I'm not on par with these guys. Like, I have no talent. And that's just.

Andrew [00:27:40] Imposter syndrome set in?

Jennifer Knapp [00:27:41] Yeah. And that's not the way I was treated at all. I was treated actually with a lot more respect than any CCM experience I'd ever had. You know, like, I was walking away from the press conference and Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls had turned to me. She was in the press conference as well. She turns to me, she goes, hey, at the end of our set, we're playing closer to fine, which, of course is one of their major, major lifetime hits. They can never not play it. And they go, We're playing that. We're inviting people to come up and sing the song with us. So if you need a lyric sheet. And I was like, yeah.

Jennifer Knapp [00:28:16] Like. Yeah, right. If you need a lyric sheet, we'll get you lyrics, but come up and sing the song with us. And I was like, okay, I hardly said two words and I almost didn't go up. But I ended up sharing a microphone with Sarah McLaughlin on stage with the Indigo Girl singing Closer to Fine.

Archival Tape [00:28:31] [Audio of Closer to Fine Live at Lilith Fair]

Andrew [00:28:45] The very song that Jennifer had been admonished for performing just a few years earlier in her baby Christian days. She was now singing it onstage with the most respected female singers in the mainstream music industry. In that moment, she was like, CCM crossover Barbie.

Archival Tape [00:29:12] I mean, who gets to do that? You know, like it was a it was one of the most-- I went from feeling like I would be excluded and, and vilified in this space for being, you know, coming from a Christian environment. In fact, I was accepted, brought into and loved. And it was ironic because it's not always the way I felt just, you know, just driving on the way there where my quote unquote own people were somewhat throwing me under the bus because I was going in and making relationships out in an environment, you would think they would be very glad that I would be a witness to that nonetheless.

Andrew [00:29:45] Yeah. Isn't that the goal right?

Leah [00:29:47] Yeah, that's that's a great illustration of the tensions where, like in the CCM world, where there's this idea that on the one hand, mainstream exposure is achievement on the part of all of them. But then, on the other hand, it's a threat in part because it's like could be tainted in some kind of way. And so it's like there are two things going on at the same time, which for an artist, that seems tiring to me to have to like, speak in all those registers. I mean, I know you're good at it, but. That would wear me out.

Jennifer Knapp [00:30:21] You know, I didn't really know that at the time. You know, like I said, it was one of those things that you kind of learn on the fly. That's probably symptomatic of one of the, the reasons why I left CCM and why I became so fatigued living in that environment, you know, persistently having to 100% project this idea of Christian culture and Christianity and becoming, an avatar of what, you know, symbolic of what that was supposed to be when everything in my art, everything in my person, in my daily life and my social relationships was about living normally and authentically and, you know, not not having my faith or my the process of which, you know, I spiritually progressed through the world be some kind of product.

Andrew [00:31:10] Instead of packaging her life as a product, Jennifer went deeper into examining her faith, deconstructing the Christianity she'd embraced less than a decade before.

Jennifer Knapp [00:31:21] The third and the last record that I would eventually do with Gotee Records as a record called The Way I Am. And on that record, I was really trying to humanize Jesus, like this person who had lived a life, who had walked on an earth, who had who had suffered persecution, who had been a blessing to other people, who had wisdom to share all these kinds of things. And I went into that humanity. I kind of took out all of this supernatural components. And I was like what if. What if we just take a second and look at this story? As I start to talk about that out in in the spaces in these big rooms. And every time I would talk about that in these environments, I would just get people just looking at me like I'd said something heretical or didn't understand what I was saying. It just was crickets. And I it just became so disappointing to me to be able to say something that I was really wanting to talk about in my faith and in my music, you know, as the medium with which I had these conversations. And to put that out into the world and to have a whole room look back to me and say, you know, play Jaja Ding Dong, play your greatest hits, play the song that's like syrupy sweet. The room that I was in wasn't ready to come with me. It became very difficult. And I think those experiences really got me, you know, bitter and angry and fatigued to the point where I just like, I don't want to do this anymore. There's sometimes I think, you know, we get so angry and we get so upset that we're not a useful person in a conversation anymore. And that's really the way I felt at the end of my CCM career. You know, I had to have a little bit of faith that if I was ever going to have that conversation, I didn't know what it was going to be in the future. So I needed to take some time out to be able to figure out what that might be.

Leah [00:33:30] In 2002, Jennifer moved to Australia. In 2004, she announced she was taking a break from music. Her label put out a live album and a greatest hits collection to keep her fans happy. But there was nothing new from Jennifer herself for years. Then, in 2009, Knapp revealed she was starting to write music again and her CCM fans rejoiced.

Andrew [00:33:54] A year later, in 2010, however, Jennifer had big news. She gave simultaneous interviews with Christianity Today, Reuters and The Advocate. In the interview, Jennifer announced that she'd been in a relationship with a woman, now her wife, since 2002. In 1999, when she played Lilith Fair and heard the talk radio discussion about her sexual orientation, she didn't identify as gay. But now Jennifer knew the strict boundaries around sexuality and sexual orientation that were the norm in CCM would mean the end of her faith based music career. In 2010, after the interview, she released a new album, Letting Go. It was not marketed to Christian radio.

Jennifer Knapp [00:34:45] I'll be honest, even when I came back in 2010, I was really anticipating never having a conversation in a Christian context in public ever again. I was super excited about that. But what I didn't know when I came back, as so many other people in that same seven years that I was gone, was also doing their own work, that there really were serious people out there who were very serious about their faith tradition. We're just as perplexed by Christian culture and all its propaganda qualities, still found something genuine, unique and incredibly important to them underneath of that. Like, strangely enough, I think I have way more of a ministry now, or way more service to my faith in a secular context than I ever had at the time. Which is to say, I'm not trying to sell people on Jesus, which I never have been, but I'm very, you know, I definitely have a conversation that I can have about it when it's appropriate and when people want to have that conversation back with me. And I think that's been a lovely balance.

Leah [00:35:42] I know you're you're rerecording Kansas, and I just wondered if you could talk about how you came to decide to to do that.

Jennifer Knapp [00:35:50] I thought it would be really interesting to kind of go back and visibly reclaim it in some ways, and particularly for the LGBTQ community, because it says, you know, this is a record made by a gay person. This is a faith based record made by a gay person. But because I didn't see myself that way at the time, but people coming to shows telling me a story about a song like Undo Me, which is on the Kansas record, or Martyrs and Thieves, which is a song that I famously didn't play for the first time in like probably 8 or 9 years until a really drunken crowd of lesbians in a lesbian bar in Philadelphia demanded that I play it. Otherwise I was afraid of violence like.

Andrew [00:36:32] It is Philadelphia, after all.

Jennifer Knapp [00:36:34] You know it is. It is a bunch of like, there was a lot of drunk lesbians around demanding that I play that song, and I, I didn't want to play it. And they they made me and course, corrected me right then.

Music [00:36:49] [Jennifer Knapp Kansas record plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:37:06] So I had to kind of somewhat go through personal process of reconciling what my relationship was with these songs. It turned out to be a gift from my community back to me of songs that I had not been familiar with. And so I went back and started playing them. And since 2010, I've kind of played 1 or 2 of these songs. But with this 25 year anniversary, I was like, I need to celebrate that concept. Yes, there are things that the church does wrong. Yes, there are odd ways that religion sometimes. Ends up playing out in our lives. Odd. Painful. Traumatic. Terrible. But the underneath of that is... Something authentic that we're actually still looking for, and I don't always know how to name it, but it is something deeply spiritual. And if it is God with a capital G. So be it. You know, I don't want to name it for-- I just loathe to name it for anybody else. But the act of going and rerecording that record is that process for me. It's being able to gift it back and say, hey, you've believed in it long time, and if you're not there right now, you can have it back.

Leah [00:38:11] With the exact same songs that were released back in 1998. Jennifer is still working on the same project she started back then to carve out a space for women to be their full selves in deeply spiritual ways. Only now she better understands exactly what she's trying to do and why.

Jennifer Knapp [00:38:29] I liberate this record for you the same way that you liberated it. For me, I feel like the fans liberated this record long before I did. I. You know, I honestly feel like rerecording is just a demonstration of that.

Music [00:38:41] [Jennifer Knapp music plays]

Andrew [00:38:49] After our interview, Jennifer's Kansas 25 Kickstarter was fully funded, so vinyls should be coming soon. You can check Jennifer knapp.com for more information.

Leah [00:39:03] Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll:

Soup the Chemist [00:39:05] I just couldn't get into the choir music at all. I just I couldn't get into it. So I just started writing raps about my new experience.

Leah [00:39:15] The holy side of hip hop.

Andrew [00:39:17] If you have a story to share or thoughts on this episode, please call our hotline. You can call anytime: (629) 777-6336.

Leah [00:39:28] To be the first to hear our episodes and for full access to our bonus episodes, join us on Patreon, Patreon.com/RTDR.

Andrew [00:39:37] Find us on Substack and Instagram by searching. Rock That Doesn't Roll. And of course, you should give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're using to listen right now.

Leah [00:39:48] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions Project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme.

Andrew [00:39:59] Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Leah [00:40:06] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurantin provides production oversight. I'm Leah Payne.

Andrew [00:40:13] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember, rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.

Andrew [00:00:00] Leah. Can you believe it? It's already the start of season two of Rock That Doesn't Roll.

Leah [00:00:05] Yes, I am so excited about this season.

Andrew [00:00:07] If you remember, the last episode we did on season one was my favorite musician. David Bowie's on a page of The Lion. Yes, and today it's only fair that you get a turn to feel what I felt.

Jennifer Knapp [00:00:21] Hello, my name is Jennifer Knapp.

Leah [00:00:23] Here's why I'm excited about speaking with Jennifer Knapp. First off, when I was in college, one of my roommates brought her CD home, and at that time, I think I've shared, I didn't grow up with a lot of the CCM pop music in my house, but I was a young woman of the 90s, so I had a taste for singer songwriters like Alanis Morissette and Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Merchant. And when my roommate brought home a Jennifer Knapp CD, we were all hooked. We absolutely loved it. Did not believe it was Christian music.

Andrew [00:00:59] Why didn't you think it was Christian music when you heard it? Like, what was the thing?

Leah [00:01:04] Oh, gosh. I mean, I think if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be: feminism? In the 90s, there was a marketing trend to sell music that was empowering to young women, but also the audience for contemporary Christian music that primarily suburban white evangelical moms, had a negative connotation associated with the word feminism. So there was there was music that was intended to empower. But this was in the era when Rush Limbaugh was calling feminists "feminazi's" and stuff like that.

Andrew [00:01:45] Oh, yeah, I remember that, but I remember she was super popular. Like I was a freshman in college when her album "Kansas" came out.

Leah [00:01:55] And oh yes.

Andrew [00:01:56] Everywhere. They had this poster of her from the album cover. I feel like anytime I was in a girl's dorm room, there was a really good chance that was going to be on the wall.

Leah [00:02:05] Yes.

Andrew [00:02:06] A picture of Jennifer Knapp, black and white. In that world, she had this level of fame that is like the dream for so many of these Christian artists.

Leah [00:02:15] I agree, she was iconic. And then in 2004, she gave a magazine interview where she just said she was taking a break from music and that she was going to leave her future in God's hands. And then she just moved to Australia.

Andrew [00:02:32] After all of that, that leaves us with the question, what the hell happened? From the Big Questions Project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist, raised on Christian rock.

Leah [00:02:57] And I'm Leah Payne, a religious historian and author of the book "God Gave Rock & Roll to You". In each episode, we look at how Christian music shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one aspect of that world.

Andrew [00:03:10] Today on the show, we're telling Jennifer Knapp's story and asking what happens when the poster child breaks the frame that the Christian music industry put around female stars? Would it be possible to make faith based art as a feminist?

Jennifer Knapp [00:03:29] My career as a musician started around third or fourth grade as a profoundly talented recorder player.

Andrew [00:03:38] After mastering recorder, Jennifer actually went onto trumpet and she went to college to study it. She was never intending to become a rock star. She was planning to pursue music education. She just picked up a guitar as a kind of hobby.

Jennifer Knapp [00:03:54] I made a decision to become a Christian in, like my early 20s was a little bit of a slow burn, but I was evangelized to by a lot of my Christian friends, and I was going through an extremely rough patch.

Leah [00:04:09] Unlike a lot of 1990s CCM stars, Jennifer Knapp didn't actually grow up in an evangelical community.

Jennifer Knapp [00:04:16] I had no idea about Christian culture, that there was this culture with a capital C.

Leah [00:04:23] She was a young adult in college when she became an evangelical Christian, and she had no concept of the expectations that evangelical culture put on women.

Jennifer Knapp [00:04:32] I had no idea you went to church on any day but Sunday at one hour a week. It was a one hour commitment that I thought that was going to add a little illumination to my life. It turns out there's so much more to it.

Andrew [00:04:46] Little did she know at the time, but Jennifer's conversion was straight out of a ministry textbook. This is how evangelism was supposed to work. A sinner turns their life around to follow Jesus.

Jennifer Knapp [00:04:59] I mean, there was something really appealing to me about the redemptive story of Christianity. And I think at the same time, the liberation, the concept of a life that you didn't have to be ashamed of, a life that you were happy in yourself and in your person. And I think that the thing that definitely attracted me to Christianity was this notion that God could look at me and love me in this no holds barred kind of way when I couldn't see myself that way.

Leah [00:05:28] As a Christian, Jennifer felt even closer to her Christian friends, who had been directly a part of her conversion. But soon they had some suggestions for her.

Jennifer Knapp [00:05:37] I never aspired to be a performer or musician, but I would sit around with my friends, you know, I'd grab my acoustic guitar and I play a couple cover songs, and I would play Tracy Chapman or Cowboy Junkies or, I remember noodling around with some Indigo Girls.

Music [00:05:54] [Indigo Girls "Closer to Fine" plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:06:03] You know, I didn't think anything of it at the time. I'm just playing songs that I liked. And my Christian friends were like, you know, now that you're a Christian, instead of listening to this secular music, which is the first time I'd ever heard any of my music that I listened to or enjoyed referred to in that manner. You need to listen to Christian music, songs about God. You can't listen to any of this other stuff.

Andrew [00:06:28] But it wasn't just negative messages or friends shared. Yes, they thought you should cut out secular music, but they also thought Jennifer could write her own songs.

Jennifer Knapp [00:06:38] It just had never occurred to me to be able to take what I was learning in my faith life and to to spend time writing it.

Leah [00:06:45] Without these friends and this moment, Jennifer's career could have taken a completely different trajectory.

Jennifer Knapp [00:06:52] That was kind of like one of those culture clash moments where it, it was very much decided, at least at the time, that you couldn't have both. It had to be all leading toward this discipleship kind of idea about your life. And I think I took that seriously. It ended up, you know, being something that I spent quite a lot of time doing. My friends very much enjoy the music that I was creating.

Andrew [00:07:15] And Jennifer very much enjoyed discovering the world of CCM artists that she'd never been aware of before.

Jennifer Knapp [00:07:22] I came across artists like, Margaret Becker, who was another chick with guitar, which and if you know anything about contemporary Christian music, they're kind of rare. You know, us chicks with guitars. Ashley Cleveland, another female acoustic player. I loved, Out of the Grey and Susan Ashton and all the great songwriting from Wayne Kirkpatrick, which I was absolutely in love with, would leave me in tears.

Music [00:07:56] [Susan Ashton "There Is a Line" plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:08:05] Oh, and I should say a lot of the West Coast stuff like the 77s, uh, Dakoda Motor Co.

Music [00:08:10] [Dakoda Motor Co. "Wind An' Sea" plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:08:20] And I was doing a lot of, like, coffeehouses in the Midwest. So groups like Sixpence None The Richer were coming through, and I was getting chances as an amateur to open up in and around those guys. And I was like, oh, this makes sense to me. A lot of those artists I would say to me weren't trying to be something else. They were telling the story when and where they were at. And I thought, oh, I can do that.

Leah [00:08:52] I have a question about your first song. You know what it was like to write a song that was in conversation with those new friends and what maybe what it was like to perform it.

Jennifer Knapp [00:09:04] Oh, it would have been bad. You know, one of the, one of the earliest songs I can remember. It was a song called shine. I did a recording of it and a music video that went along with it that we made. It was kind of fun where I was working at Hardee's and flipping burgers in the video. Just hard working girl. Just trying to get right with the Lord. The chorus was something like, "shine on me, once a slave to sin, but now your blood has set me free". Ugh, I hear that now and I cringe. And even at the time I cringed, like it was not the way that I wanted to write.

Andrew [00:09:48] At this point, Jennifer had only been a Christian for like a year, and her Christian friends were cajoling her into writing songs about faith. So it makes sense that her first attempts would emulate the language and expectations of the people around her.

Jennifer Knapp [00:10:05] And the result of doing that, it was a challenge to me that I think inevitably led me to a path of actually challenging me as a songwriter, because the only people I could sing that song to were the people in, in my circle of Christian culture, to go home and play that to my family, to go out to a pub or a bar or a street corner or anywhere else in the world, to play that song would have just seemed as cheesy as it felt to me. And so that the challenge of that really, I think, inspired me to kind of try and find a way to communicate something that actually really did mean a lot to me.

Andrew [00:10:57] Even though Jennifer isn't proud of her earliest songs, her Christian friends kept encouraging her to make more music, and they spread the good news about Jennifer Knapp to anyone who would listen.

Jennifer Knapp [00:11:08] It really was my friends that were were pushing me in that direction. I mean, I didn't have these designs of signing to a Christian music label. And at the same time, it's worth saying that because I was this convert to Christianity and then had an ability to speak about it in a particular way that was moving to others who understood this tradition, that, you know, I was somewhat of the poster child in this little space. It was like, oh, look at this sinner turned saint. This is an amazing conversion experience, you know, tell us your testimony and tell us all about the bad thing so we can see how good you are now. And even that was just like, I don't know if I really want to market myself in that way. There's more to me than that story.

Leah [00:11:54] For a few years, Jennifer played small gigs at colleges, maybe a church, a coffee shop, playing for 1 or 200 people at the most.

Jennifer Knapp [00:12:05] They're really small, they're really social, and we're in close proximity to one another. So in that sense, you there is more pressure in some ways to kind of fit in, but because it's not seen on this global scale, because it is in the room on that day. So you have this luxury, strangely enough, to really connect to people and say something that's really authentic.

Andrew [00:12:32] Later on, Jennifer would look back on these days with fondness, when her fan base was exponentially larger, but somehow she felt more alone. If it hadn't been for her manager, Byron Funk, she probably wouldn't have done any of it. Her career only built momentum because it was propelled by the enthusiasm of friends like Byron.

Jennifer Knapp [00:12:54] He was sending those recordings that we did to record labels, and showing them my schedule and showing them that I was really actually building a community of people throughout the Midwest. I didn't really know that Byron was doing this initially. One day is like, you know, we've got a couple of people who are really interested in meeting you and signing with a record deal. And I was like, dude, what are you doing? I don't even know if I want to do that.

Leah [00:13:18] One of those tapes had found its way to Gotee Records, the label founded in 1994 by Toby McKeehan, TobyMac the rapper in DC talk.

Jennifer Knapp [00:13:28] Byron, I think, knew somebody who knew Toby McKeehan. They're like, yeah, here's some tickets to the backstage. You're going to meet DC talk. And all my friends are freaking out. And I'm like, Who's Toby McKeehan? And I didn't know. But, you know, like, I didn't mean that in a bad way. I just I didn't have my finger on the pulse of what was happening in CCM at the time.

Andrew [00:13:49] Secretly still listening to Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman.

Jennifer Knapp [00:13:53] A Lot, yeah, a lot, yeah.

Andrew [00:13:55] On paper, Jennifer Knapp, TobyMac and DC talk don't seem to have much in common, but TobyMac wasn't just an artist. He was a businessman with a keen eye for what kinds of music would appeal to CCM audiences. And in some ways, DC Talk's 1995 blockbuster Jesus Freak cleared the way for more individual expression in the mainstream Christian music industry.

Jennifer Knapp [00:14:23] When the Jesus Freak record came out, it absolutely changed the landscape of CCM. It it gave permission to the rest of CCM to kind of, you know, put some holes in their jeans and go to church in military boots. And it really gave permission to those of us like, oh, the rocking thing that I'm doing is, is okay. Toby was an intriguing person to me because he was a signed artist. I mean, he was eating sushi in the green room and getting ready to go on stage, putting on belt packs with wireless microphones. And I'm like, wow, this is like rock and roll, man.

Music [00:14:59] [TobyMac music plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:15:09] And I probably only had a dozen songs that I'd written at that point, and that there's around 94, 95 somewhere in there. So, I signed with only enough songs to do the first record. I think one of the reasons why I signed is I figured I'd, I wanted to live in the moment, you know, you don't get a lot of opportunities like that. And as I told my mom when I dropped out of school to go do my first tour, I said, well, you know, I'll be back next semester.

Leah [00:15:34] So Jennifer has a record deal and a debut album, Kansas on Gotee Records. They're printing thousands of posters with the album cover, but beyond that, she has no idea what lies ahead, and that in just a few years, everything she thought she knew about herself would be in question.

Andrew [00:15:58] Coming up, Jennifer finds herself sharing the stage with her musical heroes.

Jennifer Knapp [00:16:04] Female recording artists and touring artists that you're going to write down and you know the names of history that people aren't going to forget. And my name's in the middle of that. And that was pretty a pretty big honor.

Music [00:16:14] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Andrew [00:16:20] Before that record came out. Did they ever like, I've heard about like Motown would send artists to like a finishing school or something? Did they ever send you to, like, you know, CCM celebrity finishing school or anything like that?

Jennifer Knapp [00:16:33] Or like, oh, how I wish they had.

Leah [00:16:36] Oh my gosh, wait a minute, wait a minute. If you were to have given yourself a class on like, CCM finishing school, what would you have told your early 20s self about, like how to comport yourself?

Jennifer Knapp [00:16:52] You know, I don't know that I would tell myself that much different. One of the things I love, actually, about my naivete and my ignorance of of CCM was that I walked into every room being the best version of myself I knew how to be. I wasn't trying to live into anything else, or kind of try to impress everybody else and to other people, I was a little bit too loud. Or for me, you know, femininity was always a big deal because, you know, everyone was like, wow, she's not Twila Paris. I'm like, no, I'm not.

Andrew [00:17:27] For those who don't know, this is Twila Paris, a favorite of evangelical church ladies of the 80s.

Music [00:17:34] [Twila Paris music plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:17:43] I think people were suspicious of me for a long time because I wasn't I wasn't going around kind of looking for like my husband and I wasn't talking about the future that I wanted to have as a wife. So I learned on the clock. I hadn't I never done interviews before, and nobody trained me for that. All of a sudden you've got a microphone in your face or somebody's writing down what you said, and you said that and you're like, oh, I did say that. Now it's in print for everybody to see. You know, that's kind of one of the side effects of siding with a smaller label. A lot of what an artist ends up being in the public sphere is really who they are. Like, there's no big major money machine behind them trying to craft them so that you will be this purchasable product.

Andrew [00:18:21] Like her musical heroes, Jennifer's guiding principle as an artist was authentic self-expression. She felt fulfilled when she connected with her audience on a human level.

Leah [00:18:34] The bigger goals of the CCM industry influencing teens to stay within the evangelical fold. They didn't matter to Jennifer, but when Kansas was released, it did well, really well. It went gold, selling 500,000 copies.

Andrew [00:18:49] And that put her on the radar of evangelical leaders hoping to shape evangelical children into ideal evangelical adults, and one of the most efficient ways to do that was at massive youth conferences. And suddenly Jennifer was getting booked at those and performing for:

Jennifer Knapp [00:19:08] Tens of thousands of teenagers. You know, being drawn into these arenas to be, you know, to be able to have this cavalcade of stars. So anywhere from, you know, authors and ministers and musicians is all rolled up into one this massive conferences. And, of course, you know, I was going, going and playing.

Music [00:19:28] [Jennifer Knapp music plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:19:33] One of the components inside of that was always the altar call. You know, every head bowed, every eye closed, and the culmination right of all of this messaging to try and get kids to commit their lives to Christ. And you always hear conversations inside of youth groups. You yeah, don't have sex before you get married. It was pretty soft sell, but it was a consistent sell through any of my time in hanging out with youth groups. But it started to become much more targeted. And it was one day at hanging out at the one of these major youth festivals. And I don't remember who did it at the time, but it was a pastor doing an evangelical, you know, come to Jesus call, an altar call, and literally sex shamed the entire audience in order to get people to turn like you're talking to a bunch of hormonal teenagers. And he says, if you've ever had an impure thought about another girl, if you've ever touched yourself for pleasure. If you girls have ever let somebody touch you. Now is the time to let Jesus heal you, to let Jesus make you pure again. Don't be a disappointment to your parents. Don't be disappointing in the eyes of God. Tell me, a kid in that 10,000 group thing that didn't have their hormones completely raging, that this wasn't going to be an effective kind of bait and switch to a degree like a false truth, to kind of coerce a deeply meaningful spiritual response by by targeting an idea of sexual shame. And I remember seeing that and I was like, at the time, you know, I'd been doing this a while. I've had sex. I know what it's like to be in Christian culture and have everybody go, you've had sex outside of marriage. You're, you know, you're not as good as you could be where, you're a second class citizen. And, you know, I saw that happening. I was like, what am I doing here? Because I didn't want anybody to ever be, ever walk away from anything that I'd ever told them, thinking anything less of themselves. Be a good person. Trying to treat the other person across from you with respect and dignity. Treat your body in the same way. We weren't having any of those conversations about ethics or morality, or what good health might be, or good mutual respect would be for another human. It was just like this black and white. You're in if you're a virgin and you're out if you're not. And I was appalled.

Leah [00:22:06] So operating within the Christian music industry was getting uncomfortable for Jennifer because her goals didn't match up with the industries. At the same time, her big following in the Midwest got her invited on an important tour outside the Christian industry.

Archival Tape [00:22:22] We are here at the Lilith Fair tour and this is the concert answer to all this testosterone at other concerts , you know, like Lollapalooza and Horde and Roar. Well, this is over 60 women on different stages across the country proving that women are doing it for themselves. And they can sell just as many records as the boys. We'll be catching up with women like Fiona Apple, Joan Osborne. We may even get the creator, Sarah McLaughlin to have a word or two with us.

Andrew [00:22:45] For female artists, Lilith Fair was a huge affirmation that they could attract massive crowds without the good old boys of rock and roll. But as far as festivals went, Lilith Fair was seen as comparably tame, a lineup with lots of folksy...

Leah [00:23:02] Acoustic performances.

Andrew [00:23:03] Earnest lyrics, patchouli in the air, you know? But like you look at Woodstock 99, the same year that, Jennifer Knapp went on Lilith Fair. It's like drunken riots.

Leah [00:23:18] Mosh pits.

Andrew [00:23:19] Deafeningly, loud electric guitars.

Leah [00:23:22] But despite all of that, for the CCM establishment, Lilith Fair was vaguely threatening. Lilith, known as the first wife of Adam, by the way, before Eve was considered to be a demon by folks like Jerry Falwell and the women attending the festival weren't being encouraged to be traditional wives and have traditional values like cooking and cleaning and submitting to their husbands.

Jennifer Knapp [00:23:47] I joined the Lilith Fair in like, Michigan and Ohio. I was actually in, in my minivan, driving on my way to a Lilith Fair, gig and, rolling through the radio dial then, because we weren't streaming or listening to satellite radio, was all it was on the FM radio. I came across a Christian radio station and I'd heard Jennifer Knapp. So I stopped and I was like, what is going on? There's this talk radio thing that was going off their nut about how I was going to hell, because I had joined up with the Lilith Fair tour, and so people were calling. It was this full on hour of people on the radio calling in and having a conversation about me and about my state, about my witness, about, you know, whether or not I was a lesbian because I had signed on to the Lilith Fair tour, it was clearly a sign that I was going to like other women. Turned out it made me gay. So, yeah.

Andrew [00:24:43] Lilith Fair, made you gay?

Jennifer Knapp [00:24:44] Yeah it did. I wasn't gay before I went, but now after after I went in 1999, that probably sealed the deal. About that time, the internet and bulletin boards and chat groups and blogs and things were starting to happen around that time. And then all of a sudden, you know, you turn on the radio and there's this controversy swirling around, and people were calling me out and were concerned about whether or not I was seriously Christian and probably, you know, assuming that if I was hanging out at Lilith Fair that I was like, hardcore hooked on drugs. And no, I called into the show. I was like you may not realize, yeah, you may not realize this, but I can hear you. Like, you guys could have at least called me. Ask me a couple of questions before you started, you know, like doing this. But I am on my way, and I'm fine. Just so you know, you're not just talking about me. You're talking about the 14 year old girl who's listening to this program who has. Has a pinup poster of me on their wall. Who actually thinks that I'm really pretty? You know, you're shaming her into this space, and I won't let you do that while I'm here. And I won't let you use me to do that. Or, you know, the hundreds of other kids that you're shaming around the country by trying to use me as an example for that. I won't let you do that. And that's one of the roles that I'm happy to take.

Andrew [00:26:06] Coming up, how did Jennifer go from the topic to your on talk radio to the biggest musical opportunity of her life?

Jennifer Knapp [00:26:13] I'm expecting them to hate me like the animosity that people have toward Christianity. If there's any animosity to be had, I expect it to be directed toward me.

Music [00:26:23] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music sting]

Andrew [00:26:28] Can't imagine rolling up to Lilith Fair having just listened to that conversation. That must've put you in such a weird headspace.

Leah [00:26:36] Oh my gosh.

Jennifer Knapp [00:26:37] So there's that side right from the the Christian culture side of it. But then I'm rolling into Lilith Fair, where it's seriously like there's a nice cloud of pot smoke over the air, and I'm playing with these guy, you know, there's there's a quote, there's literally like a 40 gallon ice chest full of beer in my green room, which never happened. I'm like, can I drink this? Like, what happens, right?

Jennifer Knapp [00:26:59] One of the first things I did when I rolled up to the very first Lilith Fair that I did was a press conference. So I'm sitting right next to-- I'm between Sarah McLaughlin and Sheryl Crow. I'm like, what is happening? I don't know, and I'm expecting them to hate me. Like the animosity that people have toward Christianity. If there's any animosity to be had, I expect it to be directed toward me. I expected them to not take me seriously as a musician. You know, I expected to be looked through, walked over, disrespected, you know, not necessarily-- you know, and even myself, like, as a musician, I'm going, I'm not on par with these guys. Like, I have no talent. And that's just.

Andrew [00:27:40] Imposter syndrome set in?

Jennifer Knapp [00:27:41] Yeah. And that's not the way I was treated at all. I was treated actually with a lot more respect than any CCM experience I'd ever had. You know, like, I was walking away from the press conference and Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls had turned to me. She was in the press conference as well. She turns to me, she goes, hey, at the end of our set, we're playing closer to fine, which, of course is one of their major, major lifetime hits. They can never not play it. And they go, We're playing that. We're inviting people to come up and sing the song with us. So if you need a lyric sheet. And I was like, yeah.

Jennifer Knapp [00:28:16] Like. Yeah, right. If you need a lyric sheet, we'll get you lyrics, but come up and sing the song with us. And I was like, okay, I hardly said two words and I almost didn't go up. But I ended up sharing a microphone with Sarah McLaughlin on stage with the Indigo Girl singing Closer to Fine.

Archival Tape [00:28:31] [Audio of Closer to Fine Live at Lilith Fair]

Andrew [00:28:45] The very song that Jennifer had been admonished for performing just a few years earlier in her baby Christian days. She was now singing it onstage with the most respected female singers in the mainstream music industry. In that moment, she was like, CCM crossover Barbie.

Archival Tape [00:29:12] I mean, who gets to do that? You know, like it was a it was one of the most-- I went from feeling like I would be excluded and, and vilified in this space for being, you know, coming from a Christian environment. In fact, I was accepted, brought into and loved. And it was ironic because it's not always the way I felt just, you know, just driving on the way there where my quote unquote own people were somewhat throwing me under the bus because I was going in and making relationships out in an environment, you would think they would be very glad that I would be a witness to that nonetheless.

Andrew [00:29:45] Yeah. Isn't that the goal right?

Leah [00:29:47] Yeah, that's that's a great illustration of the tensions where, like in the CCM world, where there's this idea that on the one hand, mainstream exposure is achievement on the part of all of them. But then, on the other hand, it's a threat in part because it's like could be tainted in some kind of way. And so it's like there are two things going on at the same time, which for an artist, that seems tiring to me to have to like, speak in all those registers. I mean, I know you're good at it, but. That would wear me out.

Jennifer Knapp [00:30:21] You know, I didn't really know that at the time. You know, like I said, it was one of those things that you kind of learn on the fly. That's probably symptomatic of one of the, the reasons why I left CCM and why I became so fatigued living in that environment, you know, persistently having to 100% project this idea of Christian culture and Christianity and becoming, an avatar of what, you know, symbolic of what that was supposed to be when everything in my art, everything in my person, in my daily life and my social relationships was about living normally and authentically and, you know, not not having my faith or my the process of which, you know, I spiritually progressed through the world be some kind of product.

Andrew [00:31:10] Instead of packaging her life as a product, Jennifer went deeper into examining her faith, deconstructing the Christianity she'd embraced less than a decade before.

Jennifer Knapp [00:31:21] The third and the last record that I would eventually do with Gotee Records as a record called The Way I Am. And on that record, I was really trying to humanize Jesus, like this person who had lived a life, who had walked on an earth, who had who had suffered persecution, who had been a blessing to other people, who had wisdom to share all these kinds of things. And I went into that humanity. I kind of took out all of this supernatural components. And I was like what if. What if we just take a second and look at this story? As I start to talk about that out in in the spaces in these big rooms. And every time I would talk about that in these environments, I would just get people just looking at me like I'd said something heretical or didn't understand what I was saying. It just was crickets. And I it just became so disappointing to me to be able to say something that I was really wanting to talk about in my faith and in my music, you know, as the medium with which I had these conversations. And to put that out into the world and to have a whole room look back to me and say, you know, play Jaja Ding Dong, play your greatest hits, play the song that's like syrupy sweet. The room that I was in wasn't ready to come with me. It became very difficult. And I think those experiences really got me, you know, bitter and angry and fatigued to the point where I just like, I don't want to do this anymore. There's sometimes I think, you know, we get so angry and we get so upset that we're not a useful person in a conversation anymore. And that's really the way I felt at the end of my CCM career. You know, I had to have a little bit of faith that if I was ever going to have that conversation, I didn't know what it was going to be in the future. So I needed to take some time out to be able to figure out what that might be.

Leah [00:33:30] In 2002, Jennifer moved to Australia. In 2004, she announced she was taking a break from music. Her label put out a live album and a greatest hits collection to keep her fans happy. But there was nothing new from Jennifer herself for years. Then, in 2009, Knapp revealed she was starting to write music again and her CCM fans rejoiced.

Andrew [00:33:54] A year later, in 2010, however, Jennifer had big news. She gave simultaneous interviews with Christianity Today, Reuters and The Advocate. In the interview, Jennifer announced that she'd been in a relationship with a woman, now her wife, since 2002. In 1999, when she played Lilith Fair and heard the talk radio discussion about her sexual orientation, she didn't identify as gay. But now Jennifer knew the strict boundaries around sexuality and sexual orientation that were the norm in CCM would mean the end of her faith based music career. In 2010, after the interview, she released a new album, Letting Go. It was not marketed to Christian radio.

Jennifer Knapp [00:34:45] I'll be honest, even when I came back in 2010, I was really anticipating never having a conversation in a Christian context in public ever again. I was super excited about that. But what I didn't know when I came back, as so many other people in that same seven years that I was gone, was also doing their own work, that there really were serious people out there who were very serious about their faith tradition. We're just as perplexed by Christian culture and all its propaganda qualities, still found something genuine, unique and incredibly important to them underneath of that. Like, strangely enough, I think I have way more of a ministry now, or way more service to my faith in a secular context than I ever had at the time. Which is to say, I'm not trying to sell people on Jesus, which I never have been, but I'm very, you know, I definitely have a conversation that I can have about it when it's appropriate and when people want to have that conversation back with me. And I think that's been a lovely balance.

Leah [00:35:42] I know you're you're rerecording Kansas, and I just wondered if you could talk about how you came to decide to to do that.

Jennifer Knapp [00:35:50] I thought it would be really interesting to kind of go back and visibly reclaim it in some ways, and particularly for the LGBTQ community, because it says, you know, this is a record made by a gay person. This is a faith based record made by a gay person. But because I didn't see myself that way at the time, but people coming to shows telling me a story about a song like Undo Me, which is on the Kansas record, or Martyrs and Thieves, which is a song that I famously didn't play for the first time in like probably 8 or 9 years until a really drunken crowd of lesbians in a lesbian bar in Philadelphia demanded that I play it. Otherwise I was afraid of violence like.

Andrew [00:36:32] It is Philadelphia, after all.

Jennifer Knapp [00:36:34] You know it is. It is a bunch of like, there was a lot of drunk lesbians around demanding that I play that song, and I, I didn't want to play it. And they they made me and course, corrected me right then.

Music [00:36:49] [Jennifer Knapp Kansas record plays]

Jennifer Knapp [00:37:06] So I had to kind of somewhat go through personal process of reconciling what my relationship was with these songs. It turned out to be a gift from my community back to me of songs that I had not been familiar with. And so I went back and started playing them. And since 2010, I've kind of played 1 or 2 of these songs. But with this 25 year anniversary, I was like, I need to celebrate that concept. Yes, there are things that the church does wrong. Yes, there are odd ways that religion sometimes. Ends up playing out in our lives. Odd. Painful. Traumatic. Terrible. But the underneath of that is... Something authentic that we're actually still looking for, and I don't always know how to name it, but it is something deeply spiritual. And if it is God with a capital G. So be it. You know, I don't want to name it for-- I just loathe to name it for anybody else. But the act of going and rerecording that record is that process for me. It's being able to gift it back and say, hey, you've believed in it long time, and if you're not there right now, you can have it back.

Leah [00:38:11] With the exact same songs that were released back in 1998. Jennifer is still working on the same project she started back then to carve out a space for women to be their full selves in deeply spiritual ways. Only now she better understands exactly what she's trying to do and why.

Jennifer Knapp [00:38:29] I liberate this record for you the same way that you liberated it. For me, I feel like the fans liberated this record long before I did. I. You know, I honestly feel like rerecording is just a demonstration of that.

Music [00:38:41] [Jennifer Knapp music plays]

Andrew [00:38:49] After our interview, Jennifer's Kansas 25 Kickstarter was fully funded, so vinyls should be coming soon. You can check Jennifer knapp.com for more information.

Leah [00:39:03] Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll:

Soup the Chemist [00:39:05] I just couldn't get into the choir music at all. I just I couldn't get into it. So I just started writing raps about my new experience.

Leah [00:39:15] The holy side of hip hop.

Andrew [00:39:17] If you have a story to share or thoughts on this episode, please call our hotline. You can call anytime: (629) 777-6336.

Leah [00:39:28] To be the first to hear our episodes and for full access to our bonus episodes, join us on Patreon, Patreon.com/RTDR.

Andrew [00:39:37] Find us on Substack and Instagram by searching. Rock That Doesn't Roll. And of course, you should give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're using to listen right now.

Leah [00:39:48] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions Project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme.

Andrew [00:39:59] Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Leah [00:40:06] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurantin provides production oversight. I'm Leah Payne.

Andrew [00:40:13] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember, rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.

Andrew [00:00:01] If you listen to this podcast, you probably already know that in the 90s there is a huge movement among teenagers in America, and it was very unlikely. It was called: purity culture.

Archival tape [00:00:14] "It's a choice every teenager must face." "I'm definitely not going to have sex in high school."

Leah [00:00:19] Ah, yes. Purity culture, a movement that peaked in the 90s, promoted by evangelicals and Catholics that required abstinence outside heterosexual marriage.

Archival tape [00:00:31] You can't pressure me into doing anything I don't want to do.

Leah [00:00:33] To really understand it, you have to understand purity culture in its 90s context. During that era, the Clinton administration was responding to the Aids crisis and promoting safe sex practices. What that meant a lot of times was providing condoms in American public schools, and this was very upsetting to evangelicals and Catholics.

Archival tape [00:00:58] "A high official in government said the American teenager is incapable of controlling his or her sexual behavior."

Leah [00:01:06] And in response, they created a ton of organizations that were abstinence-only education organizations to be implemented in public schools.

Archival tape [00:01:18] "We had the idea of teenagers making a commitment to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter into a biblical marriage relationship."

Leah [00:01:30] And eventually they would get a ton of federal funding during the George W. Bush administration.

Andrew [00:01:37] But before it was a well-funded PR machine, how would these abstinence organizations get teens to think that not having sex was cool when everything else was telling them otherwise?

Speaker 4 [00:01:55] "They say here 92% of honeys at UCLA are sexually active."

Leah [00:01:58] It's a tall order. You need the big guns for this. You need help.

Andrew [00:02:01] Yeah. And for evangelicals, the big guns, when it came to coolness, were CCM superstars.

Music [00:02:09] [Purity Culture CCM music plays]

Andrew [00:02:44] From PRX and the Big Questions Project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist raised on Christian rock.

Leah [00:02:52] And I'm Leah Payne, author of the book God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. In each episode, we look at how Christian music shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one aspect of CCM.

Andrew [00:03:07] Today on the show, a story so big, it takes two episodes. We're going to split it up just like they did in youth group: Boys and Girls, with apologies to all of our non-binary listeners. Today, it's part one of a two part look at the complex relationship between CCM and purity culture. Part one, Ladies First: how purity culture impacted a generation of young women.

Nikki Leonti [00:03:35] I felt like God, as a young girl, I was just trying to please you and trying to do everything right. And I got married because I wanted to make up for my sins.

Leah [00:03:45] Nikki Leonti was briefly a huge star in the contemporary Christian music world. In the late 1990s, when the secular world had Britney:

Music [00:03:54] [Britney Spears music plays]

Leah [00:03:57] And Christina:

Music [00:03:57] [Chistina Aguilera music plays]

Leah [00:03:57] The Christian world had Nikki:

Music [00:04:03] [Nikki Leonti music plays]

Andrew [00:04:11] She had the looks, the style, the sound. She made staying pure...sexy.

Leah [00:04:17] In an era when hypersexualized music videos from mainstream artists were a plague to evangelical teens, Nikki was on her way to providing the cure. She was about to become a poster child for purity culture.

Andrew [00:04:30] It's a lot of pressure for a teenager in her shoes, pressure that she hadn't foreseen when she first began singing. Nikki's intro to CCM had nothing to do with purity culture.

Nikki Leonti [00:04:41] My brother was sick with cancer for two and a half years before he passed. And during this time, I think I was second, third grade. And there was something about songs with minor notes that I just connected to, and it was John Gibson 1989 1990. He had a song, "A friend that Lives in You". And it was like the first line is like, "life has got you down... "There's nothing anyone could do to turn it around. "

Music [00:05:18] [John Gibson music plays]

Nikki Leonti [00:05:23] And what I was feeling, is as a little girl, and I would listen to this on a tape deck at my grandma's house, and I would play John Gibson on repeat, over and over and over again.

Leah [00:05:35] All her life. Music had been a refuge for Nikki.

Nikki Leonti [00:05:39] I was asked around the age of eight to do "Make Me a Servant" song solo at church.

Music [00:05:57] [Make Me a Servant plays]

Nikki Leonti [00:05:58] Then from there, like my mom, she did a lot of outreach ministry in California, like on street corners in, like, gang parks. And I'd just get up in my glasses and, you know, my, 80s wear and tell people to not do drugs and alcohol and to listen to my song.

Andrew [00:06:16] That's like in the tradition of Larry Norman.

Nikki Leonti [00:06:18] Yes.

Andrew [00:06:20] Just the original Jesus music.

Leah [00:06:21] By this point in the late 80s, the contemporary Christian music industry had been going for 20 years in Southern California. Churches like Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel and Greg Laurie's Harvest Church boomed with a casual approach to worship. Think Hawaiian shirts and hippie praise music. Their approach to church, centered around modern music ministry, proved so popular that mega-churches like theirs started sprouting like mushrooms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Andrew [00:06:52] How did you, start to put together your act? Were you writing your own songs? But did somebody come along and say, here's a bunch of songs I think you should perform, and I'll help you kind of get an act together?

Nikki Leonti [00:07:04] Yeah. That's how it initially happened. It was you should do an R&B Christian album. And so when I was 13, I was signed to an independent label through a local radio station singing contest that I won, and it was this girl named Gina Folio who was the voice of Nitro Praise back then, and she was one of the judges, as well as a guy named Tommy Woods, who started a independent label. And so he made these songs for me. I pretty much just came in the studio, sang them, and then after this, I started writing songs with my brother, and they were like our own little thing. And that record got into the hands of John and Dino Elefante in in Nashville.

Andrew [00:07:50] John Elefante was a member of the rock band Kansas for a few years in the early 80s. In 1983, he and his brother Dino wrote most of the songs on the Kansas album Drastic Measure. After leaving that band in 1984, John and Dino became in-demand producers for the CCM industry. They worked with Petra and other heavy metal bands and also formed their own band called Mastodon. No relation to the current Grammy Award winning band by that name anyway.

Leah [00:08:29] In 1998, John and Dino Elefante were hired by the CCM label Pamplin Music to find new Christian artists and to produce their albums.

Nikki Leonti [00:08:39] Then they flew out with some of the team from Pamplin to hear me sing, and that's how I ended up signing my record deal.

Andrew [00:08:48] So Nikki had a record deal. But what did that even mean? Definitely not fame and fortune. It was the start of a lot of work.

Nikki Leonti [00:08:56] I was 14 or 15 and they said she needs to just get some experience. So let's send her on the road with a group named Truth, who does like 250 dates a year. They put me on the bus with them by myself.

Leah [00:09:12] Before Nikki left for that first tour and life on the road as a Christian rock star, you might think that her parents or the label would have a serious talk about how to maintain her purity in the real world. But,

Nikki Leonti [00:09:24] We never had a talk about this stuff. This is why you're abstinent. This is what sex is. This is what this, it was like, we're not talking about those things because it doesn't apply to you. Because I'm your wedding day. You're just going to be just surprised. And you'll have to navigate this on your own. And that was the the extent of my abstinence and sex education.

Andrew [00:09:47] So Nikki became a touring musician before she could even get a learner's permit. But she wasn't just out there singing. She had to work as her own street team.

Nikki Leonti [00:09:56] They flew me to West Palm Beach, Florida to go, starts passing out coupons for my album and opening up for them on the road.

Leah [00:10:06] It sounds like a weird Hannah Montana spinoff. A 15 year old Nikki approaching shoppers at the mall with coupons for her own album. Then she got some life advice and took things up a notch.

Nikki Leonti [00:10:18] I ended up making a little side hustle and selling those coupons because it had a free CD inside of them. Hey, I was 15!

Andrew [00:10:27] This side hustle Nikki developed is a good window into how she dealt with adverse circumstances and ambiguous situations. She took the practical advice offered by adults who were aware of her circumstances and acted on it, instead of attempting to adhere to authority: the record company who had told her to give out the coupons.

Nikki Leonti [00:10:47] So I started with Truth, and then I ended up with Sierra and Greg Long. And then from there I did like For Him and Clay Crosse and Jonathan Pierce and Wayne Watson, Aaron Jeoffrey.

Leah [00:11:02] Can you tell us a little bit about the image that you developed as an artist in this, like contemporary Christian music pop circuit?

Nikki Leonti [00:11:11] Right. Well, image was very important to the label. Especially as a young woman. I was going through like the change of not being the 14 year old they met to growing into a woman. And I had gained, I think, like 20 pounds by my fourth tour. And they put a a trainer on the road with me to work out in my hotel room and to watch my food and just try to get me on a diet.

Andrew [00:11:44] What a tricky tightrope to walk. Nikki was out on the road telling teenage girls that God cared so much if their heart was pure or not, but her label wanted to make sure she maintained her sex appeal. Nikki's instincts picked up on how ridiculous the situation was.

Nikki Leonti [00:12:03] And so I rebelled against that. I would leave the show at the end of the night and go get a 20 piece chicken nugget meal from McDonald's. Really, it made me worse. Like at that point I thought, I just don't care. I'm strong. It's good. I'll do what I want to do. And I think just the new song tour, I was on the Name Me Sugar bus because I ended up having drawers of just candy and chocolate.

Leah [00:12:27] So the label was trying to control Nikki's caloric intake and workout regimen, and fans were just as harsh.

Nikki Leonti [00:12:34] People were saying, you don't look like your album cover anymore. They had me in a tight little leather jacket and leggings. There was a conservative aspect, too. I mean, they made sure I had my Ann Taylor Loft suits and things ready for the right churches and and such so...

Andrew [00:12:54] Yeah, I found the video for shoelaces.

Nikki Leonti [00:12:57] Yes, that was an Ann Taylor Loft jacket. Like a little, yeah, riding jacket from Ann Taylor when you're 16 years old.

Leah [00:13:04] Right. That's what I was going to say. I was like, that is such mom, mom-wear.

Nikki Leonti [00:13:10] Things that didn't make sense.

Music [00:13:13] [Nikki Leonti music plays]

Andrew [00:13:21] The extremely specific expectations placed on female Christian pop stars didn't exist in a vacuum. Nikki had a peer in the mainstream music industry who was breaking out at this time, too.

Music [00:13:36] [Britney Spears music plays]

Nikki Leonti [00:13:38] Britney Spears, to me at the time, like represented hell and we represented heaven. You know, that was just what it was. They were leading people down to the furnace and we were bringing people out.

Leah [00:13:52] Nikki and Britney were born the same year and both grew up in religious households. Baptist raised Britney was walking a tightrope herself, the not yet a girl, not yet a woman Spears talked publicly about her own virginity, but she also sang songs about being not that innocent. Still, Nikki couldn't see what they had in common back then.

Nikki Leonti [00:14:13] We were, conditioned to judge in that way, like that was highly acceptable and and rewarded to speak out against people who were different than us and may appear to be "of the flesh."

Andrew [00:14:27] So while Britney hiked up her plaid skirt and showed her midriff in music videos, Nikki understood that rocking Ann Taylor Loft was a completely logical move within the Christian music industry.

Leah [00:14:39] It was also totally logical for Nikki to get involved in the purity culture movement. As a young unmarried female CCM singer, Nikki was expected to be an icon of chastity.

Nikki Leonti [00:14:51] You partner with abstinence as a spokesperson and I believed in it, and while I traveled, it was something I was passionate about. Yet I had never been in a relationship before, so I didn't know. But I really said that that would never be something I would struggle with.

Andrew [00:15:09] As Nikki traveled around performing at different abstinence events, she witnessed speakers putting their own spin on common purity culture themes. A lot of people know about promise rings, but there was a whole universe of creative symbols that pastors deployed.

Nikki Leonti [00:15:24] So I think it was an Assemblies of God church I was at. We were given these keys, and you do a big ceremony of, you know, your commitment to purity. I think someone at some point related it to an Oreo cookie. And once you unlock the cookie, it leaves the film, you know, and it doesn't look like the beauty of which the cookie is like, no matter how you break open the cookie, it's still damaged to, you know, whatever. Like just the weirdest analogies you'd hear, related to purity.

Leah [00:16:03] Even though Nikki was on the road as a spokesperson for abstinence, she was also trying to glean some useful information for her own life. Remember, she grew up with practically zero sex ed.

Nikki Leonti [00:16:15] I didn't need an Oreo cookie analogy. I needed, like, a penis and vagina analogy. I needed to know how that crap worked. You know, I didn't need this other stuff.

Leah [00:16:27] Nikki was doing really well as a singer. Her album was in the top ten on the Christian charts. Then she got a huge boost for any CCM artist. She got picked to be on the cover of Brio Magazine.

Andrew [00:16:42] Hold on. You have to explain the significance of Brio Magazine for our audience.

Leah [00:16:47] Brio was like the evangelical subcultures Teen Vogue in the 1990s. It was published by focus on the family, an evangelical organization founded by child psychologist doctor James Dobson. They were major proponents of abstinence outside of marriage, and they saw CCM pop princesses like Nikki as ideal vehicles for the message of purity.

Nikki Leonti [00:17:11] I remember it was a really big deal there. Like, you have the cover of Brio. Focus on the Family's big publication. And, I was really excited. They flew me out to Colorado to talk to the Focus on the Family people and to kind of do the rounds. That was done, I think 10 to 12 months before my magazine came out. At that point, I hadn't kissed anyone.

Leah [00:17:33] So how did you even start into, like, relationships with people? And you're on the road as a young woman, and I assume like you do, what any teenager does.

Nikki Leonti [00:17:42] It was awkward, uncomfortable. There was one lighting guy that I liked on one of my first tours, and we kind of chatted and I didn't know how to navigate that. I think I scared him away on Valentine's. I sent him flowers and a bear and balloons to his house, and because he said he sent me something. And, he just sent me like a thanks for being my friend card. And I was like, oh, crap! Yeah, I think we never talked again.

Andrew [00:18:10] But then she met a guy in a band who was from a conservative family. Who she wanted to take care of.

Nikki Leonti [00:18:17] He just had a, you know, he had a broken wing. And I saw something that I could relate to and that felt more comfortable.

Nikki Leonti [00:18:26] They started dating, and as things progressed, Nikki didn't really have anyone to turn to for advice.

Nikki Leonti [00:18:33] I was, you know, 17 by that point. Being on the road by myself and not having anyone to share those things with. So no one to be like, hey Nikki, this is what you need to know about sex education or birth control or anything like that. And especially in the position that I was in and I employed people and, you know, I had a lot on the line. So and yeah, I guess it's easy to get pregnant when you're 17, 18, you got a room to yourself and you're just. Hanging out.

Andrew [00:19:05] To be clear, Nikki didn't know that intercourse is what usually leads to pregnancy. But that's what happened. She got pregnant. She'd untwisted her Oreo cookie, and now she would never be pure? And she'd have a kid to take care of?

Leah [00:19:23] And to make matters worse, by the time she knew she was pregnant, her issue of Brio magazine was just about to hit newsstands with a big interview where she said she'd never even kissed anyone.

Nikki Leonti [00:19:36] And so my life was very different than when the actual magazine hit the shelves. And so all of the things that I said were honest and, you know, just so happened to come out around the month that I found out I was pregnant. So, it was quite difficult.

Leah [00:19:55] When the interview first landed in evangelical households, Nikki got a lot of fan mail from teen girls.

Nikki Leonti [00:20:02] They put a like a post office box on there for the girls to write you and stuff, and I just remember getting hundreds and hundreds of letters and stickers. Here's your favorite VeggieTales character, because they asked you those kind of questions on there. And and they're sending me like, Bob the Tomatoes stuff in these letters, and I'm puking my brains out pregnant and just quite a, quite a situation.

Andrew [00:20:29] What would the pregnancy situation mean for her career? Well, she probably wouldn't get booked at abstinence events anymore.

Nikki Leonti [00:20:36] I was asked by For Him to stay and finish this tour out that I was on, and so they were very kind. They said, you are welcome to stay and finish out the tour, but I couldn't at that point.

Leah [00:20:47] She did one last concert after her pregnancy made touring too difficult.

