Jars of Clay

biography

Jars of Clay was formed at Greenville College, in Greenville, Illinois in the early 90s by Dan Haseltine, Steve Mason and Charlie Lowell. They had been playing and writing without thinking about an actual career in music, but more for fun. Second guitarist Matt Bronlewee joined them in 1993 and drummer Scott Savage also accompanied them in some live shows at this time and up until 1999.

In 1994, the band submitted a demo to a talent competition run by the Gospel Music Association and were selected as finalists. They travelled to Nashville to perform and won the contest! Back in Greenville, they released a self-released demo called ‘Frail’. The title song was originally written by Steve Mason as an audition track for a scholarship to Greenville (his submission was successful). Their performance in Nashville and their demo managed to catch the attention of record labels, so the band decided to drop school and move to Nashville. At this time, Bronlewee left the band to finish school and settle down with his fiancée. His place was taken by Matt Odmark, Lowell's childhood friend.
Their debut album ‘Jars Of Clay’ released in 1995 and very quickly became a hit, with the song ‘Flood’ becoming one of the biggest mainstream hits ever by a Christian band. More albums and awards followed, including seven GRAMMY Awards, plus a performance at the Philadelphia Live 8 Concert.

The earlier Jars of Clay albums were acoustically-driven although the 2006 album ‘Good Monsters’ showed a different musical direction. When guitarists Stephen Mason and Matt Odmark make their blisteringly electric entrance on the track ‘Work’, when Charlie Lowell’s piano slices through, when the rhythm section of bassist Aaron Sands and drummer Jeremy Lutito make their presences felt, and when vocalist Dan Haseltine reveals, “I have no fear of drowning/it’s the breathing that’s taking all this work,” you sense you’re in for a little different experience than you’ve had from Jars Of Clay in the past.

It’s transparency by design, an expressed desire to speak truth, as they see it, at the very moment they experience it. “There’s more urgency in these songs. There’s more honesty,” Dan says. “In a way, we’re weighing in on the bigger conversations we’ve kept ourselves out of for a long time. The conversations about relationships or social justice, but recognising we don’t have to be the voice of the church.”

“I think we’ve taken the pressure off ourselves for trying to be a voice into anything bigger than us, in a way,” Dan says. “What I mean is that we’re coming to grips with that sometimes our smaller conversations are just as significant as trying to explain the context for religion in America in four-minute songs.

“I think we used to think we had to do that all the time, that if we were talking about something we had to find the exact right context for it, and make sure that it made the right sense, but our music isn’t about that,” he continues. “’Good Monsters’ is a lot of those kinds of moments where I’m going to have to be comfortable giving my assessment of what’s going on right now, even in the midst knowing that I’m probably wrong sometimes. There’s a tremendous freedom in that, and that’s what we’re enjoying now.”

As committed as the band is to forward thinking, when it comes to keeping their musical offerings fresh, frontman Dan Haseltine and his cohorts Charlie Lowell, Stephen Mason and Matt Odmark have a passion for something even more pressing. Lead singer Dan Haseltine visited Africa in 2002, which in turn inspired the founding of Blood:Water Mission, a non-profit organisation created to raise awareness and money for the poverty and AIDS stricken regions of the continent. The name is derived from, as Dan says, "The two things Africa needs most" - clean blood and clean water. The mission has begun the 1000 Wells project, an effort to have a thousand new wells built throughout Africa.
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