rich-mullins
- “Awesome God” - AP
- “Calling Out Your Name” - AP
- “Boy Like Me/Man Like You” - AP
- “Hard to Get” - Andy Gullahorn
- “Cry The Name” - Jill Phillips
- “What Susan Said” - Andrew Osenga
- “The Howling” - Jeremy Casella
- “Screen Door” (complete w/ cups) - Brandon Heath & Mitch McVicker
- “You Did Not Have A Home” - Finnegan Bell
- “Elijah” - Matt Giraud
- “Buenos Noches from Nacogdoches” - Leigh Nash
- “Bound to Come Some Trouble” - Mitch McVicker
- “If I Stand” - AP
- “Here In America” - AP
- “Isaiah 52:10” - Jill Phillips
- “The Color Green” - AP
- “Hold Me Jesus” - Brandon Heath
- “Creed” - AP, Andy Gullahorn, and Jill Phillips
- “Peace” - Andy Gullahorn
- “78 Eatonwood Green” - Gabe Scott on the hammered dulcimer
- “Hard” - Finnegan Bell
- “I’ll Carry On” - Jeremy Casella
- “You Gotta Get Up” - Leigh Nash
- “How To Grow Up Big and Strong” - Andrew Osenga
- “Land of My Sojourn” - AP
- “Creed” - Derek Webb
- “If I Stand” - Sidewalk Prophets
- “Calling Out Your Name” - Andrew Peterson
- “I See You” - Audrey Assad
- “Land of My Sojourn” - Jars of Clay
- “Ready For the Storm” - Leigh Nash
- “Wounds of Love” - Mitch McVicker
- “Cry the Name” - Jill Phillips
- “Peace” - Andy Gullahorn
- “The Love of God” - Matt Liechty
You get the feeling from reading them that we might be loved
This old concert recording of Rich Mullins at a Wheaton College chapel service in 1997 is an internet classic, but listening through it again today I was struck by his wisdom about the love of God:
I am at an academic place so I need to speak highly of serious stuff. Although I have trouble with serious stuff, I have to admit, because I just think life’s too short to get too heavy about everything. And I think there are easier ways to lose money than by farming, and I think there are easier ways to become boring than by becoming academic. And I think, you know, the thing everybody really wants to know anyway is not what the Theory of Relativity is. But I think what we all really want to know anyway is whether we are loved or not. And that’s why I like the Scriptures, because you get the feeling from reading them that we might be. And if we were able to really know that, we wouldn’t worry about the rest of the stuff. The rest of it would be more fun, I think. Cause right now we take it so seriously, I think, because of our basic insecurity about whether we are loved are not.
I think you should study because your folks have probably sunk a lot of money into this, and it’d be ungrateful not to. But your life doesn’t depend on it. That was what I loved about being a student in my 40s as opposed to in my 20s is I had the great knowledge that you could live for at least half a century and not know a thing and get along pretty well.
Rich Mullins - gone 25 years
Rich Mullins died on Sept 19, 1997 in a car accident. A songwriter, poet, and prophet, Rich spoke with a voice that had grabbed my heart as a teenager. Hearing that he had died then ripped my heart right out.
I still remember sitting in church on Sunday morning probably 36 hours later and hearing Pastor Jim (himself a great musician) mention Rich’s death from up front. I was stunned. Leaning forward, I put my face in my hands and tried to grapple with this news while my fiancée put a comforting hand on my back, unsure what to do next.
At some point later that fall I assembled a group of musician friends and put together three of Rich’s songs and got permission to play them in his memory at a college chapel service. I’m sure we didn’t really do justice to “Awesome God”, “Hold Me, Jesus”, or “Elijah” that day, but it felt like the least I could do to honor someone whose music had meant so much to me.
I’ve written about Rich’s music many times here on the blog. The concert summary of the tribute concert at the Ryman, the post where I realized that Rich wasn’t the one playing the piano on all those recordings, and the wistful alternate-universe press release (10 years old already!?!) are perhaps worth revisiting.
Today, though, on the 25th anniversary of his passing, this short clip (shared by Shane Claiborne on Twitter) reminds us Rich’s message remains relevant today.
Rest in Peace, brother, awaiting the resurrection.
10 Albums, 10 Days: A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band
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Maybe this one should’ve been first on my list, but I decided to leave the best for last. Rich Mullins was a formative artist - perhaps the formative artist - of my musical life. I spent more time learning his piano licks (well, Reed Arvin’s piano licks) and sitting at the piano singing his songs than any other songwriter. Liturgy, Legacy wasn’t my first Mullins album, but it is the best.
