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Today, on Creative Christians, two legends from Christian rock history, Kemper Krab and Frank Hart, join me to discuss music, faith, creativity and the making of some of their best albums.
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When I started there weren't many of us.
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As a matter of fact, we kind of considered Keith Greene to be a latecomer, because by the time he came along there actually was the beginning of CCM.
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When we started we didn't think in terms of CCM because it wasn't there.
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We didn't think of playing churches because they wouldn't let us in because we were playing devil music.
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You know, archangel's first airplay was on rock radio here in Houston and we were Christians and we looked on that as an opportunity to witness to people.
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What I wanted to do was I wanted to share the gospel.
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I wanted to do that through music, because music had informed me, it had formed me, and I wanted to be able to do that for other people.
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Music had made me consider things deeply.
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I wanted to provoke other people to the same kind of experiences.
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That's Kemper Krab and Frank Hart today on Creative Christians.
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To be in Christ and have an identity in Him above anything else.
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I think it's extraordinary.
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If you believe, God's called you, you can't walk away from that.
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These are stories of creative Christians.
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Welcome to another episode of Creative Christians, the podcast series that explores Christian creatives, their talents, their faith and what they're doing at the intersection of both.
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I'm your host, tim Risto.
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I'm so glad you've joined me.
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This episode is kind of a watershed moment for me in the history of this podcast series because my guests are two legends from Christian Rock Music History.
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I have a long association with Christian Rock, going back to about 1983 in Houston, texas, the very city where I recorded this interview.
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No, I never played in a band or produced an album or anything as impressive as that.
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I just grew up listening to Christian Rock and it was very formative in the development of not only my musical preferences but in my faith life and in providing me another tool to use as a spiritual guide.
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When I was a teenager, I remember listening to the Rock of Love on KSBJ FM radio something better Jesus in Houston.
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When I was in high school.
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The Rock of Love was a three-hour radio show that played nothing but the latest and best in Christian Rock.
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I waited all week for that three-hour window of great rock music.
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I would discover a new artist on that show and head out in search of their albums that very same weekend.
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I can't underscore enough how the influence of artists like Resurrection Band Petra, jeff Johnson, prodigal DeGarmo and Key Whiteheart and so many others were really important in my young life and continue to be even to this day.
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That holds equally true for my guest today.
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My guest today are Kemper Krab and Frank Hart.
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Kemper is perhaps most recognized as the founding member of the band Archangel.
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Their album Warrior, released in 1980, is a classic of progressive art rock.
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Kemper is one of the founders of early CCM or contemporary Christian music, having been a part of the Jesus music movement in the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s.
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Alongside artists like Larry Norman, keith Green and Love Song, among many others.
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Kemper has a number of great solo albums as well, including the Vigil, another classic, and Real Aquarium, personal favorite of mine.
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He's also front of the band.
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Radio Halo was a part of the band.
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Kademan's Call wrote the book Liberation Front Resurrecting the Church and produced a wonderful performance special that aired on PBS, titled Down in Yon Forest, featuring performances of Christmas music from the Middle Ages All great stuff.
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Frank Hart is founding member of the 90s rock band Atomic Opera, of which Kemper is also a member.
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Atomic Opera has four great rocking albums in their discography for Mad Men Only, penguin, dust, alphas and Oranges and Gospel Cola.
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Frank wrote a book titled Joy Ride, which we'll get into later, has a podcast titled Frank Thoughts I love that and is serving as pastor of New Church in the Houston area.
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Frank also has a number of great solo albums out, too many of which Kemper has also played on, and the Liturgy is perhaps my personal favorite among those, and you'll get to hear tracks from that album a bit later.
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In fact, you're going to hear some samples of a lot of each of these guys' music throughout the show.
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Today.
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Both of these talents have toured and played all over the country and world, including the famous Cornerstone Music Festival, which, from 1984 to 2012, was a fantastic Christian music festival that was held annually near Chicago, featured a revolving, diverse lineup of Christian rock bands from across the country.
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It was sad to see that festival end, but there are some new great festivals that have been gearing up in recent years, including a mortal fest in Ohio.
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Atomic Opera and its heyday even opened for some secular bands of the day, including Ronnie James Dio, and an unfortunate missed opportunity to open for Soundgarden.
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I traveled to Houston and had the opportunity to spend an evening hanging out with these two legends and talk all things music, faith and creativity.
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I was really looking forward to this opportunity to talk with these talented musicians and men of faith.
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These guys have produced some amazing music, but they're incredible thinkers too.
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I've had opportunity to interview thousands of people over the decades, but as I got ready to start recording this interview with these guys, I realized I was experiencing something I hadn't felt in a very long time before an interview.
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I was a little nervous.
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These guys, in different ways and at different times, through their music, their creativity and their faith, had been foundational in my own personal development.
