Theology in the Raw - A Raw Conversation about Rock and Roll: Brian Zahnd and Jay Newman

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

This is a different sort of TITR episode. Just three dudes (but mainly Jay and Brian) bantering around about Rock and Roll. Brian Zahnd is a pastor and writer. Jay Newman is a pitmaster and BBQ artist. Both are avid students of music, specifically Rock and Roll, as you'll see. I love Rock and Roll and love the history behind it all. As far as theology goes, we don't really talk about a theology of music, but Jay does give a rather brilliant overview of why Rock music is theologically necessary toward the end of our conversation. Artists we discuss include Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Rush, Elvis, U2, Nirvana, Eric Clapton, Motley Cru, and many others that I can't remember.  -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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who are already using Logos. And okay, so they just released a new version and it's more affordable than ever. And here's the thing, you can try it for free for 30 days. And if you go to Logos.com forward slash theology, you can take advantage of an exclusive theology in the raw extended two month free trial. So go try it, try it out. It's risk-free. Go check it out. Lagos.com forward slash theology. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of theology. This is going to be a different sort of episode. We are going to be talking about rock and roll and I'm not really taking any kind of like

theological or spiritual spin on the conversation. I just invited on the show a couple of people who I know pretty well, Brian Zahn and Jay Newman, who know a whole lot about rock and roll. And we all love music. And so this is just a random bantering free flowing conversation about rock and roll, the history of it, how we should think through it, why we need to appreciate rock and roll music. I love this conversation. If you don't like rock and roll, you might not like it. So you can skip, skip this one and tune into another more mainstream the theology in a raw episode. But if you like rock and roll, I think you will appreciate this conversation.

Jay Newman is my good friend who is a pit master and barbecue artist. He's been on the show several times as our resident Christian anarchist and Brian Zahn is a well-known pastor speaker writer. And he's been on the podcast several times too. So without further ado, please welcome back to the show. The one and only Brian Zahn and Jay Newman. All right. Welcome to the first of its kind, a theology in raw podcast where we're simply talking about music in particular, rock and roll. I've got my friends, Brian's on and

Jay Newman on the show. Hey guys, you guys have both been guests on theology to watch Ross. So welcome back. I don't know how many times it's been, but let, let me start with a, a, what do you, what'd you call it? J click bait question. Let's just start with who are the best rock and roll bands and why? And I almost don't like asking that question. Cause it's like, well, what do you mean? How do you measure that? There is no V best there. So I, you can respond how you want it. There are serious contenders. Okay. Why don't you start there? Who are the serious contenders? I mean, everybody's going to bring up, first of all, they're going to say the Beatles and the Stones because they're massive success and popularity and they're geniuses in different ways.

But I get asked all the time, Beatles Stones, Beatles Stones. And the answer is Zeppelin. That's the answer. A hundred, a hundred. Oh yeah, there you go. Absolutely. It's just like, if you don't start the conversation is Zeppelin. That's the answer. A hundred, a hundred. Oh yeah, there you go. Absolutely. It's just like, if you don't start the conversation with Zeppelin, then what are we doing here? Yeah. I agree. I mean, this is, this is Jack Black when they were whatever, they got that

Kennedy's honors award and Jack Black was given the little speech and he just says best rock band ever. Not the Beatles, not the Stones, Zeppelin. Why? What sets them apart? Well, they're just across the board. I mean, the stars aligned. Who knows what happened. You have four absolutely prodigious musicians. Jimmy Page, the riff master himself, so creative, had such a vision. I mean, he basically invented a genre of music, everything that becomes heavy, you know. It starts there with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, you know, this hammer of the gods, this otherworldly

front man with his howls and that voice. John Paul Jones, multi-instrumentalist, can play everything, is just the perfect guy to fill every little hole that might be there, bass parts, keyboard parts. And then, so the band forms, and Jimmy Page has this vision, he gets John Paul Jones, who was also a session musician, but they're looking for a drummer and a front man and they find this singer, Robert Plant, out in the hinterlands of England somewhere. And they think, well, he must be just a terrible person or he'd already be in a band, but no, they found him.

And then Robert Plant says, I have this friend, he's a drummer. It's John Bonham, you know, which is I think the greatest rock drummer in history. Some people want to go with Neil Peart, but I think it's Bonzo. So anyway, I want to hear Jay chime in on this, but that's you just go down the, that they came, that they found each other and they came together and I just, that's it. Jay, you're in full agreement with that. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I would think my reasons are probably a little different. Definitely they're talented, but there are a lot of talented rock musicians out there. You don't get the number one by being the most talented. You've got to tap into something. And I think with the English Invasion, listen,

for the quickest of quick breakdowns for people who are not familiar, how we got rock and roll, black people were sad. They sang out to Jesus. But then they also liked to party on Saturday nights before church. And the way the music went was kind of like cool, but they wouldn't put it on the radio. And then white people started like, well, we like that. But what if we put a white face on it? And then but then people started being like, I don't know about that either.

It's starting to sound like the black music. And then but the British, they said, well, we don't have the baggage they got in America. And so they started copying these black artists and they actually shipped them over and got inspired by them. And so all of that Mississippi mud that got in the veins of all these people made its way to England. But no one tapped into it like straight

to the vein like Led Zeppelin. They were the first ones that were full on like they came out of the mud where I'm from. And that's, whatever spiritual thing that comes from a place, they captured that place even though they got no business knowing what that was that whole phenomenon of these white kids in England getting just absolutely mesmerized by muddy waters and Howlin wolf and whoever else, you know BB King and all that and just Albert King and all of them That's that's such a cool phenomenon. So it actually starts like this That's such a cool phenomenon. So it actually starts like this. Some of the Western African languages are tonal pitch where a flatted fifth expresses

emotion. Okay, slaves end up in America and they lose their language, but they still have this memory of a flatted fifth to show emotion and that becomes blues music. And it floats back and forth between the church and the juke joint, church and the juke joint. Just as Jay just said. And you have your race records and he gave it to you. And then, however, I mean, you listen to like,

if you listen to Mick Jagger or Keith Richards or whoever talk about, they had to go find these records. They weren't readily available. They would go to record stores and hunt for them. You know, and here's a Blind Willie Johnson album and they would sit down and what rock, what we call rock, heavy rock, is the blues played fast and loud.

That's what it is. And electric. There was also the technology merged with the times where for the first time we had electric instruments, which was around the 40s or so, they started becoming more common. It's when they left Mississippi and went up to Chicago and they're playing bigger venues and it's louder. They just needed amplification to be heard because they're not just sitting around, you know, the plantation. And, and so they figure out how to make it loud. What years are we talking here? Like when the music started to become popular in, in England, are we talking like fifties, sixties, early sixties, early sixties, early sixties.

Now, you guys haven't mentioned Elvis. Wasn't, wasn't Elvis a bridge between the kind of blues and rockers? Elvis was a thief. Elvis was a thief and he was really good and I think he fits in that route. Yeah, I would say that's accurate. He wasn't adding anything new to it other than being white. That was the new thing he added. What though, what the Who and the Stones, Beatles are a little different category and Zeppelin are doing is they are bringing their own interpretation, their own energy to it. And this also comes from a place of post-war Britain, which was a bleak place.

And so they're tapping into that kind of angst. Yeah. So it was a lot of things came together at the same, and it happened so fast. There were these festivals in the 50s where like black artists like John Lee Hooker was young. They went, they were rediscovering Delta artists from like the 30s. Like there's the most famous is Son House, who legendarily taught Robert Johnson to play guitar. Robert Johnson famously sold his soul to the devil, apparently. But Son House was about- Crossroads, Highway 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

That's right. That's right up the road from- I've been there. I've been to the Crossroads, brother. Oh, I've been there. I've been there 100 times. I mean, I used to just go there for the cotton. but they'd ship, they'd find these guys and they'd bring them to these festivals. And so they're rediscovering something that had been lost. Like, Sun House was probably the most, he, legendary blues story.

