Jars of Clay has been one of the most successful and progressive groups in music since bursting onto the scene in the mid-nineties.  Their folksy alt-rock sound coupled with spiritually profound and socially compelling lyricism has kept the group at the forefront for some time.  Yet, the group continues to desire growth in their artistry and recently left Essential Records in pursuit of just that.  Infuze's Andrew Greenhalgh recently sat down with founding member Charlie Lowell to discuss the band's new era, the evolution of their creative process, and the philosophy behind the new Christmas album.

Charlie: It was pretty affirming.  I think that, on this record in particular, there was a little bit of redefining and, I think, risk-taking for us.  It was a little bit more of a raw album and I think we said some things lyrically that...I know that at one point I was scared to put "Oh My God" on the record.  I just didn't know how it would hit people, if they would digest it.  So, yeah!  To hear that it really connected...and it was coming from some really raw stuff that we were learning as a band and personally.  The need to be in relationship with other men that we could walk the road with and have a safe place to sort of digest what's going on around us.  These are pretty new things to our band so to be able to say them in songs like "Work" and "Dead Man" and to have them be received and reciprocated was a pretty great thing.  I think had we not had quite that much critical acclaim it still would be a very important record for us.  But, you know, you throw something out there and it's really helpful or encouraging at the very least to feel something coming back.  You know, "You guys took a risk on this.  We like it!  Keep it up," or, "You went a little too far in this song!" (Laughs)

(Laughs)  Now that was more or less you last record for Essential, right? 

Correct.

So was that a little bit of an impetus to you too, to sort of go out big?

You know, I think it was.  It wasn't so much something that we talked about but I think there's sort of a perception or a general kind of stereotype that an artist's last record on a deal may not be their best work.  They're just kind of throwing whatever on there; let's get this over with.  And I think in our case, because we were still really enjoying being creative and writing songs and not feeling like, in any way, this is the end of Jars but more so the beginning of a new season.  The label might be expecting sort of a lame record, let's give ‘em the best record we've ever made.  Let's really finish this well and make a dynamic, engaging record.  And then whatever comes after that is to be seen.  But I guess that idea of finishing well...hopefully we surprised them a little bit with it.  (Laughs)

So why did you guys break with Essential then?

Well, a lot of things have changed since we signed that deal, more than I can list really.  And I think being on a roster with eight or ten other artists, you know, you're on someone else's schedule.  You've got to fit your release in with eight other releases in one year.  The marketing budget gets spread out.  You lose a bit of control and say and we really felt like we'd spent a lot of time...Bittersweet, I mean, so of it had been frustrating and some of it had been amazing with Essential.  We spent a lot of time in that system and we really felt like, with where things are at right now with internet marketing and digital downloads that we were willing to take some risks to move independently in order to have this freedom of putting out what we wanted, when we wanted.  And being a little more hands on with some of the marketing and, just creatively really.  Just kind of making our own decisions, not having to run it through someone else's system that may or may not line up with what we're excited about at the moment.  So it's less of a slap in the face to Essential, I hope, and more of just this new season.  We have enough recognition to sort of build our own system and enjoy that freedom, I think. 

Now one question that I've had to opportunity to ask here as of late to a few other veteran artists and groups is this: What are some of the biggest issues that you see within the industry, as well as some of the greatest changes as well?  How would you answer that?

Um, good question.  I think one of the fundamental issues that I and we, we being Jars, has wrestled with off and on throughout our careers is sort of the marketing of Jesus, or Christian music as commercials for God.  In a lot of contexts, I feel that tends to cheapen the Gospel.  It tends to cheapen and boil down and bullet point the life of Jesus.  I think the Gospel stands up to scrutiny and it speaks for itself.  And what excites Jars as a band, and I think what's kept us sort of pushing and going, is this relationship between faith and art and culture.  We frequently use the word ‘conversation.'  You know, we sort of feel like we have a dialogue with our fan base, it's certainly not culture at large and we don't have a huge platform but we do have some influence and we feel like our music is the medium for this conversation about, what does it mean to walk in faith?  What does it mean to respond to how we've been loved?  What does worship look like?  What are some different way that worship looks like?  We all know about the singing in church and there's obviously been a rise in the trend of writing worship songs, but what is worship as service?  And what does it mean to be implicated in the struggle in Africa or things that are going on in other countries, not just here?  So those are some of the things that have lit our fire and I think at the same time, some of the struggles that the industry has are because it's pigeonholed as this one little thing, these commercials for God or these big anthemic songs about what I'm going to do for God.  And that's been a little hard for us.

