Podcast: Steve Taylor on Faith, Music, and Saying What Others Won’t

Open the original episode on Substack for the synchronized transcript.

0:00 [music]

0:09 Greetings and welcome to a special edition of the Faithful Presence podcast. Hey, I'm your host, Reverend Michael Langer, ordained minister and founder of Faithful Presence, and this is a special podcast, and here's why. It's the last in our series of our old logo, our old brand.

0:35 We've been working for the past six months on upgrading our website platform, on getting some new branding done. We've been expanding our staff. We have a chief of staff now, a ministry resident. We have a partnerships coordinator. We are just so excited about everything that is going on. And so because of that,

0:59 we've been holding off on creating new content and pushing that out here as much as we have also been holding back on releasing the last podcast that we released under our old kind of brand. And honestly, it's the cherry on the top, really. What you're about to hear was recorded, oh, maybe four or five months ago.

1:23 It's Steve Taylor. Steve Taylor is a recording artist. He's had just a wonderful career in the music industry as well as being a music and movie producer. He's a sought-after engineer. But most importantly, he played a formative role in my life of kind of giving me the ground to stand on, to kind of navigate public square issues.

1:55 You're going to really enjoy this podcast. And I really say it is the cherry on the top of what we've been doing for the last four and a half years and an excellent way to set the stage for What is coming in our new podcast? We're going to have podcasts starting every single week, starting this Monday.

2:16 We're going to have two special podcasts where I'm just going to kind of re-explain what Faithful Presence is and what we're about. Then we're going to follow that up with four amazing conversations with our new senior fellows, Dr. Charlie Self, Dr. Amy Black, Dr. Anthony Bradley, and Dr. Greg Forster. Then from there,

2:37 we're just going to go and we're going to talk to Thought leaders on spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, intellectual, cultural, and evangelical formation. We've got a bunch of new content we're excited about. We have a book that's finished now on 1 Peter that you'll be seeing also. So, hey, enjoy this podcast.

3:01 And without any further ado, I send you back to the original introduction. See ya. Greetings and welcome to another episode of the Faithful Presence Podcast. I am your host, Michael Langer, ordained minister and founder of Faithful Presence Ministry in Washington, D.C., equipping servants and leaders working in the public square to flourish

3:37 as they participate in Christ's mission of making all things new. We do that through offering spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational gifts. Ideological, cultural, and evangelical formation, you put that all together and it spells service, which is what whole life discipleship in the whole of life for the whole of the public square is intended to produce. Service, not domination.

4:04 We are so thrilled to be back with you here. We've taken a few months off as we've been working on redoing our website. We're working on some branding things. We had a pretty large construction project in our basement. I moved the Faithful Presence studios out of place, but we are back now.

4:23 It's a beautiful, gorgeous day before Valentine's Day. Our guest today on the Faithful Presence podcast is recording artist Steve Taylor, nominated for multiple awards. He's a writer, he's a director, he has been in this industry for quite a while. He has developed monikers or accumulated monikers such as the Clown Prince of Christian Music.

4:54 And the Renaissance man of Christian music. And he is perhaps one of the reasons why I've ended up as, shall we say, interestingly calibrated as I am. And probably contributed to the fact that I am leading a ministry in Washington, D.C., working to center people on the gospel. So, Steve, welcome to the podcast.

5:18 How the heck are you?

5:20 I'm good, Michael. Thanks for that fine introduction. You know, you've heard of EGOT's Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.

5:29 Yes.

5:30 And I just, I realized I'm only four awards shy of getting there.

5:36 But does Dove not figure into that?

5:40 I don't think egg dot is a thing. I don't think anybody cares about that.

5:46 So, for those who listen regularly, you know that I love music, and I love movies, and I love just kind of odd things. And so, Steve Taylor became one of my favorite recording artists in the mid-1980s and 90s. We're going to talk a little bit about... That's kind of the approach he took to Christian music,

6:10 but our connection came through some mutual friends of, I believe, Charlie Peacock, which is Jimmy Abeg, made a connection between us because my friend, Jim Perry, who's a pharmacist in the Quad Cities, Um, I think this started on his 40th birthday. He was a big Lost Dogs fan and he wanted to see the Lost Dogs in person.

6:35 So he contacted, I think he contacted Mike Rowe and said, Hey, I have a gig for you. It's in my driveway. And that kind of started about 15 years of him just having all these different artists to his house. So, Steve, tell us a little bit about you,

6:53 about how you ended up in Christian music in kind of the heyday of CCM Christian music.

7:02 Yes. So I was born in Southern California. My dad was an American Baptist minister, which is kind of important, I guess, to the story because he was a conservative pastor in a more liberal denomination. And I'm sure that had something to do with how I turned out. He moved the family to Denver when I was five.

7:24 And so I grew up in that church and had great Parents and ended up going to Biola College at the time for my first year of college. My dad had gone to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. And so he was excited that I got to go. I got a big scholarship,

7:49 which I promptly lost my first year and had to go back home because we couldn't afford me to keep going there otherwise. So I went back to... I lost it, you know, the old fashioned way by not getting good enough grades.

8:03 I think you needed like

8:04 a 3.75 GPA to keep it. And I got like a 3.7. So you got a 3.7 and lost a scholarship over it. Yes, right. So back to Colorado, and I had to enroll in a state school, and it was University of Colorado Boulder, which if you were going to pick two colleges,

8:28 they were at the opposite end of the spectrum. I guess maybe Bob Jones would have been more opposite, but Biola and Colorado University did not share a whole lot in common. Yeah. But at the same time, my dad's church, the youth pastor had just resigned, and so he needed someone to fill in.

