Fri 18 Apr 2008
Today’s featured music comes all the way from the Netherlands. Ponoka plays indie pop melodies in all the good ways. This is their video for the song “September:”
Thu 17 Apr 2008
By Eddie Exposito
I was raised in a moral home, high on religiosity and regulation, but low on gospel. In that traditionally Catholic meadow my musical foundations were developed around a monolithic console stereo with a turntable and an eight-track tape player that belted out everything from Carole King and Stevie Wonder to Janis Joplin and Elvis. I can remember sitting on the shag carpet in my add-on den in the suburbs of New Orleans with my back leaning up against the vibrating speakers imagining myself playing in the band and becoming enamored with what I would later find out is called “the groove”.
Years later I would learn to play percussion taking up the drum kit as my mainstay and forming a local band called Fresh Young Minds which became highly popular in the early 90’s around the New Orleans music scene. God converted me during that time translating me from a bitter atheist into a green believer and I no longer pursued music as a profession; however, my love of music has never died. After battling rabid non-beat Gothardites and a stint with radical fundamentalism whereby I almost literally burned about seventy-eight CDs that were not “Christian” enough, I landed in a confused marshland not sure of what to listen to or whether I could even listen to anything at all without feeling guilty or overwhelmed by hyper-analysis.
Fast-forward to the present: I have a wife and four daughters, over a decade in the faith, pastor a local church, and have found a new love for music. I had gotten burned out on the CCM rotations after they seemed to me to be generating more cheese than gold. At some point I also did not believe that I could stomach yet another love song to Jesus that sounded like a sensual ballad from the star struck to lovelorn. And so I began to uncover my old discs and listened to forbidden rock fruits and nibbled on jazz-ensembled nectar and asked myself exactly why it was that I almost burned all of this creativity?
For the first time I saw these songs as gifts rather than enemies. Sure, some were rotten but I quickly found out that even the rotten fruits were good in that they taught me how to think through the volatile topic of music biblically and became examples that I could use in teaching the proper use vs. the improper use of creative talent. I began for the first time to see that I didn’t have to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater as it were and could instead take each song on its own merit to see if it had any redeemable qualities. Suddenly my musical acumen was not about castigating an entire musical genre but in taking the opportunity and time to listen, analyze, and learn. Later, I would see the tremendous benefit in applying this approach to my children and their schooling.
I found a great sale on refurbished mp3 players and bought three of them; one for me and one for each of my oldest daughters who are ten and twelve. I loaded our players with a variety of songs and tunes including two albums by Anathallo, some Thelonious Monk, the White Stripes, and a few Verdi arias. Their assignment was to listen to the songs and be ready to discuss them with me. They were armed with notepads and pencils as we sat down in our den listening to a few tunes from the selection on our Bose acoustic wave machine. We discussed dissonance and syncopation and crescendos and dynamics and tone and timbre and harmony and bass and counterpoint and rhythm; every aspect of appreciation. I gave them print outs of the song lyrics and we combed over them biblically to see if their subject and message melded or conflicted with Scripture and we talked more about chord structures and arrangements and whether they even liked the songs at all.
What I discovered is that instead of making a long list of musical do’s and don’ts and tabooed types, we should see music as a tool: a tool to teach our children how to discern for themselves what is worthy of discovery and what is worthy of the trash heap. Far more productive conversations have come from this type of discussion and discourse than from me simply banning certain bands from our home.
Give your children the tools they need to figure things out for themselves and you’ve stimulating their minds to think biblically with a critical eye while equipping them for life. Simply ban, dodge, and restrict their choices and you’ll only end up stirring the flesh.
Eddie Exposito and his wife Michelle have four daughters (Elizabeth-Kay, Carlyn, Jeanne-Marie, and Ruby). They have been married for fifteen years living just outside of Slidell, LA where he serves as the pastor of Sovereign Grace Fellowship. He is also director of Sovereign Grace Homeland Missions (SGHM.org) which ministers to the greater New Orleans area, a rebuilding and evangelism outreach established as a result of hurricane Katrina, where the work to rebuild homes and lives continues to this very day.
