What’s the point of Christian radio anyway
?
Well, I’m possibly not the best person in the world to answer that. In a way, because I’m producing something for Christian radio, it’s probably better to ask someone who listens to it, “Why do you listen to it?” I’d say that probably every Christian radio station has a slightly different answer, because they have a slightly different goal or vision. A lot of radio stations try to cater for the church; they’re trying to enrich and encourage Christians, and provide them an opportunity to listen to something that’s… I wouldn’t use the word ‘safe’, because that certainly wouldn’t be what I’d like to call my show, but certainly something that no-one can be offended by, and rather than being bad for the soul, it’s good. So you can listen to some regular music, or secular, if you want to call it that, and it’s not good for you. It talks about a really bad version of sexuality. Sexuality in the right context is beautiful, but often it’s degraded. And it talks about drink and drugs, and things that if you take in large volumes really don’t do you much good at all. And so on. So what Christian radio tries to do is provide something that people can listen to and they feel like it’s going to do them some good.

What Cross Rhythms does is a little bit different, because first and foremost it’s not there to serve the church. Most Christian radio stations are, if they’re honest. It’s aiming at a much younger age group than any other station of its type in the UK and, because it’s on FM in a few places as well as being online, it’s catering to people who might chance across it, and they listen to something that’s not that different to their local commercial radio station. It’s playing young music for young people, of all different sorts, and what the station does very well is specialist music shows, of which I present the “rock” show, as it were.
So that’s the point of Christian radio. It has two different aims, and the one that Cross Rhythms is trying to do is provide a positive, affirming message to people who might be looking for it.

The advantage (of Cross Rhythms) is that it’s evangelistic, it tries to prepare for the possibility that a non-Christian will listen to it and like it, and a lot of Christian radio stations, the feedback they get is always about people that have been blessed, or enriched by it, and that’s wonderful feedback, but when you hear that someone isn’t sure about their faith, or they never thought about it, and after listening to this it made them think, that’s such a wonderful blessing, I get really excited.

The disadvantage is that the church is less likely to back it, because it doesn’t cater for them. If you’re a Christian radio station, catering for Christians, Christians will back it. If you’re a radio station that isn’t aimed at the church, the church is thinking, “What am I going to get out of it?” So the disadvantage is that finances are always a struggle for a ministry like Cross Rhythms that’s reaching out.

How many people listen to your show? How do you establish listening figures? Is it a worldwide audience?

It’s actually very difficult for Cross Rhythms to know how many people listen to their station. What we do know is how many people come through the website, every month, every year, and so on. On FM it costs a ridiculous amount of money to find out how many people listen, because usually it’s the BBC, or a big commercial group of stations that pays this company called Rajar to work out how many people listen to their station. A community radio station has nowhere near the same amount of clout the BBC or a big group of commercial stations have. So we’ve no idea how many people listen on FM, and that’s our best idea of how many non-Christians listen, or people not directly associated with a church.
What we do know is that every month we get at least 200 000 unique visitors, which over the year amounts to almost a million. Obviously a website can say, “We got a million hits last month”, but how many of those were different people? 200 000 different people come across the website every month. How many of those visitors listen? We can break down the stats, and it varies from month to month, but I’m not the techie guy, so I can’t tell you, but certainly a lot of people go to the website which offers a lot of other things apart from the radio.
They are (from a worldwide audience). Even now, on my show, in the last couple of months, I’ve had someone contact me from Poland, from Slovakia, last year someone contacted me from China, Turkey, there’s always people listening from North America, which is bizarre, because there are so many Christian stations in America, and yet they feel we have something a bit different. Because we’re a British station, we want to broadcast a fair amount of music that’s British. Every week on my show, I play two new songs, one of which is British. My playlist is up to 50% British. So the first thing is we’re playing music they won’t have heard on any American station, and the second thing is we tend to play less music that’s CCM, which is produced within the Christian music industry, it stands for Contemporary Christian Music, so a lot of the music we play is from mainstream artists who happen to be Christians, or from Christian acts who are primarily trying to reach the mainstream rather than play in this sort of Christian bubble, for want of a better phrase.

