#23 SHOTGUN ANGEL by Daniel Amos (1977)

SHOTGUN ANGEL by Daniel Amos (1977)
Maranatha | MM0032A

It was eclectic. It was diverse. It was rock, it was country. It was Eagles, it was Beatles. It was theological, it was controversial, it was funny. It was a lot...a lot comin' at you through the speakers in 1977. And it sounded good...so good. 

Daniel Amos had been introduced to all of us with their self-titled debut in 1976. But this band officially arrived with Shotgun Angel.  

"I think Shotgun Angel broadened the fan base of Daniel Amos to a great extent," said Alex MacDougall, a percussionist on the album and, later, a member of the band. "This was the credible and believable album that Christian music fans wanted. It certainly was an important soundtrack to many in the Calvary Chapel movement."

So which guy is Daniel Amos? the casual fan often wonders. 

Turns out Daniel Amos is not an individual...but, rather, a band name taken from two Old Testament prophets. Being somewhat of a country band in their early days, the guys wanted a Bible-based name reminiscent of an old country gentleman sitting on a fence, strumming his guitar. At least that's the story Terry Taylor tells. 

That's Terry Taylor on the far right

Taylor became the leader of Daniel Amos. He grew up being affected and influenced by Sixties teen heartthrobs (Ricky Nelson) and also by what was later dubbed the British Invasion (Rolling Stones, Beatles). For more background on Taylor's early life and how Daniel Amos originally came to exist, check out our posts on Daniel Amos and Horrendous Disc. 

Pastor Chuck Smith

So by spring of 1975 the band was really hoping to get their foot in the door at Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel (now affectionately referred to as The Mothership by roughly 1,700 CC churches worldwide) was just a local church in the early 70s. But not just any church. Under the leadership of Pastor Chuck Smith, Calvary Chapel had become an incubator, if you will, of the Jesus Movement in Southern California. Not only the movement, but also Jesus Music itself - this new folk-rock musical expression of the Jesus People. The local church in Costa Mesa, California became famous for her acceptance of the born-again hippies (who were converting to the Christian faith in droves), her ocean water baptisms, and her Saturday night concert series. Tom Stipe gave oversight to the concert series and it became overwhelmingly popular. Stipe was a musician and producer, having been involved with Love Song and the Richie Furay Band; he would later become a long-serving Calvary Chapel pastor.

Tom Stipe

Daniel Amos was finally given a chance to audition for Stipe, performing Ain't Gonna Fight It and Love in a Yielded Heart. New acts were typically broken in on a Thursday night slot at Calvary. Stipe was blown away by Daniel Amos and booked them immediately for a Saturday evening gig. Terry Taylor later remarked that the group considered Calvary Chapel to be the Carnegie Hall of Christian venues and that they nearly fell off their chairs when the Saturday Night invite was extended.

So the group played Calvary in April of '75. It was a foursome that night - Taylor, Steve Baxter, Jerry Chamberlain and Marty Dieckmeyer (with no drummer). They sat on stools and played to a large crowd. At the end of the night they were given a standing ovation. 

Daniel Amos was off and running.

The group was quickly signed to Maranatha Records, the record label closely associated with Calvary Chapel. In 1976 they released an eponymous debut with an album cover that screamed "country music." And for the most part, it was. In fact, the group even took to wearing cowboy hats in concerts and promotional photos. 

With influences like the Beatles and Stones, how did the country shtick take hold?  

 

Taylor explains that things were happening so fast in the beginning, they just needed to keep everything simple. The country tunes were quick and easy to write, and the country sound had the added benefit of giving them a broader appeal and making them less threatening to parents. Daniel Amos was immediately popular with teenagers, moms and dads, their record label, the powers in place at Calvary Chapel...everybody.

Terry says the band didn't begin to really find its voice until they sat down to write songs for another album - an album called Shotgun Angel.

