Third Day

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Good Monsters. Overdressed. Drunkard’s Prayer. These are albums representing that next level, representing that moment when an already popular artist or band elevates their artistic output so much that a turning point is defined. And everyone knows it.

Third Day is due for one of those moments. And the early buzz on Revelation signals their time has come. It took a new producer, new collaborations, new songwriting directions and new engineers. But the effort is already reaping new rewards: a first ever specifically Christian act on a Billboard Magazine cover, killer reviews, an unbelievable tour and a Tonight Show appearance.

We had the chance to sit with Tai Anderson recently to discuss all of this and he gives us the reasons behind it all - the overwhelming feeling of being on newsstands everywhere, the pressure of carrying the torch, working with Lacey Mosley (Flyleaf), Robert Randolph and Chris Daughtry (Daughtry) and how they want to create their own music festival.

Soul-Audio: I’ve gotta start with the Billboard cover. How does that feel for the band?

Tai Anderson: It felt really, really good. [Laughs] We were in Nashville doing a benefit for WAY-FM so they could boost their signal and all of the label people were giddy and the publicist said, ‘Hey the Billboard article is coming out tomorrow.’ And nobody wanted to say anything because they wanted the cover to be a surprise. But then it got out and we found out it was going to be the cover.

It felt really good. Usually when things happen, we try to play it cool and I think now we’re learning that you don’t have to play it cool about playing it cool. When something like this happens, you should celebrate it. It feels like a groundbreaking thing - for us and also, hopefully, for all of Christian music. I thought the article was excellent.

SA: Can you comment - groundbreaking for the band?

Tai: I think a lot of times, we kind of do our thing and we can sometimes feel unnoticed or marginalized. The first thing people should know about Billboard is that it is a business trade publication. I don’t think the article is to be read as if it’s Christianity Today. It’s a business article. But on the business side, the Christian music industry can become a bit marginalized because there are asterisks because it’s Christian. But that article and having that kind of cover is showing that it’s as valid as anything else. These guys sell records and people come to their shows. It felt like the Grammys because we have our things that are internal where we give recognition and then something more from the outside is recognizing the validity of what we do.

SA: How is that for Third Day to carry that torch for the whole genre or piece of the market?

Tai: I think it’s something that, at this point, we’re pretty comfortable in. We talked about this a bit when we were looking back at our greatest hits over the last several years and we had this moment and we were thinking, ‘This is something that comes with a responsibility. Now when people make fun of Christian music, they’re making fun of us.’ Since the band is not from Nashville, we never really felt like we were part of it. We were the band for the pre-show Awards. But that felt like a big moment and it felt like a mantle. When you’re on top, we realized that we can push up the whole genre simply by being the best band that we can be.

So there’s a side there it does bring pressure but that’s a good kind of pressure. That’s what some of these things do. Every time we go to the Grammys, we leave a little bit going, ‘You know what… being a Christian band shouldn’t mean that we’re anything less. If anything, we should have a drive that nobody else does (and) more motivation because of the spiritual aspects to what we do. There should never be an excuse to do anything less or put out lesser products than anybody else.’ You see these amazing live performances and that’s what you walk away with. You have your internal stimulants and your internal drive and I think it’s also good to have things that pull out a little more effort out of you and more focus and direction.

SA: What’s the one performance you guys saw at the Grammys or a place like that and you’re thinking, ‘That is it?’

Tai: There was one performance way back… this might even be in the ’90s now. [Laughs] It was at Radio City Music Hall in New York. It used to go back and forth between L.A. and New York even though now it’s just L.A. Fleetwood Mac had gotten back together and Bob Dylan had also played and even Aretha Franklin sang because Pavarotti couldn’t make it. Just seeing these performances, we were absolutely blown away. We hadn’t won a Grammy yet. It was our third time being nominated, so we were watching these performances thinking, ‘This is just another level.’ Then through the years being able to see U2 play a couple times on the show, that’s just really cool. But that Fleetwood Mac performance was it.

