Packed to its 1,500-seat capacity, the Midway Theatre in Rockford, Ill., is hosting a show rivaling anything from its storied past. Less than 72 hours before their third and latest album comes out, the members of Jars of Clay are set to take the stage for what could well be dubbed an audition. Much of tonight's set will feature material from the new disc If I Left the Zoo (Essential). The band's performance--and the crowd's reaction--will speak volumes about the prospects for the new release.

But if it's crunch time, the Jar boys don't show it in their faces or paces. With a curious mix of poised professionalism and generous comic shtick--the latter, perhaps, inspired by the vaudevillian surroundings--the group kicks things off with "Goodbye, Goodnight," a new song that features a boisterous, mock sea-shanty vocal.

"Strike up the band to play a song and try hard not to cryyyyyyy," they croon, elongating the vowel to ridiculous, rubber-band lengths. The crowd roars. The band finishes the line, snapping back into place: "And fake a smile as we all say goodbye."

The song, a comic look at the millennium through the eyes of the Titanic string players, rings with autobiographical overtones. Learning to strike up the band and fake a smile became de rigueur for Dan Haseltine, Charlie Lowell, Matt Odmark and Stephen Mason when the foursome, in mere months, went from students at Greenville College in Illinois to international pop stars. Their 1995 self-titled debut conquered the Christian music world, permeated the general market airwaves on the strength of a smash single ("Flood") and virtually coined a new term: "alterna-folk."

But with overnight success came a dark night of the soul. Interpersonal tension and intense pressure manifested itself in the band's second album. While far from a sophomore slump--it spawned more hits, including "Crazy Times" and "Five Candles"--the 1997 disc had unmistakable moments of stiffness and a foreboding title, Much Afraid.

That time, band members say in retrospect, could well have marked the beginning of the end for Jars of Clay. Yet any signs of past tension are absent from the Rockford show. For this writer, who has seen the band a half-dozen times over four years, the evening at Midway is by far the best Jars show I have ever witnessed--loose and limber as a coffeehouse set one minute, mighty and muscular as an arena concert the next (minus the bombast and pretense). Between songs, jokes and wisecracks fly like spitballs. The 18-song set includes an impromptu "Dukes of Hazzard" theme, with random audience members pulled on stage to sing lead. Everyone's smiling, and often. Wherefore the serious, sensitive young brooders who begot "Flood"?

Over pre-show dinner at a Rockford restaurant, Haseltine, Lowell, Odmark and Mason revealed how building a new album meant rebuilding the band musically and spiritually. They chose a producer, Dennis Herring (fresh off Counting Crows' new album, This Desert Life), and locale (Oxford, Miss.) that forced them to slow down, stretch and take risks. They renewed their bonds during an intense pre-album retreat in Iowa. And with help from a former Hudson Brother, they learned to take themselves lightly.

Recounting this process is like a debriefing session; what is scheduled to be a one-hour interview stretches nearly three hours. At one point, the band members search and scratch for the perfect word to describe a nine-month period that was frustrating and freeing, rigorous and rejuvenating, as thrilling as being born again and painful as giving birth. They're also trying to capture what it was like to make an album not in some pressure cooker, but in the slow-simmering homeland of William Faulkner, Delta blues and Southern intellectualism.

Lowell, perhaps inspired by the arrival of his tenderloin steak, hits on just the bon mot: "It's like marinating," he says.

"In the creative juices!" Mason muses.

"Indeed," Lowell responds.

(Egyptian Inspiration)

Our story, dear readers, begins in Egypt.

Tapped to work on The Prince of Egypt--Inspirational soundtrack, Jars teamed with producer Mark Hudson, best known as a singing, clowning member of '70s power pop act The Hudson Brothers. Hudson brought the band to L.A. to work on "Everything in Between." It was a textbook lesson in loosening up; the song was cut in a one-room studio above a Thai restaurant.

"He had just finished producing Ringo Starr's new record," Haseltine says. "He said the philosophy behind it was, 'Life is life, this is just a record.' We really learned that from Mark and wanted to make a record that was fun to listen to."

