Print Articles:

• Roll Over Amy… He-e-e-e-e-ere’s Flamy!
• Dann Gunn: A View of the World to Come
• Catching The Stilted Lodger in Unplanned Mischief
• Catching Up With Sean From And How
• AudioFeed 2023 & 2024
• Randy and Matthias Layton: Continuing the Alternative Records Tradition of Greatness

Reviews:

• Flamy Grant – Bible Belt Baby
• Good Saint Nathaniel – I Write the Songs I Need
• Starflyer 59 – Lust for Gold
• Orbis Max – Orbis Max
• Josh Rude – A Rock So Big I Cain’t
• Dann Gunn – The World Yet Made
• The Stilted Lodger – Caught in Mischief Unplanned
• Luxury – Like Unto Lambs
• Rob Gallas – All That Is True
• Steve Scott – The Way of the Sevenfold Secret
• Fine China – Eyes in the Water
• The Julies – Always & Always

Action Spotlight:

Don’t just complain about the world – do something to change it

Freedom Firm is “dedicated to the liberation of children enslaved in commercial sexual exploitation, to their effective rehabilitation, and to justice against those who have profited from their misery. We unapologetically stand dedicated to this cause and this cause alone. We are motivated by our faith in God to conduct our work with the highest ethical standards and to allocate our resources with uncompromising stewardship. We believe that every person has immeasurable value and therefore the exploitation of any person is an unacceptable violation of their God-given value.” See www.freedom.firm.in for more details.

(Freedom Firm did not buy this ad nor do they endorse this magazine – just givin’ ya food for thought)

Credits:

EDITORS: Matt Crosslin and the DTL Snowflakes
MARKETING: Ulike-a Youtellafriend
WRITERS: Doug Peterson, Mike Indest, Matt Crosslin
LAYOUT: Matt Crosslin
WEB DESIGN: Matt Crosslin

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Letters and comments need to contain your full name. All submissions become property of Down the Line E-zine and may be edited or condensed. Or even printed out and framed if you really kiss our… um… never mind…

Vision:

Down the Line covers who ever we want really. It could be authors, or bloggers, or musicians, or interesting people or ideas. Our main focus tends to be on music, especially music that explored the intersection between faith, politics, and art in the 1980s through the early 1990s. But we aren’t limited to that, either. Some of these bands or thinkers may still be making stuff today, and others may have moved on. We cover who we find interesting, and probably miss a lot of people that are just as interesting as well.

ALL IMAGE AND STORIES ARE THE COPY RIGHT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE CREATOR. YOU MUST HAVE PERMISSION TO RE-USE, RE-PUBLISH, OR RE-PRINT ANYTHING IN THIS MAGAZINE. SO THERE.

You have been putting out albums as a member of Writ on Water for decades. So why do a solo album now?

Jeff MacKey: I guess the main reason is simply that I’ve been working on music alone in recent years. When the pandemic began, I suddenly found myself with a lot of unexpected time on my hands, and I wound up writing and recording more than 60 new songs during the next couple of years. Further, since I’ve released a handful of albums/EPs on Leap Days over the years (Pelléas, 2000; A Wingless King, 2008; either/orwell, 2012), it gave me a bit of a target for an album release. It’s always good for me to have a deadline because otherwise I tend to revise and re-record things endlessly.

Caught in Mischief Unplanned has seventeen songs on it. Was this large number a result of collecting songs for this project for years and years, or a very inspired recent effort?

All of the songs on CiMU were written since 2020, and the majority come from 2022. They weren’t written with the notion of making an album but more as a personal/musical journal over a difficult period of time. By the end of 2022, I felt like I should do something with the material so I spent a lot of time last year whittling that much larger batch down to seventeen, and there is still enough leftover material to make up additional releases of some sort, although it’s hard to say whether or when such projects might see the light of day.

The title of the album seems to possibly be a reference to you creating a solo album itself – you were caught doing this mischievous thing that wasn’t planned. Or was it something else?

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I’m more than happy for there to be different interpretations of the title. It comes from the lyrics of ‘Leaf Fallen Heart,’ and I think of the phrase as kind of a variation of John Lennon’s “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (or perhaps Burns’ “the best-laid schemes of mice and men”). You may hold an ideal of what you think your life should be, but sometimes when you reflect back, you may find a lot more seemingly random shenanigans than careful planning.

With The Stilted Lodger being the project name, some might wonder why you didn’t use your name instead? It is an interesting move, especially when you think about what “stilted lodger” could mean.

I’ve just never felt like a solo artist. I certainly have nothing against solo artists—many of my favourite artists are! — but that idea has just never resonated with me. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else, especially since I performed literally every sound on this album, but I’ve always thought of a solo artist as being a vocalist or instrumentalist whose works fundamentally feature the singing or specific-instrument-performance by that person. Whereas the music I make has never been meant to highlight any of those elements in that way. One reason, for instance, that I have always felt inclined to keep the voice a bit lower in the mix (some might even say “too low”) is because I don’t regard the vocal to be more of a featured aspect than the rest of the instrumentation. To me, the essence of each song isn’t the voice or the lyric or a specific instrument but something among and between them that reveals itself only when all of those elements are in the correct balance.

I really struggled to find a name for the project I liked. I considered a lot of, in hindsight, bad ideas over the course of several months. One day around the beginning of this year, as my wife and I were taking a walk, I mentioned two ideas to her, both of which I liked to some degree, and she suggested I combine elements of each: The Stilted Lodger. I suppose people can make of it what they will, but my attachment to it was two-fold. First, in the sense of an “awkward tenant,” it leans into the notion of what it means not to belong, to not have a real sense of home, something with which I’ve wrestled throughout my life. Secondly, it pays homage to two of my musical heroes: Paddy McAloon and David Bowie.

So far it looks like the album is available primarily on streaming services. Is Amazon the only place to purchase it? Are there any plans for a physical release?

At this point, there are no plans for a physical release, no. I may be adding another online option or two in the near future and, if so, the details will be posted on the Stilted Lodger Facebook page.

(note: since this interview happened, the album has been added to BandCamp where it can be purchased.)

It has been a while since we have heard music from Writ on Water (A Charcoal Night – 2017) and either/orwell (2012). What is going on with those projects? Are they still active to some degree?

Dan and I have lived in different states for about twenty years now so our work “together” during that time has been very much apart. I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of making another Writ on Water album, but it proves more and more difficult for us to find or make time to collaborate, and I would only consider something to be Writ on Water if Dan and I work together on it. By way of background, most of the tracking for A Wingless King and a good portion of the two 2008 EPs had actually been recorded years earlier in California, and then we finished them up in 2007/08 for release. The Greyest Day and A Charcoal Night were both made up primarily of songs dating back to the ’90s—songs that likely would have been recorded for Blonde Vinyl if the label had survived long enough for us to fulfill our three-album deal. In fact, we had 4-track demoed most of The Greyest Day before Sylph was even released! So strangely, despite having made a handful of albums/EPs over the 25-year span from 1992 (Sylph) to 2017 (ACN), those songs were almost entirely written between 1990 and 2001. From that standpoint, perhaps Writ on Water’s work is that of a time gone by.