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It was a little intimidating to sit down and pick their brains.
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Thankfully, these guys put me at ease and made this a fun conversation.
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Sit back and enjoy.
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So let's just get right into it and welcome Frank and Kemper to Creative Christians.
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Welcome, guys.
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Thanks for being here today.
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Hey, thanks for having us on the show, man yeah.
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Let's just start right at the beginning.
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Music how did each of you first really kind of get into music?
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Playing music, Frank, go for it.
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I was always somewhat obsessed with music.
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I can remember being very young four or five years old and grabbing a mop handle and singing Elvis songs and my mom coming out from the bedroom going you know, that sounds pretty good.
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And then I'd stand up in the back of the pickup trucks in the neighborhood and do little concerts, doing like Tony DeFranco and the DeFranco family songs and singing for the girls in the neighborhood.
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Yeah, so that was my early career, preschool.
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And then I became obsessed with K-Tel records.
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No one in my house ever listened to music.
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Really.
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So I had this little farmer in the Dell record player and then I would buy K-Tel records now and then.
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So they were like just you know, dear Prudence, or Roy Clark, or Fly Robin Fly, I mean just stuff that was playing on the radio.
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And it wasn't until I got a little bit better record player at some point and my mom and dad bought me the number one record that was out, which was Elton John Rock of the Westies.
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Not a good record, not really, but it got me interested in good records.
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And so I kind of became obsessed with just sitting and listening to music and listening to lyrics.
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And Elton John was definitely very instrumental for me.
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I didn't know it at the time, but because he had a poet writing his lyrics and then he was sort of a natural song Smith melody maker.
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That was a really great combination, cool.
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Camper, what about you?
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Well, my mom always listened to the radio and in San Antonio, which is where I grew up, we had this station called KAPE, the Soul of San Antonio, which was like an R&B soul station.
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That's what I listened to for a long time and I always listened to the radio and liked stuff.
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I got a little older.
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My sister wanted an LP on the radio which was a turtles record, and I liked that a bunch.
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I bought Glenn Campbell's by the time I get the Phoenix album.
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It was the second album I got.
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And then my father found a harmonica when we were camping somewhere.
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So an old honer.
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So I started playing the harmonica and I was in the church choir.
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Then one night we were doing a choir tour.
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They wanted to do a thing of oh Happy Day, Edwin Hawkins Singers, which I listened to because that was so great.
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So then the director said well, we need somebody who can hit a G, a high G.
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My friend said he was one of the people who was singing.
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He said well, camper can do that.
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I sang and, lo and behold, I discovered I could.
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So then I started singing and this was right about the time when the Jesus movement happened Got to San Antonio and then, not terribly long after that, I started hearing the early guys, the earliest guys, norman and the very first love songs, first record and all that stuff.
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So then I thought, well, I can kind of say I guess I'd learn how to play an instrument beside the harmonica, because you can't really do both at the same time.
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So I started playing guitar and that's kind of how I got.
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I mean, then I started writing songs, because I realized there weren't many songs that said the kind of stuff that I cared deeply about and I knew there were people who did that.
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So that's how I got into that, basically.
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Let me go to the stereotypical question what were the musical influences for each of you?
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What bands were you listening to as you got more and more into music?
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What was the most influential on each of y'all early on?
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I was listening to King Crimson, moody Blues yes, all the so-called art rock bands, as well as Early Step and Wolf and Iron Butterfly, stuff like that, as the radio stations began to play those and of course when they first started they really kind of didn't.
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But when they began to play those and that was right when FM started and they'd play the whole cuts and everything.
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So those are the bands that I was listening to.
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Frank, go about it.
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It's very different for me between before the age of 14 and after the age of 14.
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So before the age of 14, I'm listening to Bob Seeger and Step and Wolf and Aerosmith and Kiss and lots of Elton John, fleetwood Mac, boston, kansas.
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I mean, I'm very into buying records, have tons of records and just sitting and thinking about what is making this music work and I'm learning how to play some different instruments, but not very well.
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My family didn't go to church.
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We weren't raised in church and then at 14, god finds me in our backyard.
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I end up finding out who Jesus is not too long after that and then I want to start writing songs and I want to communicate what had just happened to me to other people.
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In 2015, frank published his book Joyride a beginning and every end.
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An intimate, engaging and often humorous look at his life and, more accurately, his faith journey.
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Joyride has tons of personal stories, including many about atomic opera, making albums and touring An insightful read into Frank's mind, heart and faith.
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Here's some select excerpts from Frank's encounter with God in his backyard.
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At a young age, I felt quite superior to all the poor, hypnotized masses until I saw God.
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I don't mean I saw a vision or that.
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God appeared to me in the flesh.
