Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Time And The Mystery

Home
Catholic
Conversations With Greg Brown: Between The Bar & The Church

Conversations With Greg Brown: Between The Bar & The Church

Last updated on: May 2, 2016 at 12:07 pm by Michael Mangione

Conversations With Greg Brown: Between The Bar & The Church 2016-05-02T12:07:50-06:00 Michael Mangione

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I often find myself straddling a life of the sacred and secular. The goal is always to seamlessly weave the two, never letting one negatively influence the other. The objective is to see the sacred in all the places it resides, to see the wheat in the weeds and live life accordingly. This whole podcast, Time & The Mystery: Conversations with Mike Mangione, has been an effort to find that magical place where the sacred dwells in the secular and the secular is unashamed of it. True love can be that middle ground where these worlds collide; Greg Brown is someone governed by love.

I had the immense pleasure of spending time with Grammy nominated and folk legend Greg Brown when I was traveling through Iowa City in January of 2016. Greg is not like many other people I have met. There is something soothing about Greg that is hard to pinpoint at first. It was only after editing this podcast that it became clear; this is a man who understands that a life without authentic love is not much of a life at all. It resonates in his music, his history and his offering. I encourage you to listen to the full podcast when you have time. You can find it on iTunes, my website… anywhere that you can get a podcast. But I wanted to transcribe a small potion and share it with you now. In this segment Greg and I talk about that middle ground of sacred and secular. This world can be so polarized between the two. We demand them to be separated and protected from each other. But its not that easy, there is a lot of bleed between them and until we recognize and nourish it, the world will remain short of its full potential. In the words of Greg, “We need Jesus and Elvis in our lives.”

A little background… Greg’s Father was a Pentecostal preacher. Greg remembers him as a man of deep love for others, rather than a “fire-breather.” We entered into a conversation about the sacred and the secular divide… The bar and the church… and if there is a middle ground. To hear the full podcast click here: Time & The Mystery: Conversations with Mike Mangione

Greg: My dad was far from being a strict typical guy but at Hacklebarney people would be drinking beer and dancing and kicking up their heels, so i got to experience that part of life too. It wasn’t just church and churchiness.

Mike: Well, I like to think kicking up your heels and dancing…could be an expression of something they are expressing in church, you know?

Greg: [Laughing] They did that in church but it was different.

Mike: I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, it’s just this is what i love so much. You’re talking about how hearing Howlin Wolf would stir up the same feeling as what you would hear in church and then what you’d experience with your grandparents. What is that feeling?

Greg: It’s life. It’s liveliness. It’s kind of a rough and ready deal that I pick up on. There’s a certain… whether you’re talking about country blues or talking about old church music or talking about old country music, the old ballad tradition that came over from the British Isle, all that stuff, there’s a you better be ready feeling to it. There’s a spunk. Like even if you’re talking about a sad blues song there’s a tone in there of like… I can make it through and this song is going to help me make it through. There’s a toughness to it and a dignity to it. It’s in all of that music and that’s what really appeals to me. And it was coming right out of people’s lives. It was not something to try and do to, you know, for you to become a big star and make a million dollars. Some people did and more power to them but the music was coming right out of life, raw life as it was lived, and that’s one thing i personally don’t, because I’m old and stuff, I don’t hear that so much in the music coming up, I mean..

Mike: You think that’s missing from contemporary…

Greg: Well, It seems to me there’s something of that attitude that I’m talking about that was in all that music I don’t hear much anymore. But I think music, popular music, does tend to reflect its time in its place. That’s one thing it does very well so… What is called country music, you know, sounds more to me like life either in the mall or close to the mall and that’s the reality for a lot of people so that music expresses…

Mike: Did you say life in the mall or closer to the mall?

Greg: Either at the mall or like driving to the mall…or your maybe your house is just a mile from the mall.

Mike: That’s what country music is?

Greg: Well, yeah if you really listen to it. Its got that mall kind of sound to it.

Mike: [Laughing] Yeah, I’ve never heard it put like that.

