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Interview with Mike Blair of Madison Greene
Lincoln Park, Michigan, November 6, 2000
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I
met with Mike Blair, lead singer of Madison Greene, in an office on
Fort Street in Lincoln Park, a modest, working class residential
community located just downriver from Detroit. He was a
young man with a sturdy build, square jaw, fair complexion, and red
hair that hung in matted dreadlocks almost down to his
shoulders. I had heard the group play in an auditorium at
the University of Michigan a few weeks before, the style advertised as
'aggressive acoustic'. There was something of a revival
atmosphere in the audience of college-age kids. The band
members looked like latter-day hippies, and the promotional material
spread out on a table near the entrance seemed vaguely Christian in its
orientation. I mentioned to the girl behind the table that I
might want to review the concert. She pointed Mike out to
me, introduced us, and even handed me a free CD. So I
decided to stay a while and see what the music was like.
It turned out to be more bass- and percussion-driven than that which I
had grown up with in the late 60s and early 70s. Celtic,
African drum circle, 'world' music, and even punk influence was
evident. The band members used a bewildering array of
instruments--bass guitar, acoustic guitar, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica,
recorder, and a variety of percussion, mostly of African
origin. The bass guitarist hopped around on stage, his
instrument slung low on his hip in Courtney Love style, his head
hanging down, eyes riveted to the floor. The percussionist
was a tree trunk of a guy with dark beard and heavy dreadlocks who sat
behind an impressive set of African drums. The fiddle player
was a diminutive girl with true virtuoso abilities. Her
playing captured my attention, the style reminiscent of that of Scarlet
Rivera on Dylan's Desire album. The bass
largely drowned out the vocals, and I strained to understand the
lyrics. The most arresting song was a Celtic tune with
"Amazing Grace" sung as a counterpoint.
I took the CD home and played it, and liked it. On the
recording, the bass was controlled, the vocals clear and
unambiguous. Mike's singing style reminded me the now
30-year-old recorded voice of Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson. Think the Dancers Mad,
the title of the CD, came from an anonymous quotation: "For
those who hear not the music think the dancers mad." The
lyrics of the untitled introduction evoked imagery of the crucifixion,
highlighting the singer's point of view without sacrificing a sense of
reverence:
Though my hands are wounded
I've engraved your name on my palms…
On "Shifting
Silence," the Christian perspective of suffering endured for the sake
of humanity was even more explicit, yet the confessional voice of the
singer remained the focal point:
Every word he ever spoke to us was truth
Every
suffering decision made for you and I
Every
tear upon his skin began with you and I
I
have not begun to see clear through his eyes
I
have not begun to relate to this pain
We
have prayed to the creator with so many empty words…
On "A Parting" and
"In this I Suffer," the singer addressed himself directly to the
savior, the comforter, and sufferer who was his model and ideal:
Tonight won't you walk beside me
Before this world's behind us
Before this darkness binds us…
I want your freedom back
I want your haven again
I
want to hold you through the desert rain, into the Promised
Land
And…the holiness you breathe
Will be the holiness I breathe
Your king will be my king
And we can fall into the endless sea…
I asked Mike about this
imagery. "Is it specifically Christian?" I wanted to
know. "Or is it spiritual imagery in a general sense?"
"It's imagery that's coming
from a spirituality that involves a personal God," he
replied. "A God that treasures us and loves us so much that
he's actually carved our names into his own flesh, or his own spirit."
"I like the way you put that," I said.
"Our spiritual viewpoint
definitely stems from the teachings of Christ," Mike
emphasized. "His teachings have an impact on our
lives. We have found them to be true and to be a fulfilling
way to live. Our writings also come out of that personal
involvement… According to his teachings, through his spirit, he makes
himself personally involved with any that would choose to accept
him. That is where our spirituality is coming from."
"I'm not a Christian,
myself," I told him. "But at the same time I'm aware that
there is a lot of expression of spirituality through
Christianity. There are many people who, through
Christianity, are having some very profound experiences. For
me, the way you use the image of Christ in your lyrics is a way of
getting in touch with something that even a non-Christian can relate
to."
"I'm glad you said that,"
Mike replied, with evident feeling. "I'm glad you brought
that up, because really there are a lot of avenues to be creative
within Christianity, in expressing Jesus Christ and who he
is. So many people in the modern church, in the modern
Christianity of our society, in America, or in the West…it's weird…they
put God or Jesus in this box, and they describe and express him in this
one way that gets very difficult to relate to after a
while. Especially when you've had bad experiences in church,
or bad experiences with other Christians. I'd be the first
to admit that many churches do more to harm his image than to express
or bring to light who he really is."
"I want to follow up on this
idea of working with the image of Christ," I continued. "One
of the people I was talking to at the concert said that many of the
songs focus on the humanity of Jesus. And I was thinking
that the reciprocal of that is the divinity within
ourselves. And I wonder if you see your songs as reflecting
both sides of that equation, or maybe not. Maybe the idea of
divinity within ourselves is a little far afield from Christianity."
