Damien Jurado and David Bazan

I've written a significant number of posts about different aspects of faith and popular music. The most recent post included mention of David Bazan. This post is about Damien Jurado, a friend of and collaborator with Bazan.

'Damien Jurado and Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan have much in common, from their shared conservative Christian upbringing to their refusal to conform to the expectations of their growing fan-bases—either the college radio kids in their Weezer t-shirts or the cool church kids, squirming uneasily as Pedro breaks into “Rapture” a vividly descriptive song about adultery.

Before Bazan had college students poring over his lyric sheets, he was drumming for Jurado in a series of local Seattle bands—The Guilty, Linus and Coolidge. They’ve collaborated on most of Jurado’s records and bounced ideas off each other throughout their respective careers.'

'While this artist [Jurado] is known as a sort of darling in the indie folk scene, his roots are in the Christian punk/emo scene of the Pacific NW in the 90s. With connections to Pedro the Lion, Roadside Monument, Poor Old Lu, etc. Jurado released some 7″ singles on the then-fledgling Christian label Tooth and Nail Records. Even his debut was a co-release with Tooth and Nail and SubPop, the latter a connection that came through his friend Jeremy Enigk of Sunny Day Real Estate.'

'Jurado originally signed with “Sub-Pop” records in 1997 releasing Water Ave S., (1997), Rehearsals for Departure (1999) and Ghost of David (2000), all of which share a standard folk flavour. In 2002, Jurado worked alongside David Bazan to produce I Break Chairs, which took a rock-influenced turn, before signing with “Secretly Canadian” records in 2005 to produce five more albums which garnered popularity and a sizable following. But in 2012, Jurado released Maraqopa, immediately noticed for its shift in style and storytelling method, sonically transporting listeners to a dream-like world.'

Jurado's 'eleventh full-length album, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son (2014) stands out as visionary and a triumph of creativity. The album is a distinct stylistic change from his previous Seattle-born acoustic folk/Americana to Jurado’s new latin-inspired, sci-fi, psychedelic spiritual folk. Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son is a concept album along with Jurado’s previous Maraqopa (2012) and his newest Vision of Us on the Land (2016), forming a cohesive narrative-based sci-fi trilogy.'

'Jurado had a dream about a musician on a journey of personal and spiritual discovery, and that dream catalyzed the songs that would become 2012’s Maraqopa. And then he realized he had more of the dream left to tell, and those songs became 2014’s Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son. And now comes Visions Of Us On The Land, the third installment and a conscious post-script to the original dream.

“The first two are really connected in the fact that they follow this story of this musician who sort of disappears from life and just goes out to seek and find himself,” says Jurado. “And while he’s trying to find himself, he sees the deep need for God and love, and wonders, ‘What does all that mean, and if love overtakes me, what will I become? Am I willing to let go of me for this thing called love? What if it transforms me? What is this thing called God? What if it takes over my life? What am I risking here?’ There’s all sorts of levels. The third record is really about him and his life companion going and seeking out whatever that is on what is pretty much Earth, but it’s barren and no longer inhabited by anyone. It’s pretty much an Adam and Eve scenario, I guess. This new album is sort of about experiencing a journey of the mind. What is all that you are?”'

Jurado also says: 'I’ve been a Christian since I was 17. For a long time it didn’t play a role in my music, though in some ways I can’t say that entirely because I’m under the belief that God is in everything I do, whether it is making dinner for my family, driving a car, or writing a song. God is in everything, as is creation. But where does it play in Maraqopa and the new album? It plays into the story in a big way only because the main character doesn’t know whether he’s dead or alive. When he goes back to Maraqopa there are certain things that are revealed to him that he didn’t know before. One is that they are awaiting the second coming of Christ, and it turns out that for them it’s by way of a spaceship. After his car accident the main character undergoes an inner change. He becomes a beacon, or radio tower, between heaven and earth, and the people of Maraqopa realize that they need him.

I think for me, the spiritual side of my faith opened up my music in a giant way. Looking back it’s not that strange. You have so many musical artists, from Johnny Cash to John Coltrane, who were immersed in spirituality. If you are in some ways open to letting God move through you, I guarantee you that you’re going to come up with some of the most creative music you’ve ever heard.'

