Episode 467 -The Jesus Music with John J Thompson

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and for all of you listening, listening today. Thank you so much for being here for another conversation. Uh, on this episode today, I am so happy to be joined by John J. Thompson. He is the former Associate Dean of Trevecca Nazarene University School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee. He's a speaker, a producer, an author, an artist, and the founder of the podcast True Tunes. He is an expert on all things of contemporary Christian music, or CCM as we might call it. As a consultant and historian, he was interviewed for the new documentary The Jesus Music Film, which is now streaming on Hulu. And I can't wait to talk about it more with you today. John J. Thompson, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thanks for having me, man. It's fun to be on this side of an interview.

Yeah, yeah, you are such a great interviewer, and I so appreciate the, the podcast that you sent to me specifically. And then I dove into a few others that I was listening to as well. I loved hearing especially, uh, the, the lost interviews with Rich Mullins that you had done.

Oh yeah.

And, uh, just, you, you've, you've contributed so much through not just your podcast, but then there's your books and, and just the way that you influence students' lives at Trevecca. And I know I had a lot of people that would comment to me over the years, mutual friends, about what a good job you were doing. So, oh, thank you. Yeah, so it's great to be able to chat with you today. Um, in case listeners haven't had a chance to watch it yet, the, the Jesus Music, it's It's this great film that is playing on Hulu right now, and so a lot of our audience probably has Hulu and they can check it out. But it deals with Christian music, probably some of the most recognizable artists and people like Amy Grant and TobyMac and Kirk Franklin and Michael W. Smith and Michael Tate and Lauren Daigle, just to name a few of them that are kind of focused on throughout the film. But really it's this history of what we now call CCM, but really what started out as Jesus music, which didn't really have a category at the time. And it really is a well-done, like, documentary. Like, it really pulls you in and makes you kind of want to have the conversation. So I'm so glad that we get to talk a little bit about the film today, but also maybe go to some areas that the film didn't get to go to. Because as you had said before when we just started talking today, this really could be like a series of documentaries together, you know.

And it originally conceived as that. It was supposed to have been an episodic, maybe 6 or 8 part documentary series, but then it got turned into a feature film so that it could go to theater. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff left out, but it's, you know, it starts the conversation at least.

Yeah. Well, as we begin, uh, today, can you just tell my listeners, just in case they haven't heard of you before, listen to your podcast, just some of your background, how you kind of fell in love with what we'll call Jesus music from, from the first place and kind of where it has brought you today.

Sure.

And by the way, for listeners to know, I'll just let you know, there may be some coughing. John is a little under the weather right now.

