The Christian Music Thread Genre • Page 110

Peter Furler is goated. To this day one of the best front men I’ve seen.

 

I'm going to do my absolute best to remove him from all this shit, as long as there's no compelling evidence he knew...because I kind of lost the DC Talk albums today, and it would suck to lose the Newsboys pre-Tait stuff too.

 

Wonder if TobyMac will say anything

 

He absolutely will not because there was probably questionable stuff going on back then too

 

I agree with this. Ever since Peter left, Newsboys with Tait felt like more of a product.

 

It is hard to say anything about what Furler could have known or not known without concrete evidence as mentioned above. I would certainly hesitate to point fingers. That said, while Tait was the front man, Furler did still take on an advisory role and actually did produce about a half an album worth of songs with the band in 2017 and 2019.

Again, I'm not arguing who knew what, and when. I'm sure it will be months before we know which sheep were rolling in the mud. But it's probably too soon to be saying Peter Furler will absolutely come out with a clean nose, either. Over 50 people corroborating this article, so far? And the suggestion that hundreds of people had heard the rumors? Even non-victims from various bands/overlapping communities calling each other up to talk about the victims they knew of, starting (at least) a decade ago? I wouldn't count on a whole lot of people from the CCM coming out with snow-white fleece, at all.

 

This is devastating to hear about. On a personal level, I never enjoyed either DC Talk or Newsboys much at all, although I certainly know a lot of people who have. The whole thing with Tait walking into the Newsboys felt like the biggest eye-rolling dumb marketing ploy ever and just showed again how CCM is consumed by commercialization and numbers (money). The fact that so many people who probably knew about this for years have continued backing him is just the worst fruit of that system. I hope this prompts a reckoning for CCM (and their listenership) as a whole.

 

I've got a friend who was in Casting Crowns during their heyday who basically said the CCM industry is darker than people could imagine and what they saw as a band would shock people. The only name he outright gave in that conversation was Newsboys.

 

Man I was a huge Casting Crowns fan with their first couple of albums. Hope they are/ were decent people

 

I only know their old guitarist personally and I love that guy. He's the worship leader at my sister's church and just has a heart for the local body. Don't know about the rest of the band but they were always grounded in their church and youth group even when they exploded. And even if their music wasn't always the best, they always seemed willing to actually tackle issues and didn't care about looking cool.

 

I always kinda assumed and hoped that TobyMac was a genuinely cool, chill, well-meaning guy who was just maybe a bit ignorant/dumb, like in a Zack Snyder kinda way. Like, in her autobiography, Jennifer Knapp seemed to have positive feelings about Toby amidst her negative feelings about the industry.

But… I don’t know how he could be as close with Tait as he was for so many years and not be aware of this shit. Especially with how much of an open secret it apparently was? No idea what he could even say that would make me not think less of him.

 

The Zack Snyder comparison is solid lol. Could absolutely see that.

But I do agree, it would be really hard to see a world in which he didn't know about any of this. I'd say the same for Kevin Max, which also gives me complicated feelings because he's usually the "progressive" one. If he knew about all of this and kept it quiet as well though? Oof.

 

All these years people thought Kevin Max was the bad one lol.

Turns out being real, honest and normal are actually signs that you’re NOT a piece of shit

 

Newsboys was never my thing. But this is reprehensible. I hate when things like this happen in Christendom, because it just adds fuel to the fires people have burning.

 

Man I adored Furler era Newsboys but I highly doubt he is unscathed in all this

 

The other members released a statement and it's predictably shocked Pikachu face

 

I’ve been out of town for work so just digesting all this. First off just horrible for the victims, what a disgusting “open secret” that never should have been covered up to save face for Tait/the band/the CCM industry

dc Talk was my first favorite band that I found. They opened up the wold of music for me. I know people can call Jesus Freak a Nirvana/grunge ripoff but as a 10 year old church kid it was new and exciting and still parent approved. I mean their Jesus Freak video is the first thing posted in this thread. And I can directly trace the dots from DCT to Gotee/Relient K to T&N bands and then the flood gates opened to the whole scene for me.

This is like a repeat of the whole Brand New bombshell but instead of tainting a piece of my music experience this hits at the foundation of it all. And adds in faith

I’m not trying to post this to make it about me and my emotions, I’m just trying to unpack it all. I lost my dad to suicide and only after he was gone did I learn he was abused as a child and never was able to fully escape that trauma. And then bands that shaped me or helped me through his loss are also committing the same disgusting acts…

My heart breaks for the victims and their families while being so angry/disgusted with Tait and everyone involved with covering this up

 

We share a nearly identical musical path, and I'm feeling a lot of the same things you articulated so well. Thanks for sharing.

 

The open secret thing, at least in my experience as someone who was in the world and knew people in Nashville in that world, wasn’t as predatory in the rumor. It was more like Tait is gay. I heard of him going to bars in east Nashville cruising and such, but nothing like on the level of SA.

 

And there’s Kevin Max’s incredibly disappointing response.

Read: Yeah, he knew.

 

What even is this? So weird.

 

That's textbook word salad

 

Cross posting this from the Accountability thread as well:

So as I’ve been reading more about the Tait case, I came across an account run by a guy who was part of the tour crew about twenty years ago. He’s been calling all of this out for months now. Apparently on Facebook, the current lead singer for The Newsboys, Adam Agee (who took over for Tait after he stepped down for “reasons” back in January), posted this in the comments:

View attachment 130825

Which obviously runs counterpoint to their statement they released the other day where they said they could “never have imagined” what he was up to. Sure seems like you could actually!

To make matters worse, The Newsboys have also apparently been actively attempting to silence victims and journalists for speaking out:

This person also spoke to one of the victims who was not only assaulted by Tait, but was assaulted when he was underage. So not only has he assaulted a number of men over god knows how long, he was also actively grooming and assaulting underage teens:

And here is one of the messages he received from another victim in which it’s also made pretty clear that, yes, his former bandmate from DC Talk, Kevin Max, also absolutely knew:

 

Man

 

I expect that every group he was a part of has heard rumors at the least, there's a good chance they would have witnessed stuff too. I doubt anyone gets out of this unscathed, and the scene is overdue for a reckoning.