The members of Caedmon's Call have learned a thing or two about patience. In fact, it goes to the very roots of the band--which, like many others, was formed because a boy wanted to impress a girl.
"Danielle and I started the band in our church in Houston about seven years ago," singer Cliff Young explains. "She's my wife now; we've been married over a year. Danielle and I first played a Rich Mullins song in church. After that we played around, doing Bible studies, stuff like that."
Sure enough, he admits, it was part of his plan to get a date--they just took their time getting serious. "Actually, you're the first person to ever figure that out," he says, laughing. "The thing is, she was 15 when we started touring, and we were really committed to the band. It wasn't the time. At least I've got my priorities right."
Ever since, "patience" has been part of the Caedmon's Call experience. It seems they've always taken the long road--whether you're discussing their nonstop touring, the way they take the time to connect with their fans, or the fact that their latest album, 40 Acres, has been a long time coming.
While the album is a record of how the sound of the seven-piece band has matured and evolved, 40 Acres also represents the sound Caedmon's Call has always had: The acoustic guitars are up front, the vocals are strong, and the rhythm section of organ, bass, drums and world percussion adds its signature eclectic elements.
"I feel like we've finally settled into the sound that is us," says vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Derek Webb. "The new record is much more organic. The first [Caedmon's Call, Warner Alliance] was a big hodgepodge of experimentation with a bit of our style mixed in. I think the band's identity is much more apparent on this record, even though we did use a lot of extra stuff. The way it was mixed, I think you can tell what's really important for us. And, we've gotten back to our folk roots a little bit."
The process differed greatly from past Caedmon's Call projects, which often had to be thrown together piece by piece in the studio. This time, the band spent all of June 1998 in the hills of central Texas recording demos at Willie Nelson's Pedernales Studio. Without the outside influence of producers, record execs or management, they were able to develop the songs as they wished.
With their own vision so defined, the band made the trip to Nashville to work with producer Glenn Rosenstein (U2, Ziggy Marley, Plumb), whose precision and work ethic drew from the band their finest performances to date.
"Working with Glenn was really good for the band because he's so meticulous," bassist Aric Nitzberg says.
The immediacy on 40 Acres, Cliff says, was captured the old fashioned way: "We recorded it live, except for the vocals and a very few overdubs. The record before, we'd tracked everything. One of the first things our producer said was, Everyone says it's your live show that makes you, so we're going to record this whole thing live."
"All the acoustic and some of the electric parts were recorded live," Derek says. "Some of the songs have two acoustics so we played through it acoustic, me and Cliff, and then went back in and layered in some electric. But we did record two guitars live on every song; that's how many hands we have."
While everyone admits that Caedmon's Call was a successful debut outing (selling a cool quarter million copies), there are suggestions that expectations ran higher. Hampered by the fact the Warner Alliance label lost 85 percent of its staff within weeks of the release and later folded suggests untapped potential.
Though the band picked up four No. 1 Christian radio singles and won the Dove Award for "Modern Rock/Alternative Album of the Year," they are recognizably disappointed they've only worked primarily in the Christian subculture since the 1997 release. After all, their following is rooted almost entirely on mainstream college campuses.
"We're definitely all Christians," Cliff says, "but I honestly don't believe that you can define our music as 'Christian' or 'secular,' or whatever. We'd be kidding ourselves to say the majority of the people at our shows aren't Christians--of course they are; at least 90 percent of our audience, even at the colleges, find out about it through FCA [Fellowship of Christian Athletes] and other campus organizations.
"But we do get that overlap. The last time we played Duke [University] we had three or four hundred drunk fraternity guys/sorority girls. So, we've had that connection."
But Cliff's not as impressed with a person's call to a "music ministry" as he is a musician's commitment to make real, honest art. "As Christians we're all called to be in a ministry of some sort," he explains. "Whether you're a doctor or a lawyer or whatever your profession, God wants to use you. But the Bible says to play skillfully. If you are not called to be a musician, then why music ministry? Your gifts and talents need to lie in the field of music."
They express those gifts and talents throughout 40 Acres with songs that explore spiritual and human themes of love and relationships. "40 Acres paints a picture of redemption," drummer Todd Bragg explains. "God is a very big God, and His redemption is very big."
Many of the songs find fresh approaches to familiar spiritual terrain: "Where I Began" touches on the inability of God's family to escape His household; "There You Go" pulls references from throughout the Bible to show how Christ redeems even the most unlikely things; and "Table for Two" finds the writer seeking to understand God's sovereignty.
Other songs show the band stretching into new lyrical territory, such as "Somewhere North," which Derek originally wrote for the girl he thought would be his wife. "She lived north of me, in Missouri," he says. "When those plans ended up falling apart before my eyes, the words I'd written began to take on a new meaning. I realized that I'm only stable when I fix my eyes on Christ. Anyone else would surely let me down. The ironic thing was that the metaphor still applied. I would simply have to direct my eyes a little farther north to find the love I was looking for."
