We interviewed Sonny from POD in a trailer behind the mainstage at Corner-
stone.
By way of background, I love POD. Mere words cannot express what this band means to me on a variety of levels. I can honestly say I do not know the course my life would have taken had it not been for seeing POD for that first time in 1996. I firmly believe that on that day God put me on a course that would take me places that I never dreamed and eventually end up with my participation in this documentary.
As with my earlier entry about Living Sacrifice, the first time I saw POD was on October 5, 1996 at the Where-House in Bartlesville Oklahoma. At that time I had recently accepted Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior. I grew up in the church my entire life and even did the walk down to the front once when I was young but as I joke now, it just didn’t take. Ironically on New Year’s Eve of 1995 after bottoming out on my own, I got saved in the church that I grew up in, with many of the same people who had known me through my ups and downs in attendance. It changed my life and was without question the best thing that ever happened to me.
I had been a lifelong music fan and of course was interested in finding music that reflected my new attitude towards life and was horrified at what my prospects were. I actually remember having the thought that Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith was all there was and being really bummed out. My favorite bands at the time were Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, Black Flag, the Rolling Stones, Tool, and Rage Against the Machine and I couldn’t fathom trying to substitute Petra or any other Christian market band for any of them. I had absolutely no idea that there was actually relevant cool spiritual music out there. This all ended one day when I was in a local Christian bookstore vainly searching for something that inspired me. For some reason most Christian bookstores have “demo” CD’s on the shelf so that you can listen to the CD before buying it. Solely on the basis of the pictures on the covers I remember picking up Audio Adrenaline and Bride and not being moved at all. As I was about to leave the store I asked this guy if he knew of any good Christian rock bands and he said not really but there is this place in town called the Where-House and they are having a show tonight. Words that would change my life.
I asked who was playing and he said that he didn’t know but that it would be cool. He told me where the place was and what time it started. Looking back on it now I’m kind of surprised that I went with that little information to go on but I guess it just goes to show how starved I was for something good.
So I show up and at first I thought I was in the wrong place, it was just this non-descript building in kind of an industrial area of town. There were like 5 people waiting in line at the door and these totally scary looking guys throwing a football in the parking lot. It is important to note that going into this I totally thought I was stepping down going to this Christian rock show. I think the last show I saw before this one had been Primus or Pearl Jam or something cool, and I was sure this was going to be some weak Amy Grant-esque stuff.
Right about the time I was pondering how lame the show was going to be, one of the guys throwing the football, threw it over towards where I was and a couple of the guys ran over towards me almost knocking me over in a scramble to get the ball. Not only did these guys run up on me but there were totally hard-core looking. Pierced, dreads, and more tattoos than I had ever seen in my life. This was not the kind of guys that we had in Bartlesville. Unlike myself these were guys that could use phrases like “homie” and make them work.
I distinctly remember thinking, “I’m in over my head.”
So the doors opened and I go in and I remember being totally amazed at the place, it was so, for lack of a better word: Rock. Inside this run down warehouse was a different world, a huge stage with a cool lighting rig. There were merch stands and this huge 80s style mural down one entire side of the building. Everything was really grungy and very punk looking. It was the exact antithesis of what I thought a Christian rock place would be.
I looked at the flier by the door to see who was playing and it was Living Sacrifice and Payable On Death (POD). I had heard of neither band, and the headline at the top of the flier was “country music night.” At this point I didn’t know what to think.
So eventually the lights go down and the guys that were playing football earlier climb up onto the stage, I was stunned, they were the band and they had just been walking around hanging around with people. They went into this intro that they used to start every show with. I don’t know if it even had a name but the only lyrics were “when we come, when we come, the wicked run” the kind of thing that you could learn the first time you heard it and shout it with the band the second time.
The crowd, all 60 of them immediately went nuts. The music was so crushing and real. I really remember Wuv, the drummer hunching over his kit, all tatted up and just going for it.
The next song they did was called “coming back” and the chorus was “He’s coming back for me and you.”I remember watching the band going nuts and there was this guy in front of me that was thrashing around that had this shirt on that had a small icthus fish between his shoulder blades and it said “Jesus Saves.”
I know that this is a term that gets thrown around way, way too much in music circles, but it was beautiful. I darn near wept. I really mean that. It was one of the most emotional moments in my life. I read once where Jimmy Chamberlain of the Smashing Pumpkins had said that all that the love of music is you searching for that one thing that drew you to it in the first place, that element that touched you on such a deep level you would always want to recapture it again and again and again. This was for me a moment that I am still trying to recapture. I always loved music, it had always been a major part of my life but that moment in time was like no other, it was how it was meant to be.
Every day that I walk this earth I will carry some of the joy from that show with me. As I said before I cannot adequately put into words what an experience this was for me.
Near the end of the set I head Sonny’s testimony for the first time and as anyone who has heard Sonny’s story before will tell you it is a moving moment. Right there in the town where I grew up, where I dreamed about something more, where I wanted to get out of, I found my life’s pursuit.
After the show I hung out with the band, we talked about Suicidal Tendencies and tattoos. One thing that really had made an impression on me was that the bands and the people at the show were so up front about what they believed. They were not embarrassed or ashamed about anything nor should they be. This was one of the coolest venues that I had ever been to and it was one of the best shows I had ever seen.
At the time, platinum records and MTV cribs was a long time off for POD, and they were like every other band, traveling in a van and barely making it. I had $6 to my name, not even enough to buy a T-shirt, but I wanted to support the band so I gave it to Sonny.
