What does a quartet of devout Christians do after their debut album is swallowed up by the pop-culture machine to the tune of 1.5 million copies and becomes a bona fide mainstream hit?

"Panic." says Jars of Clay guitarist Stephen Mason with a shy chuckle. "When we went looking for producers to do the second album, a bunch of people were put forward; one of them was Steve Lipson [London-based producer who has worked with Sting, Annie Lennox and Simple Minds--GWA Ed.] He was a guy we didn't really know that much about, so we asked him questions about how he'd produce a particular song. All he could say was, 'I don't know. I guess we'll just go to the studio and panic together.' We figured that to follow up a relatively successful record, that was the attitude we wanted to have."

Scrambling for answers in the studio must bring out the best in Lipson and Jars of Clay, because they've pulled a dandy pop layer cake out of the studio oven. The new album, Much Afraid, (Essential/Silvertone), greatly expands the contours of the melodic folk-pop of their promising 1995 debut, Jars of Clay, and suggests the quartet is more than ready to finish the job they started with their first surprise hit: breaking down the wall that has long separated the pop music world from the one labeled "Christian music."

It's a mission the band doesn't take lightly. The title of the new album speaks volumes about the band's mind-set as it settles into a career that seemed like an impossibility only three years ago when Mason and fellow guitarist Matthew Odmark, vocalist Dan Haseltine and keyboardist Charlie Lowell were banging out songs at tiny Greenville College in Illinois.

"I had never played in a band before I got to college; I'd written maybe three songs, all of which I've forgotten about," Mason says. "Dan had never sung in a studio before. Matt and Charlie were in a band together in Rochester, New York, and they had the most experience. We were surprised when we got signed; we were surprised when our record sold more than 30,000 copies, and the whole thing just snowballed. Interviews. The video. Touring. We had no idea how something like that would happen, and then we were in the middle of it. We were just four people who bonded over our mutual interest in certain kinds of music, and figured, 'Why not have some fun playing together?'"

The story of how Jars of Clay met is already the stuff of legend in Christian music circles. Mason and Lowell knew they'd found a kindred spirit when they spotted Haseltine on campus wearing a Toad the Wet Sprocket T-shirt. They started playing together soon thereafter, and when founding guitarist Matt Bronleewe decided to leave the band to pursue other interests, Lowell rang up his old guitar-playing buddy Odmark back home in Rochester. An alluring, song-based sound emerged, built on the Toad the Wet Sprocket model, and their self-produced demo tape drew the attention of several labels. Silvertone signed the Jars and put them in the studio for a week with King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew, who produced two tracks, including "Flood," which broke through on commercial radio and popped up on the rotation lists of MTV and VH-1.

Ironically, the first song the band ever wrote, called "Fade to Grey," wasn't included on the debut album because Belew and the band ran out of time and budget before they could record it. It appears instead on Much Afraid, and is one of the tracks that solidifies the album's themes of faith and redemption tinged by self-doubt. More than anything, "Fade to Grey" is a song that explodes the Christian-rock stereotype of preachy lyrics underpinned by cliched music. A moody rocker that swirls in dreamlike spirals, it builds momentum behind a hard-charging acoustic rhythm guitar as Haseltine sings, "All the black, all the white, fade to grey." In other words, don't look for pat answers here, folks.

"It was like a big accident, writing those early songs," Mason recalls. "The bits and pieces would just fall together and suddenly we'd realize, 'Oh, that was pretty cool.'"

Much Afraid is no accident. It's a grand, sprawling piece of music-making that embraces everything from late-period Beatles, with the gorgeous string arrangement on "Tea and Sympathy," to the sparse folk of "Hymn." It's as down home as the mandolin Odmark occasionally plucks, and as urban as the tape loops that surface throughout. Slide Much Afraid into the stereo without any preconceptions about the band's spiritual orientation, and be prepared to be won over by pop craft that blends classic-rock melodies with moody textures that would fit right in on any of R.E.M.'s most recent albums.

On the day he spoke to Guitar World Acoustic, Mason, who was born in Joliet and grew up in Decatur, Illinois, was grieving over a recent loss by his favorite football team, the Chicago Bears. But otherwise, he was in a good mood. Even the breakdown of a tremolo pedal in the middle of a recent concert was no cause for alarm. "We just played all night without it, and after talking with our production manager, I'm finding I don't need a lot of effects to sound good. If anything we're eliminating things rather than adding them."