How did you get started in radio? How did you come to front the Cross Rhythms hard music show?

Every kid has their dream job, and I remember when I was about six or seven, I said I either want to be a radio DJ, or a stand-up comedian. I’ve tried both, and one of them I still do. Whatever faith I did have as a child, I lost. I went though my teenage years going from something akin to agnostic, to a complete atheist. I just couldn’t let myself believe it. I became a Christian when I was seventeen. There’s quite a long story behind that, but the basic gist was I was surrounded by too many people who were too honest and truthful, and too genuinely nice people, for me to think that they were believing in nonsense. And because I fell in love with a girl who was a Christian, and because the girl I went out with before her was a Christian, I was staring to think, “Hmm… something’s happening here”, and various things got me to the point where I said to God, “Right, if you exist, I want you to tell me within the next seven days that you love me. Just that simple message… I love you.” I was going to a Christian youth group, even though I was believing what was going on, my parents almost forced me into it, but they were very gentle about it, in the sense that they didn’t drag me to church every Sunday, and because I went to that youth group on the Friday, that was God’s chance to… BOOM! Hit me with it! Because, honestly, when I made that prayer, on the Tuesday, I think it was, I was going down the stairs expecting my mum to say it to me, because both my parents were Christians, and they didn’t. That actually surprised me. Part of me was ready for God at that point. On the Friday, there was a guest speaker at our youth group, and his message was unbelievably simple – Jesus loves you. He said it about five or six times, absolutely that direct. And yes, obviously, quite often someone will do a talk and they’ll mention, “Oh, God thinks you’re amazing”, and all that kind of stuff, but the actual phrase, “God loves you”, is only used every so often, even though it’s quite a familiar phrase, so that was when I completely broke down. In that process, I started to rethink, “Well, actually, these dreams and aspirations that I once had that I thought were daft, maybe I should give them a go. I’m still quite young, what’s the harm?” The same month I became a Christian was the same month Cross Rhythms won its FM licence and found new premises.

So I got in touch with them, and between my A levels and my degree, I did a gap year with them, two or three days a week helping them out, doing whatever. And very quickly I realised they had all these specialist music shows, but for some reason there wasn’t a rock show, and it seemed like a massive gap. I listen to all sots of music, but at that point I was a bit of a nu-metal kid, baggy jeans, beanie hat, band t-shirts. We’re talking about 2001, 2002 right at the height of the nu-metal years. So the station manager said, “We’re going to start a rock show,” and there was a bit of a stumbling block, because the guy who was going to start it left the station, so it was actually the station manager who started the show, and he said, “Right, Greg, seeing as it was your idea, you’re going to produce the show.” What he meant by that was give him ideas, so I’d be listening every week to loads and loads of CDs and saying “This is a great CD, you’ve got to play it”, and I’d already got a bit of track record of finding songs that got onto the playlist, so every week I’d produce a music news section, so people would know what was going on in the world, and after about six months, he said, “Ok, you can start voicing that, and we’ll have a bit of banter sometimes, if you want to interview a band sometime and I can’t do it, feel free to do it, and we’ll play that out.” So gradually, I was getting my voice on air, but for the first six months, not a word went on air, I was just serving the show, serving the ministry. And occasionally, I’d cover for him when he couldn’t do the show live and wasn’t able to pre-record it.
About a year later I took on the show in my own right, so it was well over twelve months before this show that had been birthed was actually mine, so it was a very, very long process. I think sometimes people go into radio and think if they just turn up one day and show that they’re keen, a couple of weeks later they’ll have their own show. That really does not happen! The sort of tea-boy to presenter story that you hear is usually something that goes on for years. And if you stick at it, you can achieve it, and I’m one example of that. But you’ve got to submit to the ministry. You don’t go in there and say “I want a show!” and just keep working till you get a show. You have to be right in tune with what’s going on, and really be part of something.

s “The Rock and Hard Place” a job, a hobby, or a ministry? Explain.

