Bringing Christian Rock to a New Stage
  Brian Wise, New York Times -- October 23, 2005

The band has won a Grammy Award, sold three million albums and plays in arenas packed with thousands of screaming fans. But if your weekend pursuits do not include church or a youth group, you probably have never heard of Audio Adrenaline. 

The band is one of four Christian rock acts that will be performing at the Arena at Harbor Yard on Nov. 5 in Bridgeport. The concert, organized by the nonprofit organization Rock the Sound, is an effort to build a market for contemporary Christian music in a region where it has traditionally struggled.

Why Christian rock is scarce in one of the nation's largest music-buying markets is, in part, a function of demographics; the audience is simply not here. The Northeast did not provide the Christian conservative bloc votes that were pivotal in the last presidential election, and it lacks the highly organized mega-churches found in parts of the West and South.

The bottom-line pressures of the concert business are also a factor. Promoters of Christian rock concerts generally steer clear of the region because it lacks major Christian radio stations to sponsor tour stops for musicians. Because Christian rock concert tours do not generally gross as much as their secular counterparts, it makes bad financial sense to play at sites that frequently charge top dollar.

Still, contemporary Christian music - which fans call CCM - is a success story in a music industry hit by swelling concert ticket prices, slumping sales and illegal downloading. Contemporary Christian has been outselling jazz and classical discs combined for several years.

"People have tried to get Christian radio going several times, and it always failed for whatever reason," said Joel Stier, the 39-year-old founder of Rock the Sound. "Christian concerts here have also bombed pretty regularly, not so much for lack of interest but because it's extremely difficult to get the word out without major FM stations."

Mr. Stier formed Rock the Sound last year after winning a bid on eBay to acquire the rights to a performance by Audio Adrenaline. From there, he booked the Newsboys, considered a top band in the genre with more than five million albums sold during their 17-year career. Also added were KJ-52, a hip-hop artist from Florida, and Hawk Nelson, a pop-punk band from Ontario.

Mr. Stier, who works full time in the energy trading industry, had no experience in concert promotion, but he enlisted the help of other concert promoters in the region. He hired a public relations firm, created a Web site and bought his own printing equipment.

He also recruited more than 100 volunteers and developed a mailing list of 7,000 churches to which he offered incentives. For example, for the four church youth groups that bought the most group tickets, one of the four acts will come to each church and perform (and in one case, preach) the day after the concert.

Mr. Stier said he became a fan of contemporary Christian music after attending the 2001 Luis Palau festival in Bridgeport, which gave Connecticut its first big taste of Christian rock by featuring bands like Audio Adrenaline. He soon began organizing church bus trips to concerts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Mike Snider, president of Third Coast Artist Agency, which represents Audio Adrenaline and Hawk Nelson, said that selling out the 10,000-seat Arena at Harbor Yard was "pretty optimistic." But he said that Mr. Stier's grass-roots marketing approach was a proven means of driving ticket sales.

"We call these church-van shows," he said. "You look in the parking lot and it will be full of church buses, each of which might bring a dozen people."

Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, a concert trade magazine,said that many Christian concert promoters did not feel there was a strong enough demand in the Northeast to make it worth the effort to bring acts here, despite the fact that New York is a powerful media market.

Still, Christian tours are expanding on a national level. Mr. Bongiovanni cites a recent tour by the contemporary-Christian artist Steven Chapman that sold 150,000 tickets, and the 2005 Winter Jam Tour, a Christian rock showcase that sold 110,000 tickets. By comparison, Bob Dylan sold 140,000 tickets and Ashlee Simpson sold 110,000 on recent tours.

"It's always been a West Coast phenomenon that then spread south and into the Midwest," said Mark Joseph, author of the book "Faith, God and Rock 'n' Roll." "The Eastern Seaboard has never been its natural home, for a variety of reasons. Some of it is religious orientation and some of it is geographic."

Mr. Joseph said that, although Christian bands tend to be apolitical, blue-state politics were sometimes a factor as well.

"From time to time politics have been introduced," he said. "I don't know of many CCM bands that would have been in the Kerry camp. A lot of that is just a function of abortion. As the parties became so entrenched on abortion, a lot of these bands tend to be against it, to line up with the G.O.P. But there's an awful lot of pressure on bands not to come out for the GOP from more of the mainstream labels."

Many agree that a major Christian music radio station is what the area lacks most. Mr. Stier estimated that the cost of launching such a station was between $50 million and $70 million. He hopes that his concert will inspire national radio networks to look closely at the region. For example, he points to the listener-supported network known as K-LOVE, which has 133 stations nationwide, but none in New York City, New Jersey or Connecticut.

"This is basically the jewel of American radio in terms of markets," he said. "It's just not developed."

Audio Adrenaline's lead singer, Mark Stuart, said its rock attitude could win over fans.

"We don't lead worship songs," he said. "The Newsboys have kind of done more of a worship thing lately with more preaching. We rock a little harder. We're more of an American rock 'n' roll band."

Mr. Stier also thinks that if Connecticut won't come to Christian music, perhaps Christian music needs to adapt to the state. He pointed out that the opening act Hawk Nelson features an edgier sound and lyrics with more crossover appeal. Only later in the concert with the Newsboys, he said, does the emphasis become "more worshipful in style" with religious commentary between songs. He said he did not believe that toning down the religious language would dilute the concert's overall message.

"If you listen to the lyrics by some of the bands out there like Switchfoot, the 'Jesus' count is not high," he said, referring to the Christian band whose album made its debut at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart last month. "But who's to say that can't have a bigger impact than someone who's preaching to the choir?"



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