While the Daniel Amos debut was well-received, Terry Taylor has said that Shotgun Angel, as a whole, was much closer to what the band was really all about, reflecting the broader spectrum of radio sounds he and the boys had been digesting in the 60s and early 70s. 

"Musically, you could hear anything on the radio," Taylor said to Brian Quincy Newcomb in a 1991 Harvest Rock Syndicate interview. "And that's what I wanted to get on that record, all the things that influenced us, the Beach Boys, the Beatles' experimental attitude. We didn't have a chance to achieve that with the first record. We had gotten locked into an image by people who came to our concerts and responded to the whole country thing. But that was only a part of our set."

"Shotgun Angel was our first opportunity to lay down on wax what we were really all about," Taylor remembers, "and it had everything. Every album after that really springs from that reference point. Even the more country and western songs on there were musically mature, and [producer] Jonathan David Brown did an excellent job."

Critics agreed. 

Here's a sampling:

"Christian music's first great headphone album." - Bruce A. Brown

"This record is a flat-out winner. Brilliant." - Campus Life magazine

"Truly an offering of excellence to the Lord." - Buzz magazine (UK)

"Not until now have we seen an album that is as versatile, professional, or as seriously musical." -Cornerstone magazine

"Like nothing ever produced in contemporary music, Christian or otherwise." - Mark Allen Powell

"An absolute classic recording." - Mike Rimmer 

"This is really the record that I would consider to be the hub that all the various projects of Taylor & Co. would be birthed from at later dates." - Steve Ruff

"These songs have lasted because they are so inherently strong. Each one is enjoyable and memorable in its own way and nearly every one still makes you want to join in. It is a tsunami of melody." - Derek Walker

"So get in your 18-wheeler, get on your CB radio and tell everyone out there they will not be disappointed with this treasure." - Marty Phillips

"A classic from the Jesus Music era and possibly one of the most important albums in the history of CCM." - David Lowman

Let's dive in.

Any keyboards heard on the group's debut album were supplied by a trio of additional musicians. Not this time. Mark Cook was now an official member of the band. And some simple chords from his electric piano are the first things we hear as we drop the needle on Side One. The song is called Days and Nights, and it doesn't stay simple for very long. It's actually a somewhat complex and thoroughly enjoyable song that blogger David Lowman says is reminiscent of Poco and other California country-rock bands. My only complaint is that it's too short. 

Clocking in at 2:20, there's a lot to love here: Taylor's lead vocal and strong melody...the background harmonies...Jerry Chamberlain's exception guitar work...and an all-too-soon surprise acapella ending. And by the way, it was very unusual in 1977 to open a Christian album with a song that did not have an overtly "Christian" lyrical theme. But that's exactly what Daniel Amos did with Days and Nights. Songwriters Taylor and Chamberlain chose the time-honored subject of life on the road - specifically, missing loved ones while you're gone...and avoided the temptation to over-spiritualize it. 

Days and Nights slams directly into Black Gold Fever with no space in between. Black Gold Fever is described by David Lowman as country-western hoedown music that would've possibly been right at home on a Lost Dogs album decades later. This song tells the story of a guy who eschews money (in this case, oil) in order to pursue spiritual riches instead. Taylor's lyrics are quite clever and are delivered at breakneck speed. One reviewer said he would've loved to hear Johnny Cash cover Black Gold Fever. 

Next up was Praise Song - the third genre in the first three songs. Praise Song was about as close as we got to actual "worship music" in the mid-70s...

What can I tell you 'cept what's in this rhyme

Which grows in my heart and stays on my mind

I praise You (wonderful Savior and Lord)

I praise You (giving all glory and honor and praise)

You might say that this was Daniel Amos throwing Maranatha a bone, since the handwriting was on the wall that the label intended to make a strong push toward "praise" albums around the time Shotgun Angel was released. 

