Copious Notes

Casting Crowns are Megan Garrett, Brian Scoggin, Mark Hall, Hector Cervantes, Chris Huffman, Melodee DeVevo and Juan DeVevo. Photo by David Dobson.

The first few chords of “Until the Whole World Hears” gave me high hopes for Casting Crowns‘ fourth studio album. The title track opens with a drum crash and grinding guitar intro that seems to portend the unlikely Christian chart toppers fully embracing and enjoying their role as musicians.

Casting Crowns’ story makes you want to root for the band: A church praise band, they caught the ear of producers with a demo CD and rose to the top of the charts with albums that spoke directly to mainstream evangelicals. But they reportedly still make sure they are back at their Atlanta-area church each week. Nice story, and they’ve recorded several strong albums marked by youth pastor-frontman Mark Hall’s plainspoken lyrics.

But how far will that carry you? On the latest album, Casting Crowns assigns itself the task of telling listeners about Jesus and stumbling into creative doldrums. That’s exemplified by “Joyful, Joyful,” Crowns’ effort to put their own mark on Beethoven’s timeless “Ode to Joy” melody and subsequent hymn by Henry van Dyke. Their mark is to load it with orchestrations and harmonies that predictably soar at the end. It’s a sense of grandure, but no sense of, uh, joy.

That’s “Until the Whole World Hears” in a nutshell. The musicianship is fine, as is the production by Mark A. Miller. The sentiments are valid, and frequently lovely. But it all sounds like stuff we’ve heard before from Casting Crowns and plenty of other contemporary Christian music artists. Most of the tunes sound like retreads of Crowns hits from the past. But they lack the urgency of songs like “What if His People Prayed?” the poignance of “Praise You in This Storm” or lyrical craftsmanship of “Slow Fade,” all songs that helped make Casting Crowns one of the top-selling acts in Christian music history.

With that kind of record, and artists from Steven Curtis Chapman to the David Crowder Band releasing vital, creative albums this fall, a routine CCM effort just doesn’t cut it.

Album No. 4 is often the one where artists ascend to another level, after getting a few albums and far too many tours under their belts. Unfortunately for Casting Crowns, this seems to be the album where the band is losing its voice.

Switchfoot is guitarist Drew Shirley, bassist Tim Foreman, guitarist and vocalist Jon Foreman, drummer Chad Butler and keyboard and guitar player Jerome Fontamillas.

After two side projects by frontman Jon Foreman, it was easy to start wondering if Switchfoot was still a priority for the singer-songwriter and his fellow band members.

The group delivers the answer to that question Tuesday, and it is an emphatic yes.

Foreman’s forays of the past two years included a series of seasonal solo EP’s and the duo Fiction Family that he formed with Nickel Creek guitarist Sean Watkins. Both were outstanding efforts — the Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer quartet of EP’s topped my list of Christian music last year. But Hello Hurricane shows Foreman still rocks, as hard as ever, with his bandmates. If anything, it sounds like maybe after getting some acoustic side projects out of his system, he was ready to rock. Hello Hurricane boasts the most blazing lineup of any Switchfoot album since the band’s early years.

That’s not news to anyone who has heard the leadoff single, Mess of Me, which launches an arsenal of distorted guitar, something we hear a lot on the album. On recent albums, Switchfoot has perfected an approach to the aching ballad, something we do get here with a few selections such as Always – the prettiest thing Switchfoot has done since 24 on The Beautiful Letdown (2004). But this is at its essence a rock record with the guitars, drums, and Foreman’s voice pushing the top of the envelope.

Lyrically, this is a familiar Switchfoot blend of introspection, activism, and spirituality. Mess of Me, for instance, is the latest reiteration of, “This is your life, are you who you want to be?” and This is the Sound is the most forceful of several challenges to the status quo. While Switchfoot has trended toward the mainstream martket, Christian fans should cotton to statements of faith such as Your Love is a Song and Yet.

And the album is a cause for fans in general to rejoice that while Foreman has taken on different forms over the years, the mothership of Switchfoot is as vital as ever.

Steven Curtis Champan. Photo courtesy of Sparrow Records.

Steven Curtis Chapman opens his new album singing, “Heaven is the face of a little girl,” and you know he’s going to go there.

Beauty Will Rise is Chapman’s first new album since the tragic death of his 5-year-old adopted daughter Maria Sue Chunxi in May 2008. The proverbial “they” say great pain often yields great art, and this album certainly reinforces that point, in part by making it clear that Chapman would give everything, including his great songs, to have his little girl give him another hug and syrup kiss.

But the Chapman does not wallow in despair on this album. A palpable sense of loss pervades the entire record, but there is also an open window to the soul of a man who is finding a way to move on and whose faith has been strengthened through every parent’s nightmare.

