God & Country

More Popular Artists Are Now Singing a Spiritual Tune

Mark Williams
The Bulletin Music Editor

Sex, violence and drugs have permeated all forms in recent years; even the sweetest sounding melody can easily have a dark underside. But it seems that spirituality in music might just be making a comeback, as more and more pop and country artists are recording songs with religious undertones. Country singer Alan Jackson released an album of gospel music last year that become a bestseller. A relative country newcomer, Josh Turner, has scored recent radio hits like “Me & God” and “Long Black Train.” In 2005, Randy Travis released “Three Wooden Crosses,” the first gospel song to make it to the number one spot on the country charts.

Is this the start of a new musical trend? Actually, the line between popular and gospel music has always tended to be blurred just a bit: artists like Kris Kristofferson, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson have all recorded songs with a sacred sound; but music has always been an integral part of Christian worship since the foundation of the first churches. Much of this early Christian music was not intended for commoners to perform, however, since it was in the form of chants or musical liturgy during the Mass ceremony.

When the Protestant movement gained popularity, the concept of composing hymns for congregational singing also became more accepted. When Europeans began to colonize America, many of them used these hymns during often lengthy worship services. This importation of sacred church music formed the basis of white gospel music, as composers used the musical styles of their times to create new hymns.

Meanwhile, the slave trade introduced native Africans to a foreign and often hostile land. Many of these slaves brought with them a rich tradition of spiritual songs, and they would use these songs to communicate or commiserate with others in the fields. Christian worship became a central part of the African-American community, and these spirituals formed the basis of their emotional and impassioned worship style. Negro spirituals provided a sense of comfort during times of hardship, and many of these songs were combined with secular musical genres such as the blues or ragtime to form the earliest black gospel music.

The two paths of gospel music collided in the South during the early 20th century, as white country performers often exchanged musical ideas with their black counterparts, including the use of religious themes in secular music. White musicians were quite familiar with the harmonies and upbeat qualities of modern hymns, leading some to form vocal quartets backed by the instruments commonly found in country bands. This branch of gospel music, with white singers using many of the vocal techniques of their black counterparts, became known as Southern gospel.

While white performers were enjoying success in the Southern gospel music gospel, black gospel music performers were having a more difficult time finding a general audience for their music. Many black performers found it easier to break into secular musical genres such as jazz or blues than gospel music. Only a handful of black performers before the 1950s succeeded in bringing their form of black gospel music to a national audience. Early rock and roll performers such as Little Richard and Ray Charles did manage to incorporate the soulful sounds of black gospel music, but their music remained firmly in the secular realm.

Gospel music perhaps got its best introduction to the general public through the efforts of a young white singer named Elvis Presley. Presley had grown up listening to black gospel music, and had unsuccessfully auditioned for a Southern gospel quartet before finding success in the secular music world. Presley's rendition of a black spiritual called "Peace in the Valley" demonstrated that gospel music could be marketed to the general listening audience. Subsequent gospel music recordings by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and many other famous singers helped to establish gospel music as commercially viable.

By the 1970s, Southern gospel music had evolved into a more polished, modern sound. With the rise of alternative churches and youth-oriented worship centers, a form of modern gospel music called "Praise and Worship" also became very popular. Meanwhile, a number of black gospel music artists adapted a new style based on grittier urban sounds and a strong R&B influence. This subgenre is generally known as contemporary urban gospel music.

Gospel music is still a popular genre for audiences seeking a spiritual or religious element. Some gospel music performers do enjoy crossover success in the pop, R & B and country charts, while many secular artists have had significant success with their gospel music side projects.

A Texas artist who just released a gospel record, Billy Joe Shaver, is a notoriously feisty honky tonk hero who helped define the 1970s outlaw country movement with his songs about hell-raising and hard living. In some ways, Shaver hasn't changed much in the decades since he ran with Waylon and Willie and their kind; however, Shaver has been thinking about making a spiritual album for a long time, but like everything in his life, he approaches spirituality on his own terms. “Somebody called this album ‘honky tonk Gospel,’” Shaver says. “I kind of like that.”

The last few years have been rough on Shaver. His mother, wife and son Eddy all died within a year’s time. Then he suffered a massive heart attack, but he recovered and was soon back on the road, his characteristic optimism intact. “When I started working on this album, I pulled out a lot of old songs and started changing ‘em. Most of ‘em are heavy –- there’s some strong medicine here.”

