The CT Review: Three Chords and the Truth
Christian singer-songwriters take their faith into the culture of chiming guitars and protest songs
Steve Rabey | posted 6/11/2001 12:00AM
American folk music developed on the periphery of popular culture during the 1940s and 1950s before being brought to center stage in the 1960s by Bob Dylan and others, including Peter, Paul, and Mary. Unlike most pop music, folk's stripped-down music and complex lyrics explore interpersonal relationships, social inequities, and even faith. Folkies of today rarely make the Billboard charts. Their concerts aren't staged in massive stadiums or arenas, but in smaller clubs and bars where their often painfully confessional lyrics create a powerful bond between performer and listener.What many evangelicals do not know, however, is that some of today's most acclaimed folk artists regularly wrestle with key Christian themes, though many would question the folkies' theological orthodoxy, their left-of-center politics, or their refusal to join the contemporary Christian music (ccmCCM subculture. Artists like David Wilcox, Carrie Newcomer, and Over the Rhine are not shy about saying that Christ has touched their lives and transformed their music. These three musicians will perform this July at SojoFest 2001 (www.sojo.net), a 30th anniversary celebration at Wheaton College of the Sojourners community and its magazine.
Eclectic InfluencesHusband-and-wife team Linford Detweiler and Karin Berquist are the heart and soul of Over the Rhine, the critically acclaimed Cincinnati band that Billboard magazine said was best known for "intensely personal lyrics that offer an elixir for life's wounds."The songs on Films for Radio, the band's eighth and most sonically alluring album, fit the bill. "This collection of songs is about internal worlds, about the dialogue that runs inside all of us, conversations we have with ourselves," says Detweiler. "We hope that anyone who hears these songs will find some fresh language and maybe a soundtrack of sorts for the stories we're all writing every day with our lives."
Detweiler is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and son of an itinerant Amish minister who forbade the family to have a piano in the house but did allow one in the chicken coop. Pop music was also forbidden, so Detweiler, who was being groomed for the mission field, listened to Mahalia Jackson, the Cathedral Quartet, and Korean orphan choirs. The missionary training stuck.
"It's more of a seed-planting mentality for me now," he says. "If I'm on a mission, it's first of all to discover the foreign places inside of me, shine the light around, and tell my secrets." Detweiler has shared the band's secrets with some pretty big audiences over the years, as Over the Rhine toured with mainstream act Cowboy Junkies and performed at the alterna-rock Lilith Fair. Sitting on a bench in Boulder, Colorado, before a recent performance at one of the college town's many music clubs, Detweiler says he wants people who hear the band's music to walk away more alive.
"I love the image in the Bible of someone throwing a big banquet," he says. "He invited all the people you would normally invite, but for some reason they weren't interested. And the way I look at what we do is we throw these banquets all over the country for people from all walks of life."
June 11 2001, Vol. 45, No. 8
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