Daniel Amos

The band began touring heavily with Stonehill in the late 1970s.

DA performed their own set and, after a Stonehill acoustic set, served as Stonehill's backing band for another set.

That tour, known as the "Amos n' Randy Tour", became legendary for DA and Stonehill fans.

Daniel Amos (aka D. A., Dä) is an American Christian rock band formed in 1974 by Terry Scott Taylor on guitars and vocals, Marty Dieckmeyer on bass guitar, Steve Baxter on guitars and Jerry Chamberlain on lead guitars.

The band currently consists of Taylor, guitarist Greg Flesch and drummer Ed McTaggart.

Over the band's career, they have included keyboardist Mark Cook, drummer Alex MacDougall, bassist Tim Chandler and keyboardist Rob Watson with sounds that experimented with country rock, rock, new wave and alternative rock.

The roots of Daniel Amos began to grow out of Jubal's Last Band, an acoustic quartet consisting of Taylor, Kenny Paxton, Chuck Starnes and Steve Baxter, who spent their time performing for Bible study groups and at coffee shops throughout Southern California.

In 1974, JLB recorded a demo tape together and eventually lost Starnes and Paxton.

Bassist Marty Dieckmeyer and guitarist Jerry Chamberlain were brought in to fill the empty spots.

Sometime in the middle of 1975, Jubal's Last Band (minus Baxter) auditioned for Maranatha! Music and Calvary Chapel in hopes of signing a recording and performance contract.

Another band at the meeting, led by Darrell Mansfield, had a similar name – Jubal.

The two bands decided to change their names to avoid confusion.

Mansfield renamed his band Gentle Faith (taken from the name of co-band member Henry Cutrona's earlier band), and Jubal's Last Band became Daniel Amos.

Daniel Amos succeeded in landing a recording and performance contract and quickly recorded their first song for the label in 1975, Taylor's "Ain't Gonna Fight It", released later that year on the label's compilation album Maranatha 5.

The band released their debut eponymous album in 1976 which was produced by pedal steel guitar player and producer Al Perkins.

Soon after the release of that album, DA enlisted Ed McTaggart as their full-time drummer.

Previously, McTaggart had been the drummer for Bill Sprouse Jr.'s The Road Home.

By 1977, the band had begun to shed their country sound with the album Shotgun Angel, which took some fans by surprise.

Shotgun Angel was half country and half rock-opera.

Side two of the LP featured lush orchestrations and a string of rock songs linked together in a way reminiscent of Queen, Pink Floyd and Abbey Road.

Shotgun Angel also saw the departure of Steve Baxter and the addition of keyboardist Mark Cook.

Cook had been the keyboardist for the band Spring Canyon, which had recorded an album for Warner Brothers a few years earlier with producer Richard Podolor that was never released, due to a change in management at Warner Brothers.

By 1978, the band had recorded their first entirely rock effort, Horrendous Disc, with help from newly added drummer/percussionist, Alex MacDougall.

MacDougall had been a member of another Maranatha! Music band, The Way.

Although it was recorded for Maranatha!

Music, the album was dropped because of a major change in the focus of the label.

They stopped releasing albums by rock and roll acts and instead focuses on children's and praise music.

The band shopped the new record around to several labels, ending up on Larry Norman's Solid Rock Records.

Solid Rock delayed the release for nearly three years and despite magazine article and radio specials promoting it, the album did not hit record store shelves until a week before the release of the band's newly recorded fourth album ¡Alarma! in 1981.

The long delay led to the departure of MacDougall and Cook, and was the subject of a series of articles and letters to the editor in CCM Magazine.

From the connection with Solid Rock, Daniel Amos began working with singer/songwriter Randy Stonehill.

Taylor produced four of Stonehill's albums (1981's Between the Glory and the Flame, 1983's Equator, 1992's Wonderama, and 1993's Stories), using DA as backing musicians.

¡Alarma! was the first of a four-part series of albums entitled The ¡Alarma! Chronicles, which also included the albums Doppelgänger, Vox Humana, and Fearful Symmetry.

On the tours that followed each release beginning with Doppelgänger, the band used a full multimedia event complete with video screens synchronized to the music.

The stage setup also included mannequins, a 3D slide show and actors portraying game show announcers and models for the song "New Car!"

More personnel changes occurred during this era as Tim Chandler replaced Dieckmeyer in September 1981.

Chamberlain left in mid 1983.

For a short time, guitarist Milo Carter toured with the band.

For the first half of 1984, they toured without a second guitarist and made Vox Humana.

Greg Flesch joined as the lead guitar player in September 1984 for the subsequent tour.