Jesus Music. Again.

When it comes to Jesus Music, Bob Bennett was born about a decade too late.

He entered the world in 1955, twelve years after Chuck Girard, ten after Annie Herring, eight after Larry Norman and John Fischer. So while Bennett wasn't quite there at the beginning, he came around in time—in the late 1970s—to pick up the ball and keep it rolling along. His 1982 album, Matters of the Heart, was CCM magazine's Album of the Year, beating out Amy Grant's monster breakout project, Age to Age. Many still consider Matters of the Heart one of the best Christian albums of all time.

Bob Bennett

Bennett, now 56, is still making great music. And though he sometimes wishes he'd been around a little earlier to work with some of those pioneers, he's now done the next-best thing: He's made an album that honors their legacy.

Jesus Music Again is a collaboration between veterans Bennett, Bill Batstone (a founding member of the Good News band and a longtime staff writer for Maranatha Music), and Alex MacDougall (former drummer for Daniel Amos). The album includes well-worn tunes like "Soon and Very Soon" (Andrae Crouch), "Easter Song" (Second Chapter of Acts), "Unidentified Flying Object" (Larry Norman), "Until Your Love Broke Through" (Keaggy/Norman/Stonehill), "Oh Happy Day" (Edwin Hawkins Singers), "Every Grain of Sand" (Bob Dylan), and more.

We recently spoke with Bennett about the new album, his career, and the art of writing great songs. (Hint: Authenticity is key, but don't tell people you're being authentic.)

How did Jesus Music Again come about?

About four years ago, I was messing around on my guitar, and I started singing [Larry Norman's] "Unidentified Flying Object" for no apparent reason. I realized that no one has really gone back and treated this music like the folk music of the Jesus era. Alan Lomax went into Appalachia in the '40s and '50s to gather folk songs, and that led to some of the folk music of the '50s and '60s, with Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio—the stuff I grew up listening to. But with this old Jesus Music, no one's surveyed those songs and put a bunch of them on the same album. I thought it would be great to revive these songs.

So it's mostly music for boomers like you and me, and not for "the younger generation"?

It would lovely if that were to happen, but I don't have any fantasies that I'm going to have my Tony Bennett moment. Because now that I'm on the other side of don't trust anyone over thirty. Now I'm the guy who says, "You kids get off my lawn!"

Perhaps I need to listen more broadly, but I think there is an approach to these older songs that's missing in action in today's scene. You've got lots of worship-leading music and lyrics on a screen, and while that's not necessarily bad, you used to be able to throw a rock and hit a guy or a gal who was telling a story with a guitar. That's not the case anymore. I think there's something particularly attractive about storytelling and testimony in songs that is not as revered and not as much a part of the church fabric.

Alex MacDougall, Bill Batstone, and Bob Bennett

It must've been hard to come up with just a dozen songs for this album.

We think our list is going to be as notable for what it lacks as for what we included. Everybody will say, "You should have done this" and "You should have done that." Our first criterion was that we thought it was cool and we thought we could do a good job on it. But if we can please ourselves, hopefully we'll please the people that are listening.

Keith Green is well represented here, not just in songs he wrote but also songs he performed. Did you know him?

I only met him once, just to shake hands and say hello. I never knew him well.

How about Larry Norman?

Again, it was a matter of me coming along later in the game. I only met him once, and never really got to spend time with him. The only one of that era that I've spent time with is Randy Stonehill, and I've had a couple of incredible encounters with Barry McGuire, who's a hero to me, because he's 76 years old and he's still out there doing it. And that's what I see for myself. As long as I'm not embarrassing myself and I'm healthy enough to play, there's no retirement.

What are you best memories of making music in the '70s and '80s?

There was less of a business aspect to the music. CCM was still in its infancy, and people were making lots of mistakes. The temptation to lead with business concerns seems more prevalent now. But as a guy who used to record with record labels, this is the best time there could ever be to be a do-it-yourself guy. You can make records and serve your audience and play concerts, and it really doesn't matter what the guys in Nashville think of you. You can just keep it going in a modest way on your own, which is what I'm doing now.