Nikki Leonti [00:20:52] I think we were singing a Russ Taff song. At the end of the night, "We Will Stand", swaying, "You're my brother, you're my sister", and I was crying because I knew that was going to be the last time that I was ever on a Christian tour again.

Andrew [00:21:07] One silver lining of Nikki's story is actually happened to be on stage with Russ Taff that night. He was a top tier CCM singer who fronted a group called The Imperials in the late 70s and had a major solo career in the 80s. Russ didn't have the judgmental attitude you might expect from major CCM artists because he'd been to rehab himself.

Nikki Leonti [00:21:31] We were all in a room and they were like, crying. And it was a real dramatic moment. But he was like, yeah, people get pregnant. That's what happens. You're going to be just fine, you know? Just so sweet. He was so supportive. Like he doesn't have an ounce of, judgment in his soul. Like, not at all.

Leah [00:21:52] Russ may not have judged Nikki, but a lot of other CCM gatekeepers did. As an expectant mother, she no longer fit the market niche aimed at creating pure teen girls.

Nikki Leonti [00:22:03] So it's like first radio started, like pulling the songs off. I remember the day that I got the call that LifeWay took it off all of their shelves, and they weren't going to carry my product anymore. I did try to come back in and redeem myself. I had to like an apology tour with whoever would ever take me. There were some radio stations who would talk to me and a few magazines. 700 Club had me on, but it was too difficult to sustain. It was my cue to go.

Andrew [00:22:37] Now, Nikki was a pregnant teenager, about to get married to a guy she barely knew, and was effectively banned from the only job she'd ever had. How would she survive?

Nikki Leonti [00:22:49] I couldn't afford health insurance. I was getting, free milk and cheese. And then before that, I was singing all over the country.

Music [00:22:59] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Leah [00:23:02] Later, we'll find out what happened after Nikki was cast out from the CCM scene. All of which got us wondering, what happens when someone dares to speak out about people in Nikki's situation instead of just shunning them?

Devi [00:23:19] We didn't know that there was such a thing as purity culture. We didn't know any of this stuff. We were just evangelicals doing as we were told, like that's what we were doing.

Andrew [00:23:29] Devi Abraham grew up as a missionary kid. Her parents were Sri Lankan but worked with the American mission organization youth for Christ. That meant she went back and forth between the American South, Sri Lanka and the Philippines as a kid. But it didn't matter where on the globe they were. American evangelicalism was always held up as the ideal culture for Devi.

Devi [00:23:51] When you're told implicitly that this is really the culture to emulate, you need a guidebook and Brio Magazine was like a guidebook.

Leah [00:24:01] Brio Magazine and CCM tapes would show up in big care packages wherever Devi and her family were living. She loved it all, especially Point of Grace, Nichole Nordeman and a dreamy singer named Bebo Norman. She got to meet him after a concert with her youth group girlfriends.

Devi [00:24:19] And all of us being like,"yeah, we're going to play A Page is Turned" at our wedding, you know?

Leah [00:24:24] Aw!

Music [00:24:26] [A Page is Turned plays]

Andrew [00:24:34] The importance of finding a godly mate who would complete you came through loud and clear in the Christian music she listened to.

Devi [00:24:43] Rebecca St. James. Man, when that song "Wait for Me", came out....ah! I mean, it was just like, all right, I finally have a song that can articulate exactly what all my romantic feelings for an unspecified man....it was out there in the world. This is it.

Music [00:25:01] [Wait for Me plays]

Leah [00:25:15] Devi was determined to be a faithful evangelical woman. Yes, part of that meant not having sex. But to Devi, it also meant telling the truth, even when it was difficult.

Andrew [00:25:26] But Devi would find out that there are ways to run afoul of purity culture without even having sex yourself.

Devi [00:25:33] I studied journalism at John Brown University. I was very much the center of my whole life. I was the rule follower who was always putting up her hand up to ask the annoying questions, I guess. But I became a person whose questions became more and more urgent, and I started to have real questions about the discrepancy between what Christians said they believe and how we live, and the fact that we don't talk about it.

Leah [00:26:04] Mmm.

Devi [00:26:06] When I was in my last year of university. So this is 2005 spring. I was the editor of the student body newspaper. I decided, let's run a three part series on, gambling on campus, alcohol and drugs on campus, and sexual activity on campus.

Leah [00:26:24] To be clear, all of these activities violate the university's official expectations of students.

Devi [00:26:29] I remember gambling was "haha". Alcohol and drugs. People were like, "wow, this is interesting. We've not read about this before." The day that the article on sexual activity came out, I remember walking at the top of our student center, and there's tables down the bottom where, you know, lots of people can gather and sit. Every table that had a person, had a person there with the paper open to that page. It was an entire spread. Wow. It was there. And it was silent. Like silent. And I have a feeling it's because now I know that we had never read the stories of Christians who were having sex and saying, I feel ashamed about it. I feel fine about it. I'm confused about it. All of these different things. So even though I totally believed that abstinence was the answer, there was also this pragmatic side of me that was like, well, how do we help people within the bounds of what my imagination allowed me at the time, if that makes sense.

Andrew [00:27:33] What happened next with the article like that? Everyone was reading it on campus. Did you get called to a Dean's office or anything in.

Devi [00:27:40] The president's office.

Leah [00:27:42] Oh, boy. Wow. What happened?

Devi [00:27:44] Yeah, well, we ran it on, parents weekend, so it was kind of a thing.

Leah [00:27:51] You're such a rebel. I love it!

Devi [00:27:55] I was, I am an agitator. Like, this is what I mean. I was the annoying person going like. But what about this?!

Devi [00:28:01] So. Yeah, that is real. But I think in that meeting, I just remember feeling like I've done something wrong. I am losing the approval of people in authority. That means something. I started crying at some point and I be like, his assistant kind of comes walking in with all the tissues and a bottle of water. It was a very traumatic experience. He accused my character. He's like, I've talked to people who know you, and they all say you don't have a teachable spirit.

Andrew [00:28:33] Oh, don't have a teachable spirit?! Like we have to, can you decode that for non-religious people?

Devi [00:28:39] Decoding. Oh, man. It's this idea that there's something about your attitude that is submissive, moldable. Like to be a teachable spirit is a real elevation for you if you're a woman inside evangelicalism.

Andrew [00:29:00] And you are not one of these sexually active students.

Devi [00:29:03] Never was I married the first man I dated like, never was.

Leah [00:29:07] Right.

Andrew [00:29:09] You're bearing the brunt of purity cultures high standard, when you were living up to it!

Devi [00:29:15] Absolutely. And wanted other people to live up to it. I think my my way of doing that was to say, see what's happening. Like what you're doing doesn't work.

Leah [00:29:24] How did that set you on a trajectory to now? Do you think?

Devi [00:29:30] It's so hard. I'm going to start crying. Guys, what is happening? That was February 18th that it came out and my last semester of university. The time when I should have been looking for jobs. And it was so stressful. Yeah. And so it was like. Everything I could do. To just hold it together week after week. And, I felt very lonely and and I think for me, it was like, I'm not the one who's supposed to be fixing this. Like, I've done my part. I've done anything that I, I could do. We had an editorial that accompanied the this story, and in the editorial we talked about how we needed places where we could talk about what was going on in our lives. And in some ways, that was the best solution I could offer. Like, I still think that is actually the answer. But yeah, it was a really rough semester. I was exhausted, burnt out. Now I look back and I realize, like I had done something really good as a journalist, that would've made me very marketable.

Andrew [00:30:40] Oh, yeah, you should have been getting awards for that work.

Devi [00:30:44] Like I had no idea. Like what to do. Like zero idea.

Andrew [00:30:49] Devi did graduate and married a German who carried far less baggage from purity culture.

Devi [00:30:55] We all felt like we were failing. Even though I literally married the first man I ever dated. Like we did not have sex at all. Like nothing. Zero things like we kissed. But you will still look back on your life, your whole life, and you will see failure. And to look back and go, no, like that is not what's happening in this story. Like that's not what happened. You were trying as hard as you can. Like that's the story. The story is people put expectations on you and you did your best. And the fact that you made it. Like that's about you. And for me, like I would say, that's also about God.

Leah [00:31:40] Today, Devi is a writer, speaker and podcaster. She's the co-host of Where Do We Go From Here podcast.

Andrew [00:31:49] Coming up: how did Nikki Leonti pick up the pieces after violating purity culture in the hardest to hide way possible?

Nikki Leonti [00:31:57] I was doing all these things to try to please God while really, dishonoring my value and not being true to myself and what was good for me.

Music [00:32:10] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Nikki Leonti [00:32:14] Getting pregnant is nothing! That is nothing! It's not even my biggest sin! It's the smallest sin! I got kicked out for, like, something really easy.

Leah [00:32:25] After Nikki got pregnant and her CCM career opportunities suddenly dried up, things just went from bad to worse.

Andrew [00:32:33] It really reminds me of the Old Testament story of Jobe. She got gallstones while pregnant, wrecked a van she'd borrowed from a former tour mate while uninsured, and Nikki told us that her new husband kept getting arrested for various lewd offenses.

Nikki Leonti [00:32:53] I'm on government health care. I couldn't afford health insurance. I was getting, free milk and cheese. And then before that, I was singing all over the country. And then I had not a resource outside of John and Dino, offered to me to help me.

Leah [00:33:08] Nikki's old producers, the Elafonte Brothers, paid Nikki's rent for three months, but that wasn't enough to right the ship. She was still having a really hard time.

Andrew [00:33:18] Going through these moments, did you ever, like, did it ever shake your faith? Did you ever feel like--?

Nikki Leonti [00:33:26] DEMOLISHED IT! Shake? Shake is an easy word. I would say leveled it! But as a young girl I was saying like, well, I kept my baby because that's the right thing to do. And I still got massively punished and I lost everything, and I was just trying to please you too and trying to do everything right. And I got married because I wanted to please you, and I wanted to make up for my sins. And I was doing all these things to try to please God while really, not being true to myself and what was good for me. I was in that until I was 26, and then I was like, I'm out of here. I don't want any part of religion anymore. This is a joke. I mean, you couldn't convince me that a God existed. That was like 6 or 7 years of that. And until like, I really, like met my husband, and things shifted, and I found, a healthier balance of my faith and what that is. I do feel like the thing that sustained me to be able to solely make a living in music wasn't my talent. It was my business mind. I was 21 when I really started getting into session singing in Nashville.

Leah [00:34:42] Nikki got regular singing gigs, doing backup vocals for Carrie Underwood, and sang on more than 100 songs for the TV show Glee.

Andrew [00:34:50] And even more interesting are the hip hop artists she's worked with, the late Mac Miller, Tyler the Creator and Roddy Ricch. She and her younger daughter even sang on a track from Mister Old Town Road, Lil NAS X.

Nikki Leonti [00:35:03] I got a call when we were living in Nashville at like ten at night, and like, Lil NAS needs, some background vocals. Can you get up? But they're like, we need like a kid on there. So my daughter, I'm like, Frankie, get out of bed. We're going to sing on a Lil NAS X song real quick. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So fun.

Leah [00:35:22] But even with years of success behind her, certain songs from the CCM world can still cut straight to her heart.

Nikki Leonti [00:35:30] I remember being in the Hollywood Hills, living with my ex, and I remember one night being out by his pool, and suddenly Leslie Phillips "Strength of My Life" comes on. And I'm weeping up in the hills. And I was like, whoa, this is bringing back something so special to me. I just was a puddle. I love Christian music so much. I'm going to cry now. And I actually wasn't allowed to be part of something that I loved so much. It was like its own, probably the hardest divorce I've been through. Was the divorce from Christian music.

Andrew [00:36:16] In 2016, Nikki shared her story on TV when she and her daughter and husband Ryan Edgar competed on America's Got Talent.

Archival tape [00:36:29] [America's Got Talent clip plays]

Andrew [00:36:32] They did really well, but they didn't win the top prize.

Leah [00:36:37] In 2018, Nikki found a way to do CCM on her own terms. She organized a one night event at the church she attends called Reunite CCM. She performed and hosted artists including Stacie Orrico, Crystal Lewis, and Rachael Lampa.

Archival tape [00:36:55] "I recorded this song when I was. 15 years old.".

Nikki Leonti [00:36:56] That was so sweet. I mean, I just remember being in a line with Stacie Orrico and Rachael and Crystal, and we had our arms around each other as women who have all experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of Christian music. No one knows really how it felt to be us in these situations. And so when we get together, it's just magical.

Archival tape [00:37:23] "And I won't tell you that life is always easy but I found better days waiting there for me".

Leah [00:37:38] Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll:

Guest [00:37:41] There is this combination of youthful zeal and exuberance with the self-righteousness that also comes with that, because you haven't seen just how things can fall apart.

Leah [00:37:50] Purity culture through the eyes of the Godly Guys.

Andrew [00:37:55] If you have a story to share or thoughts on this episode, please call our hotline. You can call anytime. (629) 777-6336.

Leah [00:38:06] To be the first to hear our episodes and for full access to our bonus episodes, join us on Patreon, Patreon.com/RTDR or just tap the link in the show.

Andrew [00:38:18] Find us on Substack and Instagram by searching Rock That Doesn't Roll or tapping the link in the show notes. And of course, you should give us a rating and review on whatever podcast that you're using to listen right now.

Leah [00:38:30] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions Project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme.

Andrew [00:38:41] Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg Berg edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Leah [00:38:46] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurentine provides production oversight. I'm Leah Payne.

Andrew [00:38:54] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember, rock all you want, but watch it when you start to roll.

Leah [00:00:01] You know, in our last episode, we talked about how the women of Christian music and women who were fans of Christian music were deeply shaped by purity culture. But it's important to note that purity culture was both for the girls and the guys of evangelicalism.

Andrew [00:00:19] Yeah, there were maybe different approaches. I can never forget DC Talk saying, you know, "I don't want it".

Music [00:00:27] [DC Talk's "I Dont Want It" plays]

Andrew [00:00:38] But then there's also Rebecca St. James singing to the guys saying, "wait for me".

Music [00:00:46] [Rebecca St. James' "Wait for Me" plays]

Leah [00:01:01] I don't know about you, but I find it to be hard to explain purity culture, the fervor, the the strict boundaries, the purity rings, the purity balls, the many, many, many contemporary Christian music abstinence anthems.

Andrew [00:01:16] Yeah. So it reminded me of some music scenes. And like the further you get into them, the less sense they make to outsiders.

Leah [00:01:24] Of course you have a music comparison. You're a music journalist. Okay, I want to hear it.

Andrew [00:01:30] Well, I mean, like if you think about, like punk rock, right? It's it starts out as like a rejection of guitar solos and keyboards and, and then it gets to, Minor Threat and they invent the idea of straight edge, you know, they're not going to drink, they're not going to smoke. And then, people take that and they say, now we're only going to be vegan. And then someone who's a punk rock vegan is like, no, no, it's only ethical if you are a freegan if you take, discarded food and then you're dumpster diving and only eating, you know, like, even me without you did that famously, but, it, it just keeps building and building on itself and ramps up and gets more and more extreme the longer you're in it, because one person says, I can do one better than what the person before me was doing, you know?

Leah [00:02:24] Yeah, I think that that is such a great comparison, where it gets so extreme that the founding figures even sometimes get kicked out of it. I, I'm not athletic at all, but I think of it in terms of extreme sports because culture involves bodies and it involves bodies going to great lengths. So in extreme sports it's not enough to run. You have to run like 50 miles or something like that. And in the 1990s, in evangelical circles, it wasn't really enough to just not have sex before you were married, you had to go so much further than that.

Andrew [00:03:03] Yeah, there were plenty of people who planned to not kiss their spouse until after they were pronounced husband and wife, and then there were people who were like, well, we're not going to date, we're just going to court or we're not going to be alone together. We're only going to, you know, be in group settings. We're not going to hold hands. You know, the guys who really, really wanted to one up each other on godliness, they were the ones in the late 90s who were answering the call of Rebecca St. James.

Music [00:03:52] [Rock That Doesn't Roll theme song plays].

Andrew [00:03:52] From the Big Questions project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist raised on Christian Rock.

Leah [00:03:59] And I'm Leah Payne, author of "God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music". In each episode, we look at how Christian music shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one aspect of CCM.

Andrew [00:04:13] Today on the show, what happens when one CCM fan turns purity culture into an extreme sport and finds that the X-Games of evangelicalism includes the thrill and victory, but also the agony of defeat.

Joshua Harris [00:04:37] CCM shaped my life. It was the soundtrack for for my life. And, I wrote books that were sitting alongside Christian music in Christian bookstores.

Andrew [00:04:50] To millions who grew up in purity culture. Joshua Harris upped the ante from not having sex to not even dating. His book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", told the generation that courtship was the most holy option when pairing off.

Archival Tape [00:05:06] I want to talk to you guys. I want to talk to you guys about purity. Now, purity is something that that people just don't really get these days.

Andrew [00:05:15] Eventually, purity culture would cross over into the mainstream in a way that Christian music acts could only dream of. "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" played a big part in that.

Archival Tape [00:05:25] We asked people on the street what they thought of purity, and they were so confused. I mean, they thought it was like a woman's deodorant or something. Yeah, seriously, you asked people, what do you think about purity? Well, you know, it's strong enough for a man but made for a woman.

Andrew [00:05:42] But Harris's journey into Christian bookstore celebrity involved an unlikely gateway: a mother son dance routine.

Joshua Harris [00:05:50] My mom was very involved in the pro-life movement, and she was a dancer. And actually, went to this national conference where she choreographed this dance and she roped me into it as her son. So I'm like, doing this dance to a Phil Keaggy song.

Music [00:06:09] [Phil Keaggy music plays]

Joshua Harris [00:06:16] And so there was this kind of joining of, you know, music, art and political action. And that was a huge backdrop to to our lives.

Leah [00:06:27] But the Harris family was not your average evangelical family. They were an evangelical homeschool family. In the 1970s and 80s, conservative activists like R. J. Rushdoony and James Dobson began advising evangelicals like the Harris family to withdraw from public schools. Too many so-called "secular values" for raising healthy evangelical families. Instead, they advocated for homeschooling.

Andrew [00:06:55] Homeschooling was kind of like the extreme sport version of education in the evangelical world. Gen pop evangelicals would send their kids to public schools with Bibles if they wanted to be really strong witnesses. But homeschool families took it up a notch and put school in a home Bible study environment.

Joshua Harris [00:07:18] My dad started teaching workshops about homeschooling because he and my mom started homeschooling me. They were listening to Dr. Dobson's show radio show focus on the family and were inspired by that. And he began to travel across the country, speak to tens of thousands of people over the years. And then through that began to create resources for homeschooling families.

Leah [00:07:48] And a lot of homeschool families didn't have formal training as teachers. They needed resources. Enter Josh's dad, Greg Harris. Through his dad's homeschool publishing company, Josh was introduced to the hub of Christian music culture: the Christian bookstore.

Joshua Harris [00:08:05] People forget, like, how influential bookstores in general, but then specifically Christian bookstores were in churches and just that entire culture. It was like a it was a third space, almost, where you would meet up with people. And that was the that was the place you got books and music and so on. There was no Amazon. That was the place you did it and you didn't go and buy, you know, your music from secular stores. You're getting it from the Christian bookstore.

Andrew [00:08:32] As a teen, Josh joined the family business and started going with his dad to the biggest trade show in evangelical media land, the Christian Booksellers Association.

Joshua Harris [00:08:43] We'd have our little homeschool resources booth there. I was probably like 16 or 17 when I would go. And the interesting thing is that, my my buddy Donald Miller, who is a very well known author, he and I both worked for my dad. And so we went to, I think it was Colorado, where we were there together, manning the booth. And, you know, you'd see, like, the big celebrity people with their, their booths, like Frank Peretti doing a signing, you know, or, you know, around that, that era that was like when Jars of Clay's album came out and that would have been around the Jesus Freak era with DC Talk. So it was like it was it felt like Christian music was finally becoming like, really cool.

Leah [00:09:32] Back in the 1990s, the Christian Booksellers Association, aka the CBA, was the place to be if you wanted free Christian rock swag.

Andrew [00:09:41] I remember I went to one in um, probably 2000 or 2001, the CBA was in Orlando, Florida, and through my dad was a United Methodist pastor. But there was somebody they knew at their church or somebody who had some passes to go. And, you know, I was a college student. So I was like, hey, I heard that you could get tons of free CD's there. Like Tooth & Nail. They had stands and stuff like, my--

Joshua Harris [00:10:10] Oh gosh, Tooth & Nail.

Leah [00:10:11] Young Josh was wowed by the glamor of the Christian media world.

Joshua Harris [00:10:16] It was just you felt like you're walking into like, these massive temples, basically. I mean, these booths would be like so huge. And the things they built up around them to show off the different books and so on, where we're so massive.

Andrew [00:10:31] For a kid who grew up in the sequestered homeschool world, the CBA was a great place to find Christian rock.

Leah [00:10:38] Which in certain homeschool circles was pretty edgy. Josh followed in his father's footsteps and began publishing a magazine for homeschooled teens. But even though Josh loved Christian music, the magazine didn't have a lot of music coverage.

Joshua Harris [00:10:53] There was some controversy around rock music, you know, because Bill Gothard and he would teach that, you know, the drum beat in rock music, like rearranged your heartbeat and did all kinds of, you know, evil things to you.

Andrew [00:11:06] Since Josh, his mom and dad, actually loved early Christian music, they encouraged him to find a place for himself in the Christian music universe.

Joshua Harris [00:11:15] My youth group. Years were marked by Michael W. Smith's big albums and all these kind of key moments where Christian music was really pivotal. And I call it the soundtrack of my life. I mean, I have this mis memory of being at a Michael W. Smith concert. And he's singing "Place in This World" and I was like, this, I don't know. 16, 15, 16 year old and being like, I want my place in this world, Lord! You know?

Music [00:11:48] [Michael W. Smith's "Place in This World" plays]

Joshua Harris [00:11:55] I dated a girl in high school named Emily, and I learned how to play you know, Michael W. Smith's "Emily" song, just super cheesy stuff like that.

Music [00:12:07] [Michael W. Smith's "Emily" plays]

Leah [00:12:15] And like a lot of evangelical teens, Christian music provided him with a celebrity crush.

Joshua Harris [00:12:22] Did I have Christian music crushes when I was a kid? Was Rebecca St. James?

Leah [00:12:26] Awwww.

Joshua Harris [00:12:26] So when I was a teenager and just starting to publish my magazine, she had just come out with her first album, and I don't know if we did an interview or or what it was, but and then ended up like meeting her and her family and going to, you know, one of her concerts. But yeah, most of the guys my age were in love with Rebecca St. James.

Leah [00:12:49] A lot of evangelical guys were in love with Australian born Rebecca St. James in the 1990s. She was like the Skipper to Amy Grant's Barbie. She arrived on the contemporary Christian music scene with a song that set her up to be an alternative to Alanis Morissette.

Andrew [00:13:17] Rebecca loved God and was very committed to chastity. This made her a dream come true for organizations looking for good abstinence role models, like Dobson's Focus on the Family or the Southern Baptist organization, True Love Waits.

Leah [00:13:33] Josh grew up in a home of Dobson fans, but in his early teen years, he told us that he didn't necessarily share Rebecca St. James enthusiasm for purity culture.

Joshua Harris [00:13:44] I was traveling around the country, speaking at conferences, publishing this magazine, and began to write about topics related to purity and dating in those kinds of things. But it was before I'd written this book, and I my heart was not, you know, completely in this, in that I had, followed a more kind of typical, high school experience, having a girlfriend and those types of things, much to the chagrin of my parents.

Andrew [00:14:13] But eventually Josh decided he wanted to go big or go home when it came to purity, culture and all of these aspects of Josh's upbringing, the CCM themed political activism, the abstinence, the family media biz and even his evangelical celebrity crush converged in a big way.

Joshua Harris [00:14:33] At 17, I started to get, like, really serious about my relationship with God, and I wanted to make sure I was obeying him in this part of my life. So as I was publishing this magazine, there was this huge event in DC, and, I went out there, you know, as part of, and, you know, representing my magazine, basically.

Leah [00:14:58] That huge event took place in July of 1994, when True Love Waits invited a bunch of CCM acts to the National Mall to give a concert promoting virginity among young evangelicals.

Andrew [00:15:11] The soundtrack that day included "I Don't Want It" by DC Talk.

Leah [00:15:24] And Michael W. Smith's well-worn cautionary message to teen girls "Old Enough to Know".

Music [00:15:38] [Michael W. Smith's "Old Enough to Know" plays]

Joshua Harris [00:15:47] It was a huge event. I remember getting picked up at the airport, and Kevin Max was also getting picked up. You know, so it's like all these, like, really big name artists were coming in speakers. Jeff Moore in the distance played I think, you know, at this concert. But the thing that it's remembered for and the impact that it had on me is that they they did a big True Love Waits rally on the mall and staked all these commitment cards in the grass.

Andrew [00:16:19] From the heart of the United States government, thousands of evangelical teens and organizers opposed the Clinton administration's Aids-era safe sex policies. Just say no to condoms and birth control pills in public schools. Say yes to abstinence.

Leah [00:16:37] Participants signed pledges to quote "God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship." End quote. That moment made a big impact on Josh.

Joshua Harris [00:16:58] I remember being there and looking out at all these cards and it had a it had an impact on me in an interesting way because I felt like, wow, we're making all these promises. But then like, what are we actually going to do about this?

Leah [00:17:11] What did Josh do? He was about to take abstinence up a notch and go extreme.

Andrew [00:17:16] And he did it all with his crush turned friend, Christian music star Rebecca St. James.

Music [00:17:28] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Andrew [00:17:28] So Josh was one of somewhere around 25,000 evangelical teens at the Capitol Mall, and there had been concerts from some of the biggest stars in Christian music.

Joshua Harris [00:17:39] But I do remember at my church experiences I would have in the altar call segment of the service and coming forward and weeping at the altar and having these like, powerful experiences of conviction and feeling like, oh, I hurt these girls because I dated them and said that I loved them. And then we broke up. And I'm just breaking hearts and God sees all this, and and the music is, you know, playing. And other people around me are crying and weeping about other things.

Andrew [00:18:08] So Josh came home from Washington, D.C., inspired by what he'd experienced and eager to live out the ideals of the True Love Waits organization to the fullest.

Leah [00:18:18] He started writing, building on his experiences in Washington, D.C. and his father Greg Harris's advanced homeschooling workshop arranged courtship for a lasting marriage. He came to believe that virginity was not enough for the truly devout. In fact, the so-called seductive spirit of impurity was present even in the act of dating.

Andrew [00:18:40] I was imagining maybe at your homeschool, your magazine, you're getting feedback from people, and you've got readers that are writing you letters. And then you go to this rally and you see all the people around you, and you think we should go another step further, you know, did you have some kind of feedback loop like that that was happening? I wondered if you had felt like you got ramped up to that.

Joshua Harris [00:19:03] I think that phrase ramped up is really accurate one for sure. There's a there's a sense of always wanting to be more on fire for God. People that you know are the heroes of the Christian faith are those that go and dedicate themselves to missions. And then ultimately, martyrs are the greatest examples. So you're you're always, you know, being encouraged in that way. There's this special energy when young people get really excited about an idea. They have incredible zeal. They have zero experience. And so there is this combination of youthful zeal and exuberance with the self-righteousness that also comes with that, because you haven't seen your own flaws, your own weaknesses. And so your mindset is very judgmental towards previous generations. It's like one of these old people need to get their act together. And so again, back to the music of of that era, you know, what will people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus freak? It's like, go harder, go harder at this, you know, like actually be so passionate that people think you're a freak. Like that, people actually talk about you in a derogatory way. And so in that context, the person that's that's saying, like, we should do this, you know, that's the person that's like, oh, yeah Johnny is such a, you know, future Leader. Nobody in that context wants to be the person that's like, guys, should we just like, chill out a little bit? Like are we just taking this thing too seriously? Like, can we just like, calm down? No one wants to be that person because you're perceived as as weak or not as committed.

Andrew [00:20:43] Josh went all in. He began to believe that dating is an onramp of impurity, and so he got radical and got rid of dating altogether.

Leah [00:20:54] Instead, he recommended courtship, wherein parents get super involved in arranging marriages. You can see how this would work especially well in small social circles like, say, a homeschool co-op.

Andrew [00:21:10] Inspired, Josh took all these ideas and in 1997 he put them in a book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye". His friend and former crush, Christian singer Rebecca St. James, wrote the foreword to the book, and at Josh's request, his platonic friend Rebecca St. James crafted a catchy ode to waiting for a future spouse in 2000.

Music [00:21:34] ["Wait for Me" by Rebecca St. James plays]

Joshua Harris [00:21:46] It's on that bestseller's, you know, rack. And then it's number one. And, you know, that kind of thing was mind blowing. Obviously, God is blessing this book because look what, look at the way it's selling! And it was a big surprise. But, and really impossible when you're talking about that many people reading something to to comprehend the reach of something like that, like you can't really in the human mind, like the concept of a million of anything is pretty hard to to comprehend.

Leah [00:22:16] I would like to ask you what it was like to be like the, one of the most famous, rockstar youth group guys. What was that like?

Joshua Harris [00:22:27] I definitely kind of experienced a level of notoriety that I'd never experienced before, but with my my book, even though it was popular, it was sort of like, hated popularity. If that makes sense? You know, like, you know, it's this it's telling people not to date. So, like, people might have to go along with that because their pastor's teaching it or their parents are making them read it. But there's also a strong contingent of people being like, this is stupid. Like, I hate this guy.

Leah [00:23:02] Maybe, except for when you got to the moms.

Andrew [00:23:05] Yeah, right.

Joshua Harris [00:23:05] The moms I was huge with. I was huge with moms, for sure.

Leah [00:23:10] Moms loved Josh Harris. They also really loved songs about abstinence. The Christian music charts of the late 90s and early aughts had hits with amped up messages not just about not having sex, but also about not even dating.

Leah [00:23:46] [Music plays]

Andrew [00:24:15] How big was the purity movement in the early aughts? Big. Most Christian music acts could only have dreamed of crossing over from evangelical subculture into the mainstream, the way that purity culture did.

Leah [00:24:29] The extreme sports take on abstinence was publicly endorsed by the biggest pop stars of the era. Late 90s pop princesses like Jessica Simpson wore public symbols of their virginity, known as purity rings.

Andrew [00:24:41] So did Disney Channel, singing mainstream superstars Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Hilary Duff, Demi Lovato and all three of the Jonas Brothers. American Idol winner Jordin Sparks wore one too.

Leah [00:24:55] Purity rings even took center stage at the 2008 MTV Music Awards when comedian Russell Brand roasted the Jonas Brothers.

Archival Tape [00:25:02] Each of the Jonas Brothers does wear a tiny ring as a mark of their commitment to God. I'd take you a little bit more seriously if they wore on their genitals. At their own request, to bring on the Jonas Brothers is Taylor Swift. It'll be a little while before she brings any of them off. Taylor Swift, there she is!

Leah [00:25:20] Jordin Sparks jumped to their defense.

Archival Tape [00:25:23] All right, I just have one thing to say about promise rings. It's not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody, guy or girl, wants to be a slut. All right. So anyway.

Andrew [00:25:31] And when you watch that footage, you can see John Legend is standing with Jordin Sparks when she goes off script and he holds his hands up to show he is not wearing a purity ring. He is sitting on the sidelines of that extreme sport. It's pretty crazy though. In the 11 years since "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" was published, Joshua Harris's cultural position had gone from fringe to the center of the mainstream.

Leah [00:25:58] He'd also courted and married a young woman named Shannon Hendrickson, written a follow up advice book about finding the love of your life through courtship called "Boy Meets Girl", and basically he became an all around celebrity evangelical pastor.

Andrew [00:26:12] If purity culture was extreme sports, then Joshua Harris had become the Tony Hawk, all of which spelled big business for the Christian music industry.

Leah [00:26:22] Coming up: coming down from the purity culture heights.

Joshua Harris [00:26:26] I pastored this church for 17 years, ten years as the senior pastor. I had such a kind of arrogant view of our church, our denomination. I thought we were the best because we were just the perfect mix of doctrine and theology.

Music [00:26:46] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Andrew [00:26:52] In the 2000s, Joshua Harris was a pretty big celebrity in certain conservative evangelical circles, especially an organization called Sovereign Grace Ministries. But Sovereign Grace Ministries had some really, really big problems.

Joshua Harris [00:27:09] We were the hot church planning movement and, you know, all these things. So it was like it was, you know, arrogance disguised as humility. Like, I'm just so humbled to be a part of the best church planting movement. And it's that kind of a thing. And so when reality began to hit in the form of problems in those churches that leaders had made mistreatment that had taken place wrongly reporting sexual abuse, you know, even leaders being accused of sexual abuse, all these things started to come up because of the internet. So the internet disrupting the entire world, you know, Napster disrupting the music industry, the internet giving platform to people to be able to share their stories, compare notes. Pastors are no longer the gatekeepers.

Leah [00:27:59] Josh credits The Blogosphere with shedding light on the abuses in Sovereign Grace Ministries.

Joshua Harris [00:28:05] Oh, definitely. It was the anonymous blogs that really brought brought our movement down and in a healthy way. It called people to account. Yeah. We don't have the ability to just, like, shut everybody up and say, no, I'm the only one that speaks. Suddenly people are able to say, hey, I was mistreated like this by my pastor. And then somebody on the other side of the country that's in that same church movement, it's like, wait a minute, that same thing happened to me. Patterns start to emerge. And that was all happening while I was pastoring. And, I just began to see like, well, there's something really broken in our particular church movement. You know, we say that we're all about the gospel. We say that we're all about grace. But there's a long list of unspoken rules. It's never on the the church website. It's never on a statement of faith. But if you don't do these things, then you're going to feel like a second class citizen. And so it was really watching what I was a part of and what I contributed to start to fail and crumble and the cracks beginning to emerge and beginning to listen to the people that I was leading, instead of just thinking that we had all the answers, that I began to be disillusioned with our church movement, with our church structure, with myself, to be quite honest, and began to even question things related to my books like, oh, some of these stories are tied to this culture that my my book has helped to create.

Andrew [00:29:35] On top of that, through social media, people raised on high octane purity culture, were connecting with one another, sharing stories and explaining how Kissing Dating Goodbye had impacted their lives. And a lot of times it was for the worse.

Devi Abraham [00:29:53] This is also the thing that happened as we got older and older, the stories start trickling out.

[00:29:58] This is our guest from the last episode, Devi Abraham, on her podcast, Where Do We Go from Here? It's one of the many podcasts that took Purity Culture to task in the past eight years.

Devi Abraham [00:30:10] It's clear that things are not going to plan for everybody, and the sex is not as great as people were led to believe. And oh my goodness, we're 25, 26 and I start hearing about people getting divorced.

Joshua Harris [00:30:22] Everything that I know about leading has been shaped by this environment, and I don't know how to lead us out of it. And so I ended up stepping down, moving across the continent to Vancouver, BC to go to seminary for the first time. So I had just taken this fast track and had never got into formal education. And that became a context for me to to rethink a lot of things, starting with my, my books.

Andrew [00:30:50] So Josh and his family move across the continent and outside the homeschool, ultra conservative Sovereign Grace Ministries movement, and Josh's world quickly expands.

Leah [00:31:01] This is a common experience for seminary students who come from pretty isolated communities. But for Josh, his seminary experience included an added layer of revelation.

Joshua Harris [00:31:13] And then to hear criticism from fellow students that were that were as friends saying, oh yeah, here's how your book affected me negatively. And it wasn't just an anonymous person on the internet that was writing a negative review or saying, Josh Harris is an idiot or whatever, it was a real person, and I was able to I was at a place where I was able to listen to that in a more humble, open way than I ever had been before. And the next step for me was then to actually begin to reevaluate my book. And, you know, Leah, that happened kind of through funny circumstances. It pushed me, you know, along the way, somebody writing something on Twitter, me responding, saying, I'm sorry for how that affected you. There being this uproar. Josh Harris is apologizing! People were like, "he's not apologizing enough!" And people are saying, "you shouldn't apologize for anything!" You know? And me realizing, whoa, I really need to really think through this and really, you know, grapple with what I actually believe and then be able to stand by that publicly. And so that led to a process of interviewing people and really listening, of recognizing, you know, what? I actually think, on balance, there's more harmful content in I Kissed Dating Goodbye than there is positive content. And even though there are lots of people who say, oh, this book helped me, this book was actually good. I'm grateful for that. But I, I can't ignore these people and these patterns of how this instilled fear, how it, damaged their view of sex. You know, all these different kinds of things led to, you know, unhealthy relationships and so on.

Andrew [00:32:54] Josh took an unusual step. He decided to unpublished "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" in 2018.

Joshua Harris [00:33:01] And so, I mean, I can't take responsibility for all of what happened with Purity culture, but my my book was still out there, and I made the decision to unpublish it with the support of my publisher. So grateful for Multnomah Books and the way that they supported me in that. And apologize for the book. And so that was sort of a, a huge moment of disappointing a lot of people because a lot of people were like, Josh has just like, gone liberal. He moved to Canada. He went to Regent and you know, those kinds of things.

Andrew [00:33:36] Socialized medicine and all that.

Joshua Harris [00:33:36] Yeah, exactly. It's the first step. And then behind the scenes, my marriage was coming apart, and it came to the point where there was just such an uproar about the divorce and accusations being thrown around of who is to blame and all those things.

Leah [00:33:52] Eventually, Josh decided he needed to make an official break with the church.

Joshua Harris [00:33:57] And I came out and just said, hey guys, just so you know, like I'm not believing in the same way that I used to. You know, and and that maybe was an overdramatic moment, but I just was like, get me out of. Get me out of here. Like, I, I don't want to be, I don't want to be trying to argue with anyone. I don't want to be trying to justify anything. I, I don't feel like I'm on the same team. And according to all the things that I taught and believed in the past, I can't say that I'm a believer in the same way. That was a obviously another kind of atomic bomb in terms of of, the reaction to that. But for me, I think it was really just this desire to like, I need to be free of all these identities and all these expectations. And if I'm ever going to believe and if there is a God, I've got to figure that out, separate from all the pressures of what people think I am and want me to be.

Andrew [00:34:51] Josh's former spouse Shannon Hendrickson, made a break to her memoir, "The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife", was released in 2024, and her story will sound familiar to anyone who listened to our previous episode on Purity Culture.

Leah [00:35:10] As you can imagine, it was big news when Josh left the fold, but Rebecca Saint James stayed the course. She kept on promoting purity culture, and in 2011, she married Jacob Cubby Fink from Foster the People. Now she hosts a podcast with James Dobson's Focus on the family called Practice Makes Parent.

Andrew [00:35:32] We asked Josh to tell us what kind of advice he'd give his amped up on purity culture teen self today.

Joshua Harris [00:35:39] I would probably try to communicate something along those lines to that, that 17 year old to say like, you know. See more of the world, experience some things. Don't be so afraid to mess up. Don't be so afraid that it's all going to fall apart. That you know God is, God is is out there. And he's not necessarily in these power structures and theological structures.

Andrew [00:36:04] Today, Josh says he doesn't listen to a lot of Christian music anymore. But every now and then...

Joshua Harris [00:36:10] Apple Music has this annoying feature where whenever I get in my car, it just instantly starts playing the old music that I bought, like before streaming, and it's all worship music. So it's like the Newsboys came on the other day in my car. And I'm like, what? What is this? So I still listen to CCM once in a while, and once in a while I'll just be like, I want, you know, certain songs for for nostalgia's sake. So I, I can, I can plug back into that and not be too, too triggered.

Music [00:36:45] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music plays]

Andrew [00:36:50] Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll:

Leah [00:36:53] Are you a Kevin, a Toby or a Michael?

Andrew [00:36:57] Who's down with the DC Talk?

Leah [00:36:58] If you have a story to share or thoughts on this episode, please call our hotline. You can call anytime. (629) 777-6336.

Andrew [00:37:09] To be the first to hear our episodes, and for full access to our bonus episodes, join us on Patreon! Patreon.com/RTDR or just tap the link in the show notes.

Leah [00:37:23] Find us on Substack and Instagram by searching Rock That Doesn't Roll. And of course, you should give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're using to listen right now.

Andrew [00:37:33] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions Project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme.

Leah [00:37:43] And Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Andrew [00:37:49] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurentine provides production oversight. I'm Andrew Gill.

Leah [00:37:58] And I'm Leah Payne. Remember, rock all you want, but watch it when you start to roll.

[00:00:00] Andrew Gill: So, Leah, I have a surprise for you. 

[00:00:03] Leah Payne: Okay. 

[00:00:06] Andrew Gill: Um, so you know how every episode, DC Talk comes up in some way? 

[00:00:12] Leah Payne: Yes, yes. 

[00:00:14] Andrew Gill: Well, we were thinking that it could be fun to do an episode where we take a DC Talk personality quiz. 

[00:00:25] Leah Payne: Oh, great. Okay. 

[00:00:27] Andrew Gill: And we were inspired by your book because there's a section in your book where you talk about the three members of DC Talk. Can you talk about that little section a little bit? 

[00:00:37] Leah Payne: Sure. I use the members, three members of DC Talk as a way of looking at the state of evangelicalism in the United States. So you have the kind of traditional evangelical and industry person in the person of TobyMac, um, AKA Toby McKeehan, and then there is the kind of more Trump supporting side, which would be Michael Tait. Um, and then there is the, um, former evangelical, now ex-evangelical, deconstructed figure, um, who is, Kevin Max. And I basically say that the evangelicals who grew up with DC Talk’s music usually fall into one of those three categories. So now I wonder what do you have cooking here? 

[00:01:29] Andrew Gill: Of course, I wanted to take this quiz too. Okay. So I figured I can't make the quiz myself. So I reached out and I found one of our listeners who at one time may have been The world's biggest DC Talk fan. So I want you to say hello to Mark Lund. Hi, Mark. 

[00:01:51] Leah Payne: It's nice to meet you. Hi! 

[00:01:54] Mark Lund: Let me just say, this is a huge, huge honor. I love the podcast.

[00:02:00] Leah Payne: Can't believe this is happening. This is great. This is great. I'm so happy to meet you, Mark. 

[00:02:05] Mark Lund: I'm happy to meet you as well. 

[00:02:07] Andrew Gill: Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got to know and love DC Talk? 

[00:02:12] Mark Lund: So until I was 13, I was an MK, a missionary kid. And so, talk about extremely sheltered. My grandma bought me a tape of Steven Curtis Chapman.

[00:02:23] Mark Lund: I'm pretty sure it was on side B. There was Got To B Tru featuring DC Talk. You know, I had never heard any hip hop. I'd never heard any rap. And so I, I heard that and I fell in love, I bought Free at Last and my sister and I, we would listen to it all the time, uh, nonstop. 

[00:02:50] Andrew Gill: So you can see Mark is the perfect person to put together our seven question DC Talk personality test.

[00:02:57] Leah Payne: Oh, for sure. There's like no one else even close. 

[00:03:02] Andrew Gill: Mark, do you have any advice before we take your test? 

[00:03:06] Mark Lund: Um, I would just say, be honest with yourself. 

[00:03:09] Leah Payne: Words to live by. Words to live by.

[00:03:12] Leah Payne: Thank you, Mark.

[Rock That Doesn’t Roll Theme music plays]

[00:03:26] Andrew Gill: From PRX and the Big Questions Project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist raised on Christian rock. 

[00:03:36] Leah Payne: And I'm Leah Payne, author of the book, God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Contemporary Rock and Christian music, so called Christian rock music. In each episode, we look at how Christian music shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one aspect of CCM.

[00:03:54] Andrew Gill: Today on the show, we fill the gaping void left by online personality tests with a DC Talk quiz. To determine if you're a Toby, a Michael, or a Kevin.

[00:04:23] Andrew Gill: We knew that we needed help from two incredible guests today. He's the host of Good Christian Fun Podcast, one of the Gilmore guys. He's always in the light. Let's welcome: Kevin Porter

[00:04:39] Kevin T Porter: Always in the light is so double edged sword that could be slang for yeah, they're in the light a lot! They're out there. They're going viral for the wrong reasons [laughter]

[00:04:54] Andrew Gill: The genius of Charlie Peacock's lyrics, you know, it's, uh, it could be taken any number of ways. And our other guest today, he's the author of the novel Hell is a World Without You and co-host of the Vacation Bible School podcast. Just between you and me, it's Jason Kirk.

[00:05:15] Leah Payne: Welcome, Jason. 

[00:05:18] Jason Kirk: Just between you and me, I like that because, uh, it's, it sounds like it's a secret between, between you and the listener as to my, as to my identity, right? 

[00:05:26] Andrew Gill: Yes. Us, the listener and, uh, all of modern rock radio in the nineties. Um, okay. Uh, before we get started, uh, we illustrious guests who know so much about Christian music.

[00:05:42] Andrew Gill: I wanted to get your best Story relating to DC Talk from your own life. 

[00:05:48] Jason Kirk: So when Jesus Freak came out, like when that hit the youth group, it was wow. Like, right. Like that was like the first, uh, album I remember that kind of everyone could agree on, right? Like the weird kids finally had something that sounded like Nirvana.

[00:06:03] Jason Kirk: Right? Like we weren't getting that from Steven Curtis Chapman and, uh, and, uh, and Amy Grant and Rich Mullins. All respect to, uh, Amy Grant and Rich Mullins, uh, and Steven Curtis Chapman, I guess, if you like grocery store music. But, um, it was like, finally, it was something for almost everyone. Like, Oh, wow, there's Christian punk rock.

[00:06:18] Jason Kirk: There's like Christian backpack rap, like found all these, a lot of these other wormholes, but briefly, you know, DC Talk was the thing for everyone. Um, and I remember around this time, it became established that whenever the church praise band, the youth group band, uh, any band needed to play Jesus Freak, which was frequent, uh, that I was the designated TobyMac, who was going to come on stage.

[00:06:42] Jason Kirk: And no matter which pace the drummer decided we were doing the song that week, I was going to try and keep up. I was going to do all of Toby's raps from Jesus Freak or whichever other DC Talk song. I'm pretty sure we did, um, the one, uh, what's it called? That Kinda… That Kinda Girl. There were more skirts than any I'd seen in college. At Liberty! Yeah, I'm sure it was shorter than you saw at Liberty. 

[00:07:07] Music: [DC Talk’s “That Kinda Girl” plays]

[00:07:24] Jason Kirk: But yeah, it was the Designated 30. TobyMac. I remember a moment when it was like, I don't want to do it again. And the youth pastor's like, yeah, but you see the way the girls look at you when you're on stage being TobyMac. So I was like, fine, fine. I'll keep doing this. 

[00:07:38] Kevin T Porter: They appealed to that part of it.

[00:07:40] Jason Kirk: Oh yeah. 

[00:07:41] Kevin T Porter: Yeah. But bro, look at all the babes who are just salivating for every rap you do. Wow. 

[00:08:23] Kevin T Porter: A lot of us got into music back then, which was through the influence of an older sibling. So my brother getting Jesus Freak, Supernatural, those two albums, I've just inherited them because of course, cause it's your older brother and you want to be like them, at that time. So I, yeah, intersected with them right when they were breaking up or going on hiatus for 25 years, or whatever they ended up calling it, until the cruise lines came a calling, until the sea shanties were knocking on their door.

[00:08:57] Andrew Gill: You guys know the little stagecraft that he and TobyMac would do before DC Talk, right? where he would book gigs at churches or like senior centers as like a southern gospel singer Michael Tait would, and he'd go up and sing his set. And then he'd have TobyMac as his sound man in the back. The old folks would be, you know, going crazy for Michael Tait.

[00:09:18] Andrew Gill: They loved his performance. And then he'd say, you guys mind if we, uh, give my sound guy a chance to do his set and bring him up, you know, and they're like expecting another, you know, it's a white guy. He's going to come up. He's going to sing some classic Southern gospel. And then he busts out the rap. This was pre DC Talk where they would like, you know, smooth the way into these old white people, uh, loving Christian. 

[00:09:43] Kevin T Porter: I, I love that. I unironically think that's good. 

[00:09:50] Leah Payne: It feels like a scene from Better Call Saul. 

[00:09:59] Kevin T Porter: Tripping over like Willy Wonka and it'd be like, JK, I'm quite limber. 

[00:10:04] Andrew Gill: Yes, exactly.

[00:10:06] Andrew Gill: So we had a listener create an internet personality test based on the members of DC Talk. The only difference is that ours is 100 percent scientifically proven. In fact, It's legally binding. This will categorize you forever as a Toby, a Michael, or a K Max. So to begin, let's hear who you think you were most like as a teenager.

[00:10:34] Andrew Gill: We know Jason probably was a Toby, right? 

[00:10:39] Jason Kirk: I don't know. I think like factoring in the post DC Talk era, like, I cannot listen to any of Michael's Newsboys music. I just, I just can't, it's never going to work. I'm sorry. It's not for me. Um, Toby's like general, um, Flo Rida to Hozier spectrum is also most not for me, except for like, Take Me to Church and leave me at church.

[00:11:02] Kevin T Porter: Yeah, leave me at church. 

[00:11:03] Jason Kirk: And then I'll like have like a, um, a rage with the machine, thing at toward the end of the cd. Like, that's not for me either. Um, Kevin's general weirdness is like, woah. Which is funny, because like, looking at the group in the 90s, it was like, Okay, Kevin's the pretty boy.

[00:11:23] Jason Kirk: Like, clearly the weirdo creative one has got to be Toby, right? No, no, all along, it was, it was Kevin. Um, so like, factoring in the last 20 years, and even in addition to, like, excluding politics, um, Kevin feels like the more relatable one to me. 

[00:11:39] Andrew Gill: Yeah. Okay. So maybe in high school, Toby, but now Kevin. 

[00:11:45] Jason Kirk: a rising Kevin.

[00:11:48] Andrew Gill: Yeah! Let's get in a youth group mindset, uh, what do you say, Kevin? What's your pick? 

[00:11:55] Kevin T Porter: You know, obviously as a white boy growing up in Texas, I identified most with Michael Tait more than anyone. I probably did like in the, in the sense of he was just riding that middle and not pissing anyone off.

[00:12:10] Kevin T Porter: And he was not making anyone upset or angry, and he was doing what he thought, and maybe he still is doing what he thinks is right. 

[00:12:18] Andrew Gill: Yeah. 

[00:12:19] Kevin T Porter: Not ruffling any feathers and playing the game and not being too spicy one way or the other. So I probably identified with Michael most. 

[00:12:28] Andrew Gill: Man, you made a good case.

[00:12:30] Kevin T Porter: And now I identify with Kevin and for no other reason than I also am online and post too much. 

[00:12:38] Leah Payne: What about you, Andrew? 

[00:12:39] Andrew Gill: Um, I mean, I think the way Kevin described Michael Tait, I would say, probably described me, uh, And, you know, I, I chose to go to Wheaton College and, and that was mostly for those reasons to just, it was like, you know, you can kind of slide through and it makes everybody super happy, you know, um, yeah.

[00:13:00] Andrew Gill: But how about you, Leah? 

[00:13:01] Leah Payne: So I'm going to go with Toby because he's a like publicly pretty cheery kind of guy. That's the only reason why I can do it. I didn't go to Liberty. I don't align with, um, those political alliances. So, but I feel like I can't choose Kevin. So that's what I've got. 

[00:13:18] Andrew Gill: All right. And I also just realized, um, talking about Kevin and DC Talk while we have a Kevin in the conversation is confusing. Let’s say K Max.  

[00:13:27] Leah Payne: K Max. Yep. There you go. All right. 

[00:13:31] Andrew Gill: Question number one. If you were at a huge sports event, which role would you most likely want to occupy regardless of your actual skill level? Number one, selling merch outside the stadium. Number two, giving the team an inspirational speech. Number three, singing the national anthem. Number four, cheering from the sidelines. 

[00:13:55] Kevin T Porter: I gotta be honest. I'm cheering from the sidelines. It's great. I'm not a good salesman. I can be a pitchy singer. Uh, I'm definitely not on the team, but man, I am so happy for all those beautiful boys out there giving each other CTE.

[00:14:12] Kevin T Porter: So I will be on the sidelines cheering that on. It's great. 

[00:14:16] Jason Kirk: It doesn't specify which merch, so I'm gonna sell like my own merch. My own bootleg merch that profits me specifically. I'm here for some prosperity gospel. 

[00:14:28] Andrew Gill: Nice. Leah, what's your pick? 

[00:14:29] Leah Payne: I'm outside with the merch a hundred percent all the way because I find large sporting events to be very overwhelming.

[00:14:35] Leah Payne: So I'm just out there. Probably trying to get snacks. 

[00:14:40] Andrew Gill: Right, halfway tailgating, right? Yeah, that's right. 

[00:14:43] Leah Payne: How about you, Andrew? 

[00:14:44] Andrew Gill: I went with the merch as well, yeah. Question two. You're flying to attend the Dove Awards and the only ticket available was on Spirit Airlines and the TV is broken and can only play five shows.

[00:14:59] Andrew Gill: Which one do you choose? 

[00:15:01] Kevin T Porter: I have a question. Why am I at Spirit Airlines to begin with? 

[00:15:05] Jason Kirk: Some sort of punishment. It could also be United? 

[00:15:09] Andrew Gill: Well, all those other airlines wouldn't have broken TVs, only Spirit. 

[00:15:13] Kevin T Porter: What about an airline where Carmen's the pilot, like that one music video? 

[00:15:16] Andrew Gill: Oh, yeah. 

[00:15:17] Leah Payne: Absolutely would fly that plane.

[00:15:18] Andrew Gill: That would be awesome. Incredible.

[00:15:31] Andrew Gill: Okay. Choices, choices are Touched by an Angel, America's Next Top Model, the Sopranos, Shark Tank, or The Good Place. 

[00:15:40] Leah Payne: The Good Place.

[00:15:41] Kevin T Porter: For sure. Oh yeah. I just like that show. I'm going to America's Next Top Model. That is the level of show engagement I need on a plane. 

[00:15:47] Jason Kirk: On an airplane, right? Yeah. I think I'm going to go Shark Tank, uh, because, you know, it's bite size.

[00:15:53] Jason Kirk: It's, and, and like, it's, it's always funny. Uh, and it will give me business tips that I can employ once I get to the stadium and begin selling merch. To sell the merch. 

[00:16:02] Andrew Gill: erfect. Yeah. That's great. I think I'm going to go with The Sopranos because I've just never gotten around to actually watching all of it, but it could be uncomfortable to watch that on an airplane.

[00:16:11] Andrew Gill: Definitely. Definitely. 

[00:16:13] Kevin T Porter: If you want to start The Sopranos on Spirit Airlines… 

[00:16:15] Andrew Gill: that's kind of what I'd do. It's going to be a great trip. It's going to be a great trip. 

[00:16:21] Kevin T Porter: Love it. 

[00:16:21] Andrew Gill: All right, question three. Who's your favorite comic book character? Captain America, Ghost Rider, Tony Stark, or Jimmy Olsen? Wow.

[00:16:32] Andrew Gill: That's an interesting team. Yeah. 

[00:16:35] Kevin T Porter: For myself personally, I think I'm connecting the most with Jimmy Olsen. 

[00:16:38] Andrew Gill: Nice. 

