Interview: Jars of Clay on the Gospel Music Industry

|PIC1|Multiple Grammy and Dove-Award winning Christian rock band, Jars of Clay, have received continuous critical acclaim for more than a decade. Their latest record, Good Monsters, was recently honoured Rock/Contemporary Album of the Year at the 38th Gospel Music Dove Awards.

In this interview, band members Dan Haseltine and Matthew Odmark gives an update on their ministry Blood:Water Mission, upcoming projects, and their thoughts on the gospel music industry.

Your albums just seem to get better and better. Do the band have a specific aim to strive for musical improvement?

Dan: Absolutely. From the beginning, we very much cared about the art of making music and the art of creating songs and communicating. We try not to settle. So we're getting better at pushing ourselves. There are always times when there are certain songs that are harder to finish than others, and you kind of have to press through because you know the song is really in there.

We used to quit a bit earlier, but now we've learned how to fight through and get to the good parts of the songs, and keep the creative parts vibrant and alive throughout the course of the record. That's really important to us. I know there are some bands that think the message is more important than the music, vice versa, but I think what you're trying to say is equally as important as the musical aspect.

Where did your album title Good Monsters derive from?

Matt: The title represents one of the songs in the album, "Good Monsters", and the song itself is a good springboard into what that album is about. It's a quote from Edmund Burke that says "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".

I think a lot of the record is a reflection of processing and wrestling with the reality of who we are as people both flawed and capable of doing good things and evil things. It seems like ordinary people are capable of both those things. So the record is wrestling with that. Knowing that it's in each of us and in all of our cultures. The record is a loose mediation on what that means for us, and what God's reality means in that.

You performed at the Live 8 concert two years ago. Have you been invited to perform at the upcoming Live Earth concert as well?

Dan: No not yet. We certainly care about environmental issues though. It's something conservative Christians care less about than other things. As a band, we care about it deeply.

You launched Blood:Water Mission to promote clean blood and clean water in Africa. How are things going with that?

Dan: Very well - it's grown. We've added a few staff members and we're developing a few new programmes. One of the reasons we started Blood:Water was to engage college students on these issues of what's going on in Africa regarding poverty and diseases. Just helping them make choices that reflect that their education can be used to enter the suffering of the world to really make a difference.

We want to connect these students to some real work - to real stories and real people in Africa so they can build relationships. So this year we're setting the foundation to build those programmes and opportunities for students. We're finding that in communities where we've already dug clean water wells - we were able to dig a little deeper. Sanitation is really the next phase. A lot of communities need latrines and better hygiene practices. So we're able to provide both hygiene training and latrines.

We're trying to find a sexy way to promote latrines, but they're not so sexy (laughs). So we're just going to find ways to promote that as we sort of go deeper into the community. There's a lot happening.

What sort of changes have you seen in the gospel music industry in the past years?

Matt: These days I'm less and less interested in what the industry is or isn't doing. I think it's a unique season in music. We're artists, in a sense that there are less and less of industry middlemen for artists and fans to have to interact through. I think that's a really exciting time for music. I think we're seeing people's appetite for music growing and appetites for interaction with artists are changing... I think it's exciting for us. There are opportunities to put more music out there, and we can have a kind of more seamless and interactive communication with fans, and a lot of people follow and are interested in what we're up to.

Any upcoming projects?

Dan: We'll start recording our Christmas album soon. It's been quite a while. We did a Christmas EP back in 1995. Since then most of our fans have been asking if we'll record a full Christmas album and now we're finally getting to. So we're excited to do that. We've got a few different projects kind of on the table. We're just excited that we're about to enter a season to create more music than any other time in our career.