This week we have a very special eXclusive interview with Owen Thomas
of The Elms. But this is only the beginning! Over the next coule
months, we will be doing many more interviews with artists in the
future, so keep your eyes peeled for more on the site and in
cMusicMail, your place to see the new stuff at cMusicWeb.com first!

INTERVIEW WITH OWEN THOMAS OF THE ELMS
by Josh M. Shepherd
For all the noble intentions, Christian bands still don't enjoy a
very wide audience. Why? Aside from mediocre, sound-alike albums,
the songs are often too preachy, too churchy-never hooking listeners
with scenes and ideas that tell us, "Man, your life is my life."
Enter the Elms, whose choruses are just informal talks, and whose
sound brings to mind The Beatles. No one seems to know too much
about them-yet. Lead singer Owen Thomas talked with writer Josh
Shepherd in February about their bright future…

cMUSICWEB.COM: To acquaint our readers with you, Owen, could you give
a brief bio on the elms?
OWEN THOMAS: My name's Owen, and I'm in kind of the "frontman"
position. My brother Chris plays drums-we're from Buffalo, NY
originally, living in Indiana now. Our guitar player, Thom
Daugherty, has been my best friend since fourth grade; he's up with
us now, but from Southern Missouri. For just about a month, we've
had a new bass player, Keith Miller, from Louisville, Kentucky-so
that's our geographic background. Initially, Chris and I started
playing in a different band about four years ago, and the elms has
been in existence for about two years, during which we've been
touring pretty heavily.

cMW: Have your experiences on the road been positive or negative?
OWEN: It's been totally great. Obviously, you're going to have your
ups and downs-you'll go out, and sometimes it's horrible. But it is
that one hour of the day when you get to go up there and be on stage,
even though the other 23 hours you're really working hard. I will
say this: we just spent four weeks on the road, cruising around the
West coast-we met good people, and saw them unite. We saw how the
different people in the body of Christ, in their own different ways,
are all trying to reach out to others. They do what they can to make
others see the yearning in their hearts, and offer hope in an
innovative way. It's very encouraging to see people like that. On
the other hand, the kids who stand before us, you just know they have
a need for truth. It's an amazing opportunity to be able to go out
there and inform them of the One Truth that you've found in a world
where there is no truth. Overall, it's been great

cMW: So while the elms website lists Radiohead and XTC as musical
influences, the band is a ministry?
OWEN: We definitely have influences who we know don't have a
relationship with Christ, or don't seem to, but that's on the musical
side of it. The elms is a ministry; the thing we're not going to do
is forsake the musical quality for ministry. We want to be band that
has spiritual, lyrical, and musical depth--basically, prove to people
that great rock-n-roll music, the Word of God, and the life of Jesus
Christ can coexist. To us, it's about motivating the church to find
ways to innovate, enabling them to go out and reach the world
themselves.

cMW: How did the elms evolve from a worship group to a pop/rock band?
OWEN: Worship is still a big part of what we do; though our songs are
not "church music," we consider every show we play an act of
worship. Sometimes, the band will spend one or two days at a place,
which would entail doing a show, then one night just do some praise
choruses. It's our own spin on worship, a real pop/rock, power pop
approach to it. However, our ministry over the past couple years has
become more outreach-oriented, so we try to write songs totally based
out of experience, straight from our hearts. Worship is part of who
we are and what we love; when it's appropriate, we still do it.

cMW: With that background in mind, what are your thoughts on the
recent explosion in praise music?
OWEN: God has always wanted to see His people worship, so it's a
great movement. The only qualm I have with that whole thing is it
shouldn't be something people thing of as a "current trend," or a
cool thing to do right now. It's always been cool to worship, and it
always will be. People have asked us if we're going to put out a
worship album, and it's an idea we would entertain. Only we want to
avoid being looked at as a band who put out a worship record when it
was trendy to do worship. As individuals and as the elms, we've
always been worshipers, and always will be. Worship is a way of
life. So even if the music industry side of it, the CD sales or
whatever, started to go down, that doesn't change the fact that God
wants us to be worshipping Him 24/7.

