Christian Rock

[Stan Malinowski]

I've noticed that there are many of you out there who talk about playing Christian Rock. First, I live (and always have) in the stodgy Northeast (Connecticut). We don't have much variety of music in our churchs here, let along any type of Rock music. My wife is in our Catholic churchs Contemporary Music Group which has a couple of acoustic guitars but still is required to play "semi-classical" Catholic tunes.

So for you Christian Rockers....

Are you allowed to "rock-out" during the mass itself?
What songs do you play?
Do you have "special" masses where this music is played and "normal" church music played at other masses (for those parishoners more conservatively oriented)?
If you don't mind which "flavor" of Christian is your church (ie Roman Catholic, Methodist, etc).

[getgo]

Stan,I attend and occasionally lead Worship at a small Church here in northern Indiana. We are a three year old Churchplant with a core group of about 60 people. Our "oroginal" Church is a Church of the Bretheren but we are considered a "community" Church. We meet every Sunday at a local YMCA for our service and use a medium sized pa for our service. We set it up and tear it down every Sunday and this is pretty common for Church plants until a new Church is built.

Do we rock out? Ohhhh Yeaahhhh!

If you aren't familiar with mainstream CCM music you wouldn't recognize any of the groups but we do a wide variety of Praise and Worship material that can be pretty aggressive at times. We even use, GASP!! distortion!!!!!

I use a Crowdster through a Pendulum SPS-1 into a QSC 1202 that powers two EV SX-300 monitors as my own personal guitar/vocal monitoring rig and I push it pretty hard sometimes. I wouldn't say that we are so much loud as we are full. On any given Sunday we might have two key players ( piano, organ) a drummer using roland V-drums a bass player, and electric guitar player, acoustic guitar and three to four vocalists plus us instrument players singing as well. In our part of the country this is pretty much the "normal" procedure at the Church. Some Churches may have multiple services with one being more traditional (hymns) and there is one rather large Church near our home with about 7000 members that has SIX services!!! Whew!!

I also have a Christian pop-rock band outside of Church that does a little more aggressive and slightly performance based Worship music. It's all good!!:D

[Stan Malinowski]

getgo,

Who are some of the "mainstream" CCM rock bands. I'd like to check out some of their work.

[sonicparke]

Stan,

Check out:

David Crowder, Chris Tomlin, Hillsongs United, Charlie Hall, Mercy Me, Jeremy Camp, Todd Agnew, Delirious, Darrell Evans, Lincoln Brewster, Koo Chung, Matt Redman, Michael Gungor, Sean Feucht, Jason Upton, Tim Hughes, Todd Davidson, Warren Barfield, Selah.

Some are rockier than others. Some are more worship than others. Some are just great worship. You'll find most of them through google but some you might not. I can direct you to the right place for those. I also have some mp3's of most of them. I can upload a sample for you if you have an FTP site with enough space. Hope this helps.

[getgo]

Yeah!!! What he said, don't forget Third Day if you like that southern edge. Big Daddy Weave, Tree 63, telecast, Casting Crowns, Paul Coleman Trio, and By The Tree.

[tom]

crowder for sure, 3rd day for sure, early delirious for sure.

[sonicparke]

I knew I'd forget a bunch...

Delirious "King of Fools"...that one rocks.

Tree 63 is a good one

[tmihm]

I've been playing at Sunday mass in various churches for about 10 years now. We don't rock out through...they are traditional Roman Catholic hymns, and it's just myself, the singer, and the organist / pianist / synth dude. Occassionally another accompianist, but that's it.

Some tunes work strangely well...some - I can't do a thing with. And we don't rehearse, I don't know what we're gonna play, and a lot of the songs I've never heard. Oh...and did I mention I'm a horrible sight reader :)

But the oddest thing of all is that I've never used an acoustic at church. I generally use a strat...that is up till a couple of weeks ago when my new pride & joy arrived (the Rosewood Andy Hollow T). I've used that the past two weeks :)

I really can't chime in on any Christain bands...but will try to check out some of what you've reccommended. ;)

[tom]

cutting edge by delirious is my fav of theirs.

[tom]

our band is drums, percussion, bass, electric guit, acoustic/ leader, one or two female singers, and sometimes keys. it changes from week to week, sometimes just a simple four piece.

[sonicparke]

It's all good...

Our band is drums, (used to have killer perc but the new worship leader didn't like it so he moved it all to the youth room since he's the youth pastor anyway), bass, electric guitar, acoustic/leader (once in a blue moon he'll break out the electric), two to four singers (combo of men and women...just depends), Keys, flute, tenor sax (whistles and other stuff too), violin.

And we are LOUD...too loud sometimes. I need to get some earplugs because I can notice a failry big difference before we play and after we play. It's fun though!

[Stan Malinowski]

Thanks for all the input guys!

Is CCM music popular enough in some parts of the country to warrant a lot of radio airplay. Any local stations dedicated to just CCM?

[tom]

the radio stations here play mostly generic stuff, i don't listen to them.

[Stan Malinowski]

It just occurred to me to look on the Yahoo/Launch website, there are indeed a couple on on-line stations - 1) Christian Rock and 2) 90's Cont Christian. So now I have something to listen to!

[sonicparke]

same here...there's the occasional good song. Probbaly better than a lot of places. I usually don't listen to it but it's not bad. You can listen online at www.kxoj.com

they started a smaller alternative christian rock station that is much harder. The problem is that's there's nothing in between which is what I listen to mostly. So talk radio and CD's do it for me.

