“I’m not going to fight you,” he whispered, shocked.
“Good. That will make it easier for me to beat you up and make a greasy spot on the parking lot with you. You are out of control and have lost contact with normal people. First, we were invited to perform here. We arrived right on time and there wasn’t a soul around to help us unload and set up. You never gave us any instructions or told us what your plans were. Your people asked us to do an interview and you have the audacity to tell me people are going to burn in hell by our actions?! You say we are so egoed out we quenched the Spirit of God Himself? I don’t even know what that means! Since there seems to be no way to talk to you, and you won’t listen to anything I say, the only choice I see is to beat you up.”
His lip began to quiver, and he eked out an apology. “I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I shouldn’t have said those words to you.”
“You’ve got that right!” I retorted.
We made peace after his apology and the encounter became known in the band as “The Episode of the Parking Lot.” I’m actually ashamed I acted that way. I also apologized to him that I lost my senses and reacted like that. I was twenty-three years old at the time and the youngest of four brothers. I grew up fighting and defending myself, but it wasn’t cool to lose my temper like I did that night—especially with a preacher. My wife says I’ve gotten better at controlling my temper. I hope so. That was the only time in seventeen years of touring I ever lost my cool enough to actually want to fight someone. Other than Dana, that is. I felt bad about it and repented from my anger issues. I hope that repentance sticks. So far, so good!
We picked up Happy Truck the next day in Fresno and started back across the “Stinking Desert.” Our soundman, Madison, fell asleep on the floor with his head crammed between the driver and passenger’s seat tilted toward me while I was driving. I got bored during the endless night and found a felt-tipped marker on the dash. Slowly and carefully I drew a mustache on him while he slept. Every time I drew a line, he flicked at it like he was flicking away a gnat. It took me two hundred miles to get that mustache on him. The long, squiggly lines looked more like rat whiskers than a mustache, but I was proud of my work nonetheless.
In the morning, when we stopped for breakfast, I got out and began to fill the truck with gas. The other guys slowly rolled out and made their way to the adjacent restaurant. When Madison came in the rest of us had a good belly laugh at his expense. He didn’t know what was going on. The waitress came by and had a good laugh too. Then he thought he’d better go take a look in a mirror. He wasn’t too happy about what he saw, mainly because you have to almost scrub the skin off to remove magic marker. He got over it after another hundred miles or so and we all had a good laugh. It was a good way to end the tour.
After we got home and paid our guys, Dana and I had to get a job painting a house to pay off the rest of the tour bills. That was the early days of Christian music. It was great—and it was work!
It remains a mystery why my dad’s MasterCard was declined at the transmission shop. We never really got to the bottom of it. Who knows? As I’ve pondered for years that gracious man paying our bill, I’ve come to realize that is just how God works. He meets us in our time of need. We certainly needed his help that day. He chose to deliver us through an act of kindness from a stranger. It wouldn’t have been the same blessing for any of us had the charge card worked. That’s the best answer.
EIGHTEEN
Activate
The little house Susan and I lived in proved to be a real blessing for our family. As I mentioned, my folks owned it and offered it to us rent-free as long as I went to college. Now, the problem with that was I dropped out of college my senior year to go on tour. My folks understood my decision, but didn’t necessarily like it at all when I quit school. I promised my mother I would finish someday. We soon got so busy, and I was so driven to succeed beyond what is normal for most people, I never looked back.
We began to pay rent to my folks, which was good. We also began to slowly climb out of the need for government welfare and food stamps. The lessons I learned from that journey are immeasurable. Firstly, a government safety net for people who can’t take care of themselves is a wonderful and necessary service of society. However, I do believe help should come with responsibility from the recipient and commitment to learn how to better his or her situation and also work to serve the community in return. Government assistance should not be a way of life for anyone except those who are elderly or disabled to the point of not being able to help themselves.