'Jurado uses science fiction and mystery to open up himself, his faith, his understanding of God to speak in visions and images that are potentially uncomfortable and strange in order to better understand his own struggles with doubt and depression.'

I wrote an article on these themes for Seen and Unseen entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion'. The article explores how popular music conjures sacred space through a survey of inter-connections between faith and music. The article includes a link to my Spotify playlist 'Closer to the light' which includes a wide selection of the music I mentioned in this article. 

My co-authored book The Secret Chord explores aspects of a similar interplay between faith and music (and the Arts, more broadly). Posts related to the themes of The Secret Chord can be found here.

Check out the following too to explore further:

• Body Piercing Saved My Life
• The Ocean Blue, Denison Whitmer, Innocence Mission and Sufjan Stevens
• ROCK OF AGES: JESUS IN POPULAR SONGS
• International Times: Dark Intense Music
David Ackles and After the Fire
• David Ackles, Chris Bell, Bryan Maclean
• God Gave Rock 'N' Roll To You
• Jesus Music - 1 & 2
• The Jesus Rock Revolution and the Jesus Movement
• When Jesus Met Hippies
• A Rough Guide to Christian Art
• Looking down the wrong end of a telescope
• Pop's holy rollers
• Perhaps the most underrated band ever
• Rock gets Religion
• Ed Kowalczyk and Scott Stapp: Angels on a razor
• Hidden Gems - Bill Fay & Michael Morley
• Electric Eden and the New Folk Revival
• Salt and Sweetners
• The mystery at the heart of music - 1 and 2
• Inspiration from the Psalms
• 'Tryin' to throw your arms around the world' click here - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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Damien Jurado - A.M. A.M.

Music from a tumultuous year

Music from a tumultuous year - some sourced from 'Best music of the worst year':

Mavis Staples shared a new collaboration with Jeff Tweedy, “All in It Together,” with all proceeds from the track going to charity. “The song speaks to what we’re going through now — everyone is in this together, whether you like it or not,” Staples said in a statement. “It doesn’t matter how much money you have, what race or sex you are, where you live…it can still touch you. It’s hit so many people in our country and around the world in such a horrible way and I just hope this song can bring a little light to the darkness. We will get through this but, we’re going to have to do it together. If this song is able to bring any happiness or relief to anyone out there in even the smallest way, I wanted to make sure that I helped to do that.”

On Lockdown Songs Nashville heroes Buddy and Julie Miller collected nine topical songs, beginning with Public Service Song #1: Stay Home, that they wrote and recorded during the tumultuous year that has consumed all our lives. This collection includes the beautiful The Last Bridge You Will Cross (For John Lewis).

Michael McDermott's What In The World delivers a propulsive punch that reflects anger and passion hurtles out of the starting gate as Subterranean Homesick Blues meets We Didn’t Start The Fire. He rattles off lyrics about a new world order with “walls along the border/Kids in cages/Executive orders/Welfare for billionaires/People hungry everywhere”, dropping in references to James Joyce, Paul Revere, the President and Iron Eyes Cody, as he presciently declares “Dark days coming for the U.S.A.”.

H.E.R., "I Can't Breathe." Backed by a spare beat and atmospheric choir, the 23-year-old R&B star sings with a soulfully aching, yearning voice and adds potent spoken-word passages about generations of pain, fear and anxiety.

Sounds of Blackness, "Sick and Tired." After five decades of preaching positivity, the Twin Cities ensemble got fired up post-George Floyd, adapting civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer's classic 1964 refrain into the fiercest, most powerful song in their repertoire. This horn-blasted, gospel-infused call to action is the perfect sound coming from Minneapolis in 2020.

Mickey Guyton, "Black Like Me." Sonically, this piano ballad could fit seamlessly on contemporary country radio. Her heartbreak is about being different in a small town and in Nashville. "If you think we live in the land of the free," the Black country vocalist croons with pain in her voice, "you should try to be Black like me."

