Voices in Shadows

The Choir - Online and Up Close

For more than a dozen years,

The Choir

Derri Daugherty, Steve Hindalong, Dan Michaels and Tim Chandler

has been acknowledged by both industry insiders and fans as one of the most innovative modern rock bands in Christian music. Recently the band made the decision to step back from its grueling tour schedule and re-evaluate its future. As The Choir prepared to do what it's calling its "last major tour," in conjunction with the release of its critically-acclaimed new album, Free Flying Soul, Hindalong, Daugherty and Michaels sat down for an exclusive interview with Bruce A. Brown of CCM Online.

CCM: Let's go back a few years. There must be a least a few folks who don't know how The Choir first got together.
DD: Steve and Tim Chandler, who was our original bass player, went to college together. And Tim and I were playing in the band of a TV evangelist. So Tim mentioned to me that he knew a guy who played drums and he mentioned to Steve that he knew a guy who played guitar. We kind of got together from there. That was 1979-1980. So we've been playing together 15 years, even though we didn't do any recording that early on.

CCM: So when did you come into the picture, Dan?
DM: Around 1985. I was playing in the little orchestra at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, California. A friend of Derri's was looking at this bulletin board that had musicians looking for gigs on it. He knew Derri was looking to add a sax player to the Youth Choir, to set their sound apart from a lot of the other "New Wave" bands around Orange County. I knew he'd been influenced by groups like Psychedelic Furs and Romeo Void, both of which featured sax players. So I get this call: "Hi, I've got this band called Youth Choir. I wanted to know if you could get together with us some time?" And I said, "Heck, yeah, I'll check that out." A couple weeks later, Derri calls up Steve and [original bassist] Mike Sauerbrey and says, "We've got to audition this sax player." I don't know how I ended up getting in the band, because I had....
SH: ....a beard! And back then, you know, it was the mid-80's. Nobody had any facial hair. Right before Dan arrived, Derri had said, "Gee, I hope he doesn't have a beard." So there we were, unloading my truck, and we look at each other and Derri says, "He's got a beard!" (Guffaws throughout studio....)
DM: I was a goof. It took me a couple years to really get a vibe; to figure out how we could all click together. I remember, it might have even been the first night I played with the band, and I asked Steve, "Do you like that one song from Don Francisco, 'He's Alive?'
SH: Even more ironic than the fact that I do like that song is, if you look at pictures of Dan from back then, and then you compare that to the very trendy hair styles and clothes that Derri and I were sporting, Dan has remained far more hip looking.

CCM: Well you guys haven't really bowed to too many trends.
DD: My hair's always been long. But we did the whole "can of hairspray before the gig" thing; that was a pretty bad time. We really stacked our hair up and nailed it in place.
DM: I remember the Steve Taylor tour we did in the mid-80s; it was a competition.
SH: By the end of that tour, the band, and even Steve, were trying really hard to get their hair up there too.

CCM: So who was in the band at that time?
DM: When I first joined the band, Mike Sauerbrey was the bass player of choice. Then from there, it was back to Tim Chandler, then Bill Batstone for awhile, then Robin Spurs.
SH: Yeah, Bill was really in for a very short time as bass player.
DD: But wasn't he in at the same time as Robin? He started playing keyboards and rhythm guitar.
DM: He never did any extended tours with us. So, I came in just as Voices In Shadows was about to come out. Sometime in 1985. So, I played on Shades of Gray, Diamonds & Rain and on down the line.

CCM: What are the earliest recordings of The Choir people can find, if they are diligent?
DD: I'm not sure I want to answer that (laughs). I wouldn't want people to waste their money! Actually, we're on a 1984 sampler called What's Shakin', put out by the Ministry Resource Center. That was an off-shoot of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, which tried to help young bands get product out to sell at shows. In fact, Undercover and Altar Boys are also on that LP.
SH: Remember vinyl?

