t never mattered to us because existing in that world never mattered to us. It seems that because we’re on Tooth N’ Nail and can’t easily be wedged into a specific genre, people tend to categorize us with a lot of our peers who play screamo music, and then when we betray that formula they hate us for it. We think it’s hilarious.” In summation, this quote from Showbread vocalist Josh Dies from our September 2009 issue succinctly expresses what Showbread is all about as well as what their fans have come to expect, which is the unexpected. Confused? We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Showbread will not and cannot be put in a box. Last year, upon the release of The Fear of God, their final farewell at Tooth N’ Nail, Showbread exhibited a fine knack for continually keeping their audience guessing. Just when you think you have them figured out, they throw you a curveball to the throat. Recently dropping their long time “home” at The Nail in exchange for a more personal touch alongside good friend Chad Johnson at Come&Live!, the seemingly revolving door that is the Showbread lineup is turning a page in their long and diverse career. Their debut C&L! release entitled Who Can Know It? will be available for free download in late November. Once again, vocalist Josh Dies fills us in on the weird world of Showbread.
We spoke awhile back and you mentioned that you felt like a lot of Showbread fans had dropped off on this last record cycle. Why do you think that is?
Josh Dies: I can only speculate. I suspect the obvious is that you can only do so many drastic overhauls of your sound as a band before you stretch the open-mindedness of certain listeners to the breaking point. To us, that possibility was always thrilling; the idea that no Showbread fan could ever predict what the next record might sound like. All of my favorite bands, those that have been most influential to me, have boasted that unpredictability and that stubborn “we won’t make the same record twice” method of creativity. From the very beginning, we knew we wanted to reinvent our sound every album cycle, we’ve never had any interest in repeating ourselves and I think that has some natural consequences. I can’t fault the listener who prefers one album to another, that’s the beauty of purposeful change; it’s a completely different approach every time.
I think another contributing factor could be a collective decline in the interest and respect for art. Music has become something that people expect to be given to them for free, and if it isn’t, they’ll just steal it. It’s been completely devalued, and as a result I think attention spans are suffering serious repercussions. People steal a record, they flip through it for a few minutes, judge it based on the criteria of current, then discard it and post something on Facebook about how much it sucks because that’s what their friends say. People don’t care about truly investing their brains in an album because they don’t even care enough to ride down the street to a store and pay for it and music becomes little outside of canon fodder for narcissistic social networking updates.
Because of Showbread’s unique style, do you think that fans are always a little on edge with each new release or do you think that is just what Showbread has come to be and if you’re a real Showbread fan, you’d embrace that anticipation…
JD: I can appreciate the apprehension. With each album we know for a fact that there will be a divide among our fans and we accept and embrace that. If there aren’t a lot of people who love it and a lot of people who hate it then I’m not sure we’ve changed enough. I think the folks that have stuck with us all this time have accepted the possibility that we might make a record that even they can’t get into, and maybe they respect that. I’d like to think they do. When bands I love release a new album, I want to hear something completely unexpected, even if that means I’ll like the previous album more. I can honestly say that if Showbread wrote a record that we truly loved and knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that not a single fan would like it, we would release it anyway. But I don’t think that’s the case this time around.
“When bands I love release a new album, I want to hear something completely unexpected, even if that means I’ll like the previous album more. I can honestly say that if Showbread wrote a record that we truly loved and knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that not a single fan would like it, we would release it anyway.”So why the jump to C&L! now? Were you not being fulfilled at your long time home Tooth N’ Nail?
JD: We were blessed to be a part of Tooth N’ Nail, it was something I dreamed about when I was in middle school listening to MxPx and 90lb Wuss records. Even so, the music industry in general is in complete shambles and we knew that once our contract was fulfilled we needed to figure something out. Our band has never been formatted or designed for a successful career model; we care about what we have to say and how we say it, and we don’t care about whether or not it “succeeds” within the industry. When Chad Johnson (our old A&R from Tooth N’ Nail) told us he was leaving the label to start a non-profit organization that equipped bands to give away their music for free, we knew it was an ideal place for Showbread.
We want to give our music away because we believe that what we’re saying on this record is something that needs to be heard and we don’t want to charge money to hear it. I think there’s this beautiful, generous spirit to what Chad is doing with Come&Live! That says: “Yes, I poured my blood, sweat and tears into this art and I want you to have it for free.”
Even considering the sorry state the industry is in, the move wasn’t about reinventing the wheel, it was about believing in a message of hope so sincerely that you can’t imagine making someone pay for it.
What will C&L! offer you from a business standpoint that you are excited about that was maybe lacking on a more traditional label?
JD: Understanding. Come&Live! completely understands our goals as artists and as a band and they embrace and encourage those goals. The bottom line never has anything to do with moving units or making a profit, because there is no profit to be made, so no decision or suggestion is ever made with anything in mind other than the message and the art. That is something no traditional label will ever be able to say.
So talk to me about the new record, what is the subject matter?
JD: Contemplating that which is beyond our comprehension; specifically the idea of a loving, personal God that exists in Jesus and what that means. There are a lot of big questions examined and a lot of contemporary church ideas challenged. It’s a dense record. Sylvia and Rich (the producers who worked on this album and most of our other albums) both said that they thought it was by far our most profound and outspoken album, I hope that’s an idea that carries with everyone who hears it. I hope it encourages thought.
You guys have always had really interesting cover art. What does this cover say about the record?
JD: Peter Rollo designed the album cover. We had a million conversations about the art. We wanted to lean toward a sort of Ralph Steadman inspired aesthetic that conveyed some kind of bizarre and agonizing imagery… the quest to know the unknowable.
What is your favorite track off the new record and what inspired it?
JD: It’s tough to say but it might be “You’re Like A Taxi” which is a song about dying. The song is somewhat somber and celebratory at the same time and in essence mocks the idea of death as powerful or having some kind of dominion. There’s a lot of blank theology about death, resurrection and the afterlife and this sort of picture Christians have that we die and wake up in the clouds somewhere. For me, knowing what’s coming for me, the reality is so much better; continuing my existence in the presence of my closest friend after the prologue that is my current life. I’ll just move from one epoch to another.
“I’m sure we’ll get an email asking why the song couldn’t have been a little tidier, but the truth isn’t tidy and neither is the gospel.“You guys have always been known for some pretty controversial lyrics, walk us through your creative process when it comes to writing. What inspires you the most while writing?
JD: There’s never an intentional or conscious decision to rile feathers or be controversial, but we often examine something we’re saying and realize that the reaction from certain folks won’t be pretty. Our basis of deeming whether something is worth saying is whether or not it is said honestly, in love and actually needs to be said. The first song on the new album might be the only worship song in history that describes the murder of a family, an affair, an abortion and a rape. We wanted to open the record celebrating how indescribably big our idea of redemption is, and redemption becomes all the more beautiful when we examine exactly how depraved the redeemed actually are. I’m sure we’ll get an email asking why the song couldn’t have been a little tidier, but the truth isn’t tidy and neither is the gospel.
We don’t want to become suddenly boring, but we base our aesthetic and our message on our spiritual convictions and our creative convictions as artists. If that someone leads us to make a video with Care Bears and an album about sunshine then that’s what we’ll do.
You’ve been through a lot of lineup changes and ups and downs in your career; have you ever felt like Showbread is on their way out? Or with this new partnership with C&L does it feel like a big revitalization period for the band?
JD: It’s definitely revitalization. I’m sure the reflex for people on the outside who see a band change so much is to think “these guys are falling apart” but our band doesn’t operate in any normal way. I once told some kids that we’re like The Avengers, it isn’t about who is actually on the team, the team changes all the time, it’s about why the team is there and what they do. I can honestly say that the lineup we have right now is more unified and motivated than we’ve ever been, and we’ve made the best album in Showbread history thus far. 
(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)