Money. There’s an erroneous belief among some indies that signed artists make a lot of it. Here’s an overview of how I actually make money and how much. Reason #4 you might not need a label deal? You won’t necessarily make more of a living with one than you would staying independent and working hard and smart.
1) MERCHANDISE: I carry no more than 4 shirt designs, three CDs, a poster and a sticker - not a ton of stuff compared to some artists - and make between $2-4 dollars per person at a show - sometimes more and seldom less. Those figures are for merch sales at MY shows. When I’m playing with other artists, at a festival or as an opener for Jars of Clay for instance, those numbers drop dramatically to as little as $.05 per person in attendance. Out of that comes the cost of that merchandise to me, shipping costs, credit card transaction fees, taxes and management’s percentage. Indie artists can match or beat my income from merch easily.
2) TOURING: Being an opener on a large tour generally pays nothing. Opener are limited in what merch they can sell (one CD and one “other” usually). Openers generally received per diem (a daily allowance for food). They receive no salary but instead end up paying back their labels for the thousands (tens of thousands) paid out to buy a 15-20 minute opening slot on the tour. Merch are less for openers so factoring in my cost for making merch, paying management, and flights home to see family while on tour etc actually I lost money on two tours and eeked out a living on the others. Being an opener is an investment in the future and not something I do to make money TODAY.
3) RADIO: Thank God for ASCAP! A PRO (performance rights organization) surveys radio, tv, satellite radio and large venues to discover what music is being played. These players of music pay the PROs a fee for being able to play music and that fee is paid to writers (not artists) based on how many times their song showed up in the survey and a lot of other factors. The PROs are ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. I’m with ASCAP so I get payments every month from them. I own most of my publishing so my share is larger than many new artists on their first contracts - This is how I live. Check out these year-end totals for songs that got a lot of radio play (payments are made about nine months after actual radio play):
WELCOME HOME (#1 AC for 4 weeks, Charted on INSPO and CHR charts as well, 2nd most played song in 2001, still in rotation at major stations)
2002 $44,151
2003 $20,322
2004 $3,587
AFTER THE MUSIC FADES (#5 on AC chart, Charted on CHR as well, still in rotation at major stations)
2002 $9,671
2003 $4, 964
2004 $1,881
MOVE ME (#3 AC, still in rotation)
2002 $3,697
2003 $16,854
2004 $2,229
SHOULD I TELL THEM (#1 CHR, Still played a lot on CHR stations - here’s why some labels and artists love AC radio more than CHR)
2002 $3,987
2003 $1,267
2004 $1,736
ABBA FATHER (Top ten INSPO chart, still in rotation at some stations)
2002 $3,869
2003 $2,224
2004 $22
Keep in mind, again, as an indie you won’t get radio play no matter who promises you what. I’ve never seen an independent artist, who hasn’t had a major label deal in the past, in the top ten on any chart,
4) PUBLISHING: Publishers give advances - money given when a deal is signed that the writer pays back from their royalties. Every dollar that writer makes in the future goes directly to the publisher until the advance is paid off. Publishers can give large advances even for new artist/writers if they believe they’ll write a hit. Advances can range from 5K-40K for new artists - maybe more but I’ve never heard of that happening. Times are changing but there was an era in which new artists had to give their publishing to the publisher associated with the label. In other words signing to WORD record would require that Word Publishing own your songs. Same for all the majors. Now things are changing and that is no longer required everywhere. Because an artists does not have to give his/her publishing tot he label artists are said to be getting larger advances - being enticed to give their publishing up. I cannot disclose the amount of my advances but I can tell you I paid all of them back and made royalties way beyond them. From publishing I made more on the first record of course but I’ve averaged about 35K/year the last four years - I’m estimating here.
