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I am a Christian.
I am not in a rock band.
I have never been in a rock band.
The closest I've come is a few mini-tours with a friend's band, so I can vaguely imagine what it must be like to do rock and roll for a living, having been crammed into a van with multiple stinky dudes and a ton of gear, and being a veteran of shows of all types and sizes. And as a Christian, there have been countless times when I know I'm the only believer in the room, and the pressure is sometimes very present to be a good example, particularly if word gets out. A lot of bands and individuals are called to that - to play anywhere but churches and church-affiliated venues and contemporary Christian music festivals, sharing stages with people of all walks of life, not just the often-saccharine youth-group demographic.
All of this, of course, is today, in 2006.
How 'bout fifteen or twenty years ago? Things weren't nearly as cut and dried and ready-to-serve as they are nowadays; the Christian Music Industry(capitals mine) wasn't a billion-dollar behemoth in the United States (and increasingly so worldwide), and there surely wasn't quite the level of sniping and cries of "sellout!" when a band happened to "get lucky" and got booked for a secular tour or a major festival. I, for one, wouldn't mind going back to that simpler, scrappier time.
* * * * *
Emerging from the well-saturated early '90s Orange County music scene in California, The Prayer Chain's trailblazing shadow is long in the Christian music scene. In much the same way Black Flag established a touring circuit for the punk rock community twenty years ago, the Chain helped pave the way for today's tidal wave of Christian rock bands and wrote songs with atmosphere, rock and roll swagger and lasting quality. Many a lifer will quote 1995's Shawl (Reunion) as the first impactful Christian-rock record they ever invested their own hard-earned dime in, this writer among them, and they'll all be happy to know that lead singer Tim Taber is still very active in the community of Christian rock and roll, establishing Floodgate Records in his home state of California. And though the "us separated from them" mentality in Christian music was just starting to germinate when his band was in their prime, today, at an annual festival where I spent a few minutes with him, he's adamant on the issue of being salt and light in a world growing increasingly dark. "It seems like there's a different dynamic where there's two kinds of Christian bands," he says. "There's the 'Christian band' that exists to play youth groups, to play churches and to minister directly from the stage. And then there's a whole group of bands that are solid Christian guys, but that's not their calling - their calling is to be out in the clubs, ministering to non-Christian bands and the people there, from the stage maybe, [but] more likely from the t-shirt booth or just how they live their lives in such close proximity to others on tour, showing God's love."
Fine, okay, great - where would the Prayer Chain have fit in back in the early to mid-'90s? It just wasn't the same sort of atmosphere back then in the United States, where the band did the majority of their touring. Enormous megachurches booking every touring band in sight weren't as ubiquitous. Sound systems in those churches didn't sound all that hot. And on top of it all, the Chain just weren't into writing what we'd today call 'radio-friendly' songs - 'Humb'(from 1996's Antarctica) was five-plus minutes of droning, atmospheric noise. No vocals, guitars, nothing. Still, Taber is pretty sure his band would have found a niche - and as for today, with the mainstream's growing acceptance of fringe-type music, and particularly with Christian music executives' realization that you can sell some of these bands in the secular scene, it's a lock that the Prayer Chain would have found fans. "I think we'd probably have a better time," Tim agrees. "Christian record companies are becoming more savvy and more aware that there's a whole lot of people who like this music that aren't Christians, and I think there might have been more opportunity for us now to have that kind of career."
Interestingly enough, as have some other Band Guys before him, Taber has gone on to found his own Floodgate label, and even more interestingly, while there's certainly a strong focus on the Christian market, most of his bands past and present are no strangers to shady establishments. "Part of my job as a record-company guy is to encourage [my bands] in their walk with Christ," he says, "but I love nothing more than to hear stories about them being out in bars and clubs, either ministering to other bands or just people that come up to them." Which isn't to discredit those artists who are simply sure of their calling to tour north American and the world in the company of other Christian performers - it's vitally necessary. "I certainly think there's validity to bands that wanna exist in the Christian culture and lift up youth group kids and adults," Tim says. "That's really important. And I guess there's a third segment of 'Christian bands', which is worship, that are totally valid and mainly exist within churches and stuff, but I don't discount the potential for worship to go beyond Christians, like Delirious, who strive for excellence in what they do to the point where they're accepted outside the Christian circles in Europe."
