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Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008

Coming home

Lexington Christian alumnus returns as rock band's road boss

Jars of Clay road manager Aaron Sawyer was looking at the itinerary for the Christian rock band when he noticed an 859 area code.

The Lexington native was stoked the band was touring close to his home — then he saw how close they were getting.

”I saw the Web site and said, ‘Hey, I recognize that URL,“ Sawyer said recently over coffee at the Nicholasville Road Starbucks.

It was the Web site for his alma mater, Lexington Christian Academy, where Jars will play Aug. 30 as the grand finale for Lexington Christian’s Back to School Bash. The two-day event will include a lot of fair and carnival staples such as a dunking booth and inflatable rides plus a battle of the bands, Guitar Hero and cornhole contests, and several high school football and soccer games. The Jars concert will follow Saturday’s 6 p.m. football game.

When Sawyer graduated from LCA in 2002, he couldn’t have imagined this is how he’d return to campus.

With a beard, feathered blonde hair and a pair of big sunglasses, Sawyer looks like a rocker himself, and he was in his middle and high school years.

”I was a Christian music geek,“ Sawyer says, noting that one of the first concerts he saw was Jars of Clay at Asbury College, when he was 12 years old. ”It was a great time to be into Christian music, because it was the early 1990s when (dc talk’s) Jesus Freak came out, and Audio Adrenaline was having its first big hits and even Jars of Clay had their first couple of albums.“

That lasted a few years, but in high school, Sawyer’s attention turned to mainstream music such as Weezer and Radiohead. He took up guitar himself, playing in a few bands around town.

But that wasn’t a career. Sawyer enrolled at the University of Kentucky’s engineering school.

A few years into it though, he was impressed with the idea that, ”if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll be miserable, 40-hours a week.“

Music was still what he loved, and on the advice of some friends, he headed to Nashville and enrolled in Belmont University’s arts management program. Even there, he knew he was facing long odds. The rap in Nashville is that there are 100 Belmont graduates for every job on Music Row.

But the 2007 Belmont graduate has landed several good gigs less than two years from graduation.

One of his first was emerging artist Landon Pigg, which took him to gigs such The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and a mainstream band, The Virgins.

Going to work with a band he had seen as a boy in Wilmore was, ”very surreal and bizarre,“ Sawyer says.

He describes a road manager as being, ”the A to B guy. It’s my job to get them from point A to point B and make sure everything goes well in between.“

That has him figuring out travel, accommodations, meet-and-greets, photo opportunities, interviews, finances and, ”making sure the guys know what’s going on.

”I think I should have taken more accounting in college,“ Sawyer says, noting the number of financial dealings he oversees.

It sounds like a lot of work, but in addition to having the organizational skills of a general, Sawyer says it is almost as important that the road manager be a good person to hang out with on the road.

”There’s a lot of down time,“ Sawyer says. ”If you’re playing a festival, and you’re headlining, you may load in at 8 a.m. and not play until 9 that night.“

So, bands are often looking for diversions, like movies and restaurants on the road. It’s often the road manager’s job to find those.

The downside of the job is that Sawyer is paid only when he is on the road. Fortunately, he’s been out a lot. He was off for a few weeks this month, which prompted a trip home to see family for the longest visit he’s had since February.

Eventually, Sawyer hopes to move into other areas of management that will let him settle down and start a family.

But now, he’s getting to, ”scratch my rock ’n’ roll itch. I sometimes have to pinch myself and say, ‘Is this real?’ I once had posters of these guys on my wall, and now they pay my bills.“

And, he gets to bring them back to his alma mater for a one-of-a-kind homecoming.