Praise Song also featured some pretty impressive vocal harmonies (one blogger thought that the vocals were reminiscent of the Beach Boys here). In fact, there was a really tight vocal blend among the guys on this entire project. 

The next song was a classic that ended up being covered (somewhat surprisingly) by The Boones (Debby and her sisters).  Bruce A. Brown calls Father's Arms an orchestrated pop masterpiece that perhaps owed a little bit to Steely Dan and ELO. This one also pointed to the future and would've fit well on Horrendous Disc. David Lowman wrote about how Terry Taylor was really branching out musically, yes, but lyrically as well...demonstrating an ability to take common Christian themes and weave twists and challenges into them. 

Alright, OK, oh yeah

Keep your cool and don't hurt nobody

It all lies within you, so the dying say

And you believe in the words of some buried prophet

Alright, OK, oh yeah

They nod their heads in unanimous approval

And it makes you feel good 'till the night wind calls

And the darkness comes whispering down the halls

And you're a scared little child who dreams he falls, come

Fall in your Father's arms

Fall in your Father's arms

Fall in your Father's arms

Alright, oh yeah, uh-huh

You turn, you run you hide

A friend comes bid you to travel

He smiles like an angel but behind the eyes

Lurks the door of a death-house and a big surprise

Alright, OK, oh yeah

You assure them while composure is breaking

And they watch as you run and hit the wall

Slump to the ground and begin to crawl

To the edge of the cliff where you start your fall, come

Fall in your Father's arms...

 

The hilarious Meal fades in and once again switches the mood drastically. This is a full-on novelty song, loaded with humor, that gives us a glimpse into the future (foreshadowing upcoming songs by the Swirling Eddies and Lost Dogs, some of Taylor's future work with Randy Stonehill, and even some future songs by Daniel Amos/DA/da. Meal is another Taylor composition; it uses food, drink, and hunger as a metaphor for being desirous of spiritual things. It includes lines like...

Well, my stomach, it growls and my throat says "Now!" I can't wait

and 

Now, I get to wishin' that You'd get to dishin' that sweet meat

It's one of those songs where you just have to hear it. Reading the lyrics on a printed page are not going to do it justice.

The boys in the band are given credit as some sort of "carrot choir and celery symphony" on Meal...and the backing vocals are truly hilarious. There's excellent use of sound effects here as well. Clocks in at just over two minutes...which, for a comedic novelty track, is about right.

Another abrupt change of pace finishes out side one...and it's a bona fide country-rock classic. 

The title track was not written by the band. Rather, it was penned by Bill Sprouse, Jr. of the band The Road Home (Daniel Amos drummer Ed McTaggart had been in The Road Home with Sprouse).

Bill Sprouse, Jr.

After Sprouse's untimely death at the tender age of 26, an engineer by the name of Mike Shoup pulled out a four-track recording of the song and had Dom Franco of Bethlehem add some peddle steel to it. The story is told that when Daniel Amos heard the song, they decided to record it themselves...getting Franco to add steel guitar and Shoup and McTaggart to add the CB radio voices that are heard on the recording. 

An instant classic was born. 

"The song is easily one of the top ten Jesus Music songs of all time," wrote blogger David Lowman.

Now, the way I see it, the guys took a little bit of a chance with this song. On one level, the whole concept of God talking to a truck driver via his CB radio, with a diesel truck lifting up into the air and then making a three-point landing on the outskirts of town...well, it might've been seen by some as a little hokey...sort of like Barry McGuire's Cosmic Cowboy. It was a concept that was just a bit "out there." In fact, CCM historian Mark Allan Powell calls it "stupid."

Secondly, the CB radio craze, in hindsight, was fairly short-lived. It was a brief moment in time, you might say...so it really ends up dating the song and the album. No one under 40 (45? 50?) even knows what a CB radio was. But you know what? In this case, those concerns just vanish away.  Because a good song is a good song.

And Shotgun Angel is a great song. 

