Inland

How many times has one heard an inner voice asking "Have I done all that I have been put here to do?" It is a question everyone faces at some point in life's journey. The real question is how many dare to challenge the question and continue to create?

This is the crossroads where CCM innovators Jars of Clay found themselves standing at the close of 2011. After 17 years of creating together a moment of reflection was in order: with over 100 songs written, 10 studio records, international touring and the genesis of a sustained work benefiting our neighbors in Africa, Blood: Water Mission. In the scope of the average life of a band, they had certainly over-achieved. But was it enough?
The more prescient question is the one that is always there: Is there still soil to turn in this plot of land? Were they still capable of cultivating it? Was there something urgent, timely, even startling, left yet to create? At the age of 70, after almost 25 years of relative professional obscurity, Frank Lloyd Wright built what would be known b many as one of the most startling pieces of American architecture ever built--Falling Water.
Could there be a "Falling Water" for Jars of Clay? Was something truly great still within their grasp? In early 2012, the group turned their chairs towards one another once again and agreed that whatever grace of time they still had before them would be spent finding this out.
And so they headed inland
In the summer of 2012, they arrived in Portland OR to begin the recording process. It was their first time recording outside Nashville since 1998. In the Land of Ports, they found an immersive experience. Her wine fed their souls while her coffee sobered their minds. Once again, they submitted their songs to the discipline and rigor of the recording process. They played listened, rehearsed, felt, and listened some more. Slowly, what began to emerge was something that sounded like it might have been there all along. It was as the same time startling and familiar.
"Inland" is the result of this journey. It is a collection of 12 moving tracks. These are songs for ordinary days creating the space between the way the world is and the way that it should be.