First a little about life after The Awakening. Tell us a little about One Hundred Days.

When the Awakening broke up in July of 1989, I had this scary feeling that I might never be in a band again. Andy and I began a relationship in the studio a few months after the Awakening was over with, but we didn't have any immediate plans to rock the world. We spent about a year in the studio recording demos and then just basically making a living working together. I think it was back in 1991 that we decided to put a band together to go out and play. This first band was called Echo Park, which was the band featured on the original Counting By Heads album in 1992-93.

And Counting By Heads?

Our band Echo Park had been playing small gigs since we started up, but mostly we just rehearsed a lot and recorded a lot, which suited Andy and I fine, but didn't work as well for our drummer and keyboard player. It was early in the recording process when we all decided that the band was really just Andy and I, so we went ahead and completed the Heads album without the other guys, (except for the parts they had already contributed, of course). We also changed the name of our band to The Obvious. After this album came out (indie of course), we hired Gord Stevenson to be our drummer, and we started doing shows as a three piece. This was really the birth of One Hundred Days. It was with Gord that we solidified our sound together and began seriously persuing another record deal in the USA.

Also, I know you have been doing some touring, so tell us a little about your current projects and future musical projects you have planned.

Well... first of all... I stopped playing in OHD in 1998 for many reasons, most of them personal, and having nothing to do with the guys in the band. At that time, I actually sold most of my gear assuming that I would never tour again, because I basically really hated being on the road! Well.. all of that changed in the year 2000, when I started getting hired to play with Canadian Country artists! I'm not and have never been a fan of country music, so it is a little odd that I got all of these gigs, but it got me playing again, and unlike any of my touring with The Awakening or One Hundred Days, the money was always good, and the hassles were incredibly few. Touring with your own group just costs a fortune, and you put so much effort into a short concert, that it just doesn't seem worth it after awhile. We'd be going from 9am till after midnight just to do a 70 minute concert, and then after all of that, we'd walk out with little or no money. Now, playing with a variety of Canadian artists, I get paid well, we rehearse minimally, gear is simple and often provided at the venue, meals are free, and did I mention the money is good?!! Andy and I have talked about doing some shows with OHD next summer in the USA if the opportunity arrises. We both miss playing together.

So you can personally dispell the myth that Christian touring bands are raking in piles of money? Seems to be a common misconception (unless of course you're M W. Smith or Amy Grant....)

Oh yes! We used to always say that 4% of the artists were making 96% of the money! It really is tough out there to make a living as a Christian performer on any level. What is always frustrating is how some people, who already know this, will ask talented musicians to work "as their sacrifice unto God,"in other words, for free! I know a guy around here who is big into ministry, and always claims that he doesn't want amateur musicians at his shows. He wants the best. Well... he hires the best, and then lets them know that there's virtually no money in the event, and that maybe we could consider our performance some form of a tithe or sacrifice. I usually say, "Sacrifice This!" and leave, because hey, if there is NO money, then you deserve the amateur musicians! That always bugs me, but thankfully, these typically lecherous people have stopped asking me to work!!

I sound bitter about that, but I'm really not. I'm writing all of that with a smile on my face. It's just that it happens way more often than most musicians in the Christian field would care to admit.

Heck, The Awakening played a gig on our US tour, where the Pastor came up on stage and made a big plug for a special "love offering" above what they already paid to get in. He said stuff about how much our gear cost, and how far we'd travelled to play for them, and at the end of the night, there was this extra money. However... our contract with this guy said nothing about any extra offerings, so this pastor had no intentions of paying us any of that offering money. He basically lied to his members, telling them that we'd get the money, when really, it was just going back into the church. What a crook!

No wonder I won't get too close to the Christian touring scene again! But in all honesty, if nothing else, bad moments like that showed me that you really can't trust anybody in any form of business, and you have to look out for #1, as un-Christ-like as that may feel. If you think otherwise, you will be swallowed up with disappointment and personal failure.

At least for our period of time in OHD, when things seemed to go wrong, we were fully aware of what was going on, and in many cases, in control.

The Awakening is often compared in sound to Yes. Is that a fair comparison or one that you even acknowledge?

Yes, Yes, Yes! I have to admit, it was my time in the Awakening that pretty much destroyed my love for the band Yes. I was totally a Jon Anderson junkie as a young performer, and my adoration of him and Chris Squire was a little rediculous. Andy was a Yes fan as well, but not the extent I was. Al and Mike Powell were not terribly interested in Yes, except for their two 80's albums "90125" and "Big Generator." It sure didn't help matters when we agreed to put an actual Yes song on our second album! I honestly haven't listened to Yes to any great amount since the 80's ended.

What were some of the other influences that went into The Awakening's music?

