National Public Radio's Interview with Jars of Clay with Scott Simon March 30, 2002 Transcribed by jarchives.com

Introduction by Scott Simon:

When Dan Haseltine sings this song from The Eleventh Hour, the latest album from his band, Jars of Clay... To whom is he singing?
(The chorus of I Need You plays)
Those listening to a progressive rock station might assume they're hearing a song about love and longing between two twenty-somethings. But so-called "jarheads," listening to Contemporary Christian music stations... they are the legion of fans who propelled Jars of Clay from college band to Grammy award winners... might hear a song about the hope for redemption through Jesus.

Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason, and Matt Odmark ARE Jars of Clay. They join us now from Nashville. Gentlemen, thanks very much for being with us!

Jars: Thanks for having us!

Simon: Do you mean to have that song and most of these songs here go both ways?

Dan: I think that especially on this record, we have really come to understand that we learn the most about God and ourselves through relationships with other people. I think the songs can be both for that very reason. So that sense of longing, that sense of need is very real in relationships such as between two people... people who love each other and long to be with each other.

Simon: Charlie Lowell, your name comes from the Corinithians verse?

Charlie: Yes, it does. It comes from a verse called 2 Corinthians 4:7, which says "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.

Simon: Could you tell me the story, because... Here you folks are, platinum record sellers in this world now, and you began as college freshmen and sophomores in some kind of battle of the bands contest?

Dan: Yeah, we met on campus. We all lived on the same dorm floor and we liked a lot of the same music... our musical influences were the same. We started writing songs. We were in music recording classes so we had to write songs to get graded on them. So most of the songs that ended up on our first record were ones that we had to write for class. So we figured, if we make all A's and B's on these songs, maybe they're good enough for a record. (laughter)
So we did this whole thing, we finished recording three songs and entered this battle of the bands contest, just because they said they would give us an industry critique about our music. And that's what we really wanted. We weren't necessarily considering that we'd ever win the contest. We got a phone call a few weeks after entering saying that we were one of the ten finalists. We went down to Nashville, TN and we ended up winning. It was quite a thrill!

Jars: A few things have happened since then.

Steve: It's been quite a journey!

Simon: My notes say that your first number one best seller was in 1995? Is that right? How old are you guys now?

Steve: 26, 27, 28...

Simon: So you were in your late teens and early twenties then?

Jars: Yes.

Simon: Was that hard to get hold of?

Matt: Yes it was a very bewildering time. It was a lot to wade through as a 19, or 20, 21 year old for sure!

Simon: What would you like to draw on this new Cd, The Eleventh Hour?

Dan: On this record, we said that we wanted to take the risk of making a record that's inspiring to us and hopefully will be inspiring to other people. And that just means, being brutally honest with ourselves and with our fans and giving them something to chew on.

Simon: What songs do that for you here?

Steve: Scarlet is one. Just that the tension of the Gospel... and how unsafe it is to realize that there's nothing we can do to make God love us more or less than the moment we say we believe.
(Scarlet plays)

Simon: Now for people that don't have perhaps your developed sense of religious convictions, this is palpably a love story of a different kind?

Jars: That's right.

Simon: The moment of maximum vulnerabilty when you realize you're in love.

Jars: Right, absolutely.

Matt: I think why we're comfortable with that interpretation is that it really is a song that kind of gets out, "What does it really look like to love people beyond and through the worst of who they are?" And I think any love relationship eventually gets to that point where we're wrestling with the very kind of darkest pieces of who we are as people. And is love big enough to see us through that? And then if you can get that far... to then begin to ask those same questions about how would we look at a God who purports to love us? I think it's kind of an intentional move to connect ourselves and our stories to our listeners out there that have all these different and varying stories... connecting each other to something bigger... just some experience that can touch a deeper part of our hearts than maybe the average pop music experience.

Simon: Big music question... you listen to this song or Something Beautiful... Do you know the group, Toad the Wet Sprocket??

Jars: (laughter)

Steve: Actually, we met over a Toad the Wet Sprocket t-shirt, that Dan was wearing!

Simon: So if we hear some similarity there... it's not...

Charlie: Not a coincidence.