As for either/orwell, that album was, for me, quite a unique process and experience. Jarod Weldin and I recorded hours of material over the course of a couple of lengthy guitar improvisation sessions with just a single mic recording what we played. As ideas began to take shape, we would alternately add melodic, harmonic and textural layers. Then, after taking some time to listen to what we’d done over the next few weeks, we narrowed down to 10 ideas that were subsequently re-recorded from scratch over a period of a few months. I feel like that specific process is a defining characteristic of what either/orwell is, and it’s hard to imagine making another e/o album any other way. Again, the obstacle to making another album is coordinating schedules to find the time.

Does that even answer the question? I’m not sure. Dan and Jarod are both dear friends with whom I interact frequently so I’d never say never.

To you, what is the difference between a song you write for Writ on Water and one you write for a solo project?

I don’t know that I see any meaningful difference between the two, inasmuch as I just write what comes to me. There are certainly songs I’ve written in years past that I knew were not Writ on Water songs, that just would not have fit stylistically with a Writ release, but those have never been released anywhere. I think the main difference is that I’m in quite a different place in life and as a musician now than I was 20+ years ago when the Writ on Water material was written so I guess the main difference is…time. And to that end, I’m curious to know whether listeners hear TSL as more of an extension of Writ or as a noticeable change in direction. I didn’t set out for the Stilted Lodger to be one or the other, and I genuinely don’t know.

With the recent re-issues of some Blonde Vinyl titles on vinyl, have you thought about re-releasing Sylph on vinyl?

No. If we thought there was sufficient interest for it to be worthwhile, we might consider it. So probably not. Because Sylph was the final release on Blonde Vinyl, it got essentially no promotion whatsoever, just basically flung into the world to fend for itself. We were wrongly under the impression at the time that it was getting some level of label support, but ultimately, we are just appreciative that the album found any sort of audience and still has some level of ongoing notoriety.

Did you ever know or work with Michael Knott, either through Blonde Vinyl or elsewhere?

We used to run into Mike here and there through the label and at various shows/events, but not to a degree that would rise to the level of really knowing him. And our Mike Knott stories are probably best left out of the public domain. Our connection to Blonde Vinyl had a lot more to do with Ken Bower—the label’s true unsung hero—and Chris Colbert than with Mike Knott.

Do you have any future plans for more solo music? Or do you see this as a one-off project?

I’ve had another project semi-in-the-works with Jon Sonnenberg over the last couple of years that I still hope will eventually find its way out into the ether. It’s from another batch of songs I wrote and partially recorded a few years ago, and Jon was interested in working on some of them. I really admire him as a musician, songwriter and producer, and I think it could turn out to be quite interesting.

And as I mentioned before, I’ve got quite a lot of new material that didn’t make it onto CiMU. Hopefully it won’t all get swept down the stream of waning interest like so many other abandoned songs over the years because I feel strongly about a good bit of it. All of which is to say…no, I don’t intend for the Stilted Lodger to be a one-off and hope to use TSL again going forward. When…that is a bit harder to say.

The Stilted Lodger on Facebook
Writ on Water on Facebook
either/orwell on Facebook

Randy Layton is a legend… to those of us that know good music. Which is not often what you hear about label owners (and not always a good thing when you do), but Randy in many ways transcended the typical label owner pigeon hole. He collected rare tracks like an uber fan, but released albums and compilations based on quality rather than throwing it all in. His label has worked with bands that are favorites of DTL readers – the 77s, Daniel Amos, Two Pound Planet, Steve Scott, Robert Vaughn, etc. There is even a Wikipedia page for his small label that hasn’t been deleted by overzealous mods (which speaks to importance of the music). His posts on Facebook gave fans great insight into his label and related bands – and the banter with people like Michael Roe and Steve Scott was always entertaining.

Of course, Randy has shared his health issues as well, and it hasn’t been good news for friends and fans recently. Sadly, Randy has passed away since this interview took place. As someone that has been friends with Randy on Facebook for a while, I always enjoyed my interactions with him immensely. I only regret that I never made it out to his neck of the woods to meet him in person. He still had some projects in the works, so he handed his label over to his son for upcoming releases. I wanted to talk about all of that with Randy and Matthias in a quick interview. I tried to goad Randy into dropping some dark secrets, but he passed on that. After I totally flubbed the release decade of Songs From the Riverhouse, we dove into some projects everyone reading this should check out…

First of all, let’s get to the immediate project. You two are working on a vinyl re-issue of Robert Vaughn and the Shadow’s Song From the Riverhouse. For those that are not familiar with them, but are maybe interested in getting a hidden 80’s gem, how would you describe this album?

Randy Layton: Well first to be accurate, it’s not an ’80s gem, it came out in 1991 and thankfully isn’t an 80s gem because it doesn’t have a lot of the things that mar many of those recordings from that time, Including Love and War.

So instead I would just describe it as something that almost foresaw Americana musically. It’s a lot more stripped down sonically and there’s quite a mixture of styles on the album from rockers to things that are more introspective.

Lyrically, the songs are different than those on Love and War. It’s more a look at people living on the borders down by San Diego and going through a variety of tough times but also some positive times as well. It’s more writing about characters than I think he’d ever done before.

I think prior to that he had just a lot of things he wanted to say and came down to almost like a message oriented approach and this is much less like that musically. I think it’s also a lot more commercial or had that potential certainly.

Why a vinyl release? Why not just do a digital release and be done with it?

Randy: Simply because I’ve been asked for the years for a vinyl release. I may have overestimated how many people had asked but it sure seemed like a lot of people thought this would be a cool vinyl piece so I decided to go with it as a reissue. I didn’t want to get into a CD reissue because I figured there were plenty of CDs out there.

Matthias Layton: The original album packed in a lot of content into a CD with 74 minutes of music and the accompanying lyrics shoehorned in. With this vinyl release, the record will get the larger format it deserves and better showcase the prolific songwriting. It’s also nice just to hold something of this quality in your hands.

There are already two versions of this album (two song difference from the original tape and CD versions for those that don’t know). Will this be one of those versions, or a third? What goodies and extras can we look forward to on this release?

Randy: a third, really. Something that adds a great song that wasn’t there before and adding on ones that were extra from previous formats. It’s about 82 minutes. To facilitate that “Lost Highway” was taken off. All of that can be downloaded as well .

Also adding on the unreleased White Trash Supper Club EP (though now expanded) from 1991 that was canceled when Robert signed with Sony.

(I’m already in, because it is an awesome album. Readers can find out about the details on the IndieGoGo page – I would highly encourage you to jump on this before it is too late.)

Speaking of Robert, did Decayed Volume 1 get enough interest to garner a release of Volumes 2 and 3?

Randy: I really haven’t promoted that. There are two others but not likely to get released.

(Alright people, we need to right this wrong. Get yourselves to BandCamp and purchase multiple copies and gift copies of Decayed Volume 1!)

So let’s step back now to history stuff. You did some great interviews with True Tunes Podcast (see above). There is also a good discography / history of the label releases archive online as well. What would you say were the most successful releases for Alternative Records? Whether in terms of sales, or fan response, or even your personal favorites?