5) GIGS: New signed artists are lucky to get any guaranteed fee for a show. Starting out I got $400/show and that was with a song climbing the charts. Struck me as odd too. Or maybe you figure $400 isn’t bad, but factor in a road manager to handle the promoter and make sure technical needs are met and, most importantly, provide company and accountability on the road - yes, even Christian female fans get a little flirty and aggressive at times. A road manager costs money. New RMs can get as little as $50/show but the norm seems to be between $300-500/show among the artists I know. Ouch. Guaranteed fees for shows can be tens of thousands for a-list artists, but let’s be honest, you and I will never get that so why even discuss it? An average B or C level artist can get from $1500-$8000 for a show, depending on radio play, sales, demand in the area, cost to the artist (solo acoustic? full band? band with lighting and sound supplied by the artist? flying? driving? etc). I’m somewhere in the middle of th
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most of the time. Artists sometimes opt for no guarantee and a back end split (a percentage of tickets sold after promoter expenses) or a combination of the two (eg. $1000 and 50% of profits). I don’t like back end splits. I can’t plan my family’s life around “maybe money.” I need to know what I WILL get next month. Indie artists can almost match signed C artist revenue from gigs if they tour frequently, do a great job consistently, don’t have management and have well-attended shows. But that’s a lot of ifs isn’t it?
6) RECORD ROYALTIES: There usually are none from a traditional record deal. Royalties are eaten up by expenses that must be recouped (paid back) by the artist. Companies like INO and INPOP have developed new deals that require more investment from an artist into the record budget but yield more even splits of the profits to label and artist. Traditional deals, what most of us sign, still give the new artist less than 10% of suggested retail, or profits or some other number which usually isn’t enough to pay off the expenses of making the record (the recoupable balance). I know gold or platinum artists probably actually see royalty checks but I don’t know an artist personally who has recouped their balance at the label (made up of their percentage of marketing costs, recording costs, advance money etc). So don’t sign a deal thinking record royalties will come your way. They probably won’t.
Now, all that’s only half the picture - the honest picture of how I get paid. The other half can be summed up quickly: minus taxes, management (15-20% on everything and a smaller percentage sometimes on merch), booking agent fee (15-20%), band pay, business manager pay (you try figuring out artist taxes alone!), legal fees etc. In the end I KEEP 28% of the money I’ve just detailed for you. So in 2002 I made 44K on Welcome Home and I kept only 12K. Big difference. So do all the math and my first year as an artist I KEPT (lived on) 19K. It’s gone up from there of course but that gives you an idea of the starting place for a new artist with a song that’s getting played a lot - something I am extremely grateful to have benefitted from. I’ve known artists who worked as garbage men, waited tables, or taught private lessons to make a living while signed to major labels and reminiscing about the good old days when they made a living independently.
Sure I know an artist with a jet and a couple who are millionaires but they’re freaks of nature who’ve worked for many many years, own their publishing, get massive advances, sell massive amounts of records and have been favored with huge hit songs the likes of which you and I probably won’t ever write. So let’s be realistic. Don’t sign a label deal thinking you’re the exception. In fact don’t sign for money at all. All you really need financially are your needs met. If you’ve got that being independent then my advice is to learn how to be content with that instead of jumping the fence thinking there’s a lot more green on this side of it.
There are great reasons to sign a record deal. I’ll get to those. But money isn’t one of them. An indie artist can make a living and owe no one in the process. I’ll tell you how next time.
Hope this helps.
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(Top priorities: Gabriella, Gresham and Penelope)
Reason #2 why you might not need a record label? They don’t love your family, friends and church as much as you should.
Let me back up. If I ran a record company and wanted it to be both profitable for me and healthy for my artists right now I would only sign single people or married people without kids willing to travel together.
Right now CCM records sell best when they have the full support of radio play and touring behind them. But right now radio stations are playing fewer songs than ever before. So artists must tour incessantly to make up for that lost exposure. An artist can’t sell enough records to make a label the biggest profit possible (or any profit at all) without doing so. You have to be a road dog if you’re not a radio star.
The problem with touring is – and this is what no one wants to say out loud in CCM circles – it’s unhealthy for the artist and his/her family. The best scenario for a married artist is to share a bus/van/plane with their spouse. But many of us have spouses with attachments of their own back home in Nashville – friends and family they need to see, church services and opportunities to serve they shouldn’t miss. There’s a craving for neighborhood and normalcy that goes unmet on tour.
