[Dixielandjazz] Make A Joyful.Noise Unto The Lord

[Steve Barbone]

CAVEAT: Has some religious undertones. HOWEVER if you are a musician and/or
a band leader and/or just curious, this article is a lead into where the
audience for live music is these days. Those of us who play church gigs
(Bill Sargent, Barbary Coast, Barbone Street et al.) will relate to the
article below. Those of us who don't might well think about; "Gimme That Old
Time Religion." 

Cheers,
Steve Barbone 



America's Music
Plugging In to Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord

NY TIMES - By BEN RATLIFF - November 7, 2007

VICTORVILLE, Calif. ‹ Mike Day, singer and guitarist, gathered his rock
band. Dressed in a faded black T-shirt, jeans and skateboard sneakers, he
bent his shaved head. ³God,² he said, ³I hope these songs we sing will be
much more than the music. I know it¹s so difficult at times when we¹re
thinking about chords and lyrics and when to hit the right effect patch, but
would you just help that to become second nature, so that we can truly
worship you from our hearts?²

A few minutes later the band broke into three songs of slightly funky,
distorted rock with heaving choruses, and the room sang along: 1,500 or so
congregants of High Desert Church here, where Mr. Day, 33, is a worship
director. This was Sunday night worship for the young-adult subset of the
church¹s congregation, but it was also very much a rock show, one that has
helped create a vibrant social world in this otherwise quiet desert town.

There has been enormous growth in the evangelical Protestant movement in
America over the last 25 years, and bands in large, modern,
nondenominational churches ‹ some would say megachurches ‹ like this one, 90
miles northeast of Los Angeles, now provide one of the major ways that
Americans hear live music.

The house bands that play every weekend in High Desert Church ‹ there are a
dozen or so ‹ scavenge some of their musical style from the radio and
television. They reflect popular taste, though with lyrics about the power
of God, not teenage turmoil.

They are not aiming for commercial success. Church-based Christian rock ‹
often referred to as C.C.M., for contemporary Christian music ‹ does not
exist primarily to compete in mainstream culture; it exists first to bring
together a community.

³When you start a church,² said Tom Mercer, 52, the senior pastor, ³you
don¹t decide who you¹re going to reach and then pick a music style. You pick
a music style, and that determines who¹s going to come.²

High Desert Church has a sprawling concrete campus that includes a lavish
auditorium, a gym, classrooms and office space for its 70 employees. Once a
traditional Baptist church, it moved toward nondenominational and
evangelical Christianity in the mid-1990s and experienced steep growth. Now
more than 8,000 people attend services here at least twice a month.

A number of factors encouraged the church¹s expansion, Mr. Mercer and others
say. For one thing, there are more people in Victorville to receive the
gospel: since the early 1990s the region has been experiencing a population
surge, as city dwellers have moved north from Los Angeles County, seeking
lower real estate costs.

For another, in 1993 the church hired Jeff Crandall, the drummer for a
Christian punk band called the Altar Boys, as its music director.

Mr. Crandall, 46, spent more than a decade crossing the country in vans,
playing in churches, nightclubs and high school gyms, fighting the battle
for a more progressive and aggressive worship music. ³I knew that the
future, even in the early ¹80s, was with bands in churches,² he said. ³I
liked hymns as a kid, but I just didn¹t see myself waving my arms and
directing them. I¹ve always been one of those guys who tries to figure his
own way.²

A Band for Every Age Group

What he did was to pack the church with rock ¹n¹ roll. He organized a
rotation of bands, so the volunteering musicians ‹ drawn from the largely
commuter population of Victorville and its surrounding towns ‹ would not
exhaust themselves by playing to multiple services. And then he let them
play, loudly. 

High Desert Church holds three different large services over the weekend for
three different age groups, with music tailored to each audience: Seven (so
named for the number¹s positive associations in the Bible), the
18-to-30-year-old set that made up Mr. Day¹s audience; Harbor, the 30-to-55
group; and Classic, for people 55 and over. The church also maintains even
more bands for services at the junior high, high school and elementary
school levels. Each band carefully calibrates its sound toward the pop
culture disposition of the target age group.