8:46 So I was a youth pastor at my dad's church while I was going to Boulder. And the dissonance between what I was trying to do I think that's partly why I got into music is because, uh... At the time, music was kind of the way young people communicated. Around that same time, punk rock was coming into fashion.

9:27 There was a lot of appeal because even though I was a music major, I couldn't play an instrument. In fact, I almost didn't graduate because I couldn't pass piano proficiency. So I could write charts out and I was very good with like theoretically. And punk rock,

9:45 you didn't really have to know how to play an instrument in order to start a band. So those two things kind of led me to music. I was influenced a lot by a band, The Clash, at the time, a British punk band that dealt with a lot of social issues. So that was a lot of it.

10:03 I just thought, I would love to do something with this kind of passion and this kind of smart lyrics, but... Also offers some hope at the same time.

10:11 So are you saying that Sandinista, that I have the album Sandinista to thank for the fact that you existed in my world? That's pretty close.

10:25 London Calling was probably more influential, but Sandinista probably was what got me intrigued about it.

10:34 Because what's amazing about the album London Calling, so now I am today years old when I'm making the connection that one of the major reasons that I really was drawn to your music was I was a huge Clash fan.

10:51 Oh, well, there

10:52 you go. Huge, huge Clash fan. And the Tubes. I also like the Tubes. Ah, right, yes. Which got a very kind of avant-garde performance art. But the Sandinista album, if I remember correctly, the record label didn't even want that album. They were like, look, we want to do a bunch of experimental stuff.

11:10 We want to talk about a bunch of things you don't want to hear about. And you're either going to take this album or you're not going to take the album. But if you don't take the album, we're kind of done. And so it's like a three, it's a three album set and they just cover everything.

11:26 I mean, there is really nothing that they aren't willing to talk about.

11:30 Right.

11:32 So you're going to the University of Colorado, Boulder, right? I remember when I went out there in the early 90s, Promise Keepers was a thing.

11:44 Oh, right. Yes.

12:07 And it's this kind of polar thing. So were you using music to reach your, like, were you demoing some of this music to your youth group?

12:19 Yeah, in fact, one time I had recorded demos and I just thought I'd do an experiment because my kids in my youth group, they didn't really know what I was doing in my off hours, recording music. And so I split them up into groups and I had them listen to a collection of songs.

12:44 And I threw one of my songs in there along with some more kind of At the time, contemporary Christian songs.

12:52 Okay.

12:52 And then asked them for their feedback. They all got back together. And I can't remember what song it was I played on. Maybe it was What You Gonna Do When Your Number's Up.

13:02 Oh, yeah.

13:03 But a lot, a number of them were like, So, yeah, that was all happening.

13:21 I became a Christian in 1984. I had a very, very difficult childhood. My biological father really had two gifts when I was growing up. One was making money, and the other one was, we'll just call it domestic boxing. And he used to practice that quite a bit. So my mom remarried.

13:45 She remarried just the greatest guy in the world. And then they'd been married about four years. This is in the mid-1970s. And after they'd been married about four years, it was 1979, he had a traumatic brain injury and was permanently disabled. And then six months after that, they lost a child to crib death.

14:04 And my mother did not recover from that. And I wasn't a Christian the whole time. I just remember being very... Very angry. I was very angry at God. I would hear the pastors that I would hear would say things like when my sister died.

14:21 I remember the Catholic minister came over and said that I should actually be thankful. I was 12. I should be thankful that she died because God wanted another angel and he picked her. And so I should feel pretty good about that. And then when I was a freshman in high school,

14:37 my two best friends were walking with my Boy Scout troop on a walk for hunger. And they were waiting just before the end of this walk to go to run into the little park in the town that we lived in. And there was a train going one way.

14:55 And as soon as that train was done, my Boy Scout troop ran across the tracks. But coming in the opposite direction behind that train was another train. And it plowed through my Boy Scout troop and killed two of my best friends. Oh my gosh.

15:10 And so I just, I was not a happy camper with Jesus through most of high school. I was a complete wreck. My family was falling completely apart. And I had left to go to Rocky Mountain National Park with my senior class the summer of my junior year with plans that I would not really...

15:33 I would not be available to go back to high school. That was kind of my plan was to go do this thing in Rocky Mountain National Park and then just be done. And we camped next to a Baptist youth retreat. And I heard the gospel presented and became a Christian.

15:52 I called up our local Youth for Christ leader when I got back. And he was like, you know, Michael, we can't have you coming here. I know what you're going to do. You're going to come here. You're going to make fun of us. You're going to yell at us.

16:03 You know, you're mean, you're very, I'm like, no, I became a Christian. And he was a Larry Norman fan and introduced me to Larry Norman and then Randy Stonehill. And so that's what I thought Christian music was. I thought Christian music was very edgy, very kind of like, we're just going to critique everything.

16:22 Everything is open and available to us. Then I got into Keith Green. And at some point, he gave me this album. It was a mini album. It was called, I think it was called I Want to Be a Clone. Was that your first one? It was like four or five songs.

16:39 And I listened to that and I went, holy cow. Like this, this, this sounds like The Clash. Now that I'm thinking about it. So here you are in the early, early 1980s. Because I think I Want to Be a Clone came out in 1983. Is that right?

17:00 Yes. Mm-hmm.

17:02 Good grief.

17:03 Is that 43 years ago? It's pretty far.