Well, aside from Yes, we all had different things we wanted to bring to the band, and I think it was that difference of motivation that defined our sound. We would have been a total Prog-Rock knock-off if it hadn't been for Mike and Al, who were much more into stuff like The Police, U2, and David Bowie. I was into Gentle Giant and much of the 70's Prog-Rock stuff at that time, and Andy seemed to sit in the middle, liking a little bit of everthing the whole band liked. It really only got weird for us towards the end, when I started pushing my weight around, wanting to do these rather pompous 15 minute songs, that we frankly beyond the playing abilities of the guys. I started doing my own recordings where I'd play all the instruments, just to spite the guys for not trying hard enough to learn my songs. I had some good ideas back then, but I didn't have the maturity to know what was best for the band, so at times, things got a little tense creatively. Andy always seemed to side with me, but none of the really extreme stuff ever got recorded. We did do a demo recording in early 1989, which ended up being our final recordings together. The songs on this batch were probably the best songs we ever made together, and hardly anybody has ever heard this stuff!

What was the approach you guys took to songwriting?

At first, it was very individual. Andy or I would write a song and bring it in pretty much finished, with charts ready to be rehearsed by the guys... almost treating the band members like side-men in their own band. Mike and Al both wrote their own tunes as well, but weren't as seasoned and experienced in their writing as Andy and I were, so their tunes generally needed a bit more group contribution.

For the Into Thy Hands album, all of that changed, to make way for a very open-concept writing style, which really worked for awhile. I remember Andy showing up at rehearsal with the main riff to Wrestling In The Jungle, and purposefully stopping it there. By the end of that night, Al had created the melodic bass line, Mike had developed the jungle-style drumming, and I weaved a melody out of it. There were still a few individual type songs on that album, but by in large, it was a very equal collaboration between all 4 guys. Ironically, it was this sort of collaboration that I found a lot harder to deal with, because when I DID have ideas, I generally wanted them done no matter what. Andy was always (and still is) more open to input from others than I was. It's not an arrogance thing. It's more that Andy is never threatened by what people might have to offer, and that if it makes the song better, it's worth trying. I'm not man enough for that attitude!

Our final writing together after Into Thy Hands was a mixture of the 4-way writing and individual writing.

Was there a conscious decision for the band to sign with a "Christian" label?

At that time, yes there was. When I joined the band in 1985, there was no doubt that the band was a "Christian" band, and that there was ministry and "preaching" involved. I had barely been a Christian for a year when I was in the band, so I was far from the appropriate guy to be up there preaching the Gospel, but eventually, I became more comfortable with the idea of being in the Christian music business.

What was the "mission" of the band - the thing that kept you going during the long days recording and performing?

Well, the obvious answer is that our mission was to preach the gospel, but that's way too simple. There were times early on, when we were very much so brough closer together entirely because of God and our relationships with Him. But I think aside from that, we've always had a passion for music, and quite often, just doing that was enough to keep it real and keep us interested in it. Ironically... it was our first and only US tour that helped to shatter most of the dreams we had for the band and for our individual careers. Getting into the back-woods South of the USA, showed us that as right with God we felt, we weren't right enough for most of our audiences on our tour. We got criticised and ridiculed for silly things like secular music and our sense of humour. It's not like we were hanging out backstage smoking dope and entertaining hookers, but even our best efforts to be real in our faith got us into trouble with fanatics in the audience. By the end of our tour, most of us were sure we wanted out of the Christian music business. Our music and message was becoming less preachy as the years went by, and that didn't sit well with our US fans and the record company, so when Reunion Records dropped us (during our tour which they provided no support for!), we entertained the idea of continuing as a band but in the general market place.

But after a few months, it really seemed over to me. I was feeling a lot of creative frustration within the band and really desired to be a solo artist and not to have to always go through other musicians to get their permission to do something. I didn't completely get my wish at that time, as I was back in a semi-democratic band within a year or so!

Ironic, isn't it, that if you fall outside the expected cookie-cutter of what a Christian band should be, that you get into trouble with certain segments?

A lot of it was that time period too. Things are a lot more different now than they were in the late 80's. It was also a bit of a culture shock for us, because Canadians are known for being laid-back and relaxed, and never quick to toot their own horn. Americans are the self-proclaimed leaders of the world, so you really feel out of place when you encounter a few of the more loud-mouthed Americans, like we did. They didn't mean any harm. They were just more open and vocal about their feelings than a typical Canadian was, so it took us by surprise. Live and learn.

Looking back, do you think it would be easier to have gone the "secular" route to begin with, both in terms of money and creative freedom, as well as getting your message to people who really needed it?