If it was purely a hobby, that’s fine. I enjoy what I do, I want to make sure the listener enjoys listening to it, and they get something from it. Cross Rhythms definitely is a ministry. People contact me and tell me how they really enjoyed this music, or that interview, and I hear this encouragement, and it encourages me in turn, and I carry on doing what I’m doing. So, yes, it is a ministry. I don’t actively go with that in mind, so I wouldn’t say I have a “vision” for what the show should achieve, but it does minister to people who have this unique outlet for what they need. It’s like a job too, because I have to make sure I keep up to date with all the news, and listen to lots of CDs, but I enjoy that so much anyway.

Do you have complete control over your playlist? Are there any restrictions on what you do (who you play, interview, etc)?

Yes, I do. When the show started, it was someone else’s show, and during the transition between him and me, we had a section of really noisy metal called “Madness Medley”, named after a guy in the chatroom called Madness. So we had this three or four song section, in honour of him, and he (my predecessor) said, “Can you just keep the really noisy, screamy, hardcore stuff to a three or four song maximum?” Then after a few months, he gave me free rein. He had no input, I chose all the songs, and I realised that if, every week, I played of ear-melting music, people would start to switch off, so there is still that balance. The first hour is music that’s anywhere between indie, soft rock, maybe grungy, right the way through to some quite heavy metal stuff. In the second hour, then you’ll get the really brutal music, but if there’s an interview, you might only get half an hour of that anyway. You need to get the balance between the different styles of music, and what people want to listen to. You get a feel for that through requests.I have people say to me they only listen to the first half, because they know it gets a bit noisy in the second half, and some people say they only listen to the second half,

because that’s what they want, the really hard and heavy stuff. And that’s why I’m glad the “Listen Again” feature on the website has hour 1 and hour 2 available separately!

What criteria do you set for your playlist? Do you only play Christian artists who operate within the Christian scene? Have you played, or would you play, Alice Cooper songs, for example?

I do have a sort of self-imposed criteria. I’ll only play so much of this kind of music because, after a while, people start to feel that each song sounds like the other one. The only rule as far as the “Christian in a band or Christian band” argument for me is who writes the lyrics, and who sings them? That’s the most important thing for whether or not I should be encouraging people on my show to listen to. There are plenty of people who listen to The Rock and Hard Place who will listen to whatever they want to, and that’s fine. But there are people who’ve made a conscious decision that they will only listen to music that is good for them, and that’s my first and most important criterion. It’s brilliant if all the members are Christian, because there’s a faith and a goal behind the band, and that’s ideal. If, however the vocalist/lyricist and the main musician are the only two who are Christian, that’s fine, because not every single song (that I play) has a really strong message behind it.
Last week, I played “Salvation” from “Along Came a Spider” (Alice Cooper’s latest album), and that’s an interesting album. Some of the songs (by themselves) I shouldn’t be playing, but “Salvation” is fine. It’s a concept album, and in order to tell the story, I think he was right to do it (the way he did), but I have to be careful what I play from it, and it’s not a CD you could sell in the “Christian market”. Also, you have to ask yourself, even though I’ve been told this band is Christian, judging from some of these songs, the message they’re putting across isn’t helping anyone.
Would that make it impossible to do the show, and not be a Christian yourself?
Cross Rhythms has always been very good at developing relationships, and even though they’re more than happy to have people volunteering for them who aren’t Christians, the radio station, the broadcasting side, is a mouthpiece, and we need to make sure that mouthpiece is unified, that we all come from the same place. So for Cross Rhythms to have The Rock and Hard Place, I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t presented by a Christian. Outside of Cross Rhythms, could the same sort of show be presented by a non-Christian? Maybe, but I don’t really think it would have the same purpose behind it, and then it’s not really The Rock and Hard Place.