[00:16:39] Kevin T Porter: Again, just like I'm not even sure who Jimmy Olsen is. 

[00:16:45] Andrew Gill: What? Who is Jimmy Olsen?! 

[00:16:43] Kevin T Porter: What? Well, he works at the Daily. A little annoying. 

[00:16:48] Leah Payne: Yeah, no, he's the photographer, whereas Lois is like the —Nice. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:16:54] Andrew Gill: Well, I did, I did work as a photojournalist for a while, so I guess that would be me. I'm gonna choose Jimmy Olsen. 

[00:17:01] Kevin T Porter: Two Jimmies. 

[00:17:02] Jason Kirk: Uh, I think Tony Stark is the best character of this group, and unfortunately, I'm really building a theme here. Uh, he's a rich guy, so again, I will learn about selling merch from him.

[00:17:13] Leah Payne: That's great. 

[00:17:14] Jason Kirk: I'm really branding as like head of the label or something. 

[00:17:18] Leah Payne: That's great. Okay. I think I'll say, I don't, I'll go with Captain America. Why not? Let's go with Captain America. Yep. 

[00:17:29] Andrew Gill: Okay. Question four, which contemporary Christian music band other than DC Talk is your favorite: Audio Adrenaline, Newsboys, Reliant K, my favorite CCM band is not listed, or I do not listen to CCM.

[00:17:45] Kevin T Porter: Well, my answer is going to be, uh, it's not a listed. And of course that band is Junk Five, but that was not included, unfortunately. And they cemented a place in my heart when they did Lee Greenwood's God bless the USA and George W. Bush's White House in 2000, right after 9/11. And we needed five little Christian kids.

[00:18:05] Kevin T Porter: They did do that. 

[00:18:17] Leah Payne: They did do that. It’s in the book. Yep. 

[00:18:24] Kevin T Porter: Is it really in the book? 

[00:18:28] Leah Payne: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I've got a whole section about responses to 9 11 and there was just a flurry of responses and Jump 5 was definitely in there. Yeah. Can you imagine adult Jump 5? Doing that again, like, full grown. Jump 5, I'd watch that. 

[00:18:39] Kevin T Porter: It's probably Walk 5 at this point. Or maybe like Skip 5, like they get, a little off their feet. 

[00:18:47] Leah Payne: [laughter] 

[00:18:49] Jason Kirk: That’s funny. I've never been able to enjoy Audio Adrenaline or Newsboys. If I had to pick one from this group, I could go Reliant K. But my favorite CCM band is not listening. Uh, we're going the metal band Zao.

[00:19:19] Leah Payne: Oh yeah. Which was CCM up until like 1998. I think I'd have to go with like my childhood favorite is not listed. Keith Green was the one that I grew up with as a kid. 

[00:19:39] Andrew Gill: Yeah. I had to go not listed as well because Pedro the Lion is, uh, is my tops, you know, so. That's right.

[00:19:57] Leah Payne: But does that count as CCM?

[00:19:58] Andrew Gill: Yeah, I think they've, they've paid the price for being connected to CCM, in their careers at least, whether or not they actually were. Right. 

[00:20:08] Kevin T Porter: If you've been punished for it then you're CCM. 

[00:20:10] Andrew Gill: They have taken their punishment. Okay, question five. What would you order if you could eat at a DC Talk themed restaurant?

[00:20:20] Andrew Gill: Toast with marmalade, jelly deconstructed egg rolls, King of King’s hamburgers, or DC Tacos. 

[00:20:31] Leah Payne: I've got to go with DC Tacos. That just sounds good. I like tacos. It's just good. That's what the whole restaurant should be called. 

[00:20:37] Kevin T Porter: I instinctually clicked it out of pure instinct. 

[00:20:42] Leah Payne: There's only one choice there. I want it. 

[00:20:45] Andrew Gill: This is a dare, yeah, there's got to be a restaurant out there that could put DC Tacos on their menu, you know. 

[00:20:52] Jason Kirk: But as long as they're not in DC, so it's very clear. 

[00:20:56] Andrew Gill: Yeah, right, it's got to be in Omaha or somewhere, you know. 

[00:20:58] Jason Kirk: Yeah, yeah. As the person who rapped the verse about marmalade jelly, I'll I know in my heart it's DC Tacos, but I have clicked marmalade jelly.

[00:21:07] Kevin T Porter: But maybe marmalade jelly's really good, the way they make it there. 

[00:21:09] Jason Kirk: Maybe on the tacos. Maybe, you know, a little wacky tacos for the quick fun stuff. 

[00:21:18] Andrew Gill: And, um, you know, King of Kings hamburger. 

[00:21:20] Leah Payne: That is so funny. That's so great. 

[00:21:23] Andrew Gill: So I guess I have to choose it. Um, I don't know. Question six, getting a little earnest here.

[00:21:30] Andrew Gill: What do you believe about God? God sets out rules for humans that we need to follow as closely as possible. God wants me to tell as many people as possible about his son, Jesus. God is too big for humans to know with absolute certainty. The United States has a special role in God's plan for Earth. Okay, a little less complicated.

[00:21:55] Jason Kirk: I think it's more funny. 

[00:21:57] Jason Kirk: I think we found the real comedy here. 

[00:22:01] Kevin T Porter: There we go. Well, yeah, I mean, given what I said about President Bush's White House, I have to go with number four. The U. S. has a special role in God's plan for Earth. I'm not saying it's a good role, but it's a role. 

[00:22:15] Andrew Gill: That is, boy, that's, that's true.

[00:22:17] Jason Kirk: I'll go with God's too big for humans to know with certainty. I'll, uh I'll do a sincere answer after picking marmalade jelly the last time around. 

[00:22:26] Leah Payne: What about you, Andrew? 

[00:22:27] Andrew Gill: Uh, I'm gonna go with that one, too. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:22:30] Leah Payne: Okay, then I cannot choose. I'm gonna go with Jesus. Let's tell everybody about Jesus.

[00:22:34] Andrew Gill: Alright, tell everybody about Jesus. 

[00:22:36] Leah Payne: My Jesus-y heart. 

[00:22:37] Andrew Gill: Very cool. All right, uh, final question. 

[00:22:41] Leah Payne: I mean, nobody picked the Christian Nationalism one. We didn't have, you guys, we didn't even have, no one was gonna go for the other one? 

[00:22:48] Kevin T Porter: The other one’s boring. 

[00:22:54] Jason Kirk: Oh, come on, come on. Christian Nationalism's more fun. You get to wave two flags.

[00:22:57] Jason Kirk: Yeah, they know how to party. 

[00:22:58] Andrew Gill: All right. Question seven, the final one. What's the point of making music? Music is a form of creative expression and one of my unique gifts to the world. Music helps to rally my friends in the face of adversity. Music brings people together and helps overcome differences. Music is an important tradition that connects us to those who came before us. 

[00:23:22] Kevin T Porter: One of my unique gifts to the world is so funny. And of course there are multitudes. 

[00:23:31] Jason Kirk: When I'm not blessing the world with dance or crochet or any of my numerous other gifts.

[00:23:38] Kevin T Porter: I’m taking one of my unique gifts. 

[00:23:43] Jason Kirk: Nice. 

[00:23:43] Kevin T Porter: I like that.

[00:23:45] Jason Kirk: I think in the spirit of, uh, DC Talk's biggest hit, I'm going to go with Bringing People Together. Nice. 

[00:23:51] Leah Payne: Aw, okay. Turn down the walls. 

[00:23:53] Jason Kirk: Yeah, I'm sure he has that. That's the one.

[00:24:05] Leah Payne: I'm gonna go with brings people together. I got to be sincere. I gotta. This is the one where I really got to go for it. I think I love it when people sing together. Okay. 

[00:24:15] Andrew Gill: Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. It's beautiful. I think I'm going to go with, um, cause you know, I've been attending like Episcopal churches and listening to choirs and stuff, and they're singing this ancient music.

[00:24:28] Andrew Gill: So I'm going to go with the important tradition that connects us with those who came before. It's like, you know, such an ancient thing, you know where people sing songs that are hundreds of years old. 

[00:24:39] Leah Payne: So that was kind of my second. 

[00:24:42] Jason Kirk: That's what I think every time I hear the, uh, the Miss Morgan skit or the willpower skit, I think about the connection with the ancients.

[00:24:49] Jason Kirk: Yeah.

[00:24:50] Kevin T Porter: We all feel connected to the ancient Miss Morgan. 

[00:24:53] Jason Kirk: And Kevin spoke up and said, Miss Morgan says, that's a live drummer we've got over there today. And I said, if he hits the drum one more time he's going to be a dead drummer. 

[00:25:05] Andrew Gill: Alright. Um, let's go around and share our results.

[00:25:13] Andrew Gill: Kevin, what did you get? No, 

[00:25:15] Kevin T Porter: I got Kevin. K Max? Kevin on Kevin. I got K Max, excuse me. 

[00:25:21] Leah Payne: Okay, wait but you answered the, the, the The Christian nationalism one, and you got K Max? 

[00:25:26] Kevin T Porter: Wow. Well, you know what? I, I said, I answered it that way. That was, I was being a little silly. I did. I didn't say like, it's too big for us to know anything or whatever.

[00:25:37] Kevin T Porter: Uh, wait, should I read this? 

[00:25:39] Andrew Gill: Oh yeah would you read the description of, uh, Kevin Mac's? 

[00:25:42] Kevin T Porter: Oh, it'd be my pleasure. “You are Kevin, the philosophizing dreamboat. People get lost in your eyes and find their way out by following your beautiful voice. You’d love to imagine yourself as the Christian David Bowie and you have the style to prove it. Although you have left the church, you have integrity and are willing to risk your status, money and fame to be true to your evolving beliefs.”

[00:26:06] Andrew Gill: Leah, what, what did you get? Why don't you say first? 

[00:26:08] Leah Payne: Well, I, so I also, I answered the question specifically, not trying to not become a Kevin, but then I got the Kevin, so then I try not to become a K Max, but I did.

[00:26:21] Leah Payne: I don't know how. There might be something with our quiz. We should get it worked out because I, I tried not to, 'cause I knew which questions were gonna be the ones that….well, I sort of figured. And so then I answered the same. I got two other ones that were really funny, but answering with the same questions.

[00:26:35] Leah Payne: I got a Falwell and a McKeehan, which was okay. 

[00:26:38] Andrew Gill: Yeah. So we have a surprise, um, fourth option, which is Jerry Falwell, which is what I got. 

[00:26:45] Leah Payne: See, but I did too, but I, I answered them all the same anyway, but yeah. 

[00:26:51] Kevin T Porter: Jerry Falwell, the fourth member of this band, like the way that people say, yeah, he was, you know, the fourth Beatle.

[00:26:58] Andrew Gill: Well let me read the description for Jerry Falwell here. Um, “You are a Jerry, the geriatric groupie as co-founder of Liberty University, the religious college where DC Talk got their start. You are eager to align yourself with God. and an effort to refresh your stodgy image with a younger generation. You are willing to change your views on whether something such as rap music is sinful if it helps you guide more people to follow your way of life. You frequently tell people how they ought to live and why your way is superior using techniques that run the gamut from kindness and forgiveness to to guilt and shame. Also, you once waged a media campaign against the kids TV show Teletubbies Accusing Tinky Winky of being gay and yet said nothing about the curious relationship of David and Goliath.”

[00:27:48] Leah Payne: Okay, so you got the Falwell, I bet that's because you said you like traditional music.

[00:27:52] Andrew Gill: I think so yeah, I think that was part of it.

[00:27:55] Jason Kirk: Yeah so I got As foreseen by my youth pastor, I got Toby. “The savvy mastermind”, it says, “Your entrepreneurial spirit inspires others and makes you a visionary who not only founded DC Talk, but nurtured the careers of many others through your label Gotee Records. Your agreeable nature helped convince the Christian music industry to give rap music a chance. But your business savvy keeps you from taking a stand on some deeply divisive issues.” So selling all that merch, just like Toby. 

[00:28:27] Leah Payne: What about the Michael one? 

[00:28:30] Andrew Gill: Yeah let's see. “You are Michael the Holy One. You are on a mission to spread the truth no matter who you have to work with to do so. You remain as committed to your beliefs about politics and faith as you are about your love of motorcycles. In a world where people struggle to walk the walk, you are someone who always talks the DC Talk.” It's rather a kind assessment of Michael Tait, I think. 

[00:28:53] Jason Kirk: Yeah, like maybe edit to where it says work with anyone, maybe throw in literally anyone.

[00:29:02] Leah Payne: Coming up, we'll go deeper with our guests on the significance of DC Talk for a generation of youth group kids. 

[Rock That Doesn’t Roll sting plays]

[Break]

[00:29:14] Andrew Gill: Leah, what are some of your takeaways of the quiz? 

[00:29:18] Leah Payne: It's been really interesting to listen to these two experts in the cosmos of CCM reflecting on their own experiences. So Kevin and Jason, I think that's been the funnest part is listening to y'all.

[00:29:31] Leah Payne: Do you feel traumatized? Have we traumatized you by putting you in your past? 

[00:29:36] Kevin T Porter: Yeah. Yeah. I think having to talk about any of this on a regular basis is like, yeah, it's an exercise in numbing yourself to trauma and just like taking a bath in it, I think. 

[00:29:49] Jason Kirk: Yeah. It's a comfy spot to be. I just feel like I'm being trotted back onto the Wednesday night youth group stage yet again, but no, no, I 

[00:29:56] Kevin T Porter: You don't want to spit a few bars right now?

[00:29:58] Jason Kirk: No no. 

[00:29:59] Kevin T Porter: Jason instinctually is just reaching for [laughter] Oh, it's, it's, it's spinning itself. 

[00:30:03] Jason Kirk: “The other night I met a girl and she looked at me so nice. I asked her for the digits and she didn't think twice. A couple days later…

[00:30:10] Kevin T Porter: On and on. 

[00:30:12] Andrew Gill: Amazing. 

[00:30:14] Leah Payne: Well, I wanted to ask from my perspective, your book is like just peak that world. And what is that like for you? 

[00:30:27] Andrew Gill: You know I have to say, as a full grow adult even from the moment you start reading your novel, Jason, it just puts you in the mindset so hardcore that it was, it was like re traumatizing.

[00:30:40] Andrew Gill: In the first few chapters, it was just like, Wow. Uh, such a closed off world view, but yeah. 

[00:30:45] Jason Kirk: Thank you. And I'm sorry. And I hear that a lot. And I'm, and I'm sorry to everyone who like, yeah, we, um, we started off with like the first chapter heading is a Switchfoot reference. And then you're getting the, um, Mountain Dew knockoff shirt that, that says meant to die on the first page.

And like, yeah, I just wanted to load it up with all of that stuff. And the first music reference that is like called out within the text is Switchfoot. You know, to sort of like walk people into it, like, Hey, maybe you didn't come from this world, but you know, Switchfoot, right? Okay, well, we're going to go way beyond Switchfoot.

[00:31:18] Jason Kirk: We're taking you all the way to rackets and drapes and brainwashing projects by the end. And yeah, I mean, like going back and I guess researching is the word, which feels weird talking about like, uh, stuff I grew up on. It's, uh, it wrecked all my Spotify algorithms that much is for sure. Welcome to my world.

[00:31:35] Andrew Gill: Yeah. Oh yeah. Now it's like, would you like to listen to Michael W. Smith?

[00:31:37] Jason Kirk: And I'm like, thank you. That is kind of you to ask, but not at this time. But yeah, loading the book up with this stuff, uh, was a chance to go back and, uh, I guess reassess and like some of it's, some of it's so cool and worth hanging on to, and some of it was just sort of dumped on us by people who wanted to spread the gospel with a dollar sign in it.

[00:31:59] Andrew Gill: Yeah. And. Kevin, you've been doing Good Christian Fun for like, what, five, six years now? 

[00:32:05] Kevin T Porter: 25 years before podcasts even existed. That's what it feels like sometimes when I'm like, well, well, what have we not covered yet? Um, the impetus for that came from having conversations like the ones we're having now and discovering people's connections. A friend of mine was telling us about, uh, his origin story with another close friend of ours. And it was from an improv show they were doing together. And she dropped a Michael W. Smith reference. And then from that moment on, he was like, Oh yeah, that's my girl. And like that friendship blossomed from there.

[00:32:41] Kevin T Porter: Because of the specificity of it and the window for that time is gone with those specific pieces of media and the culture and the way that it all functioned too from that. That doesn't exist anymore, but for us that were there, it was very odd. So it helps to talk to each other to try to understand why that was the case and what happened to us during that time.

And it feels like a support group in some of those ways. And I think after talking about it for However long it's been, I think we started doing that podcast eight years ago, seven or eight years ago. So there's certain things I've been exhausted. There's obviously like ties to Christian nationalism, the rise of Trumpism, the religious right, you know, all the Jesus and John Wayne core stuff that you could talk about and do.

And then the way. It's been commodified in the 21st century in this more specific lifestyle branding and now the way you're seeing on TikTok and stuff, but at the core of it, I think I almost want to take an approach to it the way I take to some family members and some parents of mine where the perspective truly is, I don't agree with you.

I think this is bad for the world. But I want to understand what your heart was behind it, if it did exist at all, if there was an intention that was good or a nature that was well meaning behind it. And maybe there wasn't, maybe it just fully intersected with capitalism at the time and, you know, super serving a micro niche market.

I think it can build empathy or compassion in some way to try to understand the environmental forces, the emotional environment that created those things and brought them to fruition and made them so, so much a part of our lives. And even tracking those three broken, beautiful boys from Liberty University can be a helpful access point, an inroad to that.

And three roads diverged in a Christian wood. And where did they go? I like thinking about it like that. Not in a way that's just like the easy slams, but trying to understand what is of value or merit still. 

[00:35:00] Jason Kirk: I think the thing for me is going back and looking and seeing all the acts in this world that I guess like k max Ended up showing that there is a world on the other side. I think of all those bands that this machine turned into commodities when they were signing contracts at 18, 19 years old. And then those kids became adults who ended up, against all odds, showing other kids that, um, that machine doesn't have to own you forever. 

[00:35:30] Leah Payne: Yeah. It's a really interesting experiment to use mass media and youth culture to pass on Christian identity because for a long time there, like Andrew's answer to the old hymns, it was like, it was like a form of traditionalism that. You wouldn't necessarily expect the young people to be like the ones who were the arbiters of, here it is, this is what it means to be a Christian. So it's a really interesting idea that you would be like, okay, we're going to use the teens. Pretty soon you have like these like rebel without a cause and then you're like, let's make them Christian.

Jason Kirk: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Let's make them rebels with a cause. 

I think the most interesting thing about DC Talk, their, um, post DC Talk era is, um, how long it took them to make a song about the post DC Talk era. Like, For years, they're, you know, a lot of what they're singing about are essentially the same things as before.

[00:36:28] Jason Kirk: Um, Toby is largely the same message as before. Um, Kevin is still, as of the last I've seen, still professing Christian. Um, obviously less preachy about certain things, but still. It's as if the band never broke up, even though everyone knows it broke up. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago, when on one of Toby's albums, they did that song about, like, what will it take to bridge the space between us?

[00:36:49] Jason Kirk: And it felt like a bookend to, um, Between You and Me, right? It felt like an echo of that. It felt like we're finally coming around to like, okay, this band that met at Liberty University has three members who, Leah, like you said, run the entire political spectrum. These three people. And like, what in the world do they have in common other than selling cruise tickets and like, uh, you know, some Spotify revenue?

[00:37:10] Jason Kirk: Um, They did a song about it and like that song resonates for me. 

[00:37:48] Andrew Gill: Wow. 

[00:37:49] Leah Payne: That's amazing. 

[00:37:50] Andrew Gill: Well, um, thank you Jason and Kevin for joining us today so much. We could not have done this without you. 

[00:37:57] Kevin T Porter: Oh, my pleasure. 

[00:37:58] Leah Payne: Yes. Yes. Thank you. 

[00:38:00] Andrew Gill: Kevin Porter is a co-host of the Good Christian Fun podcast, and Jason Kirk is the author of the novel Hell is a World Without You. You can find both of them fairly easily on social media.

[00:38:12] Andrew Gill: Thank you so much for joining us. Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll. 

[00:38:18] Next Episode Teaser: They're not all Christian bands. It's not all Christian rock and we won't preach or anything, like it's not about going to church. It's just we want you kids to have a place to go and see shows. There isn't any other place in the city.

[00:38:30] Andrew Gill: How a weird law in Seattle helped the Christian punk scene develop there. 

[00:38:35] Leah Payne: If you have a story to share or thoughts on this episode, please call our hotline. You can call anytime, 629-777-6336.

[00:38:45] Andrew Gill: To be the first to hear our episodes. And for full access to our bonus episodes, including a full interview with our quiz master, Mark Lund.

[00:38:55] Andrew Gill: Join us on Patreon along with listeners from New Zealand, the UK, and Nashville to name a few of the places our supporters live. patreon.com/rtdr, or just tap the link in the show notes. 

[00:39:10] Leah Payne: Find us on Substack and Instagram by searching Rock That Doesn't Roll. And of course, you should give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're listening to right now.

[00:39:21] Andrew Gill: Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme. 

[00:39:33] Leah Payne: Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Ketcher, and Dave Nadelberg edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it. 

[00:39:38] Andrew Gill: Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA.

[00:39:43] Andrew Gill: Courtney Fleurentine provides production oversight. I'm Andrew Gill. 

[00:39:48] Leah Payne: And I'm Leah Payne. Remember, rock all you want, but watch it when you start to roll.

Andrew [00:00:00] Leah, what's one marker that a subculture has really taken root? 

Leah [00:00:07] I think you really know you've made it. When people start making fun of you. Like when they start, when they start creating fake versions of you. 

Andrew [00:00:20] Yeah. And Christian rock has definitely made an impact if you measure it that way. You know, there's been a lot of parodies of Christian. 

Leah [00:00:28] Yeah. That's right. When we started, we pitched it based on the fact that other people had made fun of Christian rock. 

Andrew [00:00:36] There's the notable King of the Hill episode. 

Archical Tape [00:00:39] [King of the Hill clip plays]

Andrew [00:00:48] There's a South Park episode. 

Leah [00:00:49] There's a Seinfeld joke about Christian rock. 

Andrew [00:00:53] Yeah, yeah, definitely some jokes. 

Leah [00:00:55] Oh, Gilmore Girls. Lane has a Christian band. 

Andrew [00:00:58] That's right. Yeah, totally. Yeah. 

Archical Tape [00:01:01] [Gilmore Girls clip plays]

Leah [00:01:10] My favorite TV Christian band would have to be Crucifictorious from the show Friday Night Lights. 

Andrew [00:01:17] Oh, yeah. Did they ever show a full song of theirs on Friday Night Lights? 

Leah [00:01:21] I don't think so, because Friday Night Lights wasn't the kind of show to do the sort of montage you'd have to do to get a whole song in there. 

Andrew [00:01:30] And that's the thing about pop culture renditions of Christian pop singers. There are plenty of parodies, which makes sense. There's plenty to laugh at, but there are very few efforts made toward capturing the essence of CCM. Like Spinal Tap was a brilliant satire of metal, but at the same time, weirdly, Spinal Tap was also a legit great metal band, and that kind of affection is rarely given to CCM's portrayal in pop culture. 

Leah [00:02:00] It is really hard because there's a really specific set of terminologies and language and and slang that if you're in the evangelical subculture, you understand, but if you're outside of it and you try and write it, you can easily throw throw people off like it's the words aren't quite put together in the right way. And so I think a lot of attempts, they don't really work because I don't know, they, they don't have the heart, the right heart of it. 

Andrew [00:02:33] When it comes to portrayals of Christian pop music, what's it really take to get it right? From PRX and the Big Questions Project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist raised on Christian rock. 

Leah [00:02:54] And I'm Leah Payne, a religious historian and author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. In each episode, we look at how Christian music has shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one specific aspect of the music known as CCM. 

Andrew [00:03:11] Today on the show, can pop culture create a fictional Christian music act without resorting purely to ridicule? We sat down with the composers behind HBO's Righteous Gemstones and the award winning indie film Electric Jesus to find out. 

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:03:37] If you're going to be a preacher, you got to be able to talk about anything, all right? Even if it makes us uncomfortable, we stop doing that and the people burn in hell. 

Joseph Stephens [00:03:47] Yeah. My name is Joseph Stephens. I'm composer for the television series The Righteous Gemstones. 

Leah [00:03:53] Joseph Stevens has collaborated with Righteous Gemstones creator Danny McBride on all of his HBO shows, but none have centered around music like The Gemstones. If you've watched Righteous Gemstones, you definitely know this song.

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:04:13] [Song from Righteous Gemstones plays]

Andrew [00:04:26] Over the course of three seasons, Stephens has developed an expertise in the art of writing Christian music for fictional characters. And he's not alone. 

Chris White [00:04:36] I am Chris White. I'm a film producer. I'm a writer and director. And I created the film Electric Jesus, and wrote the words to the fake Christian rock songs on that soundtrack. 

Daniel Smith [00:04:48] My name is Daniel Smith, and I write songs as Danielson and I perform with my family, and, in this case, I wrote the music for these fake Christian bands, including 3:16. 

Leah [00:05:03] It's likely that more people know Danielson than Electric Jesus, but with our audience, who knows? It's an indie film set in 1986 that follows the rise and fall of a Christian heavy metal band made up of very earnest high school students. 

Electric Jesus Clip [00:05:18] So, what kind of music do you listen to? 

Electric Jesus Clip [00:05:22] Oh, quite a bit. Actually, I've been listening to wristband, Aaron Cross Bloodgood, Leviticus. Jerusalem. Messiah, prophet. Philadelphia. Barnabus. 

Leah [00:05:31] The biggest stars in it are Brian Baumgartner of The Office and Judd Nelson of lots of great 1980s teen movies. It won a bunch of awards at film festivals, but we think maybe the most memorable thing about the movie is the song "Commando for Christ". 

Andrew [00:06:09] While both projects end up a musical aspect of Christian culture, The Righteous Gemstones sets its story and one of the most high profile expressions of Christianity a Bible belt megachurch multimedia empire. 

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:06:24] Ain't too many pastors my kind of pedigree and experience would take a position like this. I'm used to headlining Colosseums. 

Andrew [00:06:32] While Electric Jesus exists in a world just outside that spotlight glow, in the 1980s era of youth groups and summer camps and tiny venues and bands that almost no one else has heard of besides listeners of this podcast. 

Electric Jesus Clip [00:06:47] Bands like Youth Choir, The Life Savers and LSU, which is the new version of The Life Savers and its insane. Undercover, Vector, Charlie Peacock, Bill Mason band... 

Andrew [00:06:57] On Gemstones, the conflicts have real monetary stakes. People are often fighting over large amounts of actual money, but in Electric Jesus, the stakes are more about personal growth and coming of age. 

Joseph Stephens [00:07:11] The first thing I wrote was the theme song. 

Leah [00:07:14] Joseph Stevens of Righteous Gemstones. 

Joseph Stephens [00:07:17] At the end of episode one, you see Eli putting on... he watches a VHS tape of The Jeffersons TV show in the 80s, he's reminiscing and, missing his, deceased wife. So on his television screen, you see the 80s version of The Righteous Gemstones television show. And so that has a theme song. That was the first thing I wrote for the show. 

Chris White [00:07:42] I did write all the lyrics, and I had no melody, really. 

Andrew [00:07:45] Chris White, writer and director of Electric Jesus. 

Chris White [00:07:48] So when Daniel and I sort of collaborating was like, no, let's let's make the songs fit your words. And I don't remember changing anything. So they were pretty much right off the notes app on my phone, which I had. We started doing demos off of those words. 

Daniel Smith [00:08:02] Yeah. There's those, those lyrics were written on stone tablets. They came from one high, I couldn't dare edit them [laughter].

Andrew [00:08:11] Which brings us to our first rule of how to write great songs for fictional Christian bands. Write something sincere, not a parody. 

Joseph Stephens [00:08:20] We're really not making fun of anything. I think that for gemstones, we always want it to feel earned and to feel legitimate. 

Andrew [00:08:28] Some of you listening right now are scoffing, because if you're only vaguely aware of the show, it seems like The Righteous Gemstones is definitely making fun of Christians. 

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:08:40] "So the church is in a fucking mall?". 

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:08:41] Yeah, Judy. Big whoop. All across America, capitalism's crumbling. That's when we step up. Plant churches and shut down big box stores. 

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:08:49] And what did this church used to be? 

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:08:51] A Sears, I believe? Hold up. 

Joseph Stephens [00:08:53] There are the occasional people that I've encountered that that would steer away from it because of their their fear that it's, something that's going to, you know, make fun of that world. 

Leah [00:09:04] I get the feeling that you have respect for the people who might be involved in it, but it's the family that's the joke, right? It's not necessarily the the people who follow them. 

Joseph Stephens [00:09:13] Right. Ultimately, this shows about how absurd these characters are and how, it's just the ridiculousness that they get themselves into. And repeatedly, the core of the show is all of these dynamics more than, some farce. 

Andrew [00:09:25] So even if the songs in The Righteous Gemstones make you laugh, they're not just mockery. The setting of a megachurch is one place where absurd plots about greed and backstabbing can play out. And the further the story gets from what Jesus preached, the more obvious the humor. 

Leah [00:09:42] But a song like "Misbehavin'" is not only an earworm, it also becomes an emotional touchstone within the show. 

Andrew [00:09:48] It's the song upon which the family's fortunes were built. Scoring a number one hit for their mother in the 1970s. With their mother now deceased, her kids carry on her legacy by continuing to sing it. 

The Righteous Gemstones Clip [00:10:00] [The Righteous Gemstones song "Misbehavin'" plays]

Leah [00:10:21] When you look at the film Electric Jesus, it also follows this rule. It's comedy, but it's not making fun of the main characters. 

Chris White [00:10:28] There's nothing worse than like, listening to a joke song, that's just a terrible song. 

Leah [00:10:32] Director Chris White wrote Electric Jesus as a way to pay homage to his own experiences growing up as a youth group kid in the mid 1980s. He wrote the screenplay and all the lyrics for the fictional Christian songs in the movie. And not just any CCM songs, but heavy metal lyrics for a fake high school band with big CCM dreams. 

Chris White [00:10:56] Like you can't listen to more than 20s of a hey, listen to this bad song. It's like watching a bad movie, you know, like, who wants to sit through two hours of that? 

Andrew [00:11:04] But that meant Chris White actually had to create good music, so he approached someone with major indie music cred. 

Music [00:11:18] [Electric Jesus music plays]

Daniel Smith [00:11:27] What makes the soundtrack interesting, I think, is that I don't like jokey music. So where there's jokes within and then we're still trying to write great music. 

Chris White [00:11:38] I wanted to treat the 15 year old evangelical Christian boy who is writing this music. I just decided I loved him, and I loved his spirit, and I loved his evangelical fervor, and I wanted to honor that. So if you if as a writer, if I if I take that character and I mean, he starts talking about how he wants to go Commando for Christ and so like doesn't recognize that that could be interpreted in another way. 

Music [00:12:08] [Electric Jesus music plays]

Andrew [00:12:16] The comedy of the Electric Jesus lyrics springs from the naivete of the characters. 

Chris White [00:12:21] I'm sure if you've grown up in church, you know that sometimes things are said, often from a pulpit that just make you cringe a little. You're like, I don't think you mean it that way. Yeah, but it's so sincere. And he sings it without a wink. There's a sweetness to it or something. 

Music [00:12:37] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Joseph Stephens [00:12:42] I grew up in a small town in North Carolina, and religion was a part of it. 

Andrew [00:12:47] Tips for writing amazing songs for imaginary Christian bands: rule number two? Draw upon your own childhood memories of the church. 

Joseph Stephens [00:12:55] As a child we went to as this Methodist church go every Sunday, it's huge. It's really beautiful inside. When I was like, really young, like I was in choir with a church and, got out of it pretty quickly, though, as I, you know, hit middle, middle school and that kind of area, I got to learn about rock n roll and wanted to explore music a little more. Or more of a riskier take. And I guess I was attracted more towards the dark side of the rock and roll side of things. 

Andrew [00:13:22] On the other hand, the Electric Jesus team stuck around a lot longer in church. Their experiences were more complicated, but still generally positive. 

Chris White [00:13:31] I didn't so much deconstruct my faith as as much as I reconstructed my faith. And in doing that, I got okay with the people and their motives and some of the stuff, you know, some of the stuff I experienced as a teenage evangelical, you know, youth group kid. You know, some people had really bad, traumatic, awful, horrible experiences in that world. That wasn't my experience. So, though there were certainly issues that came up, but I just, in processing that and thinking through and reconstructing my faith, I just came to forgive those people. And once I did that, it was like, oh, man, I love all this. What a way to grow up. It was, there was a sweetness to it, I sometimes have forgotten. 

Daniel Smith [00:14:16] I think I was just a frustrated Christian artist kid. Because it seemed to me that art and, Christian culture wasn't going to work together. 

Andrew [00:14:27] Daniel Smith of the Danielson Family wrote the music for Electric Jesus. 

Daniel Smith [00:14:31] I was a kid who prayed and at the same time wanted to see art reflected in the culture that I was in. The one year I was forced to listen to Christian music when the traveling preacher came through and, did this backwards masking sermon. 

Leah [00:14:46] The backwards masking sermon was one of the greatest hits of 1980s evangelicalism. Preachers claimed that certain secular rock music contained hidden messages that would subliminally influence listeners. Therefore, the only safe music to listen to was contemporary Christian music. 

Daniel Smith [00:15:04] I was exposed to Larry Norman and to Resurrection Band, so that was great. But aside from that, it was pretty awful. And after the one year, my dad was like, is it, do you like this music? And I said, no. He said, me neither. You don't have to listen to Christian music. And. 

Andrew [00:15:18] You got to tell. 

Chris White [00:15:18] The story about it. Tell the story about the band shirt you wore to school. Okay. It's my favorite. 

Andrew [00:15:22] Yeah. 

Daniel Smith [00:15:24] So it's. 

Leah [00:15:24] A safe. 

Daniel Smith [00:15:25] Space. Okay? It's a safe space. So there was. We saw a band called glad. Anybody know black glad. 

Andrew [00:15:31] Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. 

Andrew [00:15:33] Glad was a Christian prog rock and yacht rock band that pivoted to acapella music in 1988 and saw huge success. This songs from their 1983 album No Less Than All. 

Andrew [00:15:46] Summer are once in. Wrong. 

Andrew [00:15:50] The chains have been broken. 

Chris White [00:15:54] That's the worst name ever for a bad. 

Daniel Smith [00:15:58] It's pretty bad. What was worse was wearing the three quarter sleeve rock n roll shirt that said, glad on it to my public middle school. And I remember some kids say, who's glad? And I never wore that shirt again. Because he's probably wearing an Ozzy shirt, you know. 

Chris White [00:16:21] Right. Again, just knowing you like I know you know, Daniel, that just makes me cringe for you every time I hear that story. 

Andrew [00:16:29] But back in the 90s, Daniel didn't give up on Christian art altogether, even if he did start listening to secular music again. After graduating from art school, he went even deeper into evangelical culture. He moved from new Jersey to Chicago to live at the Jesus People USA commune. 

Daniel Smith [00:16:47] And that's when I. Learned about, you know, the Christian music happening. 

Leah [00:16:52] Jesus people, USA or Japan that was founded by the Resurrection Band, raise band to fans in 1972. They had a record label magazine and put on the Cornerstone Festival, among many other community ventures. 

Daniel Smith [00:17:07] Like I learned about Tooth and Nail when I was at Jesus People, because that's all you're allowed to listen to. 

Andrew [00:17:12] Finding out about tooth and nail records during his six month stay at Japanese, worked out pretty well for Daniel. His whole career in music began with Tooth and Nail. The label was the only one to respond when he sent his demo tape out to Christian and secular record companies. So even if he didn't like most of the Christian music he encountered, he didn't carry a grudge against it. 

Leah [00:17:35] So not bearing the burden of unprocessed feelings toward CCM might help with the quality of creating fake Christian music. 

Andrew [00:17:44] Which brings us to rule number three for writing amazing songs for made up Christian music acts. Borrow from the best. 

Joseph Stephens [00:17:51] It's discovering the old stuff and and being introduced to that, and having a lot of respect for the way that they infuse their values into their music. 

Leah [00:18:01] For Joseph Stevens, it was writing country music that occasionally dipped into Christian music. 

Joseph Stephens [00:18:06] Like Johnny Cash being in the sort of the marquee version of that. Because I think he was the best. I think that his songs, they're all good. 

Andrew [00:18:17] Children playing the grown up game. 

Andrew [00:18:24] And the thing that's really. 

Andrew [00:18:26] Is that we lose the faith we had when we were children. 

Joseph Stephens [00:18:31] Well, I'm sometimes kind of interchangeable. There's a lot of, like, repeating themes, but it's always so good and it's always so fresh to me. 

Andrew [00:18:38] Knowing that Joseph was looking to Johnny Cash for inspiration. You can almost hear the pivotal gemstone song Misbehavin as an answer to cash. 

Leah [00:18:52] For Electric Jesus. Daniel Smith tapped into his surprising affinity for not weirdo icons like the shags or half Japanese. His love of those artists is well-documented. No, it wasn't obscure high art, as you might expect from Danielson. Instead, he dusted off his love of the lowbrow art of hair metal. 

Daniel Smith [00:19:15] I went back, I started with what I was listening to when I was 12, in sixth grade, which was Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Ratt, Twisted Sister. 

Andrew [00:19:27] Not gonna take it. Well, we ain't gonna die. Go to take. 

Daniel Smith [00:19:36] But at the time, I was listening to it every day, just, you know, mainstream metal until my dad was outraged. 

Andrew [00:19:44] Daniel's dad got outraged and imposed the Christian music only rule. But at that time, it was really hard to find the good stuff that was being made. 

Chris White [00:19:52] I think Dan and I both agreed that Christian rock and Christian metal in particular gets just a lot of disparaging, you know, but there's there's just bad music in all genres. You know, there's there's terrible secular bands that were just as bad as any bad Christian band, and they're also really good Christian musicians. That made really, I thought, great music in the 80s. I just think there were fewer Christian bands, so the bad ones really stood out. And also, there's a sincerity in Christian rock lyrics that just isn't cool. 

Daniel Smith [00:20:25] Well, also, there was no artistic critique in the culture at all. So. So there was no Christian, you know, Pitchfork or whatever. So everything was great. Well, that's not true. Yeah, yeah. 

Chris White [00:20:38] Well, it was, I he just passed away recently. Brian Quincy Newman, he would write reviews and he was kind of loathed a little because he actually did start calling out some bands and he would say, now this record isn't very good. And he was reviled by many people. It's like, come on, and this is for God. Come on. Can we just enjoy this? 

Andrew [00:20:58] But hey, that's what these L.A. guys want to see. 316 In the belly of the beast. And if a club owner gives you a good report, you guys are in. You're going to blow him away. And when you get to L.A., you're going to blow stripper away to. I won't be surprised if you get signed on the spot. 

Chris White [00:21:19] I figured that I needed to hear that band play three different songs, and I needed them to play commandos for Christ, like a couple of times. That was the one that I wanted to. You leave the movie and you can sing that one. But we made Barabbas the heavy one. Well, we're like, that's their street cred. Yeah. Good song. 

Andrew [00:21:40] Boram is to. 

Chris White [00:21:45] And then girl was the you know, the Jesus is my boyfriend. You know, the the power ballad which would have been part of the genre. 

Andrew [00:21:52] For you and. I love Jesus too. 

Leah [00:22:03] Are two examples of fictional Christian groups are both from bygone musical eras. So that is another good rule to mark. 

Andrew [00:22:10] Rule number four match the music to an era. 

Leah [00:22:13] In Electric Jesus. There's a logic to hitting these stylistic benchmarks. 

Chris White [00:22:18] We understand that the 1516 year old kids couldn't compose songs like that like us, but we just treated it like it's like, in your memory, you know, when you had a favorite band when you were a kid? A lot of times you go back and listen to them. You're like, oh man, I can't believe I like that so much. You know, it doesn't sound good at all, but in your memory, it sounds epic. You know, so really, what you're hearing in Daniel's music, you're hearing what the songs sound like in memory more than maybe what they actually sound. 

Daniel Smith [00:22:47] And that's why it's produced with this full, full 80s production. I think it's funnier that, yeah, this is the way it sounded to these kids in their head. Of course, if you were standing in front of them watching them live, it would have sounded awful. But it's much funnier to hear through their ears. And also, if we decided early on, it'd be much funnier, to play a trick on the audience for them to leave the movie. Singing Commando for Christ in their head because the band should not have been that good. 

Leah [00:23:18] It's one thing to find something to love in classic country and hair metal, but what about country Latin? That blending of country music with adult contemporary pop that emerged in the late 1970s and early 80s? The gemstones character of Amy Lee, played by Sugar Land's Jennifer Nettles, had a hit in that era as well. 

Joseph Stephens [00:23:38] We did a song with Jennifer Nettles called Sassy on Sunday that is very much like in the world of this Barbara mandrell country and pop. Back in the 80s. 

Andrew [00:23:48] Sassy on Sunday, even on Monday, comes back. Tuesday. Always a blues day. 

Joseph Stephens [00:23:55] I just went and listen to a ton of Barbara mandrell and it was amazing. 

Andrew [00:23:59] Amy Lee is a lot like Tammy Faye Baker crossed with country singer Barbara mandrell. They both began their careers as teenagers Amy Lee singing and mandrell playing the pedal steel guitar. Eventually, mandrell had massive hits with songs like Sleeping, Single in a Double Bed and I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool. In the early 80s, she hosted a variety show on NBC that attracted roughly 40 million viewers per week. 

Joseph Stephens [00:24:28] There's a weird moment where, like, I'm Barbara mandrell kind of did it, where, country music became pop songs, or I think she has a Christian album. So that was definitely the touchstone for that song. 

Andrew [00:24:40] You set my life to music. He gave me. 

Andrew [00:24:46] Words to sing. 

Leah [00:24:48] Sassy on Sunday shows up in a moment when the family is gathered around Amy Lee's widower, Eli Gemstone, who is in a coma. Judy Gemstone the heir apparent to Amy Lee's musical legacy. Hey, check this out. Puts on the song to try to pull Eli back from the brink of death. Sassy on my mama. It's a moment when the audience needs to remember why they care what happens to this family. 

Andrew [00:25:13] I keep a smile. 

Leah [00:25:15] On home, daddy. You hear mama. 

Andrew [00:25:17] Singing to you. Me and Amber are even getting along. 

Leah [00:25:21] Didn't anything. Don't you never wake up? We have fun, gossip. 

Joseph Stephens [00:25:25] Jennifer just kind of ran with it. You know for sure. Like, lyrically, that's all her for the most part, yeah. She tracked something on her iPhone and sent it to us, and it was just her playing a piano. It was. We wanted to feel like different. We wanted it rather than have like the band that plays in our megachurch. Jim stands upstage stuff. So we brought in her band that she tours with and recorded in Nashville. And yeah, it has this kind of sheen to it that that is hopefully, you know, doing a job of of feeling of a different era. 

Andrew [00:25:57] The band and Electric Jesus has a sheen too, even though if the film were a documentary, Chris White says they wouldn't have been very good. But the actors had to sell the idealized versions of the songs for the soundtrack. For the film to work, they had to find actors who could embody the fake Christian performer, as well as Grammy Award winner Jennifer Nettles embodies Amy Lee gemstone. 

Leah [00:26:21] You found this young man who has like, a total throwback 80s glam band sound. They don't really make them like that much anymore. How did you find this guy? 

Chris White [00:26:32] I met him, working on a project, where he was an actor, and I just liked him. I just we kind of hit it off, and I knew he could sing. And so when it came down to us doing the movie, I was like, oh, yeah, Daniel, I'm kind of wanting this guy to be the guy. So we had to sing for Daniel. 

Daniel Smith [00:26:52] I love it. Well, I remember having the the basic recording done and, and now he's flying in to, to my home to, to Philadelphia area to to record his vocal. And I don't know that he can really do this and the demo is, is me singing because I can, I can sing. Hi. 

Andrew [00:27:13] Let's go down. Oh. 

Daniel Smith [00:27:22] I'm known to be a singer. 

Andrew [00:27:25] Know. 

Daniel Smith [00:27:27] But I can't do that. Five I know that he nailed. So anyway, so he goes in there and he had had the recording at home, so he had rehearsed it and he went in and just nailed it. And I just remember feeling so relieved. Yeah. This is going to work. 

Andrew [00:27:42] Yeah, but that does. 

Chris White [00:27:48] In your memory. You know, when you had a favorite band when you were a kid? It sounds epic. 

Andrew [00:27:54] Rule number five use hindsight to your advantage and make your fictional band better than real bands from the era. I think this is a key part of the secret sauce that makes Electric Jesus's songs great. They're not concerned with authentically recreating what actual Christian hair metal sounded like in 1986. There's something even better than the real thing, and I think Joseph Stevens and Jennifer Nettles did the same thing with Sassy on Sunday. If you listen to Barbara mandrell Christian album from that era, there's nothing so energetic, catchy, or, well, sassy. It's a lot of reverential, churchy songs. Sassy on Sunday sounds a lot more like man, Darrell's decidedly secular hit Sleeping Single, and a double. 

Andrew [00:28:38] Bass even single and a double bass. Take it all the things I wish I'd say. I should have helped you. 

Andrew [00:28:46] But I let you go. Now. I was sleeping all along. 

Andrew [00:28:53] I can't say for sure why mandrell secular music is more exciting and memorable than her Christian songs, but her album He Set My Life to Music is seen as a sign of just how successful mandrell was in 1982. She was so successful that no one could stop her from making a gospel album from the. Leave the. Songs in the style of He Set My Life to Music would not be very memorable on an HBO show in 2022. 

Leah [00:29:27] Use the hazy nature of memory to your advantage to make listeners believe that certain genre hopping songs are really from that bygone era, even if something like Sassy on Sunday never actually existed, the audience will believe that it could have. 

Andrew [00:29:42] When you get down to it, that's kind of like what some kid was always doing anyhow copying musical styles and adding lyrics about Christian themes. 

Joseph Stephens [00:29:51] You know, we're playing with the genres, but we ultimately want them to feel pretty believable. Do you want it to feel like some kind of lost single that no one's really discovered? 

Andrew [00:30:01] I work hard all week making everyone happy. Sunday I get sassafras. 

Joseph Stephens [00:30:10] There's a lot of really popular hip hop music that shares a lot of similarities with some of, you know, what the megachurch modern, rock church band sounds like at its core? Yeah, they're pretty similar. 

Leah [00:30:25] When it comes to the worship band in the fictional Gemstone Church. That is a bunch of method actors, if you will. It's a real band of locals in Charleston, South Carolina, but they also follow Joseph's feel good vibes rule. 

Joseph Stephens [00:30:38] I think there's probably a sound, you know, with a certain tonality to the instruments, at least for the stuff that's on the stage. I mean, it's a rock band at its core, but it has this kind of, kind of sparkle to it and, slick, I guess. And so I think that overall, like, everything kind of needs to kind of maintain that status. And so we don't want it to sound like overly like, cool, you know, and have, you know, like, the song is going to be accessible in a way that don't challenge you, as a listener. But also have some surprises. 

Andrew [00:31:20] And all that sparkle works great for a big budget HBO show like Righteous Gemstones. As for Electric Jesus, however, the project called for something far more personal and intimate. 

Chris White [00:31:32] That the entire Electric Jesus soundtrack is just me and Daniel trying to entertain each other and make each other laugh at the whole record. Is that and and there's some great, you know, jump around and sing kind of cool songs too. But for the most part, it's just, our wives kind of rolling their eyes when we said we came up with another song. 

Daniel Smith [00:31:53] That. That's correct. 

Leah [00:31:56] They wound up writing songs for the film's main band. 316 the secular bands they encountered, Satan's Clutch and Bloody Mess. 

Daniel Smith [00:32:05] And we did have a worship band called Joy explosion. 

Chris White [00:32:09] That's right, we did, which is probably the finest song on that soundtrack, and we hope that churches everywhere, we'll start performing that song. It's called We Just by the way, you guys, and in the lyrics to the song, Are We just and that's it. I mean, it's just that on repeat for like 3.5 minutes. It's a, it's a mood. 

Daniel Smith [00:32:31] And it's, it's from the heart. 

Andrew [00:32:35] And it's. 

Andrew [00:32:36] It's a real way. 

Andrew [00:32:37] To. 

Andrew [00:32:38] Separate the goats from the sheep, if you will. You know, people who've been in that world know exactly what that is. 

Chris White [00:32:46] It's a to minister. It's like you're going to God, and God. 

Andrew [00:32:50] Would just. 

Chris White [00:32:51] Ask you to just just, you know, God just tonight. Oh, God. Lord, just just be your make your presence known because we just we're just these little tiny little people. 

Andrew [00:33:04] There's also a lot of striper references in the movie. Three sixteens greatest aspiration is to open for the iconic 80s Christian hair metal band striper, and they cover a striper song on the soundtrack. And even though the filmmakers probably didn't have to. 

Chris White [00:33:21] Travel to see Striper in Plymouth, Plymouth, we rented out a movie theater to show. 

Daniel Smith [00:33:26] That's right. And so, wow. And they came and they brought some of their family. 

Chris White [00:33:30] Remember when we started before it rolled? I like did a, you know, prescreening talk and I'm like, please understand this is about a band that fails, which is nothing at all like striper because you guys succeeded. 

Daniel Smith [00:33:41] They're sitting in front of us and we're sitting watching their every move. Hopefully they're laughing at the right places and the movie's over and they're clapping. Turn around. And they they loved it. 

Andrew [00:33:52] So we're so relieved, you know? 

Andrew [00:33:55] And afterward they grabbed a bite with the lead singer. 

Chris White [00:33:58] But then at the end at dinner, he was like, I related to that band, you know, people cheering us and mocking us. That's right. You know, he, he had experiences that he felt like, connected with him, like, and his experience in that band, which that was awesome. 

Daniel Smith [00:34:14] That. Yeah, that was very cool. 

Chris White [00:34:16] I was scared he was they would be like, hey, we were actually sold a lot of records, you know? You know, we're right. 

Andrew [00:34:22] Right. 

Daniel Smith [00:34:22] Well, you know, you know, you never know because, humor in Christian culture, it's tricky. 

Chris White [00:34:30] Yeah, but he has a sense of humor. Oh, totally can see that. I mean, when you call, you record with the devil or god damn evil, or, you know, he's doing that to be. He's messing with people. He's trying to be funny and provocative. So he gets it. 

Daniel Smith [00:34:43] You know. 

Leah [00:34:44] When you think about it, making a fictional Christian band believable comes down to caring. Caring about the quality of the music and caring about how the listener hears it. And when you care, it can do more for you personally, too. 

Andrew [00:34:58] When you finish Commando for Christ, you know, and you, you could hear this beautiful better than it actually was in the 80s. Christian hair metal. What did 12. Year old Daniel. Think of that. You know, because that's what it seems like. That's what you were looking for. But you never found. 

Daniel Smith [00:35:15] Yeah. Good. I never thought about it that way. He would've loved it. Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's it's, you know, it's it sounds like Def Leppard, but it's something that that my dad will let me listen to. So that would have been where I would've been. Great. 

Chris White [00:35:31] It would have been great. 

Leah [00:35:33] So much of Electric Jesus is about reflecting on your younger self. And the. A lot of what we've done with this podcast is, invite reflection. And I just wondered, would you two have any advice for your younger selves based on what you know now. 

Daniel Smith [00:35:49] When you're in a church environment and you feel, stressed out, you feel burdened by the message? That's religion. That's not. That's not the kingdom of God. And then, if you hear a message that feels like good news and it feels like a relief. That's the gospel. 

Chris White [00:36:12] Well, one thing would be like, I would tell my young self, go find Daniel Smith. 

Andrew [00:36:18] Haha. 

Chris White [00:36:18] Just because, I've so cherished our friendship as adults. I wish I'd known you 30 years sooner. I would have really sparked with your ideas back then. I think one of the things is I would tell young me, to run away with a ban. You know, I've just. I had people in the movie came out. People would connect with us and say they like the movie, and it would be like, we want to be Christian filmmakers in there. They were just getting bad advice, you know, like that they should be making their art more Christian faith based films, that kind of thing. And I would just say, no, you know, just, you know, as you feel led by God, go for it. You know, do it. And that's probably what I want to say to young Chris. 

Andrew [00:37:01] You know, Leah, I feel like, in a way, making this podcast is a form of what Chris is talking about. You know, just going for it. In a way, I think our work together on this is followed some unspoken rules, maybe kind of like the ones we've been laying out in this episode. And hopefully that's differentiated us from lots of other podcasts out there about the topic of Christian music. 

Leah [00:37:25] I, we definitely wanted to put a lot of care into what we're making here, a lot of heart. And I think based on the name of the show Rock That Doesn't Roll. A lot of people might expect us to be making fun of Christian music, but we're definitely trying to do something richer and more subtle. Yeah. 

Andrew [00:37:49] You know, we want to leave it open for listeners to bring their own interpretation to the name Rock That Doesn't Roll. The song is the Rock that doesn't roll, and that's clearly referencing Jesus, right? But for me, Rock That Doesn't roll is like the experience of Christian music. It just stays with you. It doesn't roll away. You know, and if you don't talk about it and think about it, it can just be there weighing on you, you know, so we might as well look at it closely, figure out how to live with it. You know. 

Leah [00:38:25] I'm glad we're having this talk because for me, Rock That Doesn't roll has always been about it's very powerful. Like, you can't roll that rock away. And I, I love, you know, thinking about how. Christian music has shaped people in super powerful ways. So it's funny that we both had that metaphor in our mind, and we're just now talking about a very large rock. A large rock. That's right. 

Andrew [00:38:58] And it just can't roll. Yeah. You know, it's not a rolling Stone, that's for sure. 

Andrew [00:39:02] Yeah, yeah. 

Leah [00:39:02] Good luck getting it. 

Andrew [00:39:04] Probably gathering moss on on one side. 

Leah [00:39:06] Thank you to our guests. Joseph Stevens, who is hard at work on the fourth season of The Righteous Gemstones and the Electric Jesus creative team of Chris White and Danielle Smith. 

Andrew [00:39:17] Next time on rock that doesn't roll. 

Chris White [00:39:19] It's funny, people still to this day call. 

Andrew [00:39:22] A stripper sometimes. 

Chris White [00:39:24] I don't understand that it's spelled with a Y. How do you get stripper out of. 

Andrew [00:39:28] I don't know. I don't. 

Andrew [00:39:28] Get it. The most iconic of Christian metal bands. Stripper. 

Leah [00:39:33] If you have a story to share or thoughts on this episode, please call our hotline. You can call any time (629) 777-6336. 

Andrew [00:39:43] To be the first to hear our episodes and for full access to our bonus episodes, join us on Patreon! Patreon.com smart. Dr.. Or just tap the link in the show notes. 

Leah [00:39:57] Find us on Substack and Instagram by searching. Rock that doesn't roll. And of course, you should give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're using to listen right now. 

Andrew [00:40:06] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a big questions project from NPR with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Disarm. 

Leah [00:40:17] Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Natal Burke edit the show. Michael Rafael mixes it. 