Babish Preacher murdered someone, could never really be forgiven or forgive himself, sang sad blues songs, the preacher blues is one of my favorite songs of all time. Death letter. Death letter, oh my gosh, it's haunting. And then there's a, so that's the thing, like there's a spirituality, what makes the best rock band?

Back to that. There's a spirituality and a hauntingness that resonates with the core of our humanity, that this style of music captured like nothing else had before or since. It's entirely unique. So the best rock band has to embody that, has to epitomize capturing that dark, sad, longing, but also this resilience that dark, sad longing, but also like this kind of like resilience that says, I'm going to sing about this instead of, you know, whatever other negative things you could do. Like, it's just like some of the things you're singing about, you know, like,

Sunhouse always talk about, he's like, the name, but one kind of blues, he said, and that's between a man and a woman. And it's like, you can expand that a little bit and spiritually and see that, yeah, I mean, in a way there's, there's this tension between two persons who want to love each other, but are actually each other's worst enemy in practice most days. That's rock and roll. I mean, that's rock and roll. More than any other genre, like that's unique to the rock genre or is that just music and? I, yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, I would pop music is more saccharine than that. Pop came out of rock. So you have the Fado music of Portugal, you know, but we don't really know that because

we don't speak Portuguese, but it has a similar history. Yeah Wait, wait years were zeppelin 60s the 70s, right? 68 to 80 I guess that's not very long. I got a Robert Plant story. I was hoping I'd get the horn in here It seems like a good spot talking about the spirituality of it. So I was with the artist I was working with and we were down in outside Rolling Fork, Mississippi. And we were doing some photos for his record and all this. And so we got there and I see a truck coming up our way and, Hey, hey man, is this your farm? And he goes, Yeah, yeah. He's like, what are y'all doing? And I'm like, we're just taking some photos.

You know, this guy's a musician and we're just taking some photos out here and like the landscape and everything. He goes, yeah. I said, is that okay? He goes, oh yeah, yeah. I'm trying to figure out if you're somebody I should know. And I'm like, oh no, no, no. We're." I'm like, oh, no, no, no.

Kind of small time, infinite artists. He goes, well, strangely, this happened before. He's like, I was out here and I see a man with long hair like a woman. He's out there digging in my dirt. We didn't even have, it was a downfield at the moment, it was just dirt. I said, Mr, What were you doing? He says, he says, Oh, if you don't mind, I want some of your dirt for my vial. And he's like, he talked like that, you know, and I said, he said, Well, what do you mean? He goes, and he showed me

and he wanted to wear it around his neck. He's like, so he's got a vial on my he's like, this guy, me and he wanted to wear it around his neck. He's like, so he's got a volume. He's like, this guy named his name is Robert Plant. You know who that is? And I said, yeah, I know who Robert Plant is. He said, well, he's wearing a volume of dirt around his neck. He just wanted the spirit of that Mississippi around his neck. John Bonham died. Like he killed, did he kill himself or died in the OD? John Bonham died. Like he killed the kill himself or died. He, he, he, uh, fixated after, you know, about 20 shots of vodka. That's the other thing with rock and roll. There, there ain't like how many of these people die young fast to die young. Is that why the, is that why they're only around for 12, 12 years is not long at all. I mean, the stones

have been around for like 200 years, but the stones are the outlier. Right. They are the outliers for sure. Oh, so 12 years here isn't that. That's actually a pretty good run. Okay. Okay. You too. And, and, and the stones are really more outliers and being able to, and that's, that's the other dynamic. I mean, one of the dynamics of what makes a great rock band is that the, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And I think U2, you got a U2 shirt on, so I'll talk about U2 for a second. If you just, because I started off with Zeppelin and I talk about, you know, they're all virtuosos and that's true, they are.

Now they're more than that, but they are. U2 are not virtuosos. You know, Edge is very creative and no one quite sounds like him. He's got his thing going there. I get that. But they're not necessarily the greatest musicians. And yet, I mean, the reason they started writing songs is they weren't good enough to do covers. They couldn't play someone else's songs.

They were like, what? They're our own songs. And about when U2 made their first tour of the US, which I think was 82, I think that was the year, I had a friend, I've always been around musicians all my life. He's a drummer. To this day, he's a professional drummer. And he said, he said, DZ, last night I was at the Uptown, I saw this new band from Ireland called U2.

He said, you know, they're not necessarily each individual, but they're not that great. But when they're on stage, when they do something, they got something. He said, you better pay attention to this new band from Ireland called U2 because they got something. Is this like late seventies or early eighties? It's been 82. 82. Wow. I mean, is it too simple to say they're just really, really good performers? No, I think that's too simple. I mean, there's a lot of performers. There is some, there's

a chemistry. I know it sounds cliche, but there's a chemistry. There's a magic. There's something that happens when they, so that it's actually a band. You know, super groups are fun. You'll hear of them now and then. It's kind of, they do one off album and it's okay. That's great. You know, probably them now and then. It's kind of, they do one off album. And so that's great. You know, probably the best ever would be the traveling wheelberries, you know, all that. But no, there has to be this chemistry and it's super groups are a cheat

because they've already, they're already famous and they've paid their dues. There's something about, you know, being 19 and in a van together. I was about to say it's about riding in that van. Yeah. Yeah. Us against the world.

It's hard to describe chemistry that they have. It's hard to even contain. That's why the great ones become great is because the chemistry does work. Sometimes there has to be adjustments early on. Some of the band members aren't going to be there more than six months. And they got to find out who works, but then when it hits. There's a pastor friend of mine, Josh Stump, you know Josh, owns a cigar lounge now. But he used to counsel bands all the time. Like that was kind of his thing.

He'd counsel bands and here in Nashville. So there's a lot of bands to be counseled. And he'd say the same line. I'd heard him say this line a hundred times, but he would try to reframe how bands would think about what they were. He's like, a band is like a bad marriage without the sex. Because you got you are you crammed in these close quarters every minute of every day with one another. Even if you break down and say, well, I'm going to go eat over here. Can I take a per diem or whatever?

But you're back in that van and then you're driving for hours on end and then you're standing up there and you all just have the shared experience of 10 or 15 people who paid to see you and you're just like we're putting so much into this we didn't make Jack you know and that can't be replicated after you hired a pro you know once you made it you know it just that can't be you can't get that back. And that's why like Jack White right now is on tour in a van. And he's like, you don't know where the show is till the day of the show. And I talked to someone actually who knows his manager real well and he said, he's losing his mind.

He's like, because it's so much more for him cause he has to call, everything has to be done within hours of the show. He's like, but Jack's just like, I'm having the best time of my life. And it's a, I don't know, Jack. Well, he's just riffing off what Dylan did back in 1975 with the Rolling Thunder review, where Dylan just said he wanted to recapture that kind of spontaneous energy. And he put together this kind of rock and roll review, this kind of rock show.