It's hard to say that, because I was such a different person back then on every level. Before The Awakening, I was a slightly weird, artsy-fartsy guy, who probably never would have made music that anybody could have swallowed. Meeting Andy and working in the band gave me something to channel my inspirations into. My previous band was called The Guards Of Zues, and all we did was annoying art-rock and rock versions of Gustav Mahler symphonies! (and not very well either!). The band got me focused on writing music that could be accessible. Unique and original, but at least digestible.

We could have gone out as a secular group, but the band was already established as a Christian group before I joined it. I was a young Christian at the time, and was pretty sold-out to my beliefs, so for the most part, I was ok with being outside of the mainstream, and playing for Christian audiences. We wrote words and songs about what we wanted to. We didn't feel boxed in by the industry, because we were very ok with it.

In One Hundred Days, I can't say the same thing, not me personally anyway. I really didn't want to ever work within Christian music again after what happened in The Awakening, but we again found ourselves signing with Christian labels in the 90's. I really wish we had just told them to back off, because all of our "official" OHD albums were carefully contrived to lyrically grab the Christian radio and retail market. This was not the plan for our band, but once we got signed, we had to play along. Songs off our first album "The Obvious", that weren't originally all that blatant message-wise, were suddenly in your face with the Gospel, because, as well all know, Christians need to be reminded that what they are listening to is "ok.!" What a silly notion!

Our second album "Feels Like Love" is a source of great frustration for me, because that whole album sounded like the songs were written by someone else, because I really didn't want to write happy, moral songs anymore, but I had to. It wasn't fun at all. And then, after giving into our US label, and then finding it made no difference on record sales or radio play, we just jumped ship and did our "Super Terrific Happy Hour" album, with absolutely nothing on it that we regretted making in the slightest.

So... The Awakening was prepared for what was needed to be a legit Christian band. OHD really wasn't, but we didn't have secular companies calling us, so when the Christian ones did, we gave in on way too many occasions.

To that end, what would you say to Christians (and I meet a lot of people who feel this way) that feel that if a piece of music is not explicitly "Christian" in nature, it should be left out of their collection?

That's totally a matter of conscience. We had to leave songs off of OHD albums for that very reason, and I'm still upset about it years later. So, it really depends on the artist. I know artists who are extremely happy to be in ministry, and consider the music and performing just as important as the ministry. If you felt that way, then you wouldn't object to deleting songs based on their subject matter, OR, you'd never write anything outside of the mold in the first place! Most bands we know that have stuff that is a little outside, are calling the shots anyway, so maybe they play less gigs in churches and more in bars and clubs, but that is their call.

Personally... I hate having people outside of the creative nucleus of the group having any say on the creative material that band makes. This is why I was always so hard to deal with at our US label during the 90's. Andy was always diplomatic and willing to talk things through. My attitude was..."Who asked YOU what YOU think?!" Record companies sell stuff, whether they are headed by creative talents or not. That doesn't mean they have a right to mess with my material. But sadly... when they are paying the bill, they suddenly DO have the right to mess with your material. I hated that, and therefore seem to be much happier outside of the record contract world, where I can write what I want to write, and if it fails, it fails. No big loss, as long as I am proud of it and worked as hard as I could to make it great.

Whew... did you catch me on a bitter streak or what?!!!

Maybe I just love to hear the sound of my own voice (or in this case, the sound of my own typing!), but your questions really triggered some emotion tonight!!

Luckily... I find humour in just about everything, so I can whine about this stuff in the past, but it's truly in the past, and I'm not mad about it anymore. I'm not mad, but I'm not afraid to speak out about what made me mad previously, if that helps dispell some myths or help somebody else out down the road. Too many great artists sign lousy contracts because they think they've only got one shot at it, (We did this twice!), so maybe a little experience, albeit a tad bitter, might help!

Is there any one memory during your years with The Awakening that stands out vividly?

It's been a long time, so it's hard for me to answer that fairly.

Is there any way to get a copy of Counting By Heads, One Hundred Days, or any of The Awakening's old material?

Yes. You can get most of the OHD albums directly from us (through my email address or website). The Awakening stuff is not available officially anymore, but I can always make CDR's of the old stuff. I would love to be able to release our so-called "Lost Album" from 1989, but at this point, that ain't happening. A few years ago, I put an Awakening website here. You can also go to www.iantanner.com to order stuff as well.

Anything else you would like to share with the readers of Stranger Things?

Music rocks man! I was thinking about this recently, how I'm always searching for new music to fall in love with, and sometimes there is so much crap out there, that I get all depressed about it. Then, one night when I was feeling a little blue, I heard a Claude Debussy piece on the radio, and I realized that there is a whole world of Classical music out there that I haven't even begun to explore! So the moral is, even when there seems to be no good music out there to listen to, there really is!