Andrew [00:40:22] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Florentine provides production oversight. I'm Andrew. 

Leah [00:40:30] Gill. And I'm Liam Payne. Remember, rock all you want, but watch it when you roll.

RTDR S2E7 - Yellow and Black Attack Transcript 

Leah [00:00:01] Picture this. It's 1986. The Cold War is at a fever pitch. And when it comes to political rhetoric and mass media, the whole world is locked into this conflict. 

Archival Tape [00:00:15] "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" 

Leah [00:00:20] Between the forces of freedom and the commies in the USSR and China. 

Archival Tape [00:00:26] "This is the emergency broadcast system. We're under attack by conventional forces of the Russian army. It is believed the lead waves were disguised in commercial charter flights. Communications have broken down in other parts of the country."

Andrew [00:00:38] So the Cold War was clearly delineated. Good guys versus bad guys, at least to kids in the 80s. But it wasn't the only good guys versus bad guys threat facing American society in the 1980s. A lot of people feared a much darker, much more sinister enemy than the Soviets. 

Archival Tape [00:00:58] "Dungeons and Dragons is a real serious problem. I began to look through the instruction manual, and I see here how to cast magical spells and, mage spells and cleric spells and..."

Leah [00:01:11] Yes, those were the days. A national obsession, a paranoia, a fear of the occult that was so widespread it got its own name: The Satanic panic. 

Andrew [00:01:24] For parents worried their kids would get caught by the Lord of darkness, rock music, specifically heavy metal from notoriously debauched bands like Mötley Crüe and Twisted Sister, was a big threat. 

Archival Tape [00:01:38] "Mr. Snider, what is the name of your fan club? The fan club was called the SMF Friends of Twisted Sister. And, what does SMF stand for when it's spelled out? It stands for the Sick Motherfucking Friends of Twisted Sister. Is this also a Christian group?" 

Leah [00:01:55] What was an evangelical teen metal fan to do when the whole genre was tainted by Belzebubs? 

Andrew [00:02:10] You start your own cold war with Satan and you send him straight to Hades with help from Stryper, the most iconic Christian metal band ever. And you know, I have to say, when I would mention this podcast to people of a certain age, Stryper was always the band they asked me about first. Iconic.

Leah [00:02:31] Iconic. Yes, that's right, striper combined flamboyant, gender bending 80s metal with a cosmic battle for the souls of the young, along with truly spectacular spandex and fantastic perms. I'm editorializing here. I love the perms. 

Andrew [00:02:50] At least you're being transparent with your editorializing. And that Stryper sent the devil to the bad place, they found that the enemy of their souls wasn't their only foe. 

Leah [00:03:06] From PRX and the Big Questions project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll, I'm Leah Payne, a religious historian and author of God Gave Rock n Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. 

Andrew [00:03:17] And I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist raised on Christian rock. In each episode, we look at how Christian music has shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one specific aspect of the music known as CCM. 

Leah [00:03:30] Today on the show, we follow the epic battle for the soul of striper, the undisputed kings of 1980s Christian metal who wanted to fight Satan on his home turf: The raucous world of mainstream metal. 

Michael Sweet [00:03:46] People still to this day call us "stripper" sometimes. I don't understand that. It's spelled with a Y. How do you get stripper out of–? I don't know. I don't get it. 

Andrew [00:03:56] Michael Sweet is the lead singer of Stryper, not stripper, who grew up singing with his family and Whittier, California. In 1975, Michael and his big brother Robert converted to Christianity. They were actually watching a famous Assembly of God televangelist named Jimmy Swaggart at the time. 

Archival Tape [00:04:14] Jimmy Swaggart: "For Jesus said, I am come, that they might have life. And that they might have it more abundantly."

Andrew [00:04:20] And they decided to join what you might call the Lord's army. 

Leah [00:04:24] But like a lot of teens in Southern California, they were soon captured by the forces of hell, aka Hard Rock. 

Andrew [00:04:37] Growing up in Whittier on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Michael and Robert Sweet dreamed of being spandex clad rock gods. They got really into Kiss and Van Halen. 

Michael Sweet [00:04:50] Van Halen is sacred. They're my favorite band of all time. 

Andrew [00:04:54] Between the two of them, they had a good foundation for a band. Robert was a talented drummer. And as for Michael: 

Michael Sweet [00:05:01] When I was young, I started singing. My grandmother used to pay me a quarter to sing, and she tried to get me to sing Elvis and Ray Price. She loved Ray Price. "Release Me", oh, please release me. And I got more into opera and I got more into, other singers that had more of an operatic voice, operatic approach. And that's how I changed my voice and kind of developed that, you know, the more of that thing chesty, operatic voice. 

Music [00:05:31] [Stryper song plays]

Andrew [00:05:41] As you can hear, Michael could really sing and he could write too. Then the brothers added keyboards and bass, and before you knew it, they had a real rock band, which they called Roxx Regime. Rock, spelled with two X's, because that was a whole thing in the 80s. 

Leah [00:05:58] But if you know anything about 80s rock, especially metal, you know that instruments are really only part of the story. To make it as a metal band, Roxx Regime needed the right look. 

Michael Sweet [00:06:08] So once I joined the group, I started taking my look a lot more serious. I was 12, almost 13. I started going out and shopping for clothes and the best place to go for that at that time especially was Hollywood. So we'd make trips down to Hollywood, you know, every every couple weeks. And then we started altering and customizing the clothing and putting yellow tape on it. We were into the yellow and black thing starting around like 78, 79. Started putting tape on stuff, painting stuff, yellow. Doing it all on our own. We worked hard on our look. 

Andrew [00:06:51] Clothes weren't the only components. 

Michael Sweet [00:06:53] In terms of my hair. I was a perm guy. I always got those silly perms. 

Leah [00:06:57] That's right. Roxx Regime was a real deal glam metal band, known in some circles as a hair band, thanks to their very elaborate hairdos and a lot of glamorous cosmetics, too. 

Andrew [00:07:09] So Roxx Regime got all dolled up and started performing around Southern California and places like Pasadena and Long Beach, where, incidentally, they opened for a band you might have heard of...Metallica? 

Leah [00:07:22] Yes. But the place where the glam-iest glam bands went to see and be seen, and hopefully discovered by a record label in the 1980s was Hollywood, especially the den of iniquity known as the Sunset Strip. 

Archival Tape [00:07:35] And everybody was drinking beer and screaming out of their cars. And there was the prostitutes and the drug dealers. And there was, as you got closer and closer into the strip, it got more and more electric. 

Andrew [00:07:49] That's Nikki Sixx, also with two axes from Mötley Crüe, another band from Hollywood with an over-the-top look and known for being the peak of 80s sex, drugs and rock n roll. 

Archival Tape [00:08:00] "We wrote music to rehearse. We rehearsed to play gigs. We played gigs to drink and get laid."

Leah [00:08:09] Mötley Crüe was also known for using a bit of the Satanic in their music. The band's breakout album was 1983's Shout at the Devil, which, like Van Halen's Running with the Devil, used imagery of the Evil One to great commercial success. 

Andrew [00:08:24] Was Mötley Crüe really, truly into Satan? That's up for debate. One thing is for sure, though, the strip was a competitive environment and using satanic imagery was one way to get a lot of attention. 

Leah [00:08:40] While Mötley Crüe delved into the occult, Michael and Robert said, hell no to the devil. They wanted Rock's regime to reflect their status as Team Jesus, not Team Satan. They renamed their band Stryper, a reference to a Bible verse, Isaiah 53:5. "By his stripes we are healed", which many Christians take to be a reference to the wounds Jesus received after being whipped before his execution on the cross. 

Andrew [00:09:04] In his memoir, Michael Sweet says there wasn't a lot of forethought in this. They chose the name Stryper and then found the verse in Isaiah, and they figured this acronym would fit salvation through redemption, yielding peace, encouragement, and righteousness. Why not? And just like the name suggests, Stryper was known for very on the nose songs that let you know what they were about. 

Music [00:09:44] "The hair is long and the screams are loud and clearThe clothes are tight, earrings dangling from the ears. No matter how we look, we'll always praise His name.And, if you believe, you've got to do the same."

Andrew [00:09:54] And mainstream record companies took notice. Enigma records, which was definitely not a Christian label, was interested. Enigma was home to bands known for their debauchery and appreciation for the occult. Like Mötley Crüe and Poison. The band learned just how non-Christian the label was when they visited for the first time, and the office was decorated in honor of a famous Satanist. 

Michael Sweet [00:10:17] They were celebrating Alister Crowley's birthday, and I think really more so, at least I hope it was more of a joke. I don't I don't think they were practicing, you know, witches or Satanists, right? But, you know, it was still a little weird. Kind of creepy. 

Leah [00:10:38] As it turns out, Enigma wasn't even aware that Stryper was a metal band made up of Christians. 

Michael Sweet [00:10:43] We showcased for them back in the day, I guess we were so loud they couldn't understand the lyrics. They signed us and then we submitted the lyrics. They found that we were Christian. 

Andrew [00:10:53] The label execs were essentially like, wait, you metalheads are a Christian band? I can imagine they studied the long haired, spandex clad metalheads standing before them and struggled to imagine them sitting in a church on Sunday listening to: 

Archival Tape [00:11:12] "Young people when the final buzz has cleared from your brain and the last ounce of coke has just worn off, and you come back down to the real world, you've got to face tomorrow." 

Michael Sweet [00:11:21] Tomorrow and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second here. And they had second thoughts about signing us, but they, went with that. Released the album. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Andrew [00:11:34] If the devil was good for business, maybe Enigma was worried a band that into Jesus would be bad for the bottom line. But Stryper signed with Enigma and released their first full length album, Soldiers Under Command. 

Michael Sweet [00:11:48] The album just exploded and did really well and outsold anything they had put out, you know, prior to that. 

Leah [00:12:04] Their first album sold really well, and their second album even went gold and Stryper sales record ended up paving the way for others. 

Michael Sweet [00:12:12] Because of the success of Stryper, they started signing more Christian metal bands, and they wound up signing Guardian, Barren Cross, you know, a number of Christian metal bands as well. 

Leah [00:12:23] You might think that with mainstream success, the band would be tempted to tamp down their Jesus energy. Nope. They even famously tossed out Bibles into the audience when they performed. 

Andrew [00:12:34] I love the image of you guys throwing the Bibles out into the, you know, into the crowd. And I've just had logistical questions about that. Like, where did you have, like a special tour crate? How did you travel with all those Bibles? And then also who cleaned them up at the end of the night if there were extra Bibles on the ground? 

Michael Sweet [00:12:56] Well, there were never extra Bibles. But in the very beginning, there were some that were left, and we're just throwing them out as Bibles, New Testament pocket size. And you would look out and you'd see, you know, Bibles all over the floor. And it's like, oh, this isn't good. That's not working. So we got smart, started putting striper stickers on it. Ever since that time, not one has ever been left. It's the most requested item, Stryper item, ever. And back in the day, we used to travel, we'd have boxes, 200 per box or 100 per box, and we'd have boxes stacked up in the semi, you know, three semis, four semis and a lot of the semi would be Bibles, and we would take a box out per show and toss the box out. 

Andrew [00:13:42] Stryper always made a point to play with non-Christian bands like Ratt and Bon Jovi and White Lion. You might think, wow, tossing Bibles to rock audiences just seems like it wouldn't work. 

Mike Tramp [00:14:01] What's the difference between Ozzy Osbourne having a big case of buckets so that he can throw water over the audience? 

Andrew [00:14:08] That's Mike Tramp from White Lion. We talked with him about his time on the road with Stryper, and of course, we asked him about the Bibles. Mike quickly set us straight. 

Mike Tramp [00:14:18] Freddie Mercury had a hundred pairs of fake boobs with him. You know, for this song, I want to Break Free. I mean, you do. You're out there doing the show. I mean, what do you think Alice Cooper brought with him? 

Leah [00:14:30] Point taken. Stryper kept on tossing Bibles out at nightclubs, but then in stadiums as their audience grew. Their third album, To Hell With the Devil, ended up going platinum. The original artwork had four long haired, very buff angels who looked a lot like the members of Stryper, throwing Satan into a fiery pit. 

Andrew [00:14:51] So Stryper did what might seem on the surface to be impossible: become a metal band famous for defeating the devil with the power of Jesus. 

Leah [00:15:02] You'd think that would be good news for evangelical leaders who wanted to use rock music to make new Christians, right? 

Andrew [00:15:08] Think again. Coming up: Stryper goes all in for Team Jesus. But what does Team Jesus think of Stryper? 

Music [00:15:16] [Rock that Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Andrew [00:15:21] When we last left off, Stryper had made the big time in metal while tossing Bibles out to their audiences and being super direct about the fact that they loved God. But even with this much Jesus metal energy, the young guys from Hollywood had a lot to learn about the Jesus music business. 

Leah [00:15:39] Do you have a specific memory of when you learned about the suit and tie part of the Christian music industry? 

Michael Sweet [00:15:46] Well, I mean, the first time I experienced that, and I really felt what it was all about is when we played the Dove Awards. 

Andrew [00:15:56] Like many Christian performers before them, Stryper were California natives who found themselves performing in Nashville, Tennessee, in the heart of the Christian music industry. 

Leah [00:16:07] They brought all the ingredients that made them stand out on the Sunset Strip, the yellow and black spandex, the guy liner, the perms, the high octane energy. 

Archival Tape [00:16:19] "The youth of America have welcomed them with open arms and ears to their messages. They're known to break tradition with a hammer. As they perform, they distribute Bibles to all their audiences. Get ready, for Stryper!"

Andrew [00:16:34] Michael, in his memoirs, says that he added a scarf to his midsection. Just in case the Nashville crowd wasn't ready for all that bulging spandex. 

Leah [00:16:46] Very considerate. Michael has vivid memories of that performance. 

Michael Sweet [00:16:51] Most people were horrified. They really were. They had that look like, oh my God, what is this? What is happening? And it was interesting because after the show and before the show, that's the way it was as well. No one would talk to us. And this might sound like an exaggeration, but I'm not kidding. They would actually like when they walk by us, would like, get a little further away. And the only people that literally talked to us and came up and sat and talked to us was Pat Boone. Tammy Wynette. And Sandi Patty. 

Michael Sweet [00:17:36] It was really weird. It was like we were– we felt like so out of place and, unaccepted. It was very strange. 

Leah [00:17:45] It's kind of neat that Sandi Patty recognized because she's church lady music. But she saw something in you. 

Michael Sweet [00:17:51] She was the coolest and is the coolest person I think I've ever met. Yeah. 

Andrew [00:17:58] And Tammy Wynette, she had seen it all, you know. 

Michael Sweet [00:18:02] She was so humble. All three of those that listed were incredibly humble and still are to this day. We just interviewed Pat Boone for our documentary, and he's he was drawn to tears talking about us. 

Andrew [00:18:14] Oh, wow. 

Leah [00:18:15] Oh, so Stryper won a few hearts and minds at the Doves, even if their performance was a bit too shocking and awe for the majority of industry types that night. And Stryper watched as their success inspired a bunch of contemporary Christian music imitators. 

Andrew [00:18:31] Yeah, there were a fair amount of what you might call manufactured metal bands of that era. A fact that the guys from Stryper noticed. 

Michael Sweet [00:18:40] We weren't following trends, we weren't following leaders. We were doing our own thing. We didn't have to try, to look how we looked or to be who we were. We were just it was real and not to down, play or to, negatively diss any other Christian bands. But I think that's the difference with Stryper. I think a lot of those guys were literally like wearing suits and ties, and then all of a sudden throwing on spandex like, it wasn't, you know, it was more of a kind of a cookie cutter mentality from Christian labels like, hey, let's have you guys do this, and we'll sell lots of records. 

Leah [00:19:19] For Michael, the glam look wasn't something you could just put on like a costume. It had to be authentic. It had to be who you were. 

Michael Sweet [00:19:27] And I can only say that because I experienced it. I was in a lot of those board meetings. I saw it. 

Andrew [00:19:32] As the band toured with other metal acts, Stryper also started to experience something they didn't really expect: an enemy from within the fold. 

Archival Tape [00:19:42] Jimmy Swaggart: "So called Christian radio stations are blasting out contemporary Christian music that is indistinguishable from worldly rock. The voice of the dragon!"

Leah [00:19:52] That's right. The very same Jimmy Swaggart, the televangelist whose preaching had moved Robert and Michael to become Christians in the first place, had decided that Stryper was Team Satan. It was deeply hurtful to the Sweet brothers. 

Michael Sweet [00:20:07] So it was it was very odd. Here's someone we really looked up to who's speaking out against us in protest, you know, shows. And he was holding our albums up at his crusades saying, do not go see these guys. Don't support them. They're wolves in sheep's clothing. They're evil. 

Leah [00:20:23] And Swaggart's supporters actually started coming out to protest at the band's live shows. 

Michael Sweet [00:20:28] There'd usually be about six, eight, ten, twelve people out there, literally with bullhorns, like talking to the the people waiting in line. Do not go in! You know, it's really weird. Bizarre. 

Andrew [00:20:41] It was kind of discombobulating for the band to see people who they thought were on the same side in the battle against Satan think that Stryper was a gateway to hell. 

Michael Sweet [00:20:51] We were shocked. It's like, whoa. The first time they started protesting our shows, we just thought they were protesters. And we figured out, you know, that's norm. That's the norm because we're out there looking weird and doing different things. So we kind of expected that. But then when we went outside to meet them, we found out they were Jimmy Swaggart folks. That was just kind of strange because we came to know Christ through Jimmy Swaggart, and we used to go out, you know, we always ask the question, you know, have you ever seen us? And the answer would always be no. And it used to really make me think I was confused because we used to say to them, well, how can you sit out here and protest something you don't even know anything about? That's just really weird. Makes no sense. But they were and we would offer them tickets to come and see us. Like why don't you come check it out and then tell me if you protest after you see us in nine times out of ten, they would say no. 

Andrew [00:21:49] Swaggart was part of a cohort of preachers and teachers who believed that rock music, the sounds and the beat and the whole lifestyle would lead people straight to hell. 

Leah [00:22:00] People like Swaggart's, cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, who brought the sights and sounds of black and white Pentecostalism to the world in the form of rock. 

Leah [00:22:11] You heard that right. Jimmy Swaggart was part of a very talented family of musicians who had helped popularize rock and also condemn it in the 1950s, and Swaggart was convinced that the metal of the 80s would lead to perdition. 

Andrew [00:22:25] To be fair to Swaggart and company, 80s metal bands were notorious not just for Satanic imagery, but also for reveling in sex and drugs. Here's Mike Tramp of White Lion on life in the metal fast lane. And just an FYI, this was definitely before the MeToo era. 

Mike Tramp [00:22:44] Well, it was not until we were on tour with Mötley Crüe on Skid Row that we saw that world. Because I mean, Kiss are four business men. So, you know, there and Aerosmith, that was a Permanent Vacation tour. That was their first clean tour. So there was not a drop of alcohol like anything backstage. ACDC you never saw. They don't drink. Oh, well. The groupies, that's another story. That group-- there's also groupies at Stryper shows. So that makes no difference. A girl in a miniskirt is a girl in a miniskirt. Regardless if she's at Ozzy Osborne or White Lion or Stryper. 

Andrew [00:23:20] But I mean, the guys are not taking them back into their dressing room. Or are they? 

Mike Tramp [00:23:26] No, not the band. I guess that's what White Lion did. 

Andrew [00:23:31] Yeah. So was there a, the backstage would be like, all right, all the girls go over here and none of them are going over here or what?

Mike Tramp [00:23:40] Well I mean, none of us ever was as extreme as those Van Halen and Mötley Crüe stories where, it became as big of a part of the show as the show itself. We were always up there to perform our music sober and the best we could do. And I think that's probably a difference between, you know, 10 or 20 girls standing in a corner somewhere compared to like a whole sort of like, you know, pathway with science and those with blonde hair to the right and those with brown hair to the left, you know, that kind of Van Halen stories and stuff like that. So that there were it was very, very meek and very mild at, at the Stryper shows. 

Leah [00:24:26] Here's Michael Sweet reflecting on facing temptation on the road. 

Michael Sweet [00:24:31] We just really try to encourage each other to always do the right thing and take the high road and, and be examples of Christ, because that's what that's what we're doing. Otherwise we're hypocrites. And we did go through that period, too. We were onstage telling people about Jesus, and then we'd go to the bar after the show and, and, you know, have ten drinks with the fans. 

Andrew [00:24:53] Drunkenness is frowned upon in the Bible, but it's still pretty minor when you put Stryper in its heavy metal context. Plus, the band's manager was also their mom. You think Axl Rose or Tommy Lee ever had to worry about their mom looking over their shoulder on tour? So what did the guys of Stryper do all day on the road? 

Mike Tramp [00:25:14] Most of the tour we all spent, we all got into building these, miniature, remote controlled cars. 

Leah [00:25:22] Once again, White Lion's, Mike Tramp. 

Mike Tramp [00:25:24] And when we arrived at the shows, there would be like 10 or 15 fed-ex boxes in the dressing rooms with all kinds of, like, balled on stuff in these remote control cars. 

Leah [00:25:35] And while they were battling Satan on stage every night, they also got into an elaborate prank war. 

Michael Sweet [00:25:41] I forget who started the the actual prank war. It might have been us. We were into CB radios at the time and I remember White Lion was out soundcheck in and we were we were keying up and talking through the radios and it came through the guitar players amps. Like louder than his guitar. And I'm like, oh, shoot, you know. Oh, we better not do that. So we got the idea during their show to do it. So he's out there solo and I'm backstage going breaker one is coming out through the amp. 

Mike Tramp [00:26:14] I think it was Milwaukee. That might have been the last show with them. So we were basically going to do a prank in each of their songs. You know, they only sort of did, one prank, which was basically when we walked out on stage that put like a thousand backstage passes with the sticker up. So within like 2 or 4 steps, we had these gigantic Donald Duck feet. 

Michael Sweet [00:26:39] And when Mike Tramp went running out there like a rock star, after about two seconds, he looked like a cat trying to kick tape off of his paws. It was hilarious. Oh my gosh, that was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. It was so, so funny. And we used to stand side stage where they were performing. They'd be all serious and they'd look over and we would be in towels around the midsection with our head hair wrapped up in towels with sunglasses on. 

Andrew [00:27:10] White Lion might have lost a battle or two, but they were determined to win the war. 

Mike Tramp [00:27:16] Robert had this big fireman's pole from his very, very tall drum riser, which probably could have been easily eight 8ft to 10ft tall. So he had one at this big pole to slide down to the stage on and stuff like that. So, we covered that in K-Y jelly. And he came out. And when the children cry, when we're out there doing the ballad and, it's only Vito and I playing the song, and you hear people scream, he comes out on his, on his, drum riser, and he grabs hold on, hold on on that, fireman pole. And he goes SMACK and he's down behind the drum riser, smashed to the floor, man! 

Andrew [00:27:59] Despite being covered in K-Y, striper was, by most accounts, pretty wholesome on tour, unlike what the Swaggart protesters accused them of. The guys were constantly turning down the chance to live the so-called satanic rock n roll lifestyle. Michael is open about the fact that the band occasionally went overboard with drinking, and he almost slept with a young woman on the road. 

Michael Sweet [00:28:23] It was tough at times, and we definitely had to stay guarded and we got to pray. We got to we got to read. We got to encourage one another to do the right thing. But keep in mind, there's Christian groupies, too. You know, there's there's pastors that are fighting off women left and right and, you know, aren't able to do so. And then not long after that, we all know what happened with, Jimmy Swaggart. 

Archival Tape [00:28:49] "Good evening, and welcome to another edition of Louisiana, The State we're in." 

Leah [00:28:53] What happened to Jimmy Swaggart? Well, it turns out that some of the very things that Swaggart said Rock would lead to, he was doing himself. 

Archival Tape [00:29:01] "Topping the news this week in Louisiana was the controversy surrounding TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart of Baton Rouge." 

Leah [00:29:07] In 1988, Swaggart was involved in a very sordid sex scandal that involved blackmail and prostitution. 

Archival Tape [00:29:15] Jimmy Swaggart: "I have sinned against you."

Leah [00:29:18] And while Swaggart apologized on TV, he was caught a second time in 1991. 

Andrew [00:29:23] You might think Michael Sweet would relish the moral victory after all those protesters and condemnation. His enemy was vanquished. But Michael was wary about making judgments about Swaggart or the CCM establishment. 

Michael Sweet [00:29:37] And it's unfortunate, but you got to be really careful when you're pointing fingers at people because, you know, we all have enough dirt in our closets to clean out. It'll last a lifetime. 

Andrew [00:29:48] One thing that you you share in your, in your book is, you know, right when Stryper was starting out, you know, your girlfriend got pregnant, you know, and then, you know, we've talked with other artists whose entire CCM career was derailed by a pregnancy, you know, out of wedlock, you know, and, and, but you guys were able to, like, move through that and sort of make it through. But then again, also the black sheep a little bit, you know. 

Michael Sweet [00:30:15] Oh, yeah. You know. Sure. And here's the thing. My opinion. Kyle got pregnant, and I did the right thing, and she did the right thing, and we married. And, you know, we're married for almost 23 years before she passed. And it wasn't perfect marriage, but it was a it was a great marriage. And we had ups and downs like anybody else. Here's the difference between me and and a lot of other people: I talk about, I talk about that stuff. But it doesn't mean that all those other people aren't going through the same stuff. They just don't talk about it. I used to I used to be kind of baffled. I'd go to, to Nashville and I'd go meet with, labels. And, you know, they they talk about how, you know, I love this song, but if you could just get the name Jesus in there a couple more times, it'll be great. And I say, well, okay. Well, considering the fact that the title of the song is Jesus, I'll work on that [laughter], and, and and then we go out to eat, we go out to eat that night, and they were all, Jesus this and Jesus that. And literally you'd have to help him out the door at night. And it's like, I've seen all that stuff. And it's just and there's, here's the thing. We're all, we're all sinners. We're all with faults. 

Andrew [00:31:33] So Stryper had kicked the heck out of the devil from the stage and largely won the war backstage. What could ever stop them? 

Music [00:31:42] [Rock that Doesn't Roll music sting plays]

Michael Sweet [00:31:48] Yeah, we were in our early 20s. Yeah, back then, and, we were just kids. A bit naive at times, and it kind of deer in the headlights mentality, like looking around at everything, thinking, whoa, what's happening? 

Leah [00:32:04] Stryper had won pretty much every battle they'd fought. Stryper versus Satan? No problem. They sent them straight to hell. Stryper versus Swaggart? No contest, but Stryper versus Stryper? That was another question. 

Andrew [00:32:18] If you could go back and talk to, you know, Michael Sweet at the height of Stryper's, you know...power? 

Michael Sweet [00:32:25] I would say I would say that to young Michael Sweet: pay attention. Like, just be alert. Pay more attention. At the time, all I cared about, all I thought about was music. So everyone else was doing all the business stuff and I'm just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just writing a song. It's all I want to do, you know? But you have to think of the business side of things. You have to be smart and good stewards over what God gives you, and I never really focused on that back then. I do now, though. And, I'm very cautious about, trying to balance the spiritual side of things and the faith based side of things with the business side of things, because it's a ministry, but it's a business. It's both. And that gets tricky. But, you know, I would have said no. Like, now, I do, like, if someone wants to spend money on something, I'll say no. Not happening. I didn't really care. Instead of, like, well, wait a second, that 40 grand could be applied to the next album or on new outfits or new guitars or whatever. And I didn't speak up enough. 

Leah [00:33:34] Eventually, Stryper fell victim to a lot of the same things that plague other mainstream entertainers who make it big at a young age. Poor management and money problems. They spent too much cash on things like music videos, custom stage sets, and even office decor. They didn't pay enough attention to merch profits. 

Andrew [00:33:54] And maybe most importantly, they started wearing just plain black leather and ditched their signature look. No more yellow and black attack. 

Leah [00:34:04] And that wasn't all they got rid of. In 1990, they released Against the Law, an album that didn't have the over-the-top, on the nose evangelical messages that fans came to expect. 

Andrew [00:34:15] They even reportedly stopped chucking Bibles out to the crowd. This mainstream Stryper tried something different with their new music videos, too. "Pretty Ladies". Serenading a woman in a bathtub who was not Michael's wife, may have cost them Christian bookstore sales. 

Leah [00:34:54] At the end of the day. It may not have mattered anyway, because theatrical Hollywood glam rock was on the way out, and low key, flannel wearing so-called grunge rock from up in Seattle was on its way in. By 1991, spandex and perms were just not what the kids were into anymore. 

Music [00:35:12] [Nirvana plays]

Andrew [00:35:20] Michael says that they were in debt to the tune of $2 million, and they all had to declare bankruptcy. Michael left the band in 1992, which meant effectively, soon after Stryper was over. 

Leah [00:35:33] Suddenly, Michael Sweet traded his rocker wardrobe for dusty jeans and work boots. He moved from the smog and nightclubs of Hollywood, California, to the fresh air of Massachusetts. Instead of playing for seas of screaming fans and riding on luxury tour busses, he was working on his father in law's cranberry farm and campground. 

Andrew [00:35:55] After a while, Michael got back to writing songs. He released solo music and even put his pipes to use as the lead vocalist for mainstream rock band Boston. 

Michael Sweet [00:36:05] I think going through all those those times and experiencing everything we experienced, it made us who we are today. And I think in the best of ways, you know, we've had our shortcomings and downfalls and, some negative points in our lives. But I think we're stronger now because of all of it. 

Andrew [00:36:22] In fact, Stryper reunited, and in 2022, they released a new album, appropriately named The Final Battle. 

Leah [00:36:30] As of this moment in the summer of 2024, Stryper is on an unplugged tour called To Hell With the Amps. And just in case you're curious, the Bibles are back. 

Michael Sweet [00:36:40] We still have to travel with them. They're heavy and we have to pay for them. We don't have an endorsement or sponsorship for Bibles and it gets very costly. But you know, that's a great investment. That's about the best investment you could make. 

Leah [00:36:54] If there was another group of young people who were making music, what what advice would you give them now? 

Michael Sweet [00:37:02] I would say run as fast as you can. I'm kidding. Run! Get out! No. I'm kidding. I would say, you know. Make sure it's your calling. Otherwise, you're just going to be striving in a bad way for the rest of your life to make it happen. Make sure it's your calling. Make sure that this is what you're called to do. And if you know this is what you're called to do, do it to the fullest and do it with integrity. And do it with joy. You know, smile. Don't be, don't be negative. And remember that people are looking up to you. So do your best to inspire those people and to encourage those people. And if you can do that, then you're going to be great. 

Andrew [00:37:53] And at least as far as Michael is concerned, some things are best left in the past, like spandex. 

Michael Sweet [00:38:01] If we have a family get together, someone will get the genius idea like, hey, let's put on an old Stryper video and I'll say to my wife and everyone, I'll say, you know, I'm going to go to the market. I'll be back in an hour. Yeah. I can't watch that stuff. 

Andrew [00:38:16] Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll. 

Leanor Till [00:38:18] There was a guy that made stickers and it said, "Keep your Bible out of my ska punk. Boycott Five Iron Frenzy" and we would put the stickers on our shirts and wear them. 

Leah [00:38:26] Five Iron Frenzy and the quirky world of Christian Ska. 

Andrew [00:38:30] If you have a story to share or thoughts on this episode, please call our hotline. You can call anytime. (629) 777-6336. 

Leah [00:38:40] To be the first to hear our episodes and for full access to our bonus episodes, join us on Patreon.com. 

Andrew [00:38:47] Find us on Substack and Instagram by searching Rock That Doesn't Roll. And of course, you should give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're using to listen right now and text five friends about the show. 

Leah [00:38:59] Oh, there you go. Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions Project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme. 

Andrew [00:39:11] Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it. 

Leah [00:39:17] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurentine provides production oversight. I'm Leah Payne. 

Andrew [00:39:24] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember, rock all you want, but watch it when you start to roll. 

Andrew [00:00:01] Something we've learned on this show is that there's a long cultural tradition of people making fun of Christian contemporary music. 

Leah [00:00:08] Something we've not discussed on this show, however, is that it's not the only genre that has a long tradition of being maligned. 

Andrew [00:00:16] And that other genre is: Ska. 

Leah [00:00:21] But in the 1990s, something unexpected happened. There was a window of time where both CCM and ska bucked tradition and hit a huge surge in popularity. 

Andrew [00:00:32] Witness the crossover appeal of Jars of Clay. 

Music [00:00:35] [Jars of Clay plays]

Leah [00:00:43] And the chart topping dominance of No Doubt. 

Music [00:00:46] [No Doubt plays]

Andrew [00:00:51] And that window of time created the perfect storm for a band from Denver to do something that was once unthinkable. Combine two maligned genres and become a cultural phenomenon. 

Music [00:01:04] [Five Iron Frenzy music plays]

Leah [00:01:17] What was it like to be a part of the unexpected rise of Five Iron Frenzy? 

Andrew [00:01:28] From the Big Questions project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a music journalist raised on Christian rock. 

Leah [00:01:35] And I'm Leah Payne, a religious historian and author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. In each episode, we look at how Christian music has shaped the world we're living in now by focusing on one specific aspect of the music known as CCM. 

Andrew [00:01:52] Today on the show, can a Christian ska band strike the perfect balance between spreading Christianity while also accepting people where they are? 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:02:04] W're dorks. Like still, like never trying to be cool, never changing your clothes before you go on stage or whatever. 

Leah [00:02:13] You'd think that being a member of the iconic Christian school band of the 90s could give someone an inflated ego. But when it comes to Lenore Ortega Till, the saxophonist from Five Iron Frenzy, nothing could be further from the truth. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:02:26] It's like we're pretty embarrassing, but we're over it. 

Leah [00:02:30] Leonor Ortega Till has played saxophone in Five Iron Frenzy since she was 18. In liner notes, she's often called "Jeff the Girl" because, I don't know, ska? The band is a democracy, but Leanor fields most of their interview requests, a fact that shows what a rarity the band is compared to other all male Christian rock bands of the 90s. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:02:51] We were one of the first punk ska bands I ever knew that had a mission statement, and in it it said, we will play 50% Christian shows and 50% secular. 

Andrew [00:03:02] From the start, Five iron was a band on a mission, and a big part of that mission was to exist in two different cultures that are often at odds. Mainstream punk and Christian music. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:03:14] And they're just like, well, we'll play clubs and bars and like, we're going to open up for Less Than Jake and The Pietasters and The Toasters and all these legit punk bands. So we'll do 50% of those on purpose. But because this is gonna sound funny, we know that Christians deserve good music, for that reason, and deserve some wild music too. We're going to do churches. We're going to do festivals. 

Leah [00:03:36] And with that mission came a question. Can you be embraced by both at the same time? 

Andrew [00:03:42] Leanor was used to moving between cultures. Her parents were Mexican-American. She says her dad sounds like Cheech Marin. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:03:50] I grew up Hispanic, and we were very much Democrat, very much from a Jesuit Catholic, Cesar Chavez and Kennedy kind of point of view. 

Leah [00:04:00] When she got deep into punk rock as a teenager, all these different parts of her life, social activism, the teachings of Jesus and the ethics of punk rock, they all fit together naturally. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:04:11] The first time I got into punk rock, I was at a Denny's walking to the bathroom and this dude with a mohawk was like, what do you think about flag burning? And I sat down and my life changed. Not because I had something really important to say, but because he was a Christian. And he took me kind of under his wing. And he was like, you know, let's think about the status quo. And what he was basically saying is the ideas of like, let's write zines about caring about homeless people or caring about women's rights or caring about, quote unquote, "the man", you know, what a big deal "the man" was and capitalism and all this stuff. And you start to realize that Jesus is not this world. And so for me, punk rock and Jesus went hand in hand. It was called social activism. It was called caring. It was called speaking at peace rallies or caring about migrant rights. Whatever it was, was done in the name of the Lord. 

Andrew [00:05:01] Leanor's dad taught her to apply this principle to music in general from a young age. The two of them would play along with Marvin Gaye records on whatever instruments they picked up in their family music room. When she was around nine, she picked up the saxophone. Even though she said she was terrible, it gave her a feeling of connection with God and her dad. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:05:21] So he played trumpet. There was he had, I think, six brothers, so bad I don't know, 6 or 7. But all of them played instruments in church, kind of like Salvation Army times, right? And, so horns and music and rock and roll and soul was all part of church for him. It was kind of like one day you're listening to Let's Get It On, and the next day you're listening to Marvin Gaye sing about the children and Jesus is my friend, God is my friend. And so to me, I never even had that term Christian music. Never, never even heard that. 

Andrew [00:05:51] Leanor may not have heard about Christian rock, but her cousin Micah fell victim to a brutal yellow and black attack from Christian hair metal band: Stryper.

Leanor Ortega Till [00:06:07] He was a major Stryper-head major into Christian metal. He saw looking for a guitarist in an ad on the wall at a Christian bookstore. And that's how they found Micah in the metal band. They went to his house and it was all yellow and black for Stryper. 

Leah [00:06:25] Oh my gosh that is so sweet. I love that so much. Yeah. 

Andrew [00:06:29] The Christian metal band Micah joined was called Exhumator, and at one gig, the members of Exhumator reconfigured themselves into a sca band as a joke and opened for themselves. They called this joke band Five Iron Frenzy. 

Leah [00:06:45] The thing was, the audience responded to their ska joke way more than they ever had the metal band. And once they stopped to think about it, the band realized they had more fun playing Punk Ska to rest in peace  Exhumator. Hello, Five Iron Frenzy. 

Music [00:07:01] [Five Iron Frenzy plays]

Andrew [00:07:13] In their first eight months, they said they played 60 shows opening for bands like MxPx, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Less Than Jake. They even jumped in a van and road tripped to a cornfield in Illinois for the Cornerstone Festival, even though they hadn't booked a gig there. 

Leah [00:07:31] With all this positive attention as ska band, it was time to find a permanent saxophonist. That's where Leanor comes in. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:07:38] So when I joined Five Iron Frenzy my senior year of high school, one of the first questions was, do you love the Lord? Because we're doing this. And it was known we were going to be sharing our faith and this was going to be a tool. This wasn't just a band to be a band. It wasn't to be rock stars. It wasn't even to make good music. We weren't that good. But it was to use this to make a community and reach people for God. 

Andrew [00:08:02] If you're like me and naturally skeptical, you might assume there's a youth pastor or someone behind the scenes pushing these young punks into this mission of reaching people for God through ska. But Leanor says no. Just like the rest of their ethos, the band's preaching was also DIY. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:08:21] You went to a show and you heard the musicians themselves talk about from stage, about the Lord and their mission, and there was nobody top down telling them to do that. It wasn't a youth pastor, it wasn't a label. It was the kids at the show that were themselves. Saying this message, and I was in that same camp. I was like, yeah, let's do this. 

Leah [00:08:43] With their eight member line up set, but still not signed to a label, Five Iron went back to the Cornerstone Festival and Leanor's mind was blown. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:08:53] All I knew was, we're going to a festival. I've never even been to a festival because again, I grew up in a small town and never even done anything like this. By the second day, I remember standing on a hill and just being in awe and hearing from one ear metal, rap, punk, goth, CCM style and being like, this is heaven, like this is how it is. And and not just that there's like, you know, there's people with acoustic guitars, but there's also people freestyling and, you know, playing EDM style music. I was just in awe that all these people identified as Christians. And I was like, I found my people, people that love the Lord and are able to express it however they want to. These are my people, like people that aren't just in this little bubble. 

Andrew [00:09:39] The reason Leanor was hearing so many different styles of music coming from every direction is not just that cornerstone had more than ten official stages, but the festival also allowed groups camping on the grounds to set up their own do it yourself performances. You just needed to bring your own PA and a generator. 

Leah [00:09:59] On Five Iron's first trip to cornerstone, they had played one of these gigs on a makeshift stage next to some skateboard ramps. It just so happened that members of a bunch of bands and owners of some record labels saw that unofficial set. 

Andrew [00:10:13] Word got around, and by the time Five Iron returned to cornerstone the next year, they had offers from a bunch of Christian record labels, including Tooth & Nail. 

Leah [00:10:22] Ultimately, they chose a smaller label called 5 Minute Walk because it was more aligned with their mission. Founder Frank Tate wanted to encourage people to spend five minutes each day talking to Jesus like a friend. Hence 5 Minute Walk Records. 

Andrew [00:10:36] The label also focused on using music tours to assist charities. For some tours Five Iron asked fans to bring a pair of clean socks to give to people who needed them. I'm pretty sure I brought a pair of socks when I saw them in 1997, in Jacksonville, Florida's Murray Hill Theater. 

Leah [00:10:51] So 5 Minute Walk was a record label that fit perfectly with listeners, overlapping Christian and punk cultures, an earnest call to spiritual action in the label's name, and practical attempts to create a more equitable world woven into their tours. 

Andrew [00:11:05] And for once, a good Christian band was ready to go right when a musical trend was cresting. 

Archival Tape [00:11:11] "And the winner is: No Doubt, Don't Speak"! [applause]

Andrew [00:11:18] But would Five Iron be able to stick with their mission? A 50% secular, 50% Christian shows once they hit the road? 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:11:26] There was a guy that made stickers and it said, "keep your Bible out of my ska punk. Boycott Five Iron Frenzy", and we would put the stickers on our shirts and wear them. 

Music [00:11:34] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Leanor Ortega Till [00:11:40] We lived in a school bus and we toured in it. 

Leah [00:11:43] When Five Iron got out on the road, they loved playing Cornerstone, but they also got booked to play the more mainstream Creation Fest. Never mind that acts like No Doubt and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were topping the Billboard charts at this time. At Creation Fest, the ska band was considered fringe. 

Andrew [00:12:00] The big acts at Creation, where people like Michael W. Smith, Jaci Velasquez or some of their brand new worship oriented bands on the scene. In those days, Derek Webb's band Caedmon's Call was the biggest worship band of all. 

Music [00:12:15] [Derek Webb plays]

Andrew [00:12:23] And sometimes they fell victim to some late identity theft from Five Iron Frenzy. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:12:30] And the joke was, we lived in a school bus and we toured in it, and oftentimes we couldn't get through the dozens of cars. And so we go, "we're Caedmon's Call we're Caedmon's Call!" And you would just see everybody, you know, split the sea of cars. And we're like, they don't know who Five Iron Frenzy is. 

Andrew [00:12:45] It was at festivals like Creation, where Five Iron learned that some of the Christian industry didn't share their mission.

Leanor Ortega Till [00:12:52] In some of those more creation northwest, or the other creation or some of those other festivals, there's a hierarchy of musicians. You know, the ones that are on bigger labels. They're playing the main stage, and then you have the fringe artists, right? And we almost got kicked out a couple times because we recognized that the fringe people get a $5 voucher for food, and the other artists have an air conditioned tent with constant catering and everything, and like couches and one year some of our friends were playing fringe after we had made it to headlining. Didn't come right away, and we were sneaking them back and we got kind of mad and we're like, it's not okay. It's not okay if we're all Christians. What makes their music fringe? Isn't that also who we should be reaching? Right? These are the kids that are smoking in the woods. Don't you want them to come to the show? 

Andrew [00:13:39] The frustration increased when they booked a gig at Acquire the Fire. 

Leah [00:13:43] Acquire the Fire was part evangelical pep rally, part culture war battlefield, part worship service, part Christian film festival and part Christian rock concert. If you understand Carmen's vibe, you're in the right ballpark. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:13:57] And we showed up excited to play Acquire The Fire, and one of our band members was wearing a Weezer t-shirt. And so the elders or whoever's putting on this festival met with us backstage. And number one, they said, why don't we pray about you guys performing? And why don't you pray about you guys performing? At the very least, you're going to have to turn that T-shirt inside out because, you know, later we are going to be walking through the crowd and people in the crowd, teenagers, are going to be throwing in their cigarets. Their condoms. Their secular music that they happen to have with them, their wallet, chains, whatever they have. And, you know, we don't want to be supporting a secular band. And there was a while where we thought, let's not play this tonight. Let's not. This is just they don't want us. They don't get it. We're not doing it. And, you know, walk out to the school bus where we live at the time, and there's a little clump of people underneath a tree behind the big amphitheater smoking cigarets. And they're the fringe group that is only going to come in when Five Iron Frenzy plays. And guess what? Can we let those kids down? 

Andrew [00:15:04] Now you can't. 

Leah [00:15:05] You did not let those kids down. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:15:06] Turn around your shirt, get over yourself and play. 

Andrew [00:15:09] So Five Iron was finding some points of disagreement with mainstream Christian music industry events. They knew it didn't have to be that way, though, because there were a few places where their punk rock ethics could coexist with Christian values. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:15:24] Festivals such as cornerstone or Tom, which was called the Other Music Festival. Every band gets the same amount of time, gets the same amount of press. You're not in this hierarchy. It's never felt like a business. It felt like a community. And then when you start playing these other festivals, people are coming up to you and saying, wait a minute, what are you selling your t shirts for $10? We're selling ours for 20. No no no no no, you have to sell yours for more. Or you start to see they have more lights or more sound. Why don't we? Like, you know, things like this, the business behind it. And we were on a tiny label, so, we had to stick up for ourselves. And we ended up writing some songs about that kind of stuff. 

Music [00:16:17] [Five Iron Frenzy plays]

Leanor Ortega Till [00:16:19] And a Blue Mix is when the headliners, the sound suddenly gets better, the lights suddenly get better. And for the first people playing, it's just the, you know, the sound person just puts it on either demo, which is terrible, or just put it on one color and then also all using all the sound system. That's embarrassing. 

Andrew [00:16:37] These petty competitive tactics would make sense if all parties involved weren't supposed to share the same mission. If it was just about fame and fortune and artistic expression, Leanor could almost understand this kind of passive sabotage. But,

Leanor Ortega Till [00:16:53] To see Christians do this, that's when we got really just hardened. These are normal practices in the secular, competitive world. But for if you're playing a show with three Christian bands, that shouldn't even be happening. 

Leah [00:17:04] But the truth is, many Christian bands didn't have the same kind of mission statement as Five Iron Frenzy. Many Christian bands only ever played so-called Christian shows. 

Andrew [00:17:13] Not Five Iron. They were spending equal amounts of time in the Christian and secular scenes. So they hit the road with Ska Against Racism alongside Less Than Jake and Mustard Plug and a bunch of other secular ska bands. Then, in 2002, at the height of their fame, Five Iron did the Warped Tour with no effects, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Yellow Card and Bad Religion. It was a really big deal. But: 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:17:39] When we first started doing secular fests, I would find myself crying because you're seeing 15, 16 year olds getting high. You're seeing, people that are older guys that you've toured with for quite a while, approaching younger girls. You just see people in the crowd looking for attention and wrong ways. And it was something that grieved my soul. I'd already done some of that rebelling. So on this end, I was choosing the Lord. It wasn't anyone again, top down. 

Leah [00:18:10] As a young adult, Leanor had made the informed decision to forego sex and drugs because they were barriers to her practice of her faith. She's adamant it was her decision to live this mission oriented lifestyle. As for the other seven members of Five Iron, were they under a pastor's influence? 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:18:26] The same is true for all the Five Iron. We didn't have a youth pastor or a church or anything. Anybody telling us to do this. We had our own legalistic, I will say, rules for on the road. No drinking, no smoking, no watching rated R movies. No people of the opposite sex in your hotel room. Like these are our own self-imposed legalistic rules. So when we went on tour and everyone's, like, wild in our face, it's hard because you want to be there and put on a smiley face for rockers, but you're you're also recognizing that you're different. And it's sad. It's sad to see what the average teenager, went through. 

Andrew [00:19:07] Still, experiences like Ska Against Racism, and Warped Tour were crucial to sticking with their mission of playing 50% secular shows and 50% Christian shows. Eventually they did notice that one kind of show usually paid better than the other, though. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:19:25] We created a thing called the Robin Hood Theory, and that meant when you play a Christian festival, they're going to pay some good money and you're going to save that money. And when you play a secular bar run, you're going to pay yourself out of that because you know better than to charge them because they don't have the money, but you want to be there. So that's how we learned. When you do the three month tour with Ska Against Racism, we go on a tour like that and you know you're with nine other ska bands spreading an anti-racist message. You're not going to get paid well. But when you're doing the summer circuit of festivals, pocket that and recognize that it doesn't have to be the same amount you ask for, because it's it's like giving back to people that deserve to hear these music and this message. 

Leah [00:20:08] But even as Five Iron Frenzy were funneling resources from the Christian music industry to support their secular shows, there were parts of the mainstream ska scene that didn't want anything to do with their mission. 

Andrew [00:20:19] Were there ever like anti-Christian bands that you would like run into? Yeah. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:20:22] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And especially like throwing condoms and trying to get them into my sacks. Or, there was a guy that made stickers in the scene, and it was in Denver and it said, "keep your Bible out of my ska punk. Boycott Five Iron Frenzy". And we would put the stickers on our shirts and wear them. 

Andrew [00:20:39] When the band wasn't out on tour living in a retrofitted school bus, they were home in Denver, kind of accidentally founding a church. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:20:48] We started a Bible study that lasted for four years. We started it! And it launched eventually in 2000 as the church called Scum of the Earth Church. Because we understood each other. There were preppies, there were metalheads, there were punks, there were goths, there was fights between goths and punks. There were all kinds of people, people from seminary. We all just fit. And It's still existing. Scum of the Earth. 

Andrew [00:21:11] That's a great name for a church too, I gotta say. 

Leah [00:21:14] One day in 1999, the band's 50/50 mission to stay true to punk and Christianity would face its biggest challenge yet. It wasn't from a secular tour or a Christian festival, but from a national tragedy. 

Music [00:21:28] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Leanor Ortega Till [00:21:34] Well, Columbine was very, intense for us because our guitar players sister was actually locked in a choir room while it was happening. 

Archival Tape [00:21:44] "They cornered students in the cafeteria and the library where there was nowhere to run. Witnesses say they laughed as they fired their weapons, executing their classmates who begged for their lives." 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:21:55] We happened to be performing at, the GMA's, so we were in Nashville at the time. And of course someone said, turn on the news, turn on the news. And, it's the beginning of cell phones. And so Michael was on a cell phone with his parents and they're like, she's there. It was hours of trauma until we got the call that Amy was okay. 

Leah [00:22:15] As the members of Five Iron Frenzy comforted their bandmate somewhere else in Nashville, the gears were starting to turn and the evangelical media machine. 

Andrew [00:22:24] It was like the entire country was in shock after the school shooting. Five days after the tragedy, there was a national memorial service held in Littleton, Colorado. Vice President Al Gore was there. The governor of Colorado was there, Colin Powell was there, and Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. 

Archival Tape [00:22:43] [Michael W. Smith performs live]

Andrew [00:23:01] I don't know about you, but it's weird to me that they chose Christian performers from Tennessee for the National Memorial Service in Colorado. And then the next day, still less than a week after the shooting, ABC aired a long piece about one of the victims named Cassie Bernall. 

Archival Tape [00:23:19] "These teenagers, most of them survivors of the mayhem at Columbine High, believe Cassie is a modern day martyr, a young woman whose faith in God was so strong that even as death loomed over her in the high school library, she refused to renounce her faith" 

Archival Tape [00:23:37] "I believe the gunman came to Cassie and said, do you believe in God? And she said, yes. Why would they ask her that? Because they knew and they killed her." 

Leah [00:23:48] Then a few weeks after that, Michael W. Smith released this song inspired by Cassie Bernall. 

Music [00:23:54] [Michael W. Smith's "This Is Your Time" plays]

Leah [00:24:28] The story of Cassie Bernall saying yes, she believed in God and dying for it, was like jet fuel for a line of thinking that was already popular among evangelical teens aspiring to martyrdom. DC Talk published an updated book of martyrs with a tie in to their youth group smash hit Jesus Freak. 

Andrew [00:24:47] Youth leaders traumatize teens with fake attacks by gunmen vowing to kill anyone who didn't deny Christ. There were T-shirts aping the Mountain Dew logo that celebrated martyrdom that said "meant to die" instead. This line of thinking doesn't seem to square with five urns 50/50 mission, but Leanor remembers considering the appeal of martyrdom herself. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:25:12] Maybe I'll do God more harm than good unless I'm dead. 

Leah [00:25:16] Wow. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:25:17] You know, maybe, maybe, maybe he can use the legacy of me if I die young. 

Leah [00:25:24] I was actually thinking about, the intensity of a lot of the calls for martyrdom, that came out of Columbine. And I was comparing it in my mind to the song that Five Iron, I don't know what the writing process was like for you all if you collaborated on that, but it's such a different tone. It's not the kind of radical like amp up. Martyrs are sad. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:25:54] It's dark. I guess it would say that there's something evil lurking, and there is something dark to be said. And it's called New Hope. There's a there's a bridge in that song. We talk about what makes a song, Christian or not. I don't know. I don't know, but what I will say is the bridge has no words, and it is one of the most spiritual parts in all of Five Iron music. When we play that, there's a horn line and the horns are saying something. I can't tell you what they're saying, but the word that comes up is peace. You know, peace, joy, freedom, safety. 

Andrew [00:26:44] Instead of pushing youth group kids to seek dramatic ways to die, this goofy ska punk band chose to share a more complex worldview that doesn't fear people who are different than them. And also, authorities learned later that the story of Cassie Bernall's statement of faith was almost certainly a case of mistaken identity. The real girl who said yes, I believe in God was not Cassie Bernall, but Valeen Schnurr, a Catholic classmate who recovered from her gunshot injuries. The evangelical media machine had been too quick to conclude that the shooters were primarily motivated by anti-Christian animus, and the culture wars had suddenly become a real war when the reality was far more complex than that. 

Leah [00:27:29] But when Valeen Schnurr shared what actually happened to her, the public didn't believe her. She was called a liar so many times that she retreated from public life and doesn't talk about her experiences anymore. Cassie's fictional story, fueled by the evangelical media machine, was just too powerful. 

Andrew [00:27:47] Eventually, something within Five Iron Frenzy interfered with their mission to be 50% Christian and 50% secular. Bringing together punk ethics with Christian values. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:27:58] Two of the guys that are in our band and we have eight, decided down the road after a few years that they didn't identify as Christians. In the beginning, the first one was private about it, and then he did. He wrote like a statement about an epiphany he had and, was honest with the fans. But because of that, he decided to leave the band. And so we got tryouts. So it wasn't just musically, but the person we wanted to be in the band next would also have to be a Christian, right? This is, you down with this? And so we got Sonnie Johnston to play guitar. 

Leah [00:28:25] The new Five Iron tried to forge ahead with their new guitarist and a less blatantly ska sound, but it just didn't work. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:28:33] And down the road we broke up. But on good terms. 

Speaker 4 [00:28:37] [Five Iron Frenzy music plays]

Leah [00:28:43] But breaking up, it turns out, was harder than their mission of 50/50. When they did reunite, they made some changes. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:28:51] When it was time to get back together. We broke up from 2003 to 2011, nine years. And in that time, you're no longer 20 somethings. You're, you know, late 30s, 40 somethings. And we got in a circle at a band house and said, every person answered, where are you with the Lord now? Turns out two people were not walking with the Lord anymore. And then the rest were. And in fact, not only were we, but we were even more like, you know, more into it now that we had kids and spouses. And it was very honest. And this is where the switch took place. It was Five Iron Frenzy Two. And the idea was, no, we're not as missional. Perhaps some of us, but some of us are. So now is where we become what you might call Christians in a band, although we still have some things that we do spiritually, it's different and it's very respectful to everybody and where they are, not only because there's Christians in a band, but because now as we're older, we recognize we all have different theology and different politics, right? So it's not just, are you Christian? It's are you a Calvinist? Are you Republican or or do what do you think about these lyrics that are about social justice? Oh my gosh, are we talking about gun rights? There's a spectrum for belief and a spectrum for decisions. Everyone in the band has to vote and sign off on all the lyrics because of our voice, capital V voice is in all this. And it is not easy. 