He's got a band, but he's got other rock and roll review, this kind of rock show. He's got a band, but he's got other performers and they're traveling in a school bus for Crying Out Loud throughout New England. Dylan is driving the school bus. This is for real. You can see the documentaries on this and the actual clips. And they would usually announce a few hours before. They'd roll into town and they're going to a show at, you know, Memorial Hall in some

town in New England. And it was because I think Dylan wanted that, he wanted to feel that again, that kind of that energy where it's not over managed and it's just flying by the seat of your pants and it's kind of like the circus comes to town sort of situation. So as far as like chemistry goes, I mean, I mean Dylan's band, The Band, is one of the best bands of all time too. If you really, I mean, we could talk about them on the list because- We should. And the thing about The Band is they're not necessarily known by the masses, but they're

known by the artists. Right. I mean, Clapton said they changed my life and Clapton wanted to be in the band, you know? Really? You're not going to be in the artists. Right. I mean, Clapton said they changed my life and Clapton wanted to be in the band, you know, you're not going to be in the band. Bob Dylan's band was called the band. So what happened was, you know, you know who the band is, you know, their songs, everyone. Say this to is like, Oh yeah, I know that song. The way it is their most famous one. But so, so Dylan was Dylan goes electric. He's looking for a band. He finds this bar band with Ronnie Hawkins, and it was like Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. And to make the long

story short, more or less Dylan steals this band because he recognizes they have potential. They have a lot of, you know, they're a bar band. And Dylan more or less steals them, makes them his band, and they travel the world as he goes electric. And they're his band. And then Dylan in 66 has his motorcycle wreck, and he's kind of off the... He's not touring anymore, but he wants to keep the band around. So the band isn't called anything other than they're just the band because they're his

band. And so he sets them up in Woodstock. The reason Woodstock is Woodstock is because Dylan lived in Woodstock. And when the big festival was going to happen, which wasn't actually in Woodstock, the promoters did it there because the one artist they wanted was Dylan and Dylan didn't show up. Just because that's what he is. Oh, he didn't show up to Woodstock. No, no, he's... So, to keep things going, Dylan and the other members of the band were writing songs that

they were... The idea was they're going to be demos, and we would give them to other artists to record. And they're staying in this house called Big Pink, they're in upstate New York. But eventually, the band decides they're also going to be their own entity. They have enough of their own songs, they're going to tour on their own and be in a band. And they just couldn't come up with it. What are we? Well, we're the band.

And so that's their name. The band. One of the most influential. The whole thing of country rock really comes from the band. They're considered like the most American of bands, although only one of the five was an American. They're all Canadians. But it's a great story. There's all kinds of documentaries on you. You should.

And I'll just as an Arkansas native, I'll just say that they wouldn't have been anything without that one. LeVon was... LeVon Helm, the drummer-singer. LeVon bought the soul. And nobody's going to argue with that. His influence was so great that it makes them an American band, even though they're 80% Canadian. Right.

And all their best songs are the ones that he sang. Yeah. But Robbie Robertson was the best songwriter. He's the one that wrote the weight and all those. I never liked him. I never liked him. That's because you're from Arkansas. I know.

You're getting into that few that they had there. Oh no, no, no, no. He's a scoundrel to me. So that's right. I like Robbie. I like Robbie. I like Robbie. I like Robbie.

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can walk around a store and you'll hear a YouTube song and it just feels like this feels just as fresh. I'm just as energizing as it was 40 years ago where you can have a hit song today, a pop song or something. And after, after listening to it for 30 times, it's just, I'm going to sound like the old man to a role kind of old men. But I mean, it's just like, it gets annoying after a while and it's, it doesn't have any longevity. It seems like like hit songs. Well, that's pop pop is pop. I mean, I know it's popular, but it, but it's also, it's, it's easy to like real quick and easy to not like after about 10 times. Oh, so pop genre is that's not, that's kind of my, that's my opinion. I think great artistry demands something of you.

It demands you come to me. You come to me. I'm not going to pander for, I don't know, Joshua Trezza, I did a, during COVID, I did a, because we were just all sitting around our basements doing something. And I did several, I don't even do podcasts, but I did some then I did one on 10 near perfect albums. And one of them was Joshua Tree. Yeah. And it's ever so often, you know, like, like Dark Side of the Moon would be one. I think George Harrison's All Things Must Pass would be one. Certainly Bob Dylan's Blood on the tracks. These are

like near perfect albums where there's not a lot of... Xcel on Main Street. Yeah. Oh, I love Xcel on Main Street. Great album, right? Yeah. And go ahead. But that's an album that the critics didn't like to begin with because it didn't have those poppy hit kind of songs. They're just in that basement in France and it's just, they're about half drunk and you can tell, but it's great. And that's a great, actually on main street. That's, I think that's

the stone's best album. I really do. I agree. No, for sure. Okay. So seventies Zeppelin, what are some bands that, that, that they kind of give birth to that becomes some of the top bands say in the eighties. And I want to, I want to also ask like, where does glamor, the glamor rock era fit in? Queen queens, the motley crew. You're thinking more hair metal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hair bands. Yeah. Hair bands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can blame Zeppelin for that for sure. But in the same way, like a more modern way that happens is Pearl Jam gave us Creed gave us Nickelback. You know, it's like a watering cap.

Nirvana did the work of the Lord in killing off the hair bands. They did. Nirvana did. Okay. I think going back though, listening to some Motley Crue, I'm like, ah, they're a pretty good band. Yeah. But there was definitely a time. Motley Crue for me is a band that's better to listen to and not see their music video. Right.

Right. Sure. Sure. Sure. But yeah, so Zeppelin kind of, Zeppelin gave us metal, period. Every heavy band that's existed in the last 50 years knows they owe a debt to Zeppelin. That's why I said early on, Jimmy Page basically invented a genre. Yeah, I put 50 of them in Sabbath.

I was going to just took the words out of my mouth. I was about to say that and Sabbath. Yeah. Jimmy Hendrix, is he just kind of adjacent to those? I mean, or is he doing his own thing? It's hard to say because he left the scene so quick. He could definitely be heavy, but it was different. It was so established in the blues. Of course, Zeppelin is in the blues, but they don't just stay there. I mean, like Immigrant Song, you go, okay, I can see the blues influence, but it's not blues. So I can't imagine Hendrix doing a song like Immigrant Song or Cashmere.

I just can't imagine Hendrix doing that. He's a guitar virtuoso in the blues world, the best there ever was at that. But he's going to stay there. He may not have, but he did because he died at that. But he's going to stay there. He may not have, but he did because he died at 27. Oh, he did that young. Okay. Well, that's, wow. No, I mean, he didn't make it out of the seventies, did he? He died in 69, I think. Yeah. The 27 club. He's one of the, him and Rob Johnson and Kurt Cobain.

Brian Jones. Yeah. I mean, that's a- 27 club? Is that rock and roll? Yeah, that's the term. Or is dying at 27. People that had 27. Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain. Yeah. I mean, that's a... 27 Club? Is that rock and roll? Yeah, that's the term. People that had 27. Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain. Yeah. Oh, wow. Robert Johnson was the first... You know who Robert Johnson is? Janis Preston? No. Robert Johnson gives us the archetype for the rock and roll man, because he rejected the music of the church.

And he legendarily sold his soul to the devil. Okay, I've heard about that. He mentioned earlier, but he is still considered the greatest guitar player of all time by many of the greatest guitar players of all time. He still can't figure out... Clapton calls him his true north. Clapton's got a clip somewhere I saw where he said, I still can't figure out what he's doing on these parts. He's like, I've studied a whole lot. Clapton did two cover albums of Robert Johnson's material.

I can't remember the names of them, but he talked about how hard he had to practice. If you hear these recordings, these Robert Johnson recordings from the 30s, it really is. You listen to it and go, that's just one guitar. There's no multitracking. It's just it. But you go, how is he doing that? Just one acoustic guitar. And so, yeah, the great legend, and it works great in rock, is that he sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads and got this great gift. But what happens is he just kind of,

he was kind of a, you know, he was one of the guys that was playing the juke joints and then he just disappeared for a while. And then when he came back, he was really good. He was so good. Right. And that was his wilderness, but like his, his almost like anti Jesus time in the wilderness when he came back, but he was... Well, well, it's like Clapton will say though, he says, what I really think was happening is he was what they call wood shedding. During that time, he was just practice and practice and practice.