CCM: What was one of the first songs that represents The Choir finding its own style?
SH: I think when you listen to the songs that Mark Heard produced in 1985--which were basically demos--those stand up better along side our current sound than a couple of albums in between, because they were just us playing. I think we came into our sound or songwriting style in 1987, with Chase The Kangaroo.
DD: From that album on, we've basically written the same way. On Diamonds & Rain (1986), we had a lot of those songs before we went into the studio; [producer] Charlie [Peacock] brought some songs in, and Steve wrote lyrics to Charlie's music. But with Chase The Kangaroo, that was the first album where we didn't have anything written when we went into the studio and we came out with an album's worth of songs.

CCM:So would "Sad Face" [from Chase] represent The Choir coming into its own as writers and as a band?
SH: I think "Sad Face" was one of the very first times we knew we written a very powerful or moving song. That only happens with maybe two or three songs on an album.

CCM: Have you been able to tour consistently, or at least when you've wanted to?
DD: We've toured a lot, from the very beginning.
SH: It's never been easy, but we love to play and we've tried really hard to get across the country lots of times. We're probably the only California-based, modern rock band that came out of that whole post-punk scene that managed to do national tours from the beginning. It's always a money-losing proposition. We got some high-exposure opening dates, and we got a little record company help. But in the end, it's always been the band that's paid the freight.

DD: We've made it cross-country almost every year for over ten years. We actually did a tour before our first album was out.
SH: At the very first Cornerstone in 1984, we were the first band to play, at noon, on the first day. We created a one month tour around our visit to Illinois, with no album.
DD: We actually made a little single, just to have something to sell.
SH: We were going to Cornerstone and we had no product. So we pressed up a couple songs we had recorded live at Calvary Chapel, just have something to sell for a buck.
DD: One of the songs really sounds like Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper." Back when every song you have sounds like something else.
SH: A cross between "Don't Fear The Reaper" and "Message In A Bottle." (Uproarious laughter fills the studio...)
DD: This year, I think we're playing at Cornerstone on Sunday night at midnight. So, we're going to blow up Cornerstone after that. We can go down in history as the first band and last band to ever play Cornerstone.
SH: Yep. This'll probably be their last year. They'll have to call it quits after this! (more laughter...)
CCM:At least you have one thing in common with them. You've been losing money for 11 years. (Laughter again, but not so uproarious this time...)

CCM: When you talk about bands with longevity and staying power, you're among a small number whose names always come up. Do you think that has to do with your consistency in touring?
SH: Not necessarily. Because we've never enjoyed major success. If you're asking did touring cause us to be successful and therefore we've had longevity, I'd say no.
DD: Touring gave us a big fan base; that's certainly true. Even though we might be more cynical, or let's say, realistic, at this point, we were pretty optimistic back then. We really thought, with every record, that we were going to break.
SH: We've tried really, really hard. An even bigger factor than touring is the fact that Derri invested early on in a studio, and that gave us the time to put our full effort into making good albums. We're proud of them. On the other hand, owning the studio is also a financial liability. I think, more than anything, our longevity is because of our perseverance. We've kept trying. Our music has been very well received by a cult fan base and also by the press and many industry people. That's definitely encouraged us.

DD: Early on, we got signed to Myrrh, and that kind of separated us from the rest of the pack. You had these other bands that could maybe draw bigger crowds than we could. But Myrrh liked us and signed us, and that gave us a bigger profile than these other bands. And a lot of these bands remained identified as Southern California bands, where we became known as a national act. And people still perceive us as being a lot more successful sales-wise, than we are. It's surprising when we talk to fans and they think we're selling records like Whiteheart and we go, "Well no, not really."
SH: I think another key ingredient is that we have a good songwriting chemistry. If you look at bands that have longevity--Christian or secular alike--you usually find that there's good songwriting at the core. You survive trendy periods and adapt, because you have good writing. And I think our strength has always been our songs. We feel like our audience comes to sit and listen to us--be it a small or large audience. I look at somebody like Tom Petty, who came along during the whole post-punk, New Wave era. Out of all the artists that might have survived that time, Petty probably isn't the first that would come to mind. But he's been hanging around for over 20 years now, because he's a song craftsman. Not to be boastful; we certainly have a lot of weakness and a lot of lameness that's kept us from being more successful; there's a lot of reasons why we haven't had huge success that are our own fault. We do have missing ingredients. But I feel like we know how to craft moving songs.