cMW: Many radio listeners thought of your hit "Lifeboat" as a youth
group-type chorus.
OWEN: I wrote that song out of desperation, and hope that people can
listen and understand that God is interested in every aspect of our
lives. So many people get caught up in the sacrifice of being a
Christian, rather than the opportunity and privilege it is to know
Christ--for lack of a better word, the "perks" and joy that come with
it. If we could focus on that, which I've known firsthand,
Christianity becomes way more enticing to a lost world. Like, "Hey,
guys, this is the truth; not only that, but how about some peace of
mind?" There is responsibility, but the One we're serving made the
ultimate sacrifice for us. As a chorus, if people find inspiration
in "Lifeboat," I'm all for it. It's a tune we'll play at shows until
the day this band is done--the song we look at as worship for us.

cMW: What's the overall response been to the five-song EP?
OWEN: From the beginning, the whole idea with Sparrow was to print up
a limited number of copies, and hopefully get rid of them by the time
the album came out, just to raise some awareness of the elms. It
wasn't marketed as our first "release," but was there on shelves, and
we have it on the road. The full promotional machine will kick into
action for the new album. Still, it's amazing to go places, all over
the country, and find people who are familiar with the tunes. They
found it to be music they can really get into that actually speaks
some stuff they know to be truth. We're really down with that. The
new record is going to have "Lifeboat" and some other EP songs on it,
remixed. I think I'll be able to look back at the EP, and love it.

cMW: Who or what inspired that Cd's opening track, "Goodnight Rosa"?
OWEN: I get that question a lot. "Rosa" is not a real person; she's
an analogy, a fictitious character who embodies anybody that a
Christian has ever tried to tell about Jesus, and they just don't buy
it. Because of the intangibles--they can't see Jesus, can't smell
Him, can't touch Him--there's all these faith issues they don't want
to have to deal with. They look at the responsibilities, the limits,
never seeing the joy and the promise in a relationship with Christ.
At the end of the day, when you've tried to talk to them and convince
them this is the only way to live, they just don't want to have
anything to do with it. The whole gist of the song is, as I tell
everyone at our shows, God is always faithful to those who are
faithful to Him. As long as you're planting seeds in peoples'
hearts, whoever your "Rosa" is, you can always count on God to be
faithful to water the seed, even if you can't be there to see it
happen.

cMW: What are we in store for in your new record, The Big Surprise?
OWEN: The Big Surprise, man, I'm really, really excited about it. We
feel like we've made a stripped-down, genuine rock-and-roll album;
the music is really indicative of the emotion that we're trying to
convey. It's a picture of where us four dudes stand at this point in
time. We're still dealing with a lot of our inadequacies, a lot of
our vulnerabilities, still learning that God's grace is always
sufficient; understanding that, we're doing our best to press on and
to show people, "Hey, we've found a little truth." There's not fifty
layers of noise on every track, but it's very well thought-out; we
took a lot of time and really immersed ourselves in the process. We
wrote about specific instances in our lives that I know a lot of
people deal with--there's not a lot of generalities, or really vague
things that could apply to this person if they just thought about it
enough. I think a lot of people will be able to relate, and see the
hope that
we all have.

cMW: Why is that the elms were signed to Sparrow Records in June
1999, but your full-length debut has taken two years to release?
OWEN: Well, we signed with Sparrow, and started working on the EP the
fall following that. We've always been a really hard working band;
between time on the road, and the many opportunities to play, we just
didn't have the time! We wanted to make sure that, when we released
it, it was the absolute best that we had to offer. That's what we
got with this album--it was two years in the making, but the plus is
that it gave us time to see people hurt, see people love, see people
happy, and see people sad. It really inspired us a lot; the majority
of the songs on The Big Surprise were written in the last 6-8
months. Had we released an album within a year of signing with
Sparrow, I don't think it would have been as mature and focused as
this one is. Our vision redefines itself every day as we go out and
see people on the road. What people are going to get is a way better
record, in general, than had we released it a year ago, basically
attributed to the fact that we're playing 150-something dates a
year. The product is going to show that we were really serious about
it.