At the same time, I think there's more opportunity for bands like Switchfoot and Mat Kearney.  I think when we got started, having our song on mainstream radio was really confusing for the Church.  It was new and it was kind of different and we were a new band and I think the Church didn't know us or trust us yet so it was like, "What are they doing?  This is kind of strange.  They're playing clubs and I don't think I like this."  And I think we're kind of used to that as a Church now and we understand that different artists have different calls on their life and different gifts.  And it doesn't have to be or it may not be just playing in churches.  There may be something bigger and equally as important going on there.  And so I think we've acknowledged that as a Church and we're sort of moving on with that understanding which is a really good thing.  And for, as hard as those early years were, we're humbled to have been a part of that process and that conversation of, "Is it okay to do this?  Is it okay to play in a place that serves alcohol or to play with a mainstream band?  Is it okay to play with Sheryl Crow?"  That's kind of weird for a Christian band.  So for all extension and tumult, it's an exciting part of our story and we're grateful for it. 

You spoke of your music as being ‘conversation', which would imply a two-way dialogue.  Have you had any feedback within that conversation that has made you look at things differently as a band?

Ah, great question.  Well, these days, I think, there is some sense of dialogue with our fans.  I think through blogs and message boards and...I remember when I was a kid buying a tape or a CD, you know, that was kind of all you got.  It was a one-way, or one-sided thing.  And I feel like there's really creative and exciting ways to have direct contact with fans and our audience now.  So we do take to heart what comes back to us and, I think I mentioned earlier just in a general sense, the encouragement and the feedback from Good Monsters was important because it told us that this is necessary to talk about this stuff.  Other people are feeling this too; it's not just us.  It's not just our little world that's in Franklin, Tennessee; it's a big thing and it's a critical thing to the Christian life to talk about community, to talk about isolation and how it's easier to run and hide.  So I'm trying to think of really one element of that that's really defined us and I think probably the most defining thing in the last five years has been our work with Blood:Water:Mission.  Some of the things we've learned in Africa, some of the priorities that have flipped upside down.  A mentor of ours told us in those early days when we first got started, when we first traveled to Africa, he told us that an artist's job was to look at the world and describe it.  And I think that that more than anything, has defined and affirmed our role and, without speaking for other artists, I think that what Jars is good at and what Jars gets excited about is getting their hands dirty and then talking about it.  And instead of just hurling news headlines and statistics and numbers out there, to tell stories about people, people that are like us, people that feel pain and have the kind of faith that we long for and that we dream about.  People who live through hardships and rely on God's providence every day.  And that's engaging.  That draws us into the story, it makes them human, and I think it pulls us in.  And so that's what's been probably the most defining thing for us in the last few years.

 That's an interesting thought of describing the world as art as opposed to interpreting it for everyone... 

Yeah, that's a great point.  I think a lot of ccm leans toward spelling things out, like you said, and interpreting and giving answers and sort of spoon-feeding.  I don't hold dear to me the things that are spoon fed to me.  I like to test and question and live with stuff and chew on it, flip it around and really see how it wears.  (Laughs)  Before I really risk my life on it, before I stand on something.  And so I think that I can only assume that other people like me are the same way, you know?  That they need to be encouraged and they need truth and they need a compass and a reminder, but they don't need spoon-feeding.  They need that dialogue, that conversation. 

Shifting gears a bit, how has the creative process changed for you guys as you've learned more over the years?

It's a little more free and enjoyable, I think.  We've talked about this idea of relational equity, which is just the idea that the same four guys have written songs for twelve or thirteen years, and there's more trust there.  It's kind of like a marriage.  I know the guys aren't out to get me, they're don't want to shoot me down.  There's a real safety net there to, I think, dig a little deeper or push a song a little further.  Or to give someone feedback that may feel a little tough or a little bitter.  But it's the process that we're in where at the end of the day, the four of us are able to push and make something more exciting than if one or two of us were to sit in a room and craft out a song or work on a record.  There's a beauty and a power in Dan, Matt, Steve, and Charlie that's taken twelve years to create.  And these days we're sort of resting in that and enjoying that equity, if you will, of our history. 

It's cool that it's worked out that way for you.  I'd wonder if it wouldn't normally work the other way, having garnered enough attention that the pressure might be greater than when you were starting out...

Yeah and I think that's kind of what we expect.  Like it still surprises us when we write a song and we're like little kids.  We're all giddy!  Or we're in the studio and we're working on something and it just feels kind of magical, like "Wow!  Why do we get to do this?"  And you'd think it would be boring and you'd think it would be predictable and that the songs would sound the same and "I couldn't wait to get out of the studio because I'm so tired of these guys after all this time"...(Laughs)

(Laughs)

That's how I would write it and expect it but it continues to surprise us so we'll keep doing it.

So, with you guys branching out on your own into your own sort of Advent season, was the Christmas album sort of intentional in that sense?