Rosanne Cash, "Crawl Into the Promised Land." The oft-outspoken singer-songwriter serves up a haunting, hopeful, swampy acoustic blues anthem. "Deliver me from tweets and lies/ and purify me in the sun," she sings.

Lucinda Williams, "Man Without a Soul." With its warbly, slashing guitar, this slow-burn blues tears into a certain president without mentioning his name. The song has more dignity and soul than its target.

Jim White made a video for The Divided States of America, the final song from his new album, Misfit's Jubilee: "I'm typically not the political type but these times we're riding out here, they're anything but typical. At this moment in our collective history it makes sense that voices normally content to remain silent should be lifted in outrage, howling, exhorting our minds and hearts to focus on a singular goal---higher ground for all, not just the rich folks."

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Jim White - The Divided States Of America.. 

The American South’s major contribution to the world

In a post for The Imaginative Conservative Sean Busick notes that historian Michael O’Brien has called the South’s music Southern culture’s “major contribution” to the world (Rethinking the South: Essays in Intellectual History). In that spirit, he offers some recent Southern albums (and an older box set) as musical suggestions for giving as Christmas presents. 

His list includes: The Secret Sisters, “Put Your Needle Down”; Doc Watson, “Southbound”; Johnny Cash, “Out Among the Stars”; Gram Parsons, “180 Gram”; R.E.M., “MTV Unplugged 1991/2001” and Goodbye, Babylon, an amazing 2003 gospel box set. He also notes that The Civil Wars, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, the Alabama Shakes, and Jason Isbell have all recorded albums worth giving a listen. 

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The Secret Sisters - River Jordan.

Ed Kowalczyk and Scott Stapp: Angels on a razor

'Along with Bush, Live was among the earliest adopters of post-Nirvana “bubblegrunge,” which infiltrated rock radio in the mid-’90s and paved the way for the eventual dominance of Creed and Nickelback.' (Grantland)

'Together for more than 15 years, Live's quest for faith and truth is fascinating. Though lead singer and lyricist Ed Kowalczyk apparently grew up in a Christian home, he came to resent the religion in the years leading to the formation of Live. With the band's 1991 debut Mental Jewelry, based on the writings of Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, Kowalczyk – who had apparently embraced Eastern religion – blasted Christianity in the song, "Operation Spirit (The Tyranny of Tradition)."

Rejecting Christianity would not prove permanent, however. The band's 1994 breakthrough sophomore effort, Throwing Copper, marked a seemingly reluctant return to Christian imagery, though offering a few mixed messages in the process–the cover art is an indictment of Christians too pious to show love and compassion. Not until Live's fourth album, 1999's The Distance to Here, was there a seemingly dramatic turnaround in Kowalczyk's beliefs. "Where Fishes Go" is a solid illustration of evangelism, "Run to the Water" a powerful testament of grace and renewal, and "Dance with You" is virtually a prayer of thanks and surrender. Such themes continued to a lesser extent into Live's fifth effort, 2001's V, with such faith–based songs as "Hero of Love" and "Call Me a Fool."' (Christianity Today)

'Kowalczyk's first solo album, Alive, ... is as equally dramatic and anthemic as Live but with more of an intimate singer-songwriter feel to it ...

perhaps the biggest change is with the singer's Christian faith coming to the fore. There are songs like Soul Whispers, with the line "My stained-glass heart lay shattered on the floor of the church"; first single Grace is about repentance and moving on ("every saint used to be a sinner ..."); and for Kowalczyk, a song like Rome is not only his tribute to the city's beauty but a homecoming of sorts.

"I have ventured back into the Christian faith of my youth, and I was brought up in a Roman Catholic Christian background, so going to the Vatican and St Peters, the depth of that heritage was really in a way coming home for me because I grew up with it in a such a strong way. It's a very full circle spiritual moment, and very powerful."' (The New Zealand Herald)

'There are many factors contributing to the uplifting feel of “The Flood and the Mercy,” the second solo effort from ex-Live frontman Ed Kowalczyk.