Mason is soft-spoken but thoughtful--not unlike his band's music. Though the band celebrates ambiguity and gray areas in its lyrics, the four members of Jars of Clay write melodies and craft arrangements that invite a wide audience. "We're going for a timeless feel," Mason says. "We want this music to last."

He speaks like a man with something to prove. In their subtle fashion, Jars of Clay are slowly trying to redress a cultural bias of long standing. With Much Afraid, they declare that Christian music can be good for the soul, no matter what the listener's spiritual affiliation.

Guitar World Acoustic: Much Afraid is very much an acoustic record, but it's lusher and more orchestrated than your debut, Jars of Clay.

Stephen Mason: It made a big difference to be playing out as a band for two years. That gave us a somewhat greater sense of dynamics. The first record was pretty much a studio creation, and touring behind those songs gave us a real sense of what we wanted the second record to be like. Looking back, we're not unhappy with the first record, but we felt it could have been a little more contoured.

GWA: You mentioned "panicking" in the studio with Steve Lipson--a sense that is conveyed by the album title: "Much Afraid." It sounds like you guys were highly aware that once a band becomes successful, there's a lot of attention and a lot of pressure to live up to its notoriety. Did that affect the music?

Mason: There's always been this stigma of having to prove ourselves or vindicate ourselves, especially because we have a Christian affiliation. In a lot of the reviews coming in about the new record, reviewers don't talk about the record. They can't get over our faith. That's their primary issue, and they say little or nothing about the music. So, from that standpoint, I always felt we had to prove ourselves on a musical level. We wanted to make something that could run with the rest of the stuff out there, but definitely not make a trendy, "modern-sounding" record. We wanted something a little more timeless. We didn't use a lot of analog keyboards, and though there are some loops, there aren't as many as on the first record. We wanted to take a bit more of a "classic" approach.

GWA: What did making the first record yourselves teach you?

Mason: We recorded most of the songs in college as a demo, printed up 1,500 copies and then got the chance to make the record again when Silvertone called. The only real difference was we got to add some strings and do a couple of songs with Adrian Belew. Before Adrian got involved, we were learning as we went along. It was a process of just trying to learn how to use the studio, and sonically it suffered a great deal because of it. [laughs] Adrian has a great ear, and working with him affected the record a great deal. After playing those songs live, we stored up a lot of ideas about how we could approach the next record. There was a lot more available to us this time, financially speaking, so if there was something we heard, we were able to make it happen. Plus, we added a lot more electric guitar on this record because we wanted to help the dynamics.

GWA: But the core of the band remains the acoustic interplay between you and Matt Odmark. Was that in place from the start?

Mason: We started out that way, and to this day all the songs that are written start out on acoustic. Our philosophy is that if it's a good song, you should be able to strip it down to a vocal and one guitar and have it still be interesting. That makes for some pretty tough writing. But when we come out on the other side, we feel that the song is definitely solid and that if you take away the whistles and bells, the song will still grab you.

GWA: You've used some different tunings as a songwriting tool in the past. How about this time?

Mason: We have used a "high-string" guitar approach [the E, A, D and G strings are replaced with thinner strings tuned one octave higher--GWA Ed.] in the past, and we use some of that on this record, though not as much. We use an open E tuning, which is, from low to high, E-A-B-E-B-E. It's a tuning we refer to as "open E," even though it's not actually an open E major. We used that on a couple of songs.

A lot more writing was done this time in standard tuning. We're learning more chords and listening to more music. I think regular tuning was something that we used to help diversify the record.

GWA: What kind of guitars did you use?

Mason: Matt has a Taylor 514 and a Taylor 422, and we used a 12-string Taylor, too. I have a Gibson Tal Farlow, and we used a Baby Taylor and a Martin Backpacker [travel] guitar. I also have a Gibson Chet Atkins, an electric-acoustic hybrid that sounds more acoustic than some acoustic guitars I play. In a live setting, acoustic guitars are tough to make stand out in the mix, so you have to be pretty sharp and cutting, which is where the Chet Atkins comes in.

GWA: How did you get into the acoustic?

Mason: I started out on electric. The music scene wasn't huge where I grew up, in Decatur, Illinois. In my neighborhood, it was me and a drummer, and we'd bash out Led Zeppelin songs in the basement. Everyone was blowing down all these riffs, and I thought, "I don't know if this is necessarily what I want to be doing right away." No one else was playing acoustic, and I gravitated to it. My mom introduced me to the Beatles records. James Taylor was a big influence.