On Just Have to Wait, he talks to Maria, telling her how he looks forward to seeing her again and how the family is doing — even dealing with the aftermath of her death. There is striking five-song set of expressions of faith beginning with Our God is Control and concluding with Jesus Will Meet You There – “When you think you’ve hit the bottom, and the bottom gives way . . . “

Instrumentally, this is Chapman’s most unadorned, elemental recording in years, beautifully employing cello, dulcimer and other bits of acoustic comfort. We hear him in full command of his craft, all the better to articulate tough emotions that could easily become saccharine and cloying in a lesser artist’s hands.

This record will never be an easy listen. It will never be separated from the sorrow that was its catalyst. But it is a journey you are richer for taking, from those difficult first words to the final moments when the voices of a children’s chorus rise in Spring is Coming.

David Crowder and drummer Jeremy Bush bring their church music to Southland Christian Church on Nov. 6, 2009. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

NICHOLASVILLE — Yes, it was the Church Music Tour.

And yes, the guys in the David Crowder Band showed up dressed in their Sunday best.

And this sold-out concert did in fact take place in a church — Southland Christian Church, to be precise. But it was also Friday night, and that was the spirit Southland’s visitors from Waco, Texas, embraced the most.

Danyew frontman Phil Danyew performed before the David Crowder Band took the stage.

Throughout its career, David Crowder’s group has made complete albums, and Church Music is no exception. The band’s October release is a thorough exploration of contemporary music styles put together in an arrangement that mirrors a mainline church service. But DCB doesn’t tour albums. It tours its hit-heavy catalog. Like his albums though, Crowder arranges those hits into a concert as satisfying as his studio efforts.

New quickly mixed with old Friday night as early selections included the Crowder classic and worship staple There is No One Like You and the disco-drenched selection Church Music - Dance (!). The latter was yet another chance for Crowder to show his love of gadgets, employing the T-Pain ap on his iPhone to achieve a vocoder effect several band members demonstrated — guitarist Mark Waldrop singing Sean Kingston’s Fire Burning and bassist Mike Dodson invoking the prototype Autotune song, Cher’s Believe. A few tunes later, Jack Parker had the banjo out for the regular Bluegrass barn burner  I Saw the Light and I’ll Fly Away.

We’ve particularly gotten used to seeing that Bluegrass bit at the Ichthus Festival, but one of the coolest things about Friday night was Crowder’s close proximity to the audience, allowing for the exchange of several gifts including a McDonald’s toy pony and a bottle of Dr. Pepper that had indeed been shaken.

Seabird frontman Aaron Morgan at the keyboards.

What Crowder gave back was a whole new way to think about church music.

The concert opened with like-minded artists Seabird and Danyew who gave brief, rousing opening sets. Seabird’s portion closed with the evocative, defiant anthem Cottonmouth (Jargon) and included a winning new single, Don’t You Know You’re Beautiful, from the Dec. 15 release Rocks into Rivers. Phil Danyew’s set energized the crowd for the headliner, in large part thanks to drummer Brandon Lozano’s tireless and nuanced work.

Switchfoot’s This is the Sound rocks the new Blackberry commercial.

During the past year, there have been public signs that Christian pop music is on the rise.

Last spring on American Idol, a pair of openly Christian ­contestants vied for the title and one of them, Kris Allen, won. Your TV doesn’t have to be on long to hear the rumblings of Switchfoot, one of Christian music’s top bands, on commercials for BlackBerry’s new Storm2 smartphone. Late in the summer, when Christian rockers Skillet released their latest, Awake, it perched itself atop iTunes’ rock album charts and at No. 3 overall.

Pretty good stuff for a niche genre, eh?

But beneath the surface, there have been rumblings for some time.

Late in the summer, Gospel Music Association president and CEO John Styll stepped down, saying he was sacrificing his salary in an effort to stabilize the ­organization, which has laid off a number of staffers. Then, in October, the GMA held an all-star fund-raiser - we’re talking Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith ­heading a lineup that included Casting Crowns and other chart toppers - billed as “Save the GMA.”

Even though that $1,000-a-head event apparently was a success, raising more than $350,000, there were rumors late last month that the GMA was closing its doors.

The association’s troubles come on the heels of other setbacks in Christian music, such as the shutdown of the print edition of the industry’s ­flagship ­publication, CCM Magazine, which was founded by Styll, and ­attendance drops at some festivals.

Christian music also has faced the double whammy of the ­economic downturn and the ­effects of a rapidly changing music ­marketplace less dependent on major labels for distribution and increasingly challenged by problems such as digital music piracy. (Yes, people are stealing Christian music. Go figure.)

These are problems affecting the music industry as a whole, and you know that if the top of the pops is getting battered, the foundations of a niche genre really must be getting shaken.

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The David Crowder Band looking very dignified for its "Church Music" photo. Six Step Records.

