For Toby Penner, the fall from grace began with a greasy meal at an Edmonton Hooters.
In 2000, Penner was songwriter and leader of Jake, a fresh-faced trio he formed with his fraternal twin younger brothers, Josh and Marty that was based out of the small Alberta town of Three Hills.
Sons of missionaries that possessed the non-threatening good looks of teen idols, the Penners had been propped up as the great white hope for crossover success in contemporary Christian music.
With roughly 100,000 albums sold, a major record deal with a U.S. Christian label, a handful of Juno and Vibe nominations and a spot on a high-profile Christian rock festival in Edmonton, Jake seemed poised to fulfil the Christian entertainment dream combination of teen-baiting boy band and squeaky-clean role models.
Unfortunately, as with many in their early 20s, the boys also had a sense of humour.
So in 2000, Josh — while suffering from a bout of indigestion — let slip to a reporter that the trio had dined at a Hooters restaurant earlier that day. When questioned further, young Josh joked “Christians have hooters, too.”
The Christian rock community was not amused.
When the story ran, the boys were dropped from the youth festival and a subsequent tour that was being planned by the same promoter. According to Toby, the Christian rock industry lambasted the Penner brothers, both for the comment and for being in such a Godless establishment in the first place.
And while Jake didn’t officially break up until a couple years later, Toby looks back on the uproar as an early lesson in the politics of faith-based music. “It cost us a lot of money and a lot of downtime” says Penner, now a 31-year-old session musician in Nashville. “There was a lot of negativity, especially in the Christian market press, for both us and our label. We thought it was pretty weird, that a little joke would have such drastic ramifications for our financial situation and our popularity.”
The Hooters’ story is well-known in Three Hills — the farming town of just over 3,000 two hours northeast of Calgary that is home to the Prairie Bible Institute. For 80 years, the college produced generations of missionaries, church leaders and Christian idealogues.
But, for a short period beginning in the late 1990s, it also helped spawn Jake and other notable faith-based acts such as Matt Brouwer, Tim Milner and Juno-winner Jill Paquette.
Even though the brothers had lived in various parts of the world, including a short stint at a mission school in Belize, the Christian press has always named Three Hills as the band’s hometown. This both helped play up the boys’ wholesome, small-town image and forever link the central Albertan town with the Christian entertainment industry — that parallel universe that generates billions of dollars in the U.S. while remaining mysterious to most of the secular world.
And, in a strange way, the fortunes of Three Hills as a Christian rock mecca seemed entwined to the fortunes of the Penner brothers.
Raised in a conservative Christian home, Toby, Josh and Marty were playing in separate bands when Steve Rendall — an ambitious producer and the son of the former president of Prairie Bible Institute — decided they were more marketable together as a Jesus-loving boy band.
But, ironically, the brothers spent little time as a band in Three Hills. According to local lore, they rumbled out of town in a shaky 1985 Mercury Topaz in 1999 and never looked back.
Still, to this day, Jake maintains an almost mythical status in the small town. To some, the band is still a beacon attracting students to the college and representing the epitome of success for God-guided acts.
For others, their failure to launch to world-wide fame is a painful reminder of a missed opportunity for the small farming town and college to become Canada’s centre for Christian music.
“Jake had the potential to go pop,” sighs Rendall. “They had this compelling story — three brothers, two twins. They were good-looking kids and Toby wrote hooky, compelling tunes.”
“At the end of the day, I’m not sure it was within the boys themselves. There wasn’t really the want to make it big. And I think (the Hooters) incident probably played a role in them realizing what they were up against.”
It’s not hard to see why Three Hills became a hot spot for Christian-based bands in the mid to late 1990s. The college has always produced a steady stream of young people eager to latch onto popular music and a healthy supply of parents and teachers eager to ensure their tastes stayed appropriately God-fearing.
The school also has a long history as a leader in Christian entertainment.
A few years after L.E. Maxwell — a circuit preacher from Kansas — founded the Prairie Bible Institute in 1922, it became known for exporting music from its tiny, farmland base. Brass quartets, trios and small choirs fanned out across the Alberta countryside in horse and buggy on Sunday mornings to entertain rural congregations.
In the 1960s, the school boasted a choir of 300 voices and a 50-piece orchestra that toured throughout the province. Prairie became the centre for Christian entertainment in Western Canada, with an auditorium at the heart of the campus that fit 4,000 people and attracted a who’s who of sacred music entertainers and Christian speakers.
But the college’s acceptance of modern music wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic — at least not at first. For years, a good deal of modern music was prohibited on the campus. Rock ‘n’ roll — even when played by bands that had surrendered unconditionally to Jesus — was viewed with deep suspicion.
