Growing up in a Christian home in the Fraser Valley, I was raised on the Christian music of the local radio station then called 106.5 KLYN, what is now known as Praise FM. Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Sandi Patti, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Geoff Moore and the Distance, Keith Green, Rich Mullins, The Winans, Ray Boltz, Paul Janz and our family favourite, Carman. Listening to The Champion by Carman was an amazing experience for my siblings and I when we were around ten years old, and we played his Addicted to Jesus and Live: Radically Saved albums very regularly. As a younger child I remember Psalty the Singing Songbook and the Music Machine (“whir-whir-chicka-chicka-bohm-bohm-ptshhh”). The churches my family went to sang both traditional hymns and new songs. I always really enjoyed the upbeat ones like Jehovah Jireh, There Is Power in the Blood or any song they would get the tambourine out for.

As a teenager, going to a youth group at a Pentecostal church exposed me to a lot more. DC Talk, The Newsboys, Audio Adrenaline, Rebecca St. James, The Supertones. We went to see DC Talk’s Jesus Freak tour in Vancouver and the crowd went wild when they played Jesus Freak. I had seen them previously as a festival called Son Fest when they were performing their Free At Last. I think the headliner of the festival was White Heart who, along with Petra, were the two main Christian rock groups I knew. Hokus Pick Maneuver was a local band that was popular and my first concert was seeing them at a church in Abbotsford. I also saw an acapella group called Rhythm and News and a local roller rink. Some of the youth group was into more obscure Christian rock, talking about bands like Stryper, One Bad Pig, Poor Old Lou, Mortification, The Altar Boys and other older bands. Around that time someone gave me an album to listen to that would change my life, Teenage Politics by MxPx. The energy, the talent, the winging, the lyrics– they all captivated me. I didn’t want to stop listening. Punk music was my new obsession and so was Tooth and Nail Records. Ninety Pound Wuss became a new favourite along with Slick Shoes and a split EP I had of Value Pac and Ghoti Hook. Other big Tooth and Nail favourites still to this day are Roadside Monument, Damien Jurado, Danielson Famile, Starflyer 59. Our local Christian book store carried 7-Ball and HM Magazine that exposed me to so much more through compilations, reviews and interviews.

I was also exposed to more secular music around then when Napster became popular. My exploration delved into a lot of electronica music. I had discovered CBC’s Brave New Waves radio program which played a Kid Koala track and I got into other Ninja Tunes artists like Amon Tobin. I also enjoyed DJ Shadow, artists like Cex and Kid 606 from Tigerbeat6, and μ-ziq, Wagon Christ and some Aphex Twin. For a while I was really into trance, drum and bass and other funky stuff. Jon the Dentist, LTJ Bukem, Photek, Jungle Brothers and Thunderdome XXI. I listened to a jazz program on CBC, too, called Afterhours hosted by Ross Porter. I was playing in a punk band at the time and we covered songs by Anti-Flag, Dead Kennedys and The Casualties. I loved Green Day’s Dookie album, Rancid, Pennywise and saw local rockers The Black Halos a few times. I never saw local punk heroes Gob, but I sure heard a lot about them. Warped tour and Blink 182 were getting popular at the time, but my tastes were once again evolving.

I listened to another compilation that changed my life, Tooth and Nail’s Songs From the Penalty Box, debuting many Christian bands that are still my top favourite today — Zao, Living Sacrifice, Training For Utopia, Strongarm  and Blindside. The heaviness, the intensity– it all invaded my heart and soul, instantly filling me with a new kind of energy and attitude. I also got into Extol and a genre called “spirit-filled hardcore” with bands like Focused, Focal Point and Stretch Armstrong. 

Another new obsession developed when I listened to an album from Tooth and Nail called Conglomerate International by a band called Frodus. Its intensity and technicality blew me away, and the album art and lyrics mystified me. The band’s personna was very imaginative, funny and mysterious, and on display at the end of one of Tooth and Nail’s video compilations, wandering around Seattle, interacting with people in their own hilarious ways. I became a big fan and befriended Shelby Cinca (who also plays in The Cassettes) and Jason Hamacher (of Combatwoundedveteran) over the internet and got to meet them when they toured to Toronto where I was living at the time with Decahedron. That was their new band, formed at first with Fugazi bassist Joe Lally, but at the time they had one of my favourite bassists, Jonathan Ford of Roadside Monument and Unwed Sailor. Frodus had a split with Roadside Monument, and I didn’t like them much when I first heard them, but their album Eight Hours Away From Being a Man really impressed me and my interests in both technical “math” rock, post-rock and emo-core were growing alongside each other. 

In the secular world, Poison the Well and Dillinger Escape Plan were blowing my mind, and I was learning about other emo bands like Orchid, Saitia, Antioch Arrow, Sleepytime Tro, Hot Hot Heat and Sunny Day Real Estate. There was a music zine called Cross My Heart With a Knife that was dedicated to all things emo-core, later called Skrams. When I took drum lessons as a teenager, my instructor gave me a cassette tape by Chick Corea called Inside Out that had a lot of odd-time drumming by Dave Weckl that was very impressive. Some other math-rock bands I got into were Weights and Measures and Slint. Other bands of those general genres that are still favourites are Engine Down, Oxes, Faraquet, Jesus Lizard, Botch, The Mercury Program, the pAper chAse, Xiu Xiu, Rockets Red Glare, Do Make Say Think, Lighting Bolt, The Locust, Heavy Vegetable and Mara’akate.