But selling yourself to the devil is a better story than just I practiced a whole lot. So the crossroads is the actual location you guys have been to where he. Yeah. There's, there's, there's not that one has one that there was at one point it was disputed, but is now highway 61 highway 49, right? Oh, a 49 is the highway. So Helen Arkansas has a bridge. It was one of the only bridges back in those days between Memphis and Vicksburg. It was heavily traveled between Mississippi and Arkansas. And Robert Johnson actually lived in Helena for a long time, but that

highway 49 runs East West and 61, now 61 runs basically parallel to the Mississippi river from Minnesota to New Orleans. Yeah. I mean, that's U.S. 51. It goes the whole length of the country, basically. So that's like the Mississippi River Highway, you know? So Dylan has his album, 1965, Highway 61 Revisited.

That's 1966, no, 65, 65. It has Like a Rolling Stone, but it also has the song Highway 61. God said to Abraham, kill me a son. Abe said, man, you must be putting me on. God said, no. Abe said, what? God said, you can do what you want, Abe,

but the next time you see me coming, you better run. Abe said to God, where he want this killing done. God said, you can do it out on Highway 61. Yeah, so it's like the, true rock and roll has this tension between temptation and righteousness. And it is a thread that has run through every sub genre of rock and roll. There's this kind of like, you know, we mentioned Motley Crue, I love the song Shout at the Devil, you know, which is like, there's this tension there of I'm against you, but I've really doing everything you want me to. And I acknowledge that. And that's a wild story of what's his name? Not Nikki six, who's the front man? I can't think of

the front man of crew right now. Anyway, he's got a thing where he said they were doing a seance one night. And he just thought it's silly, stupid stuff. He doesn't believe in any of that. But it got real. There was a dark presence in the room and he flipped. And he said that I'm out. I'm not doing this. And that's where the shout at the devil came from. Oh really? It was a response to a seance that got too real. So it's like the devil in rock and roll is like, but let me come back the other side. One thing we haven't mentioned and I'll put it under the rock and roll heading. The black music moved from blues to soul and never lost its blues influence. And in that time period where we had the British invasion, the black artists were giving us Motown and they were giving us Stax Records. Cadillac Records was a little

earlier than that. But Stax is very, I know a lot about Stax Records. And so these are giving us soul music. And one of the people that came out of Stax Records, Mavis Staples, who's still alive, and allegedly her and Bob Dylan were betrothed and never got married, but Mavis, I saw Mavis play in Hellen- Bob proposed to her and she turned him down. That's what it was, that's what it was, yep. And anyway, I saw Mavis play in Hellen at this Gospel Roots Festival, and she had just gotten inducted

to the Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She said, people say, Mavis, why do you want to be in that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Don't you know that's the devil's music? And she said, I tell them all the same, the devil ain't got no music. And that is, I have internalized that. That happened probably 15 years ago. I have internalized that people say, you know the whole debate we used to have in the 90s about secular versus Christian music and like there's there's no such thing. I'm now like there's no such thing. The devil ain't got no music That's there is yeah, it's not secular and sacred music. It's good and bad music, right? That's the categories I pay attention to.

You know, I saw, I've seen Dylan a gazillion times, maybe, I don't know, 15 years ago, maybe 10 years ago, I can't really remember, Mavis Staples was opening for him. And so I saw Mavis Staples at Starlight Theater in Kansas City, and I tell you, her set, it was just pure church. That's all it was. It was just church. It was fantastic. But I mean, it was, if she'd done everything exactly like she did at Starlight Theater on a Saturday night, some Baptist church on Sunday morning in downtown Kansas City, it would have fit perfectly. It was just church.

Well, they got their roots. You're talking about greatest albums of all time. I'm going to probably say the B altitudes by the Staples Singers. They're from first track to last track. It is just incredible. And so when I think about roots of rock and roll, I still, and there's, in the last 10 years, been like this, a lot of rock bands have tried to capture that Memphis sound from the mid-60s and, you know, this neo-soul revival, they call it.

But that, to me, is like, that's another path that rock and roll, one path was the zeppelin led to metal and stayed with the devil stuff. But there's this other that gospel was always mixed in and the stacks. There's always this gospel sense. Right. It's always kind of been there. And then, you know, you see artists all the time, they'll drop a gospel song on you at a rock concert. Well, even zeppelin has to do, you know, Jesus make up my dying bed, you know. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, there's just like that that we're getting more to what I consider to be what makes rock and roll what it is. It's like it's the devil and the Holy spirit in the same room. And that's, that's, that's what you get with rock and that's rock and roll comes out with a distortion comes from how about, okay. The hair bands, the eighties are there taught like in terms of

talent? Are there some that stand out? I mean, I mean, I like guns and roses, but roses. I don't know. Do you count van Halen? I don't know. They kind of, they're not an eighties hair band. Are they? I wouldn't call them that, but they also led to it. They had the hair. Yeah. Yeah. I guess you would. Yeah. I mean, Eddie Van Halen. What constitutes a hairband? Like what's the- For another generation. He's another generation's whoever. Hendrix Page, Clapton, Jeff Beck. Actually, Jeff Beck is the guitar hero's guitar hero. I've been around enough great musicians, great guitar players. I ask them, you know, tell me your three musicians, great guitar players.

I ask them, tell me your three or four favorite guitar players. Jeff Beck's on everybody's list. And I've seen him, I saw him a few times. His death, man, that hit me hard. Jeff Beck. Preston, do you even know who Jeff Beck is? I know him. I'm sure I've heard some of his music just know he's amazing guitarist.

He was a guitar virtuoso from the 60s on. He just died a couple of years ago. Who was as good at the time? He got meningitis and just died really quick. Man, that guy was good. So you have these three great guitar players that kind of grow up together. In fact, Page and Jeff Beck actually knew each other as teenagers. And so you have Clapton, Page, and Jeff Beck. None of them are really singers. Eventually Clapton teaches himself to sing so he's not beholden to a band.

Page goes out and finds himself a singer, that's Robert Plant, and Jeff Beck taught his guitar to sing. Come on people out there. If you don't know who Jeff Beck is, just get on your Spotify and start listening from Jeff Beck. Is Hendrix up there in the top guitarist? Yeah, I was talking about these three British guys that grew up together. And then Hendrix comes over, because Hendrix was not known in the US, but he shows up in London and just blows everybody's minds. I mean, everybody's just like, well, I guess we're gonna have to get new jobs now.

Who wants to hear us play guitar anymore? Yeah, I mean, you can kind of tell like what generation people are with by who they say the guitar players are. Like, you know, so Eddie, like is Gen X's. Eddie's legit, man. That guy's a freaky guitar player. And he's probably, in fact, a lot of the musicians I know around here, like they talked about him in like demigod status, you know? They weren't necessarily influenced by the 60s, 70s rock bands as much. But the 80s stuff, you know.

And there's been, yeah, there's been kind of a throwback to that. I mean, in a lot of this stuff, we're seeing stuff we used to mock, come back and be taken seriously now in rock and roll. Like we mocked hair metal. Well, people were actually going back and treating it seriously. Well, but part of the genre itself was fun. It was, butt rock is Creed, you know? Right. And, but like there's filling arenas and not because people are

that cynical, they just want to pay a ticket to mock someone. It's like, no, we like this, you know, which count me in. I did the whole cycle. I loved Creed. I was like, Oh, what was I thinking? And now I'm like, no, that's it holds up. It's okay. It's pretty good. So stick with guitar players here for a minute. And maybe and John Mayer, I think John Mayer is an example of someone who's people don't realize how great a guitar player he is. No, agree. Yeah, I didn't know what it was called. Until the John Mayer Trio, I had no idea.