The need is greater when kids come along. I talked to a child psychologist soon after my first child was born about how to best manage touring and my family’s mental health. I knew from working at an orphanage the damage an absent father does to a child’s concepts of God and self-worth. It’s for a reason that the bible calls God our Abba (Daddy): Dad’s are important living metaphors for God, lending children their first glimpses of God’s character and love. The psychologist told me that under no circumstance is it ever healthy for a child over three and under adolescence to be without either parent for more than a few days. And it’s never healthy for a child to miss his/her routine for an extended period of time either. Kids, she said, need the same breakfast table, cereal, naptime and bathtub most days. It makes them feel safe.
And then there’s church. It’s ironic to me that “Christian” artists spend so little time in church, much less serving there. Our music informs the Church universal about doctrine, about the values of God. Yet we sometimes think we’ve arrived and no longer need to keep learning those things ourselves? We sometimes think we need no one mentoring and guiding and correcting and encouraging US as we do such dangerous work? Yes, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to speak about God for God, regardless of what your job is, without being tethered to God’s people – the same people on a consistent intimate basis.
I can’t get by with writing bad theology because my pastor or worship pastor or co-pastor or someone from my church would call me on it. And I couldn’t have made it through my first tumultuous year of touring (when I toured too much) without my Sunday School class and others surrounding my wife with care – serving her and checking in on her to an almost smothering degree. It was great to be loved by them through the hard times when I acted so stupidly. And I would have a larger ego than I already do if I didn’t crawl around on the floor with one year-olds from time to time on Sunday mornings or disciple a group of students or teach a bible study or serve in other ways that remind me I’m not special, I’m just one more functioning part of a greater organism called Church.
The harm done by travel is not the label’s fault. No one makes artists abandon kids, wives, churches and friends. Labels are businesses. They need profitable successful artists so that they can take care of their own families. But now matter how much money we artists lose them they can’t make us tour more. That’s our choice. And it’s a choice many artist friends of mine make. Then, when their marriage is crumbling and their kids don’t like them anymore, they point a finger at their label. But these artists chose popularity, happiness or ministry over community, church and family – on their own.
I say ALL this to say that whether you remain an indie artist or sign a deal you will sell more records if you play more shows. I’ll tell you how to get those shows in a later post but for now take the time to examine your life realistically – signed or unsigned.
If you’re single: How many days can you be gone each month and still have real relationships with non-musician friends and family? With that schedule can you commit to some gathering of Christians who will teach you and serve you but also encourage and correct you as you give back to them in any way they need on a regular basis?
If you’re married: How many days a month, and for how many days at a time, can you SAFELY be gone from home? What steps will you take to insure that your marriage stays healthy when you are gone? Do you and your spouse have a church you can lean on and serve? Do you have a minister or older Christian friend to ask you regularly how you’re serving your spouse, how your marriage is, how you are dealing with temptation on the road? Please, get someone to travel with you always. Never be alone on the road. Guard your marriage like the precious jewel it is.
If you have kids: Same questions for you but also are you willing to give up your career or change it drastically at the first sign of damage to your children? Do you have an older friend who is a parent, someone who has balanced work and family well and raised pretty normal kids, who can teach you how to parent if you get stumped?
Prayerfully answer these questions and wrestle with these realities with those closest to you. I’ll post soon about how to get gigs once you’ve figured out how many you and yours can truly handle.
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Reason #1 you might not need a label deal: You can promote yourself. (But it won’t be easy.)
I’m on a small independent label. “Independent” in this context means we are not owned and operated by one of the big three Christian label groups: Provident (PMG), Word/Warner, EMI (EMICMG). Being on a smaller label also means less money for promoting a record - not a lot less, but less. So I’ve been letting my label do their thing while also operating from the indie artist handbook. On page 47 I think it is the handbook says you are your best promoter. You know you and your audience better than anyone. Who better to spread the word about you and your music than you?