There’s the gently jangling production of Jamie Candiloro; the singer’s spiritual lyrics, rooted in his Christian faith and a synthesis of other beliefs; and the appearance of vocalist Rachael Yamagata and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck on three tracks: “Supernatural Fire,” “All That I Wanted” and “Holy Water Tears.”
But there are bigger, albeit unseen, influences at work here, says Kowalczyk, 42 — his three daughters and baby Paul, born in August.

“With every kid, there has just been a deepening of my humanity, because there’s no more of a feet-on-the-ground moment than having a child,”

Fatherhood has forever changed him as a writer. “There’s the beauty of it, the extraordinary depth of it, and all the challenges of it,” he says. “The fact that you’re taking care of these vulnerable creatures, these new people, is amazing. And when I listen to the music, particularly in my solo career, I can feel that change.”' (SF Examiner)

Scott Stapp, lead singer of Creed, has been on a similar journey. Mark Joseph writes that:

'In Sinner's Creed, Stapp's finally comes clean, offering explanations for his zig-zaggy behavior, revealing himself to be the type of follower whom the good Lord might have had in mind when he remarked of the prostitute who washed his feet with her tears that she loved Him much because she'd been forgiven much.
Even for people like me who call Scott a friend, the book is full of surprises and stunners. Who knew that the lead singer of one of the biggest-selling rock bands in the world grew up listening to Take 6 because his Dad wouldn't allow for non-black forms of Christian rock? Or that as a young boy he was taken to a Benny Hinn crusade whereupon the faith healer prophecied that Stapp's voice would be heard by millions and then lightly touched his head, causing him to fall backwards, slain in the spirit. Or that his stepfather was a twisted fundamentalist who once humiliated Stapp by pulling down his pants and spanking him in front of his siblings and on another occasion spanked his own wife in front of her children.

Stapp's book is brutally honest and pulls no punches. He's no Bono, but he may just be the Johnny Cash of our era, a restless soul who loves both God and rock and roll, but battles his demons in a manner that brings to mind Al Green's admonition to his girl "Belle:" "It's you that I want but it's Him that I need."

And just like Johnny, Stapp has his June, a marketing executive named Jaclyn, a devout Christian woman who has worked hard to keep her husband on the straight and narrow. Stapp recounts their chance meeting with obvious joy, but readily admits that even with her at his side, the road hasn't been easy, and has included a few run-ins with the law.

Sinner's Creed is about many things: the excesses of fundamentalism and the victims that are sometime left in its wake, the nature of sin, the ups and downs of a rock and roll lifestyle and the value of faith in God to keep a person in the spotlight grounded in reality. But at its core it's about one man coming to terms with the incongruity of the vocation he's chosen and the faith he refuses to give up.'

'Scott Stapp’s Proof of Life is a poignant snapshot of the artist, showcasing his journey over the past several years. It doesn’t shy away from encountering the dark places that he’s wandered into, acknowledging those missteps nor does it neglect highlighting the faith-filled elements that have helped to draw the artist back into the light. Proof of Life is an insightful and honest record, capturing Stapp at his best lyrically and musically, proving to be a great listen.' (soul-audio)

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Ed Kowalczyk - Angels On A Razor.

Babel - the sound of transcendent music

Second albums are tricky affairs and, despite three years of preparation, Mumford and Sons' Babel is no exception.

One issue is that what surprised on the first album is now familiar territory when it comes to the second. Hence, in part, the plethora of comments in reviews that Babel is Sigh No More part II. That is only partly the case. Negatively, there is no equivalent surprise on Babel to the shock of Sigh No More's opening lines, 'Serve God, love me and mend ...' which set up the then unfashionable combination of driven folk strumming with spiritual insight which characterised that album. Babel retains the use of religious language but has less to offer in the way of those insightful aphorisms, couplets and verses which leapt out of so many of the songs on Sigh No More. This, combined with its relentlessly first person narratives, means that Babel, although consistently using the imagery of darkness and light, has less contrast, less light and shade, than Sigh No More.

Babel is generally a darker album with its repeated themes of leaving, loss and wandering set primarily in first person strained romances. That is not the full picture however as several of the songs seem both more powerful and more logical as addresses to God rather than a human lover. I'm thinking here particularly of 'Hopeless Wanderer' - a prayer for constancy having found the right road - and 'Below My Feet' - a prayer for ongoing learning and service having received the message from Jesus that all is well.