How much preparation do you need to do for a particular show? Is there a difference in your preparation for a live show, as opposed to a pre-recorded show? What’s the ratio? Which do you prefer?

It varies. All through the week, I’ll be listening to new music. I’ll get an email from someone telling me what’s happening, this band is doing that, and so on. So it’s actually very difficult for me to put a time scale on it because sporadically throughout the week, I’m preparing for the show. On a Saturday afternoon, I can arrive anytime between midday, if I’ve got the whole day free, and five o’clock. So at least two hours before the show, I’m there. If I’m there earlier, maybe it’s because I’ve got an interview that I really want to prepare for, or to edit if it was recorded at a festival or a gig, or maybe just because I fancy sitting down for a whole afternoon and going on MySpace links because someone in a forum told me this band is quite good. Then I’ll get in touch with the band and say, “Could you send me your CD?” As things are at the moment, the vast majority of my shows are live. I’d be quite reluctant to change that, because there is an interactive element to the show which I enjoy. Most weeks there’ll be people in the chat room asking me questions, and the band I’m interviewing questions, so I like to make sure the interviews are live as well, as often as possible. And they’ll be requesting songs as well.

Is “The Rock and Hard Place” essential? If CR decided it wasn’t viable for any reason, would you fight for its survival, or let it go without a struggle?

I think the UK CHM scene is quite disjointed. There are sort of regional hubs; there are bands based in London, the South West, the West Midlands, and the central belt of Scotland, but they stay in those little pockets around the country. Coventry is a good example, with what Davey Burch is doing with JesusXCore. And the reason why that’s working is because he’s actively doing something! So few of us actively do something. Rather than being anarchy in the UK, it’s more like apathy in the UK. Davey wrote a blog article about that, expanded on that idea and worded it much better.

Part of what I think “The Rock and Hard Place” could potentially do, and I think it really fails at the moment, is to have a consistent weekly focus for people involved in CHM, to know what’s going on, how it’s happening, how they can get involved, what new music’s being produced, when are these bands coming in… a focal point for Christians. What tends to happen is people dip in and out as they like, and that’s the nature of listening to music.