“There were no guitars or drums — heaven forbid,” says Ron Berg, vice-president of organizational development for Prairie. “There wasn’t even drama. Drama was Hollywood — the pit of hell itself. But the shift started to happen when the missionary opportunities with music became apparent.”
Rendall, who’s father remained president of the school until 1990, is credited with helping usher in an acceptance of modern music. In the mid 1980s, he helped resurrect Harvest Music, a long-dormant record label that was attached to the school, and began releasing traditional Christian music that had been recorded decades earlier.
“There was a lot of enthusiasm at the time and I had a lot of hope for the future,” Rendall says. “We put our heads together and decided we could start a record company and fund it by rereleasing old Prairie music on (vinyl). I knew you couldn’t sustain a record company on that catalogue. So we said, ‘Let’s get going on something new.’
“Things were progressing along nicely. But there was a component in the school that raised its head. They thought we were pushing the envelope for what they believed was wrong music.”
Eventually — after clashing with this old guard of the school — Rendall bought out the label and began operating it off campus, while still drawing much of the talent from the student body.
By the late 1990s, he was certain he had found a number of acts to launch his career — and Three Hills — into the big time.
Meanwhile, equipped with a modern recording studio from its days of broadcasting Christian radio shows across Alberta, Prairie continued to attract musical students from around the globe.
In the mid-1990s, when indie music was in its zenith in the rest of the country, bands began to sprout up in Three Hills. Music was everywhere — in coffee houses, on campus, in churches.
“There was an awesome thing happening there at the time,” Penner says. “There were all kinds of crazy talented people who lived there and went to the college. For some reason, a bunch of us got record deals and stuff.”
Three Hills became the place to be for ambitious Christian musicians.
“I can remember hearing Jake on satellite radio,” says Craig Learmont, a 36-year-old producer and musician who took over the studio where the Penner brothers recorded their two albums. “I had this Christian station on from Texas. And here was this song that was produced three hours away. God was telling me, ‘You have to move to Three Hills. Go to the Bible college to work and teach and start the studio.’ ”
Learmont continues to produce Christian-based music at the studio, which he dubbed MuzikHaus. Bands such as Kiros, Paramedic and Winter’s Longing have all recorded there.
But, to this day, there is a picture of the grinning Penner brothers on Learmont’s cluttered wall of his studio — a testament to the role he says they played in convincing him to move to Three Hills from his home outside Medicine Hat.
The idea that God took the time to actively intervene in the prospects of Christian entertainers may seem a strange concept to the uninitiated. But it’s a common theme in the legend surrounding Jake.
One article in Christianpost.com about Jake’s quick rise credits “the hand of God” for leading the Penners away from the “safe haven” of Three Hills to the world at large. An early article in the evangelical tabloid Living Light News says the band’s success was “God’s work, not theirs.”
But God, it turns out, works in mysterious ways — at least where Three Hills and rock ‘n’ roll was concerned.
“Jill (Paquette) and Matt Brouwer and the (Penner) boys were all living here with their parents and it just made a lot of sense to focus our energies on the production side and let someone else do the marketing and that,” says Rendall, who still lives in town.
“I had the vision of developing Canadian artists here.”
Anyone watching Jake’s early career would be hardpressed to argue that the Penners weren’t the chosen ones of Three Hills thriving scene.
After arriving in Nashville in 1999, the brothers almost immediately signed a deal with Reunion Records — one of America’s largest faith-based labels.
But, according to Toby Penner, the ensuing ride to “stardom” was uncomfortable from the get-go.
In Canada, the act was represented by the secular Zomba Records - whose roster included a pre-breakdown Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and N’Sync.
As a result the boys found themselves straddling two different, but equally wholesome markets, neither particularly nourishing for a young songwriter who was beginning to develop an edge.
“It got so confusing,” says Penner. “Jesus ends up being your girlfriend in some songs and your girlfriend ends up morphing into Jesus. It was weird.”
Nevertheless, the Penner brothers were urged by their American managers and label representatives to play up the Christian angle when discussing their personal lives in the press.
Along with listing boy-band tidbits such as favourite colours and food, Christian magazines and websites would also include the boys’ favourite Bible passages and long quotes from the band about Christian living.
In 2001, all three Penner brothers had walk-on parts in Left Behind — a movie based on the controversial, evangelical series of books by Rev. Tim LaHaye. Toby played a security guard and also contributed one of his songs to the soundtrack, a deal that bought him a nice car and house in Nashville.
It was all part of a larger plan to set up Jake in the billion-dollar Christian entertainment industry.
“Management and publicists were concerned with (our image),” Penner says. “They would set us up with media coaches and try to dream up role model-type stuff for us. For instance, at the time there was a real fad about abstinence and all these pledges going around. Christian artists were heavily into this movement about abstinence and they would have loved for us to jump on board. We kiboshed that. We said, ‘We don’t want to be that band.’ ”
By 2003 — worn out by the stifling list of Thou-Shalts and Thou-Shalt-Nots they were expected to live by, the Penners called it a day. They asked to be released from their record contract. Penner says he still has boxes of Jake CDs stashed away in his garage.
Representatives from Reunion Records declined an interview request for this story.
“I think the main thing was we were really sick of the Christian music industry,” Penner says. “We loved making music, loved hanging out with each other and we loved that whole life. But we thought, ‘Do we really want to be this mediocre Christian band 10 years from now?’”
Ten years later, dreams of pop stardom seem to have faded from the halls of the Prairie Bible Institute. According to students, there are decidedly less active bands in the school.
Late last year, the college even cancelled its long-standing fine arts program — citing a lack of interest from students.
According to Rendall, the real problem was that the school didn’t capitalize on the momentum that had been building through Jake and others.
“I think if they had a little more marketing moxy they could have gone further,” says Rendall.
“They had all these artists coming to the school to take advantage of whatever it is that’s in the water. . . I can tell you tons of artists who hoped to go through this whole process left sorely disappointed.”
Which isn’t to say that music is absent from the school these days. But performers tend to be a little more modest in their ambition and certainly less conflicted about what the role of a Christian entertainer should be.
“We want to show people who Christ is and our relationship with him and to point them towards Christ,” says Ben Geleynse, the 18-year-old guitarist of North of Tomorrow, a band partly based at the college.
Led by Ben and his similarly coiffed brother Sam, the act began as punk rockers in the boys home state of Wisconsin before serendipity (divinely inspired serendipity, they say) landed all the band members in Alberta. Half of the act are Prairie students, while the other half live in nearby Lacombe.
And North of Tomorrow’s four members have no problem with the notion that their message trumps their music.
“I don’t think it’s a rebellious thing to play rock and roll music ,” says vocalist Sam, 19, who is studying at the college. “It’s not the music, it’s the message. You can use rock as a lousy influence — as a lot of rock has been — or you can use it for a good message. Music is music, it’s just a tool given to us by God to express things to people.”
During a concert in Three Hills last October, the performance was heavy in prayers, scripture reading and general pontificating about Jesus.
Strict rules at Prairie have been toned down a bit in the past few years. Students are allowed to listen to rock music — although anyone attempting to blare a Marilyn Manson disc can expect an intervention and lecture from fellow students. But that doesn’t mean Christian entertainers aren’t held to higher standards by the student body.
“If they are living for Christ and have given their lives to Christ and made a commitment to Christ,” says Jordan Pelland, a 20-year-old early childhood education student at Prairie. “Then living in accordance to what God has called them to do is, for lack of a better word, an obligation.”
What role such scrutiny played in the disintegration of Jake is unclear. But one gets the distinct impression that straying from the flock can be difficult.
There are major advantages to playing the Christian rock world — even at the lowest rung of the ladder. A network of Christian book stores, media and large youth groups provide automatic audiences and place bands in venues their secular counterparts could never dream of.
But there are rules to follow.
“In the Christian subculture there are gatekeepers,” says Rendall, who remains on good terms with the Penner brothers. “There’s youth pastors, book store owners, people who control the Christian media and they do have certain expectations. I don’t know if it’s good, bad or indifferent. But if you are going to play in that arena, you have to play by their rules.”
When Toby Penner released a decidedly secular collection of songs after Jake’s breakup, he heard from a number of fans who bemoaned his abandonment of Christian entertainment.
His brother Josh has since become a chiropractor in Portland, Ore. Marty works for a think-tank involved in conflict resolution on the West Bank. But, according to Toby, strange rumours about the brothers’ post-Jake activities persist in the industry.
When told that one townsperson had whispered to the Herald about Josh’s embrace of the Wiccan faith, Toby could barely contain his laughter.
“That’s probably the funniest rumour about us that I’ve heard so far,” he says. “And there have been some funny ones. . . Rumours have always abounded about us being in various cults, so I guess it’s not that surprising. There’s also a lot of rumours about us and strip clubs. I don’t recall the specifics. It’s all a bunch of silliness.”
And while Penner says he has no regrets about his short journey into Christian entertainment, he admits his devotion to Christianity has dwindled in the past few years.
Just what is his relationship with the faith that supposedly guided him from the smalltown of Three Hills to Music City? Is he still a devout Christian?
“I would say no,” he says. “I still go to a church every week that I’m involved in. It’s a cool bunch of people. I don’t want to disregard everything. I don’t live an irresponsible lifestyle. But I would say I definitely don’t have the same beliefs I had back then.”
