If you read this magazine, then you need to get a copy of Jerry Wilson’s book God is Not Dead (and Neither Are We). It is essential reading for people that like to remember the music that we cover. The stories that are told in the pages of that book will inspire and scare you. Jerry has a few projects he is working on now, so we thought it would be a be a good time to catch up with him and get his thoughts on a wide range of topics, as well as updates on his book projects.
What is the current status of your upcoming book?
Depends on which book you’re discussing. I had started work last year on a companion volume to First and Forgotten with a focus on the Maranatha artists of the ’70s, but life has very much gotten in the way. I’ve had two bereavements in my family this year, and between that plus an increased work load at the day job there hasn’t been a lot of energy left over. That said, First and Forgotten will be available on or before January 8th of next year, which is not coincidentally the date Undercover and Crumbächer plus some pleasant surprises I am not at liberty to divulge will be playing a concert at Crossroads Church in Corona, California. Be there.
For those that aren’t familiar with the Maranatha artists, which individuals or bands will you be interviewing for the companion volume?
Bands will be Aslan, Mustard Seed Faith, the Way and the like. Individuals will be artists like Bob Bennett, Michele Pillar, Kelly Willard and others.
What made you want to change the name of God’s Not Dead (And Neither Are We)? First and Forgotten seems a bit more… pointed?…. than the first title – does it seem like too many have forgotten?
The name change came at the suggestion of a wise individual who’s enjoyed far greater success than I in the print media world. His thought was the title should be darker, and as you observed more pointed. I came with several different possible titles, ran them by friends and family, and First and Forgotten was the unanimous choice.
It’s an appropriate title when you consider it in light of today’s music scene. Kids are scooping up Switchfoot and Pillar and Relient K discs and downloads by the score, yet they have no idea who paved their way. It’s not like the mainstream rock scene, where many fans of current artists can not only tell you their lineage, they also listen to the same artists. That’s not the case with Christian alternative.
Have you ever thought about interviewing bands like Switchfoot, Reliant K, etc to see what they know about the bands that came before them and making a book about that?
Thought about, yes. Gone through the hassle of attempting to wind my way through managers and record labels to actually reach them, no. I wouldn’t mind talking to them, though. As I understand it, the father of one of the members of Switchfoot was in Parable, which was one of the early Maranatha bands.
Are there going to be any changes to First and Forgotten other than the title?
I’ll be going through each chapter, tightening and tidying. A mistake I made with the book the first time through was relying far too heavily on transcripts of the interviews I did without checking them against the actual interviews. That will be rectified with First and Forgotten. Not that I believe there was any misquoting before, but it will be more accurate, more true to the artist’s words. In short, it’ll be re-sourced from the original master tapes!
Are there any interviews that you wanted to do for Gods Not Dead but couldn’t? Any chance we will see a part 2 or even an extended edition with bonus interviews?
Gene Eugene.
Among those available for interviews, it’s more a case of people I should have interviewed to make the book more complete. I should have talked to the members of Adam Again; I should have talked to Mike Knott. Doubtless there are others, but those are the ones who stand out.
Part two, or extended edition… I won’t say no, but at this time nothing is planned. Besides, you guys are doing such a great job interviewing people I’m not sure there’s a need for a second part or extended version!
What has been the general reaction to the book so far? There seem to be several stories that expose certain areas of life that the CCM machine has sought to cover or ignore through the years – any backlash from that?
The reactions I’ve received have been nothing but positive. It was, and is, my hope that the book will have the same effect on those who read it that the Broken Records reunion concert in 2005 that sparked its creation had on me. Namely, the realization that while life has gone on, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. I had done a very good job for twelve years prior to the concert of putting Him on the back burner. My excuse was bitterness over how my time in CCM as a journalist had ended. The concert turned me back toward Him.
My love of this music and the people who created it isn’t a nostalgia trip for when we were the young lions who were going to turn the church on to real rock’n’roll, and didn’t know all the questions but were quite certain John 3:16 was the answer. Certainly I love the music itself; there was some great stuff made back then. That’s not the key, though. The key is how the music spoke to me and others. Well, it still speaks. These artists still have something to say. That’s why I wrote the book.
As far as any negative comments from current or former members of the industry, either they haven’t read it, or since it won’t impact their present-day sales they don’t care.
I have noticed from your blogging and tweeting that you are politically conservative. But your handling of the topic of homosexuality in your book seems different than what I would expect from someone that runs in Republican circles. What do you think about that whole issue?
