And the bands played elsewhere / With no prayer of a decent crowd, Christian rockers bypass Bay Area

"And the bands played elsewhere / With no prayer of a decent crowd, Christian rockers bypass Bay Area: "And the bands played elsewhere"

With no prayer of a decent crowd, Christian rockers bypass Bay Area
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, March 3, 2005

Printable Version
Email This Article


Two rock acts touring behind albums at the top of the Christian music charts are playing California this week -- but like most religious rock 'n' roll caravans, this one won't be stopping in the Bay Area.
Explaining to Christian rock fans in the nation's fourth-largest music- buying market why they have to drive at least 90 minutes to see Mercy Me and Jeremy Camp is a frustrating task for Christian rock musicians, promoters and radio executives, for whom religious music is as much a spiritual calling as it is a profession.
The reason Christian bands can't find a gig in the Bay Area, they say, is rooted somewhere in the ethereal world of blue-state politics and the bottom- line realities of the music biz.
To those in the secular music world, it's a head-scratcher.
'It's unusual for such a big metropolitan area to be that devoid of a type of music,' said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar magazine, which charts the concert tour business. 'It's like, sure, you don't go to New York City to hear country music, but country bands still play there.
'There must be some sort of cultural component to this,' Bongiovanni said. 'Either the audience doesn't exist, or it exists and it isn't being served.'
Part of the reason is economic; Christian concert tours don't gross as much as their secular counterparts, making them less lucrative to promote. At No. 51, Bill Gaither was the highest-grossing Christian act on P"