I recently posted two “When a song is a friend…” themed episodes to my show: A Song & A Friend. Each episode features a song by the band Daniel Amos (or “da”.)

Click for “I Will Return” Episode.

Click for “Meanwhile” Episode.

Let’s take each song in turn:

“Meanwhile” by Daniel Amos from the 2001 LP “Mr. Buechner’s Dream”

Although the title of the album from 2001 name drops Fredrick Buechner, the late author, pastor, professor and speaker, the titular track lists all of Taylor’s favorite authors. (who presumably influenced Buechner as well.) The authors are: G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’ Conner, Charles Williams, T.S. Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Walker Percy, Dorothy Sayer, and Graham Greene.

Their works became a syllabus for me in my 20s.

The surname “Buechner” is unique and it caught my eye once in 2004 at a Bottle Rocket Blue gig. Here’s how: in January of 2004, a group of major mainstream Christian artists made a U2 tribute album: In the Name of Love: Artists United for Africa. Sales went to support debt relief and HIV relief agencies. This was the thrust of U2’s public facing advocacy in that decade, and after their album containing “Beautiful Day” they were back in CCM’s good graces, the artists, at least, said as much with these tributes and lending their royalties.

“Tree of Life” was the Christian bookstore cum coffee house in Marion, Indiana, where Troy and I went to college. It wanted to do an album release event for the tribute CD, but they couldn’t just book Jars of Clay, for instance to play an “in-store.” But a regional band, who love U2, could play a set to promote it. Enter BRB. So we learned a U2 cover of “In a Little While,” and Troy wrote a U2-esque anthem about Africa “Open.” (Deeper NOTE: friend of the pod, Erik Fisher [see the next episode] sang the cover with us.)

After setting up our gear between the book stacks and the tables for the cafe, I browsed the shelves. Steering clear of the spiritual self help stuff, I saw this:

For $4.99 I bought it. I read it twice in the first week I had it. First, because it was so good. Secondly, because I wanted to underline all the quotes from “Alphabet of Grace” that T.S. Taylor used in Lost Dogs or Daniel Amos songs in the 90s. Being a big fan of both, the lines jumped off the page!

“…the angel who troubles the waters, troubles the air in-between and healing is possible…”

“…the holy dream becomes the holy face…”

“…Beneath the face…All the people I have ever been are buried here…”

“…if there’s no room for doubt, there would be no room for me…”

“…he died crying out in tongues…”

“…God kick to pieces such a world or kick Himself apart…”

“…this day is our last day and our first day and our only day…”

“…across the street there is a hole in the world…”

“…Is it true, my dear dead dear?…”

“…If there’s anything to know, then you must know it…”

I loved “Meanwhile” so much, for so long, that I learned how to play it and recorded a cover of it for fun in 2019:

And for “I Will Return” by da from the 1991 LP “Kalhoun.”

My origin story with Kalhoun also involves a christian book store (and also a 10 year gap to the previous bookstore anecdote, i.e. 1994 v 2004.) The Family Christian Bookstore that I went to in high school is no longer in business, other ventures have come and gone from that Kroger based strip mall on Ireland Road on South Bend’s south side. In that 90s era of indie/alternative Christian music (a scene which also has not entirely disappeared, but is more “in diaspora” – spread out, not found where it once was.)

I purchased several key albums to my creative life in that store between ’94-’96…

77’s -Tom Tom Blues

Blenderhead – Muchacho Vivo

L.S.U. – Huntington Beach

Daniel Amos – Song of the Heart

Dakota Motor Company – Into the Son

Adam Again – Perfecta

Love Coma – Language of Fools

Steve Taylor – Liver

Some of these I’ve revisited more than others over the year, but still, it feels like a golden era, looking back.

As I mentioned in the pod, the purchase was right on the borderlands of my Dad’s regime change for our family – pulling us out of Roman Catholicism and thrusting us into conservative strains of Protestantism: evangelical or anabaptist. So I was comforted to hear in the lyrics, several catholic sounding word pictures, for example, “…sweet mother and child in a stained glass reflection… (from “If You Want To”) and in our featured song, “I Will Return,” …and the saints who had slept on the head of a pin, came down from the sky at the end of all days…” Then there were head-scratching, cryptic songs like “Prayer Wheel” or the grief & lament in “Note to Anna” which address an untimely death. It doesn’t tie a pretty ribbon of shallow comfort or trite “churchy” sayings at the end. These types of moves made me appreciate Daniel Amos’ work as a counterpoint to all the browbeating and heavy handed “bible-thumping” of the church-hopping my parents took us through in the late 90s.

In short, Daniel Amos and related bands, kept my faith alive, gave me permission to express it in a way that was true to me.

I am very grateful for their influence.

In my song “Grover Cleveland” the line “I’ll put your song in the back of my history books, ‘cos you sing so true when there’s no one around” refers to Daniel Amos’ prolific song writer: Terry Scott Taylor.