Rising up: Christian rockers Skillet to headline Liberty's Winterfest

Source: The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Va.迷你倉Dec. 26--Back in the decadent age of M飆ley Cr�, churchgoing rockers sometimes seemed misplaced.And listeners who remember Stryper -- the hair-metal band of the 1980s, known for shooting Bibles out of a cannon onstage while sporting bumblebee-colored spandex -- may be tempted to dismiss today's Christian rock out of hand.But instead of growing apart, mainstream rock and its more evangelical equivalent have developed a bit of a rapport since then.Consider what's become of the Wisconsin-based quartet Skillet, whose members joined Canada's favorite sons Nickelback for a month-long arena tour that crisscrossed Europe in November -- an opportunity that showed that a broader audience was starting to get familiar with the Memphis-bred act after nearly 20 years of relentless hard work.Frontman/bassist John Cooper talked about the crossover success Skillet's been reveling in as of late during a phone interview last month from Budapest."When we released [2009's] 'Awake,' it was shocking how many great things were happening: the record sales, our song 'Hero' in a NFL commercial and being on WWE," said Cooper, who'll perform alongside his wife and guitarist/keyboardist Korey, drummer Jen Ledger and guitarist Seth Morrison at Liberty University's Winterfest on Dec. 30."It's an even bigger surprise that the largest tour we've ever done is in Europe, opening for a band like Nickelback. We've talked with them for the last four years about doing a tour, and it just never worked out. But that's something we knew we were going to be doing more of, getting out and playing around the world. There's definitely a large demand for rock 'n' roll outside of America."The acceptance of Christian music on the pop charts doesn't hurt either, as it continues to infiltrate secular radio one song at a time, with a little help from a bevy of artists committed to taking their message to the masses.Lifehouse, whose 2000 debut "No Name Face" shifted more than four million copies worldwide, had one of the fastest-selling records in the country at that time. Then, in the fall of 2005, Grammy-winning band Casting Crowns earned the No. 9 slot on the Billboard Top 200 for its disc "Lifesong," while former DC Talk vocalist TobyMac and Atlanta-based rapper Lecrae grabbed the No. 1 and No. 3 positions with their year-end releases in late 2012.In fact, TobyMac's "Eye On It" LP was the first Christian album to reach the top spot since Bob Carlisle's Adult Contemporary hit "Butterfly Kisses" did in 1997.Given the trend, Skillet followed suit over the summer, when their most recent effort, "Rise," a concept record about a teenager coming to terms with a violent world, debuted at No. 4."A lot of times in rock music, it's me singing about me: I this or I that," Cooper said. "But this album is very 'we' oriented. And, you know, trying to find faith and feeling hopeless is not just a Christian message; it's a message for humans all over the world. So, hopefully, it will challenge people to rise up."The hard-charging disc vacillates between the full-throttled discontent that is a by-product of growing pains, like on the single "Sick of It" ("Are you over it?/Bored to death?/Have you had enough regret?"), and tracks that come across as traditional love songs or an exposition of one's relationship with God, like on "Fire and Fury" ("In my sleep, I call your name/But when I wake I need to touch your face/'Cause I ... I need to feel you here with me").Cooper knowingly fashions his lyrics in a manself storageer that keeps them from sounding overtly religious, in an effort to allow listeners a chance to extract their own meaning -- the intention being to not alienate anyone from the conversation."There are a lot of Christian people who think we should say Jesus more in our songs, or that the way we look isn't really Christian enough, as if there is such a thing, anyway," he said. "So I find myself having to go, 'Who am I? What am I called to do?' And I just got to be honest about that and be myself. ... Our lifestyles are 100 percent dedicated to living for Christ, and that's what it's about for Skillet."The guys in Tenth Avenue North, a South Florida-bred pop/rock group that coalesced out of a shared belief in the Bible's teachings, adopted a similar perspective, having spent nearly the last decade "dodging traffic at the intersection of art, faith and commerce," to borrow a line from Switchfoot singer Jon Foreman.Those words seem to echo the themes found on vocalist Mike Donehey and his bandmates' -- guitarist Jeff Owen, drummer Jason Jamison, bassist Ruben Juarez and keyboardist Brendon Shirley -- latest LP, 2012's "The Struggle," a 12-song collection that explores notions of grace, forgiveness and redemption.The disc landed at No. 15 on the Billboard Top 200 but, during a telephone interview last month before a gig in Colorado Springs, Donehey made it pretty clear that he doesn't find much use for stats."It's hard to feel like you're the man, when you have poop underneath your fingernails from changing the 20th diaper," said Donehey, who also will take the stage with Tenth Avenue North at Winterfest on Dec. 30."I think we have a really good system of keeping each other accountable. ... You don't really get away with a lot in our band. If you start copping an attitude, there's people who are going to shoot you real straight."Cooper has no problem relating to the idea that family responsibilities often keep the ego in check as well."Absolutely. We have two kids on the road," he said. "They are 11 and 8. We do school on the road. We do everything on the road together. Korey and I are together every minute. We run the business together. We write the music together. We play together. ... Anybody in the whole world you spend that much time with, you're going to have disagreements and have hard times. You're going to get on people's nerves, especially me. I'm a little bit of a spaz, and I can really get on people's nerves [laughs]. That's just the way it is, my brother."When it comes to measuring his band's success, Donehey prefers to adhere to the old adage of quality versus quantity by acknowledging his human frailty as a means of understanding that, no matter what kind of popularity they happen to achieve, the job simply requires a fundamental connection with the fans above all else."A crowd is not there to applaud me and validate me," Donehey said. "Rather, it's a sea of individual humans whose story I might be able to speak into and serve with this music. Mother Teresa said, 'We can do no great things. We just do small things with great love.'"As you get bigger, and the arenas get bigger, you get fed the drug of entitlement and the dismissal of service, as though it's beneath you. ... So I just always try to tell myself, 'Mike, if you don't want to hold a toilet brush, you got no business holding that microphone.'"Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The News & Advance (Lynchburg, Va.) 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