17:07 Quite a ways back, yes. Okay, so you are releasing music. Christian music was kind of having a heyday. You have Petra, Amy Grant, DeGarmo and Key, Michael W. Smith. And if you're listening to this and you don't know who those people are, I...

17:27 You need to go back and just Google this and look at the sweaters and look at the hair and you will just find out everything that you need to find out about Christian music in the mid to early 80s. So in the middle of this, you come out with lyrics that I remember requesting you on KTOF radio

17:50 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa 104.5 and they would frequently say, yeah, we can't play that. Can't play that, can't play that, can't play that either. And I want to talk a little bit about how that landed. And we'll talk about some of these songs in particular, but the topics that you were dealing with.

18:14 I Want to Be a Clone is basically about mindless Christian conformity. You have a song about rape and generational poverty and shame and how that plays itself out and somebody just trying, a girl willing to just hook up with a carny to get out of town. You have multiple songs about abortion from multiple aspects of it,

18:37 including one of my favorite songs, I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good, which I know caused a bit of – I used to want to hear that song all the time. They're like, yeah, we can't play that.

18:48 I'm like, it's not about what you think. It's about a different thing. It's an ice cream band.

18:52 Right. You have Baby Doe, euthanasia, which I want to talk about, values clarification, pop psychology, Christian nationalism, racism, political doublespeak, clerical abuse, Bill Gothard, like you took Bill Gothard on, and Bob Jones University. And you weren't subtle about it. So talk a little bit about How you decided, like, okay, I want to do Christian music,

19:22 but I'm going to do Christian music this way, and basically I'm going to do the thing that most pastors are trying to avoid doing in their sermons. How did you get drawn to that approach?

19:34 Yeah, it was, well, the kind of punk rock part of it was a lot of it because you can't really, you can't really adapt. At least I didn't see how you could at the time. And then I was reading a lot of Francis Schaeffer at the time, and that had a pretty profound effect on my thinking. And

20:08 And then just the fact of going to a university like Boulder and being bombarded with all these different ideas. And in Boulder, it was like, what are we going to protest this weekend? And so, you know, I remember... A riot that broke out in one of the student government meetings.

20:31 I remember Allen Ginsberg kind of showing up on a Friday afternoon to preach to the assembled students, whatever he was talking about at the time. It was just so much happening. And it was a time also of kind of... Pretty profound social turmoil as well. And we were all kind of post-Watergate.

20:55 And I think when I went there, maybe Carter had just gotten elected. But all those things felt like interesting topics for music and particularly from a Christian perspective. And I don't think I assumed that I didn't assume that it would be landing at a Christian label. But when I went to Los Angeles, my barber in Boulder,

21:28 you know, you're always talking about he's asking me questions. What are you doing? I've been recording some demos. Oh, can I hear him? Well, if you really want to. So I give him a tape and then he passes them off to a friend of his who had just moved home.

21:40 From Los Angeles to Boulder to start a bookstore and he'd been in the music business and he liked it. So he set up meetings with me to go out to Los Angeles and meet with different record labels. And so on that trip, I think I met with Arista Records and someone from Warner Brothers and

21:56 a couple other labels. And I play them, essentially the demos to the songs that ended up on I Want to Be a Clown. And their reaction would be, We like this music. This is interesting. Kind of a new wave punk rock hybrid, but we don't understand these lyrics like they're kind of Christian-y, but they're kind of sarcastic.

22:18 And, you know, we like the music, but we think these lyrics would offend our listeners. And so I thought, well, if it's the Ha, ha, ha, ha. And so that's where I've lived for the rest of the time. But the breakthrough was I was invited to do two songs at a gathering in Estes Park,

22:57 Colorado that would happen every summer of Christian music. And so I put a band together and did two songs at lunchtime. And Billy Ray Hearn, the head of Sparrow Records, Who's in the audience. And I don't know that he necessarily got the music, but he saw the response with the kind of young people in the crowd.

23:17 And he literally met me as I was walking off the stage and said, I want to do a record deal with you. So that was kind of the breakthrough.

23:25 So what's interesting is now I'm just I'm thinking to myself that right down here at arm's length, I have multiple Clash albums and I have some albums by U2. So you were in this, you know, so Clash was kind of like certainly over here, not going after the Christian market, right?

23:43 Then you have U2, which was a Christian band operating on basically top 40 charts. And they weren't leading with it, but they were all Christians. They'd all come to faith. Their songs were steeped in Christian metaphor. But what you were doing was, I am a Christian and I am,

24:06 tell me what the third rail is that will kill me if I grab it. What are the things that are off limits? And you're just like, I want to talk about that. So for instance, let's talk about Bob Jones University. Here's some of your lyrics. Down in Carolina way lived a man named old BJ.

24:30 BJ went and got a school founded on Caucasian rule. Bumper sticker on his Ford says honkies if you love the Lord. That's You get bonus points for that. But just in case people were like, I don't know, what's he trying to say? White men speak with forked tongue. White supremacists eat their young. Bigotry is on the loose.

24:54 Ignorance is no excuse. I know Jesus loves that man, even with a green-veiled hand. So at this point, you're like, okay, he's not being subtle now.

25:06 Right, right.

25:07 Yes. How do lyrics like that one, I mean, this is an issue that, you know, the denomination that I used to be a part of, the Presbyterian Church in America has a Southern heritage. The Southern Baptist Church is the Southern, you know, during the Civil War, a lot of these denominations kind of split in two, right?