Andrew [00:30:15] Yeah. Spectrum is a is a word. Even on your first album and on your latest album, there's a spectrum always, you know, I mean, the first song on your first album is, unflinching screed against manifest Destiny. You know, that's just painting Christians and probably the worst light I've heard them being painted. 

Leah [00:30:37] "Let's rape and kill and steal". I look at them and I'm like, how did we get away with this in Christian bookstores? 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:30:42] [Five Iron Frenzy plays]

Andrew [00:31:04] I mean, I think the first track on the new album is not that different though. You know, it's pretty pretty unflinching as well. So yeah. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:31:11] [Five Iron Frenzy plays]

Andrew [00:31:38] As someone who has lived in an evangelical space, what other band would go back to their roots of the 90s to have a, like a very potent message that is extremely relevant and exactly on brand for their type of music and artistry in order to express what the new reality is post 2016. 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:32:03] It's always been that punk rock ethos of of the underdog, right? The meek will inherit the earth. That is always the concept as as blatantly told. And now though now though, with the new album, it really ruffles feathers. And this was the first time we got a lot of posts of people saying "how sad that they're not Christians anymore. How sad that they don't believe anymore. They're just so angry. Why are they so angry?" And we're not angry. To me change and bringing up stuff is hopeful. I'm not angry. I'm. I'm geared up. 

Leah [00:32:37] Can you tell us a little bit about your work now and how you see it as a part of your Five Iron, kind of legacy? 

Leanor Ortega Till [00:32:44] I never thought that I would see the world. I've seen the world because of my saxophone. I've met amazing people. I've seen miracles. I've been able to bless so many people through the benevolences. And now, so many years later, at 46, I am, a chaplain at a women's prison with the state of Colorado. And so I'm going there later today, and I have clearance to go into solitary confinement. I take my guitar and I do impromptu chapels in the units. And, it's surreal. It's surreal. I tried to make a way in the churches the past few years, and guess what? I am not everybody's cup of tea and that is okay. But the prison, the prison works for me. You know, you can have your tattoos, you can talk in your language, you can be your your own woman and kind of talk to the women in there. And it it's rad. I'm not going to leave that.

Andrew [00:33:55] Five Iron Frenzy are playing shows this summer and fall. Check fiveironfrenzy.com for tour dates. 

Leah [00:34:02] As for Rock That Doesn't Roll, this is our last episode in season two, and that means this is the end of our incubation in the Big Questions project with PRX. But we want to keep making the show. So stay subscribed to this feed, and be sure to find us on Patreon to get involved in the little community that's formed around this show. 

Andrew [00:34:22] Yeah, we've done a few virtual events with our Patreon members, and we plan to keep doing that while we figure out who will help us make season three of this show. So join us at Patreon.com/RTDR to be a part of that. It's a little community, but it's got room to grow for sure. And email us at RTDRpod@gmail.com if you have any ideas for how to fund a third season of the show. To be completely honest, at this point, it is unclear if there will be a season three of this show. 

Leah [00:34:58] That's true and we have so many stories, loads and loads of stories we would love to tell on Rock That Doesn't Roll, but one of the things that we've been able to do, we've been proud of, is we've been able to tell stories, with a lot of bells and whistles and cool storytelling techniques and all of that really is due to the expertise of Andrew Gill. I have to say it here. But, you know, none of this stuff can be made for nothing. And so we need some funds to, to make the show. 

Andrew [00:35:34] So thank you for the compliment. But we also need editors. We need, we a mixer, we need, you know, we have a lot of people that help us, make these stories sing. And, without resources of a partner, we can't, you know, we can't pay these professionals to do this work. 

Leah [00:35:53] Yes. 

Andrew [00:35:54] I mean, we probably have already two other seasons worth of ideas for episodes. 

Leah [00:36:00] For sure. We have, you know, virtual storyboards. And, every time at the end of every episode when we roll through the credits, each one of those people is so talented and has contributed so much to this project, we couldn't do it without them. So we're asking for your help. 

Andrew [00:36:18] Yeah, and you can help us by spreading the word about the podcast. Tell if you can think of anyone who might like the podcast, tell them about it, because they probably haven't listened yet. You can let PRX know that you love the show and you would like them to help us continue making it. You can leave us reviews on Apple Podcasts. You can introduce us to your rich uncle, even if it's just a friend you know, introduce us. Anything can help. You know, there's a lot of ways to fund these things, so we just need your help. 

Leah [00:36:53] And. Thanks. Thank you so much for all your help. 

Andrew [00:36:56] Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. 

Leah [00:37:06] Thank you for sharing your experiences with us on our hotline at (629) 777-6336. And thanks for interacting with us on Instagram. 

Andrew [00:37:17] If you'd like to connect with us, there are lots of links in our show notes, so just look for details on your podcast app you're using right now. And as long as we're talking about your podcast app, make sure you give us a rating and review on there and tell your friends to check us out. 

Leah [00:37:32] One more time, Rock That Doesn't Roll has been a Big Questions project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme. 

Andrew [00:37:44] Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg edit the show. 

Leah [00:37:48] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurentine provides production oversight. I'm Leah Payne. 

Andrew [00:37:56] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember, rock all you want, but watch it when you start to roll.

ROCK THAT DOESN’T ROLL - EPISODE ONE: YOUTH GROUP KIDS

Leah [00:00:01] Imagine being a Christian kid in 1991. The Cold War: over.

Archival [00:00:06] By the grace of God, America won the Cold War.

Leah [00:00:11] The war on drugs? In full swing.

Archival [00:00:13] Drugs are menacing our society. They're killing our children.

Leah [00:00:17] While most American teens were over bored and self-assured.

Archival [00:00:20] Here's the planet's first look at Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Leah [00:00:26] In your house, Christian contemporary music or CCM, was the only pop music allowed. Their top artists in 1991? Let's just say nothing resembling grunge. The charts included hits from Sandi Patty. Petra. And the Queen of Christian Music, Amy Grant. Though your parents probably preferred her older stuff.

Andrew [00:01:06] That was the era before the Internet changed music forever. There were basically three options: buy it, probably on cassette tape, recorded on cassette tape from the radio, or use your VCR to record the music video when it came on MTV. If you were raised in an evangelical home, the chances were slim that your parents would let you listen to Nirvana or R.E.M. or Color Me Bad or anything else on the Top 40 charts in any of those mediums.

Leah [00:01:38] In that era, if they wanted to, your parents could keep you in a pretty isolated bubble of music and media. Sonically speaking, you may as well been living on Mars.

Archival [00:01:48] This is TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. McGee and Me has everything. Action, adventure, excitement. Biblical values.

Archival [00:01:59] One bullet is called the word of my testimony and the other one's called the blood of satan. Bite the dust.

Leah [00:02:10] Unless you went behind your parents back, and plenty of evangelical kids did, this bubble could be pretty totalizing. Now, think about what it would be like to grow up, maybe go off to college and poke your head out to survey the culture outside that bubble and to find out that Christian music was a pretty well-known national joke.

Archival [00:02:32] But no way are we playing Creed, Man. Oh, no, of course not. Or Amy Grant. That's where we draw the line. I like Christian Rock. It's very positive. It's not like those real musicians who think they're so cool and hip. Can't you see you're not making Christianity better? You're just making rock and roll worse?

Andrew [00:02:50] It can feel pretty cringe looking back on it. Some people like me, would rather pretend that part of their musical journey never happened.

Archival [00:02:58] I hate contemporary Christian music. I really, truly do. Why would anyone want to roast Christian music? Because a lot of it's terrible.

Leah [00:03:10] But for others, it's the music that gave them a purpose, a sense of identity and a relationship with the divine. And it's not so simple to get rid of it.

Steve Hernandez [00:03:19] I mean, the lyrics are so awesome. These songs that worked as worship songs and as pop songs.

Andrew [00:03:36] From PRX and the Big Questions Project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a public radio producer who was raised on CCM and still is pretty embarrassed to admit that.

Leah [00:03:48] And I'm Leah Payne, a religious historian who just wrote a book about CCM called "God Gave Rock and Roll to You". For this season of Rock That Doesn't Roll. We're going to focus on CCM at the height of its powers in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000's.

Andrew [00:04:09] We're talking Petra to Switchfoot.

Leah [00:04:11] Amy Grant to Rebecca Saint James.

Andrew [00:04:13] Striper to Relient K.

Leah [00:04:15] And of course DC Talk. That was the era when the Christian music industry saw explosive growth. It grew into a $1 billion market. And back then it was possible to grow up listening to Christian rock and only Christian rock. So what did it mean to come of age in the CCM bubble and what was strong enough to make that bubble burst?

Archival [00:04:38] Rock That Doens't Rolll.

Andrew [00:04:42] For fans of Christian rock, the music was where they learned about God, family, politics and identity.

Leah [00:04:48] As they grew up. Some eventually rejected the music. Others still love it. I've created a survey for people to share their experiences with Christian music. Over 1200 people have responded and their experiences vary. But one thing is clear: the years they spent in the bubble of Christian music made a mark on them that remains, and some have strong reactions when they encounter it in their daily life. That's how old the seed of this podcast was planted, right, Andrew?

Andrew [00:05:13] Yeah, definitely. It was 2018 midterm elections.

Archival [00:05:18] People across the country are turning out to vote today in numbers that could end up being historic for a midterm election.

Andrew [00:05:24] I was working in the newsroom at WBEZ in Chicago. Tensions were high.

Archival [00:05:29] And a lot is on the line. The vast majority of governorships, state legislatures and control of Congress.

Andrew [00:05:35] In this charged atmosphere with news about North Korea, Muslim bans, the border. We were waiting to see if the blue wave of Democratic gains in Congress would materialize.

Archival [00:05:46] There's a good chance that the House and Senate could end up moving in divergent directions, with Democrats picking up seats in the House, but Republicans likely adding to their slim majority in the Senate.

Andrew [00:05:56] And then in the middle of this crazy news day,

Archival [00:06:00] But a tender Tennessee Christmas is the only Christmas for me.

Andrew [00:06:09] I found out on Twitter that Amy Grant was at NPR recording a Tiny Desk concert that day. I snapped. I was incensed. I looked incredulously to my coworkers for understanding, but I was met with blank stares, mostly because all they knew about Amy Grant was her crossover hit "Baby, Baby". But my mind automatically made several jumps that probably no one else there could follow. I come from two generations of pastors in Florida, so I was raised in white evangelical culture. Till my older brother broke out of our bubble in high school, we were only allowed to listen to Christian music. My first concert was Amy Grant. I was five. She has always epitomized evangelicals to me.

Leah [00:07:00] Amy Grant is so sweet. She's like the Queen of Christmas. How could you react like that?

Andrew [00:07:05] With everything going on that day in 2018. It was like my lizard brain went from Amy Grant to evangelicals to the chaos of Trump. It was all in one split second.

Leah [00:07:16] Hmm.

Andrew [00:07:17] It really threw me for a loop.

Leah [00:07:20] Well, I think I follow you here. Amy Grant is one of the most loved people in all of contemporary Christian music. She's an icon of that industry. So on the one hand, I can see why your coworkers were confused. But then on the other hand, right around the time Amy Grant was playing the Tiny Desk concert, I was trying to pitch a book on the history of contemporary Christian music and its effect on American evangelicals and American culture, including politics. One of the first editors I talked to said "I don't get what was political or powerful about Christian music". Some publishers just thought it wasn't a serious topic. But anyone who grew up in that bubble knows otherwise.

Andrew [00:07:58] This season, we want to talk with people who definitely think Christian music is a serious topic. People who grew up listening to it.

Leah [00:08:08] The ones who grew up in the world of Christian rock, the ones whose lives were defined by this quirky subculture that insulated evangelical teens from mainstream culture and who were deeply formed by that world. They deserve a closer look.

Andrew [00:08:22] To understand the bubble of Christian rock. You've got to start where most kids were introduced to it. Youth Group. While Nirvana fans were moshing in clubs, evangelical kids found their rock gods in youth groups, a place designed to help teens become and stay Christian.

Marko Oestreicher [00:08:39] People call me Marko, and I've been in youth ministry for 42 years. I spent the first 15 or so as a youth pastor in various parts of the country.

Andrew [00:08:51] This is Marko Oestreicher, a pastor and consultant who worked in youth ministry when Christian Rock was the best way to bring evangelical teens into the fold.

Marko Oestreicher [00:09:01] Nineties was the culmination of three decades of church based youth groups that was being done in a certain way. So in the nineties we really thought we had it figured out. So it was the era of the isolated youth group where so often it was hire a Pied Piper youth worker who would say this is a negative way of saying it, but who would entertain the kids or even be involved in great kind of discipleship efforts, but in a way that was removing them mostly from the context of the larger congregation. The phrase that's often used was "kid magnet". So it was somebody who teenagers were drawn to because of their personality. So that often meant somebody who was very extroverted, young, fun, musically talented, funny, a good speaker, those kinds of things.

Leah [00:10:02] In other words, entertainment value mattered in youth group. And the best youth pastors had to be as driven and charismatic as rock stars.

Andrew [00:10:11] Like this guy:

Steve Hernandez [00:10:12] Hi, my name's Steve Hernandez. I'm a comedian and an actor and a writer. More importantly, I'm a former youth minister at a megachurch. I don't think this will come up, but I did have a Christian rap band. I guess there's no way you guys could have known. But we were called "Get Down Voltron", and we were very good.

Leah [00:10:35] Sadly, to our knowledge, none of their music has survived, so we'll have to take Steve's word for it. But it's obvious that Steve has the charisma to be a rock star to a youth group in West Covina, California. Of course, before he was a youth minister, he was just a youth.

Steve Hernandez [00:10:50] I loved church from the very beginning. I fell in love with God very quickly when I was little. But but of course, you really fall in love with God through youth ministry and through my junior high youth group. All of your hormones are kicking in. It's the first time you're mingling with girls, having these big emotional experiences, watching a woman, a girl, you're in love with raising her hands to God with her eyes closed in ecstasy. I'm sorry, folks. It doesn't get any better than that. Why wouldn't you fall in love with Christ? Are you kidding me?

Andrew [00:11:39] So the ideal youth leader was a rock star leading youth group meetings away from the adult services. But what did they do in those services besides develop massive crushes? Music was at the center of it all.

Steve Hernandez [00:11:54] You're singing about Christ's love or being hysterical. There's one transitional song, and in the transitional song, near the end of that, you kind of slow it down a little bit. And then the lead worshiper starts saying a prayer, you know, "Hey, God, you know what? I just want to thank you right now. This is, it's so great to be here, man. And I really pray that your spirit, like, really comes into this place". And, you know, you say something like that and then you just, like, go for two or three. I think it was two for a total of five worship songs, if I remember. This is so funny. I haven't thought about this in so long. You're doing two worship songs and the last one, you're really like closing your eyes. You're lifting your hands to God, and then you say a prayer and then everyone starts laughing, and then you do some announcements and then maybe a skit introducing the topic. But then your youth pastor talks for a half hour to 45 minutes about whatever they were going to talk about.

Leah [00:12:51] Right around the time Steve was pastoring kids in California, across the country, in Lincoln, Nebraska, youth group kids were doing the same thing. Meet Tyler Huckabee.

Tyler Huckabee [00:13:01] I loved Youth Group. Yeah, I was a dyed in the wool youth group kid.

Andrew [00:13:06] Today, Tyler is a writer and a great follow on social media. But in the late nineties he was the ideal youth group kid. For one thing, he was homeschooled and he needed some help finding friends.

Tyler Huckabee [00:13:19] When I was about 12 years old, my family moved from the little rural Nebraska town I'd lived in to Lincoln, Nebraska, which is not very big but might as well been Tokyo for me. I just felt like I was very out of place in a lot of ways. But youth group still made sense. You know, like the "cool kids" in youth group were the coolest people I'd ever seen in my life anywhere. This feels like the coolest group of people in Lincoln, Nebraska, are here, Sunday morning in this room.

Leah [00:13:48] Congregations were getting bigger by the week in the 1990s. As the suburbs grew, megachurches boomed, and by the 1980s and 1990s, they were tailor made to welcome upwardly mobile families of the burbs who consumed all kinds of media. MTV and Blockbuster films and cable television. And they came with all kinds of bells and whistles to keep their attention. Cool, charismatic senior pastor: check. Big building: double check. Fancy stage with state of the art tech design, professional lighting and sound: triple check. And of course, something for the kids. Enter the really cool big church youth group. The bigger the church, the louder the Christian rock and the bigger and cooler the youth room. Being in their own space away from their parents, meant Youth group could cover the gamut of teen vibes from super earnest to pretty goofy.

Andrew [00:14:40] You might hear your youth pastor talk about getting along with your parents or about the importance of abstinence before marriage.

Leah [00:14:47] There might be a small group discussion about how a Bible story would help you make it through life as a teenager.

Andrew [00:14:52] Then there were awkward icebreakers, games testing Bible verse knowledge.

Leah [00:14:57] Or a game called Chubby Bunny, where kids competed to see who could fit the most marshmallows in their mouth and still say Chubby bunny. You know, when I say that one out loud, it sounds just really weird.

Tyler Huckabee [00:15:07] You walk in and there is music and it was usually like it was it was Christian rock, and they would get you into like little mixers or little small, you know, small circles of chairs because there was a pretty good sized church. So they broke us up into smaller groups. I'm sure usually there was some sort of insane game that if the church's legal team knew were happening, would probably have had a heart attack.

Andrew [00:15:34] I'm going to stop Tyler right there because we need to take a minute to talk about these games. This isn't just Chubby Bunny or the one where everyone puts their shoes in a big pile. Some youth pastors truly went the extra mile and came up with some showstoppers. If we're thinking of these youth leaders as rock stars, this is their version of Alice Cooper biting the head off a chicken.

Steve Hernandez [00:15:57] At one point I came up with this idea. I would get a whole raw fish and a kid would get a bat and I'd throw the fish at the thing. And this would happen in the in the youth group and, you know, it would explode over the thing. But yeah, the kids loved it. Yeah.

Leah [00:16:14] That's not even the most over-the-top game. Marko Oestreicher remembers something truly shocking.

Marko Oestreicher [00:16:20] I used to have in my junior high group in Chicago, I had a "hot seat" and it was a bar stool that had a mesh on the top of it, a wire mesh that was attached to an old Model T battery. For some reason, I never understood that. And some kind of a converter. And I had kids sit on it and I could push a button and send these painful little electrical shocks into their butts. And we thought it was the coolest thing. We just thought it was so much fun. The kids thought it was fun, too. And oh, my gosh, I would never in a million years use that today, not only because I would get sued. Just I think it's a horrible approach to things.

Marko Oestreicher [00:17:04] After all the music and games and skits, assuming no one had to go to the hospital, the youth pastor would give a message and kids would commit to living for God as evangelical Christians. Marko Oestreicher has trained youth pastors to work with congregations for decades, and he remembers how exciting it was when, after all the music and the games and the preaching, kids responded.

Marko Oestreicher [00:17:27] I think that the assumption was that kids were being formed by exposing them to truth, and our understanding of how to do that at that time was really about proclamation, right? So it was really about teaching or preaching, and it could create when done well, it could create the sense that there's this awesome stuff taking place and that kids are making decisions with multiple decisions to really reorient their lives.

Tyler Huckabee [00:18:04] What I remember from youth group, because my youth pastor, like drilled this into our heads, he said this all the time, is you can go two ways in life. You can go the world's way or you can go God's way, and we want you to go God's way. And that was just like so instilled in me this dichotomy that this is a really an either/or proposition.

Andrew [00:18:23] Steve Hernandez got a version of this message when he was recruited to work as a youth ministry intern when he was 19.

Steve Hernandez [00:18:31] I really felt like I was built to be a youth pastor in so many ways too. But also, you know, I'm 19 years old. They offer me a way to make a living and telling you you're doing this thing for God and that you're perfectly suited in every way to do this thing. Also, I had like a bunch of friends. This thing was my whole life, a bunch of volunteer youth staff, and we were just wrapped up in this thing. To me, it it couldn't have gotten any better than this. To be doing what God, the God of the universe, wants you to do and then to be doing it well, it was it was pretty much a no brainer for me.

Leah [00:19:12] Steve had chosen God's way for his life and to his bosses at the church, he was killing it. He felt he'd found his purpose in life. But Marko Oestreicher says there was a flaw in that model of youth group that can only be seen now with the benefit of hindsight. The passion for choosing God's way just didn't last after youth group.

Marko Oestreicher [00:19:32] The problem that we discovered with the research that came out later was: kids were not engaged in our programs, in other words, they graduated, they had no way to sustain that. And so we were finally confronted with the fact that our success rate was somewhere between 30 and 50%, depending on the research that you looked at. And so it was deeply problematic. It's caused a whole lot of soul searching for thoughtful youth workers.

Leah [00:20:03] Wow. 30 to 50% in terms of like going on to be a part of a church as an adult? Is that –?

Marko Oestreicher [00:20:10] Yes. Yeah. In terms of holding on to their faith and having any participation in church post high school graduation. So we had this false positive that it looked like things were going well and even smaller churches were emulating that approach to a smaller scale and appearing to have what looked like great success with that.

Andrew [00:20:37] After a quick break, our rock star youth pastor Steve Hernandez starts to see the writing on the wall.

Steve Hernandez [00:20:44] The church loved to brag about how many people gave their lives to Christ, but the whole thing did feel like we are kind of tricking in these kids.

Marko Oestreicher [00:20:53] And our youth group kid, Tyler Huckabee, sees his favorite bands perform at his church.

Tyler Huckabee [00:20:59] They came and played and it didn't go well. t was a bad show. The crowd just wasn't into. It happens.

Steve Hernandez [00:21:16] I will tell you, there's one thing about being fat and looking like me is, if you're fat and you look like me, you got to dress like you love hip hop. I mean, I just like it, you know. It's fun music, it's not my life or anything! I'm getting older, huh. There's only two places that sell double XL shirts, hip hop and Target.

Steve Hernandez [00:21:38] I don't know if you guys know this, but everyone looks down on musical comedians because it's cheating.

Leah [00:21:46] Really?

Steve Hernandez [00:21:46] Yes!

Leah [00:21:47] These days, music is a punch line in a stand up act. But back when Steve Hernandez was a youth pastor in the 1990s, music was a powerful element of his ministry.

Steve Hernandez [00:21:56] Music touches people. People's brains and their souls in ways that words could never do. And so we don't talk like this when we're ministering, but we're obviously using music to manipulate people and to open them in a way that words could not just do anyway. It's why people play music during sex. It's why music is a company for all of this is because it gets people emotional. And that's exactly where you want people to be. It's the best way, easiest way to manipulate them and to, you know, shove ideas down their throat that they may not otherwise be open to.

Andrew [00:22:34] That's one way of putting it. Music was definitely used in youth groups to set the right vibe.

Marko Oestreicher [00:22:40] It was background music to create the kind of environment that we want for a fun and engaging space.

Andrew [00:22:51] Here's youth ministry trainer Marko Oestreicher.

Marko Oestreicher [00:22:53] There was so much effort put into finding Christian versions of secular groups that would be okay for our kids to listen to.

Leah [00:23:04] In your mind, in your era, what would be the "youth group band"? If there was like one piece of music that just said "youth group".

Tyler Huckabee [00:23:15] When I was younger, for me, it was DC Talking and Jars of Clay.

Leah [00:23:33] Jars of Clay was a band made up of students at a Christian college who had a surprise mainstream hit on the radio called "Flood".

Andrew [00:23:40] Weird footnote for a CCM hit, that song was produced by Adrian Belew of King Crimson, Roxy Music and Talking Heads fame. Very random.

Leah [00:23:49] Yeah, Jars of Clay, their debut was a big deal. In part because they connected with audiences outside the youth group world. "Flood" peaked at number 12 on Billboard's modern rock chart, and the album stayed in the top 60 for almost a year.

Andrew [00:24:03] But even more than Jars of Clay, the preteen Tyler was getting down with the D.C. Talk. The interracial rap and vocal group was formed at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in 1987 by Michael Tate, Kevin, Max and TobyMac.

Tyler Huckabee [00:24:17] When you hear Jesus freak for the first time, it feels like you're like, whoa! Like you feel like you're taking a walk on the wild side.

Andrew [00:24:34] The 1995 album, "Jesus Freak" was peak youth group music. The album cover, designed to look like a weathered old book, was almost as ubiquitous as WWJD bracelets among evangelical teens.

Tyler Huckabee [00:24:47] I loved "Jesus Freak" was super important to me, and it felt if it felt rebellious in a way for me.

Leah [00:25:02] A lot of people I interviewed for my book have very strong feelings about DC Talk's Jesus Freak album. It's one of the most successful Christian albums of all time. Their big single "Jesus Freak" melds a "Smells like Teen Spirit" esque chorus with wrapped verses and grungy production. You can actually play Jesus Freak and Smells like Teen Spirit on top of each other, and it's the same chord progressions just four years later in the case of Jesus Freak. But a lot of youth group kids have never heard of Nirvana. I had a Gen Z research assistant raised in evangelical culture who was blown away when I played Smells like Teen Spirit for them. DC Talk was their introduction to grunge. DC Talk was their Nirvana.

Leah [00:25:49] At the Dove Awards, the CCM version of the Grammys, it was "Song of the Year" and it was the peak of the youth group band phenomenon where Christian music would create sound alikes to mainstream hits for evangelical teens.

Archival [00:26:01] Would you please welcome my good friends and buddies Michael, Toby, Kev and DC Talk!

Andrew [00:26:18] I remember Jesus Freak was huge. But if you listen to the words of Jesus freak, the message is a far cry from other hits of the era, like Jars of Clay's "Flood". "I don't really care if they label me a Jesus Freak" prepares Christian teens to be ostracized in mainstream social settings. "Kamikaze my death is gain" prepares them to become martyrs for the cause of evangelical Christianity.

Andrew [00:26:50] The grunge and rap-rock sound of the album, were something of a misdirect. DC Talk was far from rebellious. Not only was Jerry Falwell an early fan and supporter, but on this album they were collaborating with evangelist Billy Graham, who appears on the track "Mind's Eye".

Andrew [00:27:20] Graham put on standing feeling crusades from the late 1940s through 2005. He had an uncanny ability to present his conservative theology in ways that connected with generation after generation of Americans. One way he did that was by using popular music to tap into youth culture. Johnny Cash appeared at 30 of his crusades beginning in 1970. In the 1980s, it was Amy Grant and Michael W Smith, and in 1994, DC Talk appeared at Graham's first Youth Night Crusade in Cleveland, a perfect field trip for area youth groups.

Archival [00:27:57] An unprecedented event. Youth Night at the Billy Graham Crusade.

Archival [00:28:03] "It's music that we're used to. It's just the idea of seeing so many get so many people get saved with these things".

Andrew [00:28:10] The Billy Graham library claimed 6500 young people became Christians that night.

Archival [00:28:17] I've never seen anything like it, and I've been involved with Billy Graham for 14 years. If we take some contemporary music and Billy Graham, you've got a combination that can work in the nineties.

Andrew [00:28:27] I won't lie. This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I saw The Tiny Desk concert. Rock music being used to create conservatives.

Archival [00:28:35] Is it what you expected?

Archival [00:28:37] I didn't know what to expect because I've never been to something like this. I think it's great. It's really cool.

Andrew [00:28:43] It's like Steve Hernandez said earlier: music makes people open to ideas they might not consider in different circumstances. But behind the big numbers, how many people kept up their youth night commitments? How many teens kept listening to DC Talk? We can't know for sure, but we do know that Tyler didn't.

Tyler Huckabee [00:29:03] Then by the time I was actually in high school and youth group, that was more like the Switchfoot era and Relient K of course. Those are probably my two big Switchfoot and Relient K as I got older were hugely important to my life and I would consider them to be sort of the quintessential, maybe a peak CCM youth group, high school era. I feel like those really summed up my experience anyway.

Leah [00:29:29] Switchfoot was one of those rare rock bands who burst through that evangelical bubble and went on to have mainstream success and audiences much bigger than the youth group world. With songs that weren't so much tailored to keep kids in the fold as they were to encourage them to explore the world around them.

Tyler Huckabee [00:29:45] I think at that time, especially, you know, there was this idea which you also got from people like Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel, that the world is trying to pull you a certain direction. And every, you know, the world is marshaling its forces and its influence to make you this kind of person. And here we want you to be this kind of person. And part of the reason that I really was drawn to Switchfoot in particular was that there was something kind of different about the message that I felt like I was getting from Jon Foreman's lyrics, which was way more kind of Augustinian. And it's, you know, and existential, like you're meant to live for more. You feel something inside you that's calling you to be something bigger.

Leah [00:30:40] Tyler's right to call Switchfoot's Vibe "augustinian". They even had a song on their 1999 album, "New Way to Be Human", that was based on the ancient Saints book "Confessions".

Tyler Huckabee [00:31:09] It wasn't quite the same. I don't know. Fear based choice that I felt like I was being presented with every day and instead like it was calling me up to something higher instead of away from something.

Andrew [00:31:22] One side effect of the small Christian bubble was that bands would often play gigs for youth groups. It almost functioned as a club circuit for bands trying to build an audience.

Leah [00:31:34] It was a very normal practice for youth workers of youth groups of all sizes, by the way, even smaller ones to bring in bands either for an evangelistic rally type thing or just as a kind of momentum builder within the context of youth ministry. I did this too, and thought that it was really successful.

Tyler Huckabee [00:31:55] We brought in Switchfoot really early on. Like they were like, they might have still been teenagers when they came and played in our basement to like 12 people.

Andrew [00:32:05] And did the impact they had on you start there or had it already happened?

Tyler Huckabee [00:32:10] I was all I was already in. Like from Legend of Chin on, I was, I was in. I really, really liked them. And I think the first time I ever saw Relient K was at our church. They came and played and it did not go well. I feel bad about it. It was a bad show. The crowd just wasn't into. It happens. It wasn't anybody's fault. It just was like, there were probably 30 people there. You're in this church auditorium. I think at this point they were like the "Marilyn Manson ate my girlfriend" vibes. Like it was still it was pretty early on.

Tyler Huckabee [00:32:59] Think of a church. You're not you're not going to be like dancing around. You know, there's pews. You're not. It's not an ideal–

Andrew [00:33:05] So they're playing in the sanctuary, not like–

Tyler Huckabee [00:33:07] No, we were in the main, we were in the main sanctuary. It's not a great set up for a punk rock show. And I do remember, I don't remember exactly what he said. And with all due respect to Matt, who I think is a very nice guy, he expressed some sort of disappointment with how the show was going. It was never a great set.

Leah [00:33:29] So Tyler got to see two of his favorite bands of that era at his youth group before they each went on to sell millions of records in and out of the Christian music industry.

Andrew [00:33:39] These bands all ruled the youth group crowd, but when they got famous outside the Christian industry felt really special to comedian Steve Hernandez.

Steve Hernandez [00:33:49] For people who grew up in the church, we were always like, yearning for our music to be cool. We were always pulling for like Christian music to crossover, to see, you know, Amy Grant chart as high as she was charting. This is like, we're finally winning. We're finally doing it.

Leah [00:34:08] But when CCM artists crossed over, they could leave little holes in the bubble that their Christian fans could also escape through.

Tyler Huckabee [00:34:16] CCM wanted to get outside of the bubble. The bands in this scene wanted to break into the mainstream, and Switchfoot did very successfully, probably more successfully than any other band other than maybe Amy Grant up to that point. And by listening to them, that just sort of naturally then leads to they're opening for bands that were really big. So I'd hear them and I thought, oh, that's actually pretty good. And that radio rock leads to more and other interesting bands. Then by the time I was college, I was fully, you know, left wing Marxist listening to Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service and then all of that stuff.

Andrew [00:34:58] When Tyler wound up back in Lincoln after college, he went back to his old youth group to help out as a leader, but just wasn't the same.

Tyler Huckabee [00:35:07] I felt kind of like I was being put into a place that I put myself into of of being kind of being kind of like I'm saying these things on set. I'm teaching kids these things. But is this a good way to be like teaching high school students, middle school students? And I really wasn't sure that it was. This is a breaking point, I think, for a lot of people: as I got to know more queer people and became friends with them and realized that there is just not a place for them in this thing that I was leading, you know, I was put in the position of having to pick a side, and it was not hard for me to do that with the friends that I was making and and the, you know, how important they were.

Andrew [00:35:50] So Tyler left youth group behind. But he's written about Christian rock and mainstream musicians for more than ten years.

Tyler Huckabee [00:35:59] Most people I talked to that grew up with that stuff still listen to it, even with a little bit of embarrassment or sort of cringing about it. From the people I'm talking to, which which isn't everybody, I feel like there's still an appreciation for that era and sort of a love for the kid who listened to it. And I think that the artists who created that, although understandably, a lot of them, I think, feel a little sort of a complicated relationship with the things they said and wrote and sang at that time. It seems to me like it is a, largely been a net positive for even the people who are no longer really there, appreciate what they put into the world.

Andrew [00:36:41] Coming up:

Steve Hernandez [00:36:42] I just knew I didn't want to be the kind of like minister that got caught doing something. I mean, we've seen that all the time. I really, truly loved God and wanted to do what God wanted me to do.

Andrew [00:36:59] Steve Hernandez was a quick study as a youth pastor. He preached. He invented over-the-top games. He led worship music.

Steve Hernandez [00:37:08] I remember one of my favorite, absolute favorite songs was a song called "Pour Out My Heart". It was in my range, too, so I could sing it very like, very Bono style, very rock and roll. But I remember, if I'm leading worship, I would throw up a one to the to the group. And that would mean like, start the verse music over. I would throw up a two to say like, let's do the chorus again. And sometimes three, three would be like, just keep going. The spirit will not stop. I love that song. I think it's a great song.

Steve Hernandez [00:37:55] I stopped being a youth pastor because I did feel at some point that we really were just manipulating these kids. The church loved to see the numbers. The church loved to brag about how many people gave their lives to Christ. But the whole thing did feel like we are kind of tricking these kids. And I just knew that I should not have been doing this, that I was not at all spiritually mature enough. I was still young, and because I was having sex with my girlfriend and I was drinking some, I just knew I didn't want to be the kind of like minister that got caught doing something. I mean, we'd seen that all the time. I really, truly loved God and wanted to do what God wanted me to do. So I decided to to step away. But the church kind of wouldn't let me. I mean, they just said, "we think you're very good at this, but you obviously need some time away. So do you want to, like, stay here or go somewhere?" And I was like, I guess I'll go somewhere.

Leah [00:38:58] Steve says they sent him to work abroad for a few months, hoping he'd change his mind about quitting. But when he got back:

Steve Hernandez [00:39:05] I still wanted to quit. And they said, "okay, we're going to let you quit. But you're you're not allowed to come to the church for one year". To me, that was my family. So you're basically taking away my family and my life for the year. So I left the church at that point and then I spun out and, you know, lived a prodigal son life. And some say I never returned. I do feel bad because the church, when I left, they told everyone that I just decided to go back to school and they kind of just lied to them. And so I think a lot of the kids felt betrayed. But I've been able to talk to them since and reconcile a lot of those relationships. But yeah, what a bummer, huh?

Andrew [00:39:54] Despite leaving evangelical Christianity, Steve Hernandez says the music still connects with him, especially from an English band called "Delirious", who bridge the divide between cool church music and anthemic rock music in the nineties.

Steve Hernandez [00:40:08] You know, I don't play any of this stuff anymore, but I do love Delirious' "Do you Feel the Mountains Tremble". I think that's an incredible song.

Steve Hernandez [00:40:25] "I could sing of your love forever". I mean, the lyrics are so awesome. They these songs that worked as worship songs and praise songs and as pop songs.

Steve Hernandez [00:40:44] I don't believe in God like that anymore, but I still live my life according to seeking out God and what God would have me to do. I think about David singing these songs in the field when he's like, hurting when he's a shepherd. I think that kind of a music is what those songs bring up in you. I think the the longing for God is like such a basic human thing. We've created it probably, you know, from the dawn of mankind.

Leah [00:41:24] Eventually Steve started bartending and doing standup comedy, but it's hard to leave his work as a youth pastor behind.

Leah [00:41:32] You said that former students will come through. Is that a sweet moment a lot of times? Or what's that like?

Steve Hernandez [00:41:37] Oh yeah, especially when I'm bartending. It's great to see them. When I find out that some of those kids are still in church, that bums me out. That bums me out, that they're like still evangelicals. I'm lucky that a few of the guys that I grew up in church with and that are still believers, I'll see them once a year and we'll see each other around Christmas and they accept me for who I am.

Andrew [00:41:57] Still, even 20 years after he ended his youth ministry career, Steve Hernandez still works with younger people, trying to help them succeed every Sunday evening. Only now it's as the host of a comedy Open Mic night.

Steve Hernandez [00:42:22] It's funny, because I will have a dream once a year that the church needs me, that something has gone wrong. And then I go back and I can do it. And I wake up and I'm like, man, that would be incredible. But I also know that it's hard to continue to lie to yourself.

Andrew [00:42:53] On the next episode of Rock That Doesn't Roll:

D.L. Mayfield [00:42:58] I thought all these Tooth and Nail bands, like they're really not talking about God enough, but it's what we have and so I will deal with it, but I will be more evangelical that they are.

Leah [00:43:08] We look at kids who preferred Christian rock with a harder edge: punk rock prophets. Thanks to Marko Oestreicher, Steve Hernandez, and Tyler Huckabee. To find them online, see our show notes.

Andrew [00:43:19] If you enjoy our show, please rate and review it on a podcast app and tell your youth pastor about it.

Leah [00:43:25] If you have a story you'd like to share, please call our hotline and we might play it on a future show. It's 6297776336.

Andrew [00:43:35] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions project from PRX. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Disarme. Jocelyn Gonzalez edits the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Leah [00:43:48] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Florentine provides production oversight. I'm Leah Payne.

Andrew [00:43:57] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.

ROCK THAT DOESN’T ROLL - EPISODE TWO: PUNK ROCK PROPHETS

Leah [00:00:01] Do you remember being a teenager? Sure. Parts of that time are great. But –

Brad Onishi [00:00:05] Being 15 is the worst, right? Being 16 is the worst. It's just terrible.

Andrew [00:00:09] Being 15 is the worst. But for 1990s kids feeling alone or confused or any of the other really hard things about adolescence, pop music like grunge or hip hop or punk or even ska could be a lifeline.

Brad Onishi [00:00:24] For me, high school music is the music that gets you through. I had an ex-girlfriend once and we were riding in the car together and Blink 182 came on and I kind of roll my eyes because I'm not really blink 182 fan. But she turned it up because she was like, in high school. This is what I listen to, right? And it just kind of got me through it. And what she was saying there was not like, "Hey, today as a 30 something year old, I really love the chord structure and, you know, the way that this music is written and it's so complex. And did you hear that change there? I mean, that's just who knew?" None of that. It was just pure. This got me through a time in my life that was like really vulnerable.

Leah [00:01:07] That's Dr. Bradley Onishi today. He's a celebrated author, scholar and podcast host. But in the 1990s, he was just a youth group kid in love.

Brad Onishi [00:01:17] I fell in love through a sca band, the most cringey of all cringey youth group music. And that was The O.C. Supertones. When I was listening to The Supertones before I came to talk to you all today, I could feel it. I was like singing along. My body was like, happy. I could remember some friends and concerts and nights of dancing and having a good time walking out of a church basement, sweaty on our way to Denny's to like, you know, go finish off a crazy Friday night eating an omelet.

Andrew [00:01:52] Brad loved this social high of belonging to youth group at his church. But the music and some of those places, not so much.

Brad Onishi [00:02:00] I'm just going to be totally honest. 15 year old me just thought this is like corny Ned Flanders Jesus music. I don't want to listen to this. This is not my thing. And I'm from Orange County. We're supposed to be cool, Like I was a skater, I was a surfer. DC Talk didn't work even for Christian versions of that culture.

Leah [00:02:18] From PRX and The Big Questions project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Leah Payne, the author of A History of Christian Music and a West Coast native.

Andrew [00:02:28] And I'm Andrew Gill, a public radio producer who spent many crazy Friday nights eating omelets after watching Christian's car shows in the nineties.

Leah [00:02:37] On our first episode, we focused on youth groups and the most popular music and that world's peak era: DC Talk, Jars of Clay and Switchfoot to name a few. This time we're looking beyond those bands to the edgier Christian music of that time: punk, hardcore and ska.

Andrew [00:02:56] We want to find out what drove some kids into deeper subcultures and what did they get out of the experience. For Brad Onishi, it was because the most popular Christian music sounded corny. That's because he didn't grow up in a Christian bubble.

Brad Onishi [00:03:14] I'm like 14 and I am getting in tons of trouble, right? You know, sex, drugs and rock and roll is starting to sort of like become my teenage mantra. Parents are getting worried. Suspension from school. At that point in my, like, junior high, there were two kind of approaches to music. And it's really split between the kids who listen to hardcore and punk. And then on the other side, it's hip hop, right? So it's the era of like Dr. Dre's The Chronic and Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Those two schools of thought really dominated me until I got to the youth group.

Leah [00:03:52] Oh, I can relate to that for sure. I mean, Nirvana, I'm a kid from the Pacific Northwest and they were everything to us. And I think anyone my age knows exactly where they were and what they were doing when they found out that Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, had died.

Andrew [00:04:10] Oh, yeah. Nirvana reigned supreme. I remember I had the longest hair of my life and then I happened to get it all cut off the day that Kurt Cobain died. And I was very sad about it. But I also told people that was why I cut my hair, which wasn't really true.

Leah [00:04:29] Well, he was an icon, so people would believe you for sure.

Andrew [00:04:32] But, you know, I had grown up like only allowed to listen to Christian music. But by that point, it had been a couple of years that my brother had been dipping toes in both worlds. And, you know, I was listening to Nirvana and The Breeders. My brother is giving me mixtapes with like Pavement and Superchunk. And so at that point I really could have just gone away from Christian music altogether and just completely left that musical world behind. But little did I know that right around that time, 1993, a frustrated Christian record label employee named Brandon Ebel, who was living in Orange County, he was starting his own label that would get edgy Christian music to kids like me everywhere. Tooth & Nail records. And the impact of Tooth & Nail was huge. This entire podcast could just be about Tooth & Nail and their sub label Solid State and BEC recordings.

Leah [00:05:33] Tooth & Nail changed the game for underground Christian bands trying to cobble together an audience in the pre-Internet era. For some kids, Tooth & Nail was a godsend.

D.L. Mayfield [00:05:43] I am D.L. Mayfield, and I'm a writer, somebody who grew up in an evangelical land.

Andrew [00:05:49] Today D.L. Mayfield also hosts a podcast about Christian pop culture.

D.L. Mayfield [00:05:54] "Okay, we have to intro. What is this series, what episode are we on?"

Andrew [00:05:59] Unlike Brad Onishi, D.L. was born and raised evangelical. D.L. was homeschooled and not allowed to listen to secular music. But one day around age 11 or 12,

D.L. Mayfield [00:06:12] I was at somebody's house and they had MTV on, which I had never been allowed to see before, and it felt very illicit. And the music video was Basket Case by Green Day.

Music [00:06:29] [Green Day's "Basket Case" plays]

D.L. Mayfield [00:06:39] I just remember I stood, like, frozen in front of the TV, just watching this song Basket Case, and I just thought, what is this? But then I was like, well, this is not Christian, so I can't like this. Just file that away. That was amazing. That's not for me. You know, like, that's not my life.

Leah [00:06:59] As much as D.L. tried to reject it, a seed had been planted. It was at the nearby Christian bookstore that the seed eventually sprouted.

D.L. Mayfield [00:07:08] I would walk there and like, look at the bargain bins, and I ended up getting a sampler CD. Do you remember those, like, all the samplers they sold at these places? You know, trying to get you to be introduced to new Christian bands. It's this sampler called Seltzer: Modern Rock to Settle Your Soul. But they had one song on there that stood out from all the rest, and that was Teenage Politics by MxPx. And that song is really the only pop punk song on that entire sampler and has so much energy. And I was just like, oh my god. Like, this is it. This is the Christian version of that electrifying song I saw on MTV. And that kind of started it. I started, you know, going to the family Christian bookstore, finding CDs by MxPx and I discovered Tooth & Nail, and they put out all these samplers. I discovered more and more bands, and I guess I was kind of off to the races.

Andrew [00:08:29] A few years later, on the opposite coast, a kid named Tim Whitaker was also growing up in a pretty strict Christian household. Things began to change when Tim was 11 and his super traditional church went from no modern instruments in their worship services to guitar, bass and drums. His dad volunteered Tim as the drummer, thinking church members who were upset about the changes would at least be civil to an 11 year old kid who was just learning the instrument.

Tim Whitaker [00:08:59] Drums, you have to understand for these spaces is like anathema, right? It is just it's it's not godly, it's unbiblical. It's a modern rock beat.

Leah [00:09:09] The plan worked. Tim was now a drummer with a weekly gig and on the job training. At this point he was very into mainstream CCM.

Tim Whitaker [00:09:18] I was a huge 4Him fan. Like I had all their albums. I would go to bed to them. I loved that, that group.

Andrew [00:09:40] After a few years of performing in church each week, Tim's identity was taking shape around being a drummer. It solidified when he happened to hear Blink 182 on a classmate's iPod. Like D.L. with Green Day, he'd never heard anything like it. Unlike D.L. he didn't feel guilty about listening to it. In fact, Blink 182's drummer, Travis Barker, looked like a good outsider to emulate, at least in fashion and musical style.

Tim Whitaker [00:10:11] I found him online. He had a mohawk, he was a punk, and I'm like, hell or– I would have said heck yes at that time, you know. HECK YES, I love this guy. He's so good. I want to be like him. I even had the Mohawk like I couldn't fit in my car with my Mohawk, it was that high at one point.

Leah [00:10:27] But being a good Christian teen, Tim found Christian versions of music as exciting as Blink 182. And thanks to Tooth & Nail Records, they were for sale at his local Christian bookstore in New Jersey. One memorable day, he found albums by two Tooth & Nail bands that drew him further into his identity as a heavier than average drummer.

Tim Whitaker [00:10:49] One, the album artwork was a person with like a fishbowl on his head, and that was Emery's album. And then there was another one with a person with like a surgical mask, like, like for oxygen on their face. And that was Underoath's. And so I'm like, ooh, this looks interesting. Never heard of Underoath before. So I bought the album. We put it in the CD player on the way home, and I hated it.

Underoath [00:11:13] [Underoath plays in the car]

Tim Whitaker [00:11:15] I hated it. I was like this, the screaming. This is too heavy. No, not for me. Like, not a fan at all. But then they had one song called Reinventing Your Exit, which was like a pop, like semi hardcore tune, very little screaming, much more melody driven. I was like, ooh, but I like this one. This is really good. And then I'm thinking, are these guys even Christian? Well, luckily for them, the very last song on that album is called Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape. And that's where they mention Jesus. That's kind of like the stamp you need of the OK. They're Christian. They mention Jesus in one song. I'm in, it's safe. My parents are not going to get mad at me for listening to because mom and dad, it is Christian! Like they're Christians. I know you don't like the music, but they're Christians. So I think that was kind of like the draw for me was that my parents would knock it on my case. They weren't cursing, right, because cursing is a big deal. You don't want to have music that has explicit language, and they're playing music that I like as a drummer that now I'm starting to learn. And now I'm discovering through them this this world of like this hardcore underground Christian scene, which I think a lot of people really underestimate regarding how it shaped culture.

Andrew [00:12:40] That world was a welcome alternative to kids like Tim, D.L. and Brad, who wanted something more authentic to the issues they were facing than what the major Christian record labels were offering. Pouring over lyrics and reading interviews and zines could give these intense kids additional spiritual guidance between youth group meetings and church services.

D.L. Mayfield [00:13:00] I wasn't going and buying books at the Family Christian bookstore. I was buying CDs. So I really did all this work proving to my parents how Christian these people were. But then also my parents started to get really into the music, too. They love Jars of Clay, and so we had more music to listen to as a family.

Andrew [00:13:21] In this time before social media, going to punk shows was a chance to meet other people who shared your non-mainstream worldview but didn't live in your neighborhood or go to your school. It didn't even really matter who the bands were as long as you liked the genre. Churches that invested in youth ministry caught on to their popularity and got in the game themselves.

D.L. Mayfield [00:13:43] There was like this little moment in like youth group culture, right in the mid nineties, mid to late nineties where every youth group was like, sure, we'll become a venue, we'll sell some raspberry mochas, we'll get ourselves an espresso machine and some ratty couches.

Leah [00:13:57] This was such a phenomenon that Tooth & Nail star pop punk band MxPx wrote a song about it in 1995.

Music [00:14:11] [MxPx song plays]

D.L. Mayfield [00:14:29] So my parents ended up starting a concert venue in their strip mall church in a town in Auburn, California, and they called it the Fishbowl. And it was open every Friday night. And lots of kids came actually, like lots of kids came. The biggest band we ever had come play at our church was Squad Five-O. And the Elders gave my parents a ton of shit for that because they were like, you have let Satan into the building.

Andrew [00:14:55] Squad Five-O were a glam punk band from Savannah, Georgia. I saw a few of their shows in the nineties. I am not surprised the church Elders were upset. They're dressed like guns and roses and often have their gigs at Christian events shut down when the crowd got too rowdy.

Leah [00:15:13] But for fans like Brad Onishi, getting rowdy was kind of the point of going to a punk show.

Brad Onishi [00:15:20] What would happen in these Christian circles is you weren't supposed to get super rowdy. You weren't going to punch people and kick and there wasn't going to be fist fighting. The idea was very much the idea behind like muscular Christianity and Christians playing sports like Christians, yes, go play, tackle football, tear that guy's head off. But then, you know, help them get up after you tackle him or say, God bless you. Right. So in the mosh pit, we weren't trying to hurt each other. We were just sort of, you know, dancing in a way that let's just be honest, a lot of white kids dance in Orange County, which is by not dancing and having no rhythm. So instead just running into each other and barreling into each other. And it was a nice way to get aggression out, a nice way to like, get your blood pumping and to kind of feel alive a little bit.

Tim Whitaker [00:16:03] I mean, I got to be honest. Church basement hardcore shows are they're the shit and you know there's a whole different level of like, of, of, of raw and just unfiltered.

Andrew [00:16:13] Did they have a lot of moshing or?

Tim Whitaker [00:16:14] Oh yeah, yeah. And I think some of these churches don't know what they signed up for. They just see Christian Band, OK, and then all of a sudden like it's, you know they're screaming into the mic and like, everything's as loud as humanly possible and kids are just flailing their arms like they're possessed by a spirit. And they're like, oh my God, what would we get ourselves into?

Andrew [00:16:31] For evangelical Christian kids like Tim and Brad, who are trying to live within the moral restrictions of the youth group bubble, moshing and slam dancing provided a loophole to connect with their bodies.

Brad Onishi [00:16:43] We couldn't have sex, we couldn't drink, we couldn't cuss. So, you know, let's get out here and just sort of like elbow each other for half an hour and then we'll pray and thank God and we'll go home. So it was it was, you know, kind of fun. Now, what we were always looking for was like the church basements with the, like local punk band that would actually let you mosh because at most times there would have been like some youth pastor and some dads who were like, guys, no, no, you just listen. You got to you can jump up and down, but no barreling, you know. So we were always looking for the like that cool Methodist church in Tustin that was like, oh, yeah, go ahead, mosh away, buddy. Let let it rip.

Leah [00:17:25] DL Mayfield also found a sanctioned form of freedom through punk rock shows. They'd been so inspired by MxPx that they formed their own Christian punk band.

D.L. Mayfield [00:17:35] Like a year after I discovered MxPx, I decided to start my own evangelical pop punk band, and I told my older sister, who is two and a half years older than me, I said, "you're going to be the lead singer". And then I got two guys in the youth group to be the guitar player and the drummer. I learned the electric bass because I was like sort of pragmatic. That is the instrument nobody wants to learn because it's not sexy or whatever. I'll learn to play bass and then I will start a pop punk band and we will tell everyone about Jesus because people need to know about Jesus. This what my parents kept telling me. Everybody needs to know about Jesus. Proclaim your faith. I was like, here's an excellent way to do it. And just because of who I was, I thought all these Tooth & Nail bands, like I kind of agreed with my mom a little bit. Like they're really not talking about God enough, but it's what we have and so I will deal with it, but I will be more evangelical that they.

Andrew [00:18:29] D.L.'s band was called Agnus United and they basically played as often as possible at the Fish bowl, the venue D.L.'s parents owned and operated. As the band's Svengali, D.L. told their older sister to play to the gender stereotypes of the male dominated punk scene and dress like Gwen Stefani for their gigs.

D.L. Mayfield [00:18:47] And then I was like, but what about me? Like, I'm not going to dress like that. Like, why would I? And so I cut my hair super duper short, and I started dressing like a boy. And I would wear like two or three sports bras. I would wear band t shirts, corduroy pants from the old man section at Goodwill. I had a chain wallet, I had spikes, and I started getting misgendered right as a boy. And in some of these situations, and everybody thought it was so funny.

Leah [00:19:14] Today, D.L. identifies as non-binary. As a teen, they didn't have the language to describe anything beyond a strict male female binary. But performing in an evangelistic punk band actually gave them an opportunity to explore their presentation without completely leaving the Christian bubble.

D.L. Mayfield [00:19:32] I just told my parents like, Hey, you told me I should be a missionary, right? I'm an intense young girl who wants to tell people about Jesus. And since girls aren't allowed to be pastors, right, I have to be a missionary. I'm going to be a missionary to pop punk youth. And they're mostly boys, and I'm just dressing like them. And so my parents were like, okay, this makes sense to us. And they did get some shit for, of course, to have a kid dressed like a boy for, you know, three plus years. But for me, I really loved blending into that scene.

Andrew [00:20:03] In Agnus United they even incorporated D.L.'s gender play into a choreographed cover of MxPx's hit, Chick Magnet.

Music [00:20:13] [Chick Magnet music plays]

D.L. Mayfield [00:20:22] After about a year of that, my sister, because she was the lead singer, she would start to dedicate that song to me. So I would like be playing the bass line, I was just so intense. And I would turn around and like, the whole joke is like, girls like to hit on me because I dress like a cool punk boy. And then I would like turn around at the end and actually have a girl who can play the bass. And now looking back, I just think it's so funny and so cute and like, nobody knew what to do with a gender non-conforming person back then. And I really carved out a nice little space for myself. And I had some fun for a few years and I, I wasn't like, totally accepted, but I wasn't totally rejected either.

Leah [00:21:09] And of course, there were times when Brad didn't feel like moshing. For him and so many youth group kids in the late 1990s, that's where ska comes in.