Tue 15 Apr 2008
The group’s Myspace page introduces them by saying:
“1998: A bunch of Jesus-loving, jalopy-gospel way-backers get together and do creative things: Shrieking, speaking, flailing, failing, storytelling, fear-quelling. In the process, songs and stories are smithed and written, friendships and families are stretched and shaken, stirred and strengthened. Genre-gender-class-past-death-defiers and town-crying demystifiers of mystery history lead these pacifistic, full-frontally ballistic missives. Best of all, on frequent occasions, we see entombed voices raisin’ and we peek through the haze. ***NOW: More than one dog year together, these doors’re gonna swing wiiiiide.”
The group’s unique approach to worship is borne from a unique community, The Bridge, in Portland, OR. Several years and three albums worth of material later, the lamp of creativity is still burning brightly for worship. I recently spoke with Todd and Angie Fadel from the group to find out more about them, their creative process, ideas of worship and views on “Christian” music.
We’ve done this thing in practice for a while now. Angie and I have been writing songs together for about 10 years. One of the things I felt was really helpful going into songwriting was implementing a “no criticism” zone. We give ourselves totally leeway about anything; any words, any melodies, whatever. We record it all and then, after that time has passed, we go back and see what works, but not mid-way through the process, which I think a lot of musicians do that. Many artists get stuck because anytime something comes out, they’re critical, either of their fellow band members or whatever and they’ve got a real specific idea of how they want it to sound and impose that on everyone but that ends up being a real creativity killer. We’re really mindful of that in our process. We are not going to attack each other’s ideas, we just let them free-flow and then pick the ones that are our favorites, which there could be more than a few and we often find more than a single song.
That’s pretty much it. Prior to the Bridge starting, there was a really close-knit group of musicians and artists, involved in things like the TOM Festival. The result was that there was just a group of people that started hanging out together. The Bridge started after that initial group had been hanging out together for about four years. A bunch of people came down from Washington state with the hopes of starting a church for this group of people.
But what was original about the way they did it was, rather than coming down and saying “This is what we think needs to happen in a church,” they fell in love with the culture that was already existed and kind of asked “can we be you” and came into our culture rather than the other way around and then just saw how those things would play out in terms of authentic expression of worship and faith. As a result, we were really allowed to flourish in this new community and we were all grateful. But it did take some time. I think a lot of us were very skeptical at first about these people who kept saying “No one can take your future from you. You are valuable and we love you.” We had all, to some degree, been burned by older adults saying “This all sounds fine, but you’ve got to get right with God” and not giving us any direction other than saying things like “You’ve really just to tap into the Lord!” Then these other people came and just said “You show us what you’ve learned.” That sort of leadership drew a huge creative spirit out of all us in a community way.
After a good year of this community had gone by, we’d written a ton of songs and wanted to record. We rarely would do any songs that were written by people outside of our community. So we wanted to capture that in an album but didn’t know if we should call it “The Bridge.” As we were talking about it, one of the co-pastors, Ken, was praying for the music team and he prayed that God would be with these “Agents of Future,” and we just thought, “Well, that’s it,” that’s the name for the group. It wasn’t describing the music, it was describing us creative people. Agents of Future is just sort of the name for what we call ourselves as a collective. At least that’s the idea! Any time there’s any songs we want to record that come out of our community, we call it that.
Yes, that’s all it is. We’ve only done three or four actual concerts out in the community with the music, just because …… Angie and I ran an all ages venue in Portland for about five years doing about 1,200 shows. It was a real crazy time in music where we had a chance to develop relationships with some really amazing artists like Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Le Tigre, The Thermals, all the Portland bands you might have heard of, they came through the club. They’d just be starting out or we’d put them on a bill to help them get going. It developed in us a real respect that, in a very similar way as to when the people from Everett came down without imposing themselves on us, it made us realize that the context doesn’t necessarily fit. If I was 
going to open for Death Cab for Cutie, the context doesn’t fit because our point is a real participatory expression and that doesn’t work well in those performance settings.
