8th December, 2005
JOE MONTAGUE

Nestled between Lower Stone Mountain and Unaka Mountain in Eastern Tennessee of the United States stands a 1920's-era white log cabin with a refrigerator that has seen better days now resting on the front porch.

Call in during the day and you may find the residents - 28-year-old Mandee Radford and 31-year-old Cristi Johnson, two of the three members of the band Alathea - are out hiking in the mountains or driving along one of the nearby dirt roads in their Dodge pick-up truck.

MORE THAN JUST A BLUEGRASS BAND: Alathea members Mandee Radford, Cristi Johnson and Carried Theobold with Thumper.   Unfairly typecast by some in the music industry as a “bluegrass band” (in fact they sound much closer to country with the lilt of pop influences lurking in the background), Alathea released their debut album 'What Light Is All About' in 2003.

Knock on the door on a cold night and chances are you’ll find them sitting by the fireplace doing some songwriting, their border-collie cross, Thumper, never too far away.

It’s a lifestyle that’s directly reflected in the music the band (who all lived in the cabin until Carrie Theobold married and moved to Nashville) write.

The song Broken Down, for example, was inspired by the broken-down refrigerator on the porch.

“We live in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee and we joke how most of our neighbours have some sort of broken appliance on their front porch,” explains Radford.

“I was making that observation while I was writing for that album and then our refrigerator broke. We put it on the front porch and it was like ‘Hey, we fit in’. We thought that now our refrigerator is broken we are real hillbillies. I started journaling about it and I realised there was a lesson about my heart to be learned about all that.”

“I think for me and for everybody when your heart is broken and when your spirit is broken it is easy to leave that inside and put your smile on like everything is okay. You walk around like everything is okay and I think the lesson to be learned from the appliances on the porch is when our hearts are broken we have to leave all these broken things out, share them with our friends and share our hurts with our families. I believe that Jesus gave us friends and families to help us carry our burdens when they get too heavy. I think we need to come to church in all of our brokenness and all of our mess because that is where we are going to get healed. If we can't be brave enough about when we hurt we are going to miss the healing altogether."

Unfairly typecast by some in the music industry as a “bluegrass band” (in fact they sound much closer to country with the lilt of pop influences lurking in the background), Alathea released their debut album What Light Is All About in 2003.

Indian Creek, a song named for the creek in front of their cabin, is the first track and a good example of why this threesome should not be so narrowly defined. Sure, a dobro and banjo were used to produce the magical notes found in Indian Creek but they also used a cello on this track and no-one seems about to typecast the group as producing classical music. Alathea is simply too innovative and talented a group to be categorised by one narrow genre of music.

At any time you may find Radford playing acoustic or electric guitar or sliding over to her Fender banjo (yes, Fender does make banjos). Theobold may pick up her flute or harmonica while Johnson provides percussion and mandolin accompaniment.

Combining the trio's abilities with the sounds of a string section, fiddle, clarinet, marimba, mandolin, accordion and recorders, their producer Michael Aukofer (drummer for the late Rich Mullins) helped Alathea develop a fuller bodied sound.

The band admit that as songwriters they are heavily influenced by people such as Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin. Stylistically their music is an interesting weave of pop that reflects Theobold's leanings, as well as Alison Krause (which all three of them enjoy), Johnny Cash and David Wilcox.

As well as What Light is All About, the trio also have recorded a song on Rocketown Records' 2005 Christmas album Gloria: A Christmas Celebration. Written with Taylor Sorenson and Steve Mason (Jars of Clay) and performed with Sorenson, the song Love Came Just In Time is by far and away the best track on the album. The song recounts the stories of Simeon and Anna who were awaiting the arrival of the Messiah and represents a departure for the group as Sorenson and Alathea combine for some magical blues moments.

"The girls know where they come from, and with my rock ‘n roll we got together in a room with some guitars, a banjo and our voices and made a swamp of a Christmas song,” says Sorenson.

“Alathea might be one of the few who get the way that co-writing works, playing to each other's strengths."

Radford and Johnson agree their foray into co-writing was an intimidating experience. It began when Don Donahue of Rocketown Records approached them and the other Rocketown artists to create a Christmas album. He broke the artists into teams and then dispatched them to different rooms to sit down and write.

"I like to write songs with my door closed and everyone else far away,” says Radford. “So I was a little nervous about sitting down with somebody and writing with them."