So yeah, I'm at the tail end of a Nashville, uh, I don't know if it's allergies or cold or what it was, but yeah, I'll do my best to hold it together because I'm excited. Um, so yeah, I have always been inordinately fascinated by music since I was very, very little, like a baby. And I had a fairly traumatic childhood, and so music also was an escape. It was something I used to try to help me make sense of the world that was not making a whole lot of sense to me. Um, and then when I discovered— my mom became a Christian at the tail end of the Jesus Movement, which we talk about, this big, you know, revival, this, this thing that happened that kind of caused a paradigm shift in how people, millions of people understood Jesus and faith and Christianity and the gospel and stuff like that. And so I grew up with Jesus music playing in the house, you know, Love Song and Honey Tree and Heavy and things like that. Honestly, there was a few Love Song tunes that I liked, but a lot of that music was my mom's music. It really wasn't, uh, it didn't— it wasn't dark enough, it wasn't edgy enough, it wasn't intense enough to really help me. But there was elements of it that I liked. There were songs here and there, but I was going out and finding finding stuff in Bob Dylan and The Doors and Kansas and, you know, whatever I could find on the radio. And later, when I was about 9 years old, my, my grandma bought me a DeGarmo and Key tape called Straight On, and that one blew everything apart for me. It was just— it was, it was southern rock, blues, boogie. Um, it was lyrically very intense. And all of a sudden I thought, man, you know, this— to me, there wasn't like a separate world. I didn't understand yet that there was Christian music and secular music. It was just music that was telling me the truth or, or giving me something, or music that was just an escape or whatever. So to me, DeGarmo and Keesch, that record should have been as popular as anything on the radio, but I found out it wasn't. You couldn't even find it in most places. So A few years later, uh, I thought that that was maybe one of the only albums, uh, you know, out there, like it was just an anomaly. And then I, I was listening to a Christian radio station in the Chicago area, kind of tolerating a lot of music that I just really, really didn't like. But I thought, well, maybe I need this. Maybe, you know, it's kind of like taking your vitamins. Maybe I need to listen to this stuff. And, you know, then one night at 9 o'clock, a DJ just dropped a needle. He said, things are changing, and he started playing this new wave rock alternative music. And I've— at first I thought, well, by things are changing he means this isn't Christian music anymore, because this stuff was way too good to be Christian, I thought. Turns out it was just that he was starting a rock alternative hard rock show every night from 9 to midnight. And, uh, I— that's where I first heard the 77s and Res Band and Vector and Charlie Peacock and bands like that. Jerusalem from Sweden. This guy had an amazing show, and I started to— I just blew— it was like that Degarmo and Key experience all over again times 100. And I realized there, there were artists who were trying to use rock music, folk music, alternative music, even really, you know, good forms of pop music to ask better questions, as opposed to just like Sunday school lessons set to music, you know. So I fell in love with that. And then I went to the Cornerstone Festival. The first Cornerstone Festival was in '84. And I was 13, almost 14, and I went to that festival, and that's where I saw the 77s play. I saw Kerry Livgren from Kansas play with his band AD. I saw Rez Band. I saw Sweet Comfort Band. I saw, you know, lots of stuff that I thought, okay, this is my purpose. I'm here to kind of build a bridge between this music and my friends. And, and I also was starting to write songs and become an artist myself. And so I just felt like there was there was this artificial construct that was separating, uh, this music from the people that really would get the most out of it. And part of that was because that world was— a lot of people that were involved with it were kind of promoting it as an alternative, like an alternate universe. Like, you— once you become a Christian, you just consume Christian products. And it was this kind of bubble. And that was just never how I saw it. I saw it as a way to actually engage people and So I had this idea to build this thing called True Tunes when I was 15 or so. And by the time I was 16, I got a job at a Christian bookstore and I was the music buyer. And then that led to the creation of True Tunes when I was 19. And within a few years, we had a magazine going around the world. We had a concert venue. We just had a— it was quite a ride. And I was making my own music, but it was it was different because I didn't grow up in this, uh, kind of super strict fundamentalist world. I— and so I didn't really engage with this music as, oh, let's find a Christian version of something. To me, it was just if it was good, true, beautiful, then that's what I wanted to talk about. And so that's what I've been doing.

Yeah, well, that's fantastic. Thanks for letting us in on that part of your history because I feel like that's an important part of of the story to tell, because I think maybe that's not necessarily in the publishing world that you got into, but I think that's how a lot of people have approached, like, Christian music. They're looking for something truthful and beautiful and good, and sometimes it's Christian, sometimes it's— they're finding truth in other ways, especially today. So it's, it's an interesting component of this conversation. I was kind of fascinated as, as I watched the film. It was kind of learning and relearning some things about how we went from this movement of people who really were in love with Jesus and just made music and wanted to talk about Jesus and the stuff they wrote. And it didn't necessarily fall into like a Christian category. It was, I'm a musician who's a Christian, and who I am is coming out in what I do. Um, and seeing that move into what has become a billion-dollar industry, or, you know, this what we call CCM today, um, the pluses and the minuses that go along with that. I feel like the documentary does a pretty good job of kind of showing, you know, kind of the warts and all side to some issues, you know, from both of those, those things as we watch it throughout. Um, one thing that I, I found interesting when you were talking specifically, the documentary goes to you a number of times to ask for your comment on things. I find this disconnect, like a racial disconnect, which you talk about in the music, fascinating, and the way that Christian music should be the most unsegregated type of music that we have, and yet still we tend to see the dividing line still there in so many ways. That we're seeing on Sunday morning in our churches in a lot of ways. You had a great comment talking about Andre Crouch, right, and how he was there from the beginning, and yet somehow, um, the music didn't grow along in this way that kind of made the two kind of form together and become sort of like one big family of God. And yet now we tend to have like a category of worship music gospel music, you know, like these, these two things that diverge. Sometimes they meet, and, and we saw with like, uh, with, with Jireh on the Grammys this year, you know, getting to see them play, that it does move into the mainstream, but it's in and out. I wonder if you could talk about just a little bit more, if you don't mind, kind of that part of the history and sort of the, the relationship that's been there with even the racial divide, that Christian music hasn't always gone where it probably should have.