Here’s what labels would do to promote your music:
1) Create a publicity folder with:
-Clippings and reviews about your music
-Published articles by you
-Published interviews with you
-Publicity photos of you
-CD or sampler of your music
-Bio telling your story and the story of your current project
-Fact sheet detailing your radio and retail history as well as any tours you’ve been on and any award nominations or wins
-QUotes about you from important people
-Contact info for PR, booking and management
2) Send the publicity folder to media contacts and follow-up asking for:
-Reviews of the record
-Interviews with you
-Writing opportunities on the web or in print
-Any appearance on TV anywhere (TV is the most powerful promotion there is)
3) Build a website and put you on theirs
4) Let the retail marketers and radio promoters get the word out about you by:
-Getting your song played everywhere often
-Getting your CD in listening stations, on end-caps (the displays at the end of aisles)
-Getting your face on retail sales books
-Getting you a playing opportunity at industry events like CBA (Christian Booksellers Association), distribution showcases, GMA Week etc.
-Getting radio interviews
5) Creating and exploiting grassroots efforts like:
-E-mail viral marketing
-Street team promotions
Now, out of all that (and that’s not every trick in the label’s book but just the basics) what CAN’T you do for yourself if you have the money, time and desire? Nothing.
Here’s what YOU can do:
YOU CAN MAKE A FOLDER at Kinkos with the cover of your CD on it and all the necessary papers in it. You can get lists of media contacts and mail that folder to them. Granted, not all of your contacts will be of the quality the label has and not all of the contacts a label has are ever going to be available to you - or interested in you. But you can mail a folder out to a lot of folks in media and follow up with them. If you don’t have the time or the writing/creative skills but you have lots of cash you can hire a publicist out of Nashville for not cheap who will do this for you. Or you can hire a friend who majored in English and another with an artistic bent and another with good phone skills.
YOU CAN BUILD A WEBSITE for free! Yes, I said free. Blogger.com offers FREE blogging websites and there are other free site services out there as well. Problem is they don’t look so great. So I taught myself enough html to customize one and borrowed the brain of a nerdy friend to take it even further. I use that site for booking. Now, it’s not as purdy as my label-built site but it works. And who among us doesn’t have a friend or friend of a friend with web building skills? I met one indie artist who found a college class in which students build a website for a grade. He stood outside the class and offered $100 and his meal ticket to anyone from the class willing to build his artist site for him. He had takers and wound up making it a contest: Whoever built the best site got the cash and the food. Genius.
Other options are purevolume.com and myspace.com. I have pages at both. My Space is free and allows me to upload up to four songs, post video, make and send announcements to interested parties, blog etc. Purevolume costs money but it’s not much and it too allows easy posting of music and other promotional tools. (About now the labels are trying to figure out what they offer that you can’t do yourself. It gets worse for them.)
Here are some indie artist sites and sites that help indies on the web (not necessarily free):
jerimaeyoder.com
indieheaven.com
myspace.com
purevolume.com
grassrootsmusic.com
clemencyministries.com
robbieseayband.com
beggarsfortune.com
You can also create a Google Group. This group allows you to store all fan e-mail addresses collected at shows or from your numerous web sites in one place. Then you can quickly and easily blast all of them at once with an announcement about a contest a show or your new record deal. You can link people there from a button on your websites that says “e-mail list” and BAM! they enter their info and you have one more fan you can serve up rock n’ roll to via cyberspace.
Put a free tracker on your pages and find out how many hits you get each hour, day, month etc. Also learn what time zone they live in, if they came to you via a link from somewhere else, where that somewhere is, how long they visit your site each time, what time of day, what OS they use, what browser they use with what capabilities to handle video and audio etc etc.
The next level is buying server space for $5/month at A Small Orange or the like, uploading audio files and announcements in jpeg form and then pasting links to those audio/visual promotion tools in message boards, e-mails and on your web sites. Your small army of fans can beat the pants off any magazine ad in a matter of days if willing to pass the links along to people who’ll pass the links along.
You’re a promotion machine now! Look at you with a growing e-mail list, a couple of free web sites, folders flying all over the country and newsletters filled with tour dates and updates zinging through cyberspace to your Google Group.