Wait — I’m politically conservative? So that’s why there’s a “Palin in ’12” button on my cubicle wall…
Seriously, my prayer is that my political views reflect my faith. Faith first, though.
I must note that there is no dichotomy between conservative political views and gay rights. Just the other weekend, a group called GOProud had a convention which they dubbed “HomoCon,” with the featured speaker being Ann Coulter. You’re not going to get more conservative than that!
Back to my own views. In my time in the corporate world — I work for an insurance provider — I’ve become quite familiar with those above me playing the boss card. Well, who’s the ultimate Boss? Hint: not Bruce Springsteen.
I’m too busy working out my own salvation with fear and trembling to play morality judge, and I am more than willing to let God be God. I’ve come to realize I’m not up for the job. It’s not that if I see someone messing up I’m going to stay mute for fear of appearing judgmental, for not helping someone get away from behavior that’s destructive to themselves and others is just as wrong as hypocritically judging others. But if someone’s gay, what am I supposed to tell them — don’t be?
I freely state that I don’t know gay. I don’t get gay. I don’t understand gay. But there it is anyway. You deal. Either that, or go join Westboro Baptist.
The Bible says what it says. Don’t like it? Argue with Him about it, not me. Let me know where that gets you. Hint: the losing end of the argument. Every single time.
That duly noted, God put on His big boy pants a very, very long time ago. He’s more than capable of dealing with each of us in terms of who, and where, we are. If God can call a man who, as a king, got one of his most loyal subject’s wife pregnant, tried to convince her husband to leave the battlefield and bump uglies with her to cover for the pregnancy, and when that didn’t work deliberately put the husband in a battlefield situation where he’d be killed so he could (ahem) “console the bereaved widow” a man after His own heart, I’m inclined to believe God has a far different view of what matters than we ofttimes hold.
It seems that there is extreme misunderstandings out there about conservatives (old, close-minded people that don’t want change, etc). Do you ever run in to this? Where do you think it comes from?
How long do you have?
A lot of the misunderstanding stems from the same reason there is so much misunderstanding about Christianity and Christians. That is, the more publicly vocal elements tend to be the more extreme elements. If your only exposure to something is a freak show, how are you supposed to know otherwise?
There is also a lot of willful ignorance perpetrated by the media, which despite its protests against being labeled liberal is in fact just that. It eagerly seizes on the fringe, and when it can’t find one invents one. Apparently a retiree holding a hand-written sign that reads “Taxed Enough Already” is a dangerous radical. Gee, who knew.
The principals of conservative thought — limited government, individual freedom, individual responsibility — are far too often buried beneath an avalanche of rhetoric and misinformation. People believe as they choose, ofttimes regardless of readily available information to the contrary. If you want to know what Rush Limbaugh thinks, don’t listen to someone telling you what he thinks. Listen to his show. If you want to know Sarah Palin’s views on foreign policy, don’t watch Saturday Night Live. Listen to her speak; read what she’s written. If all someone can offer in response is a smug, blanket rejection because they’re the smartest person in the room — and it must be true, because they say so — they offer nothing.
Political debate ought to be both sides bringing facts, logic and reason to the table in support of their arguments. We have precious little of that today. Instead, we have schoolyard name-calling, followed by even more schoolyard-ish cries of “they started it.” Not helping.
As far as whether I’ve encountered “but how can you be…” scenarios, sure. Many, many times. You smile and shrug it off.
Same deal as when people learn I’m a Christian. All I can do is smile again and assure them I use my Bible for reading, not hitting.
As someone that has followed music for so long, what do you think went wrong with the industry as a whole? What could be done to fix it?
You’d think that between a couple of tornadoes and a flood over the past several years Nashville would have gotten the hint by now, wouldn’t you?
Snark aside, what went wrong was the industry started in its infancy when it chose to align with the cultural ghetto of the more vapid side of the evangelistic church rather than be actual record companies. In the old days, major labels invariably had a gospel division, and everything they released went into the Gospel bin of the record racks at your local department store. It was, as far as the labels and market were concerned, nothing more or less than another genre of music.
Regrettably, when CCM came into being it did so with a handful of labels that had little to nothing to do with the record industry as a whole. As a result, the music was only available in Christian bookstores, which immediately dropped the number of potential customers to virtually nil. The bookstores, with very few exceptions, weren’t equipped either logistically or philosophically to sell CCM. Their clientele, with very few exceptions, weren’t equipped either logistically or philosophically to buy CCM. Evie was as radical as they were willing to get, and even she was too out there for many.
