Mark Smith, Democratic Candidate For Pennsylvania Lt Governor, Rocks... In More Ways Than One

I've only been to the Bahamas once; it was to visit the legendary, now shuttered, Compass Point Studios in Nassau, where one of our bands, the Ocean Blue, was recording Beneath the Rhythm and Sound late in the summer of 1993. It was a difficult time for the band, who came from a very conservative religious fundamentalist background and had been coming to grips that one of it's key members had decided to eschew the closet and embrace his homosexuality. He had written the band's only real hit and was the member most liked by the media. But the other band members-- who had once all given each other copies of the newly released Rush Limbaugh book as Christmas presents-- couldn't come to terms with one of them being gay. They told him he had to stop talking with the media and representing the band. And then they told him that Beneath the Rhythm and Sound would be the last time they would be working together, after having been friends since childhood.

I got to Nassau for the playback. Afterwards the studio managers had a bar-b-que at the pool as a kind of celebration. Suddenly their 5 year old son was nowhere to be see. Then he was seen-- at the bottom of the pool. Steve, the Ocean Blue member being thrown out of the band, had been a lifeguard. He dove in, rescued the kid and resuscitated him... tears of joy everywhere. One of the other band members came over to me. He seemed confused. "How," he asked me, seriously, referring to Steve, "could he be doing Satan's work and God's work at the same time?"

Yeah-- and that was the last Ocean Blue album on Sire Records. We helped Steve start his own record label as a subsidiary of Sire. A few days ago a friend of mine sent me this story about Mark Smith, a musician in another Pennsylvania Christian rock band, One Floor Away. Smith, a self-described liberal Democrat and a Bradford County commissioner, is also a candidate for lieutenant governor.

His bandmates forced him to make a choice: playing in the band or changing his position on marriage equality, which Smith had supported on his Facebook page. Smith, who's marrying his fiancé, Jane, this June, made his choice-- and left his position as lead guitar player in the band just as they were preparing to record their first album.

“It sort of blew my mind,” Smith said. “It was like a smack to the side of the head.” He said the band’s record producer and a couple of his band mates gave him the ultimatum late last month as they were meeting in Ithaca, N.Y. for a recording session.

Smith has played the guitar for years, influenced by blues greats such as B.B. King, and he joined One Floor Away in 2011. He also designed its web site.

“I would prefer not to speak on the subject right now,” said KC Sawyer, a keyboardist with the band and the managing director of DMKR studios, an Ithaca, N.Y. record label that handles Christian acts, including One Floor Away. “What we do with our band we prefer to keep quiet.” On its website, One Floor Away says its mission is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Smith was supportive of that positive message.

But he said he thought the band's dismissal was “short-sighted,” noting that even some evangelical Christians support equal rights for gays and lesbians. “I’m a liberal Democrat, and I feel we should certain allow people to marry who they please,” Smith said. “Equality is the foundation of this country; it’s not something I’ll back down on.”

He said he asked the band to remove his part from the single it recently released on iTunes and to redub it. “I can’t support them any more than they can support me,” Smith said.