Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but Christmas is so delightful – at least for multi Grammy Award-winning group Jars of Clay.
The band just came out with their first full-length Christmas album titled Christmas Songs; is in the middle of a Christmas tour with Third Day; and will be featured on Gospel Music Channel’s Christmas programme throughout the holidays in the US.
But in the midst of all the excitement, Jars of Clay’s frontman Dan Haseltine wishes to spend Christmas Day quietly at home with his wife and two sons.
CT: I believe Christmas songs is Jars of Clay’s first Christmas album since an EP in 1995?
Haseltine: Yes, we did a Christmas EP with two songs – "Drummer Boy" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen".
CT: Why did you wait 12 years to do this?
Haseltine: We’ve asked every year of our record label if we can make a Christmas album. There was great momentum with "Drummer Boy" and everyone liked what we were doing, so we asked, "Why don’t we just do a full-length record?"
Every year the label (Essential Records) kept shutting it down – now we finally finished our contract with the label and started our own called Grey Matters. The first thing that we wanted to do was to make this Christmas record. We had a pretty extensive record deal – it took us about 15 years to finish the contract.
CT: I read reflections on your website regarding your childhood Christmas memories – do you have any notable Christmas memories with the band in the past 12 years?
Haseltine: We actually did a really cool show in California for a radio station. It was really amazing. It was this pop station that has been playing “Drummer Boy” and it was the most requested song for their station, so they had us go out for this concert. We ended up sharing the stage with Duran Duran. I think that was a highlight for a “band Christmas” – to be able to go out and perform Christmas songs with a band that I grew up with and loved listening to as a kid.
CT: What’s behind the drawing in music video "Love Came Down at Christmas?"
Haseltine: We thought it would be interesting to take the concept from a kid’s head what the nativity story was really like. So we took all the different elements and had them done in animation style that was like little kids’ drawings.
Our overall concept with this record, kind of with the artwork, was that Christmas, especially now and this season where we’re at war, has this inherent tension to it. We’re at war and most of the themes of Christmas are peace on earth, and you kind of go "What does that really mean in a day and age we are at war?"
Peace on earth is kind of a childish notion, or there really is an opportunity for peace to enter into chaos. We really wanted to capture that innocence from the childish quality of Christmas – the mystery and magic.