From my standpoint, since I’ve been a part of, or at least observing the Christian music thing, I just feel like it’s really been diluted. It’s diluted the strength of people’s personalities and people’s spirit. But any type of marketing runs the risk of diluting what the people’s hearts are really about. It’s almost worse when you bring in people’s faith because then you’re taking something mystical and trying to make it quantifiable. You end up with people counting how many times Jesus is mentioned, or Bible verses, but that’s a joke to everybody. That’s a joke to artists whose audience is primarily Christian and it’s a joke to anyone else. So of course creativity does not compute when you’re talking about Christian contemporary music because it’s been divorced from it. Anybody whose creative sees that dilution happen when marketing is involved.
So the best way we can share our stuff is real directly. If people want to learn methods or us to encourage writers who are already there, or maybe even writers who don’t even know that they’re writers, artists and dancers, in their own communities, that’s what we feel called to do. We’d love to make a living at what we feel God has given us a gift for.
Any time someone knows that they can make a living off of it, you run the risk of that. There are few people who can really pull it off, like Radiohead or the Beatles and really bring their fans along on this artistic journey. There are very few people like that, that people say “wherever they go, we’re going to follow them.”
And honestly, when the smallest run of LPs you can do is 1,000, you’ve got to figure out some way to sell it. So you’ve got to hear in a nutshell, “Why should I buy your record instead of this person’s record?” You have to get rid of your product, so it’s inherent. I was in a band on an alternative Christian label in the ‘90’s and it was hilarious trying to define for them what we were doing. I had been a big fan of Steve Malkmus’ lyrics in the band Pavement. So the lyrically approach, I got a lot of inspiration from people like him and Frank Black and most Christian labels don’t have a grid for that style, so you’re just left with words like “raw” and “passionate.” But that robs it of its organic process to become similarity driven and all inclusive.
Our goal is to show that you don’t lose your personality, you gain it. If anything, everyone finds their place in our community. There’s not a sense of one person taking over. Everybody is equally a part of it. That’s no easy task but we have really made that a priority in our community, to make sure that every single person gets a chance.
Recently, we had someone come to one of our services who lived in our neighborhood. She had a beautiful singing voice and we asked her to sing with us. We wanted to support that. She was in her mid 60’s or 70’s and just passed away. That was a reminder of how important it is to include and support people and use their talents and love them for who they are. Her daughter said that when we expressed excitement about her being involved in music, that she felt like God had answered her prayers. For me, it’s not about the music or the art, if I’m giving someone a sense that God has answered their prayers because they feel part of a community, that’s worth more than making a living at this.
Anthems. Shouted anthems. Spirituals. Punk spirituals. Garage Gospel. Passion before precision. Female-fronted. I play the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, so female-fronted, boogie woogie garage gospel? Garage spirituals.
That was really cool. Before the Bridge, one of the people that was part of the original group introduced us to Glen’s music and we got in touch with him. We just couldn’t believe there was this guy just singing Bible verses. Later, they came through town and we got to meet them all and they all came to church with us to our little home gathering and it was great. I was writing most of the music collaboratively even back then and we felt like we had a connection with Glen.
Then about a year ago, I decided to put together this thing called the WHIRRSHIP , a creative collaboration, sort of a workshop, but moreso just an experiment to see how many different things we could do all at the same time collaboratively. So we asked Glen to be a part of that and he came to the house and I played piano with him during his show. Then when he was doing his next album, he asked me to be a part of that which was a huge opportunity. I love Daniel Smith and we got to record in his studio. It was a great three days, I got to hang out with Lenny and Marian Smith.
We spent a lot of time over the past few years getting to know some people from Enter the Worship Circle. Just on a whim we sent some stuff over to them. It was right after Village Thrift and I thought they might be ready for us. They weren’t. But they did tell us that out of all the stuff they got we were the only original sounding ones because everyone else just mimicked the Enter the Worship Circle style and we had been in our own little niche for so long, we couldn’t do anything but sound different. Our friend Tracy Howe who lives in Colorado and has worked with Ben and Robin Paisley, she’s doing this thing called The Restoration Project, touring with Brian McLaren on his Everything Must Change tour. She helped us be a part of the Fall Out Arts Festival. 