[getgo]

We have two local stations that play nothing but CCM music, one is a little more rock than the other. Great stuff, great thread!!

[scottiK]

I have played for a quite a few churches over the past 10 years and they DEFINATLEY rock!

Funny story, I had been doing more blues/jazz based stuff so my tones were mostly built around clean and medium overdrive. So I went to a store looking for a new amp...the salesman asked me what type of setting I was playing in....I told him I played a church and my current rig didn't have enough gain! It totally blew him away:D Not the answer he was expecting.

I'm kind of in another situation now...the current church my wife and I attend plays a lot of DCB and I need a little more gain for a few tunes.

Stan, maybe you could check into subbing occasionally for a local community church that does this type of worship service. A lot of the ones around here are ALWAYS looking for help on guitar since so much of the material is electric guitar driven.

scott

[pluto]

Hi Stan, I know we've talked about this before privately, but just in case you forgot: I'm the reluctant backup guitarist when the main guy is on vacation. Presbytarian church-bass, guitar, piano and vocals. All instruments plugged direct to board. Music-standard contemporary Christian worship music with one traditional hymn. Our church was "planted" about 5 years ago, so it's a very small church, so basically, no, the music never gets loud! This past year, we got lucky-a professional singer and her professional musician husband joined the church last October-they play about once a month for the church, and wow, they are really good. I wish they would play every week, but they play music for a living, so they prefer not to play when they go to church. As for Christian music, basically, I can't take it. I've posted on this before, but the CCM I heard while growing up was IMHO, just awful and simply a horrible derivative of popular music. I recently bought a CD for my wife-can't remember the name of it, but it was advertised on tv (one of those time warner cds)-basically a CCM compilation of worship songs. I cringe listening to it when we're in the car, but my wife likes it a lot.

[Stan Malinowski]

Stan, maybe you could check into subbing occasionally for a local community church that does this type of worship service

Scott,

I would have to travel a VERY long distance to find a church like this. This area of the country is VERY conservative religionwise. I have given some thought more to "porting" the idea for entertainment at the church's Youth Group Meetings (ages 15+). One of these days on my travels to other parts of the country I will have to find a "rockin' church" and check it out.

[Stan Malinowski]

Mark, I remember from our previous talks that the music at your church seems to similar to what our Contemp Music Group does.

I guess my head is still spinning after hearing about the church whose pastor used to play guitar for Motley Crue!

[scottiK]

Originally posted by pluto
As for Christian music, basically, I can't take it. I've posted on this before, but the CCM I heard while growing up was IMHO, just awful and simply a horrible derivative of popular music. I recently bought a CD for my wife-can't remember the name of it, but it was advertised on tv (one of those time warner cds)-basically a CCM compilation of worship songs. I cringe listening to it when we're in the car, but my wife likes it a lot.

Man you have to check out some of the groups that were listed in previuos posts on this thread. The David Crowder Band would be my first suggestion.

scott

[pluto]

Originally posted by Stan Malinowski
Mark, I remember from our previous talks that the music at your church seems to similar to what our Contemp Music Group does.

I guess my head is still spinning after hearing about the church whose pastor used to play guitar for Motley Crue!

Micky Mars is a pastor now? He's the only guitarist I knew that played for Motley Crue. I haven't heard that before.

[pluto]

Originally posted by scottiK
Man you have to check out some of the groups that were listed in previuos posts on this thread. The David Crowder Band would be my first suggestion.

scott

Thanks, I will check them out. Based on the description of their music that I got from a few others on this forum, I'm not sure if I'll like them or not, but I'll give it a shot with an open mind.

[Stan Malinowski]

Pluto,

It isn't Mick Mars... One of our new forum members, Westex, wrote about this in his introduction:

Link To Westex Intro (http://andersonforum.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=680)

[pluto]

Originally posted by Stan Malinowski
Pluto,

It isn't Mick Mars... One of our new forum members, Westex, wrote about this in his introduction:

Link To Westex Intro (http://andersonforum.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=680)

Ah, I see. Thanks for the info. I thought that was unusual that Micky Mars would become a pastor!

[mwoeppel]

Stan,

in addition to the exellent suggestions you have so far, check out some of the Vineyard stuff - excellent musically and theogically.

www.live365.com has a radio station devoted to just Vineyard music.

Oh - you should hear Lincoln Brewster lead worship with a strat!

yow!

[Stan Malinowski]

Thanks to all! You've given me some new guidance to explore this genre of music.

[tom]

lincoln played with steve perry on his early solo stuff. he stopped by the namm booth, that boy can play!

[sonicparke]

So does he own an Anderson now?

[Marty S Horne]

Stan,
Definitely check out Phil Keaggy. He was playing classical violin lines on electric guitar a full decade before Yngwie as well as nylon string classical guitar. He sings songs of praise and Guitar Player Magazine called him a world class guitarist in the same league as Steve Morse. I've been a fan since '72 and have been to 2 of his concerts.

[tom]

phil is definitely a hero of mine. i don't believe any of his recordings come close to capturing what he does solo live with his olson and jam man.
linclon sounded like he was going to get one of our guitars, but i haven't hear from him.

[sonicparke]

Phil is rediculous good. I agree with tom about seeing him live. he works his way into alternate tunings on the fly during a song like a freak of nature. It's pretty amazing.

Lincoln needs to pick up the phone.

[Class5]

Keaggy is the man. Isn't "King's X" considered christian? They're pretty heavy, definitely not " rowing the boat ashore".