Daily Iowan

Issue date: 4/12/07 Section: 80 Hours

Media Credit: Ed Bornstein/The Daily Iowan

Click here to listen to the related segment from our '80 Hours On Air' Podcast.

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mp3 samples:

'David Bazan - Cold Beer and Cigarettes'
'David Bazan - How I Remember'

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In the background, David Bazan's wife and 2-1/2-year old daughter, Ellanor, talk and play.

The singer/songwriter, reached by phone at home in Seattle, is now a solo act.

Best known in music for more than a decade as Pedro the Lion's frontman and only continuous member, the Seattle native dropped his musical group and reconsidered his faith beginning in 2004.

"If I listed off what I believed and what I didn't believe, no Christian would say I was a Christian," he said. "It's just a distinction that I just don't care about anymore. Am I a Christian, am I not? - it doesn't matter to me."

After the release of Pedro the Lion's Achilles' Heel on Jade Tree Records in 2004, the now 31-year-old said he began doubting. But he has just now decided to hold off on Christianity and focus on his career - a successful one to date, including four albums and five EPs released with Pedro the Lion, with Achilles' Heel reaching No. 24 on Billboard's top independent-album chart, one solo release in 2006's Fewer Moving Parts, and one side project named Headphones - and family - wife Ann Bazan, and Ellanor.

David Bazan and Ann Bazan met 15 years ago, as Christians. Yet David Bazan says his changing faith hasn't put a stress on their marriage.

"We have a really sweet rapport - she knows this isn't some sort of posturing, me saying 'I don't believe in God anymore,' " said the musician. "In regards to Ellanor, our daughter, we've been really careful. I would prefer she wouldn't know any Bible stories or know about Jesus. And yet, that's what's going to happen," because Ann Bazan intends to bring Ellanor to church. "But I'm cool knowing that she'll be, hopefully, in a situation where she's not forced to assume certain things are true and she's given space to make her decisions about stuff like that much later."

The multi-instrumentalist grew up in Edmonds, Wash., and throughout childhood and adolescence attended a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church in which his father was the music pastor.

David Bazan said that while he may not believe the same as he used to about God's existence, it will always be in his mind.

"The odd thing is that I will always be obsessed with this question, where most people or some people are not," he said. "It's still a huge part of who I am, but I don't necessarily believe the same things about the answers to these questions. I just find myself on the other side of this line that I wasn't on before."

In previous interviews, when the rocker would talk about his faith, there was never a distinction between his relationship with God and his music. Pedro the Lion was often assumed to be a Christian rock band because of songs such as "The Well," in which Bazan told the Bible tale of the woman at the well through the lyrics, "Could he be the one we've waited for ? the one we've waited for." And then a cover of the well-known hymn "Be Thou My Vision" on 1999's The Only Reason I Feel Secure EP cemented the group as at least spiritually minded.

But Bazan always shied away being branded with Christian rock.

Manager Bob Andrews of Undertow Music said that when he first began working with Bazan, in 2003, just prior to the recording of Achilles' Heel, he didn't even realize there were Christian references in the songs. Having come from a "religiously vacant" background, he said, "I didn't get how it got that tag.

"How do you say that's a Christian band? To me, it was more about a lack of faith, and questioning, and doubting. It wasn't what I thought was a Christian band."

Andrews also represents Bazan's Friday night openers, Caleb Engstrom and Will Johnson (of Centromatic). Although Johnson isn't a Christian musician, Iowa City-based Engstrom - who plays acoustic guitar, as does Bazan in much of his solo work - has lyrics that are similar in tone and thematics to Pedro the Lion's body of work.

"I think Christianity has such an ugly face, so I'm tempted to say it can't be all Christianity," said Engstrom, referring to the various "Christian" elements of American society and politics. The UI junior adjusted himself awkwardly in his seat contemplating how to phrase his next sentences.

"I think, yeah, people are tired of Christianity that's fake," said the native of Maquoketa, Iowa. "I'm trying to be a Christian, and that means not being a selfish Christian, and that means relationships and love - and that's not what we think of when we think of Christianity."

As was Bazan, Engstrom was raised in the Assemblies of God - but unlike Bazan, he is still a Christian, albeit one who follows a nondenominational faith and is "not out to save anyone."

For Bazan, Pedro the Lion's music is a history of his doubt in the faith he was fed as a child and his inevitable denial of that faith.

"The body of work of Pedro the Lion is in way a history of me," he said. "You know, my faith slowly being corrupted and slowly sort of disintegrating, which, from my vantage point, is an entirely good thing. It's a very necessary thing to go back and to suspend all your assumptions about the universe that you grew up with."

Pedro the Lion had 15 different members during its 11-year tenure. The high turnover was partly because of Bazan's faith, as well as his writing style, which stressed an overall sound rather than highlighted parts for individual players. "Everybody knew that if he quit, I was going to keep going, and it was still going to be called Pedro the Lion," he said. "And that one fact undermined anybody's ability to have ownership in the band, and it undermined anyone's willingness to commit."

It was probably difficult for other musicians to make the music their own, he said, because the songs were so deeply personal for him. Often, Bazan played numerous instruments on Pedro the Lion records, because he knew exactly how he wanted the songs to be.

Bazan jokingly equated the dynamics of his former band with those of The Police, dominated as it was by Sting, and, seriously, with Bright Eyes, led by Conor Oberst.

"Nate Walcott and Mike Mogus are really an integral part of that band, but if they can't make a show, there's still going to be a Bright Eyes show," he said. "But if Conor isn't able to play, the show's canceled.

"It's been that way in Pedro the Lion, and I don't want to be in a band like that. I want to be in a band that if the guitar player quits, it's a tragedy, because it'll never be as cool as it was when he was in the band."

Nonetheless, he said, he was sad that the group disbanded after the departure of drummer and friend T.W. Walsh (now frontman of The Soft Drugs). Although Pedro the Lion has ceased to be, Bazan said, he looked forward to working on his music as a solo performer.

And as such, he has had the chance to look back on Pedro the Lion and see all his "failures."

For now the singer plans to continue with his solitary career and Headphones.

"I've realized since I've gone solo, as it were, that I wasn't owning it completely," he said. "And you can't really hide that."

E-mail DI reporter Brigid Marshall at:
brigid-marshall@uiowa.edu

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mp3 samples:

'Caleb Engstrom - Shaud Up'
'Caleb Engstrom - Light in the Room'

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A myriad of Christian music

The Christian music scene is not the megalith dominated by religious radio and the gospel circuit that it once was. Christian bands such as the Danielson Famile release albums on religious record labels that earn stellar reviews at indie tastemakers Pitchforkmedia.com, while other groups have Christian members and explore Christian themes in their songs but reject the label "Christian music."

Although a majority of the members of the following bands identify as Christians, some of these artists frequently make music that is overtly Christian in theme, and still others choose to market themselves to a Christian audience.

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To buy tickets to David Bazan's concert with Will Johnson and Caleb Engstrom, go to Ticketweb.com

Find out more about the artist at his official site

Or, head to his MySpace page for songs and more photos

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