What sounded like fun, the band decided, was to craft a new album with Herring in a converted cinder-block warehouse in Oxford, a college town reminiscent of the band's carefree Greenville days.

Immediately, Herring cast himself in a laid-back but professorial role. "He said he enjoyed our [previous] records but couldn't tell by listening to them what anyone did," Mason says. "One of the big goals of this record was to get each one of us a voice; even with Dan, Dennis brought Dan to places he'd never been before."

Indeed, Haseltine proved an adept student of Attitude 101. On If I Left the Zoo, he widens his palette to include bluesy inflections and greater emotional urgency. "The last two records, it was very clinical," he says. "This record, we'd look for the best performance, even if it was a little out of pitch. That was exciting to me because on the last record I'd sing a track seven or eight times and feel like it was all right. But it had no soul."

What Haseltine found exciting, Mason found excruciating--or to play on the album title--cage-like. "I didn't want to be part of this record on numerous occasions," Mason says. "Most everything I'd come up with [guitar-wise] would be fine and okay. And then Dennis would hear it. It was the first time I had someone make a face at me. I joked that I learned to play electric guitar on this record."

"The next Steve Vai," Odmark cracks, citing one of rock music's most highly regarded instrumentalists.

"It made me really angry and aggravated to work on this record," Mason continues. "I can't emphasize that enough. Even with the backup vocals, which is something we pride ourselves on, [Herring] would put a wrench in it. He'd say, 'Why don't you try something more playful?' His whole thing was, 'Think out of the box.'"

Mason cites one particular sore point, when Herring changed Lowell's keyboard part on "Sad Clown." Lowell was uncomfortable playing the new part, and Mason couldn't believe that Herring altered a chord in the song. "I got so angry," Mason recalls.

But in the end, Mason acknowledges, Herring's tinkering was worth it. The new arrangement supported the vocal perfectly; "Sad Clown," with its warped saloon-dirge piano, is now a band favorite. "I got really happy later," Mason says. "Very happy. Dennis has incredible foresight. We couldn't have made this record without him."

"When I listen to the record, I hear a lot of joy, and I smile a lot," says Jars' touring bassist Aaron Sands, who also got to play on the new album. "Even 'Sad Clown,' if you listen to it, has a real nice drum feel and is a happy song with an out of tune piano. Something about it just makes you smile."

The other members are equally pleased with the result. "You come away with more of a sense of us as an American band," Odmark says. "The last record was recorded in London and maybe obscured our identity--these four American kids who love The Beatles making this Britpop record."

This time, Jars steeped themselves in sounds that fit their surroundings, from the alternative country of Wilco, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams to the post-psychedelia of Flaming Lips. Holed up in the birthplace of the blues, they didn't sample as much homegrown music as they would've liked. But surprisingly, they developed a taste for rock's best-known blues disciples, the Rolling Stones.

"Before, our songwriting would always lean Beatles and never Stones," Lowell notes. "A year ago, I would have turned a song off the radio because 'This is the Stones, and I like The Beatles.' But I started to get it, and it was really because of Dennis."

There's even a hint of swagger a la Stones' frontman Mick Jagger on "Unforgetful You," "Collide" and "I'm Alright." "That was Dennis' private agenda," Odmark says. "He's very aware of the soulful part of music. He understood that we were in sort of a rut, that our songs were happening in a predictable way."

"I think maybe Dennis saw this record as [potentially turning into] Much Afraid, Part II, and he cautioned us," Lowell offers. "It was about not boring people or ourselves."

Odmark agrees: "People would've heard it as boring and contrived. To satisfy that part of yourself as an artist, you have to try something new."

(Snapshots of the Deep South)

To that end, there's nothing like a change of scenery to inspire some fresh ideas. The deep South had a deep impact on Jars; If I Left the Zoo is also a sonic snapshot of the band's myriad encounters with Southern culture.