He was just this saccharine pop kind of guy, but he dumped his talent down to get famous. Right. He did. He dumped his talent down to get famous. Yeah, he definitely did. To play some pop-oriented music. Pop-oriented music doesn't need these shredding guitar solos, but I just got tickets to see a dead-end company at the Sphere in Las Vegas and whenever it is, I'm going to see them

in May or something. But you're a deadhead? No, I can't claim that status. But I appreciate the Grateful Dead. I really do. I listen to a lot of Grateful Dead and it's an acquired taste. You have to learn how to get to it. But that's what happened in John Mayer. John Mayer was like, you know, he just vaguely knew him.

I mean, he knew what they were. He's in the industry, but he's not paying much attention. And then he fell down the rabbit hole. And that's how it is with the dead, because there's so much there. And it's easy to dismiss. You know, you hear one song, one live track from 1972 and you go, oh, they're just all over the place. But you stick with them, you go, wait a minute, there's something going on here. And Mayer becomes obsessed with them. And then he talks himself into being able to set in with kind of the remaining members of the Grateful Dead. And one thing leads to another and now you have this dead-end company, which is sort of like, if you listen to what Mayer's doing on guitar, he actually is still being respectful of Jerry Garcia. But it's kind of like elevated cooking.

You're taking the basic recipe that you got from grandma, but now with your French training, you're elevating it. And that's kind of what John Mayer's doing with playing with Dead and Company. Yeah, I'm a massive fan of the John Mayer Trio, and they don't do that anymore. But they probably got the best session drummer and the best session bass player going in those days, and they just did a three piece. And let me tell you something, three piece is the core. And there's something-

No place to hide. I want to over spiritualize this, you know Unity of three but But there is something like when you pull that off. It's like nothing else you bring it in all the other musicians No, if you can do it with just those three. It's the best the power trio is Like to me the pinnacle of rock and roll and not many can do it because you can't do it. You can't fill the sound with it. You don't, you know, So here's my one contribution to this conversation is the best power trio of course is rush, right? Oh yeah. Rush. Okay. Well, let me finish up and then we'll go to rush. But, but so

Perry and I a few years ago went to see a Robert plant andC. Because I was too young to ever see Zeppelin live. Oh, he's still playing? Plant was still playing? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. And Perry, we went to the show, we enjoyed it, we're leaving. Perry says, what do you think Jimmy Page would think of this? I said, I think he would think, huh, takes three guitar players to replace me, doesn't it?

We're doing some Zeppelin songs, but there's three guitar players up there, not one. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And the power trio, having a front man, Zeppelin sort of qualifies because- A power trio can have four members of one of them is just singing. Just singing, right. Exactly. So like there's something really, almost like, if you want to hallow this stuff and like sanctify it, like there's something almost sacred about the power trio that nothing else can do. Cream? Y'all, cream. Absolutely. Yeah. Ginger Baker.

You seen that documentary? Yes. I've seen all the documentaries. It's one of the wildest things I've ever seen. I've seen all the documentaries. It's one of the wildest things I've ever seen. I've seen all the documentaries too, but. Ginger Baker's scary, isn't he? He's something else. This is wild, man. He's something else. Who's he the lead singer?

Ginger Baker and Jack Rommel. And Eric Clapton, if you don't, that's Cream. Yeah, he was Eric Clapton's drummer or Cream's drummer. Man, he's... Oh, Clapton was part of Cream. I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, okay. Clapton has been in like everything. I mean, he's been all these kinds of different, you know?

So I'm going to argue that rush is, I don't know enough to say, Oh no, they're in the conversation for great power. Here's, here's, and going back to your point, Brian, about the artists, a true artist is going to you come to them. They don't come to you. So you had rush, they break on the scenes in the early mid seventies with working man. It took off, got them on the map. And then they, I think they released a couple more albums that were decent. And then they, they just, they, they started to do all this creative stuff. They release a caress of steel, I think in 75, they had two or one 10 minute song called the necromancer. And then a tour, they ended the album on a 20 minute song, a 20 minute song, the fountain, the hay day

of, you know, what we call Prague rock and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that album tanks, people didn't like it. You can't play 20 minute songs on the radio. So what do they do? They turn around the next year, they opened their album 2112 with a 20 minute song in four parts about that's the, you know, be true to yourself. And that, and that took off that was, you know, did, did fantastic. But I mean, I love, I love, I love the fact that rush said, this is what we want to do. If people like it, then great. If not, it is what it is. Yeah. I just, I love the spirit of, and I don't even, you know, they have the kind of their, I think moving pictures was kind of their apex and after that they changed, they went this, they went more synth and everything.

I didn't really like that, but, but I still appreciated that they're willing to just go where they wanted to go. So you like Russia. Are you familiar with Primus? Yeah. Yeah. I've seen Primus. I've seen Primus open for queens of the stone ages. I'm a huge, huge queens of the stone age. I'm like, like that's, I love the queens of the stone. What was the basis like watching the, I don't know his name, the primus. He's front row, man. It was all, I was literally front row. Does he, he does things with the base. Nobody else can do it. It seems like, no, he's, he's, and he's funny and he's a good performer. And, uh, there were people sitting on the front row and he was yelling at him and I was all for it.

Primus. Oh wow. I'm going to go to a primus show and sit there. Yeah. Yeah. My, my biggest regret in life is I've never actually seen Russian concert and now Neil died in 2020. So you don't think, you don't think Neil Pert was the best drummer. I mean, I know it's, I mean, he was the most, he was the best technically, but I don't bond being able to do back in the groove and something about that. That's, that's, that groove and okay, there's something about that. That's that would be my that's always been my I mean like you don't buddy rich never played in a rock band buddy rich probably the most talented drummer ever. But he didn't get what made rock and I mean, yeah, the Motown drummer, Buddy Rich wouldn't understand really how to play when the levy breaks.

Right. Right. Exactly. He would play it correctly instead of the levee breaks. Right, right, exactly. He would play it correctly instead of the way it... Right. The way Bonzo played it. His soul was exploding every time that hit that tom. Yeah. Well, that's got that heavy kick drum, right? So you're there in Nashville, Jay. That's where the black keys are these days. Oh yeah, actually, right next door to my neighbor's house is this old Victorian. They did a music video in that house, the Black Keys did. I've been to a bunch of Black Keys shows too.

I was at one just, what was it, fairly recently. And again, you know, I was right up there in the front row because that's, I just, at this point, that's how I spend my money. But I'd seen him before, but man, I'd forgotten how close, especially when they're just playing with two people, when it's just the two of them. They have band now, but when it's just Pat Carney and Dan Arbach, man, it's just right on the verge of a train wreck. I mean, there's like, are they going to come together? And then they kind of, then they do.

Yeah, they land it. It's an adventure. It's an adventure to watch them live. I'm a big fan. That you don't necessarily get on the recordings, but live you see, oh man, it could just about fall apart right here. Yeah, I've seen their whole arc because I saw them when they had not. They got really big, really fast and they didn't know. I was with them when they were

playing little clubs. And so that's one of the bands that I say, well, I knew them way back when. Yeah. No, I saw them play smaller clubs, but when they went to the big stage, they kind of lost something. Yeah. And they didn't know how to be a big stage band, which is tough. It's a two piece, you know, but then they figured it out. They they have figured it out. And I think they've kind of settled into what they are. But you know, there's I have a love hate with them too, because you know, they they stole a junior, Junior Kimbrough. Yeah, they they is giving props. They give him props. They didn't give him no money though. I think he's dead, but okay.

Yeah, yeah, but his estate or whatever, you know, it's just like whatever. I mean, it's just kind of like, it's one of those like, oh yeah, they did a whole album just covering his song. So it wasn't like they were even trying to hide the fact that we stole Junior Kimbrough's whole Hill Country Blues thing, you know, but yeah. So did you like that album, Delta Cream, when they're just doing that? Yeah, yeah. I loved it.