“Everybody’s Brother,” due for release on Houston’s Compadre Records on Tuesday (9/25), is a celebration of life as much as it is a meditation on mortality. “There were times I thought I’d be happy to go,” Shaver confesses, “but you don’t go when you want to. You go when God wants you. I’ve always been lucky and I’m lucky to still be here. God gave me this gift [of songwriting] and I’ll keep polishing it as long as I can.”

The songs on “Everybody’s Brother” deal with love, loss, mortality and the hereafter, all viewed from Shaver’s unique perspective. “Rolling Stone” opens the album with a bang: the tune addresses Shaver’s recent Las Vegas Wedding when he cracked his vertebrae during a post-reception wrestling match with a friend. “Get Thee Behind Me Satan” includes John Anderson who trades off on lead vocals and adds his harmonies to the chorus on the bluesy rocker. It’s a confession and a celebration of salvation, with Shaver delivering a performance with a jubilant, unrestrained power.

Next up is “No Earthly Good,” a duet with Kris Kristofferson; the song is a gentle put down of spiritual people who refuse to take responsibility for the sad state of the world. “I wrote for Cash’s publishing house for a few years and he gave me that title, but I was so dumb, I didn’t jump on it,” Shaver recalls.

Four love songs Shaver wrote for his wife Brenda over the years give the album its heart. “To Be Loved By A Woman,” “The Greatest Man Alive,” “I’ll Always Be Your Best Friend” and “Most Precious.” “I’ve been saving some of these songs for a long time,” Shaver says. “I went through them with John Carter and these seemed to hold together. They’re all about loving someone so much you want the best for them. ‘Most Precious’ is the name of a perfume my wife used to wear. It was so light you could hardly tell she had it on, but I could tell. She was most precious to me.”

The most remarkable song on the album is the title track, a nine minute epic. Bill Miller adds pow wow drums, Native American cedar flute and Native vocals to the track for a soundscape that pays tribute to America’s oldest music. “It was my idea to mix cowboy and Indian music,” Shaver says. “I’m Blackfoot on my father’s side, and Bill’s a full blood Mohican. He did a wonderful job.”

The song is a folk hymn praising the Lord and offering a prayer for our deliverance from the evils of war, poverty and hypocrisy. “The chorus is Lakota,” Shaver explains. “‘Hey Hanta Yo’ means ‘move aside’ –- get out of the way if you ain’t gonna help. It was a hard song to write and the night before we recorded it, I was up all night writing. I believe I had a visitation from Johnny Cash. I believe some of the verses are from him. I ought to give him co-writing credit.”
Shaver also reprises “When I Get My Wings,” the title track from his Capricorn album of 1976. John Carter Cash rearranged it for bluegrass mandolin and sanctified Hammond B3. “It’s a love song to the hereafter,” Shaver says. “John Carter had a whole different take on it and it’s doggone fine.”

Shaver will be back on the road to support “Everybody’s Brother,” but he’s already looking forward to his next album and promoting his autobiography, 2005’s “Honky Tonk Hero,” and “The Wendell Baker Story,” his latest acting effort. “Luke Wilson wrote and directed it. I play a retired reverend in a nursing home with Harry Dean Stanton and Kris Kristofferson. I’ve been playing Reverends in a lot of stuff, and I don’t know why.” It could be Shaver’s brutal honesty and openhearted generosity of spirit, which shines through on screen or off. 

The soulful quality of Everybody’s Brother shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows Shaver, a man who’s able to touch the hearts of listeners and win new fans and friends wherever he goes. “I guess God has a plan for me,” Shaver says. “Jesus Christ took away the sting of death when he came to me and if you’re not afraid of dying, you can be happy all the days of your life.”