She’s got a bunch of different thing lined up for us this summer. We’ll probably be in Texas and then Colorado and that’s pretty much it. One of the things we really want to do is just sit down in our living room and record. We have like 36 songs that have yet to be recorded so we want to record a triple album in one night! The other thing I thought of was to record all of the songs and then release them one a week and just have people sign up to receive the songs over the course of a year, give ourselves a 36-week head start! As far as the music goes, we’re just trying to gather up these songs.
But one of the things we’re doing that would be cool to let people know about is if they e-mail or message us through Myspace, we’re going to be giving updates on a very regular basis of what we’re doing, whether it’s just putting up a new song or whatever. So we’re working on developing an e-mail list. We just want to maintain that personal connection.
We would love to work with any churches or small communities that are looking tap into everyone in their community and try to find ways to involve and include everyone and just make it feel like nothing they’ve ever felt before. Not run of the mill, this is what a worship service should look like type of thing. If they’re wanting help challenging the way of looking at things, they should let us know. We’d love to be part of that process.
We believe that every community has their own voice. It’s great if they want to use our songs, but our passion is to help them figure out what their songs are for their community.
It can tend to be for some people just “OK, everyone is doing Hillsong now, that’s what we should be doing too.” Hillsong is probably flattered (and they’re making money), that all these churches are using their songs, but how does that make them feel? Do they really think that it makes sense for a church 5,000 miles away to sing exactly what they’re singing and dress like they do?
One term I really want to introduce is “Rubinizing.” Rick Rubin is a famous producer who works with people like Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash, people that we’ve almost forgotten about and he’s helped us look at them in a different light by putting their music into a completely new context. I really believe that if we work hard at including people that have been forgotten by helping to put them in a new context, “Rubinizing” them, I think we could truly see some beautiful things happening in our own communities, realizing that maybe that 87-year old Grandmother who sews in the back of the church, maybe she’s got stories to tell, maybe she’s got artwork she’s not showing because she doesn’t think it’s important to anyone. I feel like that’s the kind of church that would attract the entire world. Not the kind of church we have right now because when an artist goes into most churches, they just don’t feel like they can justify doing what they’re doing.
Trying everything you haven’t tried before. A songwriting game for example. If you put anything in the context of a game, it tricks our minds into feeling that things are approachable and manageable. What we do, we start covertly helping people develop this ability to not be critical of each other’s expression. We involve every age group and background.
I see it as a community being like a 50-legged race. You know the 3-legged race where you’re tied together? Everyone has one leg tied together. At the beginning, it’s the most awkward, gross feeling and you don’t know what to do but then after a while, you just count, 1-2, 1-2 and soon, you have this community, 50 people strong walking, slowly but surely to a goal. That’s possible with any community.
There’s also obviously a context because we’re not going to go and just impost a “Contemporary Service” because I don’t think that’s necessary. People just try to throw this “Contemporary Service” band-aid on stuff and it’s just silly. How do we include everyone? We find out what their voices are, not only with the young but the old people.
So we’ll play games and help people develop tools of being non-critical, helping people to look at one another in a loving, inclusive way, laying their aesthetics and preferences aside in hopes of making a beautiful collage. In fact, one of my future ideas is a media player that would show all of the different media at once. Like the YouTube players that have eight different mini-screens or something but what if the entire player was talking about Grace or something. So you have your musicians, your artists, your storytellers, your dancers, your comics, whatever expression is represented in your community and that player contains every single one of those things. But then each community has their own player and it’s all on one page. How beautiful would that be?! How beautiful is the church of the world! Realizing that these are all different people and expressions, this collage of beauty, that’s what Jesus is wanting us to do for one another. I know that’s a long-term goal, but that’s the type of thing I see happening; people looking at their lives and seeing everything, the imperfections and everything and making it into this way to appreciate what God has given them in their community.
Fri 11 Apr 2008
Featured artist: Bill Mallonee of the Vigilantes of love. Music from Interstates, Romantica, The Foxglove Hunt and more. Welcome to Episode 03!
