David Crowder Band
Bio
In their days at Baylor University, David Crowder, Jack Parker,
Jeremy Bush, Mike Dodson and Mike Hogan recognized the disconnect
between the church and the disenchanted, twenty-something generation,
and sought to bridge the gap. And so, they helped found University
Baptist Church in 1996, a community that thrives and grows today.
It was as worship leader of this church that David Crowder began
to write the bulk of the band's songs; songs which celebrate
the goodness and nearness of God, as well as ask the corporate
and intimate questions of his community. "This is where
our songs get legs under them," Crowder says.
The music of the David Crowder Band brought to light the
needs of a "whole new group" of worshipers, a group
vastly bigger than the UBC community. Their first, independent
recording, All I Can Say struck a chord with a fast-spreading
base of "fringe folk": a group that Crowder describes
as being "a little on the outside; they have trouble
connecting with what's going on with the Christian culture
or climate." The band's raw lyrical honesty and innovative,
yet catchy alt-pop sound created fans out of the churched
and unchurched alike. And it was this original, yet accessible
appeal that opened the doors into the world of the modern
worship movement.
As a revolution of worship music spread throughout the world
one CD at a time, the David Crowder Band found themselves
moving from the fringe into the heart of the Church via their
involvement with the Passion projects and gatherings. Songs
such as "You Alone," "O Praise Him (All This
For A King), "Our Love is Loud" and more have become
anthems for countless churches, college-aged people and youth
groups. With all the traveling and exposure to various worship
environments, the band was developing its voice; a voice marked
by an uncanny ability to absorb the needs and joys of the
people, and letting the reflections be heard through song.
It was with this voice that 2002's Can You Hear Us? (sixsteps/Sparrow
Records) was born. The project was a cry of just how much
rescue we all constantly need and have. It was about asking
tough spiritual questions without inhibition. The project
was immediately embraced by the masses: over 6200 copies of
Can You Hear Us? were sold in its first week at retail, making
the David Crowder Band Sparrow Records' biggest selling debut
artist ever. At the 2003 Dove Awards, the song "Our Love
is Loud" was nominated for Best Modern Rock/Alternative
Song of the Year, and "Passion: Our Love is Loud"
was nominated for Special Event Album of the Year.
Following the success of its debut, the band's 2003 sophomore
release, Illuminate, launched to unprecedented critical acclaim
and grabbed the No. 1 position on the SoundScan retail sales
charts, selling more than 200,000 units to date. "It's
a recording about light," David Crowder proclaimed. Taking
the empirical facts about light and translating them into
revelation about the nature of God and creation, Crowder realized
that he was on to something, and light began to appear in
everything he wrote. Illuminate is a journey on a darkened
path. It acknowledges the darkness in which we live and celebrates
the reality of Light coming toward us in the form of Christ.
The song, "O Praise Him (All This for a King),"
featured on the album and the band's first Top 10 radio hit,
is a response to redemption: the wonder of a Redeemer who
is Himself the Light by which we see. This is a recording
that is corporate and intimate, with lyrical light both blazing
and subtle.
As Illuminate resonated across the nation and beyond, David
Crowder Band racked up seven more GMA Music (Dove) Award nominations,
was featured on CNN and in the New York Times, and joined
Michael W. Smith and Mercy Me for a major market national
tour followed by its own and first-ever headline tour. One
of the most sought after artists on college campuses and beyond,
the band's Illuminate further received Worship Leader Magazine
Praise Awards for "Best Worship Project" and "Best
New Song" for "O Praise Him (All This For A King)."
David Crowder, the namesake behind premiere guitar maker Tom
Anderson Guitarworks's Crowdster Acoustic, was also the first
Christian artist to foster a partnership with M-Audio/Propellerhead's
Reason software.
Despite the success, David Crowder Band makes it a point
to get back to University Baptist Church on most Sundays.
The making of a collision or (3 + 4 = 7)
By David Crowder
It all started with a book from the early 60s acquired by
my wife from an antique shop in downtown Chicago. That, and
a conversation with a very intelligent acquaintance of mine
who is currently finishing his PhD work in super string theory,
and who happened to mention in very whimsical tone one sunny
Texas afternoon that we were, and I quote, "…walking
around in the sky…" He said this while pointing
to nothing in particular, "…you see, there is ground
and there is sky and we are somewhere in between. We're walking
around in it. Our feet are on the ground but. . ." Wait.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
Like I said, it started with a book: "The Story of Atomic
Energy" by Laura Fermi (decd. 1977) who was peace activist
and wife of famed physicist Enrico Fermi (decd. 1954), with
whom the atomic age arrived. The Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory, which is home to the most powerful atom collider
in the world, is located just outside of Chicago. I found
it fascinating that my wife would procure this particular
book from a shop in this particular city. The book's cover
is pale green, definitive 60s green if you ask me, with what
one would assume to be the representation of an atom in a
complimentary 60s pale yellow set against it. It is the familiar
depiction of a nucleus and some number of electrons swirling
about. I was immediately enthused by this icon as I have an
affinity toward semiotics and symbols and iconography and
drew satisfaction that a book about energy had a representation
symbolizing energy on its cover. No words, just pale yellow
on pale green and through symbol I understood that energy
was inside.