Randy: More Miserable Than You’ll Ever Be by 77s and Lost Horizon by Steve Scott launched things and were the biggest sellers, but I’d add on Two Pound Planet for favorites. But that’s leaving this (Riverhouse) out too! So it’s like choosing a favorite child, which isn’t right. And I’ve heard a lot of fans tell me every one of those are favorites for them.

Matthias: I’d have to say More Miserable myself primarily due to nostalgic reasons growing up around the 77s music as a little kid.

On Facebook Randy you have share stories about demos you got but didn’t / couldn’t act on, or projects that you wanted to do but that didn’t work out. What are some of your favorites from the “wish this could have happened” files?

Randy: Oh, that’s tough. I could have worked with Knott early on but declined. There are others but you wouldn’t know them.

(Note: Randy does have a SoundCloud account with rare songs and unreleased mixes of several songs by The 77s, Steve Scott, Robert Vaughn, etc, etc. There are also songs by his father and mother. Even a few tracks by bands that he wanted to work with for Alternative Records (Lighweight and Jim Upham for example). At the very bottom is a demo by a band called Armageddon Soundtrack and a brief story about the band he wishes he could have released.)

Recently it was announced that Alternative Records is being turned over to Matthias to take over the reins. What led to that decision at this point in time?

Matthias: As some fans of the label may be aware, my dad is towards the end of a long fight with a terminal form of cancer. In helping him with this Riverhouse project, it became apparent to me that this work is something I would like to continue, both on his behalf and in the interest of my own love of music.

For those that don’t Matthias as well, how would you introduce yourself as the successor to Alternative Records? What is your history with the bands that have been released on that label?

Matthias: Being Randy’s son, I grew up around lots of music in general but also around some of the Alternative bands as well. My earliest memory of a concert is seeing the 77s at the age of 4 in Eugene, Oregon a couple of years before they put anything out on Alternative. That band and several others from the label provided a lot of the background music of my childhood.

There has been some mention of an exciting upcoming project on Alternative Records as well. What can fans look forward to going forward? What projects are in the works?

Randy: Potentially later this year, we’re looking at a first real issue of the legendary Steve Scott’s Emotional Tourist album, that was supposed to come out through Exit/A&M but didn’t. As originally conceived, mixed and designed, from the tape masters .

Randy, with your health issues, how can family and friends help the most? Both with prayers and practical needs?

Randy: Prayers, certainly, and supporting Matthias on this adventure. The better these things do, the more high quality releases can come out. It’s very hard going through this but I appreciate all the love and support all these years. Thank you.

There you have it – the low down on Randy, Matthias, and Alternative Records. You can purchase recent digital releases and left over merch on the Alternative Records BandCamp page, including the last re-issue of Robert Vaughn and the Shadow’s Love and War (35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), Pantano/Salsbury’s Hit the Switch (Deluxe Edition), and Part One of the Sonny Richter collection (Randy’s Dad). If you don’t have it already, you should go to the Two Pound Planet BandCamp page and check out the Songs From the Hydrogen Jukebox deluxe re-issue. Finally, be sure to check out Josh Rude’s “Gotta Go To Church! (Josh Rude vs. The Churchgoers)“ single – 100% of profits will be donated to the Randy Layton family to help offset expenses due to illness.

Print Articles:

• AudioFeed 2022: a visual journal (with random memories sprinkled in…)
• Ric Alba Returns
• Kevin the Persian: Talking About Persian Delta Blues
• Why Dancing about Architecture is a Reasonable Thing to Do (Joel Heng Hartse)
• Christian Geeks Classic Rockcast
• David “Burrito” Villalpando Memorial
• Frank Lenz (archive interview)
• The Huntingtons (archive interview)
• Basement Tapes by Michael Gerard Knott

Reviews:

• Love Coma – Love Coma
• Jeff Elbel + PING – The Threefinger Opera
• Michael Knott – All Indie EP II
• Moral DK – Cold in August
• Kevin the Persian – Southern Dissonance
• Cicero – You Can’t Outrun Your Mouth
• Daniel Markham – Burnout
• Frank Lenz – Pyramid
• Deni Gauthier – He Said She Said
• The Huntingtons – ¡Muerto, Carcel, O Rocanrol!

Action Spotlight:

Don’t just complain about the world – do something to change it

Freedom Firm is “dedicated to the liberation of children enslaved in commercial sexual exploitation, to their effective rehabilitation, and to justice against those who have profited from their misery. We unapologetically stand dedicated to this cause and this cause alone. We are motivated by our faith in God to conduct our work with the highest ethical standards and to allocate our resources with uncompromising stewardship. We believe that every person has immeasurable value and therefore the exploitation of any person is an unacceptable violation of their God-given value.” See www.freedom.firm.in for more details.

(Freedom Firm did not buy this ad nor do they endorse this magazine – just givin’ ya food for thought)

Credits:

EDITORS: Matt Crosslin and the DTL Snowflakes
MARKETING: Ulike-a Youtellafriend
WRITERS: Doug Peterson, Mike Indest, Matt Crosslin
LAYOUT: Matt Crosslin
WEB DESIGN: Matt Crosslin

Contact:

WEBSITE: www.downthelinezine.com
EDITORIAL: downthelinezine@gmail.com
ADS/MARKETING: downthelinezine@gmail.com
TWITTER: twitter.com/downthelinezine

Subscriptions:

U.S.A. – $0, Canada – $0
International – $0
Online – $0

More info:
downthelinezine.com/subscribe/

If You Move:

Don’t lose your computer – you won’t be able to download the newest issue without one.

Write Us:

Letters and comments need to contain your full name. All submissions become property of Down the Line E-zine and may be edited or condensed. Or even printed out and framed if you really kiss our… um… never mind…

Vision:

Down the Line covers who ever we want really. It could be authors, or bloggers, or musicians, or interesting people or ideas. Our main focus tends to be on music, especially music that explored the intersection between faith, politics, and art in the 1980s through the early 1990s. But we aren’t limited to that, either. Some of these bands or thinkers may still be making stuff today, and others may have moved on. We cover who we find interesting, and probably miss a lot of people that are just as interesting as well.

ALL IMAGE AND STORIES ARE THE COPY RIGHT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE CREATOR. YOU MUST HAVE PERMISSION TO RE-USE, RE-PUBLISH, OR RE-PRINT ANYTHING IN THIS MAGAZINE. SO THERE.

Several years ago, a group of people set out to archive the fading world of the Christian Tape Underground. Building on the work of pioneers like Jeani Bond and Dan Kennedy, our goal was to catalog the various weird and wonderful recordings that most people had never heard of. We would digitize tapes, share copies of mp3s (to make sure there were plenty spread around the world), and somehow create an online data source for these efforts. When I became one of the people that was allowed to digitize and archive these treasures, the Christian Underground Encyclopedia was born.

We archive anything that was “underground” from the 80s or 90s – mostly tapes,  but also vinyl and CDs. Stylistically, we cover everything from alternative to punk to rap to metal to industrial to experimental. There are two parts to this project: The Underground Encyclopedia itself and the blog where I review the tapes as I digitize them. Every once in a while I find one that rises above the rest. So I decided to feature some in a column in the zine. So this month I bring you:

Nuclear Monks. Did they form a monastery in Chernobyl? Are they a new religious order in the world of Mad Max? It’s an intriguing name for an even more interesting album.