But maybe part of the problem was how we looked at ourselves - being just a bunch of teenagers and realizing now that we’re grown-ups and there’s no more excuses. We need to make sure we’re making the grade. The other aspect of that was that the last Grammys we went to, when Wherever You Are won, when we were there, we had so many people coming up to us afterwards that we’re big fans of and that we’re cheering on and they talked about how our music was inspiring with them. We’re talking to the guys in The Fray and Daughtry and… a lot of times people think you’re just singing to the choir, but you realize that our music has gone a really long way. A lot of other musicians who are doing some cool things, Third Day has been a part of them getting to where they are. It’s nothing we’re taking credit for, but it’s cool to hear those people are listening. The next week after the Grammys last year, we started this record and we went in fresh knowing we need to be on that level. We needed this to be great.

SA: So how did you come up with the collaborations on the album? Because I know the line-up of guests here is certainly the most diverse and even impressive to date…

Tai: Lacey [Mosley from Flyleaf] was definitely from [producer] Howard [Benson] because he had cut her record. We were looking at someone to do female vocals and he suggested her. We were like, ‘Well, she’s not going to want to do this.’ But he said he could make the call and then she said yes. Up until that point, we’d never heard their music until Howard introduced us. We were out of the loop. [Laughs]

With Daughtry and Robert Randolph, it was a lot more natural. I’d seen Robert play years ago at Gospel Music Week on his very first record and I was blown away the very first time I’ve heard him. And I became a huge fan. I’ve probably bought a ticket to see him three or four times over the years. With that track that he played on, I’d written the riff for that and was showing it to the guys and I said, ‘This is a Robert Randolph kind of riff. If we could ever get him on this, that would be freakin’ awesome!’ Now that our band has the same management as him, they were like, ‘No problem.’ Daughtry’s connection grew out of Mac and he having developed a friendship over the last couple of years. Daughtry had called Mac after American Idol and they had stayed friends. That was a little more natural, but he also has the same producer.

SA: What’s the statement you want to make with a record like this?

Tai: One of the reasons we wanted Howard was that on Daughtry’s record, there were ballads that didn’t sound like ballads. It’s been played on every format in the country and it’s a ballad and yet it rocks. But with Adult Contemporary Christian radio being what it is, they’ve been very good to Third Day. We don’t want to bite the hand that feeds us. But it’s only showcased one aspect of who Third Day is. And you look at the 25 #1 hits and most of them are ballads. We make these rock records with only one or two ballads and all people hear are the ballads. So for a lot of people, that’s their definition of Third Day.

There are other people who come to our shows and buy our records, they know us as a rock band that does a few ballads. So I think there are two very different perceptions of who Third Day is, and with this record we wondered if we could try to pull that all together. The thing about the Daughtry record is that they were able to do that - no matter the song, they’re still a rock band. For us, ours just sound like ballads - not like a rock band doing it. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. When we did those songs, we were just trying to serve the heavier lyrics. But with this album, we wanted to make sure there was a sense of urgency and believablility to everything. So that’s one of the reasons we wanted Howard.

And he was able to do that. “Other Side” is a smoking track and that will never be played on Christian radio. Yet you have “Call My Name” which is doing great and we demoed it as a ballad. Yet the production on it lets it occupy this Daughtry headspace. Yeah, maybe it’s a slower tempo and more of a ballad, but it rocks. I think there’s some consistency in this project. It’s funny to put together a show at this point in our career because, for some, Conspiracy #5 is their favorite record and they’ll tolerate the Offerings stuff but they wish we were harder. Then there are a lot of others who know Third Day because they heard “God of Wonders” on the radio. So they’re surprised when we show up and we’re not wearing suits. [Laughs]

It can be hard to put it all together. When we’re digging through the catalog putting together the Greatest Hits collection, it’s impossible to be able to please everyone or make them happy. So we needed to come forth with a new musical statement that hopefully many can get behind.

