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Three Chords and the Truth

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/008/47.100.html

Christian singer-songwriters take their faith into the culture of chiming
guitars and protest songs.

By Steve Rabey | posted 6/22/01

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 Influences

Husband-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."

[ snip ]

Steve Rabey is a writer based in Colorado Springs. His latest book is
Celtic Journeys: A Traveler's Guide to Ireland's Spiritual Legacy (Citadel
Press), written with his wife, Lois.

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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