Now, before you get all uppity there are things you CAN’T do for yourself on the promotions front. You can’t get on the radio in a big way. You might get a non-reporting station or two (stations that don’t affect the charts) but never the networks. There are people who would advise you to give it a try by hiring their buddy Mr. Independent Radio Promoter. He’s got a disc he sends out to radio stations just like the labels do. Thing is, no matter how good that promoter is (and he better be because he isn’t cheap) CCM radio playlists are shrinking. They’re half of what they were four years ago - around 12 current songs now. After you factor in core artists like Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, three songs by Jeremy Camp, two songs by Casting Crowns and Mercy Me - well, there’s not much room left for us C level signed guys much less a place for you. Save your money and buy more stamps.
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(ABOVE: Louisiana based Indie artist Jake Smith, pic from JakeSmithMusic.com)
“You MIGHT Not Need Nashville” is too long but much more accurate. By “Nashville” I mean the record labels based here of course. Nashville, the city, while a beautiful temperate place to plant yourself, is definitely not a NEED for you - mainly because there’s no good Tex-Mex here, but that’s another post.
You MIGHT need Nashville and I want to leave that door open upfront, before we get into why you might not. I hope, in however many posts this series takes, to answer questions I get often on the road about record labels and whether it’s better not to sign with one. I hope my little answers to these big questions help you appreciate where you are, gain a better understanding of what it is labels and signed artists do and inspires you to copy the things you end up liking about us and avoid those you don’t. Basically, I hope this little series gives you some wisdom and encouragement and helps you do whatever you do, wherever you end up doing it, a little better - armed with good information.
I get asked all the time on the road, by indie artists, if they NEED a label. Of course the answer is “I don’t know if YOU do”. But I know labels can be tremendous help to certain artists. Here’s what they might do for you:
A&R: Helping shape the artist and the repertoire (thus A and R). Christian Music labels (from now on called CCM labels here) aren’t, in my opinion, doing as much A as R these days. They don’t do much to determine and cultivate the artist’s performance, vocal style, musical direction and general skills. An extreme example of A done well would be a put together group - one that was created by a label or manager. They get vocal coaching, performance coaching, dance lessons, media training, styling, and have their musical direction largely determined by the label - they are the labels’ the creation. Another example would be what we witnessed on Ashley Simpson’s MTV reality series. The label controlled everything about her artistry until she wound up being more pop and less rock than she started out as - and sold more records than she would have.
What CCM labels do better is R. They shape the song writing and selection for a record. An artist who doesn’t write their own songs would have an A&R guy out meeting with publishers (companies that write songs and try to get them recorded) to explain what kind of songs the artist is looking for. When a publisher has something fitting the artist’s/label’s need they’ll pitch it to the A&R guy who may or may not include the manager and artist in it all. Ideally the A&R person, manager and artist would then choose the songs for the record. For a guy like me who writes his own songs an A&R guy determines when a song is in need of rewriting (something my publisher also does) or when a song is too this or that or just plain bad or good. In the end he decides, along with me and my producer and manager, what songs will make the record. As they listen A&R guys are thinking about art, marketing, radio, retailers, fans, clarity of message and lyric etc. The artist is usually just able to think about music. An artist is also possibly the least objective person in the room. They. after all, birthed these songs. Saying one of them isn’t good is like saying one of their kids isn’t as loved as the others. A mom always thinks her kids are beautiful right? So we need our A&R friend to tell us when our kid is actually the ugliest one in the class. (Wow, that analogy got weird fast didn’t it?)
And two more, but not the least, jobs of A&R are helping choose the producer and musical direction, and acting as the liaison between artist and label - they are the face of the large label, where the artist may not be able to work daily with every individual in the building.
MARKETING: This department at a label gets its hands in all departments. They lend wisdom to the A&R process but also to the selection of the radio singles, timing of everything, touring, retail strategy, internet presence, grassroots strategy etc. These people figure out what to tell the world about you and your music, how to do it, who to do it to and through, and when. They are the all powerful communicators of all things you. Marketing figures out who they want people to think you are (it’s not always who you really are) and decides how to get that image across. They also spend an equal amount of time building relationships you can’t build alone with retailers and other gatekeepers - convincing them you’re a great person or just a person making great music or just making music that will sell. They are your voice to the people you’ll never get to speak to. They paint the only pictures of you and your message most will ever see.