Right.

Well, you know, I think that part of it is because the— you have to ask yourself, what is the, what is the intention that I have for this experience? You know, what, what am I hoping to accomplish? And Jesus music came out of the counterculture, and the counterculture was a melting pot of young people who were dissatisfied with things like the way that the institutions had opposed the civil rights movement, you know, and things like the Vietnam War. And, uh, and then you get other things kind of thrown in there. Well, if my parents' generation is offbeat when it comes to their support of this war in Vietnam or their opposition to voter rights in the Black community, well then maybe they're wrong about their sexual, uh, morals and everything else. And so everything gets questioned, everything gets turned upside down, but the root of it was dissatisfaction and an intent to make things better. And so a lot of the young early Jesus people, they all of a sudden found this new way of understanding Christ, and part of it was to be his people here in the world. And it turns out that reconciliation and feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting those in prison and working with drug addicts, and that, that's all part of— those reinforce the same values that a lot of the people in the counterculture have. They just now had a mission and a reason to do it that was theological.

Right.

So, sorry.

Um, no problem.

So the, uh, the transition happens when music gets a little bit more away from the original mission and just being part of the culture and reflecting your spiritual sensitivities and ideas honestly into becoming a product that is being marketed to Christians. Because at that point you have to say, well, what does the market want? You know, people, artists like Bob Dylan, he didn't ever seem to care. In fact, whatever the market wanted, he went the other way. Like, his job was to challenge and provoke, and artists by their nature are provocateurs. And so people like Larry Norman and Keith Green and, you know, Mark Hurd and a whole bunch of other artists have an instinct to spark controversy at times, to provoke people to think more deeply about stuff. But that's not the same thing as when you're, when you're just selling a product to people that are trying to consume something that makes them feel good. It's kind of the difference between art and decoration, you know. Do you, do you, do you have an artist that's a, that's a, has a message, has an intention, has something that they're trying to convey on the canvas? Or are you just trying to make something that looks good in a hotel room? And the, that transition isn't always bad because I think there is a— there is an appropriate use for obviously sacred music and church settings and things like that. And it's not bad to decorate spaces with beautiful things, you know, that, that's not inherently bad. But it can become bad when the product ends up determining the mission. And so instead of being out there trying to push the edges and challenge people prophetically to do better, to think more deeply,, selflessly, uh, even you want to say radically, or to just make them feel good about the choices they've made and to reinforce the things that they already believe and stuff like that. So the racial issues are, to me, indicative more than they are prescriptive. Like, they indicate that divergence because, frankly, if you look at mainstream music, you see it become more and more and more integrated. Yeah, not less.

Yeah.

