Embracing sharing and community, Jars of Clay take comfort in 'Shelter'

The Jars of Clay (from left) are Matt Odmark, Stephen Mason. Charlie Lowell and Dan Haseltine. The band co-headlines Sunday's Rock and Worship Roadshow Tour.

One of the biggest acts in Christian rock for almost 20 years, the Nashville-based quartet Jars of Clay has no trouble putting bodies in the seats, so they usually tour alone with just a support act or two.

But on the Rock and Worship Roadshow Tour, an annual traveling Christian music festival that stops Sunday at FedExForum, Jars of Clay find themselves sharing the stage with their contemporaries and co-headliners MercyMe as well as an eclectic lineup of up-and-coming artists that includes Hawk Nelson, Disciple, Matt Maher, Group 1 Crew, Trip Lee, and Bart Millard.

Jars of Clay doesn't mind sharing not being the stars of the show. In fact, they they are thriving on it.

"We don't do a lot of these big multiartist tours, so it is a nice change for us," says Jars of Clay keyboardist Charlie Lowell. "Worldview-wise, I think its healthy for us to have to rub up against artists who see things a little differently or maybe approach their art a little bit differently than we do. Hopefully, we rub off on them a little bit as well."

Jars of Clay have been in a community mindset of late. It started when a poet friend of the band's shared with them an old Irish proverb: "It is in the shelter of each other that the people live."

For the band, who moved to Nashville 15 years after forming in 1993 in Greenville, Ill., the message resonated strongly, considering that after years of touring, the members were just starting to feel at home in Music City.

"Traveling and being on the road, it's easy to isolate and protect yourself from other people. You kind of have to put up thick walls," Lowell says. "But we really found after years of doing that, there was so much breath and freedom in letting people in, learning how to lean on people, and be known more than we had in the past. That idea of community and shelter was one that really came alive for us. It felt we had some experience that we could write about it."

The proverb became the spark for Jars of Clay's most recent album, last year's The Shelter. A month and a half into the process of making the record, the concept became even clearer in the members' minds when floodwaters ravaged their adoptive hometown. Singer Dan Haseltine found his home under six feet of water and was touched when neighbors he didn't even know came by to help him rebuild.

"It was this crazy sort of fleshing-out of the things we were singing about," says Lowell. "I think that spirit lives in that record for us."

To help them embody the notion of shared experience they were striving for on The Shelter, Jars of Clay, which also includes multi-instrumentalists Stephen Mason and Matthew Odmark, for the first time threw open the doors of the studio to outside collaborators. Songwriters like Laura Story, Thad Cockrell and Phillip La Rue helped the band flesh out the compositions while artists including Mac Powell, Amy Grant, Brandon Heath, Leigh Nash and TobyMac lent their voices to the recording process.

"We generally go dark when we work on a new project. We don't let people in, and we come out when we're done," Lowell says. "This was the opposite from the very start. It was like, 'Let's call out to our friends and bring in writers and see what kind of artists we can get interested.' It was certainly labor heavy and administrations heavy, lining up schedules and sending computer files. It was very different but very good for us to open the process up, let other people contribute, and not be so insular as a band."

Lowell says the experience of The Shelter will likely carry over into their next record, which they plan to begin recording this coming winter. (The band already has plenty of projects in the pipeline to tide fans over, with a recently released acoustic EP and a DVD imminent.)

"We are talking about bringing in a producer, which is different from the past five or six records we have done where we self-produced," Lowell says. "That won't be a light, easy thing for us, handing over a new batch of songs and saying, 'We trust you to take these someplace exciting. Let's do it together.'"

Rock and Worship Roadshow Tour

6 p.m. Sunday, FedExForum, 191 Beale. Admission: $10 at the door. For more information, visit fedexforum.com or theroackandworship roadshow.com.

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