She explains the origins for the song's title.

"Before we had the (songwriting) meeting I was thinking about Advent and I kept coming back to the phrase (from the song) 'When everybody's looking for a sign; Love came just in time', and it reminded me of the story of Simeon and Anna. The whole idea of Simeon hanging out at the temple and refusing to die before he saw the Messiah fleshed that lyric out for me. Anna was a widow for eighty years and every day she was at the temple praising the Lord. She got to see the baby as well. That temple connected to me because I am single and would like to fall in love. I can't imagine falling in love, losing your love and then having the faith to go to the temple every day and praise the Lord."

Johnson describes writing the song as "one of those beautiful surprises that happens every now and then”.

“We all got so excited and it just happened really easily. We recorded it on a little cheesy tape recorder in the middle of the room. When everyone else heard it (the song) they said that song is going to be on the album."

Radford adds: "We wrote it in thirty or forty minutes. It was just one of those miracle things."

The three friends met seven years ago while attending college and university in Eastern Tennessee. Theobold and Radford were at Milligan College while Johnson was enrolled at East Tennessee State University. They were involved in a ministry to high school students known as Young Life and were assigned to the same group of high school students. In the process of building relationships with the students, Radford hauled out her guitar. They started to sing and that became the bridge not only to the students' hearts but to their music careers.

After they started playing a few church gigs someone introduced them to Rich Mullins who happened to be in town for a conference at Milligan College. Radford jokingly suggests that Mullins was just trying to get out of setting up the sound equipment.

"He came and sat on this hillside with us and we played our music. He really encouraged us.He loved it.”

After his performance that night, Mullins suggested his band hear them play. Radford sat down in the parking lot with her acoustic guitar and the three of them held an impromptu concert. It was on that night that they first met Michael Aukofer who produced the first CD.

It wasn't long after that first meeting with Mullins that he tragically died. Mullins did however leave the budding musicians and singers with a lasting word of advice.

Radford says: "He told us ya'll have to define what success is for you now because pretty soon people are going to be telling you what success is and then everything is going to get confused. We realised then and now that success for us is getting to play honest music and some how making it connect to people where they are. A lot of times that doesn't really translate into a bunch of record sales. For us that is what success is."

While folk music and bluegrass are often associated with another era or a very small niche of the listening public, Alathea has a broad base of fans that cross a number of generations and demographics with young children, seniors, college students, teenagers and all those ages in between all attending their concerts.

It hasn’t always been easy. The ladies recall two concerts that they now laugh about but say were terrifying at the time. Johnson relates a story about the time they were playing for a youth group in Indiana.

"We were just literally hillbilly girls from Tennessee and there were girls with dog collars, fishnet tights, leather and studs,” she recalls. “It was a bit intimidating...(At first) there didn't seem to be a lot that we could connect with but the amazing thing is once we started playing the girls that we were terrified of sat down and engaged and listened.

“I think as long as we are prepared to be honest and drop all the pretences and ignore the differences, then we are all very much alike. We had this great hour of time with these girls with whom it first appeared that we shared nothing in common with. Afterwards the youth minister told us the year before they had a punk band and the kids were in and out the whole time. He said this was the first time that the kids actually sat down and were engaged the entire time. It was pretty humbling. Regardless of our backgrounds we all have this connection that makes it work."

Johnson recalls another time when they played for an all boys' boarding school.

“We got out on stage and there were all these high school guys in suits with straight faces,” she says while Radford comments that “they all looked like they were from (the movie) Dead Poets Society”.

"We have just realised if we don't get too worried about ourselves and just offer up whatever it is that we have to offer then it won't be awful," Johnson says laughing.

The good news for fans of Alathea and those yet to discover the women's trio is they are in the studio now creating a new album tentatively named, My Roots Go Deeper. This will be their first outing with producer Bruce Emmit (renowned American R&B /Jazz artist Ginny Owens).

"I think it is going to lean more towards the pop side of folk pop,” says Radford. “We are however going to continue to use all of our favourite mountain instruments to colour everything."

The new project is expected to be released both in the American folk music world and to the Christian market.

Johnson thinks it’s kind of ironic that Christian music is typically characterised as a genre.

“Christian(ity) is a faith (not a genre),” she says. “I hope that we can make an album that is good enough to be split into that folk section - that is just good enough that people want to listen to it and our faith is going to be there."

~ www.alathea.com