“Lock the Doors” by Salt Creek, Saturday, December 7, 2024

 Lock the doors

Tooth & Nail Records had a partnership with Christian bookstores for many years, and most of the label’s signed bands appeared on the shelves of a Christian bookstore with an Alternative or Hard Rock section. Even if a band was sold in a Christian bookstore didn’t guarantee that the band or members of the band were even Christians or if they were Christians that they aligned with the conservative values that the store represented.  From time to time, this caused tension between artists and the stores with some of the albums being pulled from shelves due to questionable lyrics or album art or statements from the band. Sometimes, bands asked not to be distributed through the Christian bookstores, which became financial viable when EMI bought 50% of the label in 2002. However, in the late 2010s the two biggest Christian retailers, Family Christian Bookstore and Lifeway Christian Bookstore closed their brick-and-mortar stores, transitioning to online platforms. The age of finding new music in the Christian bookstore was officially over

FREE MY SOUL. In 2013, Tooth & Nail CEO Brandon Ebel sold the label’s catalog to Capitol Christian Music Group to buy back the 50% of the label, making it completely independent again. The changes in music consumption changed the Christian Rock industry. Tooth & Nail Records two imprint labels, the heavy record label Solid State and the Contemporary Christian label BEC, fared the changes in the industry with devoted listeners. Most of the financially viable Tooth & Nail acts from the ‘00s signed to other labels, went independent, or broke up, and Tooth & Nail of the post-EMI relationship became a home to many new artists. Some of these new artists were marketed to the shrinking Christian Rock market; however, many weren’t marketed to the Christian market. The problem was there was no market for these bands. Even the Christian artists drummed up controversy for using profanity in their lyrics. The f-bomb in worship band King’s Kaleidoscope’s “A Prayer” was a turning point in the mostly clean-cut bands that the label had branded itself on for twenty years. 

YOU SAID YOU WANT MORE, AND NOW I’M BREAKING MY JAW. In 2021, Tooth & Nail Records released albums by Valleyheart and Salt Creek. Both releases carried songs with explicit labels and neither were marketed to Christian Rock radio. Matt Carter interviewed the lead singer of Valleyheart and guitarist Nathan Richardson of Salt Creek on the Labeled Podcast. Richardson got his start in music as a music promoter when he was a teenager. In the interview, Richardson talked about his love of indie music he discovered on MySpace, which ultimately got him interested in the bands signed to Tooth & Nail Records. He talks about getting bands to perform in his town of Lexington, Nebraska, on their way through either east or west. Previous iterations of Salt Creek often performed as opening acts for these bands, and eventually Salt Creek recorded two independent EPs starting with 2017’s Where Strangers Go. In May 2021, the band released a single EP Our Own World, introducing Tooth & Nail listeners to their band before their October 15th release of Out of the Sky. The grunge-inspired midwestern hard rock is sounds both inspired by Tooth & Nail and mainstream radio or the ‘00s. Neither of the band’s Tooth & Nail releases are particularly unique. The story of the band is more about breaking out of the small mid-western music scene than offering something new to Tooth & Nail or rock music. Today’s song, “Lock the Doors” is well produced, and the gloomy guitars create a mood. But there are tons of post-grunge songs from the ‘00s that create that very mood. We haven’t heard anything from the band since Out of the Sky. It wouldn’t surprise me if that will be the last we hear of Salt Creek, at least in its current form. But they could return with better songs if they’re given the chance. 

Read the lyrics on Genius.