Structured in two halves, the A-side (Liturgy) half of Liturgy, Legacy captures all the best of Rich Mullins. His tender vulnerability with his audience (Here In America), his keen awareness of nature’s declaration of the glory of God (The Color Green), his raw and honest heart wrestling with brokenness (Hold Me Jesus), his firm confidence in the faith (Creed), his struggles in relationship to other saints (Peace)… and that’s just the first half of the album.
Then comes the Legacy side, where Rich plays his hammered dulcimer for an instrumental and then explores the challenges of living life in the real world (Hard), wrestles with the challenges of coming from a real family and carrying their legacy (I’ll Carry On), shares the joy of Christmas (You Gotta Get Up), laments the corrupt systems of society (How to Grow Up Big and Strong) and explores the tension of both loving the country you’re born into while yearning for a better kingdom (Land of My Sojourn).
Every song on the record is a gem. And the fact that I just wrote those last two paragraphs directly from my memory of the album tells me something about how ingrained it is in my head and heart.
The other formative piece about Rich Mullins and this album is that Rich was the formative artist for many of the other artists I have included on this list. He was a mentor for Caedmon’s Call. He was the inspiration for Andrew Peterson’s songwriting. If you look behind the scenes at the artists who made Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God record, each of them will point to Rich as the one who charted the course they are following. Then there’s also that weird bit where a guy from Rich’s band also wrote some of the songs for That Thing You Do!, but that’s a different story…
For the 20th anniversary of this record, Andrew Peterson and friends put on a tribute concert at The Ryman in Nashville where they played a bunch of Rich’s other songs up front and then played this album through front to back for the second half of the show. It is, hands down, the best concert I’ve ever attended. Amazingly almost none of it seems to have made it to YouTube, but here’s a taste.
I could go on and on and on but I’ll stop here. Suffice it to say that if you want to really get to the heart of the music that has formed me and shaped my musical soul, go listen to Rich Mullins. Peace.
Land of My Sojourn
A Rich Mullins song as timely today as it was when it came out back in 1993.
And the coal trucks come a-runnin'
With their bellies full of coal
And their big wheels a-hummin'
Down this road that lies open like the soul of a woman
Who hid the spies who were lookin'
For the land of the milk and the honey
And this road she is a woman
She was made from a rib
Cut from the sides of these mountains
Oh these great sleeping Adams
Who are lonely even here in paradise
Lonely for somebody to kiss them
And I’ll sing my song and I’ll sing my song
In the land of my sojourn
And the lady in the harbor
She still holds her torch out
To those huddled masses who are
Yearning for a freedom but still it eludes them
The immigrant’s children see their brightest dreams shattered
Here on the New Jersey shoreline in the
Greed and the glitter of those high-tech casinos
Some mendicants wander off into a cathedral
And they stoop in the silence
And there their prayers are still whispered
And I’ll sing their song, and I’ll sing their song
In the land of my sojourn
Nobody tells you when you get born here
How much you’ll come to love it
And how you’ll never belong here
So I call you my country
And I’ll be lonely for my home
And I wish that I could take you there with me
And down the brown brick spine
Of some dirty blind alley
All those drain pipes are drippin' out
The last Sons Of Thunder
While off in the distance the smoke stacks were belching back
This city’s best answer
And the countryside was pocked
With all of those mail pouch posters
Thrown up on the rotting sideboards of these
Rundown stables like the one that Christ was born in
When the old world started dying
And the new world started coming on
And I’ll sing His song, and I’ll sing His song
In the land of my sojourn
Andrew Peterson and Friends: The Ragamuffin Album, Live at the Ryman
Last Sunday night I had the privilege of attending an Andrew Peterson-organized and -led concert honoring the legacy of Rich Mullins at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Peterson and his cadre are roughly my age, and we share a deep debt to Mullins, who in his all-too-short musical career penned songs that showed that Christian music could be artistic, poetic, and honest in ways we hadn’t before seen. (Andrew wrote an essay for the concert booklet telling his Rich Mullins story that’s well worth a read. It’s posted on The Rabbit Room.)
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This year is the 20th anniversary of Mullins' death in a car accident, and served as an opportunity for Peterson to round up his friends and prepare the music. The Ryman was packed to capacity with an audience that clearly loves Rich’s music just as much as the musicians themselves do; the concert was punctuated with opportunities for the audience to sing along, starting from an impromptu acapella chorus of “Awesome God”, which Peterson led “just to get it out of the way”. (While it’s perhaps Mullins' best known song to the general public, it’s certainly not his favorite among his more devoted fans.)
