Songs of Altar Boys Reflect Inner Struggles of Gospel Band’s Leader

Most songwriters unsure about their latest work might bounce their ideas off a trusted record producer or a fellow musician.

Mike Stand, guitarist and front man of the Altar Boys, an Orange County-based Christian rock band, took his doubts to the pastor of his church in Santa Ana.

The songs, which ended up on Stand’s first solo album, “Do I Stand Alone,” departed from the typical affirmations and celebrations of faith that had characterized much of his previous work with the Altar Boys. They conveyed a great deal of pain and struggle and wondered inconclusively about why prayers aren’t always answered.

“I was asking a lot of questions (in the new songs) and not really giving easy answers for anything,” Stand said. In other words, it was a departure from what one expects from contemporary Christian performers whose aim is to reinforce and spread the Gospel while entertaining. Stand went to his pastor at Calvary Church: “Was I being too vague? Was I out in left field?”

Reassured that the songs made a useful point about spiritual struggles, Stand went ahead with the album and came up with his deepest, most personal work.

The husky-voiced singer wears the uniform of choice for hard-edged rockers: black shirt and pants topped by black leather jacket. While Stand’s jacket sleeve sports a “Jesus One Way” patch, it also bears the logo of Husker Du, the uncompromising, now-defunct power rock band from Minneapolis that had nothing discernible to do with Christian beliefs.

Without getting too specific, Stand, who is in his early 30s, said that a combination of personal difficulties having to do with finances, his marriage and a hand injury led him to write songs in which the focus shifted from simple affirmations to troubled questions with no answer beyond faith.

“I found out a lot of the things I’d been told weren’t true. I was told, ‘read the Bible and everything will be fine,’ ” the tall, craggy-faced rocker said as he and the two other Altar Boys, drummer Jeff Crandall and bassist Ric Alba, gathered this week for an interview at the Costa Mesa offices of Frontline Records. “Do I Stand Alone” was Stand’s acknowledgement that faith isn’t always easy.

The shift in perspective also comes through in the Altar Boys’ recent album “Against the Grain.” The trio, which plays Saturday night in Anaheim, has moved toward examining worldly problems rather than simply praising the Lord.

Even on “Gut Level Music,” a 1986 album that had little to offer lyrically for those not interested in hearing such sermon-like messages as “Life Begins at the Cross,” the Altar Boys made an effective musical point with tough, punk-influenced rock. The group also churns out big-beat anthems that recall the idealistic Welsh band, the Alarm.

The Altar Boys’ goal now, after 6 years on the Christian rock circuit, is to reach a wider audience. They would like to graduate from Frontline, an independent “contemporary Christian” label, to one of the major record companies.

For most aspiring rock bands, it is an uncomplicated enough (albeit incredibly difficult) ambition. For Christian rockers, the desire to be widely heard raises some difficult questions: how to present religious convictions that many in their prospective audience don’t share, and how to avoid being seen as a sellout by Christian fans who expect a religious message.

“The label ‘Christian rock’ or ‘Gospel rock’ will make a lot of people think it’s not for them,” Alba said. “Labels can be misleading.” Band members also were reluctant to characterize themselves as musical evangelists.

“People think of a guy who gets on stage and waves a Bible and yells at people. In that sense, we are not evangelists,” Crandall said. “But I don’t think the time would ever come when we would sit down and say, ‘That’s enough talking about God.’ ”

“It just comes down to honest songwriting,” said Stand (Mike Stand is his given name, not a show-biz pun). If the songs are heartfelt, he said, audiences will respond.

The three Altar Boys first played together in an acoustic church-based musical group but found it unsatisfying.

“I was a young person playing music for people who were quite a bit older than I was, and it wasn’t the kind of music I listened to,” Crandall said.

That led to the formation of a hard-rock band that started with local church, school and club dates in 1982. Since then, the Altar Boys have released four albums (plus Stand’s solo album with backing by outside musicians) and tapped into a Christian pop network that has led to extensive national touring and appearances in England and Chile. Their Anaheim show is a homecoming, following an extended tour as opening act for the Memphis-based Christian pop-rock act, De Garmo & Key.

While the Altar Boys are unswervingly earnest on their albums, they try to leaven live shows with changes of pace, fleshing out their own repertoire with versions of the Monkees’ “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” and “The Dead Heart” by Midnight Oil, one of Stand’s favorite bands.

Singing about spiritual matters may be serious business, but as Alba put it, “We don’t take ourselves quite so seriously that we can’t have some fun.”

The Altar Boys open for De Garmo & Key, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at William A. Cook Auditorium at Anaheim High School, 811 W. Lincoln Ave. Tickets cost $11.50 at the door. Information: (714) 731-5534.