And so there's more examples of artists like Michael Jackson who, building on what happened with Motown in the '60s, and he takes it to another place in the '80s. And then we have today the most integrated, you know, across the board. You got hip-hop songs sitting right next to pop songs sitting right next to punk and rock songs. But in Christian music, it went a different way. And with a few notable exceptions, stylistically it became, what does the market want? And then you have to say why. And I think that part of that gets to some— sometimes it's just because when you create a product for the market, you're gonna inevitably dumb that thing down, you know, because you're not— you're no longer trying to prophetically challenge anybody. But I think other people came into the story who had political agendas. They, they were really, um much more motivated by culture wars and politics than they were by the gospel. And so starting in the late '70s, there's this shift towards Christians thinking of themselves not as salt and light going into the world to bring truth and mercy and grace and love, but as soldiers, you know, as, you know, kind of this post-Vietnam tough guy thing, this Rambo Jesus individualism stuff. And you have the Reagan era, and, and then a lot of that Jesus Movement stuff kind of flows right into Christian politics and, you know, conservative politics and justifying war and all kinds of stuff. You see almost no connection back to the countercultural DNA. Now, there are exceptions, and one of the things I was glad that they talked to Glenn Kaiser in the film, at least a little bit, but the Jesus People USA, flaws and all, mistakes and all, That is one example of the Jesus Movement carrying through and not succumbing to market pressures that created Resurrection Band, one of the first hard rock bands in what we call Christian music. But these people lived in intentional community in the inner city of Chicago doing the same stuff that they were called to do in the '60s, and they still are there today. And they started the Cornerstone Festival, and that really The Cornerstone Festival stands as this exception, this massive exception to the rule, even though it's been gone for 10 years now. So many of the artists that crossed out of the Christian music bubble into the mainstream—POD, Sixpence None the Richer, Reliant K, Switchfoot—they developed a following at places like Cornerstone. And really, there's nothing like Cornerstone. So at Cornerstone, they just— that was a, that was the exception to the rule, and it was an indication of what that original DNA of Jesus music was versus CCM music. And it always was for the 27 years that the festival happened. I got to be on staff for the last— I don't remember— 15 years or something like that. Um, so, uh, anyway, that, that to me was the, uh, one of the misses in there, or one of— that's one of the keys to understanding the difference between CCM and, and Jesus music is today You have artists like Twenty One Pilots or Kendrick Lamar, people that are dealing with Jesus issues in their music, with theological ideas, with spiritual existential concepts that are connected directly to faith in the mainstream. You have Natalie Bergman, this artist on Third Man Records, you know, Jack White from the White Stripes label, making a Jesus music album in the mainstream that CCM completely ignores. There's no awareness of it, no interest in it. And to me, that's, that's a, it's an invitation. And frankly, that's the space I've always felt at home in. I did work in the CCM industry for quite a while, and I still have lots of relationships, and I manage some artists that make worship music. And that, that's one of those places where you go, well, this kind of makes sense to be an industry for this, or at least a community to support it. But Jesus music should be a lot bigger than, than CCM. And I think it is. I don't think that they can own it all.

Well, and you mentioned Natalie Bergman, and it was good to hear your conversation and to hear her kind of talk about the way that, again, the Christian music industry is kind of ignoring it. But her approach to it is very much kind of like the origins of Jesus music. She's a person who passionately feels this, and she's just making music, and that part of her is just coming out, you know. And it's— and I love that. I really do. I think it's a beautiful way of expression that frankly, I think we probably ought to get back to more in some ways. Let artists be artists, and if they're Christian, let them be that, you know, in the midst of it.

But well, we missed something because what people don't realize, like, I'm all in favor of, you know, music for church, right? But when the CCM industry became as effective as it became in selling Christian products to Christians, What happened was it eliminated— it kind of sucked all of that into one bubble, and we see the end of an era when actually Jesus songs made it to the top 40 all the time. There was this whole era from '67 to '74 where you can look at how much Jesus was in the mainstream conversation. Even the spiritual seekers in the psychedelic era and the people in the '60s, it was very common for people to be wrestling with religious ideas, and Jesus could be right there in with Mahavishnu, or, or, you know, the, the yogis, or Eastern spiritualism, or whatever, because it was all fine. Like, but then once you create a ghetto, once you say, okay, all you Christians go over here, then the culture just says, oh, this is convenient, now we can put all the Christians over here and they can sing for each other. And I don't think that that was because the rest of the world hated songs about Jesus. I think it was because record company people are smart and they know that marketing music is expensive and it's difficult. If you can put all of the people that might be interested in this into one pile and then only market to them, then, you know, your return on investment is going to be a lot higher. But if you try to take a— and market this stuff to everybody, it costs a lot more money. So to a lot of people in the mainstream world, it was just a feat of marketing, but to people in the Christian world, it was part of that let's put up walls and retreat from the culture and start, uh, start this culture war. And so In the process, you know, we don't see songs crack the top 10 anymore. I mean, every 20 years you'll get a, you know, and people might point to Baby Baby. It's like, that's, that's a great song. That's a great pop song. It's a great love song from an artist who's a Christian, but it's not a Jesus music, right? Exactly. You know, Butterfly Kisses was a, was a lovely sentimental adult contemporary song, and it's very true. It's emotionally like great. But it's not a Jesus music song. Um, Stomp by Kirk Franklin was a Jesus music song, like that was— and it was in the tradition of Oh Happy Day that had happened 20 years earlier. Yeah, but, but we're not seeing that anymore because all of those Christian artists are getting put over in this ghetto.