Meantime, if you’re inclined to learn anything at all about Terri Hendrix, all you really need to do is listen to "Acre of Land" —- the centerpiece of her ninth and latest album, “The Spiritual Kind.” In a little under four minutes, you’ll come away with more than just the perfect introduction to the San Marcos singer-songscribe’s music at its absolute best. You’ll have a veritable map of her heart and a soul, a keen understanding of the philosophy by which she lives her life, and even the secret to her success as a wholly independent businesswoman: “To grow a garden/You’ve gotta have patience/You need to work in it every day/Mother Nature will give you the most resistance/But you can turn it into something anyway…”

The song is a tribute to Marion Williamson, the late philanthropist and gifted musician who took Terri under her wing in the 1990s and, as the oft-told Terri tale goes, gave the aspiring songwriter guitar lessons in exchange for goat-milking farm chores. But Marion taught her young protégé a great deal more than an appreciation for Mississippi guitar finger picking: she instilled in Terri the strength of will and confidence to weather storm after storm on her way toward building one of the most successful do-it-yourself music careers inn the modern music era.

Marion died of cancer in 1997, less than a year after Terri self-released her debut album, “Two Dollar Shoes,” but 10 years and eight albums later, Terri insists that her late friend still finds ways to guide her. She named her record label, Wilory Farm, after Marion’s own several acres of land. She follows the motto, "Own your own universe" -— and does, being one of very few recording artists who can proudly claim to own all of their masters.

"Acre of Land" actually predates Terri’s previous album, 2004’s acclaimed “The Art of Removing Wallpaper.” It didn’t make the final cut for that record, she says, because it still "needed to be fleshed out live." But the fact that it’s been a fully formed highlight of her performances for going on three years now suggests that it was more a matter her knowing that the song’s message was worth saving for a more fitting, uplifting context. 

If “The Art of Removing Wallpaper” chronicled Terri’s passage through fire and flood, “The Spiritual Kind” finds her celebrating the "get back up" with a palpable sense of hallelujah and rebirth. To call it her most personal record to date would be a disservice to a catalog in which she’s never shied away from the truth. In her own words, “The Spiritual Kind” is the first record she’s ever made where she felt like everything "just kind of clicked in gear."

A lot of that "clicking" had to do with her longstanding drive to continue to evolve as a songwriter and musician every time she steps up to the proverbial plate. It’s a fire Terri’s carried with her ever since she abandoned her classical music scholarship in college, hungering for a form of expression truer to her own heart than opera. Marion helped her coax that ember into an open flame, and for the past decade, it’s been fanned hotter and hotter through Terri’s fortuitous professional partnership with famed producer and multi-instrumentalist Lloyd Maines.

Terri and Lloyd first teamed up to record her second album, 1998’s “Wilory Farm,” and they’ve worked together ever since, performing at listening rooms, theaters and major folk festivals across the country and Europe. "Lloyd demands excellence," says Terri. "And when you’re constantly put in a position where you have to be at a certain level for things to fly, I think it makes you better. I could really tell in the studio this time around that I was a better musician than I was on Art of Removing Wallpaper. I could feel it. I just felt a lot more confident."

That’s especially evident this time around in Terri’s evolution from harmonica neophyte into a harp freak. "It’s such complex, beautiful instrument," she enthuses. "What intrigues me about it is that it can sound like so many things: a voice, a fiddle, an accordion, even a percussion instrument. It’s become more and more important to my music with each record, to the point that now I really wish I could just take time off and be able to master it."

Judging from her inspired solos on songs like "No Love in Texas" and the Jimmy Driftwood cover "What is the Color of the Soul," she’s getting mighty close. The songs themselves reveal a leap in confidence, too. Stylistically, “The Spiritual Kind” is typically all over the map — jumping deftly from folk to pop to blues to swinging jazz with the anything goes, free range eclecticism of her live shows. But even her most seasoned fans are in for a few surprises. "The way we approached the record was, anything that we’ve kind of done structurally in the past, we just tried to deviate from that," says Terri. "There’s not one song on here that has a pattern that we’ve done before. The idea was to venture into new territory. For me, that’s really what makes this record different. It’s about awareness, and it’s a tribute to things and people that too often go overlooked. The people that have mattered the most to me in my life and career have been those that are spiritually based," she says.

"The spiritual kind," she explains, are those who strive to sow more joy than sorrow on their own acre of land, and, however possible, share their harvest with the world. By that definition, Terri’s thumbs are a lot greener than she gives herself credit for. "For the past 15 years, my life has revolved around the discovery of music, and the joy of music," she concludes. "And to get the opportunity to do what I do for my living. How beautiful is that?"

send your comments to
mark@thebulletin.com