Greg: You know it’s… But that’s what it’s reflecting. I mean people aren’t living like my grandparents did with a little shack in the country with two cows. That’s gone, that’s been gone and it was that life, that rural life, that’s where country music came out of. Johnny Cash and everybody else grew up that way pretty much and that’s where that music came from.

Mike: So we almost lost a sense of, I don’t know if this is the right word but… survival? We’re talking about music being born out of the need for for it to comfort. For it to speak to a part of us that is really trying to hang on.

Greg: And to dance to…

Mike: Yeah but dancing is an expression to help cope with that.

Greg: Yeah, that’s right that’s right.

Mike: I was just talking with Bo Ramsey about… i had no idea he was such a big dancer!

Greg: Oh god yea, Bo is a dancer!

Mike: That’s great! He is last person that I’d think was a dancer. There’s a freedom in that movement, there’s a freedom in the song. It’s a freedom from what we fear, you know, the tribulations that we’re encountering in our own individual ways, in our own day to day. Music, for me, has the way of saying I affirm you, I’m with you and let’s celebrate that, lets come together on that.

Greg: Yeah, yeah…

Mike: So… Growing up then you had this kind of like country, Appalachian, gospel music, church background…

Greg: Yeah you know when I first discovered country blues…

Mike: Is country blues different than… is it like rockabilly?

Greg: Country blues is mostly acoustic music, it was rural, it was southern. It was music that tied into a lot of other music that came along but as far as how it made me feel, It didn’t feel any different to me than that other music. Really, I mean, if you look at American music, look at Son House who was a preacher one day and then the next day he was in the bar. Look at Jerry Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart… They’re cousins.

Mike: Right!

Greg: Both are really good singers. Jerry gets saved every once in awhile and then has a drink. I mean, I saw that my whole childhood in the old bible church, people who get saved and they go out and get drunk then come back to church… But I mean in American music, Aretha came out of the church, Sam Cook… the list goes on and on in terms of (people who) go on out of the church and into some other kind of soul music or pop music. It’s just all one big broth or river or whatever you want to call it. But I particularly, I think maybe because my dad was a preacher, I particularly enjoyed that whole… you know… like the way Robert Johnson would sing about things, you know? How there’s a hell hound on his trail .

Mike: Yeah!

Greg: That whole thing between going to the church or going to the bar and the music that was played in both places, that’s always held a lot of fascination for me. I wrote a song called I’m A Poor Backslider which is about that whole thing. I’m going to church and my desires get the best of me and I go and get drunk and… I love all that stuff. It seems real, says something about our human nature.

Mike: Yeah, yeah it’s a lightness and a darkness and you’re either towards one or away from the other. I like to think that there’s a church with a bar in it. You know!?

Greg: Well yeah. You know, William Blake wrote a poem called The little Vagabond and he says.

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;
Besides I can tell where I am use’d well,
Such usage in heaven will never do well.

But if at the Church they would give us some Ale.
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;
We’d sing and we’d pray, all the live-long day;

So Blake was talking about that very thing.

Mike: Saint Brigid of Ireland was quoted saying that heaven is a lake of beer.

Greg: [Laughing] Great!

Mike: Right? so… there might be that balance.

Greg: Yeah. I’ve got another song called Jesus and Elvis that is about that whole thing too. Some people say well all you need is Jesus, other people say no that stuff doesn’t mean anything you just want to rock n roll and I think, to me, we need Jesus and Elvis in our life. The idea of repressing everything is not good. On the other hand a life of just total immersion and whatever you’re looking to do that day that isn’t going to lead you very far either.

For more podcasts or information on my work check out my website

Previous Post

April 13, 2016

Behind The Song: Fields Of Evermore (Birth Through the Broken Body... And Of Course Johnny Cash)

Next Post

May 11, 2016 Conversations With Brian Anderson: The Art Of Calling The Game

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Behind The Song Conversations With Journal Time Uncategorized

Select a Month January 2017 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 December 2015 November 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: The Year of Jubilee occurred every fifty years.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE