Daniel Amos

Daniel Amos, most often shortened to DA, Da, or dä, took shape chiefly in 1975 and quickly earned recognition as one of Christian music’s most inventive ensembles, its bold originality and meticulous songwriting rarely equaled in pop at large. Fronted by vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter Terry Taylor, the group pushed pop boundaries through both sonic experimentation and lyrics that probed spirituality along with the ties between God and humankind.

Emerging as a country-and-western outfit in the first half of the 1970s with Steve Baxter, Terry Taylor, Marty Dieckmeyer, and Jerry Chamberlain aboard, Daniel Amos swiftly built a devoted live following whose reputation spread rapidly through Jesus Movement audiences. Baxter departed the next year, at which point drummer Ed McTaggart and keyboardist Mark Cook joined the lineup.

After issuing the 1977 album Shotgun Angel, the band aligned with Larry Norman’s Solid Rock Records and, now including percussionist Alex MacDougall, began tracking what became Horrendous Disc. Completed by summer 1978, the record found the musicians fully detached from their country origins, trading them for searing guitar tones and sharply observant lyrics. Norman’s protracted delays, however, kept the finished album on the shelf until April 1981.

During the interim the musicians absorbed fresh currents in pop, especially the work of Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, and other new-wave leaders. With Horrendous Disc still unreleased, they kept performing and writing; MacDougall and Cook eventually stepped away while awaiting its arrival. Early in 1981 the remaining members started sessions for ¡Alarma!, an eccentric and faintly ominous set accompanied by a two-page libretto titled The ¡Alarma! Chronicles. Its material felt unprecedented. Released in June 1981—only six weeks after Horrendous Disc—the album showed the band on its cover with eyes airbrushed away. Three further ¡Alarma! Chronicles volumes followed.

By 1987 the group had trimmed its name to the single syllable Da and delivered Darn Floor Big Bite, widely regarded as its finest achievement. The album displayed experimental guitar textures and incisive, intellectually ambitious songwriting at every turn, with new guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Greg Flesch adding substantial depth. Tepid sales and negligible radio support prompted a two-year hiatus during which the musicians operated under the alter-ego banner the Swirling Eddies.

Four Daniel Amos titles appeared in the 1990s. Kalhoun, released in 1991 under the dä name, presented the band at its loudest and most forceful, coupling political themes with pointed satire of credulous doomsayers. Motor Cycle (1993) ventured into psychedelia through tape loops, hallucinatory lyrics, and irresistibly catchy pop hooks; listeners who do not crown Darn Floor the group’s masterpiece often award that distinction to Motor Cycle instead. Bibleland arrived the following year as a harsher, more abrasive work captured at maximum volume in nearly a single take. The thematic Songs of the Heart followed in 1997.

After Taylor’s side project the Lost Dogs generated numerous recordings and extensive touring, Daniel Amos resurfaced following a seven-year silence with Mr. Buechner’s Dream, a double-CD set of 33 songs fashioned in the vein of Darn Floor Big Bite.