Brad Onishi [00:21:18] I think ska was this really perfect thing for Orange County White Christian youth group kids because it obviously was created in the in the Caribbean and other parts of the world where black artists are behind ska. And then it goes like to the U.K., right? And then it gets to the United States. So I think what we did not know at the time was that so much of the Ska we were listening to had been through a kind of colonial wringer and appropriated by white people. But we could dance to it. You could go with people who were not into punk music to a concert, and you could like dance, and you could dance in a way that was super Holy Spirit friendly. There was tons of room for the Holy Spirit. You could like, shake your elbows and kind of twist. And it was like kind of dancing like the 1950s way. You didn't have to, like, hug and twerk and stuff, so we weren't going to get in trouble, you know? But it was also like we were dancing. It was fun. It wasn't like, Hey, we're just moshing and, like, violently throwing ourselves into each other. I have these pictures of me and my siblings and I have bleached blond hair like a really sad teenage boy goatee, and like, my suit is, like, totally oversize and brown, I think. Looking back on it now, it's one of the most ridiculous pictures I own of of my siblings and I. But we were just totally saying to our little suburban enclave, hey, we're not going to just wear like, Billabong shorts and like a shirt from the mall, right? Or I'm not going to wear just like my Christian T-shirt to school today. I'm wearing this like, weird uniform that is appropriated from ska which I really don't understand, which most of the ska I listen to has been appropriated from black artists. And that's an echo of an echo of an echo of an echo. But still, take that suburbia and take that, like lame Christian adults at my church! We're a different generation. We're a little bit edgier than you, so, you know, deal with it.

Leah [00:23:30] Coming up, we'll look at how the megachurches of Orange County, California, were fertile ground for developing the Christian punk, ska and hardcore music scene of the 1990.

Brad Onishi [00:23:39] In 1995, Orange County has become this home of conservative politics, but it has also become the magnet of Christian megachurches.

Music [00:23:50] [Rock That Doesn't Roll Theme sting plays]

Andrew [00:23:54] This is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill. When we're talking about Christian punk, hardcore and ska, it would be hard to overstate the impact Tooth & Nail records had on spreading that music.

D.L. Mayfield [00:24:05] Tooth & Nail just had a really different sound than the overly produced Christian music I was hearing. I think DC Talk straddled that line a little bit, but with like a Tooth & Nail sampler, you never knew what you were going to get and things were so weird. As of course I loved MxPx. I love Slick Shoes, I love Value Pack. I loved all these pop punk bands. But you would also get bands like Joy Electric.

Music [00:24:36] [Joy Electric music plays]

D.L. Mayfield [00:24:38] The Danielson family,

Music [00:24:41] [The Danielson Family music plays]

D.L. Mayfield [00:24:46] Havlina Rail Company.

Music [00:24:49] [Havalina Rail Company music plays]

D.L. Mayfield [00:24:57] And they were weird as shit. Like, truly, truly weird.

Leah [00:25:03] Tooth & Nail was created in Southern California. The label quickly relocated up the coast to Washington State, where one of their biggest bands MxPx was from. But it's not just happenstance that Tooth & Nail emerged in Southern California. Brad Onishi says factors that would lead to Tooth & Nail emerging began decades before with a shift in Orange County's population.

Brad Onishi [00:25:25] There was a widespread migration to that region in the 1950s and sixties, and the draw was the defense industry. After World War II, the defense industry was centered, surprisingly, in Southern California. So millions of white Southerners and white Midwesterners left their hometowns, drove across the country to this place that had cheap real estate and perfect weather and really good paying jobs for defense industry titans. And that formed the Orange County that everybody knows.

Andrew [00:25:58] Then in the late sixties, when nascent mega-church Calvary Chapel was forming, the same, people were also founding Maranatha! Music, one of the first record labels intended to market music that was informed by rock and roll and evangelical Christianity.

Brad Onishi [00:26:13] Calvary Chapel is a Southern California denomination that starts when Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbie and others are ministering to hippies in the 1960s. And it becomes this denomination known as as the one that welcomes the hippies, the the runaway kids, the kids living on the beach. And they really form this kind of young people's denomination out of that. And Calvary Chapel Costa mesa in the nineties when I'm around, is a congregation of like 20 or 25,000 people. In 1995, Orange County has become this home of conservative politics, but it has also become the magnet of Christian megachurches. We were 15, 20 minutes away from Rick Warren. In my town alone, my town had two megachurches that were associated with the friends denomination, the Quakers. We also had some free churches that were even bigger than ours, that were churches of like 5000 - 6000.

Andrew [00:27:07] With all these megachurches with their mega budgets for church music, there was a lot of fertile ground for Christian bands to grow. From the Calvary Chapel bands like Love Song.

Music [00:27:25] [Love Song music plays]

Andrew [00:27:25] Lord. And Daniel Amos.

Music [00:27:29] [Daniel Amos music plays]

Leah [00:27:40] To Southern California bands like 2nd Chapter of Acts who went to a Foursquare megachurch.

Music [00:27:54] [2nd Chapter of Acts music plays]

Leah [00:27:58] Or Keith Green, who worshiped at a vineyard megachurch.

Music [00:28:01] [Keith Green music plays]

Leah [00:28:08] And don't forget about Bob Dylan, who played on a Keith Green album and who released Christian albums after worshiping at the Vineyard.

Music [00:28:15] Let me be the devil. I may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve some.

Andrew [00:28:22] It was definitely a scene in the seventies and in the eighties it kept going, creating a lineage of Christian music developing in Southern California that had a symbiotic relationship to the growing megachurches of the region.

Leah [00:28:36] One final example The Lifesavors, a Southern California punk band started by Vineyard founder John Wimber's son, Chris.

Music [00:28:45] [The Lifesavors music plays]

Leah [00:28:59] And his bandmate Mike Knott ran a label called Blonde Vinyl in the early 1990s that immediately preceded Tooth & Nail and offered weird California Christian bands an avenue to get their music out.

Andrew [00:29:13] All this to say by the time Brandon Ebel launched Tooth & Nail in 1993, the pump had been primed for 20 years, and a lot of that counterculture music probably wouldn't have gotten to the public if it weren't for megachurches. Tim Whitaker:

Tim Whitaker [00:29:31] One of the things that makes this culture so attractive is that it presents itself as countercultural, right? And so then then they stick like your evangelical talking points in that. So being pro-life, that's countercultural. So I had the Rock for Life T-shirt, had to be like a thousand font. You know, it said ABORTION IS HOMICIDE right on the front. And the back had three statements and it said, "You will not silence my message. You will not mock my God. You will stop killing my generation". So I'm wearing this listening to bands like Underoath thinking, this is it. I'm part of the resistance. I'm part of the underground movement that is counterculture, right? These guys don't curse and bands like them in the secular world do! So it kind of all fits together.

Brad Onishi [00:30:17] I think that's the whole game.

Andrew [00:30:18] Brad Onishi.

Brad Onishi [00:30:20] This fits perfectly into the megachurch ethos as well. All right. Hey, you are not the typical middle class boring white Christian, huh? No like milk toast for you? You're a little you're a little edgier than that?

Andrew [00:30:34] D.L. Mayfield.

D.L. Mayfield [00:30:35] I think a part of me is just sad that I was drawn to this music that inherently is saying, Hey, the world's pretty fucked up and you have a right to feel sad about a lot of this stuff. And that's not what Christian punk was at all. And although there was more freedom of expression and creativity, like there is that constricted intellectualism and constricted creativity, that is sort of the hallmark of evangelicalism.

Andrew [00:31:12] Coming up: what do you do when your church goes against the values it taught you?

Tim Whitaker [00:31:16] I tell people all the time, my tradition radicalized me. Like it totally did.

D.L. Mayfield [00:31:23] [Rock That Doesn't Roll theme sting plays]

D.L. Mayfield [00:31:27] These are just little subcultures that we've created within the subculture of Christianity that actually gives us some room to breathe and some room to be weird and some room to be teenagers.

Leah [00:31:39] This is D.L. Mayfield, thinking about how Christian punk, hardcore and ska scenes functioned in families that followed Dr. James Dobson's teachings on Godly Parenting.

D.L. Mayfield [00:31:50] Because, you know, the Dr. Dobson or the Focus on the Family or the conservative evangelical approach to parenting your kid is is honestly geared toward stopping individuation as much as humanly possible.

Leah [00:32:03] James Dobson's Focus on the Family provided evangelical parents with resources for raising the next generation of evangelicals. This included kids entertainment like radio drama Adventures and Odyssey.

Radio Drama [00:32:15] [These fictional character building dramas are created by an award winning team that use creative storytelling to teach lasting truths].

Leah [00:32:24] These McGee and Me! videos and media reviews for parents worried about their kids hearing or seeing swear words, drug references, sex or rude behaviors.

D.L. Mayfield [00:32:34] And for many white evangelicals, they were like, no, we don't want that to happen. We need you to remain in the fold. We need you to remain in here. So it was interesting how Christian music like Tooth & Nail, was this place where we could meet in the middle.

Andrew [00:32:48] Across the country, in New Jersey, Tim was being shaped by more overtly political voices.

Tim Whitaker [00:32:54] I grew up in a very conservative household. Talk radio was on all day. And, you know, maybe Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity,

Clip [00:33:01] [Sean Hannity clip plays: "We're going to have two experts on the program today that are going to try to explain to you how this is all a hoax, how this is not the truth."]

Tim Whitaker [00:33:10] I had that in my head. But like, I wasn't predisposed like, oh, my god, like, yeah, I'm a conservative. It was just kind of in the you're just breathing the air, right? You can't help it like it's in there. You're inhaling it.

Leah [00:33:21] Christian hardcore music gave Tim a way to distinguish himself from his parents without questioning the conservative air he was breathing every day.

Tim Whitaker [00:33:30] So it kind of gives you, like, this perfect, you know, concoction of it's rebellious, but in the safe ways for conservative Christian moms not to have a panic attack that your son's listening to it.

D.L. Mayfield [00:33:42] I'm a child of the culture war. Right. That was manufactured by conservative Christians. You know, all this evangelical media we talk about, even Tooth & Nail, all these things were sort of a part of keeping people in the fold, keeping them apart of the faith, making sure we replicate the values of our parents and also replicate us white conservative Christians. And so a lot of this is geared towards especially if you're socializes female, right? You're supposed to want to be a wife and you're supposed to want to have a bunch of kids and you're supposed to want to make sure they believe exactly like you do.

Andrew [00:34:16] In addition to now identifying as nonbinary, as an adult, D.L. also sees that they're autistic. But as a teenager, all they knew was that the expectations of the evangelical world didn't feel attainable. Instead, they poured themselves into their missionary punk rock band and later into working as a missionary among refugees.

D.L. Mayfield [00:34:39] All these ways to sort of rage against the machine without really raging against the machine at all, but just trying to find how can I survive? Like, how can I do this?

Leah [00:34:51] For Tim, some of his favorite Christian music contained within it a critique of the politically conservative evangelical world that raised him.

Tim Whitaker [00:35:00] You know what's crazy for me? A lot of the music I grew up on like PAX217, for example, I listen back and I'm like, yeah, these guys like they were onto something. Some of that, some of those lyrics were way ahead of their time.

Music [00:35:14] [PAX217 music plays]

Tim Whitaker [00:35:20] The song "Engage" was like a much more, I think like honest assessment of like A) Christian culture not being active enough in healthy ways. And also, like, there were just lyrics that would be like, yeah, like how to– in their own way of like, how do we love our neighbor? Or how do we think about, about like what's most important in life, you know, like how, how do we reject materialism?

Music [00:35:43] [PAX217's Engage plays].

Tim Whitaker [00:35:45] Now I'm like, oh, you're channeling some Shane Claiborne over there. I love that. Right? I think if I'm going to be really, really cynical for one second, one thing that I'm realizing that I think is problematic is some of the music that you listen to gives you a sense of no compromise, right? Like that's in the song Revolution by Supertones. "No compromise. No compromise."

Music [00:36:07] [The O.C. Supertones "Revolution" plays]

Tim Whitaker [00:36:18] And looking back, I see now how that's weaponized to exclude people like from evangelical culture or how not to move on issues that you really actually should move on. And so I think sometimes some of the lyrics can kind of give this sense of like, well, if I do this, I'm compromising my faith as opposed to in light of new information, how is my faith evolving in becoming more beautiful and more inclusive?

Andrew [00:36:44] For D.L. Mayfield, their journey led to leaving evangelicalism and even Christianity behind.

D.L. Mayfield [00:36:51] I ended up getting very into Catholic anarchists in the past few years of my life and like to me Jesus, his ethics are so much more in line with anarchism than they are any other like political framework I've seen. And so and now it makes sense to me, like why I was so into that. I did deconvert from Christianity last year and a lot of people have been really disappointed in me that I'm not doing what most people do, which is to say like I'm not a Christian anymore, but I still love Jesus and I'm actually unable to say that I do not love Jesus at this point in my life because Jesus was used as a tool of thought reform in my own life and as a way to like, diminish my own personhood and autonomy and, you know, give everything to this person who lived in my bind but was also a historical figure. And I love the historical Jesus.

Tim Whitaker [00:37:44] There's a huge continuation of that underground punk rock, countercultural, hardcore scene. I have essentially taken a lot of those ingredients and just bait a different cake, right? And now I'm kind of rebelling against my own tradition, calling for accountability and for reform, because it turns out what I thought was counterculture actually is pretty standard you know, empire capitalism just manifesting through Jesus. And I think Jesus is way more subversive than that.

Leah [00:38:16] Today, Tim is the face of a nonprofit called the New Evangelicals. You'll probably see him the next time you're on Instagram now that you've listened to this podcast. I wanted to know why he still uses the "E" word.

Tim Whitaker [00:38:29] I am absolutely stubborn as hell about not letting fundamentalists take the name and think that they're the ones who own it, like hard stop. And that is part of that rebellion, right? That like countercultural hardcore at the time, we're not going to curse in our hardcore songs, now I'm like you can't take the name "evangelical". There is a radical evangelical tradition that is socially minded, that is progressive minded. Look at the early Westliens. Now they have usually lost, and I understand that. I'm not claiming to be on the winning side of this conversation, but to make it seem like progressive evangelicals or, you know, queer evangelicals don't exist, denies the history of evangelicalism.

Leah [00:39:09] Dr. Bradley Onishi went on to become a scholar. His latest book is called "Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next". And a lot of his research explores the political and social world that created right wing politics and the religious right as we know them today. He deconverted from Christianity, but every now and then he gets together with high school friends and they all remember some sick innovations of their past.

Brad Onishi [00:39:38] My senior year of high school, my friends and I started like a clothing company, right? And it was called SIC Innovations and it was SIC and it was like Surfers in Christ. Okay? And it was super fun. Like we had bags and hats and T-shirts, and we'd go to these concerts and sell them at a little booth. Like, and like, I'd go to the mall and I'd see a kid wearing one of our shirts. And I'd think we were like, so awesome. And it's like looking back on it, you're like, What were you ever thinking Onishi? Come on, pal. But I still have like, six friends who, like, when I see them, you know, we still, like, talk about SIC Innovations. And some of us still have, like, a T-shirt from those days or a hat. And it's so funny and it's so comical, but it's also so bonding. Right? And I think one of the hard parts for people who leave a faith is like. How do you reminisce on the good old days without reminiscing on the bad old days? So much of it I just don't– I'm not on board with theologically or philosophically or whatever. So it's kind of hard to square the circle. But I think it's okay to say, yeah, that music was– it got me through. And for that reason, I'm thankful for it.

Andrew [00:40:49] Of all our guests, this episode, Tim Whitaker is the one who just won't give up on the evangelical world. He wants to take it back from the right wing.

Tim Whitaker [00:40:59] Evangelical simply means someone who brings good news. And I don't think evangelicals are bringing good news right now. I think we have to reclaim that term and bring some good news back to people.

Andrew [00:41:15] Thanks to our guests on this episode. This time, all three of them have their own podcasts. Tim Whitaker hosts The New Evangelicals. D.L. Mayfield co-hosts The Prophetic Imagination Station, which is named after a device in Adventures in Odyssey. And Dr. Bradley Onishi's podcast is Straight White American Jesus. Find links to all three in our show notes.

Leah [00:41:40] On the next episode of Rock That Doesn't Roll:

Episode 3 Clip [00:41:43] There was a guy that was sort of part of the band, but he wasn't a musician at all. He would actually come out after we were done playing and he would give the altar call.

Leah [00:41:51] Would-be CCM stars. If you enjoy our show, please rate it and review it on a podcast app and tell your favorite ska band about it.

Andrew [00:42:01] If you have a story you'd like to share, please call our hotline and we might play it on a future show. That's 6297776336.

Leah [00:42:11] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions project from PRX. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme. Jocelyn Gonzales edits the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Andrew [00:42:24] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurantin provides Production Oversight. I'm Andrew Gill.

Leah [00:42:33] And I'm Leah Payne. Remember Rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.

ROCK THAT DOESN’T ROLL - Episode 3: Christian Rockstar Dreams

Leah [00:00:00] Andrew, I have to ask you grew up in the world of Christian rock.

Andrew [00:00:04] Yeah. Mm hmm.

Leah [00:00:05] Okay. Did you ever dream of being a Christian rock star?

Andrew [00:00:11] There was one time in third grade. I can remember vividly. I don't remember much about third grade, but I can remember this. There was an assignment that was like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I drew a picture of like a stage and a rock band on the stage, probably flying V guitars, you know. And the band's name was Alpha Omega.

Leah [00:00:37] I love it.

Andrew [00:00:38] I thought it was, you know, it's like Christian, because Jesus said, I am the alpha and the omega.

Leah [00:00:44] The first and the last. I love it.

Andrew [00:00:46] Yeah, but I was kind of coded, a little bit coded still, you know. And I think that I was inspired because I had just seen Petra in concert and it was the On Fire tour, and they had a giant sword, like a 40 foot long sword. That was kind of like coming out of the stage, just like the album cover. And they would slide down it while they played guitar solos, and I thought that was so cool.

Leah [00:01:16] Yeah. Yeah. So Andrew Gill, lead singer or lead guitarist of Alpha Omega? I mean, was there –

Andrew [00:01:25] Probably both. Why not, yeah.

Leah [00:01:27] Dream big, I love it. I love it. Well, that is an incredible visual. And if there's one thing I've learned from my research, you were far from alone. For every Christian music star, there were thousands of people aspiring to be the next Amy Grant or DC talk.

Andrew [00:01:45] In churches around the country, it was hard to find a youth group that didn't have some musical teams who had big dreams of singing their hearts out for God.

Leah [00:01:55] And for some of those dreamers, the ones with enough faith in their abilities and Christian music to dedicate their lives to it. Every year, some would converge in Estes Park, Colorado, at the Gospel Music Association's "Music in the Rockies".

Archival Tape [00:02:10] [Archival tape: people gather at Music in the Rockies]

Andrew [00:02:25] It was like church camp meets Star Search or American Idol or The Voice. It started in 1975, and each year an unknown group or artist would win the Holy Battle of the bands and walked away with a record deal. It's been a fast track to Christian rock stardom for almost 50 years.

Leah [00:02:45] A lot of Christian artists got their start there. New wave rockers like Steve Taylor, pop singers like Point of Grace and Rachael Lampa and many more. The winners of the music in the Rockies competition didn't stay in the Rockies with or without a record deal. Really serious ones who believed God wanted them to be Christian music stars? They knew they needed to get to Music City, Nashville, Tennessee. Did you ever think about moving to Nashville to pursue that Christian rock dream?

Andrew [00:03:18] Yeah. So Alpha and Omega, it was never a real band. I never actually did anything with that. But later in high school, I did join a band that had some connections in Nashville. We played shows at youth groups around Jacksonville, Florida, where we lived. But once we graduated, I wasn't about to not go to college and pursue something as risky as music, so I quit the band. But the main guy did move to Nashville and he actually did get signed and released a couple of albums, but within a few years he was kind of chewed up and spit out. I think I made the right call.

Leah [00:03:59] So close, so close and so far at the same time.

Andrew [00:04:12] From PRX and The Big Questions project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a public radio journalist who grew up on Christian Rock.

Leah [00:04:22] And I'm Leah Payne, author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. So many aspiring artists center their lives around trying to become Christian music stars. And if it doesn't happen right away, it can challenge your faith in yourself and even your faith in God.

Andrew [00:04:44] Today on the show, we ask, what does it feel like to believe that becoming a Christian rocker is God's plan for you, only to realize maybe it's never going to happen?

Clip [00:04:58] [The Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

Sunia Gibbs [00:05:00] I really, truly did want to love God. And I was a musician, so it was like the pathway.

Leah [00:05:06] This is Sunia Gibbs. Unlike Andrew, she did make a big effort to pursue CCM stardom.

Sunia Gibbs [00:05:12] Because I'm an eager, needy, like Christian music wannabe star. And so it began with, you know, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Twila Paris. I would learn their songs and I would sing them at church to tracks, right?

Leah [00:05:30] Sunia is talking about accompaniment tracks. These were prerecorded instrumental versions of songs that soloists would sing to in church services. Years before most Americans had ever heard of karaoke.

Sunia Gibbs [00:05:49] I had a perm for much of that time. For singing for church, I would have had a dress on. Of course. Probably floral. I would have done the preludes on the piano. And then during the offertory, I would have had, you know, the track and I would gone over to the other side of the platform and stared at those orange fabric covered pews and the, you know, 120 people that were there. And I would have sang with all of my heart, with all the meaning that I could muster as a 14 year old.

Andrew [00:06:21] For Sunia's family, church was a deeply important source of identity. Her parents were deeply skeptical of mainstream pop culture. So even bringing Christian pop music home felt a little bit risky.

Sunia Gibbs [00:06:33] The first cassette tape I ever bought was Carmen.

Music [00:06:38] [Carmen music plays]

Sunia Gibbs [00:06:42] I remember we bought it and I was so scared. Right? Like, what if this isn't acceptable?

Music [00:06:52] [Carmen music continue]

Sunia Gibbs [00:07:05] I remember putting that cassette tape in and just being nervous, like, anxious. Like I can feel it now, talking about it, how anxious I was that it would be inappropriate.

Leah [00:07:17] Yes. Even very preachy, church centered music like Carmen could be deemed inappropriate, which meant for kids like Sunia, finding appropriate music could be tricky. What was simpler for Sunia was making up her own purely emotive music.

Sunia Gibbs [00:07:32] Some of my earliest memories really are sitting at the piano, making up songs. And and just emoting and sharing what is going on and when, even now, as an adult, when I am overwhelmed, when it is too much, I know that I can go to the piano and I just sync up that way. Like that is the way in which I can dial in and communicate and say and, and the things that I– that are really there.

Andrew [00:07:57] That therapeutic relationship to music gave Sunia faith that she was following God's will by performing music. She believed her musical talent was given to her by God, and she was honoring God by singing Christian songs. And Sunia wasn't alone.

Kevin James Thornton [00:08:15] I grew up in a very fundamentalist Christian community.

Leah [00:08:19] This is Kevin James Thornton.

Kevin James Thornton [00:08:22] So I was in a world where the praise and worship band was a rock band, and rock band ministries were. That was kind of the highest calling in my little world. So that's what I aspired to when I was young.

Leah [00:08:37] Kevin's family didn't make church attendance a major obligation. They attended a very traditional church occasionally. The music didn't really capture Kevin's imagination.

Kevin James Thornton [00:08:47] When I was really young, my family took us to a very old fashioned Southern Baptist Church, and the music was out of the hymnal and it was an organ player and a choir, and that's it. I even remember hearing that rock music was of the devil, and the way we were singing was the correct Christian way. And then when I got into high school, a friend invited me to this big youth group, nondenominational mega-church, and it was a whole new world. There were like 200 teenagers and the music was a worship rock band, and it was a whole huge production. I'd never seen anything like it, and there was no going back. They had a ministry in the church that was sort of a rock band. It was called After the Fall, and there were smoke machines. There were explosions on stage, like they had a guy who did pyrotechnics in the church gymnasium and it blew my mind. I wanted to be in after the fall. That was my the goal of my freshman year of high school was to join that band. I mean, maybe this is just like the cliche performer story, but it was really the only outlet I had to get on stage. And I think that's not consciously why I was going. I mean, I believe that, you know, I really in my heart was being really sincere. But I think looking back, the appeal was there's a microphone up there waiting for you to get up there and do something.

Leah [00:10:33] Can you paint a picture of what just visually what the band looked like?

Kevin James Thornton [00:10:39] Yeah, So this was probably 1989. So everyone in the band had a mullet, like long in the back, maybe even permed just the back part permed, frosted, you know, big wave of hairspray hair on in the front. So I very quickly also adopted that hairstyle. Everyone wore military jackets. I think the idea was it was supposed to be like soldiers for Christ but with big hair. So a military jacket. Tight rolled jeans. Vision streetwear sneakers. Yeah, it was cool.

Andrew [00:11:20] So Sunia had spiritual expression through music and Kevin had innate showmanship. But to be a CCM star in that peak era from the 1980s to the 2000, you needed a specific set of skills that had nothing to do with music. And few people knew what nonmusical skills an artist needed for success better than Chris Hauser.

Chris Hauser [00:11:48] I have worked in the Christian music industry since 1979. I started in Christian radio in Syracuse, New York. I was in radio from '79 to '87 and then took a job at Myrrh Records in L.A. in '87.

Leah [00:12:05] Myrrh Records was one of the biggest CCM labels in the 1980s. They had one artist you've definitely heard of.

Chris Hauser [00:12:12] So I worked with Amy Grant.

Leah [00:12:13] But there was a wide range of others.

Chris Hauser [00:12:15] Holy Soldier, One Bad Pig, Russ Taff, The choir. Philip Bailey from Earth, Wind and Fire. David Mullen. Julie Miller.

Leah [00:12:24] With 44 years in the biz, Chris Hauser still believes that for Christian music, radio is king. In the 1980s and 1990s, getting a song on the radio for any new artist was nearly impossible. Getting a song past the gatekeepers of Christian radio could be even harder.

Chris Hauser [00:12:45] Christian radio stations are very, very careful. Now, on the adult contemporary Christian side, a label simply bringing an artist shows that there's already been a vetting process. And so a radio station, a PD at a radio station doesn't have to be like, Oh, I've got to go find out everything I can about this person.

Andrew [00:13:06] In the 1990s, Christian radio program directors were looking for specific sounds their listeners would like, but also anything that would run afoul of the strict moral guidelines of evangelicals of the era.

Leah [00:13:21] This could be drug use.

Andrew [00:13:22] Sexual immorality.

Leah [00:13:24] Controversial political stances.

Andrew [00:13:26] Even gambling problems. In other words, a squeaky clean image was a must. Chris had to assure radio programmers that he understood and upheld these standards himself.

Chris Hauser [00:13:38] Because I have to show myself trustworthy to these radio people. If I can show myself to be trustworthy and direct and believable over a long period of time, then when I'm bringing an artist to them, they already have a trust level with that artist. If we bring them on a promo tour and we make a visit and have a meal and we sit together for 2 hours, they make just even better connections and they see more of a spiritual mind and a ministry heart in moments like that.

Leah [00:14:14] These days, Chris works as an independent promoter. That means most of the time, a label will hire him to promote an artist they really believe in and have decided to invest the label's money into getting radio airplay. But sometimes Chris gets unsigned artists who want to hire him. That's where things get sticky. Chris knows the chances are good the artist won't recoup the money they pay him, so he does his best to send them away. But when that fails, he has a very specific method for deciding if he'll finally work with an artist.

Chris Hauser [00:14:47] If they don't take no for an answer and they send me a record and the angels come in the room when I listen to the song and they flap their wings and I fall on the floor and I weep gently, I'm going to do something with this record. I can't just say no to that. That was actually Brooke Fraser in 2008 with a song called "Shadowfeet".

Music [00:15:19] [Brooke Fraser music plays]

Chris Hauser [00:15:21] They couldn't even get a hold of me. She and her marketing people couldn't even get a hold of me. And I finally got the song. I was like, okay, hit it. Angels come in the room, flap their wings. We have a big hit for Brooke Fraser with "Shadowfeet" in 2008.

Andrew [00:15:37] If you're like me, and this is the first time you've heard of Brooke Fraser, she really is a very successful musician. "Shadowfeet" was from her second album, Albertine. Her first album was the top selling New Zealand album of 2004, going seven times platinum. After Chris helped her break into the American market, her 2010 single "Something in the Water" got really big. It has 23 million plays on Spotify. And it looks like she's just as talented at those nonmusical skills of avoiding scandals. There isn't a whiff of anything controversial attached to her name.

Leah [00:16:23] Whether you're an established act like Brooke Fraser or someone just starting out, keeping your image as a devout believer, absolutely pristine, is essential. One false move and you could go from CCM star to persona non grata.

Andrew [00:16:38] This is something Sunia intuited when rumors of Amy Grant's marriage woes started flying around.

Sunia Gibbs [00:16:44] I had to sneak around to listen to her music, right? And I had piano books with her songs. And I would have to, like, wait till everyone was, like, outside playing or not around. And then I would pull them out and then play, you know, Age to Age, you know, "If These Walls Could Speak". I mean, that song was like my song, you know, But I had to do it in secret. It just became a secret. It's like that family member that did something you can't talk about anymore. And so you just knew that it was wrong. I don't know any details, but it was wrong.

Andrew [00:17:14] What did you think would happen if someone found out you were singing Amy Grant or playing her music? What did you imagine was going to happen?

Sunia Gibbs [00:17:21] You know, her cassette tape would have been stomped on. The book would have been burned, you know, like. And I would have been punished. I would have gotten in trouble for, you know, for my association with–right? she did become the person that I could no longer talk about or listen to when she had really been the person to invite me into songwriting and as a musician who loved God.

Leah [00:17:49] If the biggest CCM star on earth could be exiled over her marriage troubles, it could happen to anyone. But was something like this enough to make Sunia think twice about a career in CCM?

Andrew [00:18:05] Speaking of pristine images, what happened with Kevin's permed mullet?

Kevin James Thornton [00:18:10] I kind of convinced everyone that that was like my ministry or to represent Jesus. You know, at Rocky Horror. I loved it so much. I wanted to be there so badly.

Music [00:18:22] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music sting plays]

Chris Hauser [00:18:28] There's one answer if you're a Christian rock artist and there is another answer if you're a adult contemporary artist.

Leah [00:18:38] In the peak era of CCM, there was a big divide between rock bands and adult contemporary performers.

Chris Hauser [00:18:46] Where the bands of the late eighties and early nineties, so Audio Adrenaline, DC Talk, Jars of Clay and Newsboys, they were all known as rock bands or DC Talk being more hip hop, they were not getting played on adult contemporary Christian radio initially. And after about five years of them, three, four or five years of them kind of swimming around in that, playing festivals, being busy out on the road, but still just getting songs played on Christian rock charts.

Andrew [00:19:20] According to Chris, Christian rock charts represented a pretty negligible slice of the radio airwaves. Usually, stations allowed a passionate employee to play rock records for 2 hours a week in the middle of the night. Chris had one of these shows himself early in his career.

Chris Hauser [00:19:37] But those bands that I mentioned eventually figured out how to still stay true to themselves but start delivering some songs and pull AC radio along with them. And so, Adult Contemporary, AC Radio, got better in the mid-nineties by playing "What If I Stumble?" by DC Talk.

Music [00:20:02] [DC Talk's "What If I Stumble?" plays]

Chris Hauser [00:20:02] Or "Flood" by Jars of Clay. Or "Love Song for a Savior".

Music [00:20:14] [Love Song for a Savior by Jars of Clay plays]

Chris Hauser [00:20:25] At one time, those bands would just not get played on that. And so that broke open a much, much larger audience for those people.

Leah [00:20:35] That shift in the mid-nineties is an important development for would-be CCM stars, because in the Christian industry, radio is even more important than in the mainstream market. It's a world where a stamp of approval is everything.

Chris Hauser [00:20:50] And when a radio person, when a PD on the air is saying, Here's the new song from this artist that I love so much, there is a plus. There is a there's a imprimatur of of blessing or however we say it, that that gives credence to this song that is about to be played.

Andrew [00:21:13] And in that era, before Jars of Clay and DC Talk opened up the Christian airwaves, what did a star look like? For male artists, it was often someone with a super earnest, very white, non-threatening affect, kind of like if John Cougar Mellencamp were a kid's soccer coach. Steven Curtis Chapman is a great example of this archetype.

Music [00:21:35] [Steven Curtis Chapman music plays].

Andrew [00:21:37] His heartland rock sounds like the musical equivalent of a golden retriever running through a field in Colorado. And it was especially great if an artist had secular music bonafides from before they became Christians, like Phil Keaggy.

Music [00:21:53] [Phil Keaggy music plays].

Andrew [00:21:53] A virtuoso guitarist who rubbed shoulders with Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks and Joe Walsh before he became a born again Christian.

Leah [00:22:04] For female artists in the eighties and early nineties, the ideal star was someone like Twila Paris or Susan Ashton or Kim Boyce, an attractive white woman who walks the fine line between modest mom and beauty queen. In Kim Boyce's case, that was literally true. She competed in Miss America in 1984, and in 1986 she released her CCM debut.

Music [00:22:40] [Kim Boyce music plays].

Leah [00:22:40] Often these women would be married to a member of their band or their producer. So no one had to wonder why these women weren't at home making dinner for their family. Their family was on the road.

Andrew [00:22:51] Those traditional gender roles were a big deal in the evangelical world of the eighties and nineties, and the pressures facing female Christian artists were even greater than those facing male artists. And for Sunia, there was an additional layer.

Sunia Gibbs [00:23:05] So I am Korean, I'm Korean-American, adoptee, so grew up in a white household and went to a mostly white school, white church. I was already an outlier. And so I think that further like kind of protectionism that my parents had around music, around culture, just made me even more of that outsider and that outlier and just compounded sort of that not belonging thing that as an adoptee, I was so deeply after. And music was a way that I think I could connect, right? This is how I connect to God as I understand God. This is how I connect with other people. And then it became a way that I became valuable in those spaces.

Leah [00:23:56] And as she got older, she developed a sense that the attention she got for her music wasn't all positive and may have even had a patronizing element to it.

Sunia Gibbs [00:24:05] When I was little, it was like uh– like, isn't that so cute? She's so lucky that she's here and she gets all these opportunities to do this, right? So there's all of that that is at play as well.

Leah [00:24:17] Sunia's life inside that church world changed when she got her first taste of mainstream music around age nine or ten.

Sunia Gibbs [00:24:26] I remember when a friend, a kid in class had headphones, so I remember putting on headphones and like hearing the big sound of like that Michael Jackson album. And I think I sang out loud and I didn't even know it because, like, I was so unfamiliar with how that would be. You know what I mean?

Sunia Gibbs [00:24:46] And I mean, because I remember my teacher looking over at me like– like I made a sound, you know? But that's when I discovered this other music and loved it and then had to secretly listen.

Andrew [00:25:03] Sunia did keep secular music hidden in her bedroom for a little while, but eventually she had a realization.

Sunia Gibbs [00:25:10] But it's like that thing over there is defiled and is is about, you know, sex and drugs and whatever bad. And this stuff is going to keep you holy and good and pure and all of that. And by the time I got into college. It was turning towards that worship music vein, right? So it was like Hillsong was just emerging. Vineyard music was, you know, "Holy Love" was like such a big song.

Music [00:25:47] [Holy Love music plays].

Sunia Gibbs [00:25:47] And then "Shout To The Lord" was just like, you know? And I was like, Oh!

Music [00:25:53] ["Shout To The Lord" plays].

Sunia Gibbs [00:26:08] So then for me it was like that pathway was so clear. If I loved God and I'm a musician, this is the path that I need to be on in order to integrate all of those things.

Leah [00:26:20] As a college student, Sunia started doing all she could to get inside the inner sanctum of Christian music.

Sunia Gibbs [00:26:26] I went to school for music. I have a music degree.

Leah [00:26:30] She started looking for any opportunities she could find to get close to professional Christian musicians, volunteering at Christian festivals and conferences, leading worship as often as possible. And eventually she started backing up other artists.

Sunia Gibbs [00:26:46] When I was in college, I and some friends were the first band and background vocals for Sara Groves, so we were a part of her, like launching off in her thing.

Music [00:27:06] [Sara Groves music plays]

Sunia Gibbs [00:27:06] I think it was Natalie Grant. I, like opened for her at a festival in Arizona.

Music [00:27:19] [Natalie Grant music plays]

Sunia Gibbs [00:27:24] And there was this little season of time. It was post-college when really I was trying to make a go of like, how do I break into this industry, you know, contacting people in Nashville, taking trips down there.

Leah [00:27:47] Meanwhile, over in Indiana, Kevin James Thornton's search for stardom was less about finding gigs as a backup singer and more about finding the right look.

Kevin James Thornton [00:27:57] The sounds like I'm making this up, but as soon as my hair was the right length, they asked me to join the band.

Andrew [00:28:03] And just like that, Kevin was an official member of After the Fall.

Leah [00:28:23] Did you just play music for church services or did you have a wider catalog that you played together?

Kevin James Thornton [00:28:31] It was mainly church events. I think the the vision was we were going to branch out and like save the world with Christian rock music. There was a local theater in my town called The Ross, and they played Dollar Movies and Rocky Horror Picture Show. And then on Friday nights they had punk bands and it was off limits for us. But one time we played the Ross Theater and we thought we were like...missionaries. For people who liked Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Andrew [00:29:10] So did you do an altar call from the stage?

Kevin James Thornton [00:29:12] Oh yeah. Yeah.

Leah [00:29:14] Side note an altar call is when a preacher invites audience members to come down to the altar to become a Christian by saying a prayer on the spot. Some Christian artists did one at every concert. Some never did them. For a band like After the Fall, the altar call would justify the church's expense of putting on a rock show.

Kevin James Thornton [00:29:34] We hauled in like risers and a trellis with lights and our lasers and smoke machines. And on the first song, we had a huge banner that, like, rolled down the back of the stage that said, Jesus is Lord. So when we started our first song, this like giant, like 20 foot tall banner rolled across the back of The Ross Theater that said, "Jesus is Lord", really big.

Music [00:30:02] [Music plays]

Kevin James Thornton [00:30:13] I think I was so overwhelmed with how cool I felt that I wasn't really tuned in like, was there any actual ministry happening? I'm not sure.

Andrew [00:30:24] I just am curious about who funded all this. Like, where did the money come from for all this?

Kevin James Thornton [00:30:28] So it was considered like a major ministry of the church, so they funded it.

Andrew [00:30:33] Wow.

Kevin James Thornton [00:30:34] And and, you know, the church that I went to was like a congregation of 2000 people. It was a wealthy church. And honestly, I only survived about maybe my sophomore year of high school in that band. And then I realized I wanted my own band like I was I was just a rhythm guitar player in After the Fall and I was like, I need more than this. Someone in high school gave me a VHS tape of Jane's Addiction. And that was, again, way off limits. That was too secular. But I was so obsessed with how wild they looked and seemed.

Leah [00:31:21] For the uninitiated, Jane's Addiction isn't just some secular rock band. They had songs about stealing and drug use and sex. Not exactly a band the church approved of. Luckily, Kevin found a band with a Jane's Addiction vibe, whose drug of choice was Jesus.

Kevin James Thornton [00:31:44] There was a band called Scaterd Few.

Andrew [00:31:46] Oh, yeah.

Kevin James Thornton [00:31:47] And we were obsessed with them. And they seemed so like they seemed like the real thing, you know? So we wanted to be that.

Andrew [00:32:06] What were some of the names? Let's hear some names.

Kevin James Thornton [00:32:08] The main one was called Stoning Charlotte. And I don't really remember why we called it that. I think it just sounded like Jane's Addiction to us. So we just kind of kept, like rotating words until we stumbled upon something that sounded cool. So it was Stoning Charlotte. It was very blurry of were we following God's will or we getting swept away into our own vanity, you know, And looking back, we were getting swept away into our own vanity for sure.

Andrew [00:32:39] As Kevin was trying to figure out how to write the Christian version of "Been Caught Stealing", Sunia was studiously working towards her goal of breaking into the Christian music industry by working as a worship leader.

Sunia Gibbs [00:32:52] I remember as a songwriter and being one of my first jobs as a worship leader at a church and writing songs and then them being censored. And I always feel like I need to preface my music with like, it's sad, just, you know, it's in a minor key. It's going to be sad. You know.

Leah [00:33:12] Popular Christian songs are usually not sad, or if they are sad, it's in a very particular way. It's either a meditation on the death of Jesus on the cross. Or the wistful sadness of a child growing up.

Leah [00:33:47] Sunia was more interested in depictions of this: worldly issues with no easy solutions. She wanted to make music that harkened back to the CCM artists of the 1970s.

Sunia Gibbs [00:34:00] These early songwriters were really expressing their experience and their desire to connect with God, to connect with people. I think there's just always more that I want to communicate and that I want to say in that medium. And I just find it disheartening that as a greater industry, it's so limited in what it could really be as an expression of the people.

Andrew [00:34:38] For Kevin, graduating high school in Evansville, Indiana, was a clarifying experience.

Kevin James Thornton [00:34:45] Right after high school, everyone started getting married. Everyone but me. And it, like, kind of woke me up. It flipped a switch. And I remember feeling this, like, incredible sense of heartache. And so I decided– I was going to stay in Evansville and just be a minister in that community. But that intense sense of heartache? Something in me was just like, You have to leave this place. I think had I stayed in that community, I would have become terrible. Like I was fully repressing my sexuality. I was set on finding a girl to marry and have children and become a pastor. And I was already sort of learning like the kind of subtle, manipulative things in that community to, like, make people bend to my will through the Holy Spirit or what I was learning and starting to do all of those things.

Andrew [00:35:45] Coming up, what happens when Kevin leaves town for college?

Kevin James Thornton [00:35:49] I think you start to feel a sense of there's another way. Oh my God, there's another way. It didn't. It doesn't have to be the way everyone was doing things back home.

Leah [00:35:59] And Sunia shoots her shot while volunteering at a Christian women's conference.

Sunia Gibbs [00:36:04] I'm like, Hi. Hi. I'm Sunia. You know, do you wanna listen to my tape?

Music [00:36:07] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting music plays]

Chris Hauser [00:36:13] The 80/20 rule has got to be 80% of the artists that get signed and have two albums or three albums, go away.

Leah [00:36:29] For all the rags to riches stories about Nashville, the truth is, for most performers, trying to make it big, their music city dreams are unrealized.

Andrew [00:36:39] In the best cases, those dashed dreams of stardom might be recalibrated into a career as a session musician or a songwriter.

Chris Hauser [00:36:48] And only 20% of the artists ever have any natural success to speak of. In our industry.

Andrew [00:36:57] Once again, Christian music industry veteran, Chris Hauser.

Chris Hauser [00:37:01] There's way more artists that get lost, that go away, and they then take a job as a worship leader at their local church.

Leah [00:37:10] If you were one of those 20% of artists fortunate enough to develop a career, you'd better be good at tightrope walking. A slip up that violates the moral standards of the CCM world could take your whole career. Chris Hauser has an example from when he worked in the Gospel division of Warner Brothers.

Chris Hauser [00:37:30] Eventually we signed this up-and-comer in the Southern gospel world that we turned into a pop singer named Michael English. We broke Michael English in '92. The joke goes, he broke us in '94. It took a few years for the body to stop flopping around on the cement.

Andrew [00:37:54] Michael English won an armful of Dove Awards, the Christian Grammys in 1994. Then a week later, the married singer admitted he had impregnated a married member of the CCM Group First Call. He returned all his Dove awards and his label pushed him to make a public confession. As a result, Christian radio stations stopped playing his music, and many Christian bookstores took his albums off their shelves. But seven months later, Michael English told Billboard magazine that Christian labels had already encouraged him to reenter the CCM market as a poster child for repentance and a cautionary tale to people struggling with temptation. But he wasn't having it. He said, I'd have to talk about the affair, preach about it, testify about it, for Lord knows how long. And I choose not to do that. He put out an album on a secular label, then eventually reentered CCM on his own terms a few years later. But for Marabeth Jordan, the other half of Michael English's affair, there was no second shot at CCM stardom. She immediately resigned her position and first call, and sadly, her pregnancy ended in miscarriage. She still works as a session musician in Nashville, but she never got a second shot as a top line Christian artist. Her former bandmates in First Call each released solo albums in the next few years after the scandal, though.

Leah [00:39:36] Before all that First Call still made a big impression on Sunia, even if her memory of them is a little fuzzy.

Sunia Gibbs [00:39:44] There was this trio that I used to listen to all the time and I went to their concerts and I can't remember, it was like two women and a guy and they were a trio and I can't think of their names.

Leah [00:39:54] First Call.

Sunia Gibbs [00:39:55] That's it! First Call. First Call.

Leah [00:39:58] They were great. They were great. They were session singers.

Sunia Gibbs [00:40:01] And they moved. They moved their bodies to the music, which I was so used to, someone standing very stoically singing a song like they had a movement. And I was, like, scandalized by it, you know?

Andrew [00:40:15] I'm not certain, but I'm going to guess Sunia's memory is from before the whole scandal with Michael English. Though First Call did go on without Marabeth Jordan. But it wasn't anything as splashy as all that that made Sunia give up on CCM stardom. It was just a really embarrassing situation that took the shine off her dream life.

Leah [00:40:35] Sunia had volunteered at a women's conference in Minnesota. It was an opportunity to lead worship for hundreds of young people, but it also held the promise of some quality time with the husband and wife CCM group Watermark, who were signed to Michael W. Smith's Rocky Town Records.

Sunia Gibbs [00:40:53] I wanted them to be like, "We love you! We're going to introduce you to all of our people. And you, too, will become a Christian music star." You know, that was my hope, my dream. So not only was I worship leading, though, I was also supposed to be their hospitality. And so I picked them up from the airport. I drove them to the hotel. I picked them up from the hotel. I made sure they had everything that they needed in the green room. And that was also when I was like, wait, there's a green room? I didn't know all this stuff existed.

Andrew [00:41:22] Sunia was such a true believer that she'd never considered that CCM artists might have such worldly concerns as green rooms or riders requesting only green m&m's. The sense of purpose and mission must be enough to keep them energized all the time. Right?

Sunia Gibbs [00:41:39] I picked them up from the airport. They're exhausted. I'm not reading the room. I'm like, "Hi. Hi, I'm Sunia. You know, do you wanna listen to my tape?" Like, literally, I was just so inappropriate and eager, and they were just exhausted and didn't want to have anything to do with it. I'm just really eager, and I want them to like me so badly. They basically hide from me the whole time because I'm an eager, needy, like, Christian music wannabe star.

Leah [00:42:05] Eventually, Sunia did get feedback and encouragement on her music from Watermark, but the whole experience gave Sunia a vivid realization.

Sunia Gibbs [00:42:13] They were just coming in to do an event. They just wanted to sing their songs and get out of there. And in my heart of hearts, I was like, you love Jesus, and this is why you're doing it. And you love people and you love me, and you want to just help all of us become better, you know? They were musicians and they were on the clock and they were getting paid and they did their thing and they went home. I'm sure they're really, really lovely people that were just tired because they were on tour and were, you know, singing songs for a women's conference in Minnesota. And I don't know if that was the height of their dreams or not, but I'm guessing not.

Andrew [00:42:41] After moving to college, Kevin started having a revelation of his own.

Kevin James Thornton [00:42:48] Pre-internet, your community, you didn't hear any other voices. You only heard the people around you, you know. And that was the people in my church. Maybe you could turn on MTV and hear like a viewpoint that was kind of different. Like, is David Bowie bisexual? Maybe, or who not really knows, you know? But otherwise, it was just the voices around you. So for me, like showing up at that college campus in 1994 and just seeing people living in a way that I hadn't before, it just immediately started to break all kind of stereotypes and false ideas. And I think you start to feel a sense of there's another way. It doesn't have to be the way everyone was doing things back home.

Leah [00:43:38] It was a disorienting time. But making music was the one thing that made Kevin feel grounded.

Kevin James Thornton [00:43:43] If I was leaving everything else, my whole world view was cracking in half. I'm still a musician. I'm still going to be in a band. I'm still going to get a record deal. That was the little shred of identity I got to keep.

Andrew [00:43:55] At the time, it didn't feel like Kevin's story was that unique.

Kevin James Thornton [00:43:59] When I showed up in Nashville, my band and all the other bands that were sort of on the scene, it seemed like we were all ex-Christian bands. Like everyone that had showed up in Nashville in that moment was like, We're going for like secular music, a secular record deal. Like everyone. It seemed like it came from this like church background. We all decided at the same time to take the plunge into the world.

Leah [00:44:26] There were glimmers of hope as Kevin crisscrossed the country, touring in a minivan for a decade. But eventually they threw in the towel.

Kevin James Thornton [00:44:34] It's only looking back as an adult that I realized how much religious trauma I had wrapped up in my pursuit of music. I didn't see any of that at the time. But looking back, that's absolutely what I was doing, trying to prove myself that I was okay without Jesus.

Andrew [00:44:52] And that was that was a hard challenge.

Kevin James Thornton [00:44:55] Sure was. Yeah.

Andrew [00:45:18] Sunia may have given up the dreams of being a CCM star, but she still writes Christian music. Only now it's on her terms.

Sunia Gibbs [00:45:25] I could start crying right now, thinking about it. Um, hmm. I think, like foundationally, I wish we could just be really honest. I think that maybe that sounds too simple, but it's like there are really difficult, challenging, real things that happen to us, with us, around us. And I feel like CCM music has become so generic, so sugary, so palatable. And it's like we adjust ourselves to that thing and we act like that is what should be normal or okay, or the standard when in reality our relationships are falling apart, our earth is falling apart, you know, meanwhile, internally, we are dead and/or dying. We are hungry, we are thirsty, we are dry, we are all those words that we can use in Christian circles. We are disconnected. We could actually produce some change and some shifts in the world if we were willing to just even that first layer of acknowledging and admitting where we actually are.

Andrew [00:46:40] In case you couldn't tell, Sunia is now a preacher. She leads a United Methodist congregation on the campus of Portland State University in Oregon. When a member of her congregation was killed by campus police in 2018, she wrote this song.

Music [00:46:58] [Sunia's music plays]

Leah [00:47:16] When Kevin ended his decade of trying to succeed in music, he tried standup comedy. He quickly learned that all his experiences growing up in the megachurch and playing Christian music were a treasure trove of comedic fodder.

Kevin James Thornton [00:47:30] Maybe some of you can relate with the super fundamentalist Christian church. And in my super fundamentalist Christian church, we had this huge youth group and it was my whole life.

Kevin James Thornton [00:47:44] And they used to dress up like clowns. Stay with me.

Andrew [00:47:52] During the COVID quarantine of 2020, Kevin's TikTok videos started going viral, and he collected a bigger audience than he'd ever expected to find. With a little help from an autotune app.

Kevin James Thornton [00:48:06] [Kevin James Thornton's TikTok plays] "In my super fundamentalist church, there was this thing called getting Slain in the Spirit. It's where you sort of get overcome by God and you fall over dramatically to the floor. And it didn't really happen in my church, but I wanted it to so badly. I had never even heard of the term deconstruction until TikTok. You know, and there's entire channels devoted to people talking about deconstructing their faith and that's a– that word is appropriate. I'd never really used that word before but yeah, that's it.

Leah [00:48:42] I don't want to make too much of this, but it strikes me, you know, you have these people who your work, even the stuff that's just really obviously supposed to be funny is healing to people. In a weird way, are you sort of pastoring them?

Kevin James Thornton [00:48:58] I fully embrace that. Like, I, I unlike a lot of comics, I think most comedians would tell you their only job is to be funny. And that is it. And I am okay with taking on a couple of other roles along with that. Like, I know that people are affected by my stuff in ways that are beyond just laughing. I feel like I'm doing a little bit of good in the world not to make it overly self-important or anything, but I do– I, I know that I am.

Andrew [00:49:46] In fact, our CCM industry veteran Chris Hauser, counts himself as a fan of Kevin James Thornton's stand up.

Chris Hauser [00:49:53] I took my whole family. We just loved it. And the place had tons of people that I know from the church, from the Christian music industry. He's got lots of fans. And it was it was a freakin blast.

Leah [00:50:17] Thanks to our guest this week, Sunia Gibbs, Kevin James Thornton and Chris Hauser. You can find links to follow them in our shownotes.

Promo [00:50:26] Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll. There were something like ten Christian bookstores within eight miles of our house. It was ridiculous. And they all knew me because I was always in there trying to like, reorganize their music department and put the cool stuff up front. Like it was nuts.

Leah [00:50:40] How one opinionated teenager stocking CDs in the back of a Christian bookstore set out to change the CCM industry forever.

Andrew [00:50:48] If you enjoy our show, please rate and review it on a podcast app. And tell your worship leader about it.

Leah [00:50:54] If you have a story you'd like to share, please call our hotline and we might play it on a future show. It's 6297776336.

Andrew [00:51:03] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a big questions project from PRX. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme. Jocelyn Gonzales, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg. Edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Leah [00:51:18] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurantin provides production oversight. I'm Leah Payne.

Andrew [00:51:27] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember Rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.

Leah [00:00:00] Andrew, I know you're a huge music fan. Like, one of the first things that I learned about you getting to know you through this process is that you have a bit of musical trivia for almost any situation.

Andrew [00:00:15] Uh, unfortunately, yes, probably.

Leah [00:00:19] I have to ask you, like who introduced you to loving music in this way, like having this kind of encyclopedic knowledge of music?

Andrew [00:00:27] I mean,

Leah [00:00:28] Who's the culprit?

Andrew [00:00:29] My entire life it's just been trying to keep up with my older brother.

Leah [00:00:33] Ohhh!

Daniel Gill [00:00:34] I remember the big songs of that time period. Like Michael Jackson or like Run-D.M.C. or things like that. And I would hear them out in public and I was just like, transfixed by it.

Leah [00:00:49] That's sweet.

Andrew [00:00:49] Yeah, that's my big brother, Daniel. He's talking about when he got obsessed with music. He was seven.

Leah [00:00:56] But you were pastors kids and– yeah, yeah. So the top 40 music of the eighties, like Run-D.M.C. and Michael Jackson, that is not your typical pastor's kids material.

Andrew [00:01:08] Yeah. No, we never even tried to bring Michael Jackson into our house. It was only Christian music that we could collect on physical media, you know, that was it.

Leah [00:01:19] Oh, wow. Okay. So then I have to ask, how did Daniel, the pastor's kid, find music that your parents would let him love in the house?

Andrew [00:01:29] Well really, there was only one place they thought they could go to fuel my brother's music addition.

Daniel Gill [00:01:36] Quickly, you know, mom and dad were like, okay, we're going to take you out to the Christian bookstore and you can buy a record.

Leah [00:01:42] A Christian bookstore!

Andrew [00:01:46] Yeah. For listeners who don't know Christian bookstores, were actually the place for kids who weren't allowed to go to mainstream stores to get their music fix. Of course, these were just tiny sections in a book stores, so the selection was limited. But for kids like my brother and I, it was glorious.

Daniel Gill [00:02:06] I think I was getting an allowance of a few dollars a week, and so I had saved up enough to buy a record. I was probably only like $7.99 or something, you know.

Andrew [00:02:15] Do you remember listening to it when you got home and then–?