The darkness, loss and wandering that suffuse Babel is then fused with the transcendent sound and anthemic choruses that Mumford and Sons conjure up with banjo, double bass, guitar, keyboards and vocals. In this way the songs, despite their content, provide Mumford Moments - what the Urban Dictionary describes as moments when you become really engrossed with and entranced by the transcendent music of Mumford and Sons bringing on a feeling of euphoria or spirituality. The essence of Mumford and Sons' sound and success is this sense of transcendence which they create  The restlessness of which they write is the precursor to the search for participation in something greater than they know. That is transcendence and their euphoric music achieves this even when the words they sing focus more on restlessness than rising. The religious language they use and the spiritual insights they bring serve to ground this transcendent sound in the search for something more so that their songs are not simply motivational or exhortatory but instead sound and sense are one and the same.

Written Pre-Mumfords, these words from Bill Friskics-Warren in his book I'll Take You There: Pop Music and the Urge for Transcendence are nevertheless relevant:

'Records that articulate an urge for transcendence, and a great number of them do, are not pegged as easily as the bins of retailers might suggest. Less the domains of genres like rock, soul, and rap, they might more appropriately be termed "transcendental music" - music that, regardless of stylistic signature or marketing niche, points beyond itself, urging listeners to look past the mundane and to see themselves and their striving in a new light. Those who make transcendental music understand how this works only too well. They typically have had their worlds opened up in much the same way. Johnny Cash, who struggled, as he sang, to "subdue the beast within," was drawn to the existential conflict in the songs of Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, just as Dylan and Kristofferson were enthralled by the work of the Beat Poets and the French symbolists before them. Al Green, a soul singer who eventually became a preacher, identified with the spiritual desolation of Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Polly Harvey, a post-punk, art-school dropout from rural England, sought cathartic renewal in the blues, much as her Irish counterpart Van Morrison first did some thirty years before her.

Records of a transcendental bent, those made by people trying to get higher - and often, to take us there as well - are not peripheral to the history of popular music; they lie at the heart of it. The restlessness that they express often speaks to people as profoundly as what they hear in church or at their mosque or synagogue - more profoundly at times, especially lately, as many wrestle with questions of providence in our seemingly more volatile world. Countless people in the United States, for example, looked to Bruce Springsteen and his album The Rising for comfort and insight after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. In today's post-Christian milieu - a world defined increasingly by multiculturalism and globalization - pop music frequently serves as a substitute for conventional religious observance, or at least provides spiritual clarity and guidance where it might be lacking. Pop music has for decades possessed the power, much as liturgies and sacred music have for centuries, to transport the human spirit and serve as a vehicle for the transcendence we seek.'

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Mumford and Sons - Below My Feet.

Bright Morning Stars

For Bright Morning Stars Cindy Wasserman and Frank Lee Drennen, who are Dead Rock West collected the old time spirituals of Blind Willie Johnson, the contemporary gospel of the Staple Singers, and a desperate plea by the Jesus and Mary Chain, plus six more songs of strength and hope, with the help of producer Peter Case.

It was Wasserman who envisioned an album inspired by the lore of angels, while it was Drennen who suggested they seek guidance from Case, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter-and producer who understood the pull of a spiritually-based project. “All the great singers eventually get around to recording gospel-themed music, from the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers to Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan,” says Case. “This record isn’t just for people with a certain religious bent—it’s a calling out, a reaching out,” says Drennen. ‘These songs urge you to look up, whatever that means to you.”


Case has also been revisiting the past as his latest offering, The Case Files, collects demos, out-takes, one live shot and other rarities from the 1985-2010 span of his solo career. Tim Peacock writes: "The Case Files is the sound of Peter Case pulling back the doors of his creaking back catalogue only to be buried under a minor avalanche of semi-forgotten, rough-hewn gems. It may not be the obvious point of entry for the uninitiated, but you shouldn’t let that put you off. If you like your troubadours on the outspoken, intelligent and melodic side, you’ll be thrilled by these ornery delights."
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Dead Rock West - Ain't No Grave.

