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(Biography)
Stories
only get better in the retelling.
You find what
works and what doesn't, what details need to be amplified
and which parts need to be left out. You refine, you
rework, and you discover the rewards that only effective
communication can bring. And sometimes you start over
from scratch.
Musicians often
say that a song is never truly 'done,' that they only run
out of time. Songs that are familiar to both performer
and audience are given new life when they are tweaked,
rearranged and sometimes reinvented from the ground up.
There is both
great beauty and great function in recasting old songs
for a new time, and inserting new songs into the
always-changing dynamic of live performance. Jars of Clay
wanted their songs to do more, so now they give us Furthermore.
This new
double-disc project, subtitled From
The Studio : From The Stage, gives us a unique
look at the talents of this now-veteran bandtwo unique
looks, actually, as one disc contains brand-new,
acoustic-driven reworkings of classic Jars of Clay tunes,
while the other disc endeavors to capture the energy
found only in the band's high-octane live shows.
"We wanted
to do a live record because a lot of the songs on the
records translate even better in a live setting,"
says vocalist Dan Haseltine. "At the same time, the
acoustic stuff is where I think we shine as a band, even
more than the rock element. We started as a band playing
in coffeehouses and things like that; it's really where
we cut our teeth as musicians."
"Some of
it has to do with what people have asked for, as well as
just finding a balance of what songs are on the de facto
'greatest hits' list, the standards that people have come
to expect to hear," adds guitarist Stephen Mason.
"And then there are the songs we've loved over the
years and felt could be reinterpreted a certain way, like
'Overjoyed' [originally found on the band's second studio
effort, Much Afraid] a song
we really loved but have always wondered what it would
have been like another way."
The project's
From The Studio disc finds the members of Jars of Clay (Haseltine,
Mason, keyboardist Charlie Lowell and guitarist Matt
Odmark) peeling back the layers of their own career,
stripping down songs from across their catalog, from
"Liquid," the very first track on their
multi-platinum debut Jars of Clay, to "Something
Beautiful" and "The Eleventh Hour," tunes
from their latest studio record, The
Eleventh Hour.
Two new songs
are also included, the haunting "The Valley Song
(Sing Of Your Mercy)" and "Redemption,"
which Mason describes as an exercise in creative
immediacy. "On the last record, we started writing
songs in the morning, and by midday, we'd start
committing them to tape. We'd come up with things that
got us really excited, and 'Redemption' is one of those
deals where we spent the entire morning just running into
walls, and it's one of those things that show what you
can do when you stick to it while you struggle to get
there," he says. "We thought it'd be an
interesting treat for those people who are more fans of
the art side of what we do."
As for
"The Valley Song," it serves as the natural
next step to the story presented in the band's song
"Fly" from The Eleventh
Hour (as well as featured on the From
The Stage disc), a song which details someone
exhorting a suffering loved one to let go and trust they
will see each other again in Heaven. "The Valley
Song" deals with the aftermath of that sorrow.
"It's a
song about the mystery of suffering, and it's just one of
those kinds of songs where I can imagine it will get
tagged as 'the Jars of Clay worship song' but I think
it's a lot more than that to us," Haseltine says.
"It's still us asking questions, and that's a big
part of what worship is, a dialogue with God."
In listening to
the songs, both new and familiar, that make up the From
The Studio section of Furthermore,
you're reminded of what captured your attention about
Jars of Clay in the first place: the harmonies, the
hooks, the imagery of the lyrics. Haseltine says that was
a very deliberate part of why the band wanted to rework
some of their most familiar tunes.
"We find
that our music connects with an audience when we're able
to sit down and tell stories and perform in that
stripped-down manner, especially since we write from the
perspective of 'If you can't break down a song to just
acoustic guitar and vocal, it's not a good song,'"
he says. "These are songs you can just take down to
their basic elements, take out all the bells and
whistles, and simply rely on the quality of the song.
It's great to just go in and not worry about all the
extra elements of a rock show, and play songs just like
we were sitting in a living room with friends."
But then there
are times when you want all those extra elements of a
rock show: the big guitar sound slamming through the
arena, the hot crowd echoing the words of their favorite
song back to the band. That's what's captured on Furthermore's
second section, From The Stage.
Taken from a performance from "The Eleventh Hour
Tour," this 11-song collection showcases Jars of
Clay in one of their favorite elements, performing in
front of an appreciative audience.
Like From
The Studio, the songs on From
The Stage span Jars of Clay's career, from the
mega-hit "Flood" and "Like a Child"
from their self-titled debut to "Disappear" and
"Revolution" off of The Eleventh Hour. Longtime
fans and new converts alike get a taste of the dynamics
with which a live Jars of Clay show, from the rockin'
"Crazy Times" to the soulful "I'm
Alright" to the poignant "This Road."
The decision to
release an official live album came with more than a
little trepidation from within the band. "You're
kinda hanging it out there," Mason says.
"Recording a live show reflects really well whether
it is good or not."
But the
ultimate decision came back around to wanting to give
fans another glimpse at how their favorite songs can live
in another form, a view of music the band got from a
superstar with whom they've shared a stage once or twice.
"Sting was
one of the artists who gave us our perspective on what a
live show should be, that you're not just out there to
duplicate what's on the record," Haseltine says.
"You're out there to make the songs that you may
have only played once or twice when you were in the
studio, to let those things evolve. So hopefully what you
get is even more dynamics within the songs, and a more
mature sound than you could have possibly gotten when the
songs were new in the studio."
Both halves of
the Furthermore project were
born from a single desire, to give fans of Jars of Clay a
new way to relate to the band's music. "Sometimes at
shows, we'll sit down and if we're feeling a little bit
saucy, we'll say, 'Hey, what do you guys want to
hear?'" Haseltine says. "It'll be Matt and
Steve on acoustic guitars and me with a mike and they'll
always call out these obscure songs they want to hear us
play, and we'll have to say, 'Uh … we really can't do
that. Anybody else have a request?'
"So this
is a chance for us to go back and rediscover some of
those songs people want to hear, and play them how we
would do them in a live setting versus how we'd do them
on a record."
Guitarist Mason
attempts to take a little more learned approach to it.
"If you look at classical music, and note all the
variations based on a single theme, I think there's a lot
of truth to that that we've applied to songs over our
career," he says. "You can arrange things
differently, and that immediately adds a different
dimension, and that's a lot of what this record was to
us, using some more organic textures. We were playing
together as a band on both records, so it's both a 'live'
and a 'live in the studio' dynamic, and it adds yet
another element we think is pretty cool."
But in the end,
it's all about the retelling of stories already told, of
songs already and yet to be sung, and the ongoing writing
of the tale of a band constantly on the road of
discovery.
Jars
of Clay (homepage)
Jars
of Clay (the
stories)
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