2 of 4

Outside of vocal support, how does the Square Peg Alliance work together?

Phillips: There is the SquarePegAlliance.com site, but there is also a SquarePegAlliance.net site that some supporters work on. It's updated every few days with everybody's news.

Phillips: We want to do a CD with one song from each artist and give it away at all of our shows. Nobody's making any money on it, so it's not going to be weird business-wise. We're saying, "I really love their music, go out and support them." Our audiences and fan bases are relatively similar. There are differences stylistically in the artists, but there's a lot of crossover.

Peterson: Eric Peters [a Square Peg] had a CD come out a few months ago. We had the idea of doing a Square Peg Alliance concert featuring Eric Peters as the headliner. That way all of our fan bases would know about the show and all the fans would come, but Eric would be the one that we would be bragging about that night. It worked great. It was an amazing display of talent that again made me wonder why more people don't know who these artists are.

Do you wish you had seen more artist interaction like that when signed to a label?

Phillips: Many of us are here because of Caedmon's Call [of which Osenga is now a member]. They were always bringing someone new on tour with them. Steven Curtis Chapman has been good at that, too. But in general, you're right, there's a lack of that. I don't think it's a malicious intent on the part of the artists. We're trained [in business] to think of artists in a competitive way, and you get sucked up in it. It's so nice to be removed from that as an indie and not see it in that sort of way—to see it in a helping, healthy way. Andrew [Peterson] and I are going on tour this fall; we think we can draw a larger audience together than if we were out on the road alone. He's always talked about how art is at its best when it's in community. I think we really miss out when we try to go it alone.

Peterson: I don't think those involved in the Alliance would say that they hate record labels. I certainly don't. I heard Rich Mullins talk once about the televangelists that want you to think the more money you give, the better your life will be. He said that those people aren't bad people—they're just wrong. I think that way about the labels. The people you work with at the labels aren't bad people. But the structure itself doesn't always foster good art; it fosters the big buck—and you end up on the short end of the stick. I'm honored to be among people who have kept their heads low and decided whether or not we make a killing and whether or not we're on a label, we're just trying to serve God with our music.

Osenga: When I first signed, I thought that we [The Normals] would end up being friends and spending lots of time with the other artists.The band Bleach really welcomed us, invited us to stuff and was very friendly, but other than that, we barely met anybody on the label [ForeFront Records]. I think that was the label's loss, though, in not fostering relationships between especially the younger and the older artists. We probably could have learned a lot from some of the bands that had been around longer.We did, just not bands on our label; instead we learned from Waterdeep and Caedmon's Call.

next page... |  2 of 4