Memphis didn’t have any music rehearsal spaces like Nashville did, so the only place I could find for us was an old soul studio in the ghetto. The carpet looked like it may have actually seen battle action during World War II, and the bathroom didn’t work. Even if it had worked, no one wanted to go in there. It was gross. That scene was sort of natural to me. I grew up making music in those funky kinds of places. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have chosen that place, though. It probably scared Amy half to death.
The full band ended up being a pretty interesting combo. Tommy Cathey fell ill and was forced to sit out the recording of the live albums. Fortunately, Mike Brignardello heeded my emergency request and stepped in on short notice. He did a fantastic job, as usual. Tommy was able to rejoin us for the majority of the tour that happened after the two live albums were released. Dave Durham, Bonnie Keen, Gary Pigg, and Jan Harris, four very strong background singers, were added to the mix, as was Amy’s new acoustic guitarist, Billy Sprague. Although we all obviously came from wildly different musical backgrounds, that diversity was ultimately part of the magic. It was the beauty of it. When we blended all our pop, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll influences, it sounded fabulous.
After a few rehearsals, we traveled to Oklahoma to record two shows. The first was in Tulsa at the Mabee Center on the campus of Oral Roberts University. The second was in Norman, Oklahoma at the University of Oklahoma Sports Arena. Everything went off without a hitch. The band played well and the recording technology worked perfectly. But none of us were ready for the pushback we got from the audience.
There were plenty of raised eyebrows and lots of deep concern among Amy’s most vocal fans. They wondered why in the world she had been paired with a rock band. Instead of seeing it as an evolution of her sound they seemed to take great offense. Our fans weren’t much better. There was a chorus of disapproval of us for “selling out” for this “easy listening” artist. We got it from both sides!
The music itself, however, was quite good.
Brown marveled at how well the recording came out. It was so good, Myrrh made two different albums and released them back-to-back. The first of the two albums was nominated for a Grammy Award in the same year This Ain’t Hollywood was nominated. We were involved with two of the five nominees that year. But it definitely took some time for certain elements of Amy’s fan base to come around. I think some of D&K’s fans are still mad at us.
After the release of the album, Mike and Dan asked us if we would consider doing a full tour as Amy’s band. We were also invited to play a set of our D&K material as part of the show. It made a lot of sense, actually. Amy sang on our record, and we played on hers. Obviously it meant we would have to step away from our studio work and odd jobs, but we were definitely okay with that.
The tour with Amy was a learning experience for all. Someone dubbed it the “Bambi versus Godzilla” show. Sure, there was a certain amount of culture blending and boundary pushing, but no one expected the kind of outrageous and vocal criticism Amy received from some of her fans. It was downright mean-spirited at times. Fortunately, I learned to control my temper better or I would have been ready to fight some of them. The tour went very well and the majority of her fans were happy, but the amount and intensity of the criticism was weird and unsettling for Amy’s camp as well as ours. Our fans saw it as a compromise. Her fans thought she had lost her mind.
The last show of the tour was at the Christian Music Seminar in the Rockies, a well-known annual gathering of artists, music industry executives, and fans held in Estes Park, Colorado. We had never been invited to perform there before, as we were perceived as being too extreme and on the fringe for the very conservative core of the Christian music scene. It seemed like the entire industry was there, though.
As we took the stage with Amy, I saw what looked like frowns of physical pain in the faces of the audience members. It was really bizarre. We rocked the first number. Ironically, it was a song called “Beautiful Music.” At the end, though, there was absolutely no applause. You could hear a pin drop. All I could see was a large room full of people with their arms crossed, looking like they had severe indigestion and needed to pass gas.
Amy began to cry.
She passionately poured her heart out to the audience. She explained she wanted make a difference in the lives of young people. Since young people liked more energetic music, she chose to ask a rock band to help her reach them. It was a completely bizarre moment, to say the least, and definitely a defining one for me. I was moved by what Amy said, but I was confused by what happened. I was raised on The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana, Otis Redding, and Sam and Dave. I assumed most of the people in the audience were too. What planet did they come from? Besides, it’s not like we were playing heavy metal. It was upbeat pop music. I was very perplexed.
During that tour Dan Brock began to court us heavily. He really wanted to be our manager. We liked Dan, and I really thought he was the right fit for us, but out of respect for Blanton and Harrell, who also expressed a desire to manage us, I didn’t think it was prudent to make the decision public while we were on tour with Amy. It was a good spot to be in, but it was also important for us to play it out respectfully for all involved.
One of the most important business principles I have learned along this journey is it is important to always be honorable and respectful to everyone when at all possible. First, we’re supposed to be that way as Christians, anyway. I’m not sure why so many Christian business people seem to miss that. On the other hand, one never knows when you may need to call in a favor from someone. You don’t want that call to be to a person you have dishonored or disrespected. I’ve heard it said, “The ones you pass on the way up are the very same ones you pass on the way down.” That is so true.