RADIO PROMOTION: Without going down a rabbit trail about radio I’ll just say CCM radio rules the CCM universe. They are the most powerful ingredient to sales and booking at the moment. They are also, at the moment, the hardest people to get help from. There so many artists and so few slots on a station’s playlist (half as many on average as four years ago when I started out) that the odds of getting played are slim. The odds of getting played a lot are dismal. The odds of an indie getting the time of day from CCM radio are zilch. To increase those odds an artist can write certain kinds of songs and sign with a label that has a great radio department. Radio promoters are important because they get your music on the airwaves in cities you may never get to visit. Better, they get the message in your music to thousands who might need to hear it but can’t make it to your shows.
FINANCIAL: Here’s the truth. Call me greedy or whatever you like but part of why I do this job is because I need to feed my family and keep the lights turned on. Those needs are met because my label. among others, pays me and because they pay FOR marketing, publicity, radio promotion etc. I don’t have thousands lying around to make a record and sell it. They do. Someone once said a label is a bank making loans with tremendous interest. That’s pretty accurate sometimes but I prefer to think of them as partners who split the work load - helps me sleep better anyway. I make the music and do the ministry, travel etc. They fund and sell it. If they stop funding and selling I won’t need them. If that happens I’m you, in my basement, wondering why my local station won’t play me and Mercy Me won’t return my phone calls begging to tour with them. (Actually, Mercy Me doesn’t return my phone calls NOW.) We’ll get to how exactly I make money - and how much - in a later post.
PUBLICITY: If marketing is your voice to the world, publicity might be their megaphone. My publicist works her tail off spreading propaganda, most of the time true, about me to her contacts in the media. Ever wonder how this week’s CCM magazine cover girl was chosen? The publicist scurries around behind the scenes, far far behind the scenes, handing out pre-releases, pitching stories to publications about their artist, and writing press releases every time I do something remotely interesting: “SHAUN GROVES LEARNS NEW CHORD.” And then their minions, the media, put that hearty tidbit of life-changing information in rotation on radio stations, magazines, webzines and the like.
Those are the main things a label does. There are labels that do even more - no label is the same - but these are jobs that every label SHOULD do or they’re just friends who take a lot of your money.
I hope this has you thinking already about whether you really NEED a label or not - whether you need what they have to offer. Today I’ve given us all reason to stand in awe and appreciation of the label machine. I’ve shared the good news about labels: they do stuff for artists that most artists can’t do alone. But as we continue to talk about being a label artist versus an indie artist I think you might find the label deal less and less attractive. That’s because, while I like and respect labels and what they do in general, I also think their services are getting easier for you to duplicate. These services will have to grow and evolve soon or labels will become less and less necessary and awe-inspiring to indies like you. Already, I’m meeting indies on the road with more passion and direction than many marketers, more work ethic and contacts than a publicist might have, more musical insight and knowledge of what the audience wants than some A&R guys, and the cash to make and sell music on their own. That should scare labels a little and inspire indies a lot.
More inspiration and fear served up soon.
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This article, reprinted with permission from Jewly Hight, originally ran in the Nashville Scene. When I post an article here at SHLOG I don’t do so because I agree with everything in it, but instead because the article made me think and I want to think some more out loud with you. So, read, think, comment, discuss. Here goes…
With God On Their Side?
(Gospel Music Association turns a blind eye to records that get spiritual without selling their souls to CCM subculture )
By Jewly Hight
If there was ever any question about whether an artist could make a gospel record that has nothing to do with the gospel music industry, the evidence is in. Last year, not one, but two people, Buddy Miller and Ben Harper, pulled it off, earning Grammy nominations in gospel categories for their latest albums. Meanwhile, the Gospel Music Association (GMA) did what any shortsighted governing body of spiritual music would do - ignored them. While it’s doubtful that either artist would’ve felt comfortable inside the contemporary Christian music bubble, it’s worth asking why their albums weren’t gospel enough for the GMA.