The Million Dollar Quartet and the Godmother of Rock 'n' Roll

Yesterday's Independent had a feature on the Million Dollar Quartet, in the light of the new musical of that name which opens at the Noel Coward Theatre on 28th February.

The musical is inspired by the fabled Million Dollar Quartet of 4 December 1956, when Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, all enjoying the first flushes of success, found themselves in the same studio. The show imagines these fathers of rock'n'roll and country bashing out hits including "Blue Suede Shoes", "Folsom Prison Blues", "That's All Right", "I Walk the Line", "Great Balls of Fire", "Hound Dog", "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and many more.

But as the article points out that wasn't what happened at all. The truth is less immediately satisfying but much more interesting. There is no evidence that they played any of these songs – none are on the tapes. Instead, there are fragments of gospel and standards, with a smattering of rock'n'roll.

What this demonstrates is the extent to which rock and pop music emerged out of the Church. The early stars of Rock 'n' Roll, like Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, drew on a shared background of Spirituals, Gospel, the charismata of Southern Pentecostalism and all faced anxiety over their decision to substitute secular words and movements for sacred songs and mannerisms.


This influence formed the centrepiece of Mick Csaky's BBC biopic, The Godmother of Rock & Roll: Sister Rosetta Tharpe. During the 40s, 50s and 60s Sister Rosetta Tharpe played a highly significant role in the creation of rock and roll, inspiring musicians like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. She may not be a household name, but this flamboyant African-American gospel singing superstar, with her spectacular virtuosity on the newly-electrified guitar, was one of the most influential popular musicians of the 20th century.

Tharpe was born in 1915, close to the Mississippi in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. At the age of six she was taken by her evangelist mother Katie Bell to Chicago to join Roberts Temple, Church of God in Christ, where she developed her distinctive style of singing and guitar playing. At the age of 23 she left the church and went to New York to join the world of show business, signing with Decca Records. For the following 30 years she performed extensively to packed houses in the USA and subsequently Europe, before her death in 1973.

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The Million Dollar Quartet - Just A Little Talk With Jesus.

Loved Later

Loved watching the last Later in this series on iPlayer tonight. With Arcade Fire, Robert Plant and the Band of Joy and Mavis Staples on, I was in musical heaven. Especially loved Mavis tearing up at the clip of Pops playing 'Gotta Serve Somebody' and ripping into 'I'll Take You There'.

What an incredible musical journey - taking in Stairway To Heaven and Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down - Robert Plant has been on! His career has been reinvented - as with Johnny Cash and more latterly Tom Jones - by plumbing the Gospel roots of rock and roll and doing so in the company of those who know them best both musically and spiritually, such as T. Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller.

Arcade Fire build a wonderful wall of sound with the angst and adrenaline of adolescence. Like them, I hope that something pure can last!  

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Mavis Staples - I'll Take You There.

God Gave Rock 'N' Roll To You (1)

Rock and pop music, in large part, emerged out of the Church. Its early stars, like the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, drew on a shared background of Spirituals, Gospel, the charismata of Southern Pentecostalism and all faced anxiety over their decision to substitute secular words and movements for sacred songs and mannerisms.

This beginning, which was felt as a betrayal of sacred music by those involved and by the Churches that judged them has meant that, for the most part, Christian churches have been hostile to the music that young people choose to listen to, and the music industry has responded with equal hostility, believing that any song with 'Jesus' in the title will sink without trace. Robert Beckford made that argument in a Channel 4 programme shown a couple of Christmasses ago and to ground his argument pointed to the drug culture and Eastern religions that characterised Flower Power in the 60s, the influence of Satanism in Heavy Metal, Black Metal and Shock Rock, the commitment of many hip hop artists to the Nation of Islam and the way in which the Christian Right in the US has sought to censor many such artists since the 1980s.

That programme ended with Beckford giving an impassioned plea for the Church to effectively engage with popular culture. That is something I endorse at the same time as being amazed by the extent to which Beckford’s argument overlooked many significant figures in Rock and Pop who have sought to express their faith through their music. If you watched God Gave Rock And Roll To You you would have come away with the impression that apart from Cliff Richard, Kanye West, and Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae star, no one else in the history of Rock and Pop has ever dared to challenge the concensus that Religion and Rock and Roll do not mix.

