A big-time musician remembers Cape Girardeau

When he was a boy spending summers with his grandparents in Cape Girardeau in the mid-1980s, Ben Cissell and his cousin, Tommy, chased foul balls at Capahas baseball games. The manager, Cissell's uncle, Jess Bolen, paid them 25 cents for every ball returned to the dugout.

Tommy Bolen plays outfield for the Capahas now. Cissell plays drums for the heralded, Grammy-nominated Christian rock band Audio Adrenaline.

The band and another Christian rock group, MercyMe, perform Tuesday in the Go Show at the Show Me Center.

Cissell grew up in St. Louis but in the summers divided time between his grandparents: His mother's parents Virginia and Tom Seabaugh; and his father's mother, LaFern, and stepfather, the late Charles Stiver Sr.

His father, Mike Cissell, and mother, Sherry, are Central High School graduates.

You get the idea Cissell he wouldn't mind if he were playing for the Capahas too. He sometimes wears a Capahas shirt when the band performs. "I felt like I was a celebrity because my uncle was the manager," he said in a phone interview from a tour stop in Spokane, Wash.

Perhaps because his family moved around so much, his grandmother Stiver theorizes, he loved his summers in Cape Girardeau.

"They would just spoil me rotten," he says of his grandparents.

Cissell has traveled all over the world with the band but says his favorite restaurant is still Wib's Drive In in Jackson. "It's the best barbecue in the whole world, and I literally am a barbecue fanatic," he said.

When he got old enough to start bringing girlfriends to Cape Girardeau, his grandmother Seabaugh would ask them where Ben took them. "They'd always say Wib's," she recalled.

They remember their grandson drumming on tables. "He was always good with his hands," Tom Seabaugh recalled. "I thought he might become an electrician."

His grandparents remember that he was always opposed to drugs and alcohol. They thought he might go into law enforcement.

His grandmother Stiver, a school teacher, was concerned that he did not do well in school but says, "Ben has an infinite gift of gab. He's a very creative individual. I knew he would find a niche."

Cissell's grandfather said he was good at sales too. Young Cissell would find shiny rocks and sell them to neighbors. Now he's selling Christianity.

The Seabaugh side of the family, lifelong followers of the Pentecostal faith, were his spiritual role models, Cissell said. At a concert three weeks ago in St. Charles, Mo., he invited his grandmother Seabaugh, a church singer, up on stage to help out on one of the band's songs. She went.

His grandmother Stiver got him interested in the arts. His grandfather Stiver, who died in 1999, played jazz records in his office.

His grandfather Seabaugh is the only one of the three who really likes rock 'n' roll. He's a recent convert because he likes the music of Audio Adrenaline so much.

Stiver objects to the fact that the band is not invited onto some college campuses because of its Christian orientation. But Cissell says some Christians picket the band's concerts as well because they think rock 'n' roll is the work of the devil.

Cissell began playing drums in fourth grade. He didn't enjoy taking lessons or reading music out of a book. He learned by putting on recordings by bands his parents liked, Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin, and trying to play along. "I thought I was playing along to it," he said. "I probably was not coming close."

But he kept on playing. When he needed a roomy vehicle to haul his drums, he asked his father to buy him a hearse. His parents polled the neighbors to make sure nobody would mind.

"He loved driving up to the drive-through at Wendy's," Tom Seabaugh chuckled.

Cissell played sports at Parkway West High School in St. Louis but in his senior year had to choose between football and marching band. He took the band. He was a jazz major at SIU-Edwardsville but dropped out. His parents were not happy when he told them he wanted to move to Nashville and try to become a professional musician.

He lived with another drummer who was playing with a Christian rock band and took a job selling T-shirts for Audio Adrenaline. He met the band and liked them immediately. That's how he found out their drummer was leaving.

Cissell thinks he cheated a bit to get the job. He hadn't told Audio Adrenaline he was a drummer, so he got to watch the audition tapes of the 120 drummers who tried out for the job. He listened when they talked about the kind of drummer they wanted, someone who had a certain type of drum set and who hit hard.

The band wanted someone like Led Zeppelin's John Bonham or "Animal from the Muppets," Cissell said. Fortunately, he continued, "That's the kind of drummer I think I am."

He began playing with the band six years ago. Getting a job with a rock band was his primary goal, he admits, but the spiritual part of the experience has since become more important.

Audio Adrenaline, who have been called the Aerosmith of Christian rock, has performed at Christian music festivals where 80,000 people filled football stadiums. His grandparents talk in awe of going to concerts where young people are crying and singing the lyrics of each song. "At those concerts, there's so much joy and feeling," Tom Seabaugh says. "... It builds you up and puts pep in you."

At home in Nashville, where he lives with his wife, Rhondi, Cissell belongs to an organization that helps get young people off the streets by providing a place for them to skateboard. That's just one example of the kind of fine young man their grandson is, his grandparents say. "He loves people regardless of their race or creed," Tom Seabaugh said.

More than 2,000 tickets have been sold for the concert so far. If the whole clan comes to the concert there may be 100 people cheering especially hard for the drummer.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182