It wasn't a conscious thing, they say, it was only obvious in retrospect. You finish recording a project, you get away from the studio, you live with the songs for a few weeks, and what's been swirling around in the undercurrents of your own hearts and minds - the very tensions, longings and exhalations that gave birth to the songs in the first place - are suddenly laid bare and made visible. When they're finally all spread out on the table in front of you, you can at last take an objective look, determine the connections, and give them a name. For the members of Third Day, ruminating on the completion of their third record, their first for Essential Records, that name is Time.
"We just started writing songs with a notion of 'whatever comes out, comes out'," says Mac Powell, Third Day's sandpaper-and-grit vocalist. "But when we were done and we looked back, this diverse theme of 'time' just kept recurring. 'Time' in the sense that, as Christians, we hope the return of Christ is soon. But also 'time' in the sense that it's time to be bold about our faith, to start living out the Christian walk, to be who we say we are. Scripture tells us to redeem the time, to make the most of every opportunity. In response we want to encourage Christians to begin to live like the Gospel is true."
Crafting a musical framework to undergird the urgent passion of their lyrics, Third Day intentionally gravitated toward a rootsier, looser, more "southern" feel for Time than was evidenced on their previous projects.
"On Time we finally found and captured our sound," says Tai Anderson, the group's bass player. "In the past we might have felt like we had something to prove, but this time we just wanted to be ourselves and make a great record. We recognize that growing up in the South has effected our musical style. What's most natural for us is a very straightforward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach, as opposed to something with a lot of overdubs and production tricks."
Opting to record in Atlanta at Southern Tracks studios (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Black Crowes), Third Day set up their amplifiers in a circle and recorded all of the instruments simultaneously in an effort to capture their dynamic live chemistry.
"Some of the coolest stuff we do is unplanned and off-the-cuff anyway," says Third Day drummer David Carr. "Recording the way we did opened up more space for those inspired moments to happen. Our producer, Monroe Jones (Chris Rice, Chasing Furies, Margaret Becker, Wes Cunningham), was instrumental in setting the tone. He wasn't so much concerned with musical perfection as he was with capturing the mood of the songs and the spirit of what we were trying to do.
Blending elements of rock n' roll, blues, country, rockabilly, and gospel, Third Day sought with Time to further refine the personal, honest evocative, no frills sound that produced nine #1 singles, garnered three Dove Awards and a Grammy award nomination and sold over 400,000 copies of their first two records.
"We've always just written songs from where we were as Christians in our relationship with God and with each other," observes Mark Lee, co-guitarist for Third Day along with Brad Avery. "Our first record was very blatantly about our faith but it was simple faith. Over the years we've grown spiritually and musically. On the second record we wanted Christians to dig beneath the surface of their faith and search for meaning. This record combines the best of both; it's very up-front about our faith, but it's not at all surfacey. There are lyrics that are obvious, and others you need to hear a few times and wrestle with."
Time's melody-driven opening cut, "I've Always Loved You," serves as a good case-in-point. Acoustically framed and more musically subdued than typical Third Day fare, "I've Always Loved You" pulls listeners in with an air of tender urgency.
"It was with a measure of fear and trembling that we decided to kick the record off with that song," says Mac, "because it's so laid back. The song is a love song from God to us. The Psalms tell us that God knew us while we were still in the womb. Romans says that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. We sometimes run from God, but God has always known and loved us, eve in light of our sinfulness."
Third Day's tendency to dwell on matters of faith and relationship with God has served to create an ever-present, underlying sense of worship in their songs that audiences have been quick to connect with.
"Worship has to come from the heart and be sincere," says David, "so we've been really wary about jumping on a 'worship music' bandwagon. On the other hand; especially in our live shows, it's a big part of what we do and we want to make it even more so. Some of our songs we never thought of in a worship context until we began performing them live and saw people raising their hands and worshipping. It surprises us and makes us realize that what we do is sometimes more worshipful than we know."
One of the standout tracks on Time, "Your Love O Lord," falls unapologetically into the worship vein. "Lyrically it's a praise song straight from the Psalms," says Mac, "but musically it's very different. It uses loops, two drum sets and unusual guitar tones to create a rhythmic, ethereal, universal world-beat feel. It's different from the rest of the record, but not too much so.
Several of the more aggressive, forward-leaning tracks on Time such as "Took My Place," a song about Christ's unfathomable sacrifice on the cross, and "Never Bow Down" ("A hard edged, line-in-the-sand proclamation"), draw from more familiar Third Day sounds musically. "Never Bow Down," while based on events in the Book of Daniel, has specific meaning for the band in light of more current events.
"It's not something I've talked a lot about," says Mac, "but God has been dealing with my heart in a secret way about the persecution of the saints around the world. Here in the West persecution usually just means being ridiculed, but there are believers all over the world who face torture, imprisonment, loss of property, and even death because of their refusal to turn from Christ. "Never Bow Down" is a song that we've dedicated to them."
The record's musical center emerges most clearly in the tune "Don't Say Goodbye." Rootsy, spacious and minimalistic, this song of encouragement and challenge captures in a four-and-a-half minute span the collective personality and current sensibilities of Third Day's respective members.
"Even up to the day we mixed this song I was terrified," says Mark,"because I didn't think we had recorded enough tracks to pull it off. That turned out to be the beauty of it though. You hear every little part and texture coming in at just the right time. It hit the bullseye of the hybrid we wanted to create between a stripped-down southern, and a mid-American rock sound. It also hit the bullseye lyrically, because one of our goals as a band has always been to challenge Christians to dig deeper and to know what they believe and why they believe it. That's still something we're about."
Discography
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