Episode 03 features interview segments from an October 2007 Colossians Three Sixteen interview with Bill Mallonee, formerly of the Vigilantes of Love (read the entire interview here). Bill reflects on why he believes Roman Catholic artists have had an easier time expressing themselves in art and what he believes the “secret code” of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) to be. Episode 03 also features some great music. Check it out:
The Habañero Hour Episode 03 setlist:
Tue 8 Apr 2008
Beginning a career as a professional musician at age 19, Jamie Barnes plays what has come to be called “bedroom pop.” In other words, he records literate, lush songs in his bedroom, often alone, playing all of the instruments. His confessional style and way with words incorporates biblical and historical allusions track his journey and invite the listener along. Barnes is an active member and worship leader at Soujourn Community Church in Louisville, KY. I recently spoke with Barnes about his music, his faith and Girl Scouts taking care of public roads and everything in between. Enjoy:
Yes, definitely. My father was actually a professional drummer when he was younger. He played in a white soul band in the late ‘60’s. They were called Tom Dooley and the Love Slides. They actually had a pretty good following, opening for bands like The Doors and Sam and Dave and the Beach Boys. He had all sorts of neat stories to tell my brother and I. Of course some stories he only shared later in our lives. He always had music playing in the house. He had a pretty extensive record collection that we took to very early on. Music was always going on. I started out as a drummer like my dad, as we often do we try to be different from what our parents do. I think I picked up a guitar at age eleven and it was pretty much it from there.
Yes. It’s sort of an interesting story to some. I actually was raised in the Church of Christ, the very consertive Church of Christ. Meaning that the church that I was raised in all we had was acapella music. They sort of take a stance against instruments being used in worship, which is not something I adhere to any longer. Especially doing what I do at Sojourn. That was what I was a part of growing up. They still do that. They sing four part harmony. They feel that instruments aren’t a part of… it’s hard to explain. When I was knee part in it I could rattle off as much proof as I wanted to, now I don’t necessarily agree with their viewpoints, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Yeah, it was tough for me too. I think that when God give you a gift, especially when you want to be close to Him, you want to draw near to Him, you want to be able to use that gift in service. That was something I was totally discouraged from doing growing up. I became a professional musician at age nineteen or twenty when I was first signed to a label. My music was considered secular. You know I don’t even like to use the term secular, but that was just the way I looked at it then. Most people who were around me at the time I guess were okay with that. They would have rather seen me take another job. As long as it remained secular and no mention of God in my music, which is strange for me to look at now. What aspect of life does God not touch? At the time you know it was very difficult. Now I see differently. I’m very, very blessed to be using what gifts God has given me in service. To lead worship or write songs for the congregation or what have you.
Sure. I came to know Christ through the church of Christ. I wasn’t baptized into the specific local church. I very much knew who Jesus was outside of that indoctrination. It wasn’t until years later that I felt like something was missing in my walk and that is when I decided to leave the Church of Christ. I as just recently married at the time. Both me and my brother left at the same time and took our families with us. It wasn’t until later when we found Sojurne where we’re currently members of now. I think I really understood what Grace is. The church that I grew up in is very much…. And I really have no problem saying this because it’s where I come from, its’s very much like a works based sort of church. It wasn’t until later that I really understood exactly how big the gift of Grace is and how dependent I am on God for my salvation and not my own self. That absolutely changes your viewpoint of God and you begin to appreciate your salvation even more, and you’re not weighed down by guilt which I was for years. It’s sort of like two different experiences. I was raised in a house that taught Jesus. I guess I had the basics down. It wasn’t until later that my faith became more concrete and genuine because before I had a huge lack of understanding of what it meant to fully rely on Jesus.
It’s not something I use to describe my music. My music ends up on the folk rack, or indie rock or something like that. I’m fine with the term when it helps people categorize things. The reason I don’t like secular as I stated earlier, it’s tough for me as a Christian to be able to divorce your faith from anything you do, so why even use the term “secular”?
I guess Christian music, well, any sort of genre helps people sort through, what’s the fell of it and what’s the message behind it. But it’s one of those things where Christian music has developed a stigma amongst unbelievers over the years, just because the majority of the quality is just sort of questionable, in my mind and a lot of people’s minds. I think it’s taking a turn but if you notice, the good quality stuff that’s coming out, it’s not really labeled “Christian music,” it just happens to be Christians making music. They’re just being honest and they’re not divorcing their faith from their art but at the same time it’s not alienating any listeners that are unbelievers. I think that’s just absolutely necessary; not that you’re ashamed of wearing the name “Christian” at all, I don’t think any of these artists are, I’m certainly not. It allows you to circumvent a lot of the issues that come with labeling something “Christian music.” You’re just being in the world but not of the world.