The second thing I learned about government assistance was I never intended to go back to it if it was at all in my power. Susan and I desperately wanted to provide for our family with every ounce of life we had. To say we were driven is an understatement. There was no plan B. I’ve come to believe that is a very important building block of starting a business. There really can’t be a viable plan B, or when the going gets tough, plan B will be the easy fall back.
That doesn’t at all mean one shouldn’t be flexible. I was flexible in every way I knew how to be while working bi-vocationally or even tri-vocationally, meaning I always had two or three ways to make money while getting the band and our calling off the ground. While we lived in the little house on the rougher side of town, we saw God’s miracles many times in our lives.
One summer morning, I rose from bed, put on some shorts, and went outside to mow our yard. There wasn’t much I hated more than mowing the grass. I’m sure that aversion took hold of me as a kid. My dad always had me out mowing the lawns at his construction sites. He bought a beast of a lawnmower, so it would cut the tall Johnson grass. It was one with big wheels on the rear, so I could push it easier and sweat a little less. Nothing could stop that monster from chewing up a yard littered with various junk and litter thrown around by construction workers building a house. Dad paid me a little money to do it. It was good training on how to hate mowing grass as an adult. Come to think of it, I never saw my dad mowing grass while I was growing up. He knew better.
I got up that morning, made myself a cup of coffee, and stumbled outside. Susan came outside about five minutes after I started mowing. She shouted to me over the noise of the mower, saying she and the girls were going to the grocery store. I watched all three of them load into our canary yellow Volkswagen Squareback and head down the street, waving goodbye. After I finished mowing the front yard, I wheeled the beast around to the side of the house.
There was a big overgrown bush on the side of the house that was around ten feet tall and eight feet in diameter. I looked at it a thousand times, knowing I needed to prune it, but I just never got around to it. I don’t know what kind of bush it was, but I knew it wasn’t prickly, so I could get close to its waxy leaves with the lawnmower.
I skipped a few weeks mowing the yard while being away on tour somewhere, and the grass had grown tall and thick around the base of the bush where its branches met the ground. I learned from mowing those gol-darned construction lots of my dad’s that when you need to mow tall grass, one effective maneuver is to tilt the mower back on its rear wheels, roll forward slowly, and then let the mower lower over the grass a few inches at a time. That will let you chop it off little by little without stalling out the mower.
I reared that mower back on its rear wheels and pushed it up toward that big shrub. But just as soon as I moved forward I heard a loud voice shout at me.
“Stop!” the voice said sternly. “Breckon is in there!”
The voice startled me so badly I stopped and turned around to see who was screaming at me. I clearly heard a man’s voice, but when I turned around, there was no one there! It was just sticky, dusty air. “That’s weird,” I thought to myself. I reared back the mower again to cut the tall grass, but an overwhelming feeling I should not move forward came over me. I shut down the mower’s engine, walked a couple of steps to the bush, and spread back the branches to peer inside. There, hiding in the bush, was sweet little Breckon, our da
ughter, just smiling and looking up at me with her big brown eyes.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said playfully, “I stayed home to surprise you and be with you!” She had no idea what almost happened.
I grabbed her and hugged her so tight she probably thought I was going to break her in half. My mind raced, imagining the tragedy that would have happened had I rolled forward with that blasted lawnmower. I went and settled on the front porch, holding our little girl in awe until Susan got back home.
When she drove up she could see the shock on my face. I explained to her what happened and described the commanding voice that prevented a disaster. Susan squeaked in shock. “As we left, Breckon said she wanted to stay home with you. So I drove around the block and dropped her off in the driveway. I thought you saw us!”
That is the only time in my life I have ever heard an audible voice from an invisible source . . . or force. I’m convinced it was my guardian angel. Breckon was only three years old. Another miracle.
By the way, I still hate mowing grass.
NINETEEN
Long Distance Runner
When we got home from the West Coast adventures of our first big tour, it was back to “real life” in a hurry. Dana and I continued to work various jobs to make ends meet. The joy and thrill of our music and ministry calling, however, made all the menial labor worthwhile and meaningful even though we hoped one day soon we could be full time musicians. It was like holding down three jobs at a time.