Yeah, yeah, we, we love our boxes, it seems like. It just— well, they're very effective. Yeah, very much so. Well, you know, before we run out of time today, one thing that I did want to to talk to you about, because the documentary does a good job covering what it covers, but there's so much to cover that it just couldn't have put everything in. And I wonder if— I was kind of surprised when I saw, like, I think the only thing I saw of Rich Mullins in it was like him sitting in a chair at one point, but there was very little. And I think about someone who probably, at least in my view, artists I know talk about, play with sometimes, like Rich Mullins is the reason that we want to make music, you know, in some ways. And I feel like there could be like this follow-up documentary that just about people like him. But I wonder from your standpoint, like as you were in the documentary, as you have watched it now, I wonder if there was something that, that you particularly would say, oh, I really wish could have— we could have put that in there, you know, I wish that had been covered.

I think of two things right off the top of my head. One is that um, it doesn't even touch at all on the fact that in the Jesus Movement there were a lot of artists who said, I'm going to take this philosophical, spiritual gospel idea, I'm going to make music about it, but I'm not going to go into the bubble. Like, I'm going to stay out there. And I did a lot of— I did 9 hours of interviews with them. So I remember talking at length about this other stream Sorry. No, no problem. This other stream, um, with T-Bone Burnett and Michael Bean from The Call, and, and even the fact that 4 kids in Dublin, uh, were listening to Daniel Amos, and they start making punkish new wave music and incorporating their faith into it, and had very specific opportunities to make Christian music, but decided that that was not what they were supposed to do. And they become U2, the biggest band of our generation and the biggest example of the fact that you can talk about Jesus very openly and people will— as long as your music is cool and you're, you're relevant, they'll listen. So they just didn't follow that. I think that that train of Jesus in the mainstream starts back in the '60s and it continues all the way through to today where we got Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper and Twenty One Pilots and all kinds of artists that are, that are that. But T-Bone Burnett would have been a great, um, example of somebody saying, no, I'm not going to do that. Now there's also the fact that in the late '80s, T-Bone Burnett helped a guy named Tom Willett start a label called What Records, which was a division of Murr, which was a Christian label. But their whole vision was to sign artists that were mainstream artists who were Christians— Tony O.K., Dave Perkins, um, Sam Phillips, people like that, Mark Heard. And every record that Watt put out was brilliant, and the thing failed within 2 years. Like, it just, it went away. And that's because of that bubble effect. And, and so I think that, that, that would have been an interesting— at least to acknowledge that not all Jesus music became CCM. Yeah. And, and by not doing that, I think what they did was they said, okay, what is CCM today and what are its roots? And, and I think that they had to choose representative samples with Amy, Michael, Kirk Toby, Michael Sweet from Stryper to kind of represent everything. And so people like Rich that were kind of anomalies, there's no way to just touch on that. You have to really sit with that, and he's not here to do an interview with. So, um, I feel like that was, uh, if you understand the film as a documentary about the roots of today's CCM scene back in the Jesus Movement, then it works. If you want to think that it's about Jesus music from there It, it really isn't. It kind of follows one side of the family tree to today, and it ignores all of the cousins, it ignores all of the difficult political questions, cultural questions. Um, and so that's the miss, but that's also the opportunity down the road. They've started the conversation, and whether they continue it with sequels or episodes or whatever, or somebody else does, at least there's going to be— this is the first time any of this stuff has been brought into the mainstream culture at this level in a long, long time. So I'm, I'm honored to be a part of it, but I am feeling like, okay, we're just getting started. Let's go. Let's talk about the deeper stuff.