The reality is far more complicated and in this series of posts I'm going to highlight some of the people that Beckford overlooked in order to think about ways in which the good news of Christianity has been expressed in popular culture by musicians drawing on the influence of musical traditions from the American South.

But first, here are two stories that would seem to back up Beckford’s thesis. The soul star Al Green is one of those who has felt the tension between flesh and Spirit, secular and sacred. He left a multi-million dollar career to sing Gospel and, in the film The Gospel According To Al Green, explains that he was moved by the Spirit to do so.

When Al Green is moved by the Spirit it leads him to leave his so-called ‘secular’ recording career to sing Gospel and to pastor a Church. His decision frees him to sing exclusively about the light that he has found in Jesus Christ and to preach the Gospel as he does so. Because of his past career and because he continues to sing his old hits he is able to continue to sing to people outside the church as well as to those in the Church but for many who, like Al Green, want to sing exclusively about the light that they have found in Jesus that opportunity is not extended and they make their living in Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) singing mainly to the already converted.

Larry Norman is often thought of as one of the founding figures of CCM but actually began his career recording for mainstream record labels and singing songs that named the name of Jesus and critiqued the society in which he lived. As a pioneer in writing Rock music explicitly from the perspective of a Christian, he attracted criticism from the Church and from the record industry with critics claiming that he was “too rock and roll for the Church and too religious for the rock and rollers.”

Eventually, the pressure from the record companies became too much and he launched his own record label which played an important role in establishing the separate strand of music that we now know as CCM. However, while he was recording for mainstream labels he wrote many songs that were not simply about the light of Christ but also about what you can see by the light. An example is the song Nightmare#71 from So Long Ago The Garden which uses a dream format to speak a prophetic warning to Western society that is still relevant even though it was first released in 1973.

Is the sacred/secular divide found in these two stories inevitable? Why/Why not?

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Al Green - I Love You.

Forgiveness and love

Reflecting on today's gospel (Luke 7. 36 - 8.3) for a sermon, I began thinking about contemporary parallels to the experience of the woman who poured perfume on Jesus' feet.

I've had Johnny Cash's Unchained album on this car recently and the song, 'Kneeling Drunkard's Plea', is one possible parallel. This is a song about an alcoholic prompted to cry, ‘Lord, have mercy on me’ through the death of his mother. Johnny Cash, of course, had his own experiences of addiction to overcome - I've also been reading the Steve Turner biography The Man Called Cash (Bloomsbury, 2006) - and, for Cash, returning to his Christian faith was one of the factors that eventually made that possible. The song comes from the series of albums called American Recordings that Cash made towards the end of his life in which he sings honestly and affectingly of sin and the salvation that comes through repentance.

Another parallel story would be that of my friend Mandy Fenn from St Margaret's Barking. By giving her life to Jesus, Mandy has moved from self harming to setting up groups that give support and help to others who self harm. The work she now does is an expression of her gratitude for all that Jesus has done for her.

The story that I eventually used in my sermon is about the artist Peter Howson and his painting, The Third Step. Howson became a very successful painter at a young age but for a number of reasons was not a happy person. An alcoholic and a drug user, he would drink and drug himself into a stupour. One night, when he had done just that, his 13 year old daughter Lucie packed a suitcase, let herself out of the house and for several hours wandered through a Glasgow park frequented by drug addicts and tramps. Howson said, “you have to reach your own personal gutter before you ask for help.” Realising how he had failed Lucie was that moment for Howson.

As part of his rehabilitation he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. In AA, Howson explains, the Third Step comes when alcoholics have “made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.” The Third Step, then, is about his “conversion to Christianity and giving up the booze.” In the painting a man has been stripped and is crawling out of a grave towards a church and the light of Christ. The painting shows the moment when a person in torment realises that it doesn’t have to be that way. Like all of Howson’s work it is a dark picture but, while dark, it is a painting of hope, not despair. This is the way of Christ, the way of darkness endured in order to reach the light, the way of salvation.