So “The Rock and Hard Place” could be a weekly focal point, for people to be encouraged, to carry on doing what they’re doing, and to make them feel like they’re not isolated. If you’re a band in Cambridge, or Sunderland, you could be the only people doing what you’re doing within maybe a twenty mile radius. But you’re not alone, there are people doing it all over the UK, it’s just that you didn’t realise, and if people start to network with each other, maybe, “If we do a tour, maybe we should tour these places, there’s a local band that will help us out, or a group of Christians who’ll help us out, or put us up in a church hall,” then we can really start to let something happen. Luckily, there are some bands doing that, but not enough. And there are not enough Christians supporting those bands in what they’re doing.
The scene would carry on quite happily without “The Rock and Hard Place”, but it’s one less outlet for music, and it’s one less outlet for people to come on and talk about what they want to talk about.
Is there anybody you would absolutely refuse to feature on your show?
Not specifically, no. There are certain bands and musicians that I’d be very wary of playing on my show from a spiritual perspective, so I’d have to say I’d be thinking about other people’s sensibilities more than my own. I, personally, am happy to talk to anyone. If I think they’ve got something interesting to say, I’ll talk to them. If I think there’s a danger that they could actually do more harm than good to other people, then maybe I should stop and think.
You recently interviewed Dave Williams, director of Meltdown Music Ministries. How did that interview come about, and how did you feel it went?
Obviously for a long time, I’ve been well aware of Meltdown. Doing this show, I see a lot of similarities with what they’re trying to achieve. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I’ve never actually managed to get to Meltdown, but it’s something I’ve been telling myself I must do for five or six years. So the times I’ve spoken to Dave have been at Greenbelt, when he’s putting on the Meltdown sessions there, and at random gigs and events they’ve been putting on, and this year I’ve been very lucky to have given him a couple of pointers, which I’m quite excited about. So I’ve been aware of Dave for a long, long time, and what he did, and last year I went to In-Tune, their free day to resource and encourage bands to carry on doing what they’re doing, and I realised that even though I know what he’s doing, and the history of what he’s about, I imagine that a lot of people would be absolutely fascinated by what he had to say, and he has a lot of tales to tell. We literally dipped our toes into the whole sea of what he could have told us. So I realised there’s a lot that he can tell us, that probably he’s going to put better, because he’s experienced it. I’m just purely re-telling stuff, he, to put it in a horribly blunt way, is the horse’s mouth. So around the time I was getting a timescale of Conduit’s new release, I was in contact with him because of Conduit, but also I just wanted to have a chat with him, man to man. So I thought, “Let’s get him into the studio!”
I knew I’d just play one song, and then it would carry on to the end of the show. It did, and then after the show, we just carried on talking. One thing to say is he’s definitely going to come back on again, because we could’ve easily doubled the time we spent talking, and we did, off air! And also, there’s a lot of people who listened to it who found it a real eye-opener, in terms of the reality of what bands in this country are trying to do, and how when Dave started out, he was telling us about this White Metal group, run by Word Records, a mailing list. And it was huge! And so when events happened, loads of people were aware of it, and so Stryper or Bloodgood, or whoever, would come to the UK, and they’d play to decent sized crowds. But that fizzled out in the early 90s, and nothing really came along to take its place, so the momentum went, and the reality kicked in of what this country needs. So there were a lot of truths that were said, that even though I knew, and had probably conveyed them, because it came from him, because he can say, “This definitely happened, here’s an example of what happened,” it was a real eye-opener. It was an eye-opener for me, because I just didn’t realise how big things were at one point, because I know that things have been very tough all the time that I’ve been involved with this scene, since about 2001, 2002. But in the 1990s it went from this massive thing and just fizzled out.

When you listen to an album and think, “I like where they are spiritually, but this music is just pants!”, do you feel obliged to play the CD on your show, and be nice about it?

Occasionally with British bands. With an American band, or an overseas band, I will brutally say on air, “I might play this band once or twice, but quite frankly I find this album very disappointing, compared with what they’ve produced in the past.” With British bands, I suppose, I’m looking to see what the big, new, exciting thing is, much more than with American bands, you know? That’s the thing that I want to get really excited about. When I hear good things about a band, and then I hear what actually comes out, and it’s not quite matched the expectation that people have given me, it does disappoint me. And there are some weeks where it feels like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel to find some new music for that week’s show, and that’s really sad, because some months you’ll get four or five really good CDs, and you think, “Every week I’m going to be playing an absolute pearler!”

When people ask me for my opinion, and I know what the honest answer is, and I know that also I should be encouraging them, rather than putting them down, sometimes you say what you’re not actually thinking because you don’t want to hurt them. And on other occasions, you feel you are able to be honest with them, because you know they’re strong enough to take it. That’s the crux of it, I suppose.
Luckily, Cross Rhythms is a big enough organisation that if I don’t like something, there may well be someone else that does. The beauty of Cross Rhythms is that every single CD that could potentially be available commercially is reviewed. A review will go up on the website, and there are some shocking reviews on the website! There are one- and two-star reviews that deserve to be one- and two-star reviews, and there are nine- and ten-star reviews that, in my opinion, are actually six and sevens, they just got a bit worked up about it. The point being that if something truly is bad, Cross Rhythms are not scared to say, “Not very good, that, was it? You really need to work on it.”

There is a culture in Christian circles, because you don’t want to upset, and because you want to be encouraging and affirming people in what they’re doing, that mediocre music gets through. Because, firstly, nothing better’s come along, and secondly, because not enough people have stopped them and said, “It’s all right, but it could be a whole lot better.”