Do you think CCM ever should have existed as its own industry? Or should Christian musicians have just signed with "mainstream" labels?

I think it cuts both ways. We assert a kind of separatism—we're the church and you're not, and we do things a particular way—and sometimes that's exactly what we need to say to ourselves. We don't follow the status quo of what's going on. We sort of do our own thing and invite people into that. But then when you make that separatist bed, you have to lie in it. I think people pigeonholed it as being "Christian music," and then it got put in that bin and that was that. So it was an extraordinary situation where you'd have any kind of a crossover, with people like T-Bone Burnett, Bruce Cockburn, Pierce Pettis, David Wilcox—people who labored outside the confines of the church, who moved and breathed in that larger marketplace.

Artistically, I used to feel like the red-headed stepchild, like, Well, they only like me because I'm in church and I'm one of them. And maybe my music wouldn't pass muster in the mainstream. I don't know if that's true, but at a certain point I realized I was being discriminatory in reverse—that it was ridiculous for me to think, I only get to play in church. And the more that time has gone on and the way I do music has kind of disappeared, the more I feel strongly that I have something to do with the church. I want people to hear the music, to be cheered on in their faith and challenged when they need to be. So, I'm okay with saying I'm a guy who plays in church.

Do you wish you'd had some more mainstream crossover when you were younger?

When I was a young man I would have wanted that a lot more than I do now. But now I'm also playing clubs and theaters, and some Christians don't mind going to those places. And other people are experiencing it on its own terms. They're not there because you're their "brother." They're there because they dig your music.

I always tell people my job is actually to communicate first—that the ministry is always the outgrowth of what I do, not the main purpose. The ministry is on the right hand side of the equal sign, and what I do with music is on the left hand side of the equal sign.

Is it wrong to put the word "ministry" on the left side?

No. I just think that sometimes we concentrate less on doing well what we do. I think the ministry—the message part of it—will take care of itself if we pay attention to being genuine and being honest.

I was at one of these postmodern worship conferences a few years ago. The guys that were leading the angst-y praise music, you know, said, "We just want to be authentic." And I thought, The minute that you announce that you want to be genuine and authentic, that's the ballgame. You never announce your mission statement. You just make one and then keep it to yourself and go do your job.

If you could give a speech to young songwriters today, what would you say?

I would encourage them to always communicate truthfully, and to trust that when you get into a room of people and sing your songs, where two or more are gathered, it's the Holy Spirit's job to do the ministry, not yours. You play "soundtrack music," but things can happen on a whole other level that you're helping with, but you're not the primary agent of what's going on. They don't need to be good Christian songs; they just need to be good songs. You don't need to sing well because you're in church; you just need to sing well. And just because God can use everything is not automatic evidence that he will, or that you should expect him to. There's still an argument to be made for some kind of competency at what we do.

Bennett's 1982 classic

Matters of the Heart was CCM magazine's album of the year in 1982. Do you think that's your best album?

Well, it's always great to have something like that on your resume. I hope I didn't peak in 1982, but who knows. We did have a wonderful alignment of songs and production on that album, but I think I have songs that are, at least in a songwriting sense, as good or better than some of those songs. But that's the record that people seem to hearken back to the most, and I'm always happy for that.

What's the best song you've ever written?

That's like picking a favorite child. But if someone asked, "What's the song that you hope outlives you and gets heard by the most people?", it would be "Man of the Tombs."

Why?

Because as it tells the story of the Gadarene demoniac and his deliverance, his coming from death to life, it mirrors the end that I hope for myself. At the end of the story this demon-possessed man, this tortured soul, is dressed in clean clothes, in his right mind, and seated at the feet of Jesus. And I can't think of a better description of what I want the end game for me to be.

Homepage photo by Paul Bennett. Photo of MacDougall, Batstone, and Bennett by Rachel Kuhn Photography.

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