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Peterson and friends followed a concert format that he has perfected over years of touring his Behold The Lamb of God Christmas tour. The first half of the concert rotated in each of the guest artists to sing a Mullins song of their choice, with AP sneaking a few of his own choices in along the way.
When we hit intermission I told my wife that I couldn’t think of another Rich song that I was disappointed that they hadn’t played in the first half. The set list:
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The second half of the concert brought each of those artists back out in turn to perform note-for-note versions of each song from Rich’s masterpiece A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band. A string section played the original string charts as provided by Rich’s producer Reed Arvin (who himself was present and played the piano on “Creed” midway through the second half).
To my critical ear they were indeed almost exactly note-for-note and lick-for-lick. Gabe Scott had his hammered dulcimer skills tested and found awesome. My specific criteria for this evaluation was the little turn from the second verse into the pre-chorus of “Peace” - there’s a drum fill, a bass slide, and a little guitar riff that come together in a sublime little moment that I’m probably the only person in the world who cares about. They nailed it. The only place they diverged was I think they gave Andy Osenga an extra couple choruses to play a smoking guitar solo on the end of “How To Grow Up Big and Strong”… but ain’t nobody gonna complain about that.
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The second half setlist:
Even they they weren’t quite done. Peterson brought the full cast of musicians out and led the (now standing) audience in “Step By Step” (with guest vocals by Peterson’s daughter Skye) and the call-and-response of “I See You”, which itself leads back in to one final chorus of “Step By Step”. After some final applause, Peterson did his trademark exit, singing the first line of the Doxology, and then exiting the stage as the audience finished singing it. (1200 people singing the Doxology in the old Ryman auditorium: chills.)
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Hearing so many of Rich’s songs in one sitting highlighted both the artistry and prophetic nature of his lyrics. For instance, the last few lines from “Hard”:
I am a good midwestern boy
I give an honest day’s work when I can get it
I don’t cheat on my taxes, I don’t cheat on my girl
I’ve got values that would make the White House jealous
Peterson wondered aloud (perhaps just as much as he dared) whether Rich had any idea those words would still resonate so loudly 25 years after he wrote them. But the lines that stood out even more loudly to me were from “Land of My Sojourn”:
And the lady in the harbor
She still holds her torch out
To those huddled masses who are
Yearning for a freedom that still eludes them
The immigrant’s children see their brightest dreams shattered
Here on the New Jersey shoreline in the
Greed and the glitter of those high-tech casinos
Some mendicants wander off into a cathedral
And they stoop in the silence
And there their prayers are still whispered
And I’ll sing their song, and I’ll sing their song
In the land of my sojourn
The list of concerts I’ve attended isn’t as long as I’d like - and shorter thanks to the U2 concert in St. Louis getting cancelled last weekend - but Sunday night at the Ryman has to be right up there at the top of the list. Peterson posted on Facebook the next day that it might have been his favorite concert ever. I’d be inclined to agree with him.
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Ragamuffin: Music inspired by the Movie
I haven’t watched the Ragamuffin movie yet. Having known and loved Rich Mullins for the last 20+ years exclusively based on his music, I’m not sure I’m ready to have a moviemaker tell me what I should think about him as a person. But along with the movie today came out an album of music “inspired by” the movie - basically an album of Rich Mullins covers, with a couple old Rich demo tracks to round out the record. The artist list (including Andrew Peterson, Andy Gullahorn, and Jill Phillips, among others) pretty much guaranteed that I’d buy it. And I did.
The track listing includes:
Some preliminary thoughts on the songs:
If I Stand - I’m not familiar with Sidewalk Prophets, but their take here is a solid remake of Rich’s original. Not much variance from the old track here; even the piano riffs remain by the book. Good vocals, though. Nothing to complain about.
Calling Out Your Name - If you’d told me that Andrew Peterson would be the guy on the record bringing in electronic elements, I’d not have believed it, but here it is. He sets up a gentle electronic loop that serves as a solid base for a really nice remake of this song. Peterson’s creativity never seems to wane.
I See You - I wasn’t familiar with Audrey Assad before today, but I’m gonna have to fix that. She took a rather repetitive song here and made a beautiful track out of it.
Land of my Sojourn - This one was a real disappointment. This is one of my favorite Rich songs, but all Jars of Clay did with it was thump a single bass note, put the guitar in an open tuning and slide around the neck from there while Dan Haseltine did a real low-key vocal. I know the JoC guys know more chords than that - wish they would’ve used them here.