One band that encapsulated so many of the great things about those genres was a group from the small northern British Columbia town of Clearwater called Phaedo. They were intense, unpredictable, emotional, technical and very creative. I got to see them at a small living room show in Maple Ridge and I was amazed in every moment they played. I might have heard of the show from a promoter who went to Trinity Western University who ran Hairshirt Productions. He organised another show with Phaedo in Abbotsford with his short-lived but nostalgically-themed band Zack Morris Rock. Other bands that I saw at TWU were The Calicoes, Havalina Rail Co., and Pedro the Lion. The promoter was also a big fan of Social Distortion, and around then we also started to plan for a music festival that would become some of the best times of my life– Tomfest.

Tomfest was a three-day music festival in Skamania County, right on the border of Washington State and Oregon by the Columbia River and mountains. It was host to bands and articles that played alternative styles and identified as Christian. Big names in Christian alternative that I got to see were MxPx, P.O.D., Tourniquet, Ninety Pound Wuss, The Blamed, Starflyer 59, Stavesacre, Saviour Machine, Ghoti Hook, Slick Shoes, Mike Knott, Officer Negative, Squad 5-0, Five Iron Frenzy, Danielson Famile, Plankeye, Joy Electric and others. Other favourites were Warlord, Raft of Dead Monkeys, The Huntingtons, The Deadlines, The W’s, Denote the Apex and Thee Pirates who put on one of the most memorable punk shows with a huge circle pit and absolute chaos. Phaedo played there as well, and their side project The Colemans. They toured down there with another band that was making a big impact on BC’s Lower Mainland music scene– The Witness Protection Program. Now known as “The WPP,” they played high-intensity and technical hardcore punk, always putting on high energy shows. 

I was getting to know the local punk scene through an internet group called BC Punk run by Nikki Hextal of The Hextals, a hockey-themed band. A regular contributor was Brian Disagree who ran a zine called Agree to Disagree. I was forming my own zine at the time called SHZine, as both an internet publication and a message forum for local scenes and later hosted boards for some bands including The WPP, Xiu Xiu and Owen Pallet. I’d see shows around the are at places like The Douglas Rec Centre and Civic Centre in Langley, The Java Joint in Surrey, Seylynn Hall in North Vancouver, the Cheam Centre in Chilliwack and The Cobalt in Vancouver. Bands that my first punk band played with included Bluecollar Bullets (lead by Billy the Kid), Martial Law, Makeshift, Screamin Semen, Frontline and some others. Some popular acts in the scene at the time were D.O.A., Gob, D.B.S., The Red Light Sting, The Black Halos and Hot Hot Heat. A personal new favourite at the time was a band not well-known in Vancouver where they were from, but had a good following in Europe, called Removal. They played math-rock and the drummer incorporated samples into the songs through some setup on his kit. The Abbotsford scene I was a part of hosted a show for them at a house we called The Gypsy Hotel with End This Week With Knives. It was one of two houses near each other that hosted house shows, the other which I lived at was called The Burlesque House (called so over rumors that it once was one long in the past).

At the time some friends and I (two of which went on to form You Say Party! We Say Die!) started a band at first called Smile and Wave at the Busdriver, Children, but then renamed to The Progressive Thinker, a post-punk band with math-rock influences. We hosted shows at The Burlesque House for local bands and had some bigger acts come in like Three Inches of Blood, The WPP and Bloodshed from California. Local bands to frequently play were Wailing Corpse, In-Stride, Gappa, Fun 100 (who later went on to form The B-Lines) and The Hand. Other memorable shows and local Abbotsford bands for me were The Unpeople, Ministry of Love, D.S. Sutton, Ms. Anne Thropy (a goth-metal band I played for), Skitch, Thomas’ Blanket, Andy Social, Michelle Elrick, Chernobyl, and Jesus and His Band of Disciples. 

Being close to Seattle, I’d go down there with friends to see shows, many at a place called The Paradox. I saw Zao play with Three Inches of Blood, The Abodox and Hexadecimal, a very amazing show when Three Inches was just getting started. I got to see other favourite bands like Raft of Dead Monkeys, Roadside Monument and Suffering and the Hideous Thieves. I saw Xiu Xiu play at The Vera Project when they still performed their Knife Play material with a larger group, and caught the end of a Death Cab For Cutie show at the Crocodile Cafe on my birthday about a month after Sept 11, 2001. Other shows I went down to The States to see were a Supertones concert with Audio Adrenaline and I got to see Caedmon’s Call. We went to Seattle to visit the Tooth and Nail store, too.