Out behind our little ramshackle house stood an old, rickety, single-car garage. It was leaning to one side, and the bottom row of siding had all but rotted away. Several of the supporting studs were completely gone. It was a disaster waiting to happen, but in my mind’s eye, and with a little TLC, I saw the perfect band rehearsal room. I pointed it out to Dana, and he agreed. So, we went to work re-constructing that old garage.
We poured a new concrete floor high enough to keep the water out. Then we replaced all the rotted wood and applied new siding on the outside. Inside we double insulated it, removed the large garage door, and installed a normal-sized door in its place. We installed brown sheathing board on the inside walls and ceiling and covered every square inch of it with salvage shag carpet I was able to get from the apartment complex where I did part time maintenance. It looked like Elvis’s jungle room—or at least our cheap imitation of it.
Our neighbor, Mr. Bill, came over from next door to help several times during the project. I think he thought the rock music might drive him, Mrs. Katy, and Mike the parrot crazy, so he worked hard to help us soundproof it. It worked perfectly well and became our rehearsal room during the Straight On and This Ain’t Hollywood albums. It was also where we rehearsed countless hours in preparation for our work with Amy Grant. But we’ll get to that later.
We wrote the songs for Straight On, our second album, in our new rehearsal room. There was a Pentecostal Holiness Church bordering our back yard. It often seemed their band was competing with us to see who could be louder. Despite the soundproofing, the walls were thumping pretty hard. There was a lot of music going on.
Terry Moxley was on drums and Kenny Porter played bass, but Dana and I wrote all the songs for the album. We had various ways of writing together. Many times one of us would have a piece of a song like a chorus line or musical riff, and then the other one would fill in the blank. That happened on “Jericho” and “Long Distance Runner.” Dana wrote part of the lyrics on each of those, and I contributed the music and worked on the melodies. Sometimes we wrote songs almost entirely on our own. I did that on “Livin’ on the Edge of Dyin.’ ” Dana wrote “Mary” alone. Both “Bad Livin’ ” and “Let Him Help You Today” were older jam songs built on Dana’s guitar riffs born years earlier during our “Christian Band” era.
From the beginning of DeGarmo and Key, Dana and I decided to share all of our songwriting credits and the corresponding publishing royalties fifty-fifty, right down the middle. We really didn’t want competition between us to get our songs on the albums. We just wanted the best song to win out, bottom line. By taking the financial gain, and credit, out of the equation, the competition was neutralized between us somewhat.
As a result, on some albums I might have written six songs with Dana writing four or five. Then the reverse would happen. We worked on each other’s ideas together, but rarely did we sit in the same room, at the same time, and write together from scratch. I think some of the songs we wrote individually would surprise some folks. We each contributed rock and pop radio songs. We also each wrote ballads. As I step through the albums, I’ll point out some of our individual contributions.
When we were recording This Time Thru I met a young producer at Ardent named Joe Hardy. He was an interesting combination of things. Joe was an intellectual sort of guy and well read. He dressed very business-casual-like and wore his hair shorter, but at heart Joe was a music and art aficionado. He just didn’t look the part.
At that point most of the recording work Joe did was on his own solo work, but it sounded fantastic. I went to Dana and told him about Joe and how impressed I was with the sonics and the modern production techniques he employed. I thought Dana and I should meet with him to see if he might be interested in co-producing our next album.
Dana and I wanted more of a voice in the album production process, so the decision was made we would co-produce our records going forward. Both of us practically grew up in the recording studio with Lewis Willis at Allied Recording Studios and felt we had the chops to co-produce. But a third, objective voice could be a good thing.
I set up a time for Dana and I to meet with Joe Hardy. Joe played us all the demos he self-produced. They were fantastic. The three of us hit it off with our shared philosophy of music. We decided that day Joe was a perfect fit for us.