Ready For the Storm - Rich didn’t write this one, but Leigh Nash does a really nice job of covering the tune. Not much new here, but a solid remake. (She also skips the Picardy third in the final chord, so that wins her bonus points with me.)
Wounds of Love - Mitch McVicker is an obvious choice to cover songs on this record, having been a good friend and collaborator of Rich’s. This one, though, feels like he’s trying to hard. There’s a little bit of everything on this track - a hammered dulcimer here, a string section there, and he turns what was a low-key, heartfelt song into a more intense rock track that drags on far too long before an awkward ending. I wasn’t sold on it.
Cry the Name - Jill Phillips. What else can I say? This is the one track on this record where the artist took the song and really made it their own. Jill takes Rich’s rather upbeat, 9/8 rhythm song and dials it back to a 4/4 ballad with her husband Andy Gullahorn playing guitars and singing backups. Of all the songs on the record, this is the one that sounds a lot less like Rich and a lot more like the recording artist, and that’s a good thing.
Peace - I can’t imagine anybody I’d rather hear do a cover of this song than Andy Gullahorn, and he doesn’t disappoint. He manages to replicate a lot of Rich’s piano riffs with layered acoustic guitars, then blesses us with his calm, sure vocals on top. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect to hear from Gullahorn, so if you’re a fan of him, you’ll be a fan here.
The Love of God - I’ve got no idea who Matt Liechty is - a quick Google search doesn’t even turn up a proper artist homepage - but he seems far out of his depth being included with the other artists on this record. He pushes this piano ballad too hard, and his vocal chops aren’t up to the standards otherwise present here. I love this song, but not this version of it.
If you’ve read this far you may have noted that I haven’t said anything about Derek Webb’s cover of Creed. Honestly, I haven’t been much inclined to listen to anything by Derek after his recent shenanigans, so this track will probably sit unplayed for a while until I’m ready.
In conclusion
Unless you’re a die-hard completionist, I’d say this is a record where you could save a few bucks by just buying some selected tracks instead of the whole thing. I’d recommend “Calling Out Your Name”, “I See You”, “Ready for the Storm”, “Cry the Name”, and “Peace”. Skip the others, or go back and listen to Rich’s versions instead. Sometimes the original is best left alone. You can find it on iTunes today.
Which artist had the impact?
This interview with Rich Mullins' producer Reed Arvin is months old now, but I thought of it again the other day and wanted to share one revelation in the interview that particularly impacted me.
[Interviewer:] When I was a kid I would just pour over the liner notes to each of Rich’s albums, and I was always surprised to see how few of the instruments he actually played on the recordings. Obviously, he played the hammered and lap dulcimer, but usually you were the one listed as playing piano and not him. [Arvin:] Rich was incredibly soulful musically but he possessed a particular quality many singer-pianists share: he played all over the instrument, all the time. He was used to accompanying himself, you see. He would hammer out double bass notes even if there was a bass player and things like that. So, when you added other instruments, it didn’t quite mesh. Live, this didn’t make so much difference. But on record, it didn’t really work. Also, he had a very elastic sense of time. Making a record is just a different enterprise. But just to sit around the piano while he played and sang by himself, this was beautiful. And we did that sometimes, just for the pleasure of it.
Rich was the formative artist for me as a musician in my teenage years. I memorized his albums, studied liner notes, learned the piano parts note-for-note, played and sang his songs incessantly.
What somehow never occurred to me while reading the liner notes, that never really hit me until reading this interview, is that maybe I owe Reed Arvin a lot more for influencing my piano style than I owe Rich.
The songs and musical ideas were all Rich’s, so it’s not going to tarnish my view of him and his legacy, but it’s still a surprising thought.
A Rich Mullins... movie?
Matthew Johnson alerted me yesterday to the trailer that’s out for a movie about Rich Mullins. Before I comment, here’s the trailer:
Honestly, my first thought was that it’s been more than 15 years since Rich died in a car accident, and I’m still not really ready to see a movie. All the trailer’s foreshadowing with him driving in the Jeep is enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I never met Rich Mullins or even saw him play a concert, and yet he remains my most significant musical influence. I listened to his records (well, cassette tapes and CDs) over and over and over through high school and college. I sang his songs. I learned his piano riffs. After he died I organized a little band to do a 4-song memorial tribute to him in our college chapel service. I guarantee you if you sat me down at a piano I could play and sing at least three dozen of his songs from memory.