Illustration by Gilbert Ford
Miller’s Universal United House of Prayer and Harper’s There Will Be a Light, a collaboration with The Blind Boys of Alabama, both have enough gospel content to rival any of the albums that will prove winners at the GMA Awards April 13. The Grammys placed both records alongside GMA nominees like Randy Travis, The Crabb Family, Dottie Peoples and The Williams Brothers. Miller’s album received a mention in the “Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Album” category, while Harper’s received one for “Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album.” Neither, however, made the GMA list.
According to GMA guidelines, a record’s lyrics must be “based upon the historically orthodox Christian faith contained in or derived from the Holy Bible, or apparently prompted and informed by a Christian worldview” for it to be considered for an award. Both of the overlooked albums aced this lyrics test.
Miller, who frequently collaborates with his wife, Julie, a former contemporary Christian music (CCM) artist, made his most distinct faith statements to date on last year’s House of Prayer. On this album, Miller’s trademark hybrid of blues, soul, gospel and country brim with transcendental devotion. His ravaged vocals and alternately bluesy and keening guitar playing amplify the spiritual urgency of his lyrics, conveying meaning that words alone can’t possibly express.
Backed by the gospel-steeped hosannas of Regina and Ann McCrary, daughters of legendary Fairfield Four tenor the Rev. Sam McCrary, and borrowing songs from the late great CCM misfit Mark Heard and The Louvin Brothers, Miller recorded some seriously spiritual music. In “Is That You,” a song that he wrote with his wife Julie, he asks, “Lord, did you go down and take on the devil? / Lord, did you go down to hell for the key? / Buried in the ground, and then did you rise up? / Did you go down to hell and back for me?” Any writer would be hard pressed to come up with a more thoroughly gospel song than that.
Harper isn’t as associated with music of faith as Miller, but he has persistently included songs with spiritual themes on his albums. There Will Be a Light, his partnership with the venerable Blind Boys, yielded a surfeit of sacred material. Harper and his Innocent Criminals depart from their standard jam rock on this album. His distinctive singing and the deep, careworn voices of the Blind Boys form a gospel choir, conveying just the sort of spiritual fervor that you’d expect to hear through walls of a foot-stomping revival in full swing. “Take My Hand” deals with trusting God, “Wicked Man” warns that a life of selfish gain will end badly, and both “Church House Steps” and “Church On Time” blend Sunday morning imagery with visions of heaven.
But what’s gospel to the Grammys may or may not be gospel to the GMAs, and there’s more to this than lyrical content. First, gospel music’s gatekeepers suffer from a separatist mind-set. You’d think that an organization whose mission statement is “to expose, promote and celebrate the Gospel through music” would embrace anyone anywhere who creates good music that does this effectively. In reality, the CCM creed might more accurately read, “Blessed are those who target the right niche audience - that is, Christians who buy into the CCM subculture via Christian radio stations, retailers and concerts - for they shall be heralded as legitimately gospel.”
This is where mixing spirituality, art and commerce gets sticky. Anything produced outside the CCM sphere of influence, no matter how well-intentioned, is generally suspect. Artists who make faith-oriented music for the larger marketplace thus often go unnoticed, and many of them are probably relieved.
Then there’s the GMA’s apparent discomfort with complexity, ambiguity or anything that defies easy labeling. Other than traditional gospel and bluegrass forms, little space is made in CCM for nuanced, roots-oriented styles like folk, blues and Americana. There isn’t really a Christian NPR or AAA radio format to promote the growth of fringe artists. The GMA tends to promote artists who can be neatly pigeonholed and whose music presents an ideology that can be grasped on first listen. Even CCM luminaries like Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant and Sixpence None the Richer have incurred criticism for recording songs that aren’t transparently Christian enough.
With paradigms like these, it’s no wonder the GMA doesn’t comprehend, much less embrace artists like Buddy Miller and Ben Harper, who weave spirituality into the fabric of their music. Thankfully, Miller and Harper get to make the music they want to make. Just as salutary, even people who don’t patronize record bins marked “Christian” can enjoy it.
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