The David Crowder Band Performs with Seabird and Danyew at 8 p.m. Nov. 6 at Southland Christian Church.

For David Crowder, there is a master plan.

That would seem to be a natural position for Crowder, one of the most popular Christian music purveyors of the past decade. But we’re not talking master plan in a cosmic, God is in control of all things sense. We’re talking about Crowder’s music. Specifically, we are talking about his albums, which have been custom-designed in title and content to follow a trajectory to … to … well, maybe we’d better let Crowder explain:

“I’m gonna geek out on you for a second,” Crowder says, when asked about the title of the David Crowder Band’s fifth studio album, Church Music.

“We’re in a three-record cycle,” he said. “We have three records, and then a second set of three records that are sort of mirror images or reannunciations of the first three records. Before we got into all of this, we had an idea for a seven-record kind of thing.”

Crowder grants that there have been EPs and remix albums thrown in. But for the band’s studio albums, they are executing the master plan of seven albums.

“We’ve been sitting on this title, knowing that it was coming as the mirror of the second title in the first three,” Crowder continues, referring to the band’s 2003 release, Illuminate.

Within all of this geekiness are things like number games: The first three albums were four syllable titles and the second are all three, because four plus three equals seven.

Out of all that complexity, the band has created numerous hits that contemporary worshipers know by heart, including Foreverandever Etc. and Oh, Praise Him. And writing songs for people to sing is, at its essence, what the band is trying to do.

But the structure, Crowder says, keeps them engaged and gives them direction.

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Brenton Brown’s music has been played in churches for years, but it’s usually performed by other recording artists, including Chris Tomlin, who made Brown’s Everlasting God ­famous.

Brenton Brown in performance. Photo by Mark Butcher | myspace.com/brentonbrownmusic

Now, Brown is stepping from behind the lyrics and into the spotlight, billed as “the most popular worship leader you may have never heard of.”

“I guess that’s probably fair to say,” Brown says. “I have been a worship leader for a long time and a writer, but I haven’t really been an artist.

“I don’t even know how I feel about the term ‘worship artist,’ but I guess that’s what I am now.”

Listeners can get to know Brown right now through ­Introducing Brenton Brown, a six-song collection of some of his best-known tunes, including Everlasting God and Lord Reign in Me.

In January, after the proper introductions, listeners will get a new batch of Brenton Brown music performed by Brown in a new solo album. People will get to know Brown’s story and understand why one of his most effective songs, ­Everlasting God, is based on the promise in Isaiah 40 that God will strengthen people who follow him.

Brown grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and studied politics and law, first at home and eventually as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England.

That’s where he was introduced to contemporary worship music spearheaded by the Vineyard Church and worship leader Brian Doerkson.

Eventually, Brown was writing and participating in recordings. As his music career was taking off, Brown’s health took a bad turn: He was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. It derailed a career as a church worship leader, although he says he can tailor his schedule to be at peak energy levels when he needs to perform.

Then, last year, Brown and his wife lost their daughter just days before she was expected to be born.

These are circumstances that color his latest music.

“My friend Paul Baloche says that a worship album is a chronicle of your spiritual journey at the time, and that is definitely true of these songs,” Brown says of Amazing God and Adoration, the new songs on Introducing Brenton Brown. “Encountering death right at the start of this young life lifted my eyes to the idea that there is more than this earth. … It focused us on the reality of heaven and the hope that it is for us, and that all our burdens and heartbreaks will be vanquished, will be beaten, and we will know the comfort of God, forever.”

Relient K is Jon Schneck, Ethan Luck, Matthew Thiessen, Matt Hoopes, John Warne.

Review: Relient K, Forget and Not Slow Down

Direct comparisons between bands can seem a bit disrespectful, and maybe easy. But the parallels between the Beach Boys and Relient K are a bit too hard to avoid in light of the Canton, Ohio band’s recent offerings.

It’s not that Matthew Thiessen and Co. sound like the California boys, though their last album, Fivescore and Seven Years Ago (2007), did include some familiar harmonies. It’s more that this is a band that bowed with numbers like Sadie Hawkins Dance and other tunes that made them seem like a sonic confection — appealing as a cupcake, but not much to it.

And that’s a sound that has never gone away. But what has been growing in each ReK album, particularly since mmhmm (2004) is a musicianship and thoughfulness that make each album a richer experience. Occasionally it’s gone wrong — I was one who found Fivescore’s Deathbed a bit much — but each album has been a growth spurt, and little to nothing is wrong with Forget and Not Slow Down.

The immediate impression is this is a meditation on loss, but more about regrouping than moping. Therapy is the linchpin track, describing Thiessen’s very real experience of self isolation during the time he wrote the album — “You won’t take my calls, and that makes God the only one who’s left here listening.”