The recording of Straight On was an effort in experimentation for all of us. We set up Terry Moxley’s drums in the center of the big room, rather than the small drum isolation booth. We felt like the expanse of the high ceilings allowed the sound of his drums to reverberate, giving them a more natural sound. Kenny Porter wired his bass guitar up through an amplifier and used a direct signal simultaneously to give more of a “live” sound. I played Ardent’s Hammond organ (which was the same one Booker T. played on the MG’s legendary albums, including Green Onions). Dana switched from a Marshall amplifier to a Lab L-5 to allow his guitar to have more diverse tones.
It took about a week to track the album. That means we had drum tracks, bass tracks, rhythm guitar tracks, and keyboard tracks at the end of the week. We also recorded scratch vocals, which were replaced later.
Interestingly, backing up to the control room wall of Studio A, which was the larger studio at Ardent where we were recording by now, was the Mercury Records A&R (artists and repertoire) office in Memphis. Jud Phillips, who was the nephew of legendary Sam Phillips—who discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lewis, and Carl Perkins among many others—ran the Mercury operation in Memphis.
Jud knocked on the studio door and asked to come in and listen from time to time. He asked questions about what we wanted to accomplish with our music. He was keenly interested in our faith as well. Jud was convinced that at least a couple of songs on Straight On could be mainstream radio hits. He fell in love with “Long Distance Runner” and “Livin’ on the Edge of Dyin’ ” in particular.
After a few more visits and conversations, he asked if and how he could get in touch with our label (Lamb and Lion) and Pat Boone. He felt we would be a great fit for Mercury Records and wanted to research whether there was a way they could partner with Lamb and Lion on us. Jud flew out to Hollywood to meet with Pat and the gang, and on one occasion, the Lamb and Lion execs came to Memphis to meet with Mercury.
At the end of the day, though, it was to no avail. It seemed Lamb and Lion and Mercury couldn’t come to terms on markets, ownership, royalties—you name it. Dana and I were very disappointed at first. We wanted a crack at the mainstream market, and Mercury, at leas
t in the beginning, was willing to take us un-censored. That was very different from the experience we had with Hi Records and London Records when we became Christians while in Globe. They didn’t know what to do with our overt lyrics about God and faith. That didn’t seem to be a barrier this time. It was unfortunate Mercury and Lamb and Lion couldn’t get together. It might have been a great experiment for all of us.
Straight On was released in 1979 to rave reviews and much critical acclaim. It seemed to really strike a chord with our audience. The larger Christian radio audience was still elusive, as Christian radio just wouldn’t play our music very much. They said it was too aggressive for them and complained that Dana’s voice was too bluesy, and they couldn’t understand the words he sang well enough.
“That’s only rock ‘n’ roll!” I say to that.
We did get a smattering of national airplay on our song “Mary,” which was about Mary looking for Jesus in the garden following the crucifixion. He wasn’t there. He had risen! Though few in number, loyal Christian rock stations played our music endlessly and with fervor. We appreciated them and their work to get our music heard on the airwaves. There just weren’t many of them around.
In the early days of Jesus rock, our music was mostly played on college radio stations and on one or two-hour specialty shows on mainstream radio stations programmed in the late night hours, or perhaps on Sunday mornings. Those radio DJs who liked Christian rock got permission from their mainstream stations to program shows centered on Christian rock to fulfill their station’s criteria for public service broadcasting. Those shows sprang up on major mainstream rock and pop stations around the country during the seventies and eighties.
That was really the only way we could achieve mass media radio for Jesus rock music then. There were a few diehard Christian rock stations around, but very few. The majority of Christian radio was middle of the road music in the adult contemporary format. Ironically, it still is today. Actually, Christian radio is still a far cry softer in its format and sound than radio that appeals to most young people in my opinion. The reason is their format is geared for and largely reaches out to soccer moms and thirty-somethings. That is perfectly fine. It just makes it tough on artists who have a more aggressive sound. In my day that was Jesus rock music. Today it is hip-hop, and some rock and pop music.
Rebel for God Page 15