25:31 And so the narrative of the PCA and the Southern Baptist Convention is it is accurate to say that They were concerned about the northern denominations and their theological liberal drift of, like, say, the American Baptist Church and the Presbyterian Church U.S. They looked at this and said, we don't like the way this is going.

25:54 They don't believe in the Trinity. They have issues of scriptural inerrancy. All these things are big issues. Oh, and by the way, we also don't like the civil rights movement. We kind of like our southern culture and we want to keep it that way. And so... Those two things were both true, right?

26:14 They were trying to be—well, they were. They were like, hey, we want to fight for biblical orthodoxy, but we also want to fight for kind of white culturalism.

26:23 Right.

26:24 And so you're speaking into that. And just talk a little bit about, I just love to hear what the feedback you got from churches. I mean, I can't imagine there were a lot of invitations to come play in Greenville after that.

26:40 Right, right. No, I got a great report back from Greenville. There was a Christian bookstore across the street from Bob Jones University. And They wouldn't sell the album on their shelves, but if you requested it, they would pull it out from under the counter and put it in a brown bag and sell it

27:02 to you, which that was pretty awesome. That's great. And I'm not sure why. Hats off to Sparrow. There was never a moment when they said, no, you can't do that or put that on an album. So they were a great partner as well.

27:30 I did end up writing a letter to Bob Jones because a few people had said, you know, why aren't you confronting him directly? Why are you doing this song? And I thought... Well, there's a number of reasons why, but fair enough. I'll write him a letter.

27:45 And so I wrote him a letter and I got a letter back from him that was pretty curt and pretty, you know, he was not happy with the song and told me I was deceived, you know, and, you know, you're doing great harm and things like that. Kind of what you would expect. But there were other situations.

28:04 You're talking about the third rail. Probably... The third rail was attacking Bill Gothard on the next album.

28:12 Yeah, so I want to talk about that song, right? Because TV monetized that, and was it 17 kids, 18 kids, 19 kids? That was great. It was a great moneymaker, right? But that was an abusive, patriarchal, cult-like, evil, wicked thing. And there's just, I want to be clear, if you're listening to this podcast,

28:40 you're like, I can't believe he's saying that about Bill Gothard Ministries. It was a wicked evil thing that Jesus was very upset about when that was happening. And in that you, again, you talk about patriarchy and I think we're seeing a rise in kind of this Certain Christians now are enthralled by patriarchy,

29:07 and a lot of it has to do, maybe different from what Bill Gothard was doing, but there is a sense that I think is happening in our culture where we have been so depreciating of what actual masculinity is supposed to look like.

29:27 And people are so, I want somebody to say, hey, what is it like to be a man? What is it like to be a husband? What is it like to be a father? And because nobody's speaking into that, you have this kind of return to, well,

29:43 Bill Gothard said a lot of really great things about the man and the way it looks to rule a home. Talk a little bit about kind of how that song came about and what the reaction was.

29:56 It came about partly because my church had been sending people to... I'm not sending people, but inviting them if they wanted to come to one of the seminars. And so I went with my parents. I was curious. And it was a full arena of people watching a video. He wasn't even there. They're just watching a video.

30:21 And everyone's got their red notebooks. And... It's being presented as biblically sound advice for, you know, raising children and umbrellas of authority and very much kind of a trickle-down, you know— Patriarchal kind of situation. And the first day I was like, you know, some of it kind of made sense, but I just had questions.

30:52 The second day he got into music and he started talking about... And about how certain keys, minor keys are evil and things like that. And so then I'm like, okay, well, this is nonsense. So then I thought, well, if he snagged like that as biblical knowledge, I know that's nonsense.

31:12 Maybe some of this other stuff isn't so great either. And then I just took a skeptical eye to the whole thing. And yeah, it was, and of course, but as most of these things do, they unravel the Fairly quickly because of just kind of a sense of one person being in charge and abusing power and,

31:37 you know, then weirdo sex stuff gets included and, you know, Bill Gothard's. Sorry is a sad tale. Yes.

31:46 Easily accessible on, you know, one quick Google of Bill Gothard will get you to, you know. Right. And some of you may have to actually disable your web blockers to get information. Yes. Oh man, yes. So also, so I want to talk about one kind of one last song and then just kind of like,

32:08 let's just go through kind of, I would say the dearth of Christian music kind of speaking into this cultural critique. And that is a song that was very, I mean, it just meant a lot to me is this song that you wrote, Baby Doe.

32:26 Mm-hmm.

32:28 And it's about euthanasia. It's about how we see people who are born with birth defects. And it's an actual case. You can look it up. You can just type in Baby Doe, Indiana, 1982. It's an actual event that happened. Here's your opening lyrics. Unfolding today, a miracle play. A miracle... This... It's so good.

32:57 Unfolding today, a miracle play, this Indiana morn. The father he sighs, she opens her eyes, their baby boy is born. We don't understand, she's not like we planned. The doctor shakes his head. Abnormal they cry, and so they decide, this child is better dead. That is...

33:28 That is a very prophetic voice speaking into what was happening in 1980 where we were having Terry Schiavo and a lot of different conversations about what does it mean to have value. You have a whole song... I think it's Lifeboat, where you just talk about the whole, like, okay, well, this guy has straight teeth and blonde hair,

33:51 and their teacher, Mrs. Arian, is trying to get them to decide who's going overboard. So, can I ask what motivated that song? Because that song just, I mean, I remember breaking down when I heard it.

