[caedmonscall.net]

Megan: When you listen to LLoL or 40 Acres or JDWC, which one appeals to you more? Is there a distinction for you?

Jeff: Oh yeah there’s a distinction.

Todd: It’s hard for me to separate where I was mentally and emotionally during the recording of that record. If I look at it and take it for what it is, the most fun and creative I think would be LLoL.

Jeff: We had a blast doing that.

Todd: But as far as technical performance, 40 Acres would probably be the best. And JDWC was the follow-up to MCYS, and it was new and exciting at the time. It was like, “Ok we got these new songs and we want to put them down on a record.” I don’t think the production on MCYS and JDWC was very good. You look back now and it’s like, “Man, sonically and everything it’s just hard to listen to.” But as far as the songs, the great thing about MCYS is that we got all the songs from one place and put them on an album and it’s like, “Wow, there’s this theme on all these songs that just ties them all together.” The theme of redemption and this really cool lyrical theme going on there and we didn’t plan on that happening. And basically it was just what Aaron was going through and what he wrote about.

Megan: But it does come together in sort of a nice, cohesive package, which is neat.

Todd: And it’s hard to deliberately do that.

Megan: Especially if you have multiple songwriters.

Jeff: And (multiple) singers too. Cuz ya know you gotta have a Derek song and a Danielle song and a Cliff song…

Todd: And what’s interesting too, for LLoL, Aaron Tate had just had a baby.

Jeff: And Cliff too, he had just had Rachel…

Todd: So Derek had several songs, and Aaron had a couple of songs, and we were like “Ok, what do we do?” Aaron was kind of at a dry spell, and Aaron’s the kind of writer where when he writes…

Jeff: (interrupting) I wouldn’t say he was in a dry spell, I would just say he was preoccupied. He just wasn’t writing at that point.

Todd: Aaron is the kind of writer where his best writing comes when he’s dealing with something. If he’s going through a struggle, that’s the well he draws from. Like, he brought these songs to the band for this next album and he was like, “this is all I have right now”. And it was really cool because he sat everybody down and he played all the songs for us, and it was cool for him to do that.

Jeff: That was cool.

Todd: Just to get his side collectively. For everyone to get his side collectively was really cool. And it will be interesting to see what happens in the future with his writing. Like he says, “I’m putting the pen down.” But I’m like, “You’re gonna write. You can’t just stop writing.”. But what’s interesting is that he didn’t have any songs on the worship album, and being a member of the band, it’s easy for me to think “Ok, Aaron’s been with the band from the beginning. His writing is sort of a signature for the band.” And it was kinda scary to make the worship album without him. But from another point of view, it gave us the confidence that we’re not totally limited to his writing. And that’s not against Aaron or anything, that just gives me confidence as a drummer and as a member of the band that there is something to this. And I still don’t know exactly what it is…but there’s something about Caedmon’s, and the members of Caedmon’s, and the uniqueness of everybody, personality-wise, musically, that adds to something, that makes Caedmon’s what it is. And we’re still trying to figure out what that is.

Megan: I think the fans are too. (laughing)

Todd: I mean, we’ve been together for 10 years, and most bands don’t last that long. So if it ended tomorrow, I couldn’t complain. We said that 5 years ago, and I still stand by that. I’m very humbled and thankful to be a part of this and a part of whatever it is that makes this special. And I’m thankful that God chose to use this, and is choosing to use this in one way or another. And this is really fun to be at this point. This is a real transitional time for the band. We’ve got different writers, there’s new elements, new things that we’re faced with, different directions that we want to go, and yet we want to stay true to what we feel called to do, so you’re constantly redefining your vision. As a band we’re ten years old now, and when we started writing, we were all in college dealing with college things and now we’re married and dealing with family things and dealing with those pressures and responsibilities. And how do we relate when we play at a college? We’re playing to a whole new crowd of faces that are going through the things that we were going through ten years ago, and to some degree we’re still going through those, and some things will be common in the life of a believer. But hopefully we can stay attractive musically and artistically as well as lyrical content that will be relative and applicable to someone college age as an older person.

Nicole: A lot of your fans from 10 years ago are going through what you’re going through now, which is so cool.

Megan: What I find interesting is that there are alot of younger fans, and Josh has a lot of draw for younger fans.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s cuz they all like Josh.

Megan: Yeah, and what’s interesting to me is that 5 years ago if I had met a 14-yr old Caedmon’s Call fan, well, you just wouldn’t have. But now, there’s quite a few.

Jeff: I think that’s cool man.

Megan: And it has to do with your sound evolving too. The LLoL sound is slightly more mainstream, less folksy so it appeals to a younger crowd more.

Jeff: But lyrically I think it’s good for kids of that age to be exposed to something a little more profound than some of the stuff that’s out there today.

Todd: And that’s what makes it hard.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s hard writing lyrics for this band, man.

Todd: There’s a high lyrical standard.

Jeff: Seriously, there really is.

Todd: And that’s why we have songs right now that don’t have any lyrics to them. (laughing)

Nicole: Have either of you ever attempted to write songs before?

Jeff: Well, this record, like Todd said, we’re doing it. Because typically what would happen in the past is that Derek would bring songs to the table that were pretty much done. Or Aaron would bring songs that were pretty much done to the table. And this time…

Todd: (interrupting) well, Aaron’s songs are never done.

Jeff: Well yeah, Cliff usually gets ahold of them and does some stuff. But this time, all of us were involved from the beginning. Lyrically, musically, everything. And it’s pretty easy for us to sit down together in a room and come up with something cool musically, but lyrically, we have a pretty high standard. I mean, you don’t just sit down and write lyrics to a song in ten minutes. It just doesn’t happen that way. If it does I would think it would be a rare occurrence. You think about em, you change em, you ponder em, it’s tough.

Bryan: Aaron set the bar really high with MCYS.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Bryan: I know that he’s told me that he wrote probably 100 songs for that CD and in the end only 10 of them were good enough to make the cut.

Todd: Yeah.

Jeff: It’s tough.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 19th, 2002 at 11:23 am and is filed under Dotnet Exclusives, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.