And here is why this simple thing would inspire a collection
of songs: this model is improper in its depiction of particle
matter. We know in fact that electrons do not circle in elliptical
paths around a nucleus. And this is the difficulty with symbols.
They are never quite proper. They are always a bit broken.
And as I held this book in my hands, frozen in the middle
of an intersection in downtown Chicago, while this inadequate
drawing roused simultaneously both hope of discovery and reminiscence
of destruction in my chest I thought, "This is the essence
of art. We are creating broken containers."
Then came the Eschatology of bluegrass. One evening, after
hearing our band play in Dallas, Texas, the grandfather of
one of our guitar players stated, and I quote, "You boys
should do a bluegrass number as it is the superior variety
of music!" And so it was that we stumbled into this vast
genre of song, written, in a religious sense, almost exclusively
in regards to the ever after, the sweet-by-and-by, or flying
away to glory. I was at first troubled by what seemed a glaringly
unbalanced doctrinal depiction of the Kingdom of Heaven as
I have the fear that this approach to Christian living has
lead many a person's head into the clouds and allowed for
justifications of neglect in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven
into the here and now. Then a close friend of mine was diagnosed
with terminal breast cancer. It had spread. It was everywhere.
Liver. Brain. Lymph nodes… Everybody wants to go to heaven.
We settled on "I Saw the Light" by Hank Williams,
by way of Johnny Cash. What I am about to relate is nothing
short of miraculous. We met the fabulous Marty Stuart at the
Dove Awards a year ago. At age thirteen, mandolin protégé
Marty Stuart found himself on the road with bluegrass legend
Lester Flatts and peers in the likes of Roy Acuff, Ernest
Tubb, Bill Monroe and Grandpa Jones. After Lester's death
in 1979 the next band he would join was Johnny Cash's (decd.
2003). Marty is a living history of country music. And there
he was backstage wearing a black suit, aglow in rhinestones,
sparkling down both sleeves and spanning the back of the jacket
in the shape of a very large cross. His hair was flawless
and bigger than mine. He wore shades. None of this would have
been entirely strange if not for the fact our guitar player,
who's grandfather's fault this whole bluegrass thing was,
had suggested exactly one day prior, "We should get Marty
Stuart to help us with the bluegrass number." We gathered
around a microphone in Johnny Cash's cabin and recorded the
song with Marty just outside of Hendersonville, Tennessee;
two of Hank's verses, the one of Johnny's and one of mine.
The rest of "A Collision" was recorded in Waco,
Texas, in the barn behind my house. The barn was built in
1885 by the then Waco corner drugstore owner and local alchemist
Wade Morrison. Its color is the most perfect of faded barn
reds, very close in color to that of a Dr Pepper can holding
the delectable beverage whose origins are Mr. Morrison's corner
store. Local lore has it that this barn was home to Morrison's
horse, incidentally named Pepper.
We documented the whole process online with weblogs and four
(a significant number for us) webcams running 24 hours a day
for four weeks. Near the end of our tracking I posted an invitation,
to all who were tuning in, to join us in the barn for a hoedown
and some group singing. And our friends came in cars and planes,
from California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, and more extraordinary
places far and near. I wish you could have been there! There
was a BBQ smoker in the shape of a pistol 10-feet tall (the
meat goes in the chamber and the smoke comes out of the barrel.)
It was true Texas culinary indulgence met with ocular and
aromatic stimulation. We ate. We laughed. We shook our heads
at the distances traveled. And we sang. We sang at the top
of our lungs. These good folks sang like they meant it.
For the past two years I have ended most nights in concert
with the following statement: "When our depravity meets
His Divinity, it is a beautiful collision." This recording
is about that collision. It is the collision of our fallen
state and our Maker's transcendence. It is a rendering of
our mortality and eternal life. It is about the tension that
exists in the living of life, here, where the sky meets the
broken earth. It is about a tsunami in East Asia. It is about
a sunrise over Hiroshima. It is about too many who know too
intensely what pain the word cancer holds and the words of
my friend whispered in my ear, "It's ok. None of us are
getting out of here alive you know." It is about victory.
It is about the joy that comes when blood tests come back
and a miracle is announced. It is the hope in a rescue that
has come. The hope in a rescue that has found us. And the
relentless hope in a greater rescue that is still coming.
One that has not yet arrived but is no less present. This
music, broken, improper and inadequate in its response, is
rooted in that hope. The Kingdom of Heaven is here and now
and coming. Courtesy Six Steps/Sparrow Records
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