cMW: Studio work often gets very tense; what has the chemistry been
like between the elms, your producer, and Sparrow during the
recording process?
OWEN: Sparrow has been very supportive in letting us go into the
studio and make a record that is our own, indicative of our hearts
and our musical desires. Brent Milligan is an amazingly talented
producer and a great player--so he has a lot of original ideas.
After being on the road, the studio became therapy for us, just being
able to take time, and listen to the tunes put themselves together.
You know, we scrapped this one, and put this one back in, and Brent's
skills at that really enhanced the album as a whole. It is hard work
and long days, but we were able to relax. A couple of the songs got
written while we were in the studio, so there's an excited, first-
time-you've-ever-played-it vibe there.

cMW: As the band's songwriter, Owen, how did you approach the task of
writing for The Big Surprise?
OWEN: I approached it much like I did the EP songs, or any of our
independent releases, and that is I don't really approach it at all.
[laughs] It's funny, 'cos I'm never the guy who sits at a table with
notebooks, and pulls out his guitar, with the idea of writing a hit
song. The majority of the songs come within minutes of me seeing
something that inspires me--it's not uncommon for me to be driving
down the road, watching the guy next to me doing something that makes
me wonder why they do that. Or seeing someone walking down the
street makes me wonder, "What's life like for that guy?" I'll pull
over and rummage around my old car for a pen, and an old napkin, or
McDonald's bag, and start to write. I've still got little pieces of
trash that have lyrics for "Lifeboat" and stuff like that on it. All
the songs are written directly after I get the inspiration to write
them; none are written in any kind of contrived manner with the idea
of just writing smash hit singles. The only thing I have in mind
when I write the tunes is, "How can I get my emotion, or how can I
get the feelings of this very moment into this song in order that
somebody else will be able to identify with it?"

cMW: That's really unique. Will we hear any significant changes in
the elms sound?
OWEN: Yeah, I definitely think you will. We've had a change in
lineup since the EP--my friend Tom, who I mentioned before, brings a
whole new guitar texture to the band. He's been playing guitar for
years, and The Big Surprise is a lot more stripped-down, yet thought-
out than earlier stuff. We've got another 120 shows under our belt,
and our chemistry as a band is a lot better. We sound more and more
like a rock band, less and less like four guys who just play and love
music. We're becoming one cohesive unit. What people will hear
mostly is a focused sound, and just the fact that it sounds more
mature, more grownup.

cMW: Can you divulge any details like first radio single, supporting
tour, or the possibility of a music video?
OWEN: The music video thing has been talked about, and it's
definitely going to happen; I don't know for which song, yet. We had
photo shoots and all that stuff for the album publicity yesterday in
Nashville, and ideas were talked about then. Come video time, we're
going to try to do something unlike anybody has ever seen, try to put
our own spin on it. We want to make it as intimate and interesting
as the music--to just better convey whatever song we choose. As far
as the first radio single, I don't know that, man. A few songs are
in the hat right now, a few that we're really excited about releasing
there. We're touring, through May, doing our own headlining shows,
30 or 40 dates before The Big Surprise comes out. This summer, we'll
hit a lot of the festivals, and there are tour talks in the works
right now for next fall and next spring.

cMW: Any closing comments?
OWEN: Just thanks for doing this, and maybe if there's some way to
let people know about our website theelms.net, and that The Big
Surprise comes out in May.

Find out more about The Elms on cMusicWeb.com:
http://cMusicWeb.com/rock/theelms


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AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER (on cMusicWeb.com)

ROCK: http://cMusicWeb.com/rock
Hit Parade - Audio Adrenaline [03/13]
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THIS WEEK'S CHRISTIAN HIT RADIO CHARTS
> 40 Days drops off the charts for a week, but Jaci jumps in
> at #6 and Third Day is cruising to #1. Congrats Jennifer!
1. Lay it Down - Jennifer Knapp
2. Genuine - Stacie Orrico
3. Joy - Newsboys
4. These Thousand Hills - Third Day
5. Wake Up - LaRue
6. Every Time I Fall - Jaci Velasquez
7. Treasure - Tree63
8. Worth It All - Michael W. Smith
9. Strangely Normal - Phil Joel
10. Say the Words (Now) - dc Talk

SOURCE: CCM Update (http://www.ccmupdate.com/)


cMUSICWEB UPDATES
• New review - OneDay Live - Passion:
http://cMusicWeb.com/worship/passion/reviews.shtml


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