I think it’s been effective. I know of several people that, after watching the Danielson Famile movie, them not being Christians, they were affected by it and it caused them to want to discover more about Jesus, even in just loving these artists. I think they’re definitely not the same people that would listen to Twila Paris or Carmen.
I don’t know, you can probably make an argument for both sides but that’s just how I see it. I think it’s great when Christians are just honest and make music from their hearts and it just so happens to be a light to people. But it’s just being who you are.
I don’t think so. What comes out of me just comes out of me. I don’t’ think it’s a matter of being conscience about it. There is a different approach that I take when I know that I’m writing something for, like the church that I attend, Sojourn Community Church here in Louisville. We put out our own CDs. We have a lot of really great songwriters and musicians. But I take a different approach when writing for the church than I do when writing for a Jamie Barnes album. It’s not that when I write a Jamie Barnes album I turn off all faith or anything like that; that would be a horrible mistake.
It’s harder for me to write worship songs, just because I’ve been doing the other for so long. But that’s just a personal thing. It should be easier for me but that’s just another issue that I’m overcoming.
It doesn’t seem though that when my records come out people miss the spiritual stuff, even in articles and reviews that are not printed in any sort of Christian-oriented magazine or radio station. They get it and make comments to it. But they seem to appreciate that it doesn’t seem to be written specifically for Christians.
Not that I’m aware of. I’ve never received any sort of difficult e-mail or any bad press because of that that I’m aware of. Whether or not some people choose to come out to shows because of that, I’m totally not sure. Personally I’ve never had any of that. In fact, I’ve had more of a good 
response from people that are not Christians. They seem to appreciate it. At least that’s what they tell me.
Even if I did, I’d just have to see what the people have to say. I definitely don’t want to beat people over the head with my faith just because I want to beat them over the head with it. But I also don’t want to be shamed out of sharing my faith through my music because it offends people; that’s just what Christ does.
I think that music has a deeper meaning now than it used to for me. When I thought was I was doing was “secular” music, it just didn’t have as much weight or meaning behind it. I’ve seen the fruits of sharing spiritual things, or just having my faith on my sleeve on some of the records that has caused me to realize that that’s what the Lord wants me to do. I think, years ago, I was struck by the parable of the talents.
After I read that and had not been using my music to any sort of advancement of the kingdom or trying to preach to people or even just admonish the Body, I felt like the guy who was burying his talent under the sand. Everything was self-motivated. I looked at music as a way of making my living and I was very intent on gaining as many fans and as much attention as I could as an artist. But it wasn’t for the right reasons. It was just because I wanted to live the dream of being a professional musician. The Lord has helped me take a turn with that over the last few years, through what He’s allowed me to do through service at Sojourn, the church where I’m at. I’m heavily involved with the worship team there. Before two years ago, I had never played music in the church. Just seeing what the music inside the church means to the body of believers and experiencing what a difference it is to play a show at a bar or club versus inside the church. It’ definitely changes your perspective. Music is not just entertainment, it’s more than that. It’s communication, it’s a gift. My view has certainly shifted and continues to do so.
That’s a huge question. I don’t know where it can be traced back to or who is to blame. I think it’s just that Christians are to blame due to heart issues. I think it’s a matter of honesty. I have a hard time saying that, obviously you can’t judge people’s hearts when they’re producing stuff. I think that people just picked up on the fact that, for a long time, Christian music just seemed to be like the machine of pop music. It was the same, only we mentioned Jesus. It just wasn’t produced well, it wasn’t written well or performed well.
I guess it comes to personal taste too. I’m sure a lot of people have been blessed through the ages of some art, liturgical art, Christian art or whatever you want to say, but it’s important to always do what we do well and with a lot of thought behind it and make sure we’re not just cranking things out.