34:09 Yeah. I have to thank a writer in the Village Voice named Nat Hentoff, who was a... He was a jazz music critic, and somehow he started paying attention to issues regarding abortion and the sanctity of human life. And so this secular Jewish writer, in writing it arguably the most liberal kind of Right.

34:44 Publication in America was essentially calling BS on the way that this story was being reported in the media and that the facts of the matter were that the parents realized their child had some abnormalities. I think it might have been Down syndrome, but I would have to look it up. It's been a while. It was Down syndrome.

35:09 And that between them and their doctor, they decided to let the baby starve to death. And there's no nicer way to put it. They let the baby starve.

35:22 Yeah, and we don't need to put it a nice way. That's the thing that I loved about this song and the thing I love about what you were doing is you were basically saying, okay, let's just be honest about what's happening here.

35:36 Right, yeah. Yeah, I still get worked up talking about it now. Like, it's mind-boggling, but that was the area that we were living in. I was living in Colorado where our governor, Governor Lamb at the time, was talking about, and I won't get the exact words. But he was saying,

35:55 why are we wasting all this money so that, you know, kids can learn how to roll over or something like that? Like, completely dismissive to any sense of inherent value of human life. But that was kind of the battle that was being fought then. And we're living in an era today where... Where political parties have decided,

36:23 you know, which party is going to support abortion and which one is going to be opposed. But the mind boggling thing to me is, and I'm going off topic, but I heard James.

36:35 You are going right down the road that I have laid out for you.

36:38 So just hit the gas. I heard Ezra Klein interviewing James Tallarico, who is a pastor in training in Texas and had a lot of good things to say in that interview. But when it comes to abortion... What he's talking about is nonsense, and he's trying to justify abortion scripturally by something about,

37:04 well, you know, the Holy Spirit gave Mary consent or something like that. Like, what is wrong with you?

37:09 Yeah, I read that. That's insane, right? He asked the question, like, do you want to have this child? Like, no, no, you've just completely

37:16 misread scripture. Right. Whatever. Yes. And so you've got, we're living in an era, and maybe it's always been this way, but where... If James Tallarico wants to be elected a senator in Texas, he knows that he's got to make up some nonsense about a Christian—if I'm going to do this as a Christian, well,

37:37 I guess I'm going to have to figure out some reason why— I can be supportive of abortion. And, of course, we see the same thing happen on the Republican side in all kinds of issues, which he points out correctly, that Jesus has a lot of concern about the poor and about refugees and all that stuff.

37:53 You don't seem to be caring about that, Republican. So that's part of my, you know, that's why I appreciate Christians in Washington who are trying to engage in public policy. But I also know that is very dangerous when you pick a political party.

38:11 If you want to stay in that party and you don't want to tow the company line, you want to put, you know, your Christian beliefs first, you are going to have a rough time with it, I would think.

38:21 Yeah, and so this really brings me to kind of this role of Christian music. Like the Psalms, you know, we have 150 Psalms and they cover everything, right? They cover repenting for a rape and the murder of a woman's husband. They cover poverty. They cover, you know, one of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 73, right? Which is,

38:46 you know, so Psalm 1 is, hey, you know, don't drink, don't chew, and don't go with women who do. Don't sit in a seat of spoffers and all those things. And if you do all the things you're supposed to do, then all that you do will flourish, right? And so if you misread Psalm 1,

39:06 you come to the conclusion that if you do good things for God, he will do good things for you. And then you get to Psalm 73, which is effectively saying, yeah, so I did all those things and my life is a hellscape and the wicked are, you know, dining on gold utensils. So, you know, what's that about?

39:27 And you have basically every imaginable difficulty in life that the Lord in his providence told the writers of the Psalms, That would make a great song. We could get that on Christian radio. You should write that right there. And then we kind of whitewashed it for Christian music. We just kind of washed that out.

39:55 And we're like, oh, we can't play that on the radio station. Oh, can you play Psalm 51? Oh, well, yeah. I mean, that I could play for sure. Right. The song is about him apologizing for raping and murdering somebody. Like, are we talking about the same Christian music here? Right. And so we have this,

40:18 the thing that I have always appreciated about you and your work and, you know, Blue Like Jazz, which I want to, we can just talk about that here, is kind of the thing that happens in Washington or specifically just in the public square in general is there has been a... Christianity has been subsumed underneath political platforms, right?

40:44 So the right has subsumed part of Christianity and pushed it over to one way. And the quote unquote progressives have subsumed Christianity and moved it over here. And so you have, in one sense, abortion on demand at any time. And at the other one, you have no abortion under any circumstances and will put you in prison

41:06 if you even try to do it. And yes, I'm speaking hyperbolically, but the reason I'm speaking hyperbolically is that's the way that the language is now being used, is we speak hyperbolically and we can't come to the place where we can say, well, no, let's think for a moment.

41:25 About a woman who has been in multiple abusive relationships. And whose husband is disabled now. And not able to work. And now she's just lost a baby. And now she's pregnant again. And she can't imagine how she's even going to navigate that. She's addicted to drugs. And she goes into having an abortion.

41:50 Can we even have a conversation about... What it's like to yell at that woman as a baby killer as she's walking in there. And the thing that you forced people to do is talking about Rape and generational poverty and euthanasia and Christian nationalism as a, there is this quote unquote,

42:16 and here's a phrase that you can't use anymore, the third way.