SA: Jars of Clay’s last album was Good Monsters and it was across-the-board received as that ‘next level’ sort of album. Here’s this torch-carrying band that suddenly kicks it into another gear. Do you perceive that for Third Day here, because the scenario is largely the same and with the early buzz…

Tai: I would agree. This goes along a bit with the last question. We did those Greatest Hits records albums last year. And I don’t think they are ever band ideas, they’re just things that record companies can do contractually [Laughs]… and as a band you just try to make them as good as you can. But that’s where our energy went. We really wanted to make the content good and get as much fan material on there as we could. But it’s not the same thing as making a new record.

We really felt like as a fan - and we’re all music fans - when I get a greatest hits record, I think what every music fan thinks: it’s either the end of the band or the end of a chapter of the band’s career. But it’s always the end of something. But we were pretty determined not to make that the end of the band. [Laughs] So U2 came out with a greatest hits after All That You Can’t Leave Behind and then they were able to define that end of the chapter very successfully with How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. They showed they were still viable and moving forward. So that was part of the challenge for us.

It was one of those self-imposed things. We needed this to be great. We needed this to be a new statement. We needed it to sound like Third Day, which as long as Mac is singing, it’s gonna sound like Third Day. But it doesn’t need to be us trying to be something we’re not - it needs to be us doing well what we are capable of. So I think we’ve hit that from the beginning. And it wasn’t like when we were recording or writing the songs that it was different than the past; I think this record just speaks more to the people around us, from management to producers to mix engineers. It’s just approaching it a bit differently and shaping it up in a really cool way. We just did things with a higher standard. That make sense?

SA: Sure! Finally, I wanted to ask one more thing. How did the Music Builds tour come together with Switchfoot, Jars of Clay, Robert Randolph and you guys?

Tai: Well, the story is different depending on who you ask. [Laughs]

SA: So your narrative, then? [Laughs]

Tai: We started looking last year at putting together our own Christian music festival. Our favorite festival is SoulFest in New Hampshire and Parachute in New Zealand. A lot of times at a Christian music festival, there’s this evangelical approach. You go there and there’s someone sharing the gospel and giving an altar call and in the big sense, you think, ‘This is a Christian music festival and the people here are Christian.’ I’m sure there’s fruit from that, but we really like those festivals where they recognize the audience are Christians and they make sure the emphasis of the festival is social justice and motivating the audience to live out their faith. So we thought we’d love to do a festival like that.

There’s a guy in our management who co-owns the Bonnaroo Festival and so we were looking at that site. They already own all that land and they only do one event there over one weekend for the whole year. But we realized that won’t do for this year. It wasn’t feasible. Then we realized that maybe we could do a dollar per ticket for Habitat for Humanity like we did on the Come Together Tour and really line up with a cool organization like the One Campaign, especially if it’s this year and making the issues about poverty as we go into this election season.

Then our management said that maybe we should think about a tour rather than a festival for this year and they were able to go through Live Nation to really pull it together. So it was something where they made it happen. They could get other bands to be a part of it and the One Campaign is actually going to sponsor it. So it’s pretty cool. There’s definitely a theme with Third Day with this album and this whole year where it’s like everything we’re wanting to see happen is happening. Maybe it’s not how we first saw it, but if anything it’s almost cooler than how we first thought of it. That’s how it is for the tour.

It’s just a great line-up. If I was putting together a four day festival and I said, ‘Thursday night, Third Day is gonna close. Friday night, Switchfoot will close. On Saturday, Jars of Clay will close and Robert Randolph’s gonna close out Sunday.’ That’s a great festival. But to actually get it all on one night on one stage for a whole lot less money is really cool. It’s great to see it all coming together.

• www.thirdday.com
• www.myspace.com/thirdday

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#1 MattConner.net » Blog Archive » S-A Interviews: Third Day, TFK, Bebo on August 5th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

[...] Read the rest of the Third Day interview here. [...]

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