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I simply looked up at the stars one night and suddenly could no longer sustain the belief.
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God wasn't there.
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I was 14 years old, felt so small.
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Standing in my backyard I could feel the grass soft as velvet under my feet, the dirt under the grass and the air between myself and the expanse of space.
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I could sense the microscopic universes making up each atom, which in turn make up everything that is.
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It all seemed too interconnected to be random.
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I couldn't convince myself.
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Given enough time and space, a godless universe could end up generating me staring at the stars, trying to not believe in a god who wasn't there.
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How could we ever suspect that the universe was without meaning, if it was actually without meaning.
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After I saw God, or felt him see me, I went back inside the house.
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My family was sitting around the TV watching HBO a new and amazing thing in our world.
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I was still thinking about God.
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So I got up and walked over to our bookcase.
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There was a set of encyclopedias, a dictionary, a copy of I'm Okay, you're Okay, and the Bible.
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None of these books had been read, except possibly the dictionary for homework.
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I picked up the big white Bible with its padded cover and gold trim, carried it back to the couch and sat down.
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It was a family Christmas present from my grandma Hart several years before, but it had sat unappreciated until this night.
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I cracked it open.
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If you open a big Bible to the center, you could end up in a number of places, but I landed in Psalms.
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What I found was amazing in light of what had just happened in the backyard.
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Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork, day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.
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There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.
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Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
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I said, hey, listen to this and read the first part out loud to them.
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Have you ever read the Bible?
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Of course my mom said this as though the question was an insult.
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Of course I've read the Bible, but she hadn't read the Bible, not much of it anyway no one in our house had.
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I took the big book upstairs to my bedroom and started in the beginning I was going to get to know this God who wouldn't allow me to not believe in him.
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So that faith moment in the backyard for you was kind of a light switch, so to speak, not only for your faith but I mean musically as well.
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Oh, it changed everything.
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All I wanted to do was have conversations about faith with people, try to give them light and hope.
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I wanted to convince people that God existed and that through Jesus, he loved them.
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I just wanted to tell everyone that.
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But it wasn't too long after that that I discovered all kinds of Christian rock that I just loved so much, some of that being Archangel and Kemper, some of that being Larry Norman and Keith Green, two very different approaches.
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Larry Norman is more provocative.
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Keith Green's just doing Bible studies and preaching through songs.
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I'm kind of fascinated with both of those ideas.
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So yeah, all of the Christian, all of the-.
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Resurrection Band.
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Resurrection Band.
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Yeah, I love that.
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Glenn Kaiser just a fantastic influence on me when it comes to so it's hard rock, so that's familiar to me.
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I'm loving that.
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He's got the bluesy, raspy voice, so I love that.
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And he's sort of a combination really between Larry Norman and Keith Green.
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It's like sometimes he's provocative and clever and interesting and sometimes he's just singing the Psalms.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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I was listening to for Mad Men Only on the drive up here from Austin and I kept hearing aspects of Resurrection Band in that album and in your voice I mean you're like the second coming of Glenn Kaiser, I think.
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In some ways.
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I kind of hear that in that album in particular and I can hear some influences, definitely in the guitar and your performances.
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Yeah, the big, bombastic, bluesy, raspy voices, that's what I always loved.
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I didn't learn how to do that for a long time, right.
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Did you guys get to play with a lot of other Christian rock artists, perform with them, tour with them or interact with them or work on projects other music projects with them?
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albums.
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I mean we opened or toured with, in some cases played with a bunch of different bands over the years.
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I knew Keith Green and Norman and all those guys.
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I mean when I started there weren't many of us Right and, as a matter of fact, we kind of considered Keith Green to be a latecomer, because by the time he came along there actually was the beginning of CCM.
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When we started we didn't think of playing churches because they wouldn't let us in, because we were playing devil music.
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But Archangels its first airplay was on rock radio here in Houston and stuff like that, and we were Christians and we looked on that as an opportunity to witness to people and stuff like that.
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But we didn't think in terms of CCM because it wasn't there, but because we were around.
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So early on we did meet a lot of people.
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There was a guy in town, ray Johnson, who had New Earth concerts that I started working with for a while and most of those artists were brought into Houston and a lot of times we'd open for them and so I'd known bunches of them and became really good friends with a number of them.
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Archangel Warrior.
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How did that album come about?
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How did that project come about?
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Were you foundational in forming Archangel?
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I'd had a band called Redemption before that and when we started touring we started touring as Redemption, but then we discovered that there was a band with Salvation Army in the Northeast, a really good band called Redemption, and they had an album out and people were kind of knowing who they were.
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So we changed the name to Archangel and we were touring and playing a lot and we ultimately played a lot in Houston.