42:20 You say third

42:20 way now, people are like, oh, third way, that's a woke thing, that's a Tim Keller, you know, before he died, he turned woke. No, no, no, listen, okay, biblical way, Christ way, third way, can we not police everything? What we're trying to talk about here is the fact that being Christian means

42:39 that you're able to critique both aspects of what's happening. Abortion can be wrong, and we can look at the horror of it, and we can also say, hey, thinking that you should blow up an abortion clinic That's insanity. And the Lord supposes that. And so let's talk about, so in addition to music,

43:00 you moved into like directing and screenwriting and all that stuff. Donald Miller, tell me how you got connected to the Donald Miller and the Blue Light Jazz, which was a book that I loved because I read that book and went, yes, more of this in Christianity.

43:14 I like the book a lot, but it's not a book that you read and think, oh, I see this movie in my head because it's really like stream of consciousness, right?

43:22 That is exactly what I thought when I saw it. Right. Yes. Well, yes.

43:56 It was famous for two things, probably. Number one, it's where Steve Jobs went for a few semesters and learned calligraphy. And it's also the Prince Review called it the most godless campus in America. And Don, he started auditing classes at Reed and ended up meeting some other Christians who were all afraid of being outed as Christians.

44:15 So they ended up... During the big year-end party kind of bacchanalia at Reed College, they ended up constructing a confession booth, and he and his Christian friends dressed up as monks, and they invited all these drummers. These Christians would confess that they were actually Christians and they would apologize for the sins of Christianity through the year.

44:47 And it was a really beautiful sort of picture of, you know, what we should be doing all the time as Christians. You know, we should be repenting and seeking forgiveness and turning toward God. And I just loved the idea of that. So I thought,

45:06 I think then we need to make a movie that ends with that scene and kind of work backward from there. And so I met Don Miller at a book... And he had been a fan of my work. So that kind of helped ease the way. That doesn't surprise me at all. Right. And so we hit it off.

45:26 But he wanted to be a part of the writing process. And I said, man, that's usually not a good idea because the person who wrote the memoir is not going to like all the things that will have to change in order to turn it into a movie. Yeah. And I could tell he was I thought, you know,

45:44 if I say no, maybe he just says, well, maybe I'll just wait and find someone else to make this movie. So I said, OK, let's do it. But, you know, I'll need to have the final say and you need to. Right. That's how we kind of collaborated on the screenplay and putting it together.

46:18 And the whole journey was because it had become a phenomenon. I just thought it was going to be easy to raise money to make this movie. I wanted to make it independently out. Right. That's right. That's right.

46:56 So Blue Like Jazz, I just want to kind of draw a line as we kind of move towards the end of this. I just go on forever with you. But it seems as though a movie like Blue Like Jazz probably could not happen anymore.

47:16 Right.

47:16 In evangelical Christian circles. Right. It would be classified as being, you know, woke or whatever the kind of shutdown term is. Right. And certainly Donald Miller ended up kind of outside of Orthodox Christianity.

47:33 Yes.

47:35 And, you know, and so did Bob Dylan, right? Bob Dylan came in and was like, hey, I got some music, I got some things I want to say, and people were like, get out.

47:43 Right. Yeah.

47:46 And a lot of the music that you have, I think, would be very difficult because it seems to me that Faithful Presence, we're about spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological, and cultural formation before we get to evangelical, missional-type formation. And this giving people ideological, and by that I don't mean kind of like lockstep,

48:13 I don't think, but like how to think. How to think Christianly about things in the world and kind of cultural intelligence is just completely missing. And it seems like the church is really has some work to do. In developing kind of intellectual and cultural rigor. I wonder if you could just talk about like,

48:37 as somebody who's been in the kind of Christian arts world, you know, Makoto Fujimura wrote a very famous letter that I read to my congregation when I was church planting, basically saying, it was like, I think it's called an open letter from artists to the church. Where he basically says, yeah, we used to be amazing.

49:01 You used to love us. We used to paint churches and design churches and flying buttresses and we did mathematics and we invented things and you thought it was amazing. And then you decided we were evil. Right. And you made us all leave.

49:14 And the world told us they would make us gods and we could do whatever we wanted.

49:20 Right.

49:21 And so talk a little bit about kind of the... The pressure that exists culturally, what's happening right now as it relates to Christianity and Christian arts.

49:36 Yeah. I think I mistakenly thought we had... Kind of crossed the Rubicon or whatever it is. I thought that discussion had been settled. That the church recognized the value of the arts. Because that was the main... Argument I was facing in the 80s was, well, that style of music is evil, so you can't do that, right?

50:08 And I kind of thought we'd gotten past that. And yeah, it turns out not so much. And particularly when it comes to, I guess, more... If not even elliptical, but more projects that have a subtext of faith to them, but aren't on the nose as far as being Christian projects.

50:38 I just think there's still a lot of aversion to that. And probably it's even grown lately by labeling it woke or whatever, that that's a way to just kind of put a blanket over everything that doesn't fit within what Right.

51:00 And so the thing that I, we have some podcasts and stuff on this, I've written on this, but, you know, both MAGA and Build Back Better are both eschatologies. They're both making a statement about the way things are, the way things could and should be. They're answering the questions, what is good that I could encourage,

51:20 what is broken that I could repair, what is missing that I should create, and what is evil that I should oppose. Both of those worldviews, those end games, are heading towards a particular direction. They're giving you somebody to lead you there. But they also tell you that the only way you get there is fight those other people.

51:38 Those other people are mad and they're trying to stop us from having all the things we can have if we just do this. But the third option, which is the tougher option, the third eschatology that the public square really, I think, needs to embrace is the making all things new, which, again,

51:56 has answers to all four of those questions, gives you a leader to take you there, and tells you you don't have to fight anybody to make this happen. And so you don't have to be afraid. You know, Peter and Paul both say that your salvation is kept for you. It's safe. He's the author and perfect.