Originally I saw the tape of this on eBay, but after digging around, I found out that it was also released on CD (with two different covers). You can probably poke around for a copy as well. So since it sounds so interesting, I took a chance. I am glad I did. Nuclear Monks basically falls into the alternative rock / gothic rock tag. To be honest, they could have easily fit in with Sincerely Paul, Black Carnation, and Tribe of Dan on the Blonde Vinyl Records label. There is a slight influence of Sonic Temple-era The Cult here and there, along with The Alarm as well.

As you move deeper into the CD, the harder rock influences from late-80s The Cult drop off, and the band starts sounding like a more alternative/goth mixture of The Stand, Brighton, The Cry, etc. But they don’t stay there forever – when you get to the final song “Real,” they come roaring back with their hard rock/alt/goth sound.

You can dig around a bit and find a few interesting tidbits about the band as well. The best one being a live video on YouTube when they opened up for the Newsboys and the Walter Eugenes. From the video, I can tell you the guy on the left in the cover shot is the guitarist Kenny Johnson, and he is wearing an Indiana shirt because that is where the band is from. The guy on the right is the lead vocalist and bass guitar player Scott Hudnall. He is also the primary songwriter. The guy in the middle is the drummer and background vocalist Mark Clark (interesting to note that Clark is wearing a Die Happy t-shirt that Roger Martinez of Vengeance Rising fame used to wear a lot).

All in all, this appears to be another alternative rock hidden treasure along the lines of Octover – should have been snatched up by some label, but never was it seems. I’m not sure what is up with the two different covers above other than being different editions – they seem to have the same release date and tracks on them otherwise.

Rap got its mainstream start with The Sugarhill Gang, which placed in the Top 40 in 1979. However, Pete McSweet will tell you it began in the Garden of Eden, quite a bit earlier! McSweet is the man behind the first faith-based rap song, which came to us in 1982 with The Gospel Beat 12.” This one set the bar high: it had a lively choir, melodious keys, funky bass, a smooth jazz trumpet, and spectacular drumming/percussion. This 12” is worth obtaining, and can still be found on Discogs.

Before going any further, let me introduce to you the Cheese Factor number system, which I use to rate the cheesiness of these releases. I will rate them on a scale between 1 and 5, with 1 = the lowest on the cheese factor and 5 = the highest or the cheesiest. So McSweet’s 12” gets a 2, only due to the reissue cover featuring a half-naked McSweet being tempted by a lady with an apple. A pure cheese cover.

A couple years later Mr. T from The A-Team TV sitcom released a rap/electro funk album for kids, Mr. T’s Commandments. This one was a fun album to give kids a moral compass rather than being a proselytizing tool. Mr. T has been outspoken about his faith and this album reminds kids it is cool to live a straight ‘n’ narrow lifestyle. Pity tha fool who can not enjoy this one! Cheese Factor: 5 (A true classic in the cheese rap category)

In 1985 Stephen Wiley put out Bible Break, the first full-length Christian rap album on a Christian label. What you may not know is that Wiley was a jazz drummer in 1979 and wrote a song called Basketball that rapper Kurtis Blow recorded. Wiley began writing Christian rap in 1982 but did not release Bible Break for another three years. Bible Break was about as cheesy as it gets. The first track names off all the books of the bible in chronological order to help the listener remember them. Wiley broke ground for Christian rap and released five albums after this debut. Cheese Factor: 5

In the same year Terry Taylor, Doug Doyle and Rob Watson (aka Daniel Amos and Frontline Records) formed a Christian rap group called The Rap’Sures. Gospel Rap was the first Christian rap geared specifically for young kids. Terry Taylor explains it like this: “Well, there wasn’t any (rap) on the Christian labels. We do a kids thing, we see it as appealing to 7 and 9 year olds. No one was doing it. We just brainstormed a little bit, Rob Watson and Doug Doyle and I, we were just looking for something to do, something to work on, we did it and then didn’t think that much about it, and it was successful. Don’t ask me why. We thought, no one will take this seriously, we’re just doing it for kids, a little Bible story kind of thing. Megamouth was kind of the same thing. We looked at it that way.” So here we have the first Christian rap albums that owns up to their own chessy-ness. They also put out O.T. Rap and Loud Proud Born Again.  Cheese Factor: 5 (and fully deserved)

Megamouth was the other Terry Taylor-Rob Watson kids project, also featuring Dan Rupple of comedy act Isaac Air Freight. Distributed by the Frontline Kids label, both Rap Battle In The Big City (1987) and The Great Skateboard Adventure (1988) were one part spoken word and one part rap. Both of these albums are also extremely hard to find but worth the search. Cheese Factor: 4

In 1986 the mainstream group Crew Devastation released four 12” records with gospel influence, the most popular one entitled No Time To Lose. During the same time Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew released a rap 12” entitled All The Way To Heaven (Fresh is now a member of the Church of Scientology, by the way). Crew Devastation thought Doug E. Fresh’s 12” sounded too much like their gospel rap so they dissed Doug E. Fresh with a  another 12” called We`re All Going To Heaven. The whole thing sounds silly, but that is what happened. These were quite legit rap releases with gospel content, so no Cheese Factor rating for these.

Also in 1986 The Rappin’ Reverend aka Dr. C. Dexter Wise III released an excellent 12” entitled I Ain’t Into That. The Rappin’ Rev. was actually a child preacher at age 12. While making this record, he was finishing up a Harvard Graduate Degree. The rhyming on this one is simplistic. Still, I find this release charming by the fact he played all the keys and wrote/sang the songs himself. Cheese Factor: 3

A year later Rev. Rhyme came out with a full length album called According To Rap. If ever there was a dude who could rap in polyester, this was your guy. You can definitely tell Rev. Rhyme was a preacher by the way he fit so many bible stories and theological observations into these eight songs. Musically, it was keyboard and a drum machine. Fun stuff. Cheese Factor: 5

Another contender in 1987 was Michael Peace with RRRock It Right. Wikepedia acknowledges Michael Peace as the grandfather of Christian rap, though I beg to differ. Peace may have been early but righteous rap grand daddy he was not. Peace did give Christian rap more accessibility and was picked up by Reunion Records. His music was edgy and had cultural awareness. Before Peace did rap, he was a black student activist in Upstate New York. Cheese Factor: 3

Another early one is Roy Southard’s Plain White Rapper tape from 1987. This one featured keyboard with programmed drums. It also had an authentic monster bass sound. But the dude is hopelessly white, as the title implies. Interesting to note is that in 2005, Christopher ‘Razorsharp’ Shick contemplated using the name Plain White Wrapper for his MC project, but decided to scrap it. Later on, Christian rapper KJ-52 did a song called “Plain White Rapper” featuring cowbell, but not related to this act at all. Cheese Factor: 3