In my early twenties I moved to Toronto. I worked at HMV for a bit and still ran SHZine, but soon ended up at a vintage clothing store on Queen Street, right across from Much Music. The people who worked at the clothing store were big music enthusiasts and I learned a lot about older, classic rock, punk, soul and alternative music while I worked there. Led Zeppelin, The Ramones, The Misfits, The Who, older Kiss, Alice Cooper (who came into the store one day), Deep Purple, MC5, T-Rex, The Smiths, Tom Petty, Van Halen, The Modern Lovers. Other great bands I got into were Soundtrack of Our Lives, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Fu Manchu, Outkast, Weird War, Suicide, Joel Plaskett, The Equals, Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Hank Williams Sr., Johnny Cash, old Ike and Tina Turner, Bob Marley, Bad Brains, The Clash, Joy Division, G.G. Allen… the list goes on.

I quickly got into the music scene there. There was an internet hub called 20hz (later named Stillepost) and a weekly show series called Wavelength. Living in a big city gave me the opportunity to see many great shows, a very memorial one being The Polyphonic Spree with Do Make Say Think and Rockets Red Glare. Other favourites I saw were DIllinger Escape Plan, the pAper chAse, Damien Jurado, Starflyer 59, Xiu Xiu, Zao, Engine Down, Jonathan Richman, Gossip and from B.C., The All Purpose Voltage Heros.

As I was developing habits of reading around that time, two bands I started to listen to heavily while reading were The Durutti Column and The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud. Some piano music I got into was Jane Trojan, Phillip Glass, Chopin, and the movie soundtrack to Shine. Other favourite soundtracks are the ones for Requiem For a Dream, Pi, Brazil and Session 9. I also really appreciated Elliot Smith and some Dashboard Confessional. 

After the SARS pandemic, Toronto hosted a mega concert I went to with The Rolling Stones, AC/DC (my favourite classic rock band), Rush, The Guess Who, Justin Timberlake, The Flaming Lips and others. I saw Iron Maiden while living in Toronto, too. Some friends and I would sometimes go to a great 50’s dance night in Kensington Market, and one time Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones and Dan Akroyd walked in. There was a bar in Toronto, Stone’s Place, that’s a tribute to the band that has some of Ron Wood’s artwork up. The owner looked eerily like Mick Jagger.

Soon I moved back to B.C. and wasn’t involved as much in music. My band The Progressive Thinker reunited over the years, though, and played some shows. There was still a good scene in Abbotsford, and a band that unexpectedly blew me away was one called Guests (now GSTS), formed by very talented young musicians who played very technical and intense hardcore. They were influenced by The WPP and later formed Blessed. One of the members joined The Progressive Thinker for a while, and Blessed went on to play SxSw. 

On my move back to B.C. I got a taste of my first cross-Canada road tour experience with my friends who were playing in You Say Party. They picked me up in Toronto and we headed out west, stopping in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon and Edmonton with Toronto band Lioness. I took photos as I often would as a music journalist and helped at the merch booth. Surprisingly, the best crowd was in Saskatoon, with a lot of audience members dancing. One person even asked me to cut “fashion holes” in their newly purchased band t-shirt. 

The experience was one of the last times I got to spend with drummer Devon Clifford who tragically passed away some time later (may he rest in peace). I had known him since he played in Blue Collar Bullets, and he formed a band with the bassist of my first punk band that they called The Argument. There has been a foundation and drum clinic set up in his honour, The Devon Clifford Drum Foundation. He was replaced by a phenomenal drummer who played in Frontline and The WPP, Al Boyle.

I was approaching my thirties at this time and wasn’t as involved in the music scene. A new generation was taking over and I would occasionally take photos at shows, get back into the mosh pit and just relive what I grew up loving. I started to focus on learning piano and composed a collection of short instrumentals. I was more focused on my career and employment and my music discovery slowed down as I listened mostly to the favourites I had discovered over the years.

Driving in my car I started to listen to Christian radio a lot. My mom always had it on in her car and I felt compelled to do the same. I started going to church regularly again and was still listening to a lot of Tooth and Nail music from my past. There was a band from Abbotsford, Oh Village, who played at Praise Fest in Surrey one year. I played their album in my car quite a bit. I also started to listen to country radio, because I was regularly visiting my grandfather who used to play it in his car constantly. When I drove him somewhere I would turn it on, and started to do so while driving on my own, too. 

I started finding CDs at thrift stores to play in my car– Michael W. Smith, Revival in Belfast, Country Christian Jubilee, The King of Love: Celtic Expressions of Worship, Michael Card, Rich Mullins and I still had my alternative favourites Zao, Living Sacrifice, MxPx, Focused, Spitfire, TFK, Extol and Frodus. A female Christian artist whose voice I fell in love with was Sarah Groves, who along with Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer, are my favourite all-time vocalists. Other quality Christian bands I’ve always admired are The Chasing Furies and The Kry. Soon I started to have an aspiration to cover heavy Christian bands like HM Magazine did– ask about their beliefs and stories of God working on tours. I wanted to explore and expose what was going on with spirit-filled hardcore as well, but my career was taking up much of my time and energy.

I’m at a different place in my life now and feel called to do again what I once loved, discover and write about music, with a focus on both Christian contemporary and alternative. I haven’t been immersed in it as I used to be, but I know I will enjoy getting back into it. Thank you all for reading, and thank you God for this aspiration. Praise Him!