Audio Adrenaline
I think of the first Audio Adrenaline record as being created in
three different periods. In college, in Grayson Kentucky. While we lived
in Dayton, Ohio for six months. When we all first moved to Nashville.
These first three songs all come from our days at Kentucky Christian
College and have a lot to do with how we got our record deal. Mark, Barry,
and Will were in another band in college called A-180. I was a friend of
theirs and DC-10 was the first song I had ever written.
DC-10
I wrote the words in the summer of 1989 at a church camp in Angola,
Indiana while I was a student recruiter for our college. After I had written
the lyrics I heard a song later by Anthrax called "I'm the Man".
I thought it was a really cool song (at that time) and knew it would really
be cool to have Christian music like that. So I talked the guys into putting
it on the A-180 indie album called "Reapers Train". It was a
really radical song and the kids really liked it. Once we got our record
deal as Audio Adrenaline, it was put on our first album. It is the exact
same recording that is on the A-180 "Reaper's Train" album. It
was recorded in Chesapeake, Ohio at Landmark Studios in the fall of 1989.
It's still my favorite.
My God
I had a Youth Ministry in Greenup, Kentucky while I was still in
college (in Grayson, KY) and had plenty of time to think of lyrics as I
drove back and forth on the weekends. One day the words "Buddha was
a fat man, so what!" just came to me as I was driving a church van
filled with little kids. Soon after I finished all the words, I knew I
had to do something with it. A-180 had just made an album and probably
wouldn't make another for quite some time. I didn't know any other bands
to record it, and I could barely play my stereo. So I saved up some money
and asked Barry Blair and Mark Stuart to record the song for me. I was
never going to sing (or shall I say yell on it) but in the studio it just
seemed like the cool thing to do. We threw in a choir to make it really
weird, and the Rev. Moody part was made up while I stood there looking
at the mic and the tape was rolling. It was a lot of fun, and it was basically
how Audio Adrenaline was discovered. We paid to get it on a sampler CD
that got sent out to different radio stations around the country. Dan Brock
from Forefront Records heard it on a college radio station and the rest
is history. The song cost about $800 dollars to record. It was recorded
sometime in the fall of 1990 at Landmark Studios in Chesapeake, Ohio.
Life
After we got Forefront's attention with the song "My God",
they wanted to hear more songs. But at the time Audio Adrenaline was a
band with just one song. So we started pumping out as many songs as we
could - about ten of them all together. "Life" was one of those
songs and has a lot of funny stories behind it. Like the line... "You
wrecked your buddy's car and you cracked your head." We had decided
to stayed at school for spring break so we could write more songs. One
night Barry and I went to a movie in Huntington, WV. I borrowed my roommate's
truck who had gone home for spring break. Unfortunately, I didn't see a
stoplight turn red and crashed his truck. You can imagine he and his dad's
surprise when I had to call them and tell them. No one actually cracked
their head though, that was just poetic licensing. As for..."Your
hair is falling out, on your pillow and all through the house."...
I thought it would be cool to straighten my hair, so I bought a home perm
and woke Mark up one afternoon and asked him to come straighten my hair
for me. Mark didn't think to read the instructions and about a week later
my hair started to thin very rapidly. Fortunately it grew back, about a
year later. The moral of the story is that life sometimes has highs and
lows but with Jesus in your life you really have nothing to worry about.
Recorded at the Saltmine in the spring of 1992.
P.D.A.
The idea comes from the public display of affection rule we had
at the conservative Christian college we went to. Basically, the rule was
to stop couples from showing inappropriate displays of affection on campus.
We turned the phrase around to mean the public display of affection that
Jesus Christ showed on the cross. If we are going to show affection in
public, we should first strive to show our Christian affection to others.
Another interesting fact about "P.D.A." is that the chorus melody
used to be the melody of "A.K.A. Public School". Recorded at
the Saltmine, in the spring of 1992.
Audio World
This was the first slow song we had ever written. We wrote it in
Dayton, OH. It is basically a response to the fact that everyone has something
to say. Environmentalists, politicians, lobbyists, you name it ...everybody
seems has something to say about any one topic. But, there is one thing
that everyone needs to HEAR and that is the gospel of Christ. Recorded
October, 1991 at the Saltmine.
One Step Hyper
To me this is one of the less meaningful and least personal of all
our songs. I can't even remember where the idea for this song came from.
I don't know if Mark had the title idea or who. I do remember sitting out
on the porch of the house we lived in and writing verses. It was basically
a bunch of words that rhymed and sounded good together. The phrase "yo
gnarly ho" was our idea of mixing rap and surf talk together. We've
been embarrassed ever since. This was one of the three songs we recorded
in October of 1991 while we still lived in Dayton. We traveled to Nashville
for the weekend and recorded this at the Saltmine. That was when we realized
that we really needed to live in Nashville to make a go of the band, so
we moved the next month.
The Most Excellent Way
This song to me is just about like "One Step Hyper". I
remember sitting at the computer in Dayton and writing many songs. This
happened to be one of them. I think Mark had the title idea and chorus
words and I probably filled in the verses. I don't know who Fred is either.
Saltmine, Spring of '92.
What You Need
This is one of my favorites, we wrote this in the winter of 1991.
The music went to a song that Mark had wrote called " Come Jam With
Me". For some reason the record company liked the music but not the
words. I had heard a song that had a line in it that said, "It's not
who you are, it's who you know." I thought to myself that was a great
theme for a Christian song. Barry had the music sequenced on a computer
for the demo and I just listened to it over and over until I had all the
words filled in. It was a lot of fun to write. It was recorded spring of
'92 at the Saltmine.
Who Do You Love
This was the second ballad we had written. If I remember correctly,
this was an eleventh hour song. (That means, we wrote it a couple of days
before we went to the studio to record it.) Mark wrote the melody and the
words to the chorus. Then we sat around the kitchen and wrote the rest
of the words in one night. ("Lovey dovey, turtle dovey". We thought
it was funny.) Saltmine, spring of 1992.
J.E.S.U.S. Is Right
This is the first song that I actually wrote the melody for. But
everyone has to start somewhere! Everybody hated it, especially Mark and
Will. I pushed and pushed until it made it on the album. I wrote the words
too. Anyway, little kids liked it. I also got to do the bridge part where
I talk very dramatically. Last but not least, the girl's voice on the song
was my girlfriend at the time. She is now my wife! In hindsight, the song
might not even be close to one of the best Audio Adrenaline songs, but
it was sure fun for me! The song was recorded at Saltmine in the spring
of 1992
Revolution
All of the words in this song were written by Mark. He wrote it
after we moved to Nashville. He worked on it for quite a while and I remember
seeing the words scribbled down on an old piece of paper in our room. He
would add to the words from time to time, but I don't think he ever really
finished it until he had to... which was just in time to record it.. Spring.
92. Saltmine.
BacK