The year 1988 was quintessential for Christian rap. DC Talk (aka Descent Christian Talk) from Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University came in with a crazy awful tape. The opening keyboard notes on the first song “Heavenbound” are so bad that they are cringe-worthy! It was a bit pop and a bit rap. The Christian market needed a group to make rap more accessible, and DC Talk were there with bells on. It became the best selling Christian debut album, which says a lot about the market considering what a disaster this album was. This would be humble beginnings for what would become an extraordinarily talented group, selling two million records with Jesus Freak six years later. Nonetheless, “Heavenbound” was miles from being good. The tape was charming in a juvenile way. Cheese Factor: 5

Then PID (aka Preachers In Disguise) launched Here We Are, which changed Christian rap forever. PID was the first Christian rap act to hit the Christian bookstores and get major recognition. Their rhymes were scandalously trite. Surprisingly, kids ate it up and parents were happy their kids were not listening to the secular crap. Check out this song if you need a reminder of how silly it was. Cheese Factor: 5

J.C. & The Boyz were a good example of a group so emboldened in their faith that they come across as faith pushers. Style-wise, they were current with the rap scene. Lyrically, they suffer from the same foot-in-mouth disease as PID and DC Talk. Never Give Up came out in 1989 on Broken Records. Cheese Factor: 4

Also back in 1989 or so, Ty Dowdy put out a lesser known indie tape, The Spiritual Rapper. This one was excellent musically, but lyrically, not so much. Three songs of righteous rap, short but sweet. If we are talking cheese, this one is like fondue, dipping into the cheese lightly. Cheese Factor: 2

Then there is a tape from Rappin Rabbit from 1989. A white dude named Rhett Parrish is responsible for this piece of musical torture. Listen to it for yourself if you do not believe me: “Books of the Bible Rap” and “Rappin’ Rabbit’s Christian Habits.” Cheese Factor: 6 (I know, it only goes up to 5…)

In 1990 MC Hammer released his second album Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Them. Hammer would object to being classified as a Christian artist, though gospel music played a large part in his career. He was active in church, singing in a group called The Holy Ghost Boys. The song “Pray” became a hit in the pop industry, going #2 on the charts. I do not consider MC Hammer cheesy, though he was over-the-top pretentious in his early career.

Say What?, an electro-pop/rap group consisting of two white guys, Tricky Downbeat and Mix Master Mighty White, hit the market with a couple Star Song Records albums. Say What? sounded similar to Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince and they wore their cheese very proudly. The album Fresh Fish came out in 1990 and featured a comedy song about Sandi Patty entitled “I Can Sing Higher.” Their hidden-identity career went downhill from there. Cheese Factor: 4

Carman, CCM’s answer to Gino Vannelli, entered the rap arena with gloves on, appealing to kids who needed some fresh bible rap. Yo Kidz (1992), Yo Kidz 2 (1994), and Lawrence And The B-Attitudes (1994) were hot items with Word distribution. Video was also available so you could see the Italian stallion on screen. Hanson even sang on the David & Goliath track. Check it out. Cheese factor is an overwhelming 5.

If you think cheesy Christian rap is a thing of the past, here is one from 2006. It’s Rev. DeWayne GoLightly aka Rev. Rap’s Rappin 4 Jesus: “Books of the Bible.” This featured track is a time-travel back to the days of the books of the bible memorization songs. Does the world really need one more of these? Cheese Factor: 5 (once again)

In the “What do ya do with this?” category I share with you a fake bad Christian rap piece. Here is the story. Pastor Jim Colerrick apparently put out “Rappin’ For Jesus” around 2003 as a rap tool for the youth of his church, the West Dubuque 2^nd Church of Christ. The church was said to have shut down in 2004. The rap that was made it to video featured the following line: Jesus is my n*gg*r. The entire video is made of tongue-in-cheek phrases, silly clichés, and hokey moves. It is a train wreck of a song that even the most sheltered church could not overlook. The other aspect that identified this video as a fake is that it used the word “swag.” The word as used in current popular culture was not popularized until 2010. This one does not deserve my cheese award.

This immersion into the land of cheesy Christian rap also speaks to the fact that there were many talented and legit rap/hip hop acts as well. Some of the early rap stuff I thought were the real deal were D-Boy, SFC, ETW, DDC, Mike E & The G Rap Crew, Grits, and Gospel Gangstas. This, however, is not a fanfare to the good Christian rap that came out in the late 80s/early 90s. This is a celebration of the cheese that drivelled its way towards making Christian rap grate again. The cheese grater that gave us Christian rap also gave us a Sunday School message long after we left Sunday School. Maybe that is not the best comparison, and I do not want to belittle it all to simpleton Evangelicalism 101. But let’s call it for what it was. A part of us might love it. A part of us might cringe. And you are like me, you will enjoy it for all the wrong reasons. Christian rap is a part of the larger story, how we came to understand our own narrative amidst this pastureland of culture and curdling. For this, we stand proud, turn the boom box up to 11 and rap it up for the J-Man!

So first things first, we have to acknowledge that a vinyl record is a living relic of the past. In today’s world of digitally exact precision and replication, it’s hard to imagine a time when things weren’t so… cookie-cutter. When the CD came along, it gave us an exact time limit of what could fit on each disc, no matter what type of music you put on it. Soft whispering music to loud death metal all took up the same space on a disc, even if there was a lot more sound on one when compared to the other. And the sound quality was set once the disc was burned – the 0’s and 1’s that make up the sound coming from CDs stay the same no matter what color or material you make the disc from. You could fix things somewhat with better equipment and equalizers, but there was nothing that could change what was put on the disc itself.

However, this level of precision was not previously a thing with vinyl. Louder music takes up more space in the plastic grooves, meaning you could fit more acoustic folk on side 1 than you could a blaring orchestral score. The louder the music means the less you can put on a side, which increases the width of the groove, thereby decreasing the quality of the music if you try to put more on there. Weird, I know. Making the disc out of thicker plastic improves the sound of the music even after you have finalized the mix in the studio. Before CDs came along, determining what your music would sound like before you picked out how much you would spend on the end materials was difficult at best. Today you can look up the price per unit for CD manufacturing, multiply it by the number of copies you want, and be done with it.

But vinyl? Not so fast.

First, you have to see if your music will fit on both sides of single disc. Oh, and will that be a 7-inch, a 10-inch, or a 12-inch disc? It’s kind of a sliding scale: the more music you put on a side, combined with the amount of it that is loud and noisy instead of soft and quiet, will decrease the quality to some degree. Will you need one disc of what size, or two? You can see how the prices can vary greatly already.

“But I know all of that” you say, “because you can still look all of this up online. I can see where a certain disc costs $20 per disc and these labels are charging a lot more!”

Well, good point. Is this proof that labels are ripping us off? Not necessarily.

There are many other costs involved in getting music ready for vinyl. You can’t just take the music files from decades ago and put them on vinyl. Sometimes they were mixed, mastered, and/or engineered poorly back in the day. Fixing any or all of those issues while also bringing them up to modern standards is expensive. Even with a sonically perfectly album, the sound still has to be adjusted for the limitations of vinyl (CDs and digital files can reproduce the full sonic spectrum better than vinyl can). You really want to get someone that knows what they are doing to make these adjustments.

So needless to say, comparing prices between one label and another is pretty much pointless. One company may decide to put less music on each disc and fork over a lot more for a double issue, while another may choose to squeeze a bit more on one disc to meet the budget.

