Brow Beat was a collaborative record, conceived by Michael Knott, where some of the top bands in Alternative Christian music got together and recorded one unplugged acoustic song each. Some of the songs on here were later re-recorded, but some are only available here.

The original ad for this release listed several of the bands that were scheduled to appear – including Michael Pritzl / Violet Burning and The Prayer Chain (referred to as “The Prayer Chiefs” in the ad). The Prayer Chain later said “‘Radio Friendly Stone’ was supposed to be on a multi-artist acoustic compilation, but didn’t make it due to some business fussiness. It definitely foreshadows the Mercury sound and feel, almost a year before we even recorded that album.”

“I just wanted to make people aware of the alternative bands in Christian Music…. All the artists worked together. No one was a ‘rock star.’ The worst part was scheduling 30 different people.”

Although everyone was given a strict “no electronic instruments” policy, they were allowed to fudge in the mixing process. So, some tracks have interesting vocal effects, and some artists used the loophole to double and triple some tracks to layer the instruments. But, Knott mentioned, even then all the instruments were acoustic.

“I haven’t really dug deep enough yet to find who broke the rules and who didn’t,” Knott laughed. “But 99 percent of the time, they seemed to follow the rules.”

(from “Brow Beaten But Not Out” by Chris Well for the March 1994 issue of CCM magazine)

Lyrics and Credits

To read the lyrics to the songs Knott performs on, please see this document. If anything is incorrect, please let me know.

Listen / Stream

Listen to the songs Knott performs on below. If you want to hear the entire album, see the Brow Beat playlist.