It was intentional in some ways.  We'd talked about it, really for a decade, about doing this record, and our fans had been asking for it and waiting for it and we keep saying, "We're gonna do one!  We're gonna do one!  Just hang in there!"  So when we got out of the Essential deal and we finished it, then it was sort of us to decide, what are we going to do next?  Coming into the start of this season, it was like, "We have to do this Christmas record!"  Literally, if we don't do it now, we may not every do it.  So it was like...we finally have the opportunity to, really the four of us in the room, to decide what we want to do and what's most exciting.  And we kept coming back to that idea that it's finally time to do a Christmas record.

And I think more specifically, it felt like...after last Christmas was when we started talking about it and writing, it's when we wrote "Peace Is Here" and started arranging songs, we talked a lot about ‘goodwill to men'.  You know, ‘peace on earth, goodwill to men' and when you watch the news or you look around you, that's kind of the furthest thing from what it feels like and what we see being alive right now.  But it's not a foolish notion.  This Christmas story is not some magical anecdote that feels good in December, you know?  It is something that we're staking our lives on and what does it mean for Jesus to be our peace in the middle of the chaos that the world is in right now?  What does that really look like, tangibly on a day-to-day level?  To say, peace on earth, goodwill to men; what's goodwill to men look like today when there's more hatred around us and more division than I can remember in my life.  And so we were excited about bringing Christmas, about looking at the world through this window of Christmas and these things that we sort of toss around and we sing them and they become very familiar.  But to step back and say, "What does this really mean?  Is this really true?  Is this what we really believe?"  If so, wow.  Let's talk about it and let's rediscover it.  So that was some of the fuel for some of the early conversations and excitement about doing this now. 

Now what's the song selection process like going into a Christmas album?  Because you guys have everything from a Baroque hymn to a Paul McCartney tune...

Yeah, it scans the board, huh?  We had a lot of conversations; some of them were really philosophical.  Do people just want Christmas music to be in the background and to create a mood?  They're not going to really put headphones on and study it and dig in.  Well, how Dan our singer listens to Christmas music is different than how I do and we have different favorite Christmas records.  Is the mood more important than the words in the song selection?  We had all these sort of interesting heady conversations and we'd written a few of our own.  I think that what we kept coming back to was this nostalgia.  We wanted the songs to remind us of our early Christmases.  And so we wanted it to have a little bit of wonderment, you know, I want to picture the Peanuts gang holding hands humming around the tree and so many things that are to me just quintessential Christmas elements.  And so we tried to use a lot of textures and moods and sounds that would evoke these memories and this nostalgia, as well as exploring some of the themes that I just mentioned like ‘peace is here'.  You know, just declaring that.  That we have peace through Jesus because of Christmas.  The world looks different through these beliefs.  It just took time.  We knew we wanted to do this rearrangement of "Little Town of Bethlehem" that our friend had come up with.  We always loved that Sting baroque arrangement; that was like the last one on the list.  Like, if we have time, we'll take a shot at "Gabriel's Message" and we'll just see what happens and we ended up getting through that one.  We knew we wanted to write two or three songs.  We knew we wanted a couple songs that just everyone could sing along with like "God Rest Yet Merry Gentlemen," "In the Bleak Midwinter;" we're not going to mess with those too much and then we wanted to mess with a few of them.  (Laughs)

(Laughs) 

...which is sort of where we get our kicks, I guess. 

Is the greater challenge with a Christmas album the cover songs or the originals?

I think it's the covers.  Because how many ways have you heard "God Rest Ye" or "Little Drummer Boy?"  Making that one sound different and original and also familiar was...and we had already done those two songs before on our EP so that made them even harder.  I think the original one's are more along the process of what we're used to with making a record, starting from scratch, letting the song lead, trying to build it, and trying to find the right skin to put it in.  But the rerecording of traditional melodies, I think, is pretty tricky. 

So to just close out here, what's up next for you guys? 

We're going to start writing for the next studio record which probably won't be out until '09, I guess, early '09.  But I think Essential is going to put out a greatest hits album in the spring so that'll hopefully have a new song or two on it.  We're looking at some other book ideas to do but we may take the year a bit slower and sort of ease into it a bit. (Laughs)  I don't know if there'll be tons of new music this next year.  We did score a soundtrack to a documentary that a friend is doing about this village in Kenya and these doctors.  They're two sons that grew up in Kenya and they're in med school at Vanderbilt and they just opened a clinic back in their home village.  And it's an amazing story and our friend filmed it and put together this documentary and asked us to do music for it so we did that this past summer.  This film will be out in late February and it's called Sons of Lwala.  That's the name of the village.  So that was new territory for us to score a movie.  It's a different sort of process.  But we're honored to be part of this wonderful story that helps teach us what life is like in Africa, the ups and the downs. 

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