Oh, and then there is the artwork. Some companies pay to have the artwork re-created from scratch (either as new designs or “faithful to the original” versions), while others try to stretch out the original artwork to fit on the larger vinyl format. As someone that has made artwork for vinyl re-releases, this is no easy task either way. And if you aren’t careful, you will end up with the pixilated fiasco that was the cover of the re-issue of Tourniquet’s Vanishing Lessons:

“Okay, I get it,” you say again, “it can all get expensive. So you just pass that cost on to the buyers, right? Surely it doesn’t come out to $30+ per disc like we are seeing now?”

Weeeellll… here is where the real expose comes in. The vinyl re-issues we see from the labels and bands that Down The Line covers don’t exactly… sell a whole lot of copies. Sorry, our “scene” is just not big enough to bring the prices down for most releases. Sure, there are anomalies like Starflyer 59 releases that sell huge numbers, but that seems to come from 5 fans that buy hundreds of copies a piece (or something like that). The real price break in manufacturing vinyl comes from buying releases in bulk, typically with 500 units being the first big price break. Some factories won’t even go below 500 as minimum purchase, while others will go as low as 300. However, many of the releases you and I are interested in would be lucky to sell 100-200 copies. There are a couple of factories that will do runs that small, but if you know how bulk pricing works… it gets more and more expensive as the numbers get smaller.

Many of labels have to decide whether to see if they can pay for 500 records and hope to sell them at a high enough price point to break even after selling 200 copies, or to go higher in price for 200 copies and hope to sell most of them to again reach the break-even point.

But many don’t. I have spoken with several bands and record companies about their vinyl re-issues behind the scenes. They rarely break even, and usually lose money on vinyl re-issues. Even at the prices they are charging.

And what about the bands? Well, if they still own the publishing rights to their music, they can usually charge a publishing fee. If not, that fee has to go to the company that currently holds those rights. It’s a sad side of the business, but many bands didn’t get paid for the music they put out on record labels back in the day. Some of the re-issue labels do work in some kind of payment for the bands. But on the other hand, often the band refuses to participate in the re-issue. You can’t even force them to take money even if there is some to be given.

Then there is the tedious aspect of shipping the vinyl to the buyers. Vinyl is fragile. The record jackets are fragile. Shake them even a bit in shipping, and the jackets fold and crease. Sometimes you can fix this by shipping the record outside of the sleeve, but then collectors will complain that you removed the wrap and they can no claim the album as “still sealed.”

A lot of the blame for this damage is often directed back to the record labels and/or bands, but the truth of the matter is that it is usually the post office that causes this damage. Even minor creases in the jacket can be caused by bending the packaging. Those cardboard mailers have a good amount of bend in them that won’t show up as visible damage on the package, but will crease the record jackets inside of them.

Of course, it’s not always the post office. If a large number of people are seeing the same major damage to their package even though the records were sent all over the country, there is probably a problem at the shipping or manufacturing facilities. This was probably the case with the recent re-issue of Starflyer 59’s Gold album, where hundreds of customers all over the nation had the same extreme crease marks on their jackets and inserts while there was no damage to the box at all. This is the rare case, though:

All of this to say that even packaging and shipping the vinyl can be a time consuming venture. I’m amazed that any labels even try it, to be honest. However, as someone that has bought a lot of vinyl as well, I know there are many companies that do their best to release quality products at the lowest possible price: the Limited Run family (Retroactive Records, Roxx Records, Girder Records, No Life Til Metal Records), Lo-Fidelity Records, Steadfast Records, Galaxy 21 Music, Old Bear Records, Latent Print Records, Velvet Blue Music, Burnt Toast Vinyl, Stunt Records, and others, as well as many of the bands we feature here, can all be trusted to put out quality vinyl releases at the best price possible:

Here is my confession. I did not know much about Luxury prior to hearing their Trophies album. I had their CDs and was aware they were wildly creative while not writing for a Christian audience (even though Tooth & Nail was their label in formative years). I also knew three of the members became Orthodox priests following their awful wreck after Cornerstone ‘95. The film left me spellbound. I felt I had re-discovered a band I could connect with on a deep level, only many years late to the party.

Matt Hinton, the second guitarist of Luxury, is responsible for creating Parallel Love. Matt has been present at select film screenings, offering a Q&A following the film. I attended the Vancouver showing, and later joined Matt and five others at a nearby pub to chat and eat. About a month later, Matt was gracious enough to let me pick his brain further.

DP: You’ve been touring various cities in the US/Canada in promotion of your Parallel Love film. How did that tour come about and how has it been going?

MH: I would say it’s not as much a tour as it’s been occasions that I’ve been able to intercept the film, either because it was convenient or because that was part of the request of the cinema. For example, in Portland and Seattle, that that was a request of each of those cinemas. While I was in the Pacific Northwest, I asked my distributor to make sure there was something else to make it worth my while. So that was how Vancouver came about. Some of them have been week-long runs. Some have been one-off kind of nights in art house cinemas. The way that all came about is we got a theatrical distribution deal with Abramorama, who are distributors of lots of really cool music-related stuff, but not all music-related. And a lot of documentaries, but not all documentaries. They did the Anvil documentary from ten to fifteen years ago. They also did Exit Through The Gift Shop, which is a Banksy documentary. They did Ron Howard’s Beatles documentary from two years ago.

Have there been any highlights or lowlights while taking the film out on the road?

It’s been almost all highlights. I would say that the screening you were at (Vancouver) was only a lowlight because it was a smaller turn-out. In other respects, Vancouver wound up being a ton of fun, like going out with you and the other folks for dinner after. To me, that was great. It’s all been great.

People who have seen the movie seem to like it. One way you can tell is that whenever we’ve done the Q&A, the only thing that shuts down the Q&A is the venue. It’s never because people have run out of questions to ask. They usually run about 30 to 40 minutes, which is a really long Q&A. So everyone has been really engaged and had interesting things to talk about.

Yeah, I found the Q & A time riveting. My attention was there because I was just so curious.

That is the one thing I have found about the response to the film. I used to be a teacher so my instinct as a teacher was to answer every question. Part of the art of making a documentary is to leave people with enough questions afterwards so we can have a good conversation. There were things that I would have liked to explain in the film, but it would have made the film too long. Plus, I’ve found that ambiguity exists in parts of the film, and I’ve enjoyed that.

I think you’ve done a really good job of leaving things open to interpretation and curiosity. I recall years ago there was some funding campaign for Parallel Love. Are there any plans for releasing Parallel Love to a wider public, like a DVD or Netflix-type release?

I certainly hope so. The distributor is working on that, especially on the streaming side. The next phase of my interest in this is some sort of international release, particularly in Europe. Let’s face it, Greece and Russia are two predominantly Orthodox nations. I can’t think why it wouldn’t work there. As well as Netflix or Amazon or one of those streaming platforms for sure.

When did you join Luxury and how did that come about?

