Jars of Clay/Trivia

• Executive Meddling: The band's long-running relationship with Essential Records was fraught with this until they completed their contract in 2007 and went indie. Some examples:
  • The band wanted to record a Christmas album in 2002. The label wanted a worship album instead. The compromise was The Eleventh Hour, neither a seasonal album nor a worship album, but the song I Need You was added at the last minute when the label demanded a "worship" song to use as a single.
  • The band's first approaching to entering the "worship album" fray was to re-record a number of old hymns, some of them very obscure, with a bit of a folk/country bent on 2005's Redemption Songs. The label was not terribly interested in the idea, and implied that marketing support for the album would be withheld unless the band recorded a more recognizable hymn in an upbeat style, to release as a single. The result: A strangely happy-sounding take on "It Is Well with My Soul", complete with Beatlesque harmonies.
  • While they've been releasing music independently since 2007, Essential got back into the game with a distribution deal for 2009's The Long Fall Back to Earth. This may or may not have had an effect on the guest star roster for The Shelter.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Leigh Nash, lead singer of Sixpence None the Richer, keeps cropping up to sing duets with Dan Haseltine, which so far include "With Every Breath", "Mirrors & Smoke" and "Out of My Hands".
• The Pete Best: Matt Bronleewe, who left the band after they got signed in order to finish his college degree. Matt Odmark replaced him.
• Word of God God: According to Jars of Clay, "Goodbye, Goodnight" is from the perspective of the musicians who played aboard the Titanic as it went down. Really.