You had the occasional attempt by regular labels to set up a CCM division — MCA had Songbird in the late ’70s, CBS had Priority in the early ’80s, later on Warner Bros. created Warner Alliance. They all were shut down. Why? They didn’t make any money because they didn’t sell any records. Well, how could they? The regular marketplace had already written off gospel in general, and CCM in particular, as being worth the space in its racks because anyone who bought CCM went to the Christian bookstores, which were loathe to push product from evil secular labels no matter the artists involved. Meanwhile, the same artists weren’t selling anything in the Christian bookstores for the reasons I just mentioned. Why throw a bunch of promotional money out there for these artists, with no discernible reason why you should believe it’ll be rewarded, when you know you’ll get a return on your investment in Elton John, or Billy Joel or the Doobie Brothers?
It wasn’t that these artists were looked down on artistically. Miles Copeland, who ran IRS Records when it was a very big deal, liked the Choir. But he didn’t sign them. Why? He didn’t think he could sell enough of their records to make it worth his while. Why? The isolation from the general music world, and the ostracization within the Christian marketplace.
Fix it? You can’t. You can’t go back. It’s acceptable now to be a Christian artist. Meanwhile, the entire music industry is disintegrating. It’s not nearly as much a case, despite what the industry believes, of this being a result of file-sharing. Rather, it’s an inability to release music anyone genuinely cares for or about. That’s why 256 kbps MP3s are the perfect medium for music today. They sound terrible, and they can be deleted with a push of a button. It’s a disposable medium for disposable music.
You touched a bit on file-sharing. Do you think recent changes in technology have been good or bad for the industry as a whole?
They have hurt the industry in as much as the industry has been woefully tilting at windmills. Instead of embracing the technology, they have spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy chasing after file-sharers. Granted, these people are ripping off the artists, a fact conveniently ignored by file-sharers who insist they’re cyberspace Robin Hoods sticking it to The Man. But they’re a very small part of the problem.
On U2’s website, you can buy a download of one of their albums as either a medium-quality MP3 or full-quality FLAC. It amazes me the industry hasn’t realized this is the only way to go. It is not that expensive to dust off original master tapes, even those needing special care or restoration because of the tape itself deteriorating, and go through your entire catalog, making it all available online. Yet they don’t. The labels would rather watch tapes rot than spend a few dollars to generate revenue from people buying the music they grew up with.
itself deteriorating, and go through your entire catalog, making it all available online. Yet they don’t. The labels would rather watch tapes rot than spend a few dollars to generate revenue from people buying the music they grew up with.
This is especially reprehensible in the Christian marketplace. These albums are sacred. They brought people to Christ. They nurtured people in the faith. They blessed, they challenged and they comforted the listeners. To not make the music available is flat-out sinful.
Two hypothetical questions:
- Someone from a big time label comes to you wanting to put together a super group of “unknown” Christian musicians from the 80s/90s to record an album. Anyone you pick can’t say no. Who would you pick and why?
- This same someone likes the results so much that they want to fund a series of re-issues of ignored Christian albums from the same time period picked by you. They are going to put enough money behind it to get them heard everywhere. Which albums would you pick and why?
Why are you trying to get me in trouble with anyone I don’t include in the group, or whose records I don’t mention? They all have my phone number, you know!
Okay, I’ll take my life rather loosely in my hands and answer. First, a supergroup. What I believe would be fascinating, in terms of what they’d do musically, would be Sean Doty from Veil of Ashes on guitar and lead vocal, Mike Roe also on guitar and vocal, Tim Chandler on bass and Aaron Smith on drums. That would be awesome.
As far as re-issues, I’d put together compilations for everyone in the book plus Adam Again, along with re-releasing everything in everyone’s catalog. I would dearly love to do that, and not in the hypothetical, either. Re-mastered, re-mixed where necessary to bring them up to snuff sonically. The compilations would be more for potential new fans than existing, because it is impossible to put together a compilation of any artist that will satisfy everyone. You’re always going to have “how could you leave off that; how could you include this instead of that.” So, make the entire catalog available so people can have the records as they remember them. But push the compilations, hopefully arrange for some touring if the artists are interested. I’ll write the liner notes and concert programs. It’d be an honor.
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