I joined the band in ’99. I’d been buddies with them prior to that: The band I was in previous to Luxury was a band called Piltdown Man. Those two bands would play shows together. When one band booked a gig, say three months in advance, and somebody in the band wasn’t able to swing it, the one band would hand that booking over to the other band. Now if *that* band couldn’t do it, then we would conspire to create a third band called Metropolitan. Metropolitan was a band that was made up of a different grouping of the two bands. It usually involved songs by each band, and a smattering of cover songs as well. There were really only three Metropolitan shows as I recall. I remember the first Metropolitan show included Luxury and Piltdown Man songs, but also had one or two Big Star songs, maybe a T. Rex song. And we were tight. The singer from Luxury (Lee) and I were roommates for a while in Atlanta. As soon as our bands got to know each other, we became close really quickly. We had a lot in common with our outlook and so forth. Anyway, there was sort of a point where the Luxury albums got a little more involved or interesting in terms of production. It became clear that you needed two, if not three, guitarists for playing live if you wanted to pull it off. Lee was interested in the performance piece of it. The idea was that I would take over Lee’s (guitar) parts live. So I came on as a member of the band in ’98 or ’99. Given our history, I was kind of the obvious person to join.

Cool. You also have an award-winning film on Sacred Harp singing called Awake, My Soul. How did you find your passion in Sacred Harp and what is your current involvement in that?

I grew up listening to the music that my parents were listening to. It was a strict diet of bluegrass and old time country music, pre-Nashville type stuff, more along the lines of ballads. When I was about eight years old, I turned my back on it, thought it was dumb, and listened to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 type stuff instead. Eventually, by the time I was in high school, I started to come back around to the music I was raised with. When I was fifteen or so, I went to a concert that was put on by a North Carolina ballad singer named Betty Smith. There was a flyer posted by the Atlanta Area Friends of Folk Music. One of the things on that flyer was an announcement about a Sacred Harp singing coming up. To this day, I don’t remember what seemed interesting to me about that. I went to that, which was an all-day singing. My instinct at the time was that it sounded like what would have happened if medieval Gregorian chant and early Renaissance music had happened in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains instead of Europe. It was all a part of that kind of music exploration for me. I started going to Sacred Harp singings on and off throughout the 90s. It was 1998, shortly before I joined Luxury, that my wife and I began working on the Sacred Harp film, though we didn’t finish it until 2007 or 2008. By that time we had become Sacred Harp singers. Now, my family and I are at Sacred Harp singings as much as 30 or 40 times a year, these all day singings taking place on Saturdays and Sundays, usually in country churches scattered around Georgia and Alabama. Since we made the film it has now found its way around the country even in Vancouver, Portland, and Seattle, as well as internationally, to Germany, Poland, Ireland, Australia and so on. We’re still super active in that community.

Is there any correlation between the Sacred Harp community and being a member of Luxury?

No.

I recall there is a song on BandCamp called “Restoration, 312b”….

Well, ok…hold on…”Restoration”…yeah, when we made that (Sacred Harp) film, we also made a soundtrack, which was a two disc set. The first disc was traditional Sacred Harp singing. The second disc was a various artists’ compilation of contemporary artists doing their arrangements of Sacred Harp songs. For that collection, I convinced Lee (Bozeman) to record a song. I totally forgot about this, but the first song he set his mind to was “Restoration” which is on the bottom of page 312 in The Sacred Harp hymnal. I haven’t heard it in ten years. It’s on BandCamp from what you are telling me. Then I think I pushed Lee to attempt a song called “China,” which is on page 163 on the bottom of the Sacred Harp. That was what wound up on the record. So that’s the sole connection. Also, Chris (Foley) and I both played on the song that made it on the record. It was almost a Luxury song. It was an All Things Bright and Beautiful track.

This Sacred Harp disc set you are talking about, how can one get a hold of it?

We are going to re-release it, possibly before the end of 2019. The film is called Awake, My Soul. The soundtrack, with various artists, is called Help Me to Sing.

Parallel Love referenced how Luxury members were injured in the van accident after Cornerstone Festival. The film shows how they contemplated their own mortality during that time. They found some strength in humor and personal connections through that time. I’m wondering if there might be a connection in that event and the three members later becoming Orthodox priests. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah. I think Jamey (Bozeman) is the most clear about the idea that he did not think he would have become Orthodox, much less a priest, having not been through that event. It serves as a sobering event in his life. If you were to ask him if had to do it over again, and he was in charge of it, would he have had the wreck happen. And his answer is yes, that more good came out of that event than evil. If you ask Lee that, it would be NO (laughter). He thought it was awful. Of course, Lee was injured way worse than anyone else. Whereas, because it’s a movie, and you tell stories in a way that move from one thing to the next, the movie does not very clearly reveal the fact that Chris and Lee were both moving in that direction before the wreck.

They had both converted to Orthodoxy at that point. They were miles away from being priests, of course. But at that point they were Orthodox, and had that theological resource to fall back on, and that community to be bolstered by at that point. It was not as totally out of left field as it might have seemed. Also, Luxury, as individuals, was always serious about our faith. It’s sort of interesting in so far as Luxury had as much relationship with regular bands as with Christian bands. It seemed to me, even more so looking back, that Luxury was far more serious about that kind of stuff than the so-called Christian bands really were, in my estimation. Now, talking to some of those bands who have abandoned the Christian faith… when I’ve talked to some of them, and asked about why they abandoned it… I remember talking to this one guy who said, “You know, I just can’t believe in some old man with a white beard, sitting on a throne in the clouds anymore.” I was like, “What?! I don’t know if you’re kidding or what. No one believes that! What are you talking about?” So it leads to my theory of how those bands wound up being formed and what ended up happening, which was terrible for them and everyone around them. In Evangelical circles you got youth group culture.

What may take place is you have some kid who shares some proficiency on playing guitar. He’s learned a few chords. So you have a youth minister, who innocently wants to encourage that kid. If the kid’s been playing Black Sabbath riffs or something, the youth minister would be like, “Let’s focus the talents over here. Why don’t you play these worship songs for youth group on Wednesday nights?” The next thing you know, the kid has found himself in this world when he’s thirteen years old, all he cares about is if girls are looking at him when He’s playing, or he cares about the riffs and his new pedal. I’m reminded of a student I used to have. She was a girl raised in that sort of context. She sort of disapprovingly said, “Any boy who can play three chords and thinks he’s my spiritual leader…” There was something to that. That was not the experience of the members of Luxury.

From a very early point, we personally would take theology and all the other stuff we were studying in college very seriously. I was a philosophy and religious studies major, and went on to grad school in that area. This was all stuff we were talking about. But it didn’t slip in any direct way into the lyrics, especially in the early days. The lyrics were a different ball of wax.

This leads to my next question. When we went for food after the Q&A on the film in Vancouver, I overheard you talking about someone asking Lee whether Luxury was a Christian band. And Lee responded that Luxury is the *Only* Christian band. Do I have that right? What’s the context behind that?