But even with a popular new record in stores, Caedmon's Call remains firmly committed to their indie roots--and to the fans who've been with them from the beginning (without a major label, the group managed to move 60,000 copies of their independent debut, My Calm // Your Storm). Helping them in this is Kirby Trapalino, who has managed the group in the past and now runs Grassroots Promotions. He's seen the band use the power of its music, along with promotional guerrilla tactics, to break down barriers, getting themselves heard in places where Christian bands are often unwelcome.
With a schedule of more than 100 dates a year, from Harvard University to L.A.'s House of Blues, Caedmon's Call's sphere of influence will only expand. They press on with purpose, as they always have. "We want to give a genuine, real-life picture of what it means to be a Christian, on and off stage," Todd says. "We have never wanted to be just entertainers."
It comes down to relationships, Trapalino points out. "What we've tried to establish since day one is we're here to connect with our fans, not just be a band onstage who plays some songs and then disappears," he says. "Back in the day when you'd only have 50 people at a show, you'd almost covet those relationships, they were so special. We wanted a way to hang onto those relationships, and we've been able to do that through our mailing list and website."
He says the band's broad appeal and strong, grassroots fan base comes from their ability to share themselves with their audience in a positive, affirming way. "I think it has a lot to do with stage presence; it's not your typical live show. They'll stop in the middle of a set, ask for requests and cover whatever people suggest. They tease each other up on stage, and I think people appreciate their realness. The music and the lyrics and the other factors all come into play at some point, but by and large it's the human connection."
It's been Trapalino's gig to mobilize fans, and his latest offering is a fan club that grew out of requests for permission to share and sell live bootleg tapes. "The Guild has been a fun deal. We decided to clean up some of the recordings and create an archive, get it mastered and put it on a CD that we could sell. We liked the idea of an official newsletter, but it's more of a low-budget literary publication. We call it Thirsty Plants, which is made up of submissions from other Guild members and contributions from the band."
He says Guild membership has more concrete benefits, as well: Membership not only includes an archive CD, but also a backstage pass, which--while it does not get you free entry into the show--grants access to a room where Guild members can gather and chat with band members before the show.
For Cliff, the Guild is an extension of what all Christians ought to be about, creating community. "As Christians, one thing we're called to be is vulnerable," he says. "If anyone should be open and honest and lay it all out there on the line for everyone to see, it should be a Christian. Jesus was very open and vulnerable. We go through certain things as Christians; God may use a hard time to teach us, so we learn more about ourselves or God, or whatever it may be. If you're a speaker you speak about these things, a teacher teaches, but if you're a songwriter or a singer you write songs and sing about them. That's what we try to do every single night when we're out there."
In a sense, Caedmon's Call is reaching out to a marginalized group of people. While the Church is excellent at addressing the needs of families and teens, it is greatly lacking in ministry to college students, singles and other young adults. It's with that audience Caedmon's Call really connects.
The group, its support staff and fans basically make one huge extended family. "You don't just have the people who play in the band," B-3 organist Randy Holsapple says. "Maybe that's just the people you see, but you've got the management, the songwriters, the fans--and we're all Caedmon's Call. It's not just seven people on stage."
It also includes other artists. On the tours following their major-label debut, Caedmon's Call rejected the industry standard of having opening acts pay the headliner for the privilege to play. They turned down appeals from several well-known artists and decided instead to bring with them independent musician friends whom they respected and enjoyed.
And now they have taken it a step further. Seeing the need to cultivate good music, Cliff recently started his own record label, Watershed Records, a subsidiary of Essential. Through Watershed, he hopes to enable some of these artists to get the national attention he believes they deserve.
"So far, we've signed Bebo Norman and Andrew Peterson," says the unlikely record exec. "Andrew's toured with us--he's an unbelievable songwriter, a lot like Rich Mullins, very much aimed at the contemporary Christian music market, but someone who's going to be right in the middle of it. He's unbelievably honest, unbelievably vulnerable. Bebo's a singer-songwriter, more of a David Wilcox, Shawn Colvin kind of a thing."
While fans are an integral part of the Caedmon's Call community, the band dislikes the term--they see their audiences not as "fans," but as fellow travelers on the road of life.
Often, the band will catch a phrase yelled from the crowd that will dovetail into a lively exchange in the middle of a set. The group also committed years ago that the Caedmon's Call experience wouldn't end until the last person left the building. That promise has resulted in the band spending hours after concerts, usually cross-legged on the corner of the stage, in discussions about life, lyrics and faith. "The fact we share ourselves brings our fans to say they've been through the exact same things," Cliff says, "or share what they're going through, or what a song has meant to them."
"After the show, the band members trickle down into the audience and just talk with people for hours," Trapalino says. "I think it's that personal availability people have connected with."
As vocalist Danielle Young explains, "These people are more than fans; they have become our friends and we've invested in each other personally. They're our community."
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