The British scene, compared to two or three years ago, I’d say it’s better; it’s growing. There was a real low period in the first decade of the twenty first century, which is the only decade I know really intimately, towards the middle of it, it felt like you were hitting a sort of a lull. A few bands that were good were retiring or splitting up, and nothing really was coming along to replace them. But thankfully, in the last two or three years some really good bands have come through, and have continued to improve, and some new bands are, excitingly, coming up hot on their heels as well. And the Coventry scene, especially, has gone from almost nothing to four or five quality bands, conduit being the sort of forerunners of the group, but bands hot on their heels like Many Falls, Juinera, Eden Wakes, that are almost as good, and getting well on track so that when they release their first properly well recorded CDs, they’ll start to turn a few heads. I would say the reason many of these bands exist in Coventry is because of Conduit, and Davey Burch putting on these gigs. And suddenly all these Christians see what Conduit are doing and think, “We could do that.”
A network of bands is beginning to develop, and I think that’s one of the things Dave Williams has been trying to do with Detonation and the Meltdown mailing list. If you can create a focal point, one place where everyone can communicate, maybe we’ll get those networks and relationships back, if not to the same extent, then at least a similar extent to how it was in the late 80s with the White Metal Club.

The sad loss that we’re going to have later this year with Dougle going to America, it’ll leave a hole because the same has been happening in the central belt of Scotland. When I first started to be aware of what was going on in Scotland, there was a guy up there who called himself Dave Emo who had this thing called “Zero Airplay”, and he was getting all these together to put on compilation CDs. He did a really good job of it, and then he felt called to go to South Africa. But he was in a band called Dragged Out, and Dougle was involved in that, Dougle was involved in Voice of the Mysterons, who had a bit of a lull, but seem to be recording something now, 100 Philistine Foreskins, which was born out of that lull, there was Rodent Emporium, so it really does feel like some really big and exciting things are happening. The fact that Meltdown have got this relationship with a German label (Whirlwind Records, check them out at www.whirlwind-records.com), means that now, when a band comes along that you really can push, that avenues are opening up that allows them to not only go around the UK, which sadly still only has a tiny, tiny scene, but to play European festivals as well. The German scene is one we maybe should look to, and see how they’re making it work, because there are some little pockets of Germany where there’s lots going on at the moment, and it’s quite exciting.

Is it important to develop your own presenting style? How did you arrive at yours?

I’m probably the person that’s least able to answer that, because I don’t know how I might sound different. Everyone does and says things slightly different on air to how they’d actually speak in real life. I realised quite quickly that because I was trying to speak more clearly, and I was thinking about how I was getting a message across, the way I was speaking conversationally changed as a result. Not long after I started doing the show, I pretty much lost my Stoke accent. I used to have a fairly obvious North Staffordshire accent, but that went quite quickly, because I realised I needed to be quite clear, and just by being clear and speaking in a particular way, you end up sounding quite neutral. I think people can say, “Well, he’s not from the south, but where he’s actually from, I don’t know.” And that’s fine, I’ve got over the issues of my identity!
I also know that when I speak on air, I’m a bit gruffer sounding than I would ordinarily be, because it’s part of the style of the show. It depends on the song, but certainly when you get to the really heavy stuff, I can’t help but adopt that persona. I don’t want to pretend to be someone I’m not, but at the same time, it’s fun to go along with it. (There followed a moment of announcing different bands and artists in “appropriate” tones of voice, to mutual amusement.) You know what you want to say, and you work at it. I’ve tried my utmost not to sound cheesy, because the first thing you associate a radio presenter with being, is cheesy. And that’s actually difficult, because sometimes you say things that, in ordinary conversation, no-one’ll stop and think about it, but when you’re presenting a show, people will think, “Huh! Cheesy DJ!” So you know some of the things you say are going to end up being a bit cheesy, but I think I’ve managed to not sound too bad.