(Laughter) I didn’t even want to talk about it because it annoyed me so much that it came up at that time. The reason I even brought it up (at the table) was that this person (sitting across from me) wanted to write an article with the title, something like “Luxury: The Only Christian Band.” So for me, it was like, “HUH?!? How did you possibly have that instinct to think that?!” My contention throughout the film is that Luxury is not a Christian band at all. It was obvious, especially in the beginning, from the lyrics that Luxury wasn’t a Christian band. Put it this way. You would find nothing as explicit as what you would find with Led Zeppelin, which nobody thinks is a Christian band. But “meet me Jesus in the middle of the air,” as sung by Robert Plant on “In My Time of Dying,” is vastly more explicit as a statement of some kind of faith. That is a traditional text, so I don’t know we can assume Robert Plant was necessarily singing that in a confessional way, of course. But certainly, if your lyrics are less explicitly Christian than Led Zeppelin’s, then maybe you’re not a Christian band. I don’t know if that’s the general rule we want to have, but maybe that’s some kind of rule.

But certainly, if your lyrics are less explicitly Christian than Led Zeppelin’s, then maybe you’re not a Christian band. I don’t know if that’s the general rule we want to have, but maybe that’s some kind of rule.

… Ok, so what did Lee mean? We were interviewed on this long-form interview show on public radio in Georgia. In the film I go to great pains to point out that one of the reasons the band really never took off was signing themselves to a Christian label, which was a terrible fit because they weren’t a Christian band. So with any of the press that’s gone alongside the film, I’ve been very hesitant to broach that subject with any press releases, even interviews. I didn’t want to talk about it because any interview in general is likely to be peoples’ introduction to the film and the idea of the band. Especially on public radio, it’s a total deal breaker for most people, myself included. In general I am not interested in Christian rock music. So if I heard about a documentary on a Christian band I was not familiar with, that’s just a non-starter for me. I can imagine even more so with ninety percent of the world. So in that context, it was an hour long show and we ended up talking an hour and a half so a good bit needed to be cut. That bit of Lee saying that Luxury is the Only Christian band never aired, thankfully.

The Luxury lyrics…there was a poetic-ness to them. But there was also a lot of critique.

Yeah, there are places you can find glimpses and glimmers of faith coming through. But there is easily as much critique of Christendom or that kind of thing. The lyrics, “…well-read Christian will be double-crossed whores.” That would be a tough one for many Christian bookstores to swallow.

I think that song is called “When Those That Are Not Do Become Those That Are.” Do you think that is describing the freak show amongst Christendom?

I think that’s part of it, the general gospel truth, that the way is down, and those that are high will be brought low, and the low will be raised up. That is a case where, though it has that particular line, there are others that are provocative and contain theological truths. It actually does not take that much effort to discover but it’s ensconced in language that is more rough around the edges. I don’t want to presume to interpret Lee’s lyrics for him.

On Trophies, there’s the song “Don’t Feel Bad If You Don’t Feel Better Right Away.” There are the lines “In the classroom, I sat and watched you, Never underlined a word, Funny unbelievers.” I’m trying to flesh out why Lee is depicting unbelievers that way. Can you enlighten me?

Well, there’s the other line on the album that says “unbelievers are strange.”

Yeah, “…I loved a few, I remember their names…”

I would say it’s another case of provocation on Lee’s part. I don’t know how he would put it in theological terms. I come from a Reformed tradition where I would say faith is a gift we are given more than a thing that we do. You’re a believer or you aren’t. I think that one song (“Don’t Feel Bad If You Don’t Feel Better Right Away”) is talking about an unbeliever who is in seminary. The context is actually seminary as I recall. It kind of puts it, “Why are you even there? What are you up to? What’s the point?” But also in terms of “unbelievers are strange…,” Lee sees a cultural tendency for people of faith being excluded in a way, or not being understood. If you look at almost any portrayal of a Christian, certainly in a Hollywood film, nine times out of ten, they will be either very strange or very evil. I think Lee is turning that on its head. It’s like he’s saying, “*I* think unbelievers are strange.” That’s the more peculiar position, historically. The default setting of the human heart is belief, not skepticism. Unbelievers are the peculiar ones.

Are there any Luxury songs that have special meaning for you?

Yeah, for different reasons. A song may be essentially meaningful to a person because of something they were going through at the time, or reminds them of a time period. The songs on the first record put me in mind of that period. “Solid Gold,” for example, Lee wrote for his wife when they were getting married. And it’s a marriage song. I always liked that one a lot. We got Lee to perform that song at my wedding. That is a song that I think of. “To You Who Gave Me Hope and Were My Light” on the third record, I like quite a lot.

Does Luxury have any plans for future recordings?

Nothing is settled. But in the past couple weeks, we’ve been talking about it in more detail. At this point I’d be shocked if we didn’t try to do something in the next year. Basically, Lee has about ten songs written that are eligible for the new record and that we have played together.

Some Parallel Love and Luxury videos to check out:

• Parallel Love film trailer
• Luxury – “Parallel Love” lyric video
• Luxury live in 1997
• Luxury live in 2002
• Lee Bozeman live 2012

Print Articles:

• Luxury …And The Band Plays On (A Matt Hinton Interview)
• The Vinyl Re-Issue Industry Exposed
• A History of Cheesy Wraps (with bonus online pictures)
• The C.U.E.: Nuclear Monks
• Untitled by Rick McDonough

Reviews:

• The Ocean Blue – Kings and Queens / Knaves and Thieves
• The Blamed – The Church is Hurting People
• Starflyer 59 – Young in My Head
• Stranger Kings – Blue
• MAP – History, Mystery, and Gifts: Writer’s Block, Pt. 2
• Mike Indest – 4-Track Diaries
• 2Minute Minor – Snake That Ate Its Own Tail
• Secret Archives of the Vatican – Barsoom
• Sea of Orchids – Washed Out Colors
• RB Brown – Six
• Prayer Flags – Prayer Flags
• Good Saint Nathanael – Hide No Truth
• Altar Boys – No Substitute
• Vicious Cousins – All Disappearing

Action Spotlight:

Don’t just complain about the world – do something to change it

Freedom Firm is “dedicated to the liberation of children enslaved in commercial sexual exploitation, to their effective rehabilitation, and to justice against those who have profited from their misery. We unapologetically stand dedicated to this cause and this cause alone. We are motivated by our faith in God to conduct our work with the highest ethical standards and to allocate our resources with uncompromising stewardship. We believe that every person has immeasurable value and therefore the exploitation of any person is an unacceptable violation of their God-given value.” See www.freedom.firm.in for more details.

(Freedom Firm did not buy this ad nor do they endorse this magazine – just givin’ ya food for thought)

Credits:

EDITORS: Matt Crosslin and the DTL Snowflakes
MARKETING: Ulike-a Youtellafriend
WRITERS: Doug Peterson, Matt Crosslin
LAYOUT: Matt Crosslin
WEB DESIGN: Matt Crosslin

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Vision:

Down the Line covers who ever we want really. It could be authors, or bloggers, or musicians, or interesting people or ideas. Our main focus tends to be on music, especially music that explored the intersection between faith, politics, and art in the 1980s through the early 1990s. But we aren’t limited to that, either. Some of these bands or thinkers may still be making stuff today, and others may have moved on. We cover who we find interesting, and probably miss a lot of people that are just as interesting as well.

ALL IMAGE AND STORIES ARE THE COPY RIGHT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE CREATOR. YOU MUST HAVE PERMISSION TO RE-USE, RE-PUBLISH, OR RE-PRINT ANYTHING IN THIS MAGAZINE. SO THERE.