It almost seemed like Christian music was cranked out just to combat pop music but that’s not a good reason to do it: “We’ve got to have something for our kids to listen to, so let’s just send this person to a studio and sing this song.” It almost seems to me like that’s what happened.
The Church took such a huge stance, particularly in the middle of the 20th century against pop culture and I think the art that came out of that was just a response to stick it to the Beatles or something: “Our kids burned all of those records so we’ve got to have something for them to listen to.” I don’t know if it traces back even further or not.
The one thing I always encourage people to do when they’re just getting involved in the arts at church is to remember that we’re made in the image of a Creator. That means a lot. We do these things to the glorification of God’s name. Look at what He’s created! If we can understand that, that we’re made in His image, then we too have a creative side and can say a lot about the character of God through what we craft. But we’d better make sure that our heart is in it and the reasons behind it are true and just. I think that when we’re honest enough to really put our hearts behind our craft, people will at be less offended by it. They might object to the message just because Jesus came to bring a sword but I don’t think that people will be able to put it down just because it’s cheesy and lite.
Right, that is great. At least if they’re going to reject it, let it be the message. Get yourselves out of the way and let people look at the message. We’re definitely not going to get anywhere with a world of unbelievers when it’s just sort of half-way lobbed up there or it’s not a well-crafted thing for everyone to look at. Why would anyone want to be a part of anything that just seems like it was put together half-heartedly?
I always stress honesty when I talk to other writers but that’s tough. It’s tough because that requires a level of transparency. Even as Christians, not just as artists but as Christians, we have a hard time doing that. I think Sufjan Stevens has been great at that. I use his song “John Wayne Gacy” in seminars on songwriting. It’s an awesome song and he talks about Gacy and all the horrible things he did as a human being but the last line is something like “look underneath my floorboards and you’ll see that I’m just like him.” Man, what a confession! That’s a true understanding of sin and depravity. People can appreciate that. Instead of Sufjan pointing a judgmental finger, he points it back at himself. He has the wherewithal to be transparent with his listeners and that’s huge.
I’m pretty atypical on that. I don’t necessarily have a typical process. I teach building around one thought. Sometimes I teach based working around a title. I’ll give you an example: there’s a song on the last record called “Hell’s Adopted Mile.” I totally built that song around that title. I was driving down a road somewhere and you see those signs saying that this stretch of mile was adopted by the Jefferson County Girl Scouts or whoever and it looks nice and taken care of. So I saw one of those signs and then a few miles later it was apparent the Girl Scouts were no longer taking care of the road and I said that it looked like the Devil adopted that part of the road! There were wrecked cars and trash along the road. I thought that was a pretty good line and started working with it. So I built the song around that. You can train yourself to listen to your thoughts and to other people and listen to yourself ramble off stupid things like that, which I’m very accustomed to! You never know when a thought might be worthwhile that you can build all sorts of themes around. I don’t really have a set formula: it’s hard to schedule creativity. For me, it’s hard to come up with a solid process that you can teach people to do so I just teach a lot of things but I’m still learning too. I hit creative walls all the time and I just figure the Lord wants me to be doing something else until the moment strikes.
I don’t know that I’d use any of those words. I don’t know, I guess that would be fine. I think the one thing I would agree with is the “simple” part. That’s not self-deprecating. I like the idea of things being simple. I try to be simplistic in my approach to it.
I don’t know that I have an answer to that. I know that it takes a long time for me to write a song. I wouldn’t call myself prolific. I definitely err on the side that it takes me a very long time to craft a song. There’s a lot of thought and pain that goes into every one of them. Whether or not that’s for the better, I don’t know. So in that way, they’re not simplistic. But I think the musical presentation is simple, maybe that’s what I’m trying to say. If someone down the road publishes a Jamie Barnes fake book of guitar chords, which I doubt that anyone ever will, but anybody can play these songs on guitar. I dress them up simply but the words is what I focus on. I love language and I love words. That’s something that I really try to put a lot of effort into.
I don’t read a lot of poetry. I’m a real history buff and I read a lot of things about obscure portions of world history. I really like early American history, Civil War and around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. I’m a big documentary watcher. I love the History Channel. I love being able to look at history and how that applies to present day and learning from history. But also, it’s very easy for me to make poetic allusions from history. That’s a resource that’s always been very precious to me as a writer.