Daniel Amos, with the help of producer Jonathan David Brown turned in a performance for the ages on this one. 

Decades later, the 77s covered the song Shotgun Angel on a Daniel Amos tribute album called When Worlds Collide and did a masterful job. You can tell when you listen that they handled this legendary song with great care...with the respect it deserves.

Before we flip the album over, let's talk about that iconic cover. The art direction, design and layout was credited to Neal Buchanan, while the entire band took credit for the overall cover concept. It was a gatefold with several great band photos on the back cover (Larry Frowick) and on the inside (Scott Lockwood)...with cowboy hats prominently featured. But that front cover was something else. It's one of the greatest examples of classic 70s album art in Christian music. The truck, the fonts, the sheriff's badge logo...it all just works together beautifully. 

Have we talked about who exactly was in the band at the time of this recording? Daniel Amos was: Terry Taylor and Jerry Chamberlain on guitars, Marty Dieckmeyer on bass, Mark Cook on keyboards, and Ed McTaggart on drums. And everybody sang. 

Shotgun Angel was recorded at Martinsound and mastered by Ken Perry at Capitol Mastering. Strings were arranged and conducted by Jim Stipech. Additional musicians included Frank Marocco on accordion (!), the aforementioned Dom Franco on peddle steel, and Alex MacDougall and Fred Petry on percussion. Bill Hoppe played some synth parts and John Benson is given credit for eefin' on Meal.

MacDougall, of course, would join Daniel Amos as a full-fledged band member prior to Horrendous Disc. He's played on so many albums over the years; always generous with his time, he usually has some interesting stories to tell. So I slid into his DMs (as the kids say).

Alex MacDougall

"Yeah, I remember being asked to come into the studio, Martinsound, and put down some percussion overdubs," Alex explained. "Fred Petry, a 'Hollywood' session man, had already come in and done some percussion parts. I'd been doing a lot of percussion on a lot of albums during that time period, and I had worked on DA's first album and knew them as friends at church. I'd also done some live percussion with them." 

MacDougall continues: "As for my parts on Shotgun Angel, I suppose they were part sound effects, part supportive percussion, and part slapstick/Spike Jones. Ed [McTaggart] played great, solid parts and had some really wonderful drum sounds. I loved how deep and rich his toms sounded."  

In addition to his friendship with the band members, I asked MacDougall if there might be another reason he was eager to participate on Shotgun Angel. "The great Jonathan David Brown was at the helm producing on this one," he answered. "I probably ended up doing 50 or 60 albums with JDB."

Jonathan David Brown

You might say that Brown was just a kid when he produced Shotgun Angel...but my goodness, what a great job he did. It was a sign of things to come. "I must say that artistically, Jonathan David Brown was a genius," MacDougall said. "Like George Martin with the Beatles, Jonathan enabled and encouraged creativity. He always pulled the best out of me and could always deliver the goods when he himself was challenged."

In addition to being listed as producer and engineer, JDB ("Your Local Hokie Okie") also mixed the album at Producer's Workshop in Hollywood.

Now, if you were a casual Daniel Amos fan or Jesus Music fan in 1977 and flipped the record over and dropped the needle on side two, you probably thought, "Wait...what? What the heck is this?" Well, congratulations. You just stumbled upon a mini-rock opera on end times events. 

The Wikipedia page for Shotgun Angel says this side two suite "featured lush orchestrations and a string of rock songs linked together in a way that was reminiscent of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album. The band even made a number of concert performances at this time with a full orchestra backing them." 

Alex MacDougall

"I remember tearing up when JDB and the boys played me side two in the studio," Alex MacDougall recalls. "I was trying to figure out what I could contribute, and it was like listening to the Beatles or the Beach Boys. I could not believe the incredible musical and lyrical growth in such a short time. I remember performing these songs with DA before I actually joined the band. It was always a big deal performing side two of Shotgun - lots of anticipation and adrenaline on my end. It was always a very moving experience to see the impact that it had on concert goers."

