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Jars of Clay guitarist shares his view
of success



Jars of Clay guitarist Matt Odmark says that his view of success "is so completely opposite from what we think success looks like."
-Callie Fahsholz, photo

Few people have been as humiliated on stage as guitarist Matt Odmark when he played in a club in Chicago. Odmark ran onto a stage and leaped with his guitar, slipping on an unfastened rug. He collided into the drum set backward, and landed on his back so hard that he had to be picked back up.

But Odmark has come a long way since his band first met at Greenville College in Illinois.

In just five years his band has received both Grammy and Dove awards. Jars of Clay's latest album, "If I Left the Zoo," hit the top of the charts when it came out on Nov. 9, 1999, and for a while sold more albums off the Internet than any other. Billboard Magazine said Jars of Clay is "one of the few Christian acts to achieve major mainstream success this decade."

Such success has changed Odmark as a person. "Success has put me around people more than I ever would have chosen," he said. "I am actually more of an introverted person.... I probably wouldn't have chosen this life-style, but it has helped me grow in my ability to relate to people."

Success may have pushed Odmark to overcome some of his personal limits, but it has also threatened his music. Retaining his enthusiasm for music is now a struggle.

"There's the demands of needing to do records, of needing them to be this successful, of needing them to look a certain way... feeling all those kind of needs, you have to fight in order to keep the music somewhat pure and to keep the message from being tainted."

Many fans claim that the lyrics and music of Jars of Clay have changed significantly since the arrival of the band's debut album in 1995. The music style changed when producer Dennis Herring suggested the band take an entirely new approach to its songs. As a result, the music in the most recent album, "If I Left the Zoo," leans toward experimental folk and bluegrass instead of acoustic pop.

Many people enjoy Jars of Clay's new music style, but the band has received a lot of criticism for its lyrical ambiguity in "If I Left the Zoo." Singer Dan Haseltine himself describes the song "No One Loves Me Like You" as "a metaphoric look at the risks and rewards of loving well." Haseltine describes "I'm Alright" as "a satirical look at denial and its grip on those who believe everything is fine even though the life they live holds no joy, substance or purpose."

The lyrics in "If I Left the Zoo" are clearly ambiguous. Take, for example, the chorus of "Collide":

"I, I collide with love as an illusive state of mind. I know there's something else it's supposed to be. I, I collide with love as an illusive state of mind. Something's killing me!"

But Odmark still doesn't think the message has been tainted.

"Our lyrics are not ultraliteral. This is a postmodern way of communicating," he said. "If you look at music in general, there's not a lot of ultraliteral lyrics in popular music -- at least in the more earnest and more popular kinds of music. In bands like Radiohead and even Goo Goo Dolls that are more of your rock 'n' roll bands, lyrics come across as a sort of montage and evoke some sort of emotion rather than communicate a real story or idea."

Odmark doesn't think Jars of Clay's music and lyrics have been tainted -- the band has altered them to accommodate a more diverse and mainstream audience. But Odmark sees a much greater danger to becoming successful than compromising music standards for the sake of the public. Odmark realizes that success can lead to one's own downfall.

"Anybody who sees any level of success has got to swallow the emptiness of what is on the other end of that," he said. "That is why you see so many miserable sports stars or rock stars."

Because Odmark knows what success can potentially lead to, his entire perspective on it has changed.

"A lot of things this world values as successful don't really mean much," he said. "It is pushing me back to what the Bible says about success. It really is true. If you look at the beatitudes, that is what the successful life looks like."

Odmark said this view of success "is so completely opposite from what even we as Christians think success looks like." Not many Christians view pain as success. But to Odmark, a "successful life looks like you being at the very end of your ropes so that God can meet you in your weakness."

Because Odmark wants to pursue the biblical definition of success, he may leave Jars of Clay to become involved in missions work in the future. Odmark wants to serve others more.

"Whatever I do next, it needs to be something that requires me to serve a lot, because we're in a profession that gets served," he said. "Growth for me is going to look like being in the back seat and learning more about what it means to serve other people."