GWA: Was the Jars of Clay sound there from the start when you all met in college?

Mason: Yes. I think just naturally we're all big fans of groups that do a lot of harmonies, so we all started singing, doing backgrounds and stuff. We wanted to keep the acoustic element as a strong base. And we all have an appreciation for a good pop song. It was all about being interesting and accessible songwriters.

GWA: If not for the lyric sheets, listeners might well find it difficult to realize you have a Christian aspect to your music.

Mason: We definitely don't want to come across as heavy-handed. I think Dan does that really well, lyrically. We don't preach. Hopefully, there's not this air of condescension that some people project. We don't want to alienate an audience that might not have any idea about the Church or Christianity. We want anyone to be able to pick up the record and say, "I like this because..." and not have to feel like they're making a commitment to Christianity by listening to our music. I think that's what people fear: admitting they like the music might be admitting they like something "bad".

GWA: Do you ever consider just not printing the lyrics, to avoid that kind of snap judgment?

Mason: A lot of our favorite artists, like Del Amitri, include the lyrics with their records. I feel like it's a necessary part of what we do.

GWA: Obviously, it's frustrating being written off by certain listeners because of assumptions they have about so-called Christian music. How do you deal with that?

Mason: Hopefully, it pushes us to strive for excellence, musically and lyrically. Hopefully, what we do will be a complete package that says something and says it well. A lot of the stigma comes from people's perception of Christian rock as having too much lyrical content and no musical value. I think a lot of people have a stereotype of what that sounds like. So we've tried to communicate that this music can have both things, hand in hand.

GWA: How do you and Matt arrange the guitar parts?

Mason: We've found that when one of us comes up with a chord pattern, whatever else pops up doesn't have to be an entire part, but just little melodic lines on another guitar to complement those chord changes really well. I think "Overjoyed," on the new album, is a really good example of that; it's got a lot of arpeggios that play off the basic chords and fill up the song. We tried to do more of that on this record. It gives us more elements to play with from a production standpoint.

GWA: Does one of you generally come up with melodic ideas and the other the counterpoint fills?"

Mason: We go back and forth. When we wrote "Overjoyed," Matt came up with the [electric] guitar line at the beginning, I came up with the acoustic line and had an idea for the solo. But generally, I play the electric stuff, when there is electric.

GWA: So you're straddling lots of worlds: acoustic and electric; mainstream rock and Christian rock. Do you feel comfortable there?

Mason: A lot of what we hope to do is build bridges between the two, because obviously there's a gap there. I know that having an industry that calls itself "Christian music" doesn't necessarily help in closing that gap. We're playing a lot of mainstream-type venues now, which we hope will help the process.

GWA: Was it easy to integrate the idea of rock with your faith, or did you have some doubts about whether it was appropriate to play, say, a Tony Iommi riff you copped off a Black Sabbath record on a song praising God?

Mason: [laughs] I never had a problem with it. It's so funny how people look at rock artists to find the answers for whatever is troubling them. We're open to a lot of different music because, hopefully, that makes us better songwriters, better musicians. Our tastes go all over the map. We don't limit ourselves by what the artist's message is. Often, the message is just a byproduct. But there's no doubt that a lot of our influences---Sting, Peter Gabriel, Sarah McLachlan---are thinking-person's pop. Dan likes to say a good writer writes from his experiences, and the four of us being brought up in the church, that's our experience in life. Those are the things we're going to wrestle with and write about---not necessarily in a way that says, "This is it," but in a way that says. "This is our take on things." We hope most of all to ask people to ask questions.

GWA: "Fade to Grey," on your new album, says that. It's all about realizing you don't have all the answers.

Mason: We want to make sure we're being as transparent as we can, and so we give people a bit of who we are. That translates into not taking it too seriously. Our biggest thing is that we want to be really accessible off stage and show people we don't have an agenda, just show we're normal people.

GWA: I've heard you've gotten fan mail from people who bought the first record after seeing the video for "Flood" and were shocked to find you had a Christian bent in your lyrics.

Mason: We've had negative and positive feedback. Parents would tell us there's not a lot of pop music they like their kids to buy or can even listen to with their kids. That's one of the cool things about our band, that families can come to our shows, parents and kids, and enjoy it. Different generations are in a constant struggle to relate to each other, and if we can be part of helping ease that struggle, we think it's great.*

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*Article transcribed from Guitar World Acoustic Magazine, Issue No. 25, pages 28-31 and 89-91.