Thiessen has developed a knack for taking the spiritual and putting it in temporal terms without diminishing its gravity. He can also take a well-worn cliche and give it new meaning such as Part of It, where he invokes the phrase, “It’s not the end of the world,” and adds, “When a nightmare finally does unfold, perspective is a lovely hand to hold.”

The notes hold equal “Ah” moments like Candlelight where the jumpy pop melts into into a lilting, swirling finale evocative of the lyric, “A solar flare shines through her hair.”

It’s one of numerous moments that could make a listener wonder how long Thiessen will find the pop band format sufficient for conveying his ideas.

One way that Relient K does not mirror the Beach Boys is in popularity. While they are one of the biggest bands in Christian rock and a significant player in the modern rock scene, sales of one Beach Boys hit probably equal ReK’s entire catalog. Forget and Not Slow Down will not change that. Despite its excellence, it may be the band’s least radio-friendly effort ever. But it is an effort that should make serious pop music listeners, Christian and otherwise, take notice.

Chris Huffman on stage with Casting Crowns at the 2008 Ichthus Festival. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

The last time we checked in on Glasgow native Chris Huffman, in 2004, he was a single guy in a white-hot Christian rock band who got a charge out of seeing his group’s CDs on the shelves at Wal-Mart.

Today, Huffman remains the bass player for Casting Crowns, but he’s a married guy with two kids, which makes touring and getting back to Kentucky a bit more challenging.

Casting Crowns are Megan Garrett, Brian Scoggin, Mark Hall, Hector Cervantes, Chris Huffman, Melodee DeVevo and Juan DeVevo. Photo by David Dobson.

“Everybody in the band has kids,” Huffman said Wednesday afternoon from a tour stop in Casper, Wyo. “In fact, my wife and I just had our second child three weeks ago tomorrow.”

That makes getting back home all the more important to Huffman, and leaving harder, particularly because his wife suffers from fairly serious car-sickness, so she can’t often hit the road with the group.

“It can be hard,” Huffman said, “when you call home and find out someone’s been hurt or something big happened to not be there.”

Still, despite the separation, Huffman said that Crowns is a valuable ministry, and the band’s policy of returning home for services at its home base of Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in Atlanta means he is rarely gone for an extended time.

“When you’re passionate about what you do, the negative sides don’t really bother you,” Huffman said. “I get frustrated a lot of times, but you learn to overlook the frustrations and the hardships.

“I believe God has called me to do this, and as long as he has, my response is, I’m here; send me.”
Huffman, who was born in Glasgow and lived there until he was 10, returns to Kentucky next week with the band’s concert Thursday night at Rupp Arena. The band is touring in support of its new album, Until the Whole World Hears, set for release Nov. 17.

Huffman loves his job, but the band’s fourth studio album and family obligations have quelled that Wal-Mart thrill. Somewhat.

“When I go to Wal-Mart, I’m usually going to the grocery and baby department,” he said. “But sometimes I get to electronics, and it’s nice to see we’re there.”

David Crowder*Band CHURCH MUSIC Intro from sixstepsrecords on Vimeo.

Review: David Crowder Band - Church Music

If this album were coming from any other artist, the title would rightfully lead you to believe this was a worship or hymns album.

But this is David Crowder Band, a group where nothing easily fits into a category.

The group comes across as very rootsy, but the music often sweeps over us with an electronic wash. Crowder has this idiosyncratic sense of humor, but his music and the message are delivered with incredible seriousness — he’s the artist who can take a stage with a keytar or Guitar Hero controller, joke about it, and by the chorus make you completely forget he’s playing a silly instrument.

Church Music is neither a collection of old hymns or easily digestible choruses. It is, in the tradition of Crowder’s Collision albums, a complete experience. There are songs that will ride on their own, but it is an album that is best experienced as a complete package and will take you in some interesting places like late in the album when steer into Church Music - Dance, a song that could have been played in Studio 54 in its heyday, and the blistering rock of God Almighty, None Compares. The album makes a progression from contemplation to celebration, like a well-planned church service.

David Crowder Band has a lot of great hits like No One Like You and Foreverandever Etc. But complete packages like this count as the Crowdster’s most satisfying work. Just revel in the contradictions.

Wondering how Crowder will handle this album live? Well, you can find out when Crowder plays Southland Christian Church with Seabird and Danyew at 8 p.m. Nov. 6.

Two concerts that we mentioned in recent posts have been cancelled.
■ Derek Webb, whom we profiled in the last rc talk, will not play Lexington next week. The Dame, where he was scheduled to play, has closed, and he has not secured another venue. Webb’s publicist said he hopes to schedule a Lexington concert later.

■ Starlit Platoon, which was scheduled to play South Elkhorn Baptist Church on Oct. 10 has broken up, so that show is scrubbed.