GUEST POST by Danny Barnes, formerly of Bad Livers:
On the weekend of November 14 and 15 I attended my first “christian music” conference, the Christian Music Summit in Redmond Washington, near Seattle. It was a very interesting experience and in this article my idea was to compare and contrast the secular mainstream type music conferences I’ve attended in the last twenty years or so with my experience at the CMS.
I have only started paying attention to christian radio in the last six months or so, finding myself on the worship team [church band] at my church and playing quite a few of the songs heard on the Seattle contemporary christian music station. So when my pastor told me about the conference and asked me to go, it sounded like a new experience. Off we went. I’ve probably played and worked at about twenty or more music conferences of various stripes in the secular world. about 15 SXSW, CMJ, IBMA several times, Folk Alliance, most of the obvious ones that relate to my work. I found the CMS to be a very different scene in particular about this one issue:
Typically at a “secular” conference, folks are wrapped up in self and self promotion. They are usually giving off the vibe of “hey look at me! I’m so great and I’m in the club. and you aren’t.” Folks get rewarded for this behavior in that world so it’s the way they relate to one another. In other words, that scene can be based on flesh and works. Moving into a group of folks that don’t work that way was a welcome relief. The whole thing at CMS was about Jesus. So it was very interesting to see a top Christian artist play, on a very good stage with excellent sound, lights, and a real production and find them talking about Jesus instead of themselves. That was really different. One of the artists I saw, when the audience erupted in applause said, “let’s applaud God!” and he started clapping raising his hands and lifting it up to God It was also cool the see the lyrics to the song put up on the screen behind them so the audience could sing the songs too. That was really cool.
That struck me as significant. I have never seen that happen in “secular” music. In the mainstream world, people are clawing all over each other “look at me, buy my CD, here’s my promo kit, visit my site, etc. let me tell you how wonderful I am.” So I guess the main difference I saw was people working on “how can I serve the lord and tell people about Jesus?” instead of “how can I get people to pay to see me and how can I tell them how great I am?”
I never realized how much that attitude of self is woven into the secular music world. I knew that I felt kind of icky after going to some of those types of conferences and needed to decompress and be alone and take a shower and stuff. You know how when you get in a weird environment you kind of get a little sick or stressed from it. Playing jobs in that world and being around some of those musicians and promoters and hangers-on can make you feel the same way. Kind of drained and worn out. But when you find yourself in a positive environment, you feel like going and doing something with your art. Overall folks seemed much happier at CMS in comparison to the secular conferences I have attended.There wasn’t that sense of desperation. That was replaced with something more akin to joy.
Another thing that was cool about CMS was that there were classes on how to play better. Usually at secular conferences they mostly have workshops on how to take a good promo picture, how to get your music heard by a label and all the business type stuff and few workshops on actually playing. I have often felt that it would be a good idea to encourage practicing and getting better on one’s instrument and to work on making the art better instead of trying to get record deals. They had lots of classes on playing and sound and lights and stuff like that at CMS. Many times there were several classes at once I was interested in.
One thing I heard in particular that I liked, Paul Jackson Jr. said, at a master guitar class “the more you can do, the more you learn, the more places God can use you.” I really took that to heart and felt like that was a good message. At another workshop I heard the teacher say “if you try to do this for the wrong reasons, God will take you out into the desert for a long time.” The same person also said, “don’t despise the days of little things.” This seemed like information and ideas that would actually help someone in the arts. Another teacher said emphatically “the great American disease of materialism will keep you from doing a lot of things!”
It’s very cool how there is a context for musicians in the Christian world. This realm is growing instead of shrinking. There’s lots of people writing songs, there’s lots of radio stations, there’s lots of worship teams [church bands], lots of places to play, magazines, gear, labels, in short there’s a healthy environment, a good scene, as it were, a healthy mainstream and a healthy underground.
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Danny Barnes wrote, produced, sang and played in the seminal punk rock bluegrass band Bad Livers. He has gone on to write scores for movies, his own solo career, and also to perform as sideman for great musicians like Dave Matthews, Bill Frisell, Tim O’Brien, and Robert Earl Keen. He has a lot of records out of his own music and there are hundreds more records out with him as a session musician. He was raised in the Church of Christ and now attends the New Life Assembly of God in Port Townsend Washington, where he plays on the worship team when he is not traveling.
Here we are at the end of the year again and it’s time to gather our thoughts and share our opinions. I’d love for you to share your thoughts about this past year; what did you like, what did you not, and why? What was your favorite music? Did you like a certain book? Did you gain a lot from a particular author? Did you “rediscover” or possibly discover for the first time a band from the past?
This week contains one of the very few days that Americans stop wanting, stop striving and for once, express gratitude. The fourth Thursday of November commemorates Thanksgiving, a North American holiday to give thanks at the end of the harvest season. Most believe that the holiday came to be as a result of the early settlers of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. These early settlers were particularly grateful to Squanto, the Native American and former British slave who taught them how to both catch food and grow corn and also served as their native interpreter. Without Squanto’s assistance, the settlers might not have survived in the New World.