Mike Rimmer summed up the rock opera quite succinctly while writing for crossrhythms: "The 7-song sequence of the second half of the album is a concept piece interpreting the book of Revelation. With its string overture and interlocking songs, it's by far the most adventurous Christian recording of the era."

I also like the way Marty Phillips describes the side two suite in his work for jesusrocklegends.com: "It was as if the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band got together at the Hotel California and made a rock opera about Revelation. Starting side two with orchestration and spooky nuances, the music and lyrics bring you face to face with the end of the world."

Other reviewers weren't so sure.

Mark Allendar of Allmusic deems the mini-musical "a little too wide-eyed and doom-saying for most modern audiences."

And historian/podcaster David Lowman says that while he considers the album to be one of his all-time personal favorites, he disagrees "with nearly every single idea...expressed on side two."

Professor Mark Allen Powell, author of the voluminous Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, says that the rock opera is what the album is famous for; that it "incorporates snatches of Queen, Pink Floyd and Abbey Road, but really sounds like nothing ever produced in contemporary music, Christian or otherwise." But then he laments the fact that the theme of the suite was derived from various teachers and teachings that he considers unsound...including the unfortunate (his word) end-times views of Daniel Amos' pastor Chuck Smith.

Pastor Chuck Smith

So we continue to have this debate because so many of these great albums of the 70s contain songs that talk about the rapture of the Church, as so many Christians have understood it from the Scriptures for my entire lifetime. Now, lately, certain pockets of evangelicals and progressive Christians have poo-poo'd the traditional Scriptural understanding of end-times events. They say that we're just not understanding the Bible correctly and that our beliefs were popularized by some preacher in the 1800s (a guy that I'd never even heard of until about 15 minutes ago). I'm not a Bible scholar. I don't read Greek or Hebrew. My ultimate position on all of this is to stay ready to go and let God sort out the details. But I will say this... I just watched a video last week from a Calvary Chapel pastor by the name of Mike Winger (he's also a very popular YouTuber in the apologetics and theology space) and he concurs with the position that I see when I read the Bible...the same position that my own pastor espouses (and he's a solid Bible teacher with a few decades under his belt). Last thing I'll say on this is that the inside album sleeve comes with the Scripture verses that pertain to these songs literally printed on it. So consult those verses and make up your own mind. We report; you decide.  

All of that said...musically, the side two suite of songs is a thing of beauty. It's unique, it's creative, it's eerie, it's rock and roll, it's all of these things. And to be fair, even those who disagree with the theology of the rock opera still find much to praise. Lowman, for example, writes that "it is so beautifully crafted, stunningly performed and brilliantly conceived that no differences in positions can detract from singing its praises."

Despite the raucous rock treatment of He's Gonna Do a Number on You, one cannot help having an uneasy feeling as the anti-Christ's appearance on the world stage is described...

The morning paper is not the same

A man is smiling, do you know his name

He's shaking hands with the president

It almost seems as though he's Heaven-sent

He's gonna do a number on you

(A very strange tattoo)

He's got a friend, it seems there is no end

To the tricks he will do, always on cue

Standing in line, it's so divine

Can we choose the place, my hand or my face

"Next...next...next..."

It's chilling stuff.

And in the song Better...how could Daniel Amos in the mid-1970s have envisioned debit cards? No, it's a serious question. I was alive and remember enough about the Seventies to know that ATM machines and a cashless system was nowhere on the horizon back then. Maybe it was on the drawing board of financial wizards and Washington elites, but certainly not on the radar screens of the average Joe. 

Taylor & Company accurately predicted a thing or two in this song...