Snapshot is definitely the right metaphor. All four members became shutterbugs during their time there--time spent hanging at Square Books (a legendary indie bookstore), hobnobbing with the local intelligentsia (The University of Mississippi and John Grisham's Oxford American magazine call the town home) and scarfing pastries at Bottletree (ground zero for good home cooking, Oxford style).

"From 9 to 11 every morning, we would have breakfast there," Mason says, practically salivating. "Many honey cream cheese danishes were consumed."

"Lots of fruit with granola," Haseltine adds. "Their coffee was unbelievable." As for the local populace, "At first we were like, 'Does anyone work?' All we would meet were these literary types," Haseltine says. "We met this guy Bill Roberts, a screenwriter/photographer, who's really into the arts. He became one of our great friends, along with Clay Jones, a record producer, literary guy and mandolin player. They taught us a lot about looking at the seemingly mundane nature of a small town and seeing the artistic side, just picking up an eye for what's going on."

"It's like Franklin, Tenn.," Mason says, referring to the Nashville suburb many musicians call home, "only with more interesting people. It's like an Ivy League town with a vibe of its own."

If it sounds like the ideal place to make an album--the band also stayed in a bed & breakfast and passed idle mornings playing golf--keep in mind that diversions from the studio grind were but momentary.

"You could never get too far from the record," Odmark says. "The furthest you could get was about five blocks. Maybe."

(Iowa's Peace Treaty)

But when the going got rough, things between band members stayed civil--an outcome, they say, that stems directly from a January 1999 retreat convened at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Accompanied by their tour pastor Michael Guido, Dan, Charlie, Matt and Steve set about the process of getting to know--and need--each other again.

"We discovered a lot of things we hadn't dealt with, a lot of walls between us that had been constructed," Mason says. "Decorah was all about us confronting that."

"I was the last guy in the band to get married, at the end of Much Afraid," Odmark says. "The first few months, I focused on my wife and my relationship with her. But now, I've rediscovered the guys and my need for them."

Haseltine relates going back to the Scripture verse that gave the band its name, II Corinthians 4:7. "We tried to reach an understanding of what it meant to be broken and serve each other, and how to relate to each other in our weaknesses. When we're broken and able to serve each other, that's when our relationships are able to grow."

"It was a milestone week for the four of us," Lowell says. "I remember thinking, 'How many guys do I know have this many close relationships?' We all sort of fell in love with each other."

They also rediscovered, to quote a Jars song, faith like a child.

"It's the 'Front Yard Luge' syndrome," Haseltine states. "There was about nine feet of snow on the ground, and we were on a corner lot. We found a hose, iced down a track and we were out all over the place!"

"In the middle of the night," adds Mason. "We had been given a rare gift, a week to enjoy our friendships. With all the blessings of success, we have very focused time together. But we rarely get to enjoy each other."

If friendship is one side of the Jars coin, mission is the other. And with this new album comes a broader sense of outreach to match the expanded musical delivery.

"This past couple of years, we spent a lot of time apologizing and trying to explain what our purpose was," Haseltine says. "We spent so much time doing that, we never got to do what we were called to do. Now, we hope to build relationships [outside the Christian sub-culture]." Hence If I Left the Zoo, where comfort zones are left for different experiences.

As for the band's place in Christian music, Haseltine sees Jars and the industry on opposite paths. "As [the Gospel Music Association] starts developing its criteria of what is Christian and what is not, we realize that we do not fit into that mold and that we have to move out into the world. They're building their fence around it, and our property is not inside the fence."

Likewise, those who secretly pray for "Flood II" or "Son of Love Song for a Savior" shouldn't hold their breath. After three albums, nine No. 1 singles and countless encounters with their own brokenness, Dan, Matt, Steve and Charlie are changed men--and still changing.

"Every record has been different," Haseltine says. "This one speaks well in terms of what we want it to sound like--the playfulness, the musical maturity. And if all goes well, we'll use Dennis on future records. I think this record may usher in what Jars of Clay will be."*

*Article transcribed from CCM Magazine, January 2000, pages 24-30.