Yes. I mean, you have to understand that. So I grew up, like I could smell the Mississippi River. And so, like my whole music arc was, you kind of reject what you're familiar with. When you're a kid, when you're a teenager, you're just like, so I was like anti blues, anti country, you know, I wanted like, just loud, screamy punk rock, rock and roll. I got a Ramones t shirt on. So we need to go.

But then like, it was Kurt Cobain doing that live acoustic. I remember that MTV unplugged. Yeah. And I'm like, who is Leadbelly? And so then I do a deep dive and I'm realizing- Where did you sleep tonight? Leadbelly was not far from where I'm from. And then I'm starting, I started, it just, that was the portal for me and to all the old blues guys. I'm like, there was a familiarity that drew me in at that point in my life that I had up to that point rejected, because it was too close. My whole music life changed.

I was in Cape Town, South Africa, back when you used to go to record stores and they let you sample the CDs. I listened to B.B. King you'd listen, you know, they'd let you sample the CDs. And I listened to B.B. King and Eric Clapton's record, Riding With The King. And I was across the world, and I felt like I was back home where I grew up. And that, it just struck a note inside me. And I was like, that's still, it's still, I still hear it. I still, it still rings out and I'm like, this is it. What have I been doing? What have I been chasing?

And then you realize that the people that you like actually attribute everything to those guys too. Like there's a line in that movie, crazy heart with Jeff Bridges, which is a music. And he got his line. He says, we all owe everything to them Delta boys. Well, yeah, I mean, you, you've Yeah, I mean, you've got to pay homage. You've got to pay homage. I mean, the whole world of rock, pop, soul, it all comes from like, two counties in Mississippi.

That's where it begins. That's the cradle. It's crazy. I mean, if you start going through these names, they all grew up within about 20 miles of each other. The, you know, Albert King, BB King, uh, uh, sun house, Robert Johnson, Howlin Wolf, all of these. Yeah. It all comes from this tiny little area in North Mississippi. Going back to Nirvana is Nirvana to nineties rock. What Zeppelin was to seventies and eighties. I mean, was that like a transition area kind of, yeah, they were that influential, that big, that sudden man. Nevermind. What an album. Yeah. We just want a great, they were another,

that's just, that's a power trio. What a great band. I mean, they toured patch smear joined them, but I mean, they, they changed everything almost like that. Almost what's the relationship with Pearl Jam? Cause weren't they around the same era doing similar stuff? Well, okay. That's the, you know, like, or are they, is Pearl Jam a by-product? And then you have the debate, you know, Nirvana, Pearl Jam. Okay. But, but then you also throw in sound guard. I can say the answer is sound garden. Yeah. I think J and I are pretty much on the same thing. You told me that a while back, Jay. I think I even tweeted something about, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You said Nirvana or Pearl Jam. And I

said, sound, I didn't even realize sound garden was that old for some reason. I thought they were like nineties, not eighties, but I like screaming trees too, because that's, that's in that, that flows into that Queens, the stone age neighborhood that I'm so into. But yeah, yeah. I mean, I love the Queens of the stone age too. I mean, some, some, some of the more like 21st century rock bands, which it's a short list, sadly, but everything goes through ebbs and flows. Rock and roll will never die. If anybody takes anything from this, know that. Rock and roll will never die. Okay. Where is it? Where is it?

It's just, you know, it's taking a nap maybe, but it ain't rock and roll will never die. There's some 14-year-old boys in their basement plugging in a Les Paul or a Stratocaster. And that's, you know, it's when they get back to playing their instruments. And you know what the gateway is? It's Zeppelin. It actually is. You'll have 13 year olds hear Zeppelin and go,

ooh, what is that? You like Greta Van Fleet? I like Zeppelin. You're right, exactly. Right, but they're like a young version and they seem to have just embraced it. Yeah, I mean, no, I have nothing but blessings for them. God bless them. Yeah.

But it reminds me so much of Zeppelin. It's a little confusing. A little through on the nose, right? Yeah, I agree. But I mean, they're doing well and I'm happy, but I have not listened to an entire album of theirs from front to back. Anybody here familiar with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard? I've heard the name for some reason. They're a band out of Melbourne. They're now, you know, they're like 30, 31, 32, so they've been around a while.

But in like 10 years, they put out 25 albums. They're all over with genre. They do metal as well as anybody, thrash metal. But they can do everything. And they have built a real fan base. So I saw them at Red Rocks. And they sold out Red Rocks three shows. One evening, matinee evening.

They sold all three out and didn't repeat a song. Because they have the, because most of the people, I don't know what's most, I would say a large percentage of the people that had tickets to see King Gizzard at Red Rocks bought all three shows because they had this real fanatical, kind of like a Grateful Dead type fan base, but for much younger generation. And in fact, it feels like it. It's all the tie dye and all of that. They're kind of a psychedelic jam band that plays lots of different genres and they're

worth checking out. I think in my mind, they're the most exciting live band out there. Oh, really? Oh, you know, some of these- Damons Contains DC from Dublin. Somebody, I was, I was at a coffee shop and some, I had a cold play shirt on and I think that, I think this is the band. They said, well, if you like cold play, you'll probably like this, this band. Yeah. I don't know that I necessarily see the connection, but King gives us a lot more raw, a lot, a lot more jam. I mean, they're

a jam band. They are a jam band. They'll do 20 minute songs, but they're good. Okay. So we're going back to the raw. I don't where, what happened in the 21st century where it seems like pop has taken over everything and rock and roll. It doesn't even like, what are the top five rock bands today? Other than like ones that have been around since the eighties or whatever. Foo fighters. Number one for me, Foo fighters. They're carrying the torch. I heard someone say that it came from a who's the front guy for radio head. Everybody, everybody's out

there watching this podcast, screaming the name. I, Tom, I was going to say Tom. Every time I say it, I want to say Tom Waits. I'm like, no, not Tom. Not Tom Waits. Tom, I'm sorry, I can't come up with it. I apologize to everybody out there. You know what I mean. I know what it looks like. With the I. Yeah. I can't. He was having a conversation. I think it was with Bono. And he says, have you noticed that the bands that can fill arenas today are the same bands that filled arenas 25 years ago? It's like nobody has, at some point it just cut off and said, okay, everybody that's newer than the Foo Fighters doesn't get to fill an arena anymore.

Yeah. I mean, like Smashing Pumpkins is like still like one of the biggest shows I've been to in the last five years. And it's like, you know, but, you know, you say that, Greta Van Fleet, they actually, they draw well. They draw well. They sold out in 8,000 seasons. I haven't been to any of their shows.

Have you been to one of their shows? I've not been to one of their shows. I'd be curious who goes. I mean, what's the demographic? Right? Sure. I bet, you know, I bet it's old people. I bet. I was just a couple of weeks ago, I was at a ZZ Top Show. I took my 14 year old grandson with me.

He loved it. We had a great time. But I'm telling you, my 14 year old grandson was 50 years younger than anybody there. Yeah, I was like, well, it's a bunch of old people. I think you're going to get a generation that comes up. You talk about that, your grandson, my now 10-year-old, we've got a family legend, which you got to build these legends for your family. But I was trying to potty train him and we were at a ZZ Top Show,

and we spent half the concert in the Porta John trying to squeeze one out. And he was listening to ZZ Top when we were in the Porta John. So, Jude, my oldest grandson, has been with me to two rock shows, ZZ Top and Bon Iver. So he's got the spectrum, right? Yeah. And I mean, and you get these kind of reunion shows like they just did one a few nights ago, actually, Billy Gibbons was there Elvis Costello was there. What's the harmonica player for Willie Nelson? Mickey something,

I can't think of his name, but he was he was there. And then Chris Stapleton came out. And you know, there was a whole this, listen, you got to understand these things happen all the time in Nashville. I can't, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of just like legendary shows that just randomly happened here. Like Jack White played a last minute thing at the American Legion over here. It's like, you know, with 200 people just a few months ago. Jack White, we

haven't said enough about Jack White, I love it down 21st century who's still at the top of the game, anything he does. Dead Weather, rock and tours. You know, I probably like I probably like Dead Weather of all of those iterations. Probably the best. I love Dead Weather with Allison Mosshart when she sings. Good stuff. Yeah, I saw the Rack on Tours at the Ryman. And I've seen in

several shows at the Ryman here. But I think that's probably the best show I've seen at the Ryman ever. The Rack on Tours are so good. And that's not even like, that's his side project, you know? It's Jack White's side project. It's not even his main thing. So, yeah, I mean, Jack White- He's the king of side projects. He's got so many different things that are Jack White, yeah.