You said you wanted to be a stand-up comedian… did you ever realise that dream?

Yeah, I did a little bit. It was roughly when I finished my degree, for about a year, I’d try and do open spot nights in random parts of the Midlands and the North West. I suppose it’s one of those things where, if I’d put all my effort into it, I could’ve maybe got somewhere, but I knew I’d have to work a lot harder than I had. I wasn’t innately hilarious; conversationally, or anecdotally, I know at some point I’d be able to make people laugh, but I’m not a natural comic like some people are. Some people are like, “Oh, I did a couple of gigs, and I didn’t realise it was this easy.” Those people infuriate me! Most comedians have had to work very, very hard to get where they have, and at that point in my life, I had to make decisions about what my priorities were, and I was doing a Masters degree, and I thought maybe I should concentrate on that, and I never got back to it.
Stand-up comedy helped me with my confidence; you have to have the confidence to say and do things in front of other people and know it might not work. By comparison, sitting behind a microphone with no-one in front of you, is a breeze. You’ve got no-one in front of you, staring at you with a blank expression. You imagine, in your mind, that everyone’s loving it! Whether they are or not is irrelevant! You don’t have that immediate reaction. I do have a fairly immediate reaction, because someone in the chatroom might comment on something I’ve just said, but because I don’t have to make them laugh, it’s ok.
 
Where do you see yourself in 5 years time? How long do you envisage doing this? Would “The Rock and Hard Place” continue without you? Who, if anyone, can you imagine filling your shoes?   
        
Could the show go on without me? Yeah, I reckon it could. I’d like to think it could. One part of me can’t imagine ever not doing it, and one part of me thinks, “Well, at some point, I’m not going to, so when is that going to be.” Because I haven’t thought too much about the second part, it suggests that I’m going to be doing “The Rock and Hard Place” for a good while longer.
If for some reason it did stop, well, I’d just have to accept it. I wouldn’t fight frantically to find another station or another organisation that would let me do something similar, I’d just say, “It’s a shame, because there’s nothing like it, but if that’s what you decide, then that’s what you decide.” I would hope, though, rather than that happening, that it’s a case that someone else carried on the flame, carried on the show in some shape or form, without me.
The danger could be that I’d get a bit precious, like it’s my baby, and I have certain expectations about what goes on with the show. I would hope that I can just say, “It’s yours now, I’ve enjoyed doing this, and if you want me to help, I’ll help, and if you don’t, that might benefit you, because it needs to be yours now.”
And there are people doing similar shows now. When “The Rock and Hard Place” started, there weren’t really, but there are now a few more Christian stations springing up. Cross Rhythms has three FM stations. There’s a new station starting in Coventry that was going to be a Cross Rhythms station; it’s not, but still Cross Rhythms are supporting what they’re doing, and they a vision, they have an idea of wanting to see community radio in this model right around the UK. And there are other organisations that have sprung up outside of Cross Rhythms, that Cross Rhythms are still in connection with, like Hope FM in Bournemouth, for example. They don’t have a de facto rock show, I don’t think, and I hope that someone will start one. I know someone in Bournemouth who is very, very passionate about it, and I’d love to see him start a show on that station. Flame FM, on the Wirral, with Ken Eaves, and on Swindon’s Flame FM, John Derry from Rising From Death presents a show. In Scotland, there’s Revival FM, and a member of a new, up-and-coming band, The Royal Foundlings, is presenting a show on that station. I gave him a few contacts, a few pointers, about what I’d recommend as good sources of information, good labels to get in contact with, good bands to keep an eye on.

What’s your attitude towards these other Christian radio stations? Are they rivals or colleagues? Would you do everything you could to encourage them, or is there an unwritten rule that you avoid them like the plague?

