Rebels with a Cause
The Elms' rebel rock, never a comfy fit for CCM, is finding a mainstream home as the band—a la Mellencamp and Springsteen—sings of the hard lives of ordinary Americans.
by Andree Farias | posted 7/10/2006
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Unlike many bands that leave the cozy fold of Christian music with bigger mainstream ambitions, The Elms weren't disgruntled at their former label benefactors for not hitting it big. Neither had they forgotten their faith-based beginnings—playing festivals, tours and other avenues in the tightly-knit CCM circuit. When their time was up, the band simply quietly transplanted itself from the subculture's confines, looking for a new place to take root—and finally landing with Universal South, which they deemed the perfect terrain for their artistic renaissance. The result was The Chess Hotel (Universal South), the band's magnum opus but also a conceptual case study on the socio-cultural plight of the Midwest—namely, the band's own home state of Indiana. In this conversation, frontman Owen Thomas discusses the band's transitional season, their growth, and how they hope the new album will shake small-town dwellers—geographical, spiritual, or otherwise—out of their comfort zones..
Your group started off as a modern rock act with splashes of Brit pop and other influences. Why shift to barebones rock 'n' roll?
Owen Thomas We probably played five or six hundred shows over the last two years, and that has a dramatic way of forging a band's sound. After you do it for long enough, it becomes less and less about what you want to sound like, and more and more about what you actually sound like. We found over the course of the last two years was that sometimes we stuck our toes into the Britpop pool, sometimes the modern rock pool, sometimes the power-pop pool—and we always came back to a heavy, blues-based, loud, raw, organic, '60s-inspired rock sound.
When we were just getting started, we were listening to so much different music, and it was all influencing us in so many different ways. I'm still very proud of the songs on those first couple of records, but I think we were going in a lot of different directions. Now, I feel we've grown up a little bit. We've let the road mold who we are. Our collective character really comes out. So now, I don't think we're playing anything other than what we were born to play.
How do you feel about that earlier material? Do you disregard it in favor of your new sound?
Thomas On this tour, we're playing 99.9 percent new material because we have a new album to promote. Also, we're very passionate about what we do. We do play one or two songs from our last album, Truth Soul Rock & Roll, and very rarely do we play anything from the first record. If we're doing a headlining set, then I'd say we play literally the entire new album, and maybe a cover song or two.
Why do you think The Elms never really took off with those first couple of albums? Was it a lack of creative freedom or the label's belief in you?
Thomas There was never really any sense of the label or anybody lording over us to sound a certain way. They were very trusting of our band and let us do what we wanted to do. And the new label relationship is that way, but even more so. I don't think we would've liked to have launched this rock band—the way we are now—in the old CCM world. I don't really know that'll ever happen for a band like us because I think there's an inherent element to our music that's kind of almost…
Rebellious?
Thomas : Yeah! It's almost inherently rebellious. The kind of music that we make, and the kind of risk that we love about rock 'n' roll, and the kind of danger that we love about what you can say and the way you're meant to feel and the things that it's meant to make your body do—things like that, people in Christian music are just generally not receptive to.
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