Third Day
THIRD DAY'S LATEST OFFERINGS
Rockers Get Their Praise On
No one was more surprised than rockers Third Day when the band's 2000 praise & worship release, Offerings: A Worship Album, became a huge hit, quickly reaching gold sales and earning the group five Dove Awards, including Artist of the Year. Proving that the boogiefied rock band could excel in the worship arena, as well, Third Day continue to breathe new life into the praise & worship movement with Offerings II: All I Have to Give. Third Day's lead singer, Mac Powell, spoke with Barnes&Noble.com's Lisa Zhito about this second helping of Offerings.
Barnes & Noble.com: Why do an Offerings II project?
Mac Powell: There are several reasons, but I think the main reason is because it's what our fans want to hear. There was major success with the first Offerings record; it was something our fans had always asked for, even before this resurgence of praise & worship music, because it had always been a huge part of our live show. We had thought, if a third of our audience goes to get [that] record it will be a success. It was a lot more than that!
B&N.com: Why do you think Offerings I was so successful?
MP: I think a big part of it was that it was new music for people. A lot of worship -- I would dare to say even most worship records -- are songs that people have heard before, just done by a different artist. For us, it was new music, and the majority of the songs were songs we had written. And if they were songs we had not written, they were songs we had liked a lot and wanted to get out to more people. It's the same on this record. We wrote most of the songs, but there are a couple of covers. Usually, the covers are songs we like and want to expose to more people. An example is the song "You Are So Good to Me," which was written by a Christian band called Waterdeep. It's a great song, a song we wanted to get out to more people.
B&N.com: Tell me about some of the original songs.
MP: "May Your Wonders Never Cease" is kind of an epic, eight-minute-long song on there. I've had the chorus for probably five years now and never finished writing the song, but I always loved the chorus. Even for the first Offerings record, I wanted to do the song but never finished it in time. That was a song that's been a long time coming for it to finally be completed, and now it's my favorite song on the album.
B&N.com: Record labels love it when bands put eight-minute epics on their projects!
MP: Yeah! We have an eight-minute song and a couple of six-minute songs, too! When we put these things together we do like to think about what can be on the radio, but for the most part we think about what is best for the album, as opposed to what's best for the single.
B&N.com: Third Day originally was known as a Southern rock band. Do you think the band has grown beyond that now?
MP: We are still rooted in Southern rock, I think that definitely is an influence on us still, in that we do that well. But I think we have perhaps broadened our musical taste and base from that a bit. I don't think that you can necessarily pick every song from our record and go, "Those guys are Southern rockers." Come Together, I thought, was way, way different from everything we had done before, but the more I started playing it for my friends, the more they said, "Hey, this sounds like Third Day!" So it's not a huge departure, we always just take that natural next step.
B&N.com: The Come Together & Worship Tour with Michael W. Smith broke some new ground for the industry with its Chevy sponsorship. Some thought the deal was too worldly. What was your take on that situation?
MP: Well, when you do a tour of that magnitude you pretty much have to have a sponsor if you want to keep the ticket prices down. And so when Chevy came on board that helped us a lot in being able to keep the ticket prices low. I don't see the negative side of that. Why would people have any problem with making it to where more people can come at a lower cost? I don't see the issue. On Chevy's part, it's a smart business decision for them because they ended up spending a lot less money than they would on other advertising, and they reached a lot of people.
B&N.com: One hears stories like that a lot. Do you think the Christian music industry's more conservative element is starting to lose its influence?
MP: I think it will always be a constant battle. But at the same time there are people opening up their eyes to the fact that we as Christians are part of the culture. We are part of this world, whether we like it or not. There are things in the world we can know are wrong and say, "I'm not going to have a part of that," but there are other things where there's no moral decision in it. What is the moral decision in buying a Chevy? There are probably some people out there who can come up with something, but you're probably grabbing at straws! You can't please everybody; you have to do what you know is right for you and what you're called to do.
February, 2003
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