Well, for me personally, it’s definitely about encouraging the Body of Christ. The more people doing what I’m doing, the better. I suppose I could see them as rivals, but if it’s easier and better for someone to listen to a different show, and it suits them, fine.
Without naming any names, there are two radio stations in the UK, not directly connected to Cross Rhythms, I should stress, who do a very similar thing, and they have become competitive with each other, and there is a slight amount of animosity. I don’t think Cross Rhythms has that with any station, and I certainly don’t have that about any person doing what I’m doing. Cross Rhythms wants every major conurbation to have Christian community radio there. They would love it if it was part of the Cross Rhythms banner, but their resources only go so far, so if something outside of their sphere of influence, they’d encourage it, and give them the ideas and resources that they could to help make it happen. It’s about enriching and encouraging and growing the Body of Christ, absolutlely!

What’s missing from the Christian hard music scene at the moment? Who should be filling that gap?
 
What I would really like is for Christians to be pioneers in the music scene, to be seen to be original, not copycats. There’s a British group of musicians called Marstin and the Revelators, very weird bunch of lads, they produce this kind of music which is quite unique: a bit folky, a bit indie, mainly acoustic, and it’s a kind of storytelling type of music, the main brains behind the band is from the Faroe Islands, so they have this storytelling technique that has obviously transferred into his music. I wasn’t to see bands being unique and original and exciting, and if I find a band doing something I’ve not heard before, that’s far more interesting to me than a band that are very good at doing a copycat of something that’s already out there. Even though they’re both as musically talented as each other, one of them’s going to turn more heads than the other.
Also, bands that are able to get a message across that you don’t feel like they’ve watered it down, it’s just that they’ve been more clever about how they’ve done it. There are very few bands that are actually overt, and there are reasons why, and I understand those reasons, but you can still be very intelligent and creative about how you portray your message without someone like me thinking they’re just being cowards.

If you came to the job fresh tomorrow, would you do it exactly the same way? What would you do differently?

Well, the textbook clichéd answer is, “No, I’d do it all the same way.” There probably would be a couple of things I’d do differently. I’d be less worried about the crossover element, as in, “Will people who listen to the general playlist like this stuff that I’m playing?” because I think from a much earlier stage I should’ve realised that people listen to this show exclusively. It could be there only level of contact with Cross Rhythms. Maybe they’re not that bothered about what’s on the general playlist. So that’s the main thing, appeasing people who don’t like the noisy stuff too much.

What makes a truly great radio show? Is there a special formula, or is it a hit-and-miss process? How do you respond to praise or criticism?

Well, the show I like the most is Radcliffe and Maconie on Radio 2, because what they have is natural Northern wit, an amazing breadth of musical knowledge which spans far more than the genres they play, and they have a genuine passion for the music they do play, and I suppose that’s what makes a good show: passion, knowledge and music. And me shutting up, and letting the music do what it’s meant to do.

I used to be quite bad with praise, actually, I used to prefer criticism. I’m better now, but the problem is I don’t know how I’d respond to criticism because I’ve had next to none doing the show. And I think that’s as much as anything to do with people, like I said earlier, trying to please each other all the time, rather than saying what they think.

Your next show is your last. You have carte blanche to do whatever you want. Describe that show.

Well, this reflects my last answer: I would just play good songs. That’s the short answer. I’d play good songs, and try my utmost to shut up, and just let the music do what it’s meant to do. There are some people that I haven’t had the chance to interview that I’d like to before I stop doing this. Rowan London from Virgin Black is probably the best example. And Samantha Escarbe (VB’s guitarist). They’re the two main brains of the band. We tried to do an interview once, but because of the time difference, it just didn’t work, because there was miscommunication between both of us. So I’d still like to have that interview, maybe that would be the last hurrah! And the other person I’d like to interview is Doug Van Pelt (editor of HM magazine) because, like Dave Williams, he must have so many stories. He has a great overview of the scene, but his overview, obviously, is of the American scene.

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