Matt: I think what influenced us about bands like Toad the Wet Sprocket, is these are bands that built a career based on songs. They were never a part of a big new happening sound, and I think we have a similar approach. We were never a part of the Grunge movement. We were really a band that spent a lot of time trying to work out songs and built our career based on those.

Simon: Let me ask you about the song Silence?
(Silence plays)
Is there a greater resonance over the past few months with this song?

Dan: Yes, certainly.

Simon: The "Where are you?" That plaint? It strinkes you in a couple of ways. Silently, you think of someone looking for someone they've lost. You can also think about why God permits this to happen.

Dan: Yeah, I think this is a song that maybe necessarily would separate us from a lot of what's going on in even the Christian music industry. We really aren't afraid to ask those questions and not give an answer. This song, Silence, is specifically just a song about being in the midst of that place of doubting and faithlessness, in the sense of going, "Where are you, God?" And especially since September 11th, this song has certainly carried with it a more resonant idea that I think a lot more people are struggling with.

Steve: I think we believe, as people of faith, that God isn't afraid of those questions and actually invites that and desires to have that dialogue with us.

Simon: Artists are always asking unanswerable questions.

Jars: (laughs) That's right.

Simon: In fact, some of them will say rather truculently, "Hey, I'm the artist! I don't have to have the answer." (laughter) But committed people of faith usually tell themselves that their faith furnishes an answer at the end of the day.

Matt: We are conscious of a dialogue with people that maybe don't share our faith and so we're not necessarily looking to give answers to questions that people maybe aren't asking. We can talk about these sorts of questions. We connect our hearts and make them feel more what's true rather than explain what's true. And I think you could do that with art. You could say, "Well, here's my world view and I could inject it into any expression I have so that people would know where I'm coming from and what I am talking about." But, we feel that would be a one dimensional experience for the listener as well as for us.

Simon: I guess I've heard over the years that there's a phrase in pop music where programmers are concerned... I guess it's called BPM, beats per minute. And I've been told...

Jars: (laughs)

Simon: You see where this is going?

Jars: Oh, yeah! (laughter)

Simon: ... that at Contemporary Christian stations, the phrase is Jesuses per minute.

Dan: We fail miserably!

Simon: I listened all through your Cd and liked it! And I did not hear a lot of Jesuses.

Dan: I think that's fairly intentional. I think in our approach, our songs, kind of like Matt was saying, are not really there to explain our faith. They are songs that are written about our life that are affected by our faith. And there are many people that are very put off by the name of Jesus... that are very put off by the church and religion. There are many aspects of religion that we just as much despise as the next person, because we feel like they don't represent who Christ is. And so we shy away from that traditional religious language and choose to write songs in the language of the culture, in a language that we understand as people.

Steve: I don't think it's ever quite what the traditional church appreciates entirely, nor is it necessarily exactly what the mainstream wants to hear, altogether. So we've kind of found a nice comfortable place in the middle of just frustrating a little bit of everybody! (laughs)

Simon: Yeah, but you've sold 5,000,000 Cds!! You're not frustrating a lot of people!

Charlie: Somebody likes it!

Steve: There's a group of people in the middle that are frustrated right along with us. That's what we've had to believe, in that, making certain decisions about art and accessibility... that we will lose a fan here and there, but hopefully we will challenge them and gain a few somewhere else.

Dan: I think part of that comes from the fact that there's a lot of Christians who probably wish we had a greater agenda than we do as artists. We take the stance, that to love somebody well, means to love somebody without an agenda. So when we walk in to play a concert or record a record, we're not doing it for the purpose of converting people. We're not doing it for the sake of pushing an agenda on people. And I think some Christians would call us spineless in that sense. Some people would call us vague. If something is going to close more doors than open them... For us to be able to build relationships with people and love them well, we're going to try to be wise and love people in a way that isn't exclusive to people that understand the language of Christianity.

Simon: Gentlemen, thank you very much!

Jars: Thanks for having us!

Simon: Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason, and Matt Odmark... Jars of Clay. Their latest album is The Eleventh Hour.

(Fly plays in the background)

Simon: This is Weekend Edition from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.

http://www.npr.org/programs/wesat/features/2002/march/jars/index.html