Here’s my other hang-up with the movie: I know Rich almost exclusively from his songs. Do I really want to deal with some other writer’s dramatization, and some actor’s impression, of his life? Maybe not.
Instead, I kicked up iTunes and started on a bender playing through Rich’s classic albums The World As Best As I Can Remember It, Vol. 1 and 2, Never Picture Perfect, and A Liturgy, A Legacy, and A Ragamuffin Band. You guys can let me know how the movie turns out, but those records may be all of the Rich I ever really need to know.
In an alternate universe...
Twitter was abuzz with #Hutchmoot tags yesterday after Andrew Peterson’s announcement of the special guest for this year’s Nashville faith and arts conference: singer/songwriter Rich Mullins. Mullins, 57, had big Christian music hits in the 1990’s with “Awesome God” and “Sometimes By Step”, has been nearly unheard from since the release of “The Jesus Record” in 1997.
Mullins has spent most of the last decade on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, continuing to teach music lessons to children and reportedly working on a memoir. It’s not immediately clear what prompted Mullins' desire to jump back into the music world by attending Hutchmoot.
“I was stunned to get the phone call”, said Hutchmoot organizer Andrew Peterson. “Rich has been an inspiration to me for decades. Rich’s music is the common fabric that inspired so many of us who write at The Rabbit Room and who record as the Square Peg Alliance. It’s a great honor to have him join us and share at Hutchmoot this year.”
Adding to the Hutchmoot buzz was a tweet from long-time Mullins producer Reed Arvin (@reedarvin) who said yesterday “Exciting phonecall from an old friend. Can’t produce this time but he couldn’t have picked a better producer.” This was followed, ten minutes later, by a single-word tweet from Andrew Peterson collaborator, pianist and producer Ben Shive (@benshive): “Speechless”.
Tickets for this year’s Hutchmoot have long been sold out, but Rabbit Room proprietor Pete Peterson notes that he is keeping a waiting list if there are any last-minute cancellations.
-———–
Rich Mullins passed away as the result of a car accident 15 years ago today. Those of us who grew up loving Rich’s music are forever in his debt. We miss you, Rich. Rest in peace awaiting the resurrection.
So I call you my country, and I'll be lonely for my home
And the coal trucks come a-runnin'
With their bellies full of coal
And their big wheels a-hummin'
Down this road that lies open like the soul of a woman
Who hid the spies who were lookin'
For the land of the milk and the honey
And this road she is a woman
She was made from a rib
Cut from the sides of these mountains
Oh these great sleeping Adams
Who are lonely even here in paradise
Lonely for somebody to kiss them
and I’ll sing my song, and I’ll sing my song
In the land of my sojourn
And the lady in the harbor
She still holds her torch out
To those huddled masses who are
Yearning for a freedom that still eludes them
The immigrant’s children see their brightest dreams shattered
Here on the New Jersey shoreline in the
Greed and the glitter of those high-tech casinos But some mendicants wander off into a cathedral
And they stoop in the silence
And there their prayers are still whispered
And I’ll sing their song, and I’ll sing their song
In the land of my sojourn
Nobody tells you when you get born here
How much you’ll come to love it
And how you’ll never belong here
So I call you my country
And I’ll be lonely for my home
And I wish that I could take you there with me
And down the brown brick spine of some dirty blind alley
All those drain pipes are drippin' out the last Sons Of Thunder
While off in the distance the smoke stacks
Were belching back this city’s best answer
And the countryside was pocked
With all of those mail pouch posters
Thrown up on the rotting sideboards of
These rundown stables like the one that Christ was born in
When the old world started dying
And the new world started coming on
And I’ll sing His song, and I’ll sing His song
In the land of my sojourn
“The Land of My Sojourn” Rich Mullins (c) 1993 - Edward Grant, Inc., 1993 - Kid Brothers of St. Frank Publishing
I was prompted by Kari’s piece the other day to revisit Rich Mullins' A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band. I have long counted this as one of my favorite albums, but it tends to be one of my forgotten favorites; I don’t listen to it for a while, and then when I turn it on again, I wonder why I ever forgot about it.
I can’t pick a favorite song of of this album, but the song I quoted here is one of the best. Rich nails the feelings that I have about the land where I live with these lines:
Nobody tells you when you get born here How much you’ll come to love it And how you’ll never belong here So I call you my country And I’ll be lonely for my home And I wish that I could take you there with me
Not much else to say about it… but if you haven’t listened to this album for a while, get it back out. You won’t be disappointed.