The Amy Grant tour was also the official end of the This Ain’t Hollywood tour and it was time to re-set. We officially hired Dan Brock to be our manager. Stephen Lawhead and D&K parted amicably and we remain close friends to this very day. Stephen’s destiny was to become a best-selling author and not the manager of some crazy rock ‘n’ roll band from Memphis. We couldn’t have done it without the help of Stephen and his wife Alice.
That tour took the better part of 1981 to complete. It was a big deal for us. It was the catalyst and launching pad that helped us end our bi-or-tri-vocational lives and the beginning of our career as full-time artists. It also wrapped up almost four years to the day after we signed with Lamb and Lion. Susan and I made a four-year “make or break it” commitment to God regarding the band, and it took every second of that time. We had finally arrived at a place where we could provide for our family.
Susan saved every penny from my royalties, producer payments, and residual checks. We finally saved enough money to place a down payment on a modest house. We had been off government assistance for a couple of years and it felt really good to be able to stand on our own feet again. Of course, I had to borrow a little money from Dana. He was still single, though, so he had extra.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I Have Decided
Dan Brock and D&K began to dialogue about what our next album should be. What would excite us creatively? What would our fans want? What was best for our new relationship with The Benson Company? There were a lot of factors to consider, and having just come off such a great opportunity with Amy we wanted to make the most of every moment.
Ultimately, we decided we wanted to showcase our live performance. We were always a great live band. I pride myself on that. It’s where the rubber meets the road for musical artists. Can they pull it off live? We could, and we wanted to showcase that. Benson agreed.
Of course, we couldn’t do just one record. That would be too easy. This had to be a “Double Live” album; eighty-nine minutes of rock ‘n’ roll glory. We recorded No Turning Back /Live in November of 1981 at concerts in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. That’s actually how our song “Oklahoma Blues” was born. Ironically, those were th
e same cities where we recorded Amy’s live albums. I’m not sure if that was coincidence or planned magic, but it worked out that way.
Dan Brock moved from Nashville to Oklahoma City to work with a large, progressive church that hosted concerts and events in Edmond, Oklahoma. While he was working with them, along with his wife Darlene, he also began to promote concerts on his own in Oklahoma City while managing D&K. We all did whatever we could to eke out a living.
No Turning Back/Live was the first time Greg Morrow and Tommy Cathey recorded with us. Tony Pilcher was back as our second guitarist after many years away. He had played in “Christian Band” and was the one who brought Susan to our band practice at Lewis’s studio in the downtown Memphis ghetto. It was great to have Tony back with us. The band was really a tight unit at that point. We were definitely firing on all cylinders.
Through recording the Amy Grant In Concert albums and a Gary Chapman live record called Happenin’, which Mint Productions produced, I became quite the live album recording expert. I knew all about cutting the tracks, splicing tape, and fixing mishaps that happen during recording. We hired Malcom Harper to engineer and his old remote recording bus called “Reelsound Recording” to record the shows at the auditoriums. Afterward, in the recording studio, I took the mantle and engineered and mixed No Turning Back/Live with Dana helping me. It was a great tutorial for other things to come.
There were a few new songs on that album we added to the best of the tracks from the first three LPs. In addition to “Oklahoma Blues,” which was definitely a jam tune, Dana wrote a very powerful song about a young man’s confession to God, called, “Preacher, I’ll Need a Friend.” Dana also wrote “Matter of Time” and “Love One Another,” which bubbled a bit on Christian radio. That song got more airplay than we ever received before, even though it was scattered.
We closed the album with our version of the Gospel standard “I Have Decided (To Follow Jesus),” which became a standard closer for us for years to come. It was a simple acoustic version Dana and I led the audience in every night as people came forward to publically proclaim their decision to follow Christ. It was moving and effective even though it was written over a hundred years earlier by a Christian convert in India. I probably played that song a thousand times and witnessed a hundred thousand tears of repentance as I did. Folks of all ages walked forward and gave their lives to Jesus in our concerts. It was powerful beyond words.
I still believe that album captured our performance, and who we were, better than anything before. I often have fans tell me it is still one of their favorites.
D&K toured heavily to support No Turning Back/Live. With the band getting our full-time attention, and Dan Brock managing us, we had a shared vision to do nothing less than change the world. That might sound grandiose and egocentric, but our vision was simply to carry the Gospel of Christ into places it might not have gone before. We saw ourselves as sub-culture missionaries. We were all about carrying out the ministry we knew God called us to.
One leg of the No Turning Back Tour took us to Western Canada. Canada was always a hot spot for us. The audiences were large and crazy with enthusiasm. That tour was no exception.
“May I speak to Brenda?”
* * *
It was then I heard the most frightening words I have ever heard spoken in any language.
By that time D&K was very popular across Canada. We spent a lot of time up there. The Canadian audiences were energetic and awesome to play for, but we always seemed to tour there in early spring or late fall, when the snowy weather was either coming or going. This particular tour was in March. At that time of year Canada could be beautiful or rocked by blizzards. We were traveling overnight from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Most of the larger cities in Canada are fairly spread out from one another. The two cities are around five hundred miles apart, which is about as far as you can travel overnight.