I’m not a big poetry guy. That’s not to say I don’t like poetry I just don’t read it a lot. I love novels. I’m a big fan of Cormac McCarthy whose been getting a lot of attention lately. Flannery O’Connor. I love writers that seem to have their own jargon. Like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, the language is just so rich, it’s just a very violent book. The language that he uses to describe all the depravity and absolute ugliness is truly beautiful and that’s something I’ve always admired.
Tom Waits is a big one. He’s just been a huge influence on me in the way that he thinks. He’s someone who can make ugly stories into something beautiful. I wish I had a voice like his. A lot of people say not to wish that upon yourself because it probably took years and years of cigarettes and who knows what else. When he sings about hard times or being some sort of rambling guy who sleeps in a graveyard and watches TV through the window of a furniture store, you believe it when it comes out of his mouth.
Another big one over the years is Leonard Cohen. I love the early Leonard Cohen songs; not the greatest musician but a heck of a lyric writer. Jim White is another one. His first record, Wrong Eyed Jesus, I got when I was pretty young, like 16 or 17 and it just blew me away. I still listen to that a lot.
There’s other stuff that might not seem so obvious in listening to my music like, I love ambient music and I love contemporary classical like Steve Reich. Last year there was a whole summer I listened to nothing but old reggae. Sometimes it’s stuff like that that might not be so familiar that’s really fun to listen to.
I recently just discovered Neko Case. I know everybody’s been hip on her for years but I totally missed that boat. I bought Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and, man, that’s just a great record! I love it. I’ve been listening to Dawn Landes lately. She’s a Louisville native whose taken up residence in New York. Her latest album is called Fireproof and it’s really good.
That’s a good question! I’m finishing up producing an album for a guy named Luke Asher. This is his debut album and I’m excited about that. I’ve done production work before but I feel like his record might actually do something. He’s really talented and he’s already got a label behind him. We’re just finishing up the mixing and mastering for that.
Yes, I think so. It’s just a matter of having the time. It’s time-consuming. I don’t notice how much time goes into my own stuff because I produce myself but when it’s somebody else’s music you’re more aware of time.
Sat 5 Apr 2008
Welcome to the weekend. Here’s a couple of videos to get you through. First off is from a group called Interstates, featuring Kyle Noltemeyer and Alex O’Nan who spent eight years together in the group Of Asaph. Interstates centers around O’Nan’s electronic music live by adding acoustic drums and electric guitar. The group recently signed with Kansas City label The Record Machine and their debut, Run Run will be out in May. Until then, catch Interstates on tour with Colossians Three Sixteen and Habañero Hour favorites Foxhole. Here is the video “Hip Hop On My Mind:”
Next up is a video from Gileah and the Ghost Train. Gileah first appeared in 2005 as a solo artist with the album The Golden Planes. Now, two years later, she’s given a name to her accompanying musicians and fleshed out her sound a bit. Many people will immediately think of Eisley or Sixpence None the Richer and while those comparisons are not entirely off, there is a bit more subdued Britpop flavor to Gileah’s music. Decide for yourself. This is the video for the track “The Light Princess” from the 2007 self-titled album.
Fri 4 Apr 2008
“On the outskirts of Freetown, there is a very special group of 77 children in the Wellington district of Sierra Leone, West Africa. These children are extraordinary. They are survivors of a long and brutal civil war. Most are orphans because their families were murdered in the conflict. Many children were witnesses to these crimes against humanity and have suffered severe heartache and emotional trauma. Through various circumstances, they have come to reside at the Wellington Orphanage, formerly known as the War Cries Orphanage.
The album entitled, “The World Should Know” was released in December of 2007. It is a collection of songs, stories and sounds from Sierra Leone in the midst of rebuilding. Most of the voices are from the Wellington Orphanage, with the exception of a special song by the Cheshire Polio School for Children and various tribal drumming. Join us in supporting and promoting this CD. Tell two friends!”
These are recordings of actual orphans in Sierra Leone and all proceeds go to help them.