So, um, Tim, homeboy - of these three established segments of professional or semipro Christian musicians, where would you place yourself and the Prayer Chain? "We probably played around five hundred shows and I think I gave two altar calls in my entire life," Taber says. "I always prayed before every show, that hopefully I would be surprised, that maybe in a club I would have been led to preach, which I totally wouldn't have expected. Or at a youth group, to simply say nothing at all. Sometimes we would just talk about what the songs meant to us. [Those altar calls happened] just because I really, really felt like that's what God wanted us to do. I was scared to death and didn't wanna do it, but I felt like God was prompting me."
* * * * *
Following the demise of his band, Taber bounced around California, still involved with music, but not at the full-time level. "I think I got to a point in life where I couldn't do the entry-level, "go play a million shows and make no money" thing, because I was married by that time and it's a whole different dynamic," he says. "Right after the Prayer Chain, I started getting really into worship music, and wrote a batch of songs with Jyro [Xhan] of Mortal and Fold Zandura, and we were thinking about doing a record that never materialized. I consulted for Brainstorm Artists, Gene Eugene's label, and it went from there to managing bands like The Insyderz and starting a concert-promotion company in California." Given the Prayer Chain's pioneering a few shorts years before, it's perhaps no surprise that those Insyderz were at the forefront of the mid- to late-'90s ska-core movement, one of the few such revolutions since the genesis of Christian rock that Christian bands actually helped foment instead of tailgating on several years hence. Spearheaded by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The OC Supertones and - early in their career - a little band called No Doubt, the wave lasted, in retrospect, far longer than most, and the Detroit-based Insyderz stayed together about ten years, putting out several well-received albums before calling it a day in October 2005.
And Mr. Tim Taber, in overseeing their affairs, hearing about other upstart young bands through other managers and settling into the management side of professional music, had a chance to see how different things were becoming. "It's funny to me," he muses. "I'm a veteran; I think I can say that about myself now, and it's funny when I see kids complaining about drives, and sleeping on floors, and bad food. I'm like, 'Man, you're in a rock and roll band for a living - that's pretty cool.' Being in a rock band is a heck of a lot of fun. It doesn't matter that you're making a thousand dollars a month - because the most we ever made was, like, twelve hundred bucks a month, and you can't really make a living on that. It's a trade-off, you know? To have the opportunity to do what we did, I think, is a privilege."
And then God arranged a providential meeting with someone who would in changed the course of Taber's life - not to be overdramatic about this. "I met a worship leader named Rita Springer, and I thought she was exceptional," Taber says. "I tried to get her signed and couldn't, so I started my own label. That was six years ago." Floodgate Records has since made its name as a reliable source of quality modern rock and been home to several notable acts including indie heroes Cool Hand Luke, the now-defunct and criminally-underrated Denison Marrs, fellow Floridians Forever Changed and new blood like Hundred Year Storm and The Myriad - and these kids have a common theme: they have the potential, in today's marketplace, to sell as many copies of one of their albums as the Prayer Chain sold as an aggregate. "I was hanging out with the Third Day guys," Tim begins. "They opened for us a few times, and I really encouraged Reunion to sign them - and we were talking about their new record, and how they'll probably sell 65,000 records in the first week. I said, "Do you guys understand that if you combined all the sales of the Prayer Chain, it would probably be around a hundred thousand, and you guys will sell 65,000 in one week?"
In his new career as a concert promoter, manager and now label president, Taber has seen a lot that's made him glad the Prayer Chain had help in the early going. "We were fortunate to have guys out in California, veterans like the Choir and Mike Knott who told us the ins and outs of record deals - what to look for," Tim affirms. "And about publishing, making sure we got a good lawyer. And we did - we paid a heck of a lot of money and it was worth every dollar." Now he's in a position to treat his bands well - to be as supportive as humanly possible. "We try to be different," Tim says of Floodgate. "I try to give deals like I would have worked them as an artist. The typical route is that the label will throw out the worst deal possible for the band, and if they sign it, they've signed it, and it's not immoral or unethical, because that band's had the chance to examine that contract and negotiate that contract and get a lawyer, and it's up to the band to decide whether they wanna accept the terms or not. We don't do that at Floodgate. The deal we offer is the deal we offer; there's not a whole lot to negotiate. We try to build in long-term things like profit-sharing from the get-go. Bands don't have to negotiate for five rounds - we just give it to them up front."