We rented a bus for the tour, which was a first for us. A semi-truck travelled with us carrying the sound, lighting, instruments, and stage equipment. For a band to upgrade from a van or motor home to a tour bus was a significant career milestone. Any band will tell you that. The bus was equipped with bunk beds, TVs, a galley kitchen, and it came with a professional driver instead of me spending each night behind the wheel. We were in hog heaven.
We drove away from Saskatoon at around midnight after playing to a sold-out house and were headed for Winnipeg, where we had another capacity crowd awaiting us the next night. On this particular tour we welcomed a new artist named Carman to open for us at some of the concerts. He was scheduled to appear in Winnipeg with us. We got on our comfy tour bus and headed out into the darkness. There was snow in the forecast—no big deal in Canada.
The next morning I woke up early, rolled out of my bunk and headed up to the galley to make coffee. I noticed the bus wasn’t moving. I could hear the constant hum of the diesel power generator though, which was a normal feature of most mornings.
Oftentimes, we’d wake up in the parking lots of the auditoriums we were to play in that night. If the auditoriums had shower facilities, we might forego the hotels. Most days were filled with promotional obligations, record store appearances, or radio and TV interviews, and it was just too much trouble to get back and forth from the venue to a hotel. We would just clean up at the venue. There was always catering there as well.
This particular morning however, as I gazed out the bus windshield, all I could see was snow as far as the eye could see. Not just a little snow, mind you, but several feet of it in all directions. It wasn’t falling, but was piled up high around the bus.
Through the windshield, far out in the distance, I saw a lone figure slogging through the snow toward the bus. It looked like Nanook of the North, toboggan on his head, and scarf blowing in the breeze. I then recognized him as our bus driver, Bobby. He came in through the bus door shivering, looked at me, and said, “Bad news. We’re broken down. I’ve just come from a roadside café about a mile up the road. Good news; the equipment truck kept going and has made it to Winnipeg. I called the auditorium.”
“How far are we away from Winnipeg?” I asked.
“Almost three hundred miles.”
About that time Charles Gilliland, our road manager, came through the bunkroom door wiping the sleep from his face. We brought him up to speed. One by one Dana and the other band members stumbled in. Fortunately, our crew was also ahead of us with the truck, so there were only six of us left there, plus Bobby. It was about 8:00 a.m. We quickly decided to walk to the café (as this was in the age before cell phones) to use the pay phone to try to arrange for emergency transportation. The sky was a clear ice blue with full sun and a zero degree wind blowing.
Bobby told us there had been whiteout conditions throughout the night, with the wind chill dropping to forty below. “The wind was blowing like a hurricane,” he said. “The bus engine shut itself down.” Turns out the direct drive shaft running the cooling fan failed and the bus had, believe it or not, overheated in a minus-40-degree wind chill. It was a repair that required a specialized part and would take days to arrive.
So, we took off for the café. We must have been a sight walking single file through several feet of snow wearing our rock ‘n’ roll clothes. We made it to the café in what seemed like an hour, and Charles went immediately over to the pay phone and started making calls. The restaurant was a time capsule. It could have been any roadside café on Route 66 back in the fifties. The pay phone was at the end of a typical counter lined with bar stools. Checkered tablecloths covered about ten square tables already crowded with local regulars. This little diner was obviously the only place to buy a cup of coffee, eggs, and toast for a million miles. The smell of smoke and frying grease filled the air, but the food was good and hot.
A local mentioned that the closest town of any size was almost eighty miles away in either direction and that until the snow plows did their work they would be impossible to reach. He said the plows would b
e by anytime. This was a national Canadian highway we were on, by golly, and they kept it clear of snow as much as was humanly possible. In the meantime, Charles tried everything. He tried to rent a car; too far away. He tried to rent an airplane; no airport close by. He tried to rent a helicopter; couldn’t find one. Our anxiety increased with every relentless tick of the second hand. Nine o’clock turned into 10:00. Then noon came and then it was 2:00. Things were getting desperate. For the first time in our career we were about to miss a gig and it was a sold-out show. We tried everything we could think of while our manager, Dan Brock, and his staff down in Oklahoma City did their best as well. Nothing was working.
Suddenly I felt the need to visit the men’s room. Now as any guy will explain, there’s a time you can stand up, and there’s a time for a guy to take a seat. This particular time I needed to take a seat, so I went into the stall inside the restroom and closed the door. I was deep in thought, considering our predicament. We prayed all morning that God would show us the way. About that moment I looked at the funky green wall of the restroom stall and saw scrawled across it in black magic marker . . .
“For a good time, call Brenda.”
Below that seedy promise was written a local telephone number. As I thought about it, a strange thought crossed my mind. “Well, God,” I said in a sort of prayer, “I’ve tried everything else. I’ll call Brenda and see if she has any ideas.” I finished my business, wrote down the number from the stall, and went back out to the pay phone. I noticed the guys in the band looking my way, but I didn’t want to try to explain what I was doing at that moment. I dialed the number. The phone rang a few times and then was picked up. On the other end a low, gruff, decidedly male voice semi-growled, “Hello?”
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