CCM: When someone listens to your songs, can they get the feeling they know you? Or do you distance yourselves from the lyrics enough to protect your privacy?
SH: Well, a song only represents a very small portion of how complex individuals are. Some songs are more revealing than others.
DD: That's for sure.
SH: And often, songs are more melodramatic, bigger than life. If someone's heard all 100 or so of our songs that are out there, then sure, they could have a pretty good idea.
DD: That's true.
SH: But not just from hearing a few songs. I think a certain amount of our audience bought, say, Kissers and Killers--love songs with a lot of irony. But they also bought At the Foot of the Cross--which came immediately before that. And to me, that was the enjoyment of being to able to make those statements in different contexts. After 10 years of trying to make every album a complete statement, containing all the faith, all the doubt, all the love, all the bitterness of life, it was a joy to stop and say "Enough! Here's eight, 10 songs about love and how miserable it is, and yet how hopeful I am about it." And talk about that, and only that. And then do At the Foot of the Cross, which is 100 percent focused on the death and resurrection of Christ, and not feeling the need to have all the irony and tension. I think as much as artists can be known by their work, we are.

CCM: You've gotten a lot of good press coverage over the years. Is there anything that you think people would be surprised to know about you?
DD: Uhhh, that we're women? (Explosion of laughter.)
DM: There's more humor in us than the records usually reveal.
DD: Sometimes we can come off as being all depressed, and what not. But whenever we're together--on the road, in the studio--we laugh quite a bit. There's always something going on to set us off. That's probably something people wouldn't necessarily realize unless they knew us personally or had hung out with us a lot.
SH: We definitely don't take ourselves as seriously as we sometimes come across. The intense nature of the music sort of demands that kind of focus. But when we're not actually performing, there's a lot less tension and a lot more humor.

CCM: In the early '90's, you got a production deal with Word which spun off into Glass House Records. Many fans felt Glass House met an untimely end after too short a period of time. Any comments as to why? Were your plans for Glass House too ambitious?
SH: All we did was try to survive and make a few records. Did we over-extend ourselves? No. We had a four records per year deal with Word; it was just a production deal. They gave us a certain amount of money, we'd find an artist, produce them, market them, everything within the means which Word supplied. But they cut us off at five records. They didn't honor the agreement. They were bought by Thomas Nelson, which did the same thing with half-a-dozen other production/label deals. Basically, the agreement we had with Word was not one that would have allowed us to succeed anyway. But Derri had the studio, we had families; you just keep trying to find more ways to survive. For instance, we produced a worship album, the first At the Foot of the Cross. And I got to produce Rick Alba from the Altar Boys--that was the first record I produced.

DD: Then we did The Throes Fall On Your World album together, plus a couple songs for John Austin, and we had the opportunity to release a gospel blues album by Rev. Dan Smith.
SH: What happened was, we focused on the label and we sort of lost the momentum we had struggled to maintain with The Choir for several albums. We'd done Circle Slide on Myrrh, which we were really proud of.
DD: We were frustrated because we had just done Circle Slide, and we had the option to do another record with Word, but they weren't interested enough to pick up the option.
SH: We realized that the relationship wasn't going to go much farther. We felt like, artistically, Circle Slide was the kind of picture we were trying to paint at that point. We didn't know what else to do. I think we were both 30 years old then, and wondering what was next. So the production work gave us a way to think about an alternate future.

CCM: I remember being very disappointed for you guys when Word's mainstream distribution deals with A&M and then Epic didn't really yield any appreciable advances in your career.
SH: We've done it a lot of times. But there comes a time when you just don't believe it will happen anymore. You believe in some things, but not that kind of success.
DD: It was frustrating because we believed that Circle Slide was our best record. It was strange because, except for a few people within the company, like Chris Hauser and Thom Willett, Word wasn't that interested. Thom moved on to work with Epic, and the other A&R people who were with the company when we were originally signed, were gone.
We could probably have done another record for Word, but it probably would have just sat there. So at that point, we had to regroup and figure out what to do. The production deal gave us a way to survive while we decided how to proceed with The Choir.
SH: So, we offered At the Foot of the Cross to the Christian industry. It was a very honest offering; we thought it was very embraceable, that we had succeeded with that. We were very excited and hopeful about it. Meanwhile, we did an eight song EP called Kissers & Killers, which was really just a demo. We sold as many copies of that through our fan club as Word had done with some of our albums. We used all those proceeds to shop ourselves to the mainstream, which we had never actually done before. There was always all this press about The Choir crossing over. But the fact is, we were always under contract. It was the first time we had put so much effort into shopping ourselves. To the Christian industry, it might have seemed like we had dropped out. We believed, and we had some encouraging things happen, but we never did get that deal.