Exactly. And when I watched it, I felt like, what a good start. Now let's have some more, you know, because it really was that feeling to me. And I, and I feel like in some ways, if I've heard any criticism of it at all, or if I've read any, it has been, uh, this one thing too, which it's very selective about its controversies that it'll deal with. With. Yeah. And I think because we didn't touch on like, you know, there's this whole chapter of like, well, right now things that are in the culture, like we didn't touch on Ray Bolts and his like effect. And because Ray Bolts came out a few years ago, he's all of a sudden like completely non-existent in the history in some ways. And so it would be also an interesting conversation to talk about some of the less safe controversies, I guess, to say, you know, like—

and probably that, that might take somebody doing it that's not beholden at all to the industry, because, um, you know, you want to talk about those things, and you should, but you're going to end up going back to what is the intent of this product. And exactly, the intent of CCM is to provide products for Christian consumers, and they have become increasingly stringent about the culture war stuff and about you know, at least a handful of sexual politic issues. Sure. But then they're also completely ignoring the incompatibility of the gospel with, you know, fascism and anti-democratic things. And, you know, the fact it's like— so that's what we're trying to do on the podcast, on the True Tunes podcast, is over the course of time Talk to people from a broad array of genres, from Bruce Coburn, somebody that's 70 years old, to Doe, a contemporary gospel artist now, teenagers up to octogenarians, people that are from all different genres, because I think we'll get at the truth of this thing better with a wider quilt, a wider patchwork of stories. But it's, yeah, it's a tough thing when you start to go, okay, what about Jennifer Knapp? What about, you know, that particular quote-unquote sin issue? You know, like they're very selective about the ones they don't want to talk about. Corporate malfeasance. They don't want to talk about, you know, all these other sinful issues. They just kind of focus on this one thing. But when you go back to what is this product and who is it for, it kind of makes sense that they're not going to— that that market isn't going to tolerate anything that their, that their audience doesn't want, right? Yeah.

Well, yeah, and I so appreciate you saying that, and I appreciate people like you who are having these conversations and are going to a deeper place. And, and let's face it, there's only so much you can put into one film too. I mean, you have to be selective on what—

well, you've reminded me I should reach out to Ray and have him on the podcast. He's a, he's a fantastic guy. Oh, I would love that. Very thoughtful, deep thinker. I met him at Cornerstone Festival. He used to ride his motorcycle to Cornerstone and just hang out with all the great unwashed watching rock bands, and he came to see my band play. And, uh, what a— you know, yeah, that's a good idea.

I should talk. That's cool. That would be— yeah, I'd definitely be up to hear that. That would be great. Well, and you know, the other thing that you just brought up a minute ago, like, how does Christian music— it, like, there seems to be this desperate need to reconcile with, like, what have we become? Like, not, not just music, but like the church itself. Like, what does it mean that on January '76 when this terrible insurrection is happening, you've got people with Jesus signs and Christian music blaring over speakers and things like that happening. And it's like, it's so important that we not ignore these conversations, but like dive in and find ways. So again, that's, that's not necessarily in the scope of the Jesus music film or anything, but I— well, you know, it kind of is.

I mean, there's one example where it is, and that's that they do a lot of— they spend a lot of time at Explo '72, this big event that happened in Dallas in 1972. It's— some people want to frame Explo '72 as the Christian Woodstock, which is a complete misnomer. Um, it was a massive event, and it did show in physical form what it looks like for 200,000 young Christian kids, from hippies to super conservative kids, all to get together to listen to great music and hear some speaking. And they chose some great moments from Billy Graham's, uh, talk that day about Christians need to be involved in social issues and at the forefront of that stuff. But what they don't talk about is that Billy Graham had gone to the White House to personally lobby Richard Nixon to come to Explo '72 to promote his candidacy so that young people could start to support the Vietnam War and could support the Republican Party. They don't talk about that, and they don't talk about the fact that during Explo was when Nixon's goons were breaking into the Watergate Hotel. It was actually those days. That's when that crime happened. And that's a really interesting thing that people could go, wow, okay, so even all the way back in 1972, there was a temptation to align the Jesus Movement and Christianity with one particular political— and you know what, there's people that do it on the other side too. Yeah, for sure. If we don't have discernment and we can't sniff that stuff out and learn from past mistakes, then look what happens. It just keeps cascading into a situation where we have a slate of values that most of us would have easily identified as Antichrist values that are now embraced by people who call themselves evangelicals. Now, if you scratch at that a little bit, you'll find that to be evangelical right now just means to be Republican and white in America. Right. And so the— but we need artists to help provoke us and make us uncomfortable and upset us and get us to think the way Crosby, Stills and Nash did after the Kent State shootings, the way that, you know, Buffalo Springfield did after the riots in Hollywood. We need artists to upset us. And I think that there have been some great Christian artists who have done that and continue to do that. Nowadays, they're completely indie. You have to find them on Spotify. It's really— it's difficult to get, but they're out there. But throughout our history, we've had those artists. And that was another miss in the film, is to go, what about those provocateurs? What about the people that are challenging us?