Daniel Gill [00:02:18] Oh yeah yeah, I remember that part. I remember that part.

Andrew [00:02:20] Part. How did you feel about your purchase when you brought it home?

Daniel Gill [00:02:23] I loved that record. I loved it. But it was also just because it was like, this is the first record I bought with my own money and picked out myself. And it's not my parents music. The very first one I bought was Petra, Not of this World.

Music [00:02:38] Petra "Not of this World" plays.

Leah [00:02:48] Not exactly Run-D.M.C., but still it's music he picked out for himself.

Andrew [00:02:53] After that, he was a bookstore regular. He was obsessed. And if you have a sibling, you know that sharing is not always easy. So I had to start collecting my own stuff at the Christian bookstore. My own music.

Leah [00:03:07] Oh, wow. Your brother was a bookstore guy.

Andrew [00:03:11] Is that an official thing?

Leah [00:03:14] For me, it is. There's a particular kind of guy, and I've mostly seen it in guys. Although there are always exceptions, but guys who couldn't get music at places like Tower Records or Warehouse. Guys who were turned loose in Christian bookstores and with blanket parental approval, developed this voracious appetite for all things music that could never be sated. I started calling them bookstore guys, it's a very official researched category.

Andrew [00:03:45] Perfect. I'm going to go with it. I'm going to go with it.

Leah [00:03:52] From PRX and the Big Questions project, This is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Leah Payne, author of "God Give Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music".

Andrew [00:04:03] And I'm Andrew Gill, a public radio producer who grew up on Christian rock. Christian bookstores were the training ground for lots of lifelong music nerds in the eighties and nineties. And when your appetite for music is insatiable, eventually the little corner of the Christian bookstore just won't cut it. You start to realize that going to the potpourri smelling-precious moments selling-Bibles thumping corner of the mall is not the logical place to buy cool music. Today on the show, we have the story of a guy who agreed that it didn't have to be that way, and he tried to create a Christian version of Rolling Stone magazine, Tower Records and CBGB's.

Leah [00:04:47] He did it all to create a bridge between interesting Christian music and the kids who might actually like it.

Music [00:04:54] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

John J Thompson [00:04:57] Well, Grandma goes to some Christian bookstore and says, My grandson is really interested in kind of scary music. Do you have stuff? And I like to think that this is how it went. I'm not sure. But she had some kind of list that my my mom had given her of the scary music I was listening to, to Talking Heads and maybe The Clash or, you know, maybe, you know, something like the Sex Pistols or whatever.

Leah [00:05:19] This is John J. Thompson. He was also a precocious music fan in the early 1980s. And just like Andrew's older brother, a concerned family member turned to Christian bookstores for help.

John J Thompson [00:05:32] I love picturing my grandma going to a bookstore and having to read these names. And uh, the Christian bookstore person go, Oh, yes, yes, yes, we have the perfect thing. And and, you know, because they had these charts, you know, that would tell them, you know, if you just just go on, you know, this side and it's like a, you know, a little graph and you could fill out the blank and find the perfect thing.

Leah [00:05:54] These recommendation graphs were sometimes called RIYL's. Recommended If You Like, charts. And they come up a lot when you talk with people about CCM,.

Sunia Gibbs [00:06:05] You know, those lists of like if you like this band, you know, you'll love Petra.

Tyler Huckabee [00:06:12] There was the poster, the if you like this, listen to this, poster. I remember that.

Steve Hernandez [00:06:19] They would straight up say, if you like Pearl Jam, you'll like this band. I remember particularly there is a band called Raspberry Jam, and they sounded like Pearl Jam.

Andrew [00:06:39] One of our guests in the last episode, Chris Hauser, like somebody we were talking with, said that Chris Hauser had made some of these charts in his work in the music industry.

Leah [00:06:53] Well, you know, I've been trying to track down an original version of them, like the oldest versions. And the oldest one I can find in print is from 2000. But I know that they existed–.

Andrew [00:07:07] Oh they were so much before that, yeah.

Leah [00:07:08] For decades before that! So if there's a listener in your mom's basement and you know where there's one of those old charts, Chris was trying to help me track one of those down, and I haven't been able to find one. So if you have one, I would just be so grateful to you.

Andrew [00:07:24] But it's a brilliant tool, right, for the analog era. It's like a graph where one axis has pop bands that you could buy at Sam Goody and the other axis has the Christian equivalents.

Leah [00:07:40] Absolutely. And they are famous, if anyone listened to Christian rock, you know exactly what these are. These charts were trying to help bookstore owners function like record store clerks doling out critical picks to customers eager for good music that suited their tastes. And they were an essential piece of infrastructure. Since Christian bookstore owners were usually more concerned with, you know, books that they were selling, not music.

John J Thompson [00:08:09] So he gave her two cassettes. One was the Pat Terry Group, which would later put out some really cool stuff. But this was not that. This was a record called Heaven Ain't All There Is, which sounded like John Denver and which was not something I was into at that point.

Music [00:08:33] [Pat Terry group music plays]

John J Thompson [00:08:35] And then DeGarmo and Key, a rock band out of Memphis, their second album called Straight On.

Music [00:08:51] [DeGramo and Key music plays]

Andrew [00:08:55] John was skeptical, but eventually he gave DeGarmo and Key a close listen and became a fan. The Christian bookstore had done its job. His grandmother felt comfortable shopping there, and one out of the two albums she got was a hit with John. That's a high batting average! But one record couldn't satisfy John's thirst for good Christian music. He started going to the Christian bookstore himself and was well on his way to becoming a bookstore guy. Then when he was 14, he heard about a Christian music festival that was starting near him outside of Chicago.

Leah [00:09:33] Cornerstone was a music festival organized by a commune of ex-hippies in Chicago called Jesus People USA or JPUSA. The commune was founded by the members of the Resurrection Band or Rez Band to fans. The first year of Cornerstone was 1984 and John was pumped.

John J Thompson [00:09:54] I'm at the first Cornerstone Festival. I begged my youth pastor to take me and a couple of my girlfriend and maybe one other kid. And I'm at that first festival and I'm in the front row watching when the 77s came out and played, it just electrified.

Music [00:10:26] [77s music plays]

John J Thompson [00:10:33] And then it just literally that set changed my life. I watched that band and I said, this should be all over MTV. This should be the biggest band, you know, like my generation, this is– they are so good and it's not good for Christian music. This isn't good compared to, you know, the other stuff that's in the Christian bookstores. This is just really great music. I wanted everybody in my school to hear this band.

Andrew [00:10:58] But how could John get everybody in his school to hear the 77s? He could barely tolerate going to the Christian bookstore himself, and he was a deeply devoted Christian. How could he tell kids school about the 77s if they had to buy it there?!

John J Thompson [00:11:14] They're going to blow your mind like they're so good. And you got to go to a Christian bookstore to buy it? That was just stupid! I mean, I used to laugh about it like there was a Christian bookstore in the mall. The mall, man! I mean, all of the cool stuff was in the mall. The record store was in the mall, the leather shop where you can get all your studded wristbands, whatever niche you were being marketed and you were identifying how to spot in the mall. The Dungeons and Dragons people had their spot, the video game people had their spot, the jocks had their spot, the T-shirt people. Everybody had a spot in the mall. And the Christian bookstore was in the mall. So I could go to Sam Goody or whatever the record store was and see all the other cool music. But if I wanted to get the handful of good, you know, the stuff I wanted, had to go to that Christian bookstore and you had to go past the precious Moments figurines and all the mom stuff and go to the back and talk to somebody who was really nice but didn't have any idea what you were talking about and my hair sticking out to here. And I'm like wearing leather pants and I'm looking all, you know, eighties rock. And they're like, Oh, boy, this kid doesn't belong here. And I didn't belong there. I belonged in the record store. Right? Right. That's where my even though I love God and I love I belonged over there.

Leah [00:12:26] This situation just could not stand, man. Eighties rock leather pants jesus loving John could be more himself at the Sam Goody than the Christian bookstore. He really only felt fully at home at Cornerstone.

Andrew Mall [00:12:54] When I've spoken to the people that used to run that festival, they said what we loved about Cornerstone is that there was a place where people could really grapple.

Leah [00:13:02] Ethnomusicologist, Andrew Mall.

Andrew Mall [00:13:05] With the difficulties of living a Christian life, with the difficulties of their faith, in their home church. Or maybe they don't have a lot of people who feel the same way, or at least look the same way with a big beard, with tattoos, and with ear piercings and listening to heavy rock music where they might feel like outcasts. And maybe they don't have a lot of people to talk to about the struggles that they go through with their own calling and their own sense of what faith should be.

Andrew [00:13:32] Cornerstone was the one place where John felt really seen. But that only happened once a year. John wanted to live in that world all the time. So at age 14, he decided he had to take matters into his own hands.

John J Thompson [00:13:56] I came home from that first cornerstone and I wrote a manifesto. Called it True Tunes. And the whole idea was, We've got to have a record store, we got to have a concert venue, we got to have a radio station, we got to have a magazine. We got to pull together a community of people that are interested in great music. But that's risky and dangerous and goes to the spiritual places. But it was going to be a tribe that was like what I saw at Cornerstone. The tagline that I used for a long time, was to keep the cornerstone buzz going all year round because most of us just hated when Cornerstone ended. The Cornerstone was this dented, weird, beautiful thing that we would just get on such a high. And then it was just devastating to have to leave that like. And so I was like, This is going to be the little thing that can keep that going. Like life support.

Leah [00:14:44] John was thinking big at the ripe old age of 14, and if you look at it a certain way, it's not entirely different than the idea behind the original Lollapalooza in the 1990s, bringing all sorts of like minded young people together who were being ignored by mainstream culture. For whatever reason, the music would end up binding together young outcasts into a tribe. But John couldn't dive headfirst into a life as the Christian Perry Farrell just yet. He was only 14. He knew he needed to start small.

Leah [00:15:18] There were something like ten Christian bookstores within eight miles of our house. It was ridiculous. And they all knew me because I was always in there trying to like, reorganize their music department and put the cool stuff out there. Like, I was nuts, man. I would also go to all the record stores and I would put the 77th. I'd take all their records out of the Christian department and put them in the rock department. And I'm seriously I was obnoxious, but.

Andrew [00:15:40] Culture jamming, that's all that.

Leah [00:15:42] I was absolutely hacking the whole western suburbs system.

Leah [00:15:46] John's amateur product placement may have moved a few units for the 70 sevens, but if he really wanted to make a difference, John needed to be on the inside the inside man at the Christian bookstore.

Andrew [00:16:00] So he got busy on his resume and applied for jobs at the plethora of Christian bookstores around him.

Leah [00:16:07] I'm looking for my first job. I want to work here. I want to manage your music department. And if you hire me, I will do anything you want. I'll clean the toilets. I will vacuum the floors. I've been working for my mom's cleaning company. I'm really good at that stuff. I'll even sell precious moments, figures without laughing. I'll do anything you want, but I want to manage the music department. And if you hire me, I guarantee I'll double your music sales in six months.

Andrew [00:16:31] John based this on his extensive market research experience combing through months of sales figures. Right.

Leah [00:16:38] Six years old. How do I know? I even know what their music sales are. I'm completely just making stuff up. Most of the places offered me a job. To be fair, one of them really wanted to hire me. They really liked me, but they said, You can't manage the music department. But this Catholic bookstore on Front Street in Wheaton, they did.

Leah [00:16:59] And it was all thanks to a connection he made to a guy who worked at that bookstore when he was hitching a ride to the place where he'd found his tribe. Cornerstone Year two.

Leah [00:17:08] Cornerstone 85. He actually took me. He gave me a ride to the festival, and he learned how crazy I was about this music. And he's like, Man, I don't think I've met another kid that knows more about this than me. And he was going off to college. He's like, I'm the music buyer at this Catholic store. If you want to take my job when I go off to school, I'm like, Yes.

Andrew [00:17:40] So John had finally wormed his way inside the commercial Christian sales industry, and there wasn't anything that John wouldn't do.

Leah [00:17:49] I delivered candles to every Catholic church in Chicago, and there are a lot of Catholic churches in Chicago. I tarred the roof on my first week there.

Leah [00:17:58] So John's learning the Christian bookstore ropes and the basics of retail business. But so far, there's no secret knowledge about music. Fan tried building. And that was the thing. Not all bookstore owners were music fans.

Andrew [00:18:13] All right. So walking through a Christian bookstore in the 1980s, let's think about what would you say?

Leah [00:18:18] Yes.

Andrew [00:18:19] To see Bibles for sure. Definitely different translations. Nobody can settle on one translation. Everybody has to have a new translation every couple of years. True, True. Bible studies.

Leah [00:18:33] Right?

Andrew [00:18:34] Things written. They are all like endorsed by celebrity pastors, you know, with or with like the teen version where there's like a flashy cover, but it's still the same stuff inside.

Leah [00:18:47] And you might see like a sales display where there's a cutout of a a famous preacher, of course, somebody just inviting you to buy a buy this Bible study.

Andrew [00:18:56] A book, bookmarks.

Leah [00:18:57] Bookmarks have.

Andrew [00:18:59] Like metal bookmarks with like Bible verses written on them.

Leah [00:19:02] Oh, yeah.

Andrew [00:19:04] Sunday school curriculum.

Leah [00:19:05] Oh, yes, yes, yes. My my personal favorite would have to be the precious moment style section where you have these. I don't even know if I could describe of precious moments to all to somebody who hasn't seen it, but a doll with a very large head and cute little eyes praying or something like that.

Andrew [00:19:23] It's definitely made of porcelain. So you can't so kids couldn't play with you know, these were not for playing. No, these were for sitting on a shelf to look at. Right. And dust and then break on accident when you're done on the shelf.

Leah [00:19:37] And you know, you get a doll, you get a Christian themed T-shirt, you get jewelry. I mean, they just the options are endless.

Andrew [00:19:45] You know, That's why we didn't mention music, right? Because that's back in the corner, usually, like not in the front of the store.

Leah [00:19:53] Right, Right. That could be really typical in the Christian bookstore world. You know, they're Christian bookstore owners. They're not they're not music critics. That was definitely true of Phil, the Catholic bookstore owner who had hired John.

Leah [00:20:07] So he didn't care what I did with the music. He wanted to be a positive influence to the kids. Like he didn't care so I could put punk rock stuff everywhere. He did not care at all. And when I offended nuns, which happened quite a bit, he made me deal with the offended nuns like. So I got to deal with what it's like to kind of diffuse situations like that. Plus.

Andrew [00:20:29] What did you do that offended nuns? Was it the products you said or what?

Leah [00:20:34] Oh, gosh. Okay. So two things. One was there was this band called Lust Control, and their first tape was called This Is a Condom Nation. And it was just ra obnoxious punk, Jesus punk about pornography and stuff. And one of the songs was called The Big M about masturbation being.

Leah [00:20:56] Released from what? Your sexual appetite. Forget it. Get real. It's artificial sex.

Leah [00:21:06] Everyone's just over the top, you know. But just the fact that it was called this is a condemnation and it's a Catholic store, you know. So Adnan was offended by that. And Phil was like, you know, this one might be a little. Do you want to have this conversation every day? So what I did was I said, well, I really want to sell this tape, but we'll just keep it under the counter and we'll make a display and we'll explain that we have it. And that was the best thing ever because we sold it like pornography, like we'd slide it into a paperback and we sold so many because it was contraband.

Leah [00:21:41] Now John's learning some lessons about how the music business works.

Leah [00:21:45] But then there was a metal band from the area called Sacred Warrior, and their album was called Rebellion.

Leah [00:21:57] Wow. Now I.

Leah [00:22:04] But they were from that town and they were friends of mine. And I was I would go to their shows and sell their merch. I was underage and I made a display because the record label didn't support that. And I made a sword and I wrote Rebellion on the Sword and had a little Bible verses that referenced the kinds of, you know, rebellion that was scriptural and stuff. And this nun came in and she just saw rebellion on a sword and was like, No, no, no. Like, she was very upset. And she went back and talked to fill in Phil's like, John, come here. And he gave the nun and me his office so I could go in there. And basically she just tore into me for about 10 minutes about how inappropriate it was. Now, and again, my hair's getting longer and I'm still wearing a button up shirt, but I'm looking like I'm exploding out of the nice boy clothes pretty badly.

Andrew [00:22:50] Now, I haven't read John's original manifesto, but I don't think it had anything in it about how to talk with an irate nun when you're maybe about to get fired over birth control puns and rebellion branded swords and album displays. When you're the music manager at a Catholic bookstore, I'm pretty sure about that one.

Leah [00:23:09] Will John's grand plans go down in flames, possibly down to eight double hockey sticks? Or will John find a way to address the nuns concerns? Stay with us.

Leah [00:23:21] And.

Leah [00:23:25] And I listened to her and then I explained to her with the copy of the record and the lyrics, you know. I said, You know, sister, this this record actually isn't has it for you.

Leah [00:23:36] This is an important moment for John. He's learning to build the other half of his bridge between Christian music and listeners. Instead of bridging the divide to cool teenagers. John is now connecting Christian gatekeepers with the intention behind what sounds like the devil's music, and he's somehow turning a huge roadblock or liability into golden opportunities.

Leah [00:24:00] I told her the story about the guys in the band and and I showed her the lyrics and then when she saw that she not only understood, but she invited me to come speak at the youth conference they were doing for all of the Catholic kids in the Chicago area.

Andrew [00:24:15] A teenage age, 89, 80. John Jay Thompson had won over a nun upset about a Christian metal band he was selling in the Catholic bookstore. JT had pulled off something impressive. The nun walked away not only convinced that metal could be redeemed, but also that John had a message worth spreading.

Leah [00:24:38] I spoke for 2500 kids. I was just a kid myself and I started speaking at all these events, which started this thing where every year I was speaking in front of thousands of kids and I was still I was 17 years old. And I'm speaking for, you know, at all these big events. I wasn't going out saying rock and roll is of the devil and playing records backwards and trying to find a Christian version of everything. Instead, I was talking about like respecting yourself and digging for stuff that's good and true and beautiful and, you know, that kind of stuff.

Leah [00:25:07] Even as John was learning to win friends and influence Catholics, he never took his eye off the ball. He kept plugging away at making his manifesto become a reality. This was like John was manifesting before. It was cool, but also working really hard to make audacious things happen.

Leah [00:25:25] When I was getting ready to graduate from high school, I wrote this big business plan, like 80 page business plan that I'd worked on for two years, and I presented it to Phil and said, Hey, I think we should spin this off as a separate thing and it's not going to be a bookstore. It's going to be just a record store t shirts, you know, and and I need $100,000 to get this going.

Andrew [00:25:45] I can't imagine a bookstore owner today having $100,000 to invest in anything, but I definitely can't imagine them handing it over to an 18 year.

Leah [00:25:56] Old and he bankrolled it. He financed the whole thing. So and he had a we rented a building in another part of downtown Wheaton, and we started shooting.

Andrew [00:26:06] And now John had the money and the location, but he knew there was still one major hurdle facing him. Local sales weren't going to be enough to keep true tunes profitable. Even with Wheaton College, the most prestigious evangelical college in the world, just down the street, he needed to diversify.

Leah [00:26:31] But I knew that it was going to have to have a mail order because our audience needed to be bigger than was just in Wheaton. So mail order was a big part of that.

Leah [00:26:38] It sounds quaint now, but mail order was a lifeline for people outside of big cities before the Internet. If you had the true tunes catalog, you could order from it just like you would from the Sears catalog by mailing an order form and a check, or by calling on the phone, giving your credit card information and waiting a couple of weeks for your order to reach you. For niche styles of music. Mail order catalogs often doubled as a zine.

Andrew Mall [00:27:10] There is a lot that was done through the mail. There was a lot that was done through printed fanzines.

Leah [00:27:15] Music ethnographer Andrew.

Andrew Mall [00:27:17] Marshall People kind of writing their own magazines and then Xeroxing it at a copy center to copy paper folding, stapling and mailing it out. And each fanzine oftentimes had ads for for mail order. You know, you'd see the ad, they would say, you know, write to this person for a free copy of my demo tape to send a few stamps or Hey, I've pressed a few hundred copies of a 45 or of an LP right there, $5 apiece, and then you literally mail them a $5 bill. That's true. Outside of the Christian scene through the regular DIY scene.

Andrew [00:27:52] Making your catalog into a zine also makes people more likely to want to read it. And the more someone reads the catalog, the more they're likely to buy via a mail order. So in order to build a robust mail order business, John started by making a robust magazine that he gave away for free. But who would he give the magazine away to? Easy fellow members of his tribe.

Leah [00:28:18] At Cornerstone, 88. I made these, like, ransom note looking fliers. I literally cut letters out of magazines and and glued them all over. And it just said, coming soon, you know, the the store you've been waiting for. You know, it was kind of a promise that this thing was coming to Chicago. So I made this ransom note and I printed up thousands of half sheets of it, and I just handed it out at Cornerstone. And all it said was, if you want to be added to the mailing list, send a note to this P.O. Box in Wheaton. By the next year at Cornerstone, we printed our first magazine and it had David Mullen in the alarm on the cover, and we brought 10,000 copies of that to the festival. And we said, You can have a copy for free, but you got to give us your name and address, like you have to join our mailing list. And we were thinking, you know, if people get this magazine, if we mail it to them, they'll probably order stuff. And so we didn't charge them for the magazine. We just wanted their information. And so we gave away 10,000 copies of the magazine and got 10,000 names and addresses. And right then we were the we were the second largest magazine in Christian music. Like a CM had about 50,000. And right away, boom, there we were.

Leah [00:29:35] That sick. Innovation from the mind of a teenager helped propel true tunes, the magazine slash mail order catalog racing out of the gates, spreading the good news about Christian rock. But John didn't really think of himself as a writer or critic. He says he wasn't trying to gather a massive audience to heed his critical tastes. He says he was just a teenager who liked talking with people about music.

Leah [00:29:59] The other thing that I really cannot discount was the telephone. Like we had an 800 number and it started even before we opened up the store. And this is what Phil Teske out of the owner told me once was I was 16, 17 years old, and every Thursday night the store was open till nine. And so I had to work every Thursday till noon. I was still in high school at the time and he noticed that every Thursday night the phone would just be ringing and ringing and people were on hold and I usually spent every Thursday night. It was like I was a deejay and I was just taking phone calls and I was answering people what what records were out this week and what did I think of this record or whatever? And he noticed usually he didn't work on Thursdays because he was the owner, and so he could go home for dinner. But one time he stayed and he said, Is that what it's like every Thursday? And I said, Yeah, it's like I can't get off the phone. He said, Well, you know, it seems like you're saying the same thing to everybody. And I said, Yeah, kind of. And he showed me how to use the fax machine. And he's like, You should ask these people if they have a fax number because you can write the stuff down. And then on Thursday you could just send it one time and it could go out to 500 people at once. And so I started doing that where I would write a weekly newsletter, handwritten as neatly as I could. Here's the new vector record. I think that's about it. And here's this new thing. And oh, and I talked to this artist this week and he said this probably and I handwrote this thing, and then I would fax broadcast that out to whoever gave me their fax number. And then on Thursday, instead of me having to repeat this stuff over and over again, people could just call in and order what they wanted or say hi or whatever. We could talk about something else.

Andrew [00:31:36] So John's writing in the True Tunes magazine was a natural outgrowth of these weekly music news phone calls that had grown into the Thursday night fax party. And once the magazine started publishing, it had wide reaching influence from the mailing list. He'd shrewdly built a cornerstone. Even my brother in Florida, and having never attended that music festival, was part of the tribe.

Leah [00:32:00] I would read every single review and, you know, kind of like highlight the ones that sounded good to me and then try to. You know, order that. It was kind of like having a resource like Wikipedia, But for Christian music at the time.

Andrew [00:32:17] The goals of John's true tunes manifesto were getting accomplished in rapid succession. Record Store. Check. Magazine. Check. Concert Venue.

Leah [00:32:28] Well, after a couple of years in the business, the space upstairs from the True Tunes record store opened up. John rented it out and turned it into a concert venue called Upstairs at True Tunes. They hosted more than 500 shows in about two years there. So check.

Andrew [00:32:45] But success often attracts controversy, especially in religious circles. True Tunes was no exception.

Leah [00:32:52] Kind of culty. Weird thing happened where this one guy had this ministry. I'll put in quotes where he was obsessed with this idea that I was actually an agent of the Vatican sent to Catholicism, and he had all this evidence. He quoted the fact that Margaret Becker had been in true tunes, and then all of a sudden Margaret Becker was Catholic. I was like, Oh, wait. Okay. That's just really funny. And we laughed about it because Margaret played a show in Chicago and and people picketed. Like, there was a handful of people picketing the show.

Andrew [00:33:24] In the early nineties. Conspiracy theories were often a laughing matter. They didn't usually lead to people taking action in the real world, and when they did, it was usually just head scratching. Weird.

Leah [00:33:36] And then one Saturday, a guy runs into the store at peak traffic and starts throwing fliers into the air and they're like, flowing like confetti and screaming Ichabod, Ichabod, the glory of the Lord is departed. And this is the kind of thing where nowadays you think someone's going to pull out a gun and start shooting. We don't know what's going on with this maniac. And then he runs out the door and gets into a car and peels off like tires screeching and the cops come. And all this stuff is like, What is going on here?

Leah [00:34:04] While John was definitely not a sleeper agent of the Vatican, he did have a religious background that was a little bit different than the evangelical roots of the powerbrokers of the Christian music industry. His mother was raised Episcopalian but was all in on the first wave of Jesus music.

Leah [00:34:21] And that's how I was exposed to a lot of early Jesus music stuff when I was three or four years old. So Love, Lovesong and Phil Shaggy and Randy Stone, Hell and Honey Tree. This singer songwriter was constantly playing in our house.

Leah [00:34:35] It's only that Lord Jesus took me by the hand. He waves.

Leah [00:34:42] Me every night and night time. Keep singing.

Leah [00:34:48] And so I grew up with that and this sort of charismatic, really simple, almost simplistic version of what it meant to be a Christian. But then also with the Episcopal Church and the kind of liturgical aspect as well.

Andrew [00:35:06] When he was ten, John and his mother moved to the Chicago suburbs to live with his grandparents.

Leah [00:35:11] And they were still part of the Episcopal Church. But they but the church that they were part of was full of people who were just really excited about God and singing. And it was it wasn't I realize now it was maybe not like every other Episcopal church. And there was a charismatic renewal that happened in a lot of liturgical churches in the seventies, you know, So the Jesus movement was not it wasn't you didn't start in Orange County with with the Calvary Chapel. It was not contained to the evangelical world by a long shot. It was something that was happening in the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran church. Then my mom was a part of that. And they sang these Jesus folk songs as we went to St Mark's Episcopal Church. So I had I had both of those things in the background.

Leah [00:36:01] Maybe that's what raised the suspicions of these activists. John could move between different Christian traditions with ease, and he was eager to apply a big tent approach to who got the label of Christian artist. But he was also rather naive about where fundamentalists were coming from. Eventually, a mentor had to spell it out for him.

Leah [00:36:20] He sat down with me and had to kind of talk with me about the roots of fundamentalism and where that comes from and what some of that thinking is, because I was getting a little bit hot about it for a while. Like I wanted to kind of offend everybody I could just so that they would leave me alone. It's kind of like, Well, if you're going to hate me, I want you to hate me on my terms. You know.

Leah [00:36:41] As a religious historian, I can fill in a little bit about what John means by the roots of fundamentalism. He's probably talking about a group of conservative, mostly white Protestants who had really specific ideas about the Bible. They believed in a thing called biblical inerrancy and about what constituted a Christian and what the Christian's posture should be toward the world. And they distilled all of these teachings into a set of beliefs they called the fundamentals. And a lot of the fundamentals had really specific ideas about who was a Christian and who wasn't a Christian. And a lot of fundamentalists did not think that Episcopalians qualified.

Andrew [00:37:26] John was trying to build his tribe of music loving Christians and was uninterested in arguing over these small religious differences. The subculture was pretty small as it was. He didn't want to leave anyone out if they wanted to be in.

Leah [00:37:42] And I just didn't understand the psychology of it. They wanted to have a platform they didn't have or they wanted control that they didn't have, and there was always this sense of control. And so but I will say that all of them owners and managers of all of those Christian bookstores around Chicago, everybody that I ever did business with or met, they were all great. Like everybody was cool. I never sensed it from the industry. I never sensed it from the other managers. It was always like these peripheral people.

Leah [00:38:10] John didn't seem to have many issues with the industry. In fact, by the mid-nineties he was getting positive attention for the little empire he'd built for himself with true tunes. Then he established a toehold on the Internet.

Leah [00:38:23] My buddy Paul Scott worked for me and he was a computer guy and I was not. And he was the first one who said, You've got to do one of these chat rooms. And he goes, There's a lot of people online, man. And I'm like, I don't know. He's like, I'm going to set up a chat room and we're going to publicize that you'll be in the chat room and just take people's questions. And it's just like hanging out, you know, I just you hanging out in a room and people and I'll, I'll he goes, you just sit in the chair, I'll read the question to you answer back and I'll type it in And I like All right has know he's going to come to this thing at 9:00. Nobody's going to be sitting and look in their computer. Everybody will be out at a movie or going to see a band. He's like, Now, trust me, there will be some people on their computers. It's probably like 1994. We get there and I'm super nervous because I'm I'm kind of wired to make sure everybody feels seen and taken care of and get there at 9:00. There's person, person, person, person, ten people, 15 people, 20 people, 50 people. That question start coming in and I get freaked out. I answer the first couple of questions and then I tell Paul, Turn it off, turn it off. There's too many people there. We can't answer all these. They don't expect to all get answered. And I was like, I answered about five or ten questions and I got totally stressed out and AP canceled all. I was like, I can't handle the Internet. I can't deal.

Andrew [00:39:36] This is a turning point in John's story, even though it was just an online chat room. This is when the tribe, John had gathered overwhelmed him. He could deal with conspiracy theorists, angry parents and upset nuns. But when his community grew too large to attend to their needs, that really got to John. He'd set out with these big goals in his manifesto, and he achieved them, but he never accounted for his tribe growing too big. In some ways, he became a victim of his own success. It was like he was an artist who moved into an undesirable neighborhood and inadvertently kickstarted a gentrification process.

Leah [00:40:18] It was probably two years later a company from Virginia bought true tunes and with plans to do a lot. That never happened. But they did launch True TRANSCOM. And back then there wasn't a lot of competition. So in the early days, the Internet church encountered hundreds of thousands of people visiting it every day, like just right from the from the get go. It was nuts to see that people in China and Africa and Australia and all over Europe, it was just we could post an article and then look at the numbers and it was just it was crazy back then how much traffic it got.

Andrew [00:40:55] So can people buy records on the website entretiens Commerce.

Leah [00:40:59] Which caused a whole other problem because they could usually buy stuff way faster than we could stock it. And so then we had this customer service problem where I would write an article about the new vigilantes or Love record, and we would get, you know, maybe 200 copies in stock and and then they would sell out and then we couldn't get enough in. And so even when we offloaded our distribution to another company to handle it, they couldn't keep up with it.

Andrew [00:41:24] So John was working as an employee at the company he'd started, but he didn't care. He had succeeded in keeping that cornerstone feeling going all year long. And he found a tribe of like minded people from around the globe.

Leah [00:41:43] Coming up, how does John deal with the exponential growth the Internet brought to true tunes?

Leah [00:41:48] There's no reason to sell music anymore. There's no need for that. People are streaming it all.

Leah [00:41:55] The fact.

Leah [00:41:55] That. I really owe this guy. I don't think I would have had a career as a music journalist if I'd never met a guy named John Jay Thompson, who did a magazine called True Tunes.

Andrew [00:42:10] This is music critic Jay Edward Keyes. He's currently the editorial director at Bandcamp and has written for Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, the Village Voice, etc., etc., etc..

Leah [00:42:19] With all the arrogance of youth and the early dawning Internet, and I subscribed to two tunes and there was two tunes at AOL dot com. And so I emailed John and I said, You should let me write for publication. And he did. And he gave me, I mean, covered stories when I was 19, 20 years old on, you know, Christian electronic music and really just gave me a wide berth, but also was a great editor, reeling me back in and saying, why not want to say this becomes it comes off a little bit brash.

Leah [00:42:52] Jay was a kindred spirit to John. They're both the bookstore guys I've identified in my research on the subculture, though, of course, John and Jay went beyond just the Christian bookstore. Just like Andrew's older brother.

Andrew [00:43:05] And, you know, I guess in 1996, I was kind of one of those guys, too, though I never worked at a Christian bookstore. I did, however, let True Tune's location in Wheaton, Illinois, influence my choice of colleges. Sure, Wheaton College offered me a good financial aid scholarship, but what truly sealed the deal was having true tunes and all the concerts they were hosting in their upstairs venue. Only a short walk from the dorm from my. Oh, no. So imagine my disappointment when I learned in Florida about to move to Wheaton, Illinois, for my freshman year that the true tune storefront and concert venue had closed. That company from Virginia saw that True Tunes was doing great on the Internet and that most of the music they carried could now be found at Best Buy. Thanks to music industry consolidation further up the food chain. And that's the thing about gentrification. Sometimes you push yourself out of your own community.

Leah [00:44:20] So after the store closed, my job basically became customer service monkey. And that was how I was in a tiny little box of an office all day long, just basically answering angry emails from people. And it was terrible, terrible couple of years.

Leah [00:44:39] What started as John working the phones, laid on Thursdays at the Catholic bookstore talking with his Cornerstone Festival tribe, had ended in pretty much the opposite of a music festival. A tiny office with a computer and customer service duties to attend to.

Leah [00:44:55] I don't know. It was it was a weird and it is a weird thing. It's just that, you know, ironically, I go from that to then working for the Cornerstone Festival for about 12 years.

Andrew [00:45:04] Ironic or not. John wound up getting what he'd wanted all along to make Cornerstone last all year.

Leah [00:45:12] To then working at Capitol CMG, like working for the largest Christian music publisher in the world for almost ten years. So I got to experience it from all of those angles. And now I work at a university, a Christian university. So what do I now? I don't know what.

Leah [00:45:27] Tell you today. There's no shortage of music to listen to and almost no barrier to accessing it. But in some ways, John says the same problem exists from his youth.

Leah [00:45:38] There's this chasm. The artists need to find the fans. The fans need to find this art. And so I'm just trying to build a bridge because now the cost isn't the barrier. It's not like it used to be. Now it's obscurity, it's noise, it's the fact that, you know, we can do all this stuff for free. It doesn't cost so much to make the records. It doesn't cost much to distribute the records, but it's impossible to find people because the noise is just overwhelming. So how do we coalesce an audience of people that are interested enough to be able to introduce them to new and independent music?

Andrew [00:46:10] Naturally, John started a podcast, and if you remember his manifesto from way back in 1984, he wanted a radio station for good Christian music. Back then it was the one thing he never did because it was just too expensive. Now True Tunes, the podcast finally completes his manifesto.

Leah [00:46:31] It's not a business proposition, so I don't treat it as such. I treat it as my mission, and I do other stuff too. To pay the bills and support the family and entertains is just something I do because like I was when I was 14, I felt like God said, This is something you're supposed to do, so I'm going to do it. So that's that's what we're doing.

Leah [00:46:53] Thanks this week to John J. Thompson, who today teaches aspiring young musicians at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Andrew [00:47:01] Thanks also to Jay Edward Keys, Andrew Marr and my family. Check out our show notes to find more information on our guest next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll.

Speaker 6 [00:47:11] There was charismatic revival, but there was also punk rock. There was also The Clash and the Ramones.

Leah [00:47:18] Can Christians make music and not be a part of the Christian music industry?

Andrew [00:47:23] If you enjoy our show, please, please, please give it a rating and a review on the podcast you're using right now. Then make rock that doesn't roll fliers. Go to your nearest record store.

Leah [00:47:35] Throwing fliers into the air and screaming Ichabod, Ichabod, The glory of the Lord is departed.

Andrew [00:47:40] Please and thank you.

Leah [00:47:41] If you have a story you'd like to share. If you're a Christian bookstore guy, please call our hotline. And we might play it on the Future show or shared on social media. It's 6297776336.

Andrew [00:47:54] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a big questions project from NPR. It's produced by us with help from Morgan, Flannery and Emmanuel Discernment.

Leah [00:48:03] Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Needle Berg. Edit The show Michael Rayfield mixes it.

Andrew [00:48:09] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Florentine Provides Production Oversight. I'm Andrew Gill.

Leah [00:48:17] And I'm Leah Payne. Remember Rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.

Leah [00:00:01] The late 90s and early aughts were a banner time for a really specific type of rock band.

Andrew [00:00:06] Why? What type? Emo? Indie? Nü metal? What? What are you talking about?

Leah [00:00:11] All of the above. But I was thinking of an even more specific category. I like to call them the 'are they or aren't they bands?'

Music [00:00:29] [Montage of Creed, Evanescence, Sixpence None the Richer, Owl City, Paramore, Lifehouse music plays]

Andrew [00:00:44] Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely know this.

Leah [00:00:47] You know the ones when they came on the radio, you were never quite sure about their music, was it or was it not Christian? Are they singing about the love of their lives or the love of God?

Andrew [00:00:59] Right. Yeah. 'Are they or aren't they bands?' tore up the mainstream charts in the 90s, early aughts. That whole era. It was rife with this stuff.

Leah [00:01:09] Sixpence none the Richer, Creed, Evanescence, Lifehouse, Owl City, Paramore. They all had different sounds, but they were all bands that left listeners wondering, Are they or aren't they Christian music?

Andrew [00:01:22] Oh, you know what? There is one artist who fits this category perfectly who I actually watched rise during this era. My big brother Daniel, from, you know, the last episode, he was on it. He was a publicist for this artist. Here, let me call my brother real quick.

Andrew [00:01:42] So we want you to talk about a certain artist. And I bet you know who I'm thinking of.

Daniel Gill [00:01:46] Yeah, it's got to be Sufjan.

Music [00:01:48] [Sufjan Stevens music plays]

Andrew [00:01:56] You worked with Sufjan Stevens way before he was nominated for an Oscar. Or his music was played on The O.C. or The Bear. It was before even his album, Michigan, had come out. Sufjan was definitely a Christian, but he wanted to make sure he wasn't associated with the Christian music industry at all. And there was one review that really changed everything for him at that time, right?

Daniel Gill [00:02:19] This is the beginning of what, you know, is now known as the blog era. But, you know, a big part of that was Pitchfork, who reviewed Michigan and gave it sort of like a middling review. And then Ryan Schreiber, the founder of Pitchfork, actually listened to the album himself, said 'We didn't give this a good enough review.' He reran the review with a much higher score and the “Best New Music” tag attached to it. And then it was kind of off to the races from that point forward. Sufjan would tell me that it feels like the Pitchfork Blimp is following me around. They're talking about me too much.

Music [00:03:08] [Sufjan Stevens music plays]

Daniel Gill [00:03:13] I don't know if they would have given him the same attention if those records had been on Tooth & Nail to be honest with you.

Andrew [00:03:22] Right. The indie rock flavored Christian music label.

Daniel Gill [00:03:25] Or if there is an active CCM element to them.

Andrew [00:03:30] Christian contemporary music.

Leah [00:03:31] Why is that, would you say?

Daniel Gill [00:03:33] In general, I feel like there's an element of being taken seriously where you want to be– you want to have your art and your music taken seriously and you know, I just think the standards are not as high maybe in the CCM world. Like if you want to actually, you know, rise above the fray or whatever, I think operating outside of CCM makes a lot more sense.

Andrew [00:04:04] Not the band, The Fray, just the–

Daniel Gill [00:04:06] Not the band The Fray, just the–

Andrew [00:04:07] The noise in the music industry.

Daniel Gill [00:04:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew [00:04:10] The band, The Fray, I think, is Christian, actually.

Daniel Gill [00:04:13] Yeah, I think they are.

Music [00:04:14] [The Fray music plays]

Leah [00:04:20] Sufjan is a pretty singular artist, but different versions of his story played out for loads of modern rock bands made up of youth group kids eager to avoid the label of quote unquote, Christian in the early aughts. It's not hard to see why. Beyond being taken seriously by industry gatekeepers, there's also the conservative social values of Christian rock clashing with the unholy trinity of sex and drugs and, well, rock and roll.

Andrew [00:04:45] Yeah, right. And if you started out in the Christian industry and then tried to change markets, you would get criticism from both sides. The Christians would say you sold out the values of the Bible for worldly fame and fortune, but the mainstream industry would give you side eye over starting your career in the minor leagues instead of paying your dues playing in dive bars for years. It's a really tough situation to navigate and it's almost impossible to know if you're doing it correctly while you're in it. In the words of Sixpence None the Richer:

Music [00:05:15] [Sixpence None the Richer music plays: “We would like to see a burning bush type sign. But anything would be fine.”]

Andrew [00:05:36] From PRX and the Big Questions Project, This is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Andrew Gill, a public radio producer who grew up listening to Christian rock.

Leah [00:05:48] And I'm Leah Payne, author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You and a Religious Historian. Today on the show, Boxed In, does an artist who identifies as Christian have to brand their music as religious too?

Music [00:05:59] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music sting plays]

Jon Foreman [00:06:03] I didn't know that, CCM those letters, I didn't know what that was when we made our first album.

Andrew [00:06:11] As the lead singer of Switchfoot, Jon Foreman is one of the best selling artists in the genre of CCM, contemporary Christian music. But:

Jon Foreman [00:06:21] The Christian music genre is one that I think for us as a band, we kind of always had a smirk when you, when you say it, because it doesn't really make sense. It never did for me.

Andrew [00:06:34] Their breakout was their fourth album. 2003's The Beautiful Letdown, which was a general market release. But just a few years before that, Switchfoot had been playing church gigs in between club shows and their first three albums had been mainly sold in Christian bookstores. So were they a Christian band or a secular band?

Leah [00:06:56] Adding to the confusion was the 2002 movie "A Walk to Remember", only the second Nicholas Sparks film adaptation.

Andrew [00:07:03] And the one right before "The Notebook", too.

Leah [00:07:06] Oh, that's right. That's right. Better known as right before "The Notebook". Yeah. This movie, it's also kind of Christian and kind of not. It stars Mandy Moore, a mainstream pop star who I think...isn't she a pastor's daughter in the movie?

Andrew [00:07:21] Yeah. Plays a pastor's daughter.

Leah [00:07:22] Okay. So mainstream pop star, plays pastor's daughter. It wasn't made by a Christian studio, but the soundtrack? Chock full of songs by Switchfoot. That's right. Mandy Moore even sings a Switchfoot song in the movie.

Andrew [00:07:42] And people have been debating whether Switchfoot is a Christian band or not ever since. There are posts all over the Internet about this. Reddit, Tumblr, old Myspace accounts.

Leah [00:07:54] Oh yeah, I found one in my research. Here you go. Okay: "They're open with their faith, and some songs have very explicit Christian messages. They aren't considered a Christian band. Similarly, though, to my two other favorite bands of all time, NEEDTOBREATHE and twenty one pilots, if you look deep enough into the lyrics, you'll find biblical ideas and messages, but it's not something that punches you in the face with their religion, like most bands that are in the Christian genre." That's one.

Andrew [00:08:16] Okay.

Leah [00:08:18] Okay. Here's another one: "I've often thought about creating a quantitative rating scale for categorizing bands as quote unquote, Christian just for fun, like it would be metric weighted for lyrical content, fan demographics, marketing strategies, religious composition of the fanbase, etc. Switchfoot would be like a five out of ten, whereas Bad Religion would be like a zero out of ten. And you know, somebody like Hillsong would be like a ten out of ten. But that might be simplifying a complex issue."

Andrew [00:08:46] That's like a it's like the Pitchfork rating scale, but for how Christian the band is.

Leah [00:08:50] Exactly. Exactly. It just goes it goes on and on. By the way, that's like one paragraph out of six.

Jon Foreman [00:09:03] I just love music. I love listening to songs. I love the way they make me feel. I love the places that they take me. And I love the idea that music can be a vehicle to get places that I can't go with words alone.

Leah [00:09:16] Obviously, I know you're a pastor's kid. I'm a pastor's kid myself. You know, a lot of folks who we've talked to talked about the role that churchy culture played in shaping their their musical tastes, their musicality. Did your status as a kid in a in a churchy house or a pastor's family, did that have any role in shaping your life as a as an artist, as a musician?

Jon Foreman [00:09:44] Yeah. "Churchy" is a really interesting adjective. I would find it akin to Kierkegaard's usage of the word Christendom, where it is helpful sometimes to have language that connotates something related to this thing that we hold dear. This faith that we have and the culture that is spinning around it. You know?

Andrew [00:10:13] If you saw Jon, you might guess right away that he's from Southern California. And as you can probably tell from the way he answered that question, he's kind of a philosophical surfer type guy. Jon and his brother, Switchfoot bassist Tim Foreman, grew up in the churches their dad, Mark, pastored. He's a part of the Calvary Chapel movement that helped kickstart the whole Christian music industry in the early 70s. So think preachers in jeans and sneakers, not suits and loafers. And unlike almost any evangelical kid we've talked to in this whole process of making this podcast, Jon says that his parents didn't restrict what music he listened to as a kid. They didn't even talk about music being Christian or non-Christian.

Jon Foreman [00:10:58] My dad being a pastor, I got really into Led Zeppelin and instead of banning it or something, I think he welcomed the change because all I was listening to before then was The Beatles, and it was like, I would listen to the same songs so he was excited about, maybe something new in the rotation. He taught me Stairway to Heaven and I didn't think anything of it. It was only when I showed up at Youth Group and I started playing Zeppelin in the, you know, youth group band, like checking my guitar. And everyone said, 'no, no, you can't play that!' Like that was the first time I realized, Wait, oh, there's some sort of delineation between this music and that music.

Leah [00:11:44] There's a good reason Jon has this approach to music.

Jan Foreman [00:11:47] We really tried to erase any line between secular and sacred.

Leah [00:11:53] Jan Forman is Jon's mom. A few years ago, the Forman parents wrote a book about how they raised Jon and Tim called, Never Say No. This is from a promotional video they made for it.

Jan Foreman [00:12:04] We wanted them to realize that God's a part of everything in everyday life. And so we would pray. We would talk about the Lord in real life while we're driving in carpool. We could pray about parking spots. We could ask God to help us find less toys. Whatever it was. We just wanted them to understand that God is normal, to be naturally supernatural.

Andrew [00:12:26] Based on our conversation with Jon, I'd say that lesson stuck with him. Even when he left home to study music at the University of California San Diego.

Jon Foreman [00:12:35] Wonder is always the best place to start a song. Going to UCSD, the first album was pretty much, you know, written for people in my dorm room, you know, like that was my, those were my peers. That was my audience. And none of them believed in God. I mean, there might be a few theists in the group, but certainly not people that would call themselves Christian. But those were my peers, that's who I was writing songs for.

Leah [00:13:15] When the band was looking to sign a record deal, a label called ReThink sounded like the perfect fit for artists like them. It was committed to marketing their artists to Christian and secular markets.

Andrew [00:13:27] Yeah, the times Christian artists had hits in the mainstream like Amy Grant or Jars of Clay, There are always questions about which audience the record was for: the so-called Christian market or the mainstream market. ReThink was an attempt to serve both. It was the brainchild of a guy named Charlie Peacock, who was a multi-multi-hyphenate: a singer, songwriter, composer, producer, improviser, and for a short time, Leah's boss. Right?

Leah [00:13:55] True. I worked as his assistant back in the day.

Jon Foreman [00:13:57] Charlie had this dream of a label that would be able to bring music to our local record store, Lose Records, which you know that the highest honor, right? That that was, that was our tip top of the dream that we would be in the listening station at Lose Records and maybe the listening station at like some church, maybe our church that that we thought, man, because we have something to say. I would like go in and and listen to music in both places and and I didn't think it was weird. So I think that was our dream in those days.

Andrew [00:14:36] But the reality was that marketing an album in both Christian and mainstream markets was really expensive, and pretty soon the ReThink record label had to rethink their ambitious distribution strategy. Long story short, Switchfoot only got marketed to Christians. Goodbye, Lose Records. Hello, youth groups.

Leah [00:14:55] Which was disappointing for the band, but great news for youth group kids like Tyler Huckabee from our first episode.

Tyler Huckabee [00:15:02] We brought in Switchfoot really early. They might have still been teenagers when they came and played in our basement to like 12 people.

Leah [00:15:09] Another reality check for the band was around touring. It's hard to build up enough fans in each city to make an annual tour worthwhile financially, but if you split your gigs between clubs and churches, you basically have to attract two audiences for your band.

Jon Foreman [00:15:23] We tried the ReThink model of playing the church and the club, and we realized you can only play Philadelphia once a year, right? So you either play the church or the club.

Andrew [00:15:36] As the band were discovering the practical limitations of existing in two worlds. They were also discovering they were at odds with the theological underpinnings of the Christian industry, too.

Jon Foreman [00:15:47] I think Christian music, you could call it a dangerous misnomer. You could call it something that, though well-intended, actually distanced us from us. The idea that anything other than a human soul could be saved, could be redeemed, could be transformed by this. You know, this faith is heretical.

Leah [00:16:18] So for Jon, thinking about a song or a band as Christian or not, is like thinking about a car or a table as Christian or not. It's confusing and maybe even kind of absurd. And when the word Christian gets applied to any art form, it's just a marketing strategy.

Jon Foreman [00:16:33] As far as like the boxes people put on us, they're mainly for selling. And from the very beginning that's kind of was the language that we, we used with Charlie was like, okay, where is it sold? And that has little to do with the art. I do think in some ways we as the Christendom members, have done Christ a disservice in that we have put ourselves and others in boxes.

Andrew [00:17:09] Those categories or boxes Jon is talking about are absent from his memories of growing up in Southern California. But they were blatantly obvious when he got involved with the Gospel Music Association. Or basically like the Grammys of the Christian music industry.

Jon Foreman [00:17:26] We would play bar mitzvahs, we'd play coffee shops, we played frat parties, we played churches like it was very fluid. And San Diego felt like it was very open at the time. I think it still is. You know, pretty free as far as that's what we felt. And when I went to Nashville for like it was like a GMA thing, it was like, wow. On the one hand, it's really cool because you have so many people that that are all there that love music and want to talk about it, you know? But at the same time, it felt a little bit strange because it felt like, wow, this is just various versions of one viewpoint and an entire genre defined by a viewpoint rather than a sound. And that's what felt unusual at the time.

Leah [00:18:17] Jon says the thing they liked about music in the church was the physical act of singing together with other people. The singular viewpoint wasn't that important. It was the moments when different people joined their voices into one.

Jon Foreman [00:18:30] Music for everyone else, that called themselves a human for ages before us, meant somebody had to play the thing, you know? And I do think that the church is one of the last places where the collective we is still singing that one song, you know? And I think that that shaped me quite a bit. And there's a beautiful thing that happens when everyone is singing the same song.

Andrew [00:18:55] Now, I would push back on that just a little and say that big concerts are also a place where that happens. I wouldn't be the first person to suggest that a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé concert is similar to a church service. There's reverence, there's collective singing. And Jon, of course, had his own rock heroes he would have loved to commune with in a stadium.

Jon Foreman [00:19:18] So all of our heroes Zeppelin and U2 and the Police and the Beatles were, you know, some of my favorite bands. But I had never seen them. I didn't even think that I would ever see them play. They were so far removed from the bands that were playing in backyards in and around San Diego, and those were our heroes.

Leah [00:19:41] So with Bono and Sting ringing in his ears alongside San Diego bands like Pinback, Jon wrote Switchfoot songs that would point towards the wonder of God but still resonate with the diverse set of friends he had in college, including surfers. Switchfoot is the term for changing up your stance on a surfboard.

Jon Foreman [00:19:59] I had friends that believed all sorts of different things. And I, I loved them. I felt loved by them. And, you know, I had a friend who was, like, who didn't like the way a guitar sounded, you know, in my dorm is like, yeah, I mean, you're really good at that, but I don't really like the way acoustic guitar sounds. They sound really clinky and and I'm like, Yeah, they kind of do, you know, like, but, you know, we get ensconced into a certain tribe and we never think to think, 'man Yeah, maybe the acoustic guitar isn't the best way to go forward on this particular song'. Just because you got it in your hand doesn't mean it's the right way. But yeah, I think like I'm looking back, I'm really thankful to be outside of any one particular ghetto in that respect. I'm sure there's millions of blind spots that I have as an American, but that that being exposed to all sorts of different ideas was not one of them.

Andrew [00:21:02] So Switchfoot was going for a few years trying to make it work in two parallel music industries, but they started feeling less and less comfortable being marketed mostly in the Christian industry. Meanwhile, they were having some success having their music placed in TV shows like Dawson's Creek.

Music [00:21:29] [Switchfoot music plays]

Leah [00:21:39] So it was a logical progression when they were invited to appear onscreen in a movie playing a band.

Jon Foreman [00:21:46] Jason Priestley invited us to this thing and we're supposed to be the band. And we're looking around at the venue and there's all these, like, cages around the room. And this is pre-me too, pre-a lot of things. Like when I say it now, it seems even wilder. But then it it felt like, Oh, this is you're going to be the rock band and you're going to do this thing and there's going to be girls in cages around and while you play and you're going to play this one song and they're going to be dancing and it's going to be great. And and we're we're like, oh, you know what that's like, okay. We are a rock band and we do play music, but this rubs us the wrong way.

Andrew [00:22:34] I know you're probably thinking that a Christian rock band is not going to be okay with cage dancers because they have some kind of purity, culture commitment. But that's not the number one thing on Jon's mind in this moment. He thought instead of what is rock heroes like U2 would do?

Jon Foreman [00:22:51] None of the bands I look up to ever do this. This is not something I'm comfortable with.

Leah [00:22:57] This is a big moment for Jon as an artist. Will he go along to get along? Or will he risk losing out on a major opportunity because it clashes with his taste and sense of ethics? In moments like these, at least artists like Jon could think of another Christian artist who made a career in the mainstream industry for guidance. He could ask WWBD, What Would Bono Do?

David Dark [00:23:21] I recall in '87, when the The Joshua Tree tour came to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and I saw Amy Grant in the audience and I thought, Oh, there we go. This is all one thing.

Leah [00:23:32] Stay with us.

Jon Foreman [00:23:35] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music sting plays]

David Dark [00:23:42] All along, U2 was the kind of the secret favorite standard of maybe almost all CCM artists who are really wishing that they had maybe gone that path.

Andrew [00:23:53] David Dark is a philosopher and an author And also,

David Dark [00:23:57] I'm a Nashville lifer. I attended a school that had Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith in as chapel guests. I was a high school English teacher for a long time. And I had the kids of Steven Curtis Chapman and and people like that. So it's all very real for me.

Andrew [00:24:21] Adding to his credentials. David's wife also recorded as Sarah Masen for the ReThink label, and he happens to be close friends with Jon Forman of Switchfoot.

David Dark [00:24:30] I am writing a book about U2 called Explain All These Controls: U2 and the Inner America. I think they're a model of how life can be lived artfully and politically and a just way.

Leah [00:24:47] We know that U2 was one of Jon Foreman's favorite bands as a kid. But what you might not know is that in many ways, they were the original 'Are they or aren't they a Christian band?' Most of the members were Christian, but they were never marketed widely as a quote unquote Christian band, even though they had a ton of Christian fans, including a lot of notable CCM stars. So it would be natural for Switchfoot to think of U2 when confronted with a showbiz decision that could require ethical compromise. The case could be made that no one has ever walked the line between the Christian industry and Christians making art more skillfully.