52:12 You have nothing to worry about. What's the worst thing that could happen to you is nothing compared to the fact that your salvation is for you. And as we end on that, here's the thing I want to talk about. Two stories that you're connected to. One is the Newsboys, which became kind of national news, right?

52:39 And I want to be clear to our listeners, you were not part of the Newsboys when that happened and had been kind of disconnected them for a number of years, but you were connected to them prior to that.

52:50 Absolutely.

52:51 And that was a music industry. And most people don't understand the way, like the Newsboys, they were an owned company. Like those were all performers. And then, so we have that kind of sensational story. And then we have Russ Taff. And people who are my age will know Russ Taff and remember Russ Taff being in

53:12 the Michael W. Smith, Andy Grant, DeGarmo and Keith thing. And then all of a sudden he disappeared. He was just gone. And the reason he was gone is he's an alcoholic and he's having huge issues. And that story ends very differently. So just talk about your role in both what maybe your assessment of kind

53:33 of what happened with the Newsboys and kind of more, not a he said, she said, but kind of how the music industry, you know, you said in an article, there's no way multiple people didn't know about.

53:45 Right, yes.

53:46 And then kind of contrast that with the kind of the redemptive story of Rust-Haft.

53:52 Right, yes. Yes, really quick, the Newsboys were a band out of Australia. I had just finished a stint with a rock band, Chagall Guevara, and the band was kind of in the process of breaking up, but we had been signed to a major record label, MCA Records, and a lot of the tension within the band,

54:14 even though all the band members were Christian, came about with Right. There was just a lot of tension about that. So around that time, a friend of mine who worked for a Christian label said, I got this band called Newsboys and they love your lyrics. And here's a song, would you want to help them with the lyrics?

54:48 And it was a song. It was a song called I'm Not Ashamed to Speak the Name of Jesus Christ. And it was not a particularly good song. The lyrics were not good. But I just loved the contrast between this band that I'm in right now

55:05 that is definitely afraid to speak the name of Jesus Christ and this band that, you know, that was the title of the song. So... I was attracted to that and got with the writer of the song, Peter Furler, who's kind of leader of the band, and rewrote the lyrics,

55:24 but kept the kernel of the song and said, hey, let me produce this. And I had time on my hands because our band was trying to get out of a record deal. And so I produced it with Peter and the record label liked it and they let me produce the whole album.

55:44 And it was just a whole different work. Producing another artist was a whole different thing. I loved not having to wake up thinking about how do I make myself more famous today or how do I make my band more famous. I loved serving another band. I liked these guys.

56:01 They were young and they were, you know, just fun to hang around with and fun. Yeah. And I always liked Australians generally anyway. So that started a really good collaboration. But I think we made, you know, good projects and it was definitely more evangelical oriented. But I like that, too.

56:22 And I wrote most of the lyrics for their songs. And and then as I got involved with other projects, I got less involved, but I had a record label and that went well, but I kept working with Newsboys. But ultimately, Peter Furler, the leader of the band,

56:39 was just tired of the constant touring and he decided to leave. And at that point, the manager of the band, He took over everything and owned everything from that point forward. And he brought in Michael Tate from DC Talk to be the lead singer, and the band changed sound to become a more American-sounding band,

57:02 whereas before we'd been kind of more... Quirky kind of Euro pop, maybe rock. I don't know what you would call newsboys, but I liked the sound a lot. And then I just ended up not working with him anymore, which is fine. But when the news broke about Michael Tate,

57:21 who was a guy that I knew reasonably well and liked as well, That was really disturbing. And the extent of it was really disturbing. And as disturbing to me was the fact that the owner of the band, Wes Campbell, was pretending like he didn't know anything about this, which was utter nonsense. And it really made me mad.

57:48 And so when I was doing a Christianity Today podcast interview, I just mentioned that and that that was disturbing. No, that is categorically not possible. And, uh, yeah.

58:02 So you have within the news, boys, and, you know, again, we certainly pray for Michael Tate and don't have any reason to think, oh, he wasn't a Christian. Christians make horrific decisions that impact lots of people. You can just ask King David about how that works out, right? Right. So that's in no way to excuse his behavior.

58:23 Right. But you have this kind of like the machine. I mean, we were talking before the show about you had these record labels that were just doing Christian music. And then bigger record labels realized, oh, these people are making money. We should buy them. Right. Because there was there's money to be made.

58:41 Right.

58:42 And and part of your critique in the Christianity Today article was, well, as long as they're making money, we're just not going to keep just, you know, look over there, please.

58:52 Yeah.

58:53 Then you have Rust Half. Who would just talk a little bit about kind of the contrast of that story. Right. And your involvement in that, because that's just, that's what we need more of.

59:06 Right. Well, Russ was a fantastically gifted singer that I'd known back in the day, and he and I always got along, and he and his wife let me... Stay at their house when I was working in Nashville and they were on tour. And so we always got along really well.

59:21 We had not kept in touch particularly well over the years, but we got together, you know, every once in a while socially. And then where I learned about his alcoholism was he had been on some kind of, I don't think it was an award show, but it was like a multi-artist thing. And he was clearly drunk.

59:44 And it was a rough time. It was a rough ride for him and for everyone involved. And he worked and got sober and has been sober now, I think, for 15 years. And I just like him. You know, Michael, as much as I'm Tackling big issues. I actually grew up in a pretty sheltered environment

1:00:11 because my parents were very consistent between what they said they believed and the way they acted. And that's a blessing.

