God's Surprising Plan
Shane Barnard and Shane Everett never planned to be professional musicians—much less among the most popular in all of Christian music. But God had a bigger idea all along.
by Maryann B. Hunsberger | posted 1/10/2005
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When Shane Barnard and Shane Everett met in college, they never planned to be musicians. But that's just where they've ended up, as two of the most popular in Christian music, selling a total of about 350,000 albums since their 2002 debut, Psalms. Their latest CD, Clean, debuted at #2 on SoundScan's Christian sales chart and at #5 on the overall Christian chart. The first single from Clean, a cover of Twila Paris' "He is Exalted," is receiving numerous radio spins in multiple formats, quite a feat. We spoke to the Shanes about Clean and life as musicians.
A pair of Shanes—Everett (left) and Barnard
You put out two albums in one year. Your concert dates extend from this past fall to this coming spring. Don't you guys ever rest?
Shane Everett That is the million-dollar question. We stumbled into this music thing. We never really asked for it, and that is the irony of what we do. We were both going to school at Texas A&M and got plucked out by the providence of the Lord. So many great things have happened over the past six and a half years. We're off a month-and-a-half in December and January, then we'll be home about three days a week after that. This is the first time that has ever happened. It feels like the last day of school to know we will have a considerable amount of time at home.
How many concert dates a year are you averaging?
Everett It's been anywhere from 250 to 300. Now, we are looking at about 160-170.
What did it take to realize you were doing too much and make changes?
Everett About a year and a half ago, we realized we needed to make some changes. When it's happening, you are in the middle of it, and your adrenaline is pumping and you feel like you are doing the will of God. Then, you just wake up and say, "We need to slow down!" You realize that you need to be home with your family and the people in your life. We finally landed there, and it's a really exciting time for us.
You play mostly at colleges. Why is that?
Everett Again, it's the providence of the Lord. We just go where we've been called. We play in a lot of college auditoriums, probably 90 percent. If we hit a church, it's usually associated with a college. It's weird, because we never said we wanted to play for the college demographic and young adults. That's just where we've landed. It's been this grassroots Internet fan-based thing. We did it for four years without being on a label and were still traveling all over the U.S. Just recently, we've seen a shift because of some radio play that has brought in a bit of an older crowd.
Why did you put out two records in 2004?
Everett We did the Upstairs record upstairs in Shane's house in a week. It was stripped down and very organic sounding. It was initially intended just for our fans, and we were going to sell it on the website. But Inpop [their record label] really liked it and wanted to release it to give people an opportunity to get it. We had already planned on doing the Clean record that would release in October, so they kind of slipped it in.
You recorded Upstairs in your own studio. Did that affect the creative process?
Barnard We didn't get to explore that too much, because we had a serious deadline with this record. In the future, when we can spend a year going back and forth into the studio, it will really make a difference.
Did having your own studio allow you to do things differently?
Barnard We didn't have each musician play ten songs in a day and zap into ten modes, ten tempos and ten emotions in a day or two. We corporately jumped into each song and recorded them one at a time. Doing things back to back, you might set up the drums and those same drums will be on every song. This time, we totally rearranged things on each song. On one song, we put tape on the tom drum. We set things on it and hit it with a broom. We used different amps for guitars for each song. We used small ones, big ones, new ones, old ones. We put foam under the guitar and bass strings to have a muted sound on some songs. We even removed things from the room to make it brighter and set the mood for certain songs. Whatever the song was calling for, we did. It took us maybe a day-and-a-half per song. I think we will continue to do it like this in the future.
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