Oh, Greta Van Fleet, they started in 2012. So they're pretty, fairly recent. They're kids, yeah. I mean, to me, they're kids. Well, they were kids when they, I mean, they like're pretty fairly recent kids. Yeah. I mean, to me they're kids. Well, they were kids when they, I mean, they like, we're like really kids. I mean, they were like teenagers almost when they started, I think. Yeah. And yeah, they, they were emulating the entire seventies, like very blousy type shirt, halfway on button. I mean, they're just doing the whole thing. You know, they're just like, yeah, we're going to be exactly like Zeppelin.

So it is, it is still happening. It's just, doesn't, it doesn't feel, and maybe it's just my gender. It's not, it doesn't feel like the eighties, nineties when there was a, you know, Taylor Swift and Beyonce and that sort of thing. It's, it's a drop in the bucket. And why, why is that? Why is that rock and roll belongs there? I'll just say, I don't think it belongs on the level. I don't think it belongs on Beyonce level. Exactly. It shouldn't. So this is what happened with punk, that rock starts as a start.

And then you reach the level where it's, well, Zeppelin with their virtuosity and Queen and, well, I don't know who else you want to name, these really over the top in artistry and musicianship and showmanship. And then you get a rebellion. Yeah, say, all right, well, we're going to play two-minute songs, just as fast as we can with three chords,

real loud, and real pissed off. Yeah. This is punk, although I will argue that it has a predecessor with the Stooges, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, that gives a gesture towards what becomes punk. Greatest punk bands, I want to say the Clash, but they're not just punk, are they? Because they were kind of too good to be just punk. Well, what I think of the roots of punk is also the blues. They just sped up the blues. Exactly. But it's that rebellion.

It's rebellion against mainstream. When something goes mainstream. Rock begins as counterculture and then becomes the dominant culture. And so punk says, okay, we're going to find a way for it to be counterculture again. And so rock doesn't flourish when it's dominant culture. And it has to find a way to be counterculture. But then when it gets good at it, then everybody loves it. That's what happens. It's kind of like the church that way. It flourishes best when it's not in the arenas, when it's counterculture. I mean, this is supposed to be theology in the realm. We're just talking music.

Jay, let's keep church out of this. All of us can sit here and do theology. I mean, all of us can. And I love, you know, I love the Lord, I love Scripture, I love theology. But I mean, all of us can. And I love, you know, I love the Lord, I love Scripture, I love theology. But I mean, people haven't, if they're still listening, they say, okay, enough of that. It might be a few. You can tell that this is easy for me to talk about. And because it's just, it's, you know, nobody has to care, but I do. And I just grew up in this world. I mean, I remember to this day, the first time a friend of mine had me lay down between two Allegro stereo speakers circa 1973 and listened to Hola

Love. It just blew my little 13-year-old mind. And I've never not loved it. I had to go through the period of time where, you know, in the church world, it was, you know, it's the devil's music and backward masking and nah, nah, nah, nah. And I just never went down that road. I also grew up in the Jesus movement. I'm about as young as you can be and really have been really in the Jesus movement because I was pretty young, but others were. So, I knew Larry Norman and Keith Green and Phil Keagy, who's still in Nashville, still a good friend of mine. Phil has played my guitar in one of his shows. Ha! No way.

Ha! Phil Keagy, wow. shows. Ha! Ha! How about that? Anyway, so I grew up in that world and I was like 15, 16 years old and booking these artists and doing shows. So I have that too, but I never just completely let go of just good old rock and roll. And I never saw it as of the devil. It's another genre of art and it has its play. And why should Christians care about art? Because we care about all that it means to be human. And not everybody has to care about it. Not every Christian has to care about it, for sure, but some of us do. And I think it just testifies to the fact that we're human. You know, I'm not just

a pastor, preacher, theologian. I'm also a human being that loves rock and roll. And I could probably do, I could probably almost, not quite, do a podcast almost as passionately with some aspects of literature, because I'm into literature too. But it's just part of being human. And when the church tries to be too spiritual, it ends up being just less than human, and it's off-putting. Yeah, I, 100 percent, that's kind of my, it's how I'm trying to raise my boys. And like, what is the gospel if it doesn't redeem our humanity? Like, we worship a Savior who is fully human, if we're going to stay Orthodox, fully human. And so something about our redemptive life has to be human.

And when you deny whole swaths of the human experience because of some alleged pursuit of righteousness, you know, it's just like, no, that's not honest. That's not true. You're no longer human. Like the idea is to redeem humanity, not replace it. And I think the church I grew up in, and then, you know, I grew up in the heyday of Christian rock. Like that, the 90s was my high school and college, you know? And so there was always this conversation. And, you know, I just ended up kind of, and I've fully like burned my cassettes and everything out of faithfulness to the Lord when I was 13 years old. And I will stand on this. No

youth pastor coerced me. I felt it from something that was happening in my personal prayer time as a 13 year old that I no longer could tolerate this in my home. And some of it was pretty disgusting stuff, like some gangster rap stuff that I was super into in the early 90s. So I have no regrets of that, but over time I had to amend what my view was of that,

because I'm just like, I'm trying to interact with my friends and I realized my music sucks and theirs is awesome. And I'm like, how do I reconcile? I know God didn't save me to listen to shitty music, you know? And so, like, how do I reconcile what the Holy Spirit's doing in my heart with how this makes me feel? That's not a bad feeling. It can't be like, I cannot come to a place where I reconcile. That feels so good. That's not a bad feeling. It can't be like I can't, I cannot come to a place where I reconcile. That feels so good. That makes me feel in touch with myself and everyone I've ever known, everything I've ever known. It connects me in a way that cannot be bad. It cannot. And so anyone who like denies himself that, I mean, it's this kind of pharisaical,

hyper religious thing that totally misses why God saved us in the first place. He saved anyone who denies himself that, I mean, it's this kind of pharisaical, hyper-religious thing that totally misses why God saved us in the first place. He saved us to be fully human and where those things no longer lead us into a darkness. But it is walking on the edge. You can't be honest about the darkness. If you can't sing about it, if you can't talk about the struggle against it, then you're probably more prone to a different type of darkness. You've got to live in that tension. That's why rock and roll is my soul music, is because it makes me walk that line between the tug of the darkness and

the longing to be more fully human. That's good, Jay. That's good. of the darkness and the longing to be more fully human. So that's, you know... That's good, Jay. That's good. Brian, you want to close us out with, I'd love to hear your kind of theological reflection on the power and beauty and necessity of... Yeah, we're going to close out. Let me just, I got to say a few words about Dylan, because people associate me with Dylan, and rightfully so. And we got that bio pick out now.

So, hashtag that. You know, I know Dylan as well as you can know Dylan and not actually know the man. Dylan for me occupies a whole, because you've heard me talk, we didn't get into Metallica, I could talk about Metallica, I told you I love Queens of Stone,. But then people know that my true love in the world of music is Bob Dylan. And so that's different. That's not Zeppelin, that's not Queens of Stone Age, that's not Metallica, that's not the Black Keys, that's not Foo Fighters. But it goes all the way back to being 15 years old. I'm all into Zeppelin and Deep Purple and ZZ Top at that time.

