Last month Maren Ord released Not Today, her sophomore disc. She is a more gifted musician than Alanis, sings a lot better than Michelle Branch and writes songs sharper than Pink and Avril combined. Yet you aren't likely to hear the 23-year-old singer-songwriter on any radio station around here, even though she has plenty of Las Vegas fans. Then again, if you're not a Mormon, you're probably not one of them.
In fact, if you're not a Mormon, you probably don't know a single song performed by any of the nearly dozen acts at last weekend's first-ever LDS Music Festival. That obscurity was compounded by bad timing—the only things supposed to be going on in Las Vegas were cowboy events, which are geared to a harder-living crowd than Mormons, even those who rock.
But backstage at the Orleans Arena, bands like Providence and headliner Jericho Road offered only a blank stare when asked about NFR, and it was no different among the thousands of fans. For them, this was the event last weekend, and to these performers, being here was every bit as exciting as anything going on over at the Thomas & Mack. For the first time, an alternative music scene was testing its strength in Las Vegas.
"We've never done anything like this before," says Krista Maurer, director of publicity for the company that oversees the sales and distribution of discs by eight of the artists playing on the bill. "Normally, our artists just go to the churches and sing there. Most of them I believe have jobs. The majority of our artists have never performed in an arena like this, with the lights and smoke and the screaming fans."
According to Maurer, the mainstreaming of Christian rock and pop in the '90s left the LDS music scene behind, and that has only just begun to change:
"The Christian music industry is booming, but quite often we've been excluded. In the beginning, our music was very Mormon. The way we talk about God and the way we talk about Christ is more subdued than many Christians. Plus there are so many misconceptions about what Mormons are and what we believe. But change is happening as people become more educated about what our beliefs are and know that we just want to praise God and worship Christ."
Brad Haslam, who oversees distribution for the company responsible for Ord's disc, says, "The hard thing is that we are in a small market. I mostly sell to 250 LDS bookstores scattered around the country. We are just now getting into places like Wal-Mart and Kmart." He adds, "Our music is just as good, if not better, than the contemporary Christian stuff you find out there. We have artists just as good as Switchfoot." If that seems like faint praise, it is at least easy to justify.
In some ways, the LDS music scene resembles nothing so much as the early '80s hard-core punk scene: independent labels jerry-rigging distribution for artists doing it for the love of the music; independent promoters trying to bring the bands live to the fans at financial risk (hey, it ain't cheap to rent an arena on cowboy week).
But unlike the punk scene, the LDS artists share spiritual values only, not musical ones: R&B, rock, folk, pop and bubblegum all mix freely here. Kenneth Cope is among the best-known LDS artists, and when he strummed his guitar and sang unaccompanied, it was clear why he told me his idol is Dan Fogelberg. Providence, on the other hand, appeared with a full band featuring four women (who have 12 children between them) who seemed more like the Dixie Chicks doing songs by Destiny's Child. The style didn't matter—the crowd sang along, clapped to the beat and yelled out praise to God when asked. (Everyone asked.) It wasn't entirely clear whether the kids took their parents to the concert or the other way around.
Also unlike punk, these performers have no fear of being seen as selling out to the mainstream. On her website, Maren Ord is working a promotion with HG Hair Cosmetics, and Carmen, 19, another performer on the bill, was a contestant on American Idol. Carmen is blunt about her desire to reach the same audience that buys discs by Britney Spears. "I don't want to sing about God all the time," she says. "My main goal is to enter the mainstream. But I still want to represent my standards and values in the way I dress and act."
Ord also hopes to reach a mainstream audience, albeit a slightly more mature one. But she knows the problems she will face: "I grew up listening to punk." When she was a teenager, Sarah McLachlan gave her a spot on one of the Lillith Fair tours. And Randy Bachman (Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive) produced and wrote songs on her new disc. She has even found some radio play in her native Canada. "It is mainstream," Ord says of her music. "It is definitely mainstream." Yet this sounds almost like a plea, like talking to Husker Du in 1982. Then Ord sighs, perhaps knowing that what she is about to say—in the world in which Eminem tops the charts—is absurd. "It's mainstream, but with good morals."