CCM 27 CCM 27 “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” So goes the old Irish proverb that catalyzed the music found on Jars of Clay’s latest release, The Shelter. And while it might be an unexpected venture, fans will most likely find themselves resonating with the core value of the album – at least, that’s what happened to Dan Haseltine and company. “A friend of Steve’s [Mason], our guitar player, gave him these old Irish words that said, ‘It is in the shelter of each other that people live.’ It was one of those things that felt so inspired to us,” says Haseltine. “We thought, ‘This speaks really well of community at this stage where we are.’ We haven’t been touring a lot. We’ve been at home and investing in our communities and have seen the value of that kind of intentional work of reaching into community. So we really wanted to talk about that.” Consider The Shelter a sister project of sorts to Redemption Songs, the 2005 collection of reworked hymns and spirituals. While The Shelter is not a worship record per se, it’s church- and community-centric themes involve a similar feel, and the collaboration with several Christian artists further distances the work from where the band was heading. “As we were developing the record, we thought this was going to be a different type of Jars record,” says Haseltine, “and not necessarily the follow-up to Long Fall Back To Earth. It was this other type of project where we thought we needed to invest in our community around us. We wanted to bring in some other songwriters and friends and artists to sing on the project. We wanted to make it a community-oriented project in that regard. by Matt Conner