1:00:18 Let's just be clear that not having a quote unquote, whenever somebody says to me, oh, I don't have a sexy, cool conversion story like you.

1:00:27 I always think I would love to not have one.

1:00:31 I would love to have grown up in your home, Steve.

1:00:33 Yes, no, exactly. And so because of that, I did not have a good sense of... You know, if you're in Christian music, well, of course you're, of course you wouldn't be an alcoholic or a drug addict or something like that. And of course, as I got involved, it's like, well, I guess that's not always the case.

1:00:54 And so Russ was someone who got sober and really turned his life around and, uh, And I just loved him. We invited him to do an after party, sing at an after party when the band Chagall Guevara got back together and did a reunion show. He joined us and he sang that night.

1:01:14 He sang Charlie Peacock's Down on the Lowlands, which he'd be And so another friend made that. That came up with some money and we were able to record an album called Cover Story, which is a collection of songs that were all covers songs, but they all spoke in some way to, you know, his recovery.

1:01:46 And it's a really great album. It's one of my favorites. He does one song called Demons by one of my favorite bands, The National, which I just think it's like... Yeah, it's like if Al Green recorded The National. I just love that song. And so working with him has been a huge blessing because it's reminded me of

1:02:10 the struggles that so many people go through and find. Frankly, he and I shared some stories about our own children and some of those struggles as well. And it's so he's he's been a great friend. And I'm actually we're going to do a tour together starting in a month. And I'm really looking forward to it because.

1:02:29 Yeah, but it's in California. You need to bring you need to bring him out out here onto the East Coast because there are people I just happen to know at least at least one of them would would love would love to. To be a part of that.

1:02:45 And there's a documentary about Rust Half and the Rust Half story. You had a little bit about it because you were involved in that.

1:02:51 Right. Another friend of mine had made a documentary about his recovery of three or four years earlier. And then there's a guy who does a really popular YouTube podcast called Soft White Underbelly who interviewed Russ like probably a year or two years ago. And that was just a really great story.

1:03:12 I think he asked a couple of questions and Russ ended up talking for the rest of the time and told this story in a really beautiful, redemptive way.

1:03:22 Yeah, there's an artist now, I'm sure you know, Jelly Roll. Right, yes. And he professes faith. Yes. And his lyrics are like, I'm in a crack house, I want to die. There's a song that I would just encourage every single person who's listening to this podcast, listen to Jelly Roll's song, Her.

1:03:50 Which is about a young girl who is just being, she's on her way to dying. The video is so sad. But it's, you know, drugs were destroying her life. And he's writing this song, and when you see him play live, it's basically a giant AA meeting. There's just all of these former addicts are being drawn to him.

1:04:20 And to kind of circle back to where we started, the church is not, like, there's a reason why people are like, oh, here's a guy talking about being addicted to fentanyl and alcohol and being strung out. And he's giving this message of Jesus and hope. And like, why have I been going to church for 20 years?

1:04:43 I've never heard this. And listening to the Russ Taff interview reminded me of this similarity of him just saying, look, I'm just going to put it all out there. Because what's the worst thing that can happen to me? You're not going to play this album? That doesn't matter to me. Jesus is about redeeming. Yes.

1:05:37 Yeah, that's... And then I still do movies. There was a movie that came out last summer, Sketch, with Tony Hale from Arrested Development and Veep that I produced. And it's going to sound braggy, but it is. It's actually, if you go on Rotten Tomatoes, it's the best-reviewed wide-release movie of the year after Sinners. It's really good.

1:06:24 It's a family movie.

1:06:25 I love the irony of that.

1:06:26 Yeah, I know. And it's fantastic. Sinners and Sketch together again. Yeah. And I'm working on a couple other movie projects. We'll see if they happen. They all take a long time, but we'll see.

1:06:40 Well, thank you again. We're going to put a bunch of links in the show notes so that you, if you're not familiar with Steve Taylor, you can do a deep dive and just spend all of your time in the deep end of the pool because it's wonderful and the water is perfect.

1:06:56 Yeah, the internet doesn't forget. It's all out there.

1:07:01 And you know what? It's okay. I mean, you've... Time has been very good to you. Time has not been good to all Christian recording artists, but time has been very good to you. Thanks. Hey, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We really, really appreciate it.

1:07:19 Thank you, Michael. I thoroughly enjoyed this.

1:07:21 All right. All right. That's it for this episode of the Faithful Presence Podcast. I want to thank so much Steve Taylor for coming on. I told him he's going to get a little care package. We've got some new Faithful Presence swag that'll be on the website. You might want a little bit of that. Absolutely.

1:07:42 Thank you so much to Steve. Thank you for the time that he spent kind of arranging his schedule to be able to come onto this. Thank you for Ben Vester. Thank you for our ministry resident who is sitting just off to my left-hand side making sure all of this technical stuff happens.

1:08:00 Please check out the rest of our podcast. We're going to be moving our entire platform off of Substack and over to a newly revamped website here in, I think we hope to be starting that April 1st. But please do all the things you know how to do, like, forward, repost, do all of those things because the algorithms,

1:08:22 as much as I hate social media, those things actually matter to people seeing this content. So with that said, receive a blessing from the Lord. May your Father in heaven make you one as he and his Son are one, so that the world may know that he loves them and sent his Son for them.

1:08:44 Have a great week, everybody. Bye-bye.