I said take my groceries and put 'em in the sack

No checks, no cash, don't give me no flack

It's getting better, so much better

I don't have no worries, don't have no frets

My little number never failed me yet

It's getting better, so much better

I love convenience, I said it's so keen

He took our money mess and he swept it clean

He is the wisest man this world has seen

Shotgun Angel ends on a triumphant note. Posse in the Sky and Sail Me Away are two of the finest country-rock songs you'll ever hear, bringing this diverse, classic LP to a close.

How about one more sampling of comments from music critics:

"Compelling arrangements, superb musical performances and a transcendent vocal blend that will leave you breathless"..."Few Christian albums at the time possessed such stellar production, unique creativity and complete and utter abandonment to the art. From the album cover to the final note there is little to complain about here"..."There is not a bad apple on the album and both sides are equally cherished for me"..."It's an eighteen-wheeler of great tunes"...

And we'll give Alex MacDougall the last word on the album: "Shotgun Angel was and is the finest of the finest that Christian music could offer. Creativity with a decent budget, great producer-engineer, and a long leash was allowed. The inmates were running the asylum! So the project was hugely impactful with listeners and concert goers."

What we didn't know at the time was this: when the final notes of Sail Me Away faded out, Daniel Amos was bidding farewell to the cowboy hats and the country sound for good. These guys were about to reinvent themselves multiple times over several decades.

"The creativity on Shotgun Angel just literally took off in the months following its release," Alex MacDougall remembers. "I joined the group later in 1977. Somewhere in time, I began moonlighting with them in live performances, but always on percussion only, which I found to be limiting. It was when I joined that Ed and I were able to do our double drum 'shtick.' I had always loved that in The Mothers, The Allman Brothers, and The Grateful Dead. Sometimes I would match exactly what Ed was playing, and sometimes I would play around him. And when called for, I would run over to my percussion setup (which was very large) and contribute from the far-left side of the stage." 

DA has always had a rabid and devoted group of hardcore followers, but the band's penchant for change and growth sometimes left the casual fan scratching his or her head. "Like Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the audience was divided when we started to branch out and do the songs that would become Horrendous Disc," MacDougall admits.

A more recent photo of Alex MacDougall and Jerry Chamberlain

Alex explained how the seeds of even further musical experimentation and eventual transformation were being sown within the band as far back as the late 70s. "Interestingly," he said, "during that same period, we would leave the shows and listen to new wave music alongside whatever we thought was good at the time. One of those recordings, Talking Heads: 77, was recorded during the same period as Shotgun Angel." The Alarma Chronicles were not that far away.

For more on what the band did post-Horrendous Disc, click here. Commercial success seems to have eluded them, but they have been one of the most prolific and most critically-acclaimed bands in Christian music history. "I've said this before," stated Alex MacDougall, "but my time in DA was one of fabulous friendships, respect, laughter, and solid performances and ministry. And I count each one of them dear to me to this day."

Terry Taylor

Unbeknownst to most of us at the time, Maranatha Records was about to shift direction and move toward children's ministry and Praise albums. That meant Shotgun Angel would be one of the last recordings for a rock band on the storied label. In a Harvest Rock Syndicate interview, Brian Quincy Newcomb asked Terry Taylor if the parting was amicable. "Pretty much," Taylor answered. "I think they were feeling it was time to get out of dealing with bands and personalities. We had families and children and growing concerns."

If you missed Shotgun Angel the first time around, as of this writing you can pick up a special deluxe edition reissue from the band's website - danielamos.com. It's got lots of extras - bonus tracks, alternate versions, demos, interview clips, you name it.

I think I speak for a lot of people when I talk about how special this album was and still is. A lot of us have done a whole lot of living since 1977. We've had our share of mountains and valleys, ups and downs...we've been done wrong, we've sometimes been victims of circumstance, and we've also gotten ourselves into a few scrapes here and there. But the Lord never leaves us. His presence is a constant. He never lets us wander so far that He can't reel us back in again and tuck us under His wing so that He can finish what He has started in each of us. 

You might even say that we've all got an angel or two riding shotgun. And they're riding with us all the way.