"It really is."
"You're more comfortable with the humanity of Jesus."
"Yes. I'm
comfortable with the humanity of Jesus. I have a hard time
understanding that term, 'divinity within ourselves'."
"Maybe that's something that
belongs more within the sphere of eastern religion," I speculated.
"I have a hard time with that
concept because we're all mortal. Divinity implies eternity,
immortality. To say that someone is divine is to say that
they are beyond death."
"But you do believe in life
after death, don't you? So maybe in that sense…"
"Sure. I recognize
that our souls are eternal. But I guess I would separate
'eternal' from 'divine'. Just because our souls are eternal,
doesn't necessarily make them divine."
"Man is not God. That's what you're saying."
"Right. Even
though we are eternal, we are not in absolute control of where we spend
our eternity."
"And where does your
spiritual orientation come from? From your home, your family
life?
"Much of it came from our
home life. My mother and father did a great job of raising
us kids. My brother, my sister, and I are all in the
band. They did a great job of raising us with what they
believed was the truth. At the same time, they didn't expect
us to believe just because they believed. Our questions were
answered with other questions, to provoke our thoughts, to find the
answers ourselves. When we had questions about the Bible, or
about other spiritual books, she would ask us to measure those
questions with scripture that we would find in the Bible, that we would
find in other books. We believe that the Bible has all the
answers, but we believe that there are truths in other spiritual
books. There are truths that many people have expressed
throughout our existence as humans."
"There's a book I think you'd like," I said. "The title is Jesus, the Son of Man,
by Kahlil Gibran. It's an imaginative portrait of Jesus at
the time of his mission, written from the perspective of the people who
knew him. It's very much a picture of Jesus from a human
point of view." I wrote down the name and title for him.
He thanked me and promised to
take a look at it. "Getting back to what you said about
someone who is not coming from the same world view, someone who is a
non-believer, how they can relate to the music and the lyrics in spite
of that…that is our greatest encouragement. That is what we
really hope to do. That's what we aim for. There
are many "Christian" groups out there whose desires are to represent
huge groups or churches. That's what they want to
be. That's what they want, full-time. We hope and believe that people from all backgrounds will relate to what we're singing about."
"Do you relate to all types
of Christian groups," I wanted to know, "or are there some that you
don't relate as much to? It seems to me that there's so much
diversity, and there's so much that's going on within the whole body of
Christianity that there's got to be some ways in which people just
prefer not to connect."
"Yeah. I have a
hard time relating to people who are getting their message and their
purpose mixed up, between being a musician and an
evangelist. There are a lot of people who try to integrate
the two, but in my opinion you've got to pick one and do it
well. We're not evangelists. That's not what
we're doing. We're expressing what we believe, we love the
music, and we want to share it with people. Any artist,
anyone who is writing their own music is going to be expressing what
affects their life--whether it's God, whether it's some other
spirituality that they're finding, whether it's their boyfriend or
girlfriend--that's what they're going to be writing about, whatever's
real to them. You mentioned Bob Dylan,
earlier. He wrote about things that he believed in, things
that affected him."
I wanted to follow up on
this, as well. "One of the things about Dylan," I said, "is
that he wrote about some very dark things. His songs are not
all sweetness and light. And that is a question I would also
want to ask you. How do you feel about writing about darker
things? Do you feel that you do that, or do you feel that's
not as appropriate? Do you try to keep the spirit of your
music a little lighter?" I talked about a recent experience
I had with a rather negative individual, and the quandary I faced in
deciding whether or not to write about her.
"The first thing I would say
is to listen to the song, "Sister's Keeper," on the
album. Listen to that song. I think that people
should write about whatever it is that they feel…whatever that's honest
to them. There's a lot of darkness in our culture and in our
world that's worthy of expression."
I went back home to type up
the interview and listened to the CD again. I went right to
the song, "Sister's Keeper::
I know this girl. Her name is Kansas…
Her eyes resemble Cain's…
I
think her middle name is broken on the sidewalk…
She
catches my glance from the back of the pavement park
But
I have no drugs to buy her with…besides
I am not my sister's keeper.
Kansas
shuts her eyes and resolves to withdraw her barren soul
from no one
I
am not the one to blame for this. I am not in blame for her
Kansas tells me of her demons
Their names are Jonas and Cantel
They keep her company when no one else is home and then
they fill her head with raping lies, and feasting
She
lies on her back outside the city hall gate
She is screaming out to nothing
But don't we have petty demons?
If I am not my sister's keeper
Who am I--and how?
I felt the
darkness in the song, as well as the truth. Most of all, I
perceived the desire to make sense of, resolve, forgive oneself, and
forgive others for the darkness. My impression was the
Madison Greene did not shy away from experience, did not use its
spiritual faith to shut itself off or separate itself from the darker
aspects of experience, and that this had a lot to do with what made its
music accessible to Christians and non-Christians alike. |
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Date Submitted:
7/17/01 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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