Tommy Coomes and Jay Truax were there. Not adjacent to the Jesus Movement, not students of it, but in it, on the beach, in the room. They're two of the founding members of Love Song, and this conversation is the long version of how a handful of California musicians accidentally became the front end of an entire industry.
Jay starts at the beginning. He was an inland surfer who helped build the first skateboards out of plywood and cut-up roller skates on his dad's bandsaw. He talked his father into a guitar instead of a trumpet, got a 1957 Strat from a pawn shop for ninety dollars, and traded it in 1963 for a brand new Fender Jazz bass. Two weeks later his band opened for the Beach Boys in a skating rink, and Brian Wilson asked to borrow the bass. Jay was fifteen. Then came the surfing, the LSD, a string of bands, and two years in Salt Lake City playing alongside the Grateful Dead and Creedence.
Tommy played trumpet for fourteen years, formed a band, and within six months all three of them were drafted at the height of Vietnam. Fred Field went to Vietnam. Chuck Butler went to South Korea. Tommy went to Germany, where he got deep into drugs mostly out of loneliness. He spent his leave in London and was standing on Carnaby Street the day Apple released its first four singles, with "Hey Jude" blasting out of every doorway. He came home in early 1969 planning to quit music and get a real job. Then friends dragged him to see a band called Love Song at a bar in Costa Mesa, and somewhere in a song he decided he couldn't quit after all.
The heart of it is what happened next, and how little of it was planned. Tommy invokes the opening of 1 John, this is what we saw, this is what we heard, and calls himself and Jay living witnesses, noting that the generation who can say that is thinning out. Jay's account of the Holy Spirit is the plainest thing in the episode: it comes about when you pull the plug on everything and stop getting in the way. They woke up with no idea what the day held and played three times a day, in jails, convalescent homes, high schools, two services at the Orange County jail. Jay compares it to being firemen. The phone rang and they went.
They tell it without polishing it. There's the Seventh Day Adventist church where they had no idea the congregation was vegetarian until Fred gave his testimony about being delivered from vegetarianism. There's Madison Square Garden one week and a flatbed truck on the Rio Grande in El Paso the next, which is where Tommy lands one of the best lines in the episode about being the same person in front of sixteen people or fifty thousand. There's Calvary Chapel going from a room the fire marshal capped around 220 to 2,500 people in a matter of months, with local pastors turning up in white belts to see what was going on.
Then Maranatha! Music, which is the part worship leaders will want. Chuck Smith sent them to a four-track studio in Huntington Beach. The compilation cost four thousand dollars, sold 160,000 copies with no distribution, and the records lived in a Sunday school room. Michael W. Smith found a copy in a used clothing store in West Virginia, took it home, and walked the aisle of his Baptist church six weeks later. Twenty years on, Tommy asked Chuck Smith why he'd started the label. The answer: because the band had no gas money and he figured an album to sell would get them home.
Kurtis asks about Chuck Fromm, who founded Worship Leader, and the two of them light up. Chuck Smith's nephew, called down from a city administration job in Yuba City to run Maranatha!, a man who used his Rolodex as a thinking tool and would talk an idea through with someone for an hour just to hear it out loud. Tommy tells the story of Chuck buying property and building a real studio without telling his uncle first. It opened in 1978 with fifty of the best tube mics in the world, and they recorded in it nonstop.
The last stretch is a challenge. Tommy is blunt about what he sees walking into rooms as a producer: he estimates 60% of people in the pews aren't singing at all, and he lays it at the feet of volume and craft rather than sincerity. He points to Cliff Barrows, who never called it worship and always called it community singing, and who could make fifty thousand people feel like a living room. His charge to worship leaders is to be a communicator first, because there are plenty of great players and very few great communicators. He also refuses the easy version of the argument, insisting God isn't an either-or God and that he's all in when a room full of people knows the songs and pours their hearts out.
Kurtis closes by asking whether God could do something like the Jesus Movement again. Tommy says yes, and points out that people get serious about finding a raft when the ship starts sinking. Then he tells his own conversion story, which he'd been saving. He was working a factory job, paying off a court fine, living with his parents, one day from starting at his father's construction company. There was a note by the phone about an anti-drug rally. Love Song played three services for the Orange County police department, the same department that had illegally searched him and put him through a year of court. On the third service he ended up on the floor crying for forty-five minutes.
"If there's sixteen people in front of you, or sixteen thousand or fifty thousand, you gotta be the same guy." - Tommy Coomes
ABOUT TOMMY COOMES AND JAY TRUAX
Tommy Coomes and Jay Truax are founding members of Love Song, the band formed in the late 1960s out of the counterculture scene in Laguna Beach, California, and widely regarded as the first Christian rock band. Alongside Chuck Girard, John Mehler, Fred Field and Bob Wall, they came out of the Southern California club circuit, with Jay's earlier bands sharing stages with the Grateful Dead, Creedence and Canned Heat, before finding their way to Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa under Pastor Chuck Smith. Love Song became one of the founding acts of Maranatha! Music and helped shape what Time magazine called the "Jesus Revolution" in 1971, influencing a generation of artists who followed. Tommy went on to a long career as a producer and has worked for years with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
IN THIS EPISODE
Jay building skateboards out of roller skates before you could buy one
A ninety-dollar 1957 Strat, and Brian Wilson borrowing his brand new bass at fifteen
Three bandmates drafted within six weeks at the height of Vietnam
Carnaby Street the day Apple released its first four singles
Coming home to quit music, and hearing Love Song at a bar in Costa Mesa instead
"Living witnesses" and why Tommy thinks the record matters now
Jay on the Holy Spirit, and what it means to pull the plug on your own plans
Maranatha Music, four thousand dollars, and 160,000 copies in a Sunday school room
Michael W. Smith finding the record in a used clothing store in West Virginia
Why Chuck Smith actually started the label: gas money
Chuck Fromm, the Rolodex, and the studio he built without telling his uncle
Tommy's challenge on volume, craft, and community singing
The factory job, the note by the phone, and three services for the police who arrested him
LINKS
A Band Called LoveSong (documentary): https://www.abandcalledlovesong.com/
Kurtis Parks: https://www.kurtisparks.com
Worship Leader: https://worshipleader.com
SPONSOR
This episode is brought to you by Planning Center, the all-in-one software that helps your church schedule volunteers, plan services, and stay organized. Start free, no credit card required: https://www.planningcenter.com/?utm_source=worshipleader&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=the_walk&utm_content=episode_186_love_song
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