Yeah. Yeah. It's a difficult thing because the church is always— I mean, all the way back to Constantine and probably even before has had this really like, be careful getting in bed with power because it's, it's always a lot easier to go play golf with Pharaoh than to say, let my people go, you know.

And that I would say, don't even be careful about it. Just don't get into bed with people. Right, exactly. It seems like it never ever works out.

Right, exactly. So, well, this has been really great. And again, we've barely scratched the surface surface in our conversation today. And I, I appreciate so much, even when you're not feeling great, coming on and talking a bit about this today.

But well, if people listen to the podcast, they can hear what my voice sounds like on a good day.

That's right, it still sounds pretty good. Oh, okay, good. I gotta say, but I, I do want to let everybody know, uh, whether they follow this podcast through my Substack page or whether they just go through voicesinmyheadpodcast.com, uh, we will make sure and have links, uh, to not only the, the film that we're talking about today, The Jesus Music, but there'll be several links on there as far as for John J. Thompson as well. They can go and find more about him and his books. And definitely everybody listening, go check out the True Tone— the, the, the— oh, I said it wrong. I'm sorry.

No problem. 40 years, that's true. True Tunes.

I was thinking of Tom Hanks's company, I think. True Tone. Whatever it was. You ripped that off from me, I'm sure. True Tunes, my mistake, sorry about that. Uh, the True Tunes podcast is, is really amazing, and there's some wonderful guests. And the way that you, you really do create kind of a documentary-style atmosphere on that show, and I so appreciate it. So I— what we have done here today is not, again, even scratch the surface of some of the places you go. Uh, but is there anything else before we end our time together today that just maybe you would like to say to listeners, anything that you have going on or any place you particularly would like to point them?

Well, if you go to truetunes.com, you can find articles I've written and you can even find a Spotify mix. I curate a mix every week, 40 songs, usually on Wednesdays it gets updated. So if you follow that mix, you're going to hear artists who very clearly are Christian artists who are making, you know, that kind of music. And you're going to hear main— mostly mainstream music where there's still a thread of spiritual thought going on. And I mix that all up the way— it's kind of like if, if, if I had been able to create a genre 50 years ago, this is it. And, and it also goes from hard rock to gospel to hip-hop to pop to singer-songwriter to folk. So if people really say, well, I'm interested in this, I'm every week up— in fact, it's over 6,000 songs I've curated in the last few years. And so if you want to go really nuts, you can find the archive list and you can dive into that and drive to Alaska and back and not hear the same song twice. But, um, but we're writing articles. Sometimes it's me, sometimes it's friends, other writers. We're posting podcasts. Some of them are 6 minutes long, some are an hour and a half long. And I'm curating this playlist, and I really would hope that people that are interested in this would subscribe to the email list and join our conversation, because we're hoping to do things like physical gatherings of people you know, small versions of festivals, um, books that are coming out that people need to find this audience. And it's really hard. Like I said at the beginning, marketing is terrible, but it's, it's necessary. And so finding like-minded people who are interested in something and gathering them into a pile makes it so that authors and artists can find those people. And that's really what True Tunes is about, is trying to reconvene this community that, that is a little wider a little bit deeper. And it's not about putting up boundaries. It's, it's about just— it's what you might call a center-set model where we're, we're the well where we're hoping people find good water, and we're not worried about where the borders are. So I just invite people to check it out. And if you happen to be in Illinois, I'll be at the Audiofeed Festival in Champaign speaking and playing and hosting interviews with people, and that's July 4th weekend. So I do get out and speak and travel and tour and stuff like that. And if anybody wants me to come speak at their school or church or something, I'd be happy to do that.

Terrific. Well, I'm so glad for that information. I know our listeners will be too. Well, this has been a real pleasure today. So, John J. Thompson, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

I'm happy to do it. Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now, For the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.