I grew up listening to comedy albums. I listened to them enough to have some comedian’s routines memorized. It would be hard to not be influenced by some of these routines even when they weren’t the most spiritual stories. Here are three songs that I can site direct influences from comedy routines.
Several years ago, I wrote a song called The Belly of the Whale. It was based on the familiar story from the first three chapters of the book of Jonah. In the story, Jonah is called to preach to the people of Nineveh, he runs away from God, is swallow by a whale, is spit up after three days and he finally goes to Nineveh to preach where the people turn to God. My song stopped at this point in the story. This is also the point where most people stop when they are telling the story of Jonah. But there is one more chapter in the book.
Several years ago, I had an opportunity to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of the things that I enjoyed seeing is the notebooks that the songwriters used when they were working on their songs. It made me think about the different methods that I use when I’m writing songs. I wish I would have written all of my songs in a journal but that’s not the way that I’ve worked. I do have some journals that I have used to write a few songs. I also use the journals to write a few of the ideas that I have for songs and the earliest threads of ideas for songs. Most of the time, these ideas are transferred to Word files. I keep those files on a jump drive that I have with me most of the time. I carry the drive to work just in case I get an idea and I want to get a record of it before I forget it. The unfortunate thing about the files is that they are edited. I move words and phrases around with little to no traceability of the evolution of the song from one form to another. It’s really convenient for creating but bad for documenting the creative process.
This past weekend, I did special music during the worship service at the church I attend. Most of the time I do special music, I just sing one of my songs. I try to select a song that relates to the scripture lesson for the service or at least the theme for the service. This Sunday, I chose to go with a theme that related to the passages from several recent Sundays and sessions from other programming.
I wore an old pair of jeans, sneakers, my oldest, favorite sweatshirt and a 2014 Elvis Week ball cap. I told everyone that my wife asked me before I left the house, “Why are you dressed like that?!?” I told her that I was going fishing.
Many societies have survived without gas, electricity, literacy and modern technology, but no society has ever existed without stories. Integral to our human ontology is the need for stories. It is often a challenge for us to learn from the abstract but truth comes alive when it is donned in narratives. Stories have a way of putting flesh to didactic lessons when they are acted out in life situations. Further, stories help register life-lessons not only cognitively for us but they create indelible images in our hearts. This is why 77 per cent of the Bible is narratives and Jesus himself is the quintessential storyteller par excellence. God knows we are story-telling creatures. So, something is amiss if our songs of worship are scanty of any narrative elements. In a genre where we have relatively few story songs, Art Wheeler’s “Six Minutes After Seven” feeds a lacuna. Wheeler joins the lofty heights of Christian story-telling artists such Michael Card, Carman and David Phelps in reviving great story songs. Nevertheless, for those of us who are not familiar with Wheeler, a word of introduction is in order. Hailing from Jackson, Tennessee, Wheeler has been involved in music all of his life. Perhaps what is most impressive about Wheeler is that he not only writes his own music from bar one but he plays all the instruments on record. However, for the major portion of his life he had been writing novelty songs many comic in nature. It’s only after 1998 after the birth of his third child, Wheeler decided to write more his faith and Bible-based songs.
I have written music off and on throughout my life. Most of the things I did early in my life weren’t work keeping around. There are bits and pieces of this music stored away in drawers at my father’s house but it’s really not worth digging up. Sometime around 1998 or 1999, I started work on the song that would become The Belly of the Whale. At the time, I lived in Livingston, Tennessee. We only lived there three years and my youngest child was born while we were there. She might have been born before I started working on this song. At the time, I felt that I was being moved to minister to people that I really didn’t like. By writing this song, I attempted creatively address this feeling.
I have talked about writing It’s Gonna Rain in a previous blog post. When I decided to do a video for this song, I turned to my son for help. He was in charge of filming and editing all of my live action videos including the ones for Arkansas and Electric Jesus. I decided to replicate the construction on a very small scale with footage of making a paper boat. We needed to test the boat so I decided the best test would be in a large tub that we normally use at parties to ice down drinks. One of the challenges for any video shoot that involves rain is getting it to show up. We included footage of an actual rain shower at our house and I was impressed that it showed up so well. We hoped to get some shots of it “raining” on the boat. The rain would be water from a hose. The rain effect didn’t work. It destroyed one of the boats that we made for the shoot. We decided to just so the boat swirling around as the tub was filled with water.
In the liner notes for my new CD, I make the following statement about the title track: “Six Minutes After Seven draws from the apocalyptic images in the Book of Revelation.” I think the idea for the song is best illustrated in the lyrics of the fourth verse:
“The scroll will lose the seventh seal The seventh horn will blow The seventh woe will pour Out from the seventh bowl A seven headed dragon Wearing seven crowns Will intimidate a pregnant woman And smash up the town Angels will defend her honor A war will start in heaven And troubles spread upon the earth At six minutes after seven”
In an earlier post, I talked about writing and recording both versions of The Promised Land. I wanted to do a black gospel choir arrangement for the background vocals. Most people who know me know that I play music primarily by ear. I can read music, but I’m not very good at it. Practically all of the other songs that I have recorded are arrangements that existed only in my head prior to the sessions or were developed during the recording process. For this recording, I felt the a little more planning was in order.
I wrote the song The Promised Land to sing during the memorial service at a church homecoming. The church I grew up in has a homecoming celebration every year on the second Sunday in June. Most of the people that go to this church are related to my mother. The same goes for the people that come to the homecoming celebration every year. For several years, I had been asked to sing special music immediately after the memorial section of the service. I usually tried to sing something that fit the tone of the memorial. I wrote this song probably about a year after my mother had past away. I wanted to try and write something special for her. As I approached writing the song, I thought about a lady in the congregation we called Aunt Erin who had written something special for homecoming. She read it as the memorial service every year when I was younger. I thought about how poetic her writing was and wished that I could set that to music. I never tried very hard to find her memorial service. I’m not sure but her memorial service could have died with her. I hope not.