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I walked out of the midtown Atlanta offices of Brash Music with an armful of eclectic CDs, feeling a bit like a bandit and thinking, "Now that was completely different." For the previous hour I had been regaled with stories of the heyday of Atlantic Records in the 70s, heard names like Stones and Zeppelin dropped in routine conversation, wondered if the Dove Award sitting on a file cabinet would be more effective as an emergency can opener or a self-defense weapon, and heard an intriguing and sometimes alarming outsider's perspective on the Christian music business. I knew then that Brash, the fifth label we've covered in this series, would be the one that really gets people talking.

At Brash Records, secular music came first. Bands like Sister Hazel and Collective Soul were around in the early days and as acts were added, Brash paid less attention to musical genre and more to the quality of the music itself. Consequently, the current roster includes everything from rap (Explicit Lyrics stickers included) to folk to bossa nova to, yes, Christian. Brash found Christian music—or was it the other way around?—when a demo CD by Christian artist Aaron Shust found its way into the trunk of the car of the label's CEO, Mike McQuary. He popped it into his CD player while driving around one day.

 "I was on my cell phone," McQuary remembers, "and I heard this song playing, and I'm thinking, That's kind of a catchy song. I wasn't really paying attention to it. The second song comes on, and I'm thinking, That's pretty catchy too. By the time I got off my cell phone I was on the third song, and I was thinking, This is pretty interesting, and then I thought, Wait a minute, did he just say 'God'? I think this is a Christian record!' I went back to that first song, and listened, and there was no mistaking, this was a Christian record. But it was catchy, it was interesting."

Mike 'McQ' McQuary

McQuary's next action would dictate the course of events that would lead to Brash becoming Billboard's No. 7 label in Christian music: he recognized the CD as Christian music, and he pitched it to his staff anyway. 

With no introduction, no back-story about how he had come across this music, McQuary played the CD at the label's weekly new music pitch session. "Halfway through the first song, everybody's heads are nodding, their toes are tapping. Then somebody said, 'Wait a second, is he talking about God, or talking about a girl?' Then they said, 'Wait, this is Christian music. We don't know anything about Christian music.' I said, 'Do you like it?' They said, 'Yeah, but it's a whole different world.' I said, 'You know what, I didn't know anything about any genre of music and how to market and promote it a few years ago. How is this any different? Let's do what we do. Let's go see him play, let's meet him.'"

That meeting happened, and more meetings, and Shust became a quiet trailblazer: the first artist on the Brash roster making explicitly Christian music. McQuary, who goes by the ultra-cool moniker McQ, knew Shust would need people behind him who knew the Christian music world, so he went online and "looked up the biggest Christian artists in the world and who their managers were." That led him to Michael Blanton, who's worked with, well, the biggest Christian artists in the world—Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith, for starters.

Management, publication, and radio promotion were added, a strategy was developed for Shust's first album and singles, and the song "My Savior My God" became the absolute success story of 2006, the Dove Award winner and top song of the year. Just like that, Brash Music became a major player in the Christian music world.

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