Andrew [00:25:23] And there's certainly no one who has done it on a bigger stage than U2. And for so long. Their accomplishment is so singular in this respect that it's worth looking back at how they situated themselves from the beginning. It could be the path forward for artists like Jon.

David Dark [00:25:40] At the heart is the trauma and the terror and the hope and the possibility of being from particular families in Dublin in the 70s and what is referred to as the troubles of the entire Ireland, Northern Ireland and Ireland alike. And they found themselves, they met one another at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, which was a non-denominational effort. Your primary identifier was not Catholic, Protestant, politics, religion. You're a human being and it's a work of integration.

Leah [00:26:20] That's how U2 came together with two Protestants, The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton, one Catholic: drummer, Larry Mullen Jr. and Bono, who came from a Catholic Protestant mixed family. The year they formed 1976, there were eight bombings in Ireland, all part of a conflict drawn along the lines of religious and political identity.

Andrew [00:26:42] Into that tense and often hopeless situation, came the Jesus movement revival that sparked the Christian music industry in America. Places like Calvary Chapel in Southern California capitalized on this wave of young people embracing a radical reading of Jesus that centered on a hippie friendly emphasis on love. And when it reached Dublin, it didn't bloom into anything as commercial as it did in America, but it still made a big impact on the members of U2.

David Dark [00:27:12] And out of that, as there was for many and what we refer to as the Jesus movement, in a way, there was charismatic revival, but there was also punk rock. There was also The Clash and the Ramones. So there right away, there was this work of being more than one thing, being neither Catholic nor Protestant.

Leah [00:27:36] The members of U2 were also fans of early Christian rock music. Probably not Petra, but,

David Dark [00:27:41] They loved Larry Norman.They loved Randy Stonehill.

Music [00:27:54] [Randy Stonehill music plays]

David Dark [00:28:00] They loved all that stuff. They went to the Greenbelt festival.

Andrew [00:28:04] Greenbelt is an English Christian music and arts festival founded in 1974. Like the Cornerstone Festival we talked about in our previous episode, the festival was Christian, but tried to cast a large tent to welcome everyone to attend. They focused mostly on Christian artists, but also booked mainstream acts who fit the vibe regardless of their faith or lack thereof. Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill played there many times, but U2 only played there once in 1981.

Leah [00:28:35] It was only their fourth show after recording their album "October". That album was heavily influenced by the band's involvement with a communal Christian group called Shalom in Dublin. Just listen to the song "Gloria" and its liturgical Latin chorus.

Music [00:28:49] ["Gloria" plays]

David Dark [00:29:02] It was a group called Shalom, and they were very new testimony, having all things in common. Almost like paleo communist. The early church was a form of socialism, arguably, and they were following that model.

Andrew [00:29:23] Intentional communities of the early 70s Jesus movement in the US and around the world were groups of people who tried to live like they imagined the earliest Christians did. As depicted in the Book of Acts and the New Testament.

Leah [00:29:37] So they shared all things in common. They often pooled financial resources. They lived together. Basically, they were Jesus-y hippie communes.

Andrew [00:29:46] And it wasn't unheard of for these groups to include music in their mission. Like Jesus People USA did in Chicago. They ran the Cornerstone Festival, a record label, and supported many bands.

Leah [00:29:58] But for the ascendant U2, their commitment to the Shalom community posed a problem.

David Dark [00:30:03] What occurred within that situation was 1 or 2 charismatic leaders suggested that you can't have God and rock and roll. That they couldn't have it both ways. And truly, Edge was out for a moment. And Bono was also out like, we can't do it.

Andrew [00:30:24] At this point. They had already topped the Irish charts, toured the United States and had an extensive tour booked to promote October. And they were still trying to live like the earliest Christians alongside the Shalom community.

David Dark [00:30:39] But they approached Adam and Larry and said, on account of what we're being told and what we believe within this community of discernment, we're not going to be U2 anymore. And they approached their manager, Paul McGuinness, who was an atheist. And Paul McGuinness says, What kind of God would tell you to back out of a contract?

Andrew [00:31:00] This was a moment where their understanding of God was being put to a test. There could be no middle way here. Either their faith community had understood God correctly or their manager had. Where would they place their allegiance? Would they sell out Shalom or try to sell out their tour?

David Dark [00:31:19] And and that that worked. I mean, they received the schooling of the unbeliever. And this maybe speaks a little bit to the moral, artistic, spiritual business decision. They were going back on their word. According to their read on what the spirit was saying. But then they received from Paul McGuinness, you know what? Maybe, maybe he has a point. Maybe we aren't reading God right in this moment. So part of their strength is, millionaires we have all around us, but we don't have four artist millionaires who call each other out on their own shit constantly for almost 50 years. And I think that's part of their staying power.

Leah [00:32:03] It was only after this decision that U2 wrote their iconic song "Sunday Bloody Sunday" about the 1972 protest that turned into a massacre in Derry. The song takes pains not to choose a side in the centuries long conflict, only for the killing to stop.

Music [00:32:19] [U2 music plays]

David Dark [00:32:32] "Sunday Bloody Sunday" very specifically, is a song addressing all kinds of things. But for one thing, it seems to be addressing that tension between politics and religion. And they decided to, with much nuance, be who they were. They grew up knowing the dangers of going too hard on self-description. The proof is in the pudding.

Andrew [00:32:59] If U2 had formed five years later and in Southern California or Nashville instead of Dublin, there would have been the CCM industry for them to turn to in this moment. If the Christian commune they joined was Jesus People USA in Chicago instead of Shalom, they may have carried out their career in a vastly different context. And their career probably would have gone a lot differently. And they probably wouldn't be doing a residency at this fear in Las Vegas right now either.

Leah [00:33:29] Maybe not.

David Dark [00:33:31] Once you call yourself a thing, whether it's righteous, good, activist, philosopher, Christian, poet even! Leonard Cohen said "poetry is a verdict, not a choice." I'm going to leave it to other people to tell me whether or not I was a poet. On the business end, they understood and they talked about it famously that the marketing of God seems to be its own evil form. You can't sell God. You can earn a living perhaps talking about God, but spirit won't be marketed, won't be commodified, won't be sold. So I think of that as an ethical thing, keeping that gift flow going. Also not trying to sell your audience something that they didn't agree to. Also, keeping it nimble. Why needlessly court misunderstanding by using a word like "Christian", which is so contested, so toxic, why not leave it to the reader, the listener to label instead of putting that on the front end? Edge said that in the Book of Acts, no one is called Christian. They just get called Christian. Christianity is a public verdict placed on people rather than a self-description in the scripture. One of their first buttons was emblazoned with the words "U2 can happen to anyone." I say that to say that I am someone to whom you two happened. They've been very helpful to me in processing CCM, which happened around me. It dropped on me when I was maybe 14 or 15 years old. I had Amy Grant come into my chapel, but then I had U2 on MTV. So I was kind of comparing the two right away. Not that there's a stark division because I think they've been on similar paths. But being in Nashville, I, I grew up in this quagmire of ideas. When they arrived, CCM as a, I won't call it scam, but as a marketing tool did not exist. So they kind of jumped ahead and of course, evangelical before the Reagan Falwell fusion was Jimmy Carter. So I called my mother, who's 83, a Jimmy Carter evangelical. I was raised by Jimmy Carter, Evangelicals. U2 fit like a glove into what I was being taught. And especially all the way up to The Joshua Tree.

Leah [00:36:12] By not overtly declaring a Christian brand, U2 were free to grow and push the envelope in ways that CCM bands might not be able to. But that freedom could just as easily lead them to alienate their most ardent Christian loyalists.

David Dark [00:36:28] Now I will say something like, I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I had enough of a fundy in me to say, 'Well, you have! You've found Jesus!' Don't say you haven't found what you're looking for. And so that tension, they were playing with that, but they were also inviting a kind of third way, a different way of holding belief. Even with Joshua Tree, now with Achtung Baby, that was a little bit like Dylan after Shot of Love.

Andrew [00:37:01] Bob Dylan's 1981 album, Shot of Love, was the last of his three "born again" albums. And 1983, he released Infidels and returned to a more personal and less preachy songwriting style. Evangelical fans of U2 saw their 1991 album Achtung Baby in a similar light.

David Dark [00:37:21] I recall in '87 when they The Joshua Tree tour came to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and I saw Amy Grant in the audience and I thought, Oh, there we go. This is all one thing. Achtung Baby, cast doubt on a lot of that. I remember being devastated listening to it because I didn't think that they were Christian anymore. I will say that white evangelicals who were like me, who were with U2, that they lost us with Achtung Baby and they lost us with um, oh gosh, it feels folksy to say it, but by cursing! Like he cursed on television. And there was a, 'Oh, no, I can't believe he said it. He's not our guy anymore.'

Archival news tape [00:38:03] Irish rockers U2 walked away with the Best Alternative Music Album award for Zooropa. Bono's acceptance speech took the audience and the network by surprise.

Bono [00:38:13] "I think I'd like to give a message to the young people of America, and that is we shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up the mainstream. God bless you."

Leah [00:38:26] It's funny. U2 was almost never marketed or talked about in the same conversation as CCM. But for almost every CCM artist, they were sort of the standard for all the artists, the artist class. It was like, of course, of course it's U2. So,

David Dark [00:38:47] Yeah, like you could even, I don't want to be cynical about it, but you could know that whatever U2 just did, that that was going to show up in the production and style decisions of many a CCM artist a year or two later. But that is kind of that dark corner as well, because I have known many who have accrued cred and coin through the CCM umbrella. But I don't think that I know anyone who is happy about it. Like, I don't think I know anyone who thought I am a CCM artist and that's what I want. I think everybody wanted out or beyond. But of course, the overhead question, I know for myself that if I had been handsomely compensated to be one version of myself when I was a teenager, it would be hard to stop being that version of myself so long as I was paid to be that version of myself. Some forms of success in politics and entertainment make a failure of the rest of life. And I feel bad for people who who got that CCM stigma but were never able to get beyond it. Because I'm so big on human beings as human beings and not mistaking them for their brand, their persona or their marketing, I feel like I could write a number of novels about people who signed contracts and agreed to a particular model and whose mental health suffered because of what they were being asked to be. For a youth group audience, churches and label execs who maybe didn't believe any of it, but just wanted a return on their investment.

Andrew [00:40:39] Coming up: we'll go back to Jon Foreman and Switchfoot to see how they apply the lessons of U2 in their own cagey situation on the film set.

Music [00:40:49] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music sting plays]

Jon Foreman [00:00:01] And so we say, you know, I think we probably should lose the cages. That's just kind of not who we are.

Leah [00:00:08] We left Jon Foreman on the set of a Jason Priestley movie. Switchfoot had three albums out that were mostly marketed to youth groups. And thought appearing in this film could be their big break. But they showed up on the set to find cage dancers surrounding the stage where they'd be playing. They asked the director to lose the cages.

Jon Foreman [00:00:26] And he comes back. The director says, No, it's kind of– the cages stay and we'll find a new band, if that's your position. And so we drove home to San Diego thinking, okay, well, that was our big break. But ym, yeah. And it was just this thing where I didn't think of that as a Christian decision. I felt like that was that was being true to who we are as a band. Like Jimmy Eat World would never do that. Rage Against the Machine would never do that. Like, that's just not who we are. And again, no offense to any bands that that's who they are, but that's not what we do.

Andrew [00:01:08] Unlike U2, Switchfoot did not receive the witness of the unbeliever in this case, but they did follow U2 in knowing who they are and remaining true to that idea. Jon says that chasing business opportunities was never part of the band's identity.

Jon Foreman [00:01:25] Music was not a moneymaking venture. It never was seen that way. It was always like, Of course you're going to go surfing, you're going to make music, you're going to hang out with your friends, but that's not going to make money. Like, you have to get a real job and pay for those beautiful, wonderful parts of life. And so that's the way I always thought of music. You know, even up until like our third album where I thought, yeah, I mean, it's better than a real job, but it can't last for long.

Leah [00:01:54] So with their botched big break in the rearview mirror, Switchfoot was getting more comfortable with the idea that their time as a band may be coming to an end soon.

Jon Foreman [00:02:03] But on the heels of that, a friend from high school who is working for Mandy Moore's management brought that song to Mandy and that camp.

Leah [00:02:16] "Only Hope"?

Jon Foreman [00:02:17] "Only Hope". The "Only Hope" was the song that she brought in and Mandy sang it. And, and yeah, that was a wild thing.

Music [00:02:27] [Mandy Moore sings "Only Hope"]

Andrew [00:02:36] A Walk to Remember features a pivotal scene where Mandy Moore's character sings "Only Hope" in a high school theater production to a classmate. At the end of the song, you guessed it, they kiss.

Leah [00:02:49] While A Walk to Remember definitely changed things for Switchfoot. It wasn't immediately clear to them just how much things had changed. But starting on their next album, they had a newfound feeling of creative freedom.

Jon Foreman [00:03:02] On the heels of that, we said, You know what? Because we were going to break up as a band. You know, we had our couple albums and we're going to finish college and get real jobs or maybe keep playing on the side. But, you know, our drummer was getting married. Life was beginning. That cute little band you're in, that's cool. That time to get a real job. So we said, Well, let's make one last album and let's let's just do everything the way we wanted to. And so we said, Well, how's this for this round? Let's play neutral venues. Let's only play places where everyone feels welcome. Not that we have anything against the church, but let's just let's play the club down the street. Let's play Northstar Bar wherever it is, because that's the place where music happens. That's where bands play. Everyone feels comfortable. We were just kind of like, Let's make one last stand as a band and this is what we're going to do.

Leah [00:03:58] The album they recorded was The Beautiful Letdown, their first mainstream release, and it turned out to be the album that allowed Switchfoot to crossover from youth group world into the mainstream. The songs "Meant to Live" and "Dare You to Move" charted in the top 20 of Billboard's Hot 100. They signed with Sony and landed music placements in even more teen shows than Dawson's Creek. And their music reached lots of kids who went on to make music themselves.

Monica Martin [00:04:24] Hi, I'm Monica Martin and uh, hi Switchfoot. I love you!

Jonas Brothers [00:04:30] Hey, guys. What's up? It's us, the Jonas Brothers. And we're here to talk about our favorite band. One of our favorite bands, Switchfoot.

Twenty One Pilots [00:04:35] One of my favorite albums of all time is The Beautiful Let Down by Switchfoot.

One Republic [00:04:40] Switchfoot. My Guys, The resonance that your lyrics and messages have in your music was a big impact to me as I was starting writing the first One Republic album.

Music [00:04:49] [Switchfoot's "Meant to Live" song plays]

Andrew [00:05:19] The Beautiful Letdown has such universal acclaim that even David Dark likes it.

David Dark [00:05:25] The Beautiful Let Down album was recently rerecorded by Switchfoot. I noticed the song 'We Were Meant to Live', there's one line in that song, their hit song, where he says, "We want more than this world's got to offer. We want more than the wars of our fathers." And I thought, oh, my goodness, that's a that is a major line that got through, that is known by people who listen to the song. But there's a kind of depth charge to that that maybe sinks beneath or floats right past the Switchfoot brand impression. When we think of Switchfoot, we probably don't think of a song quite so heavy as a sort of word of disavowal concerning the military violence of, do I say, the greatest generation? I mean, like that kind of there's a challenging of a myth there that is not exactly in sync with brand Switchfoot, but it's there anyway.

Leah [00:06:33] Even 20 years after their breakthrough album, Switchfoot is still going strong. And Jon says the key to their longevity is their "are they are, aren't they?" approach to music.

Jon Foreman [00:06:43] I think we do ourselves a disservice being literalists. There's this ancient African tradition where the, the poem is about a woman and God. And I just just found out about this. And it's this thing where I think to the empirical mind, you have to decide, what's it about? What's the song about? Which to me is the dumbest question you can ask a songwriter. Like when the songwriter finishes the song and you say, What is the song about? It's like you were in the room. I mean, your opinion is equally valid. Don't ask that guy. You've got your own ears, you know? I mean, it is odd when when somebody says, Hey, this song evokes a hot tub scene for me, which has happened to our music. But at the same time, I am not the final source about what the song means. You hear it and and I love the dialog, the idea that the song changes. I mean, these songs that– we're on a tour right now playing The Beautiful Letdown front to back. And these are songs I wrote 20 years ago, and if they hadn't changed at all, if the meaning was literal and fixed, I would not want to play them. But because of life experiences, they mean more now, and that's only possible with this ambiguity of I'm not sure, I'm not like, again, it's this closed fist idea of control or it's the surrender where you're open to new ideas.

Andrew [00:08:21] So settling the question of "are they or aren't they?" Is kind of missing the point. We're never going to get a satisfying answer anyways. But maybe the vagueness is more truthful. Maybe the labels are unfair to begin with. Maybe forcing bands into boxes is a bad idea.

David Dark [00:08:40] There's always more going on with these acts when we study them, when we treasure them, than the cartoonish version of these acts.

Andrew [00:09:02] Thanks this week to our guests, Jon Foreman and David Dark, whose latest book, We Become What We Normalize, is available now. Find links to both in our show notes. Thanks also to my brother, Daniel Gill.

Leah [00:09:15] Next time on Rock That Doesn't Roll.

David Bazan [00:09:17] Up until I was 14. My heels are Christian music. You know, that caused a big conflict because I didn't want that to be what my heels were.

Leah [00:09:29] How to stop worrying and love your CCM past.

Andrew [00:09:34] If you enjoy our show, give us a rating and review on the podcast app you're using right now. And if you want us to keep making this show in the future, you can support us on Patreon. Find the link in our shownotes.

Leah [00:09:47] If you have a story you'd like to share, please call our hotline and we might play it on a future show. It's (629) 777-6336.

Andrew [00:09:57] Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions project from PRX. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme. Jocelyn Gonzales, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg edit this show.

Leah [00:10:10] Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurantin provides Production Oversight. I'm Leah Payne.

Andrew [00:10:18] And I'm Andrew Gill. Remember Rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.

Andrew [00:00:00] Imagine this scene, if you will. The year is 2001. You're at a Pedro the Lion show at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago. It is very cool. You know, punky fashion choices. Thrift store coats, thick rimmed glasses, like somehow a 16 year old has 50 tattoos. Like, I don't know how they had the time to do that in their life yet, but somehow they do.

Leah [00:00:25] Wow. I'm picturing like, a lot of spiky hair, that kind of thing.

Andrew [00:00:30] Oh, yeah, yeah. The hair gel, the white belts, you know, ripped jeans with, like, thermal underwear underneath, you know, that kind of stuff, like pierced noses. Earrings with giant spacers.

Music [00:01:12] [Pedro the Lion music plays]

Andrew [00:01:12] It's a very cool scene. You might think to yourself. The word hipster was invented for places like this. You know?

Leah [00:01:18] What if I were to tell you that this Pedro the Lion concert would not have been possible if not for an artist whose music sounded something like this.

Music [00:01:37] [Carman music plays]

Leah [00:01:40] This is the music of a Christian music superstar so iconic that he only had one name, Carman. And his concerts were decidedly different from the hipster scene found at a Pedro the Lion Show. Here, the audience was multigenerational. You had grandmas. You had infants. You had teenagers. And a lot of youth pastors. The parking lot was like half church vans.

Andrew [00:02:08] Yes. The 15 passenger white vans.

Leah [00:02:10] That's right. Get those kids in the van. For the uninitiated, Carman, he was part Liberace, part Rocky. He sang. He rapped. He preached. He even line danced.

Andrew [00:02:23] And if you don't believe us, that one would not have existed without the other. Take it from Pedro the Lion lead singer, indie rock icon, David Bazan.

David Bazan [00:02:33] Yeah, I think I was seven and I heard Carman The Champion on Christian radio.

Music [00:02:39] [Carman music plays]

Leah [00:02:49] David Bazan really shouldn't be fessing up to liking Carman. He has way too many cool points stockpiled up for that. But here he is.

David Bazan [00:02:58] And I freaked the fuck out. I just was like, What is this? And so I called the Christian radio station and requested it over and over again. And finally, the guy was just like, Kid. Have your dad take you to the Christian bookstore and buy a tape of this thing. And I was like, You can do that?! And he was like, 'Yes, leave me alone!' Like. I can't. I've already played this song four times today. Like, I can't play it again.

Andrew [00:03:28] So I'm like, sounds like Joe Pera with The Who, you know?

David Bazan [00:03:31] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Andrew [00:03:33] So, Leah, have you ever seen Joe Pera Talks with You, you know, the TV show?

Leah [00:03:37] I don't think I have.

Andrew [00:03:39] Okay, so there's an episode where he hears the song Baba O'Riley by The Who for the first time.

Leah [00:03:45] Okay.

Andrew [00:03:46] But he does the same exact thing David described with a radio DJ.

Archival Tape - Joe Pera Talks with You [00:03:51] "You're on the air." "What was the song you just played?" "Yeah. Good one. Well, the name of the song is Baba O'Riley." "Uh huh. All right. Could you please play it again?" "Sorry, pal." "Okay. I'll try another station."

Leah [00:04:15] Wow. That is. That's amazing. To picture the lead singer of Pedro the Lion being obsessed with Carman of all people. I'm legitimately surprised by that. How does that happen?

Leah [00:04:34] From PRX and the Big Questions Project, this is Rock That Doesn't Roll. I'm Leah Payne, author of God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music.

Andrew [00:04:44] And I'm Andrew Gill, a public radio producer who grew up on Christian rock.

Leah [00:04:49] Today on the show, how one artist got caught between the two worlds of authentic self-expression and religious instruction, and how he carved out his own space after swinging back and forth on a pendulum for years.

David Bazan [00:05:07] There was a period of time when I just was deeply embarrassed of what my early influences were.

Andrew [00:05:15] David Bazan has been making music for more than 25 years, mostly as Pedro the Lion. And since this is our final episode of Season one, I took the prerogative to book an interview with one of my favorite musicians about how Christian contemporary music shaped him.

Leah [00:05:32] To be honest, I didn't expect David to be this forthcoming because most of the musicians I've asked about CCM, even the ones I'm sure know about people like Carman and Sandi Patty deflect when I ask them about it. And David–it happens to a person. And David's music is cool. I figured he'd be too cool to open up about how CCM shaped him. But as you've already heard, he was an open book with us.

David Bazan [00:06:01] I heard this one, Sandi Patty record that my mom listened to called Another Time, Another Place, which has Jeff Porcaro drumming on it, some of the sickest drumming on any record. It's astonishing.

Music [00:06:16] [Sandi Patty music plays]

Andrew [00:06:23] The first thing I heard from Pedro the Lion was the official debut in 1997, the Whole EP. It had a drawing of a lion on the cover, like a children's book, and it sounded like an authentic indie rock band wrestling with deep topics that happened to center around God. It didn't feel like the CCM music of the 80s I'd grown up listening to or the pop punk of Tooth & Nail stars in MxPx.

Music [00:06:48] [Pedro the Lion music plays]

Leah [00:07:04] As he became known for his honest and authentic songwriting. He said he feared being associated with some of his earliest influences.

David Bazan [00:07:11] The idea that you could see, like Carman's kind of fingerprints in the way that I make music, like really made me feel insecure.

Andrew [00:07:33] Carman is an interesting influence to try to parse out in Pedro the Lion songs. Honestly, it never would have occurred to me unless David mentioned it.

Leah [00:07:42] But, you know, the more you learn about David, the more it makes sense. Carman was a Pentecostal, the kind of Christian who speaks in tongues and believes we live in an epic spiritual battle between Jesus and the devil. And David told us his father is a music minister in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination.

David Bazan [00:07:59] With my dad as the music pastor, I just was there all the time and that was the school that I went to also. And so, like church music was a small feature of just like, being in show business kind of, you know, the way that you're putting on a show every week, preparing and rehearsing.

Andrew [00:08:25] Above all else, Carman was an evangelistic showman, and growing up in the same Pentecostal tradition gave David a similar grounding in holy show business from a young age.

David Bazan [00:08:36] There was a lot of musical cantatas, like kids musicals, you know, all this sort of stuff.

Archival Tape [00:08:43] "Susie turn me to page 24 and let's sing our way up the mountain. My pleasure."

Leah [00:08:49] Salty spelled PSALTY, was a lovable, six foot tall anthropomorphic Psalter, a hymn book whose adventures taught kids biblical lessons.

David Bazan [00:09:15] "Bullfrogs and Butterflies". What's that person's name?

Leah [00:09:20] Barry McGuire?

Leah [00:09:21] Barry. Barry McGuire. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew [00:09:23] Wild. The Eve of destruction guy wrote "Bullfrogs and Butterflies".

Leah [00:09:27] Quite a journey.

Andrew [00:09:29] Barry McGuire had a number one hit in 1965 with the antiwar song Eve of Destruction.

Music [00:09:35] [Barry McGuire music plays]

Andrew [00:10:05] In 1971, McGuire became a born again Christian. He went from being a radical protest singer to doing soft focused religious instructional songs. Possibly his most enduring CCM song, at least for Gen-Xers, is from a 1978 kids album called "Bullfrogs and Butterflies".

Music [00:10:22] ["Bullfrogs and Butterflies" music plays]

David Bazan [00:10:40] You know I sing music machine bits and pieces all the time. Like the "have patience..."

Music [00:10:47] [Music Machine music plays]

Andrew [00:11:04] The Music Machine was an album of kids songs from 1977 set in the world of Agapeland. I listened to it as a kid, too. The songs were designed to teach kids about the nine fruits of the Spirit. Can you name them Leah?

Leah [00:11:20] Pentecostal pastors kid here! Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Andrew [00:11:26] Wow, that is so impressive. You are so fast. You must have drilled that as a kid.

Leah [00:11:31] Yeah, maybe.

Andrew [00:11:33] You know, early in his career, David was kind of drawing inspiration from some of these albums. He had early songs that worked in a similar way packaging Christian values like patience and indie rock tunes.

Music [00:12:20] [Pedro the Lion music plays]

Andrew [00:12:21] This instructional project was a far cry from where David would go in his songs on later albums. At this point, you could say his pendulum was all the way on the Christian religious instruction side. But later he would write lyrics like this:

David Bazan [00:13:02] [Pedro the Lion music plays]

Leah [00:13:02] So David was steeped in Holy showbusiness and had a taste for musical earworms from a young age. But it wasn't his parents who introduced him to Christian Rock. His dad grew up in an immigrant home and was intensely sheltered, as David puts it. Even though he was a music minister.

David Bazan [00:13:20] My dad, probably to this day, like if you showed him a picture of John Lennon and Bob Dylan, he would just be like, don't know them.

Andrew [00:13:27] Wow.

David Bazan [00:13:28] You know, it still hurts his ears to hear swears like he's a very, like, gentle kind of a weirdo. I like to think.

Andrew [00:13:37] So the self-expression that artists like Bob Dylan and the Beatles brought to rock music didn't move the needle for David's family. Music was meant, for one thing, glorifying God, not emotional catharsis. So even at the Christian bookstore, David's music choices were put under a microscope.

David Bazan [00:13:56] I played Petra for my uncle, and I was so excited. There's this bored mute like right before the last chorus on that song where I just like, it jumps back in with like the kind of Mutt Lange-y harmonies and stuff. I remember just like listening to that part over and over again, being like, what is happening?

Andrew [00:14:33] David's uncle did not share his enthusiasm for Petra.

David Bazan [00:14:37] And he was like, Hmm. Sounds like the message might be getting lost in the music on this one. And I was like, Oh shit.

David Bazan [00:14:50] I would play certain things out in the car, like Steve Taylor, and they would ask me about the lyrics. Well, what does that mean? And with Steve Taylor, like, I– I don't know. "We don't no color code."

Music [00:15:18] [Steve Taylor music plays]

David Bazan [00:15:19] You know, I knew what he meant, kind of, but it was like it was very abstract.

Andrew [00:15:25] Steve Taylor's song "We Don't Need No Color Code" was a diss track aimed at Bob Jones University's ban on interracial dating, which they maintained even after the Supreme Court ruled against them in 1983. The school had to give up their tax exempt status and pay backtaxes to keep it in place.

Music [00:15:44] [Steve Taylor music plays]

David Bazan [00:16:08] So it had this chilling effect where once I got a Walkman shortly after that, so I started just going internal and not asking to play the things out loud in the car because they just got so much scrutiny.

Leah [00:16:21] It turns out that this high level of scrutiny of any kind of rock music has a long history in Pentecostalism. Carman has rock songs about wishing people would actually be, well, a little more judgmental.

Music [00:16:33] [Carman music plays]

Music [00:16:41] Directions.

Leah [00:16:43] And the Assemblies of God denomination that David grew up in has been questioning if rock music should be associated with it for as long as there's been rock music.

Randall Stephens [00:16:51] There were these letters from one of the heads of the Assemblies of God Church to Elvis Presley's pastor in Memphis.

Andrew [00:17:01] Randall Stephens is a religious historian and the author of The Devil's Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock and Roll. He makes the case that many of the earliest rock and rollers were inspired by their experiences in Pentecostal churches. And in many cases, those performers like Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Elvis simply recontextualize elements of gospel performance to create the controversial new genre.

Randall Stephens [00:17:27] And then there were also a lot of letters that were written from people within that denomination when there was a story that came out about Elvis's background and he was describing himself as a member of this church. And, you know, the things they were talking about were obvious kind of things like the way that he moved on stage and the way that his music was sexually suggestive and how they didn't want to be attached to this character at all. And they were kind of pleading with the church leader, Please tell us that Elvis has nothing to do with our denomination.

Andrew [00:18:00] By the time David was growing up in the Assemblies of God, there were different camps when it came to rock and roll. Some of them thought rock music was great for the church, but others were still the kind of traditional hard liners, people like Jimmy Swaggart. They viewed rock music with suspicion. When it came to Christian artists like Petra, then it was like, Put them under the microscope. But for mainstream bands, Whoa, Break out the CT scan.

David Bazan [00:18:27] My first introduction to some of that music in those bands was the God and rock and roll movies that they would show us about backward masking.

Archival Tape [00:18:37] But now consider this second type of back masking. With this variety, the vocal tract makes sense both ways. When you listen to the music forwards, you hear one message. When you listen to it reversed, however, you hear something entirely different. Now, it's been suggested by some that when we listen to music in its normal forward mode, the subconscious mind is able to decipher the backwards message and mind control results. It becomes what is termed a subliminal cue.

David Bazan [00:19:07] That's the first time I really like was aware of the Beatles in a direct way, and that's why I started listening to the Beatles actually was directly because of that movie. So good one, everyone. You did a good job.

Archival Tape [00:19:20] The real question we need to ask here is not can a listener subconsciously hear a back mass message, but instead, how did it get there?

David Bazan [00:19:30] I was at my friend Matt's house spending the night and we were just hanging around in his room and he had that record and I was like, we had just gotten back from summer camp where we had watched the god rock and roll like backward masking movie. So I was like, Dude, you want to just try to Turn Me on Dead Man like Revolution number nine thing? And we were like, Yeah, let's try it. And so we put it on and we ran it backwards and it kind of, you know, what it said on the movie (*mumbles random sounds). It's like really stupid. It's not real. It's just so stupid.

Archival Tape [00:20:05] "Number nine. Number nine on the neon Neon."

David Bazan [00:20:11] And we just sat there like, you know, it's really dumb. And then I was like, Do you want to just... why don't we just play it forwards from the beginning? And then it was "Birthday" was the first thing that I heard.

Andrew [00:20:29] After that, they just let side three of the White Album keep playing. "Yer Blues" and "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me And My Monkey", they hit David especially hard. Then they threw on the Beatles best-of and kept listening all night–forwards.

David Bazan [00:20:44] The following Sunday at church, he had a cassette for me and he had dubbed everything that he could fit of the Birthday side of White album on one side of the cassette and everything that he could fit of the Blue best-of from the beginning on the other side. So then I had an auto reverse Walkman and that tape and it was it. Like all waking hours, just like on a loop, on a loop, walking around school, you know? And for me, it just it, like everything was kind of Technicolor. I felt understood.

Music [00:21:21] [Beetles music plays]

David Bazan [00:21:40] But I was walking around the house like a few months in just absentmindedly singing. And I was singing this, the lyrics to "Yer Blues" 'I'm so lonely. I want to die if I ain't dead already girl, you know the reason why'.

Music [00:21:55] [Beetles music plays]

David Bazan [00:21:58] And my dad, it just. It just clicked. He was like, he heard me, and he was like, that's it. Like, no, more. Like, you can listen to it occasionally to appreciate whatever, but like, you can't immerse yourself in that the way you have been. And so that got removed.

Andrew [00:22:19] That amount of scrutiny, I'm just thinking about the chilling effect it might have on your own creativity when you were starting to write songs yourself, did you have that inner critic? Had you internalized the scrutiny?

David Bazan [00:22:32] Am I still working through that? Is that okay?

Andrew [00:22:36] Probably, right?

David Bazan [00:22:37] Yes, I am. Yeah.

Leah [00:22:45] David's identity was wrapped up in these religious values and high expectations that were put on all music. But he felt the pull towards artists who valued authenticity and personal expression. How would he balance those needs within that structure as he became an artist himself?

David Bazan [00:23:02] I was stuck. I mean, I really didn't know, I wanted to make art. I wanted to express things that weren't basically slogans reimagined. But I didn't feel like I had the permission to do that.

Leah [00:23:16] Stay with us.

Music [00:23:18] [Rock That Doesn't Roll music sting plays]

David Bazan [00:23:24] Within a year and a half or two years, the ban was lifted. And so I just came back to all of it. It's still my favorite in music and I still can't get over the way that it feels when Ringo and either John and Ringo or Paul and Ringo are doing something together. It's, it's so sick. I mean, I– I just felt like I was saved by it. It just felt good. It felt so good.

Leah [00:23:52] David wound up learning to play drums in middle school. That pretty much guaranteed he could be in rock bands if he wanted to in high school. In the 1990s, there were never enough drummers in high school music scenes.

David Bazan [00:24:03] Back then in Seattle, there was a church called Calvary Fellowship, which was one of the Calvary chapels.

Andrew [00:24:10] Calvary Chapel was one of the key players that helped create the contemporary Christian music industry in the early 70s in Southern California. They'd planted churches up and down the West Coast, including this one in Seattle.

David Bazan [00:24:23] They had a youth group and basically a music scene.

Leah [00:24:28] The church had a recording studio, which is where MxPx had recorded their first demos, and a lot of the early Tooth & Nail bands were part of the scene. Even Jeremy Enigk of Sunny Day Real Estate and folksinger Damien Jurado were part of it.

David Bazan [00:24:41] There was like a culture of this music, but it was also, it was so closely tied with church music so that if I was performing at this place, like I would maybe perform on Sunday at that church.

Andrew [00:24:55] On the surface, it looked like these Christians weren't so uptight and judgmental. They accept loud rock music and people with tattoos and piercings. But once you scratch the surface, you would find a similar attitude there. It just looked a little bit different. It looked like something many punk scenes had been caught up in over the years, policing itself with extreme scrutiny and tearing each other down over minor squabbles.

David Bazan [00:25:20] There was a real question of art for art's sake. Was that okay or was art for only for God's glory? And I was, I was stuck. I mean, I really didn't know. I wanted to make art. I wanted to express things that weren't basically slogans reimagined, but I didn't feel like I had the permission to do that.

Leah [00:25:46] You know who would say they only made art for the glory of God? That's right, Carman. I can imagine that early example of Christian pop music was bouncing around in David's head around this time. To ease those tensions, he started reading some Christian art theory and developing a deeper understanding of Christian traditions that went back further than 1970. Still, the pressure was weighing on him.

David Bazan [00:26:12] I was really concerned. Like as a drummer, how do I express the gospel? I'd gotten a guitar to lead songs for, like the two and three year old Sunday school class. And at some point, I was sitting at home in the living room and my dad was there and he said, Hey, do you want to know some chords? And I was like, Yeah. Then I just sat and wrote a song like with those chords in the order that he showed me them and then mixed them around for the chorus or whatever. And it was a song of missing a friend. It was grief. That and the next hundred songs were grief and ways to express grief that I hadn't had access to before. And also it was permission because there was a tradition of sad songs and slow songs.

Leah [00:27:05] Christians have been singing slow, sad songs for truly hundreds of years. Hymns like "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded" or "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" or even songs of yearning, songs like "Be Thou My Vision", which Bazan recorded as Pedro the Lion.

Music [00:27:23] [Pedro the Lion music plays]

Andrew [00:27:31] That tradition gave David a shield against criticism of his youth group community who questioned art for art's sake. And I imagine it helped him separate his songwriting from Carmen's utilitarian glory to God songwriting. Some of the punk and hardcore music from that Calvary Fellowship scene actually did come from a similar songwriting perspective as Carman. And the stuff that didn't totally take that approach at least had fast and loud music. The songs David was writing were so sparse and cutting and personal that some in the Calvary Fellowship group weren't sure they were okay. But the truth of those songs was enough for David.

David Bazan [00:28:13] So then performing them for people was the first time that I was myself in terms of my grief in front of people, and that was really powerful. I think that the approval that I was losing was from the church people, I started gaining from people who just wanted to hear songs about what was going on with a person.

Leah [00:28:47] The emotional reward of his self-expression being received by an audience gave David the hope that he could maybe combine these two approaches to music, that he could express the sadness he felt while also providing religious instruction. He knew not everyone would get it, but he hoped it would be useful to God in some way. Maybe it would help someone become a Christian.

David Bazan [00:29:09] In the moments where I believed in hell the most, especially like I wanted to like, just tell people. And so when I made my first release, it was this EP called The Whole EP and if you follow there, it's it's not like the Roman Road exactly, but it is the gospel message kind of laid out over five songs.

Leah [00:29:36] The Romans Road was a method of evangelizing by citing several verses in the New Testament book of Romans. Its origin story is kind of mysterious. Some argue it’s as old as the Bible, other accounts claim that a preacher named Jack Hyles invented it in 1970. The technique caught on like wildfire among the rapidly expanding population of evangelicals in America. By the 1990s, there were popular beaded bracelets that youth group kids were encouraged to wear. Each colored bead represented one of the verses. The idea was that Christians would wear the bracelets, and then when non-Christians commented on the jewelry, it gave the wearer an opening, an opportunity to try to convert the person to Christianity.

Andrew [00:30:14] These kids were told by youth pastors that they could be a classmate or friend's only opportunity to become a Christian, and if they weren't prepared to explain how to become a Christian to anyone at any moment, the logical conclusion is that the non-Christians eternal damnation was their fault. That's a heavy trip to lay on anybody. But it's especially heavy if you're already predisposed to grief and have lived under intense scrutiny your whole life. No wonder David wanted his first release to be useful in that way among his community at Calvary Fellowship.

Music [00:30:49] [Pedro the Lion music plays]

Leah [00:31:25] After David finished The Whole EP, he thought about his future as a songwriter within that world. It felt like he'd already written the gospel storien song once.

David Bazan [00:31:34] I started thinking like, I don't want to do this over and over again. This is ridiculous. Like, I don't want to just keep trying to crack the same puzzle from different angles. It was just so tense to try to make things under the, the pressure of God's and everybody else's expectations or what I perceived all those things to be.

Andrew [00:31:54] If he wanted to stay in this Calvary Fellowship community, David would have to keep writing songs that taught Bible lessons. I imagine he worried that if he kept on that path, he could follow in Carman's footsteps.

Leah [00:32:13] The next couple of Pedro the Lion releases were on a small new label called Made in Mexico. The first full length album got recognition in Spin magazine, and pretty soon David was able to play clubs and have his records available at Tower. In 2000, he signed to Jade Tree Records, a mainstream label that seemed to be home to all the coolest emo bands in the late 1990s. He should have finally been free of the scrutiny.

Andrew [00:32:39] And his music was getting more daring. Instead of another retelling of the gospel story, his album's Winners Never Quit and Control were more like Flannery O'Connor stories with murderous protagonists and flashes of existential transcendence. But the thing was, some of that Christian audience followed him and wasn't ready to quit scrutinizing his every move.

David Bazan [00:33:31] Every single show on the 2002 Control tour, you know, I was still in the mode of after the show had come out into the room and 3 to 15 dudes would surround me and corner me essentially, and explain to me in various ways how what I was doing was wrong. So some people suggested the very puritanical idea that fiction was lying. Because it felt autobiographical and because it felt confessional, you know, I'm like, Yo, this is fiction. Like, no one killed anybody, like it's you know.

Andrew [00:34:09] Right.

David Bazan [00:34:10] And they were like, Well, you need to tell– like fiction is lying. And it was just like, are you like, okay. And every time I would just have to come to like, we are going to have to agree to disagree. And half of the people felt okay about that and half of them were really mad. Like, they left mad and they never came back.

Leah [00:34:35] Wow. Fiction is lying. Believe it or not, there's there's actually a long tradition of antipathy toward fiction in certain Christian circles. But still, it's quite a rhetorical limb to go out on because guess what? You know who is fine with taking on unsavory characters in their songs? Yes, you guessed it, Carman.

Music [00:35:10] [Carman plays]

Andrew [00:35:11] But, you know, by this point, David's identity as a white evangelical Christian was getting more and more uncomfortable for him. A major catalyst for this discomfort came in 1999. 50,000 protesters showed up in his city to disrupt the annual meeting of the World Trade Organization. And trying to understand why this was happening, David discovered Noam Chomsky and other progressive political writers. He became politically engaged for the first time. And when he looked around at his Christian community in Seattle, he didn't find many left wing comrades. How could he integrate his new political awareness into his life when it seemed like all the Christians around him were Republicans?

Leah [00:35:56] At the same time, it wasn't so easy to be in the indie rock world as a progressive Christian, either. Being any type of Christian came with a lot of baggage. For example, there was a time when Pedro the Lion had some shows booked with Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney.

Andrew [00:36:10] Yeah, a side project of hers called Cadallaca.

Leah [00:36:12] Right. So she had just read an article about this venue in Portland called Meow Meow, that was Christian. But it also booked non-Christian bands, something that most Christian venues would never do.

David Bazan [00:36:23] But there was a Rock for Life table at every Meow Meow show. And that was kind of what the article was about. If I'm remembering right, and we were listed as one of the bands that played that venue, so we had three shows booked with them. They canceled two of them. And at the show we did play, they basically confronted me and I was like, Well, I'm pro-choice, but there's probably other things that we would disagree about, but not that, you know. And I just also said, thanks so much for talking to me to my face about it, rather than just making a judgment based on like a bit of media.

Leah [00:37:03] As David became more and more progressive, it became harder for him to strike a balance between his faith and his art, in part because being a Christian artist came with an expectation of being aligned with right wing politics. But that's something that began decades prior.

Randall Stephens [00:37:19] There was something just recently I came across at the Nixon Library about Explo 72.

Leah [00:37:26] Randall Stephens is a religious historian and Explo 72 is an event many called The Christian Answer to Woodstock.

Archival Tape [00:37:34] "We are committed to a revolution of love and reason instead of hate and destruction. We believe that this message of Christ and the spirit of Explo 72 is the only hope for our world in crisis."

Andrew [00:37:45] It attracted around 80,000 young people to the Cotton Bowl for performances from Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, as well as Christian performers Larry Norman, Andraé Crouch and Love Song, among others. Not entirely dissimilar to the venues David was talking about in Portland and Seattle, owned by Christians, but okay with some mainstream artists. Explo was organized by Campus Crusade for Christ and portions were broadcast on TV. A record was produced later called Jesus Sound Explosion, which Campus Crusade would send for free to anyone who requested it? Oh, and the headlining act wasn't music, but the preaching of Billy Graham.

Archival Tape [00:38:25] "Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Billy Graham. Thousands of us here. This whole generation of you sitting before me right now are going to die."

Andrew [00:38:39] So that thing Randall found at the Nixon Library.

Randall Stephens [00:38:41] This exchange between Billy Graham's camp and the Nixon camp. It was like a letter that would be read to the audience there, a greeting from the Nixon administration.

Leah [00:38:52] 1972 was the first U.S. presidential election where 18 year olds could vote. So reaching young people was more important than ever. Nixon emissaries had been in contact with Explo 72 organizers about activating young evangelicals in the months before the president went up for reelection.

Randall Stephens [00:39:11] And Graham decided that would be too political. And I think it was a decision about since they're trying to reach youth and they know about the president's relationship with young people and especially the counterculture in 1972, mostly because of the antiwar movement, but other things as well, they decided not to do that. So it's an interesting moment where they wanted to depoliticize this a little bit.

Andrew [00:39:36] Nixon did go on to win reelection, and spoiler alert was later nearly impeached for his involvement in the Watergate break in. And it weirdly happened on the same day as Explo 72.

Archival Tape [00:39:49] "Five men were arrested early Saturday while trying to install eavesdropping equipment at the Democratic National Committee."

Leah [00:39:56] So that moment between David Bazan and Corin Tucker, where she suspected he must be part of the conservative political machine, that didn't come out of nowhere. That moment was built on associations that had been subtly and not so subtly forged decades before.

Andrew [00:40:12] And that history is one reason why, when David shifted his identity to being an outspoken progressive Christian, things did not get easier for him. His music got more pointed and centered around the hypocritical actions of George W Bush era evangelicals. In a way, he was still trying to make his music useful to God, like Martin Luther writing his Ninety-five Theses. Of course, that only motivated more concerned Christians to confront him after shows things got pretty dark around the mid-aughts. David wrestled publicly with losing his Christian faith and was banned from the Christian Music Festival cornerstone for alcohol abuse. Eventually, David left the structures of Christianity altogether. His pendulum had finally swung completely away from Christian music to indie rock. He could start a new era with his identity fully free of the expectations that Christians had put on his music. But he just couldn't quit writing songs about God.

David Bazan [00:41:14] I thought I was done with my process. And then my body was like, You're not done. You have to write this record. You know, I was like, walking out the door is what I felt like.

Leah [00:41:24] David Bazan dropped the name Pedro the Lion in 2006. Critics called his first solo album, Curse Your Branches, a breakup album with God.

David Bazan [00:41:34] I wanted to recast myself not in a you know, not in a more religious content kind of way. I wanted to write songs about shirts like Spoon or like I wanted like I wanted it to be something else.

Leah [00:41:48] Curse Your Branches doesn't have any songs about shirts. The concept of original sin? Yeah, that's covered.

Music [00:41:56] [David Bazan music plays]

Music [00:42:04] Minute. You expect me to? And all this. From one.

David Bazan [00:42:17] All these songs were coming out that I was playing live, and I thought, these are for something else. And I make the record that I want to make. But it was all the Curse Your Branches songs, and I finally told him, I said, I'm really sorry, Bob. And he was like, what's going on? And I said, I can't. You know, it's God and alcohol and marriage. Like, that's what I have to write about. And he was like, well, just, you know, write about what you know. And that's that's all you can do. And so, yeah, I just felt like, I was so bummed to be writing that record.

Andrew [00:42:53] In 2009, deconstruction wasn't a common term describing a personal reexamining of religious beliefs someone grew up with. No one was calling themselves an ex-vangelical. It was the beginning of the Obama era and the Tea Party was on the rise, fueled by millions of evangelical voters. For listeners who resonated with Curse Your Branches, the connection went deep, and David Bazan's lyrics are still pointing the way 14 years later.

Leah [00:43:21] How do you manage that that role? Are you okay with being that person in their lives? Does it feel kind of weird or do you embrace it?

David Bazan [00:43:30] Sometimes I think, like if I if I had a paid role the way in record when I was 14 or 15 and I mean, I made the records that I had needed the whole time. I like that, the way that records work as they work in such a personal level. The records that I have obsessed over or even have just brought me comfort half a dozen times or have connected with them, it's in a car with other people or in your ears or in your house. And there's something so intimate about that that I feel like just a report like that, that somebody has had moments where they've felt whatever, with anything that I've made is profound, because I do that all the time. You know, it's like a main source of sustenance in a lot of ways is spinning those those moments.

Andrew [00:44:30] Coming up: David's approach to music as a listener, has opened a whole new method of writing to him.

David Bazan [00:44:36] I don't get to hang out with that kid that often because I won't listen to Carman.

Andrew [00:44:40] Stay with us.

Music [00:44:44] [Rock That Doesn't Roll sting plays]

David Bazan [00:44:47] For me, the most like of arresting authentic feeling music is usually what one might call hillbilly music. Music that grows and is uninformed by– is like provincial, you know, at its at its root. It's it's not informed by the broader culture. It sort of develops in this obsessive way without all of those things. And I think that we all have that. We all have hills that we can be the billy's of. You know, when I came to that realization, I realized, well, up until I was 14, my hills are Christian music, you know. And that caused a big conflict because I didn't want that to be what my hills were. I didn't know the Beatles. Like I had heard a Billy Joel song. I knew the Michael Jackson songs that had been converted to Pepsi commercials.

Andrew [00:45:46] In 2017, after five records under his own name, David brought back the band name Pedro the Lion, for a planned five album cycle named for each of the places he lived as a child. Pheonix came first, then Havasu covered David at ages 12 and 13. His process for writing these albums is to relive significant moments from these eras of his life with the benefit of perspective he's earned as an adult.

Leah [00:46:14] This is where his past immersed in CCM music comes in handy. He's been so busy distancing himself from almost everything he listened to until he was 14, that the contemporary Christian music that dominated his auto reverse Walkman now acts as a key that allows him to access memories he's locked away for years.

David Bazan [00:46:35] So at some point I just realized like, just be just, just be the Billy of your actual hills, not hills that you wish, you know. And this impulse to like, what you're doing to work on a national or an international like level or scale is just such a killer to making anything real or good or you, you know. And so at that point, I just realized, like, dude, Carman, like, listen to it.

Music [00:47:04] [Carman music plays]

David Bazan [00:47:08] There's just records that I spent a lot of time with that I have a lot of memories attached to the way you do with music that I, that are just blacked out. I don't listen to them. So then when I go back, you have all the ego problems of like listening to this music that is cheesy or you think is whatever. But then you get to the layer where you're just experiencing the sensations of, you know, that have been locked away like that seven year old version of myself that was so freaked out about the champion. Like, I don't get to hang out with that kid that often because I won't listen to Carman, you know, until I realized that. And now I do for myself for that, not, you know, for the complex reasons that one might, you know, now go back to that. So, yeah, it's a it's a big, big journey.

Music [00:47:59] [Carman music plays]

Leah [00:48:14] It's interesting that the album that David wrote when he was done trying to make music that's useful to God, Curse Your Branches, has proven to be profoundly useful to a generation of listeners struggling with their place inside and outside of evangelical Christianity. In my research, a lot of people cite it as a crucial album in their spiritual journey.

David Bazan [00:48:39] Um, I don't, I'm not really confronted with that idea that often. And now that I in this moment that I am, I'm moved. Um. I can only feel a responsibility to myself. You know, those of us who have made, who are on that journey, it's a very human and very vulnerable thing to to continue to try to navigate. And the idea that there's like companionship or solidarity or anything around a song or a lyric or anything like that is pretty profound. And, you know, I just wish everybody comfort, you know, and peace through that. And so, I don't know. It's hard to– I feel really lucky to be a part of that conversation.

Music [00:50:08] [Pedro the Lion music plays]

Andrew [00:50:28] This is our final episode of Season one of Rock That Doesn't Roll. And I don't know about you, but this whole process has been cathartic. We've heard from lots of listeners who have had the same experience David was just describing, flashing back to fully drawn scenes of their teenage years that they hadn't thought about in years. Here's some of our favorite messages from this season.

Listener Voicemails [00:50:55] It was like drinking from the fire hose of youth pastor, youth group memories. In a trailer behind the church with the youth pastor preaching to us about how bad secular music was while going to every Petra, DeGarmo and Key, White Heart, Farrell and Farrell, Russ Taff, Steve Taylor and more Petra concerts than ever before. Carman actually, I think Carman was my first concert. I might have been age six. I saw P.O.D. and Blindside and Project 86 perform on the stage at a local church in the sanctuary.

Listener Voicemails [00:51:41] Rob Bell was going to Wheaton College at the same time that I was going to Glenbard West High School and he had a band. So we were super fans of Ton Bundle. And I remember seeing him on Roosevelt Road and like pulling at my brother's arm and going, Oh my God, that's the lead singer of Ton Bundle.

Listener Voicemails [00:52:02] Finding your podcast has been amazing. It's just lots of memories. Seeing Jennifer Knapp come to my college campus and then later her coming out as a lesbian, but still maintaining her Christian faith and working through her Christian music there, so cool. But I remember still listening to the Supertones and the W's. We weren't allowed to dance with people of the opposite sex, but we did. We listened to the W's and did swing dancing in the street, just loving it. It was hard that that difficulty of looking back on the good times in the midst of the hard times. But your podcast was really brought some of those interesting pieces back.

Leah [00:52:52] That is just a smattering of the messages we've received from you all. And honestly, we have loved listening to every single one of them, haven't we?

Andrew [00:53:02] And that's not even the ones that we've gotten in DMS or like emails or just. Yeah, it's been great.

Leah [00:53:11] Yeah. We really I mean, it's this is going to sound like a cheesy CCM hook, but we treasure them, we treasure every single one and you can leave us messages. You can call anytime: (629) 777-6336. But we'd actually really love it if you would join us on Patreon or Substack so we can get in touch with you and we can turn this thing into a real community. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Yeah! Follow us on social media. You know, we have a lot of people are following us on Instagram, at Rock That Doesn't Roll. And I'm on Instagram at Iamandrewgill.

Leah And I am Dr. Leah Payne on all social media platforms and we're really excited. We're going to do some bonus episodes on Patreon before Season two.

Andrew Yeah. And season two. We don't have a launch date yet, but it should be mid 2024, we're scoping out. We've gotten a lot of suggestions for things that we should cover in season two. We can't possibly do them all, but we're going to try to select very carefully and use our resources wisely.

Leah [00:54:12] Yes. Yes. This time between seasons, it's a great time, actually, for you to help us by spreading the word about this podcast. You can tell a friend you can leave a five star rating and review. You can write about us in your newsletter, invite us to be guests on your podcast. I mean, you could even mention it in your churches announcements.

Archival Tape "I'm sorry. Have you guys heard of The Who? They Rock! They're unbelievable."

Andrew And again, if you have a story you'd like to share, please call our hotline and we might play on a future show or shared on social media. The number again: (629) 777-6336. And yes that is. Nashville area code. It's on purpose.

Leah [00:54:58] It is! 777, perfect number. Thanks to our guests this week, David Bazan of Pedro the Lion and Dr. Randall Stephens.

Andrew [00:55:07] Who also had a band in the late 90s, Jatender Paul. They were so good. Look them up. I had two T-shirts, Jitender Paul. So I can't let this episode in without mentioning that. Rock That Doesn't Roll is a Big Questions project from PRX with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. It's produced by us with help from Morgan Flannery and Emmanuel Desarme.

Leah Jocelyn Gonzalez, Neil Katcher and Dave Nadelberg edit the show. Michael Raphael mixes it.

Andrew Our original score is by Jim Cooper of Infomercial USA. Courtney Fleurantin provides Production Oversight. I'm Andrew Gill.

Leah And I'm Leah Payne. Remember: Rock all you want, but be careful where you roll.