CCM: Dan, how did you see your role in the group change over the years? You said you were "a goof" in the beginning. But you've assumed a lot of business and management responsibilities; negotiating contracts, making sure things function right on a tour. When did that begin to happen?
DM: I guess I was always aware of the practical things that needed to be done to help half-a-dozen people make a living. It came to the point where I realized that playing sax in a Christian alternative band was maybe not the best career move! When Derri got the Glass House Records deal, I just threw myself into that situation. I realized that I knew how to put a stamp on an envelope and talk to people. I tried to get people to understand what was going on with the label, with The Choir, with other things we were trying to achieve. I had the ability to talk business on a personal level.

CCM: When you went back and did Speckled Bird, was that partly because you felt the original eight songs were too good to abandon?
SH: We wanted our fans to hear what we were doing; we were very proud of it. So we added five more songs, and did a licensing deal for the full-length disc with R.E.X. See, we were sure at that point that we were going to be signed to a mainstream market deal. So we moved to Nashville with the idea in mind that this was a very centralized hub for touring, and we were thinking we were going to be doing much more touring. But in the meantime, we couldn't bear for our audience not to be able to buy our new music, the audience that had been so faithful through the years.
So we did the licensing deal to get the new songs out there. Meanwhile, Word wanted us to do a second At the Foot of the Cross, which was real encouraging. We loved doing it and we really tried hard again. We really thought we had delivered the goods to the Christian audience. And it sold less than the one we did on our own label! It seemed like a political thing. They serviced no singles--we thought we had finally written singles. We brought in Bryan Duncan to sing one song and Babbie Mason to sing another. But because of political reasons, those very songs could not be released as singles!
DD: That, and the incredibly bad timing of that album coming out at the same time as My Utmost For His Highest!
SH: The second At the Foot of the Cross, for me, I think, was my biggest disappointment. It's not just a money thing or a success thing; you just want to be heard. I really thought we had captured some moving performances. You want a wide audience to hear it. It's a slow death; an album has a slow death.

CCM: How do you guys feel about the Dove nomination for At the Foot of the Cross, Volume 2 ?
DD: It's pretty funny. I don't know why. I'm glad that a few people have taken notice.
SH: I'm real excited, just because I feel like audiences are much broader than we give them credit for. I really think there's a future for us, doing worship music. So anything that causes people to notice is good. I think the reason a lot of worship music tends to be so formulaic is because of the timidity of the industry and not because of the narrowness of the audience. So it's exciting to get a nod, or anything that might bring the kind of recognition that would cause us to continue to have chances. It's ironic, really. Still, I'm glad. It gives you just a spark of hope.
CCM: Do you think in personal terms or corporate terms, when writing the type of music that was on those albums vs. music for The Choir?
SH: I definitely think of it as addressing the church, whereas The Choir is more intimate. Our recent "best of" was called Love Songs and Prayers, because that's almost what every song has been, whether addressing one person or God. Where the worship music is still personal in its roots, but it's addressing the needs of the church.

CCM: If you beat the odds and did win the Dove, what do you think you'd say?
SH: Thank you very much!
DD: Now, that really would be funny!
SH: I'd say "Let us do the third one; it was supposed to be a trilogy, for goodness sake!"
DD: Right, we gotta get Christ out of the tomb...
SH: I had always pictured this as being a boxed-set. But by the time the second one came out, Word had dropped the first volume; it was out of print and unavailable. We went out on tour performing At the Foot Volume One, and it wasn't even availabale to us! After much begging, they did a special pressing of 500 more copies and sold them to us at a good price (Lifts his eyebrows.)