I remember the first few years being really exciting. At that time no one ever thought a Christian band much less one on a very very very minor league label would ever make it big, so I just wanted to enjoy them every chance I got. They were really struggling to make it and were doing a lot of touring. Once I saw them on the back of a flatbed in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Tulsa. A church had put on the show and during the performance they were baptizing people in a cattle tank off to the side. I remember seeing them another time at a Skatepark in Arkansas. My friend Judah, who later became a bass tech for the band, drove us there. About ten feet into the trip I found out that Judah is one of the craziest drivers I have ever encountered. We were doing about 90 on the way to Arkansas and Judah was passing cars every way imaginable including on the shoulder. We were listening to No Innocent Victim the whole way there, it was pretty nuts.
I also remember talking with Sonny after the show and this woman coming up to him and saying that she had gotten saved after seeing them in a club. Apparently she was a waitress at the bar that POD had played at. She said that she could feel that they were real and she wanted what they had. It was really moving.
Another time after POD played at the Where-House, I went to Denny’s with the bands afterwards. It was POD, NIV, Dirt, Nailed Promise and Mindrage. Picture this scene, it’s Saturday night, 12 o’clock midnight at a Denny’s in Bartlesville Oklahoma. It was kind of like if you took all the locals from the movie “Deliverance,” got them hammered and then went and packed out a Denny’s. I’m totally not kidding. And I go walking in with these guys, tattoos, piercings, dreads everywhere. It was like in one of those old westerns where there was this really busy saloon and then the marshall walks in and the music stops and everyone shuts up because they know something crazy is going to happen. I remember the place literally freezing, people were stopping mid sentence and staring. The only words being spoken were by the waitress asking where we wanted to sit. After we sat down people started going back to what they were doing but it was really uneasy. The great part is that no one said anything. I truly thought that one of the locals would mouth off something but no one did. I think they were scared to.
The cool thing about POD at that time was that while most people didn’t know or care who or what POD was, people who liked them, loved them. To see them was for them to become your favorite band. They were just so awesome on every level, it was insane. I distinctly remember how much everyone at the Where-House was into them. At the time the WH was doing tons of shows and we were meeting all kinds of cool bands and people every couple of weeks but POD was different. They would travel in this beat up brown van that looked like it was from about '85 or '86. Bands would always roll in, in the afternoon and there would be a couple of staff on hand to greet them. It was really funny with POD because everyone on staff rolled out and would actually line up at the door when the van pulled up. Seriously, I think there was one time that someone was waiting at the door and yelled “there they are” when the van was in sight and everybody lined up. It was kind of embarrassing but I loved these guys so much that I didn’t mind being a fan-boy.
A short time after that Cook started managing them. I was of course overjoyed because not only would I get to see them more, I’d get to hang out with them more. I was always asking what was going on with them and Tim would always have something good to report. At one point Rescue Records, POD’s label went belly up and they were left looking for a new label. Tim told me that several labels were looking at the band and it was looking really good. I remember saying “do you think they might be able to sign to Tooth and Nail?” because at the time I thought that Tooth and Nail was the apex of all we could hope for. He goes “we’re really looking at Atlantic.” I couldn’t believe it. Atlantic was at one point the home of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Rush, and Stone Temple Pilots, among many, many others.
I need to stress that at this aside from people in the scene, no one on earth cared about any Christian artist, much less a niche band like POD. Heck the Christian market didn’t even care about POD. I told Tim, “yeah, that would be nice” but I totally thought that they didn’t have a chance.
The next thing I knew they were signing to Atlantic.
It was crazy. There was this incredible buzz everywhere. All the sudden people who never even knew there was a band called POD, was talking about them. There were magazine articles. They were on every website. I don’t remember where I saw them next right after they signed the deal but I remember being really overjoyed and emotional. I was so proud that these guys had overcome everything, and despite every odd against them had succeeded. It was a glorious time (Goodfellas reference).
I remember seeing the “Southtown” video on MTV for the first time and again being blown away. It was just as good if not better than any video out at that time. Wuv was wearing a ZAO shirt and you could see others wearing NIV and Project 86 shirts. I felt like not only had POD made it but they were taking us all with them, the whole scene.
Then it seemed like everything good that could happen, did happen. Gold records, then Platinum records, then multiple platinum records. Saturday Night Live, MTV, TRL, Cribs, Ozzfest, Rolling Stone, Spin, everything.
The shows were amazing at that time, the kids knew all the words and the band was truly on top of their game. I remember seeing them at the Brady Theater in Tulsa on the “Satellite” tour. I got to watch from the side of the stage and it was one of the great moments in my life. The place was packed to the gills and everyone was so jazzed for the show it was like this incredible release when they got on stage. They opened with “Outkast” and people were going nuts, I remember the crowd was just surging up front and Sonny was all over them screaming the “don’t count me out” part. Wuv was wailing on his kit and I vividly remember him throwing out his sticks as he was playing. They were hitting the stage and skidding into the crowd. There was nothing like seeing POD at this point in their career. It was amazing.
I guess I should get back to the part about Bleed Into One. We interviewed Sonny in a trailer behind the mainstage at Cornerstone. He was as cool and nice as he was the first day I met him. He talked about people not getting the band in the early days through to the fact that people still didn’t get what they were doing. I asked him how it was playing for Ozzfest crowds and he said that sometimes people would be really hateful. He said that sometimes people would flip them off with both middle fingers held in the shape of a cross. I have to admit you’ve got to hand it to people like that, at least they’re creative with their hatred.