Young people and future generations are in fact the fixation of High Desert
Church, which has already broken ground on building a children¹s ministry
complex called Pointe Discovery, a $20 million project financed entirely by
worshiper donations. ³If I ask God¹s people to give me $20 million,² Mr.
Mercer said during an interview in his corner office, ³when I stand before
God someday, I don¹t want to hear him say, ŒDude, you wasted a ton of my
money.¹ I want him to say, ŒYou did a good job.¹ My definition of a good job
is that it will impact people until Christ comes back.²

ŒHey God¹

Praise-rock is at the heart of that impact. The teenagers and young adults
at High Desert ‹ those who haven¹t been attending services since birth ‹
tend to say they joined the church for the teaching and the community, and
stayed because of the bands. But some are clearly more enthusiastic about
the music itself. 

³I started out in Harbor, but I moved to Seven because I liked the music
more,² said Tony Cherco, 32, a recent arrival to the church who would not
have been out of place in the East Village: he wore a long beard and large
rings in his earlobes. ³Between Pastor Tom and the music of Seven, I was
like, yes!²

To generalize, the music tailored to the Seven service is modern rock, with
a modicum of wired aggressiveness. (In its sets before and after the
pastor¹s sermon, the band does play some adaptations of hymns, including a
power-chord version of the doxology. It was arranged by the worship minister
Matt Coulombe to approximate the droning, locomotive style of the secular
New York rock band Secret Machines, one of his favorite groups.)

The music for Harbor, meanwhile, resembles U2 from about 1985, while the
Classic crowd gets a softer and more acoustic sound, like the West Coast
folk-rock of the 1970s.

For the children, in both their Sunday school classes and youth group
events, the music is pop-punk. The idea is to keep their attention with high
energy, then to slide gradually toward contemplation.

On a Saturday afternoon in October a group for the junior high contingent,
called Power Surge, which included four guitarists and two bassists, played
in the church gym, rehearsing a version of the Jason Wallis song ³Hey God.²
Fifteen girls performed choreographed hand motions to the music, which
sounded like pious Ramones:

Hey, hey, hey, God I love you

Hey, hey, hey, God I need you

I know there¹s not anything you can¹t do

I know there¹s nothing you won¹t see me through

Hey God!

These bands don¹t need to take all their cues from secular rock. Since the
¹70s there have been Christian versions of all kinds of genres, from
folk-rock to metal to punk. But the music heard at this church descends more
directly from other Christian music.

The fountainheads are artists like Lincoln Brewster, a singer, guitarist and
songwriter who began as a touring rock guitarist in the mid-¹90s and later
became music minister at several churches, before starting his own recording
career. His highly melodic songs, as well as those by other Christian-rock
artists like Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman, are performed here in nearly
constant rotation. 

Then there is Air One, a national FM radio network with 164 stations that
serves as an index of the current Christian-rock movement and provides a
playlist for many of the bands here. For the most part the groups at High
Desert Church don¹t write their own songs; they are high-functioning garage
bands, playing cover versions. But they operate in a large, modern
auditorium with top-quality sound, lights and video operated by young
volunteers; there are smoke machines and overhead screens that announce the
title of each song and its lyrics.

Staying Humble

Still, showmanship has its limits in praise-rock music. The musicians don¹t
want to distract themselves, or their audiences, from the higher purpose of
serving God; in interviews they talked about not exuding rock-star charisma
but instead remaining humble. ³We¹re not up there to have people say, ŒWow,
what an amazing band,¹² Mr. Day said. His goal, he explained, was to play
with excellence but to remain ³transparent.²

³There¹s a constant tension,² he continued, ³between the audience and the
people on the stage, all thinking, ŒO.K., music is a great tool, but the
ultimate purpose is worship.¹ And riding that tension is tough.²

The congregants also tend to respond fairly chastely. A performance at a
Seven service may look like a rock show, with the audience dressed as
fashionably as the band, but in some ways it represents an inversion of one.

The tall, solemn bassist Zac Foster, 15, played twice over the weekend: with
the in-house high school praise band Fuel on Saturday, and with the Sunday
morning junior high group as well. He has a six-string bass and a guitar
strap with a large white cross on the front. And he is adamant about the
idea of music as merely a means to an end.

³It¹s structured, and we play well, but we¹re still allowed to worship,² he
said with a serious face. ³Worship comes first. Music just falls into
place.²

Bobby Stolp, 39, a drummer in several different bands here, agreed. ³It¹s
all about the heart of worship,² he said. ³God can enjoy a distorted guitar
as well as a clean guitar. Especially when you¹re playing it for him.²