Daniel Amos: Daniel Amos (1976)

 

Tracks:

1. Jesus is Jehovah to Me
2. The Bible
3. Abidin'
4. William
5. Prelude: Servant's Prayer
6. Don't Light Your Own Fire
7. Losers and Winners
8. Walking on the Water
9. Ridin' Along
10. Dusty Road
11. Love in a Yielded Heart
12. Skeptic's Song
13. Happily Married Man
14. Ain't Gonna Fight It
 

Daniel Amos is one of those bands that just keeps trucking along, leading a long and varied line of fans (myself included) through a journey of faith, wonder, and weirdness.  At the head of the train is Terry Scott Taylor (he's the one on the far right in the above picture), a songwriter that cut his teeth in the midst of the California Jesus Movement of the early '70s.  Much like his home state, Taylor's musical legacy is rooted in classic pop, country, and surf music.  For me and a lot of other fans, this is a perfect storm of blissful sounds that could just as easily be termed "American music."  But on these sandy shores of melody there are any number of sea shells, bottle caps, seaweed, and inflatable sea creatures:  For all of its "rootsiness", Daniel Amos swirls in enough Cali flotsam and jetsam to create a colorful, slightly bizarre landscape of punkish pop and postmodern noise rock.  Think a cowboy in burmuda shorts, Jesus T-shirt, and pierced eyebrows, and you might get a picture of the fluid wagon train that is the DA sound.

I'm not even sure what that first paragraph meant, but trying to summarize Daniel Amos' legacy in any kind of brief statement is like describing the shape of air, to quote one of their later songs.   The best way is probably to start at the beginning, and that's where we find Daniel Amos, their debut on Maranatha Records.  A little bit of background:  Maranatha was the music publishing outreach of Calvary Chapel, the little church in Costa Mesa that made a point of reaching into the teen counterculture of the late '60s and early '70s with an old-fashioned gospel message.  Growing out of that culture, Taylor and his cohorts--guitarist Jerry Chamberlain, bassist Marty Dieckmeyer, and guitarist Steve Baxter--settled on a back-home country sound that fit in with the church's conservative doctrine.  Their first single from 1975, "Ain't Gonna Fight It", was a gentle acoustic ballad from Terry that set the pattern for things to come: slow tempo, simple country-based melody with glossy production and big harmony singing.  It's actually a pretty moving song with its simple message of surrender and faith.  

The album came out the next year and features the same sweet, homey sound, the band locking into basic shuffle rhythms and twangy guitar sounds.  Taylor slides his voice into his heaviest drawl and creates an image of a posse of dusty cowboy preachers ridin' through the prairie, roundin' up some varmints.

Those varmints are the religious outlaws that preach a gospel other than the one the Amos gang preach.  And it's this "Long Arm of the Lord" approach that obscures the message and tone of the album.  They start off with "Jesus is Jehovah to Me," a song directed at Jehovah's Witnesses (with a spoken interlude no less), and then follow that with "The Bible," a sweet if somewhat generic song about the Good Book that takes on false teachers.  These songs might work in a local church setting, where one would expect a preacher or teacher to defend the orthodoxy of their beliefs.  But for a band playing country music, it just sounds insular and preachy.  

More successful are the confessional moments on the record, when Taylor & Co. focus on their own struggles to stay on the righteous path.  "William" is a throwback to sunshine pop that laments the singer's treatment of a pious classmate.   "Walking on the Water," despite a somewhat languid tempo, has a certain maritime feel, with Terry flanging his voice as if he were on the waves.   "Dusty Road" starts out as a cowboy jaunt but ends up with some of the most gorgeous melodies and harmonies on the record.   

Then there are first of the many novelty songs that would become a band trademark.  These genre experiments provide a nice break from the twang-fest, if not the sermonizing; "Abidin'" and "Skeptic's Song" are kitschy, jazzy toe-tappers that hide moral teaching in zoot suits and bow ties.  

Back in the day, "Christian music" was a lot less diverse than it is today, mostly because it was still being defined as a genre.  Country music was a logical starting point for a band trying to find its way in that frontier.  And DA's brand of country was well-made and listenable, but the band that played "Ain't Gonna Fight It" and "Happily Married Man" would bear little resemblance to the band that would be moving into rock and new wave in five short years.  Stay tuned.