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That's why we moved here and when we did there was a brand new record label, starsong, at the time and there was a group called Hope of Glory who was kind of our sister band in a lot of ways, did a lot of concerts with them, and one of the guys in there was one of the principals in that record label, in Starsong, and he introduced me to his partner, darrell.
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Darrell is Darrell Harris, who co-founded the Starsong label in 1976 and served as its president for 20 years.
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Harris' name is synonymous with contemporary Christian music, having been responsible for signing artists like Resurrection Band, petra Newsboys and many, many other well-known CCM artists.
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Darrell came over to my house one night for supper and I had a mountain dalsamer sitting in the corner and he said what is that?
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I told him, can you play it?
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And I said yeah.
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And he said did you write any songs?
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I said yeah.
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So I played him like they go down to the sea and ships and a few things.
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And he said, well, do you have any more?
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And I said, yeah, I got more songs, but I'd have to play them on guitar.
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And he said, okay, so I played that.
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And he said, well, we want to sign you.
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I mean that never, ever happens in the world.
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That's like totally out of movies or something.
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I said, well, you can't because I'm in a band and you'd have to sign the band.
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And he said, well, when are you all playing?
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I said we'll play in tomorrow night.
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So him and his partner came out and heard us play and signed us.
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Because of that they were like, well, do a record.
00:23:41.369 --> 00:23:59.086
So the songs that I had written and that we were performing, or what became Arkang's when I tend towards the thematic they were arranged fire face and wind face on the LPs back then and I'd become friends with a guy named Jimmy Hudson.
00:24:01.865 --> 00:24:03.670
So, we helped build the studio.
00:24:03.670 --> 00:24:19.523
He produced his record which I played on, and then he did the production with me and primarily with me and stuff, and we recorded it in Pasadena at the studio that that label, Star Song, owned at the time Riven Dell recorders.
00:24:19.523 --> 00:24:22.166
So that's how that happened.
00:24:23.140 --> 00:24:25.929
Jimmy Hudson is on a Crystal Sea.
00:24:26.665 --> 00:24:27.897
Yes, beyond the Crystal Sea.
00:24:27.897 --> 00:24:30.208
Beyond the Crystal Sea, another great, great album as well.
00:24:30.208 --> 00:24:33.207
He just passed away a couple of months ago.
00:24:33.627 --> 00:24:33.748
He did.
00:24:33.748 --> 00:24:34.630
I was not aware of that.
00:24:34.630 --> 00:24:36.599
Sorry to hear about that.
00:24:36.599 --> 00:24:39.808
Another fantastic artist from the history of Christian music as well.
00:24:40.619 --> 00:24:56.866
When the Arkangel album came out first, I got awarded all these awards that I don't think actually existed Maybe they just created them to give them to me or something and there were articles and stuff that still got them.
00:24:56.866 --> 00:25:01.539
They talked about the lyrics because they said, well, these lyrics are so poetic.
00:25:01.539 --> 00:25:22.710
And at the time I realized that most of the bands that would become known as CCM bands or whatever were writing pretty straight ahead lyrics, but the stuff that I was listening to from the mainstream and everything were yes, and all these people that had very poetic turns in their approach.
00:25:24.602 --> 00:25:30.292
So when I started writing about Christianity, I pretty much tried to do that.
00:25:30.292 --> 00:25:31.943
But it's weird.
00:25:31.943 --> 00:25:34.029
It's not that way anymore.
00:25:34.029 --> 00:25:42.362
But when it first started, stuff that would be considered Christian music was really straight ahead, which I thought was pretty freaking boring.
00:26:03.680 --> 00:26:09.832
Your style of music, that medieval kind of old English style, and this kind of Celtic influences in there too.
00:26:09.832 --> 00:26:11.153
Why did that appeal to you?
00:26:11.153 --> 00:26:14.048
Why was that an approach that you were interested in pursuing?
00:26:14.740 --> 00:26:16.046
There's two answers to that.
00:26:16.046 --> 00:26:21.768
One is long before I was into music.
00:26:21.768 --> 00:26:26.115
I read a lot and all kinds of stuff.
00:26:26.115 --> 00:26:44.053
When I was in fourth grade I read the very first issues of Tolkien that were officially put out here, and at the end of that I read the appendices and some of those were about runes and stuff like that.
00:26:44.053 --> 00:26:51.248
Then I realized that there was something of kind of a historical foundation to what he was riffing off of.
00:26:51.248 --> 00:27:03.506
So then I read everything that was in English about runes by the time I was in sixth grade and there wasn't that much, you know, there were only six or seven books.
00:27:03.506 --> 00:27:15.266
So then I began realizing why I could study historical stuff about that, and in that I came across the thing of medieval music.
00:27:15.266 --> 00:27:23.272
I began to read those lyrics and stuff and you know, the early music thing was just beginning back then.