CCM: During this time, the independent production jobs began to pick up, at least for Steve. Is that one of the things which prompted to you to make another re-evaluation of The Choir's future?
DD: There's a lot of different reasons, depending on which one of us you ask. For one thing, we've always felt like we're a pretty good live band. But you're competing more and more with bigger productions. And it's hard to keep a rock band going unless you tour 200 dates a year. It's hard just to say "We're going to tour one month now and one month in the fall," without losing your shirt. Personally, for me, I have three kids, and I kind of like being around them more. It's just a lot harder to be away. Plus, you have the business consider. When Steve and I are both on the road, there's nobody hustling to get projects into the studio.

CCM: Steve, your thoughts about pulling back from touring?
SH: Well, I always want to be on a vehicle that's going up. I feel like every album we've done has been an improvement. And I felt like Speckled Bird, actually, was our best album. And was by far the least successful--by far. Now, that mostly had to do with the whole system; the record label, the distribution. I'm constantly asking myself what could be better in my life; how do I keep things from going on the decline. And so, for me, I lost enthusiasm. And, as Derri alluded to, we would jump out and do quick tours or one-off dates. We didn't really have the energy to run down the details--was the production right, was the sound right, and all that. And we found ourselves in some very embarrassing situations. I don't want to do work that I'm embarrassed about. We never got together and said, "Let's not do this anymore." It was kind of a gradual thing. Different things happened in different individuals' minds. There's nothing I like better than getting to make a record then going out and playing it live. But it got to the point where I was mostly producing first albums by young bands, and I could see that fire in them. That their music is everything; that they want to get out and play for as many people as they can, whenever they can. But I could see that, as The Choir, we were losing that edge. I always knew in the back of my mind, that if we lost that hope, that drive, I'd want to do something else. So the whole thing that went out in the press about, "It's the end of the road, this is our last tour," etc., came out of that state of mind.
DD: But things always change.
SH: Music Entertainment Group started the Tattoo label, and that gave us another opportunity. And again, we did what I think is our best record. It's just a dozen more songs, but I've never been as happy with a complete album. It came easy, it took the shortest amount of time to record. And that's given us a whole new feeling about things.

CCM: How did you approach the making of the new album?
DD: I went into Free Flying Soul with the attitude of doing a record that would please ourselves. I said several times during the recording that I don't care if any 15-year old buys the album.

CCM: It may not grow to be as popular as Speckled Bird or Circle Slide, but I think it's the equal of those records. It doesn't feel like a last album; it feels like a forward-looking project.
DD: It definitely is. We've got a new energy going. It's nice when the co-owner of a label comes in and sits you down and has listened to your whole catalogue and knows about your music. That's the first time that's ever happened to us. So you go, "If we've got people who are excited about this, then we're excited about it." We're looking forward to this tour; it's going to be a great tour. When we get back, we might say, "Let's go do another one."
SH: If we actually don't lose a lot of money.
DD: And we're still going to do selected concerts dates. But like Steve was saying, when you're just doing something to survive, that's not what it's about. You should be doing it because you've got the heart to do it and you want to see the look on people's faces when they hear the songs and you want to interact. There was a period of time when we were just trying to survive. And anybody who'd give us $500, we'd go play. Because we had to have it. But now, it's back to the place where we're excited about playing music because it's music. And it's going to be our audience there. This is on our terms, and that's exciting. And of course, now we need $600! You know what? I've gotta go. [Leans into mic] I've gotta go to church. Be sure to put that in bold type!

CCM: Dan, was there a point where you would have steered the band away from Tattoo if you thought there was a better deal out there?
DM: I don't think Steve and Derri would have let me do other than the right thing. If another label were to have offered something that appeared to be more attractive or better for us, the band would have gone in that direction.
SH: We were actually approached by Tattoo before they had hired Dan. But his hiring certainly was a swaying factor. When we hadn't made a final decision, all other things being equal, having Dan on the inside was certainly a plus.
DM: My involvement with the label didn't hinge on whether or not The Choir came with deal. The label heads were looking for someone who was savvy in the alternative/modern rock genre, and they sort of sniffed me out from among a number of candidates. It's an indie spirit with a big machine driving things. I've never actually been happier with a job in my life.

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