Never before in the 25-year history of Contemporary Christian music has an unknown act emerged with such immediate fury and success as has Jars of Clay. Two years, five Christian CHR Top 5 singles, one Top 25 mainstream pop single, and 1.5 million units later, the group which takes its name and mission from II Corinthians 4:7 is now recognized as perhaps Christian music's hottest band.

Meanwhile, "Jars" members Dan Haseltine (lead vocals), Steve Mason (guitar, bass, vocals). Matt Odmark (guitar, vocals), and Charlie Lowell (keyboards, vocals) seem to be taking their newfound success in stride as they prepare for the launch of their sophomore Essential project, Much Afraid, in September.

What do you consider to be the most remarkable or surprising aspect of your overnight success?

Dan: The overnightness.

Steve: This was a dream, to do music, maybe professionally. The fact that those expectations have been blown out of the water has been the most amazing thing.

It's been two years since the record came out and you took the world by storm. How has this changed your lives?

Matt: Well, I'm not home nearly as much as I used to be. How else has it changed our lives? We live on a bus more than we probably ever would have doing any other job.

Dan: We get to travel a lot, see a lot of different places, meet a lot of different people.

Matt: Go through lots of luggage.

How about internally? Has it affected the core of who you guys are?

Charlie: It has definitely challenged us in our friendships with each other. And going from college life to kind of jumping into this business and all of the different career, corporate, creative kinds of aspects of what we do has forced us to grow up really quick. It's forced us to look at how we love each other, how we want to love each other, what that means for issues of forgiveness and grace, compassion, sensitivity-probably a lot of things that maybe a young marriage would go through.

Yeah, except you have four guys in this, so you have three other persons' quirks to…

Dan: That's where the marriage thing breaks down. [laughter]

How about spiritually? How has it changed or challenged you?

Steve: I've never enjoyed accountability like this before. With these friendships, I've gone through more than I have with any of my relationships growing up. And maybe it's the fact that I'm getting older, but our relationships have pushed me to examine my walk with the Lord more often than I had ever expected.

Matt: I think it's really challenged us, just in the midst of what we get to do, to continually take stock in what is really important.

I would imagine your schedule has gotten a bit more hectic in the two years since you left Greenville College. Is it harder for you to find time to do the kinds of things that you had done before-like having quiet time, time to spend in the Scriptures, time for prayer, time for group sharing?

Charlie: It's a lot more difficult, definitely, and it has to be a lot more intentional. Our days are kind of consistently inconsistent in that we don't really know what the next day is going to be like or what the time frame is going to be like to spend alone or to relax or sleep or whatever. So we just have to purposely seek out time alone and time of fellowship. And we can't get to church much, so we try to get tapes from our home church in Nashville sent out to us on the road, and we listen to them on the bus and try to keep in touch with what's going on with the church so we feel like when we come home we can kind of pick up where we left off.

Let's talk about the new record. Was writing for it more difficult than writing for your first record?

Steve: There's this element to your first record that you've been writing it your entire life up until that point. You have these life experiences to look back on and kind of sum you up to that point. But the second record is a little more difficult because you're writing it in the span of maybe a year or two versus 19 or 20 years. Well, of course I don't think any of us were playing guitar at two, but you know. So it was definitely a little different writing for this record.

Where did you do the writing?

Dan: Anywhere and everywhere.

Steve: We did a lot of it at my house. I got married in December and we have a little loft upstairs and the four of us would gather…

Dan: …and yeah, we'd work on songs there. We also wrote a few on the road the last couple of years, and a few were written before we started to go out on the road.

I heard you did some writing at Sting's French chateau.

Charlie: It was actually the chateau of Sting's manager, Miles Copeland. It was a songwriters' thing, which was a great experience.

Where did you do the recording?

Matt: We did about half of it in Nashville and half of it in London, England.

Because of your success, have you felt a lot of pressure to match or exceed what you accomplished with your first record?

Dan: Yes, and I think a lot of the reason why it's taken so long to do a record is really because we've tried to distance ourselves from a lot of the pressures that have been kind of plaguing us in the past couple of years.

Steve: And we've had a lot of changes happen, a lot of struggles that we walked through before starting to work on the record, so it was a very healthy opportunity to kind of figure out still why we do what we do.

Struggles as a band or individually?

Steve: Individually, and then that kind of filtered into us as a band. And that was a good check going into it because we needed that, you know, just like we need to hear the same simple truths from the Bible again and again because we forget. So it was good.

As you're listening to this record, are you happy with it?

Dan: We're really excited about it.

Charlie: Yeah.

Matt: I think we're all very pleased.

Steve: This may sound contrived, but I don't think it matters how successful it is commercially, because we feel like we've made a really good record, and it's been honest and there's a lot of truth in it that I think will affect a lot of people, Lord willing.

What's the story behind the album title?

Steve: There's a book called Hindsfeet on High Places by Hannah Hernard. And the lead character is called Much Afraid. It's not a very bright and happy title, but we think that conceptually it fits with the songs and that it speaks well of the journey from fear to faith, which the lead character experiences in the book.

What are the differences musically between this record and your first record?

Charlie: We used a lot more live drums on this record. There are still a couple of sampled loops, but more elements of a live band. I think that's because we've been playing with a live band for the last couple of years and that's kind of what we're most comfortable with now. Another difference is how we decided to arrange a lot of the songs. Other than that, instrumentations aren't too different.

Dan: There's a lot of kazoo playing on this record.

Matt: Lot of kazoo. We even brought in some wah-wah kazoos.

Oh yeah, I've been waiting for someone to showcase the kazoo. I think it's a much overlooked instrument.

Dan: We have to please our public, so we knew everybody would want that…

Lyrically, how are the songs different on this record?

Dan: I think the songs came from a very different place than the first album. I think in some ways we've taken a risk. Some of the lyrics are really vulnerable, more so than they were on the first record. And we've just taken a real honest approach to a lot of the struggles involved with being a Christian and being a human being. So it's a very honest look at our walk. We deal with a lot of those struggles in a very real way.

Do you think there will always be a Christian emphasis in your music and in what you're doing?

Charlie: Yeah, I think there will be, because that's who we are and that's pretty much what all of our identity is, hopefully. I think that as long as we're struggling and learning and walking and growing, that'll be a really big influence in our music and in the lyrics. I think we would love to continue doing what we're doing. We're having a blast. You know, we'd like to be home a little more than we are, but there's a tension there, I suppose.

Steve: There'll be plenty of time for being home when we're has-beens.*

*Article transcribed from New Music Magazine, Summer 1997, pages 6,7, and 21.