When asked if there are any horror stories about the Prayer Chain's negotiations with their old label - this story being written by a Canadian hockey fan who watched the entire 2004-05 NHL season tank due to lawyers and money and therefore despises such things - Taber is effusive in his praise for the venerable Reunion Records. "I always thought Reunion was great for us," he remembers. "Compared to a lot of other bands, we got a lot of money to make records and pretty much do whatever we wanted. On Mercury, they wanted us to go in and record some more songs, and we did, but [overall] I think they granted us a lot of freedom. They weren't well-versed in rock and roll and how to market that, but they tried really hard, and I think we got a fair deal."
* * * * *
A couple of days before I talked with Tim Taber, I had a conversation with a fellow festival attendee, someone who professed to be really hugely into Christian music, and he had no idea who Five Iron Frenzy were. Hailing from the centre of the USA in Denver, Coloradio, FIF had eight great years making music, and only played their last show in 2003 - a mere three years ago. It made me wonder if a band that had broken up closer to ten years ago held any sway over increasingly short memories - and Tim came up with an anecdote that perfectly addressed the question. "I don't remember who I was talking to last night," his story begins, "someone from Copeland, I think, but he was like, 'Dude, I don't want to offend you, but I saw some guy, about forty-seven years old, bald head, wearing a Prayer Chain tie-dye shirt,' and I was like, "Yeah, man, that's our fans!" And while the humour level is high, it's important to realize that Tim's band's openly Christian stance, regardless of where they were playing, meant that like every troupe of Christian kids rocking some dead-end bar today, they were witnessing every night. "Mainly I live my life and nobody ever brings up the Prayer Chain," Taber says. "At home in Los Angeles, maybe twice a year someone will recognize me or something. Of course at Cornerstone, maybe a couple people a day because we played here so often. I think the main people that remember the Prayer Chain are band members, and I love the fact that there a lot of bands that come up and say, 'Man, your band meant so much to me,' or 'The Shawl album was the first Christian CD I ever bought, and it changed the way I look at music,' or 'I still listen to Mercury at least once a month.' It's encouraging. It makes me think that we made art with lasting significance. [We] were really committed to creating something that wasn't ordinary and challenging what was happening at the time, and making sure that we turned in a record that really challenged our listeners."
Somewhere on the internet I read that the Prayer Chain, back in their prime, once played a new annual festival called Lollapalooza, put together by Jane's Addiction frontman/guru Perry Farrell. Truth or fiction? Vile rumour, according to Tim, but the fact is, with the Chain's style of eclectic, multifaceted rock music, this could actually have gone down. "It's funny," Tim says. "The legend of the Prayer Chain is so much bigger than the Prayer Chain. It's funny that people thought we were this big band, maybe because they came to Cornerstone and there'd be three thousand people watching us, but most of our shows were to three hundred people. Some of our shows were to twenty-seven people."
Boasting some of the most talented, inventive musicians around, Tim Taber's former band, regardless of how many people were watching, never wavered from making great rock music with a timeless message - and most of them, especially guitarist Andy Prickett and drummer Wayne Everett, remain full-time musicians, whether it's as session players, part-time band members or producers. So would a full-blown Prayer Chain reunion show or tour be likely to happen? "I don't think so," Tim says. "We did play a few years ago - the Flevo Festival in Holland asked if we would ever come back, and it's pretty hard to turn down a free trip to Holland, so we did that, and we played Cornerstone. I got a videotape of the show in Holland, and it really wasn't that good. *laughter* I thought we were awesome that night, and I look at the footage and go, 'Yeah, we're not that good. Let's leave the memory intact and not be the old fat guys trying to re-live our glory days."
- Mike Postma