And I wake up one morning, my clock radio goes off and early one morning, the sun was shining and I was laying in bed wondering if she changed all that her hair was still red. And I just laid there in that liminal space between awake and asleep and these rhymes just washing over me. And that's what birthed in me my love of language. And so Dylan is in a different category. Look, give everybody all the Grammys. You give Dylan a Nobel Prize for literature for crying out loud. As Leonard Cohen said, Bob Dylan, he's a once in 500

years kind of artist. You don't get these people every day So so people they don't have to like Dylan They should appreciate Dylan and they should recognize you you are living at a time Where a once in a 500 year artist is still active and so you should probably Be aware. I want to hear your thoughts and listen, I've still got this much cigar to smoke. So I want to hear your thoughts on Dylan and Christian music and his phase and because saved it might be, it's not his best, but it might be my favorite Dylan record. And I know I get made fun of for that. I get made fun of. First of all, I have to build a story. So, I'm a massive Dylan fan, and I'm a massive Jesus freak.

And it's the summer of 1979. I'm 20 years old. There's rumors out there that Dylan has become a Christian. First of all, I don't know how we had rumors before the internet. I don't even know what the mode of transport was, but somehow it did. So Dylan is coming, I know he's coming out with a new album. New albums are always released on Tuesday. And so it was in August of 1979, I was at Musicland waiting for, it was in the mall

waiting for him to lift that thing up, you know, the cage and let you in. So I go in there and I go right to the D's and I pull out this album, I look at it and I go, it looks like that guy with the pickaxe, that pickaxe looks more like a cross, like he's carrying a cross and I turn it over and Dylan's on, I'm standing under the ship mess but it looks like a cross. I'm probably imagining things because I had been praying for Dylan. I'm not taking any credit here, but I'm just saying that, you know, I mean, I'm 16, 17, 18, 19, Jesus freak, I love Dylan. I said, Lord Jesus, save Bob Dylan. And so I buy the album, I go to our coffee house called the Catacombs, put it on the turntable, first

song got to serve somebody second song precious angel third song I believe third song slow trinket was like tears is running down my face Then then his set next album was saved and that's just like that's just gospel piled on top of gospel And then shot of love which is one of his that's actually one of his more guitar oriented kind of loud albums That's actually one of his more guitar oriented kind of loud albums. In some ways though, his most... Because they talk about it being like a trilogy of Christian albums. Slow Train Come and Save, Shot of Love. Then you have Empyre Berlesque and he's moving away from that.

But 1989, he comes out with Oh Mercy. And that's actually a Christian album from a much more reflective, mature, not the flaming zeal of a brand new convert, but someone that's actually kind of wonked it for a while and had disillusionments and failures and all that sort of stuff. What is Dylan religiously? Well, he's Jewish. His encounter with Jesus in a hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona that led him to become a Christian actually is how he found his way back into his Judaism. And so, I think if you could pin him down and say what is he religiously, he's not going to answer your question, but if he would, he would say, I'm Jewish. And then do you believe in Jesus? Of course.

And I think that's where he's coming from right now. That wasn't the question you asked, but that's how I was. I didn't realize he, I'm just reading his article, his Wiki page. He got saved in the seven, in late seventies. Was he part of the Jesus? No, 78. Coming off of the, he'd been on the, he'd been touring the street Legal album, and this was where he had some black background singers, and they're talking to him about Jesus.

He's gone through a divorce, and he's got some issues, and at least some of them attended the Anaheim Vineyard with Ken Gullickson. And so Dylan ends up at that church, and he actually went through their kind of basic discipleship program where, you know, you're like five days a week for a couple of hours in the morning, and Dylan is there. I mean, he comes every day. He didn't say anything. He just went through the course. I did hear Ken Gullixen say the one time he really spoke was that part of the course requirement was to memorize the Beatitudes and you had to recite it for the class. So he's in his 30s by this time, this is a bunch of teenagers and early 20s. And he says, I'll never forget, you know, Bob

Dylan reciting the Beatitudes in the Bob Dylan voice, you know, blessed are the poor in spirit, here's the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they should be comforted. Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on about his story and where he's been. And he was friends with Keith Green, who I was friends with and all that sort of stuff. He's 83 years old. He's still... He's 83 years old. He's still... He's 83 years old, still touring. Oh my word. Just got done, just finished up in Europe, finished up in London.

And then he dashed over to Paris to hear Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on their Wild God tour and then tweeted about it, how great he thought it was. And Nick Cave didn't know that he was even there till, you know, like a week later, which means, you know, if you were at one of those shows in Paris, there's somebody, there's got to be somebody that halfway through a Nick Cave show in Paris realized this old guy in a hoodie next to him is Bob Dylan. That must have been pretty freaky. So he literally won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016. I thought that you're just speaking analysis.

It's not a figuratively, it's not me aspirationally speaking. No, he won the Nobel prize for literature. When it was announced, you'd think I would have won, I didn't won the Nobel prize. I got so many texts. Congratulations. I didn't win the Nobel Prize, Bob Dylan did. Yeah, but in typical Dylan fashion, he didn't even acknowledge it for two weeks and then didn't show up to the ceremony. Patti Smith went in his behalf to receive the award. Is he an introvert? Is he not like all the limelight?

He is an introvert. Yes, that's for sure. He definitely is. Keith Richards talked about it because I don't know if you remember in 2016, they were doing these shows out in Coachella. I can't remember that, but it was like Paul McCartney and Dylan and the Stones and Bruce Springsteen and I don't remember who else. Really big bands from that era.

And it was three nights, two artists each night. And like the second night was Dylan and the Stones. And this is right after they had announced that Dylan had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. And he hadn't responded publicly. And Dylan goes, he's backstage, Keith Richards sees him, Keith says, man, Bob, congratulations. Wow, Nobel Prize. That's great. And Dylan's apparently, according to Keith Richards, said, is it? I mean, is it really?

I mean, I'm a musician. Should I have the Nobel Prize for literature? And Keith's, yeah, you should. But I think there was a little bit of, you know, am I Ernest Hemingway? Am I, because that's who you give, you know, am I John Steinbeck? Am I, you know, So he had genuine humility, especially for somebody. I think at this point in his life, you know, he's won everything and then he's, I don't

know, go see the biopic. I think it'll be good. I got to run you guys. This has been fun. I got to go take my car and I can tell you, so, oh yeah. I hate to cut it short. Although it's been a bell over an hour, but thanks you guys for joining me. If anybody's listening still hope you enjoyed this episode. This is a yeah. Why not? The Aldera will try things new. We'll mix things up. Me and Jay have done podcasts that fall outside the typical the Algenra genre. I think so. I'm still waiting on our baseball podcast. We got to do a baseball one. Maybe, maybe come spring training. We should do that. That'd be fun. Yeah. I don't know how much audience I'll retain, but whatever. All right guys.

Thanks so much. Appreciate it. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hi, I'm Haven, and as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore, usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte. But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave. So I started Haven the Podcast. It's a safe space for curiosity and conversation. And we talk about everything from relationships

to parenting to friendships, to even your view of yourself. And we don't have answers or solutions, but I think the power is actually in the questions. So I'd love for you to join me, Haven the podcast. Hey friends, Rachel Grohl here from the Hearing Jesus podcast. Do you ever wonder if you're truly hearing from God? Are you tired of trying to figure it all out on your own? The Hearing Jesus podcast is here to help you live out your faith every single day. And together we will break down these walls by digging deeply into God's Word in a way that you can really understand it. If this sounds like the kind of journey you want to go on, please join us on the Hearing Jesus podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever

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