A quiet road flows through towering trees on either side, with wild grass reaching several feet into the air. Men in leather vests clutch the throttles of shining Harleys, rumbling and shaking through the silence to a once-deserted barn. 

A woman dismounts her Triumph Bonneville ‘65, adjusts the black bandanna covering her trimmed hair and walks through the doors. On the inside, 90’s metal rock plays over loudspeakers, polished Harley parts adorn the walls and a hanging, leather saddle bag takes the place of an offertory.

Floyd Brady, better known by his road name, Crow, greets each guest with a hug, a high-five, or a custom handshake. As members trickle in, the opening chords of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” rattle the barn walls with drums, bass and electric guitar.

“Sweet home up in Heaven,” the congregants sing the edited lyrics crafted by Crow, ex-rock star and current worship leader. He stands on stage, leaning backward with each strum, thrusting his knees slightly forward and moving with the rhythm of the music. Pastor Brian McKay, “BMan,” opens the service in prayer. In the audience, tattooed arms cross in observance before a loud, affectionate “Amen.”

Without a sanctuary, hymnals or a dress code, Victory Biker Church International in Lenon, Mich., meets in what they call a Clubhouse, embracing biker culture while advancing the gospel.

“People don’t want religion,” Brady said. “They want relationship.”

The son of evangelists, Brady left the church in his teens and hit the road touring with a metal rock band, singing songs filled with hatred for religion. Decades later, in the Clubhouse, he works to make space for “outcasts,” by embracing, not fighting, the road warrior culture he came to love.

Kross-Eyed Mary 

Adjusting the seat to get the proper leverage, Brady situates himself behind a too-large drum set overlooking a church auditorium. To his right, his parents tune their instruments and adjust their microphones. His aunt and uncle fiddle with the cacophony of chords coming out of the amplifier in the back.

The Brady Family, a touring, country Western gospel quartet, goes through their now well-practiced rituals.

Singing songs about God, forgiveness and right-living, Brady grew up surrounded and immersed in faith. His parents were active members of the church and focused on outreach and proselytizing. Brady learned to play the drums by fumbling through the simple beats of gospel hymns.

As a young teenager, Brady shifted away from the genre he knew and gravitated toward rock and metal music. Artists like Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath began shaping his outlook on music. Listening to Randy Rhoads’ lengthy guitar solos, the electric hum coursing through over-ear headphones, Brady became inspired. He traded his drumsticks for a guitar strap. He studied the guitarists that inspired him and learned to emulate them, venturing away from the world of family gospel bands and into the more exciting realm of harder music.

With each year, Brady grew increasingly disillusioned with Christianity. His parents always seemed to be the same in every situation, living with integrity in the pews and outside. As he branched out from his parents and tuned in to the broader life of his congregation, he became disheartened by perceived, ubiquitous hypocrisy and began harboring a hatred of religion.

In 1989, Brady and five of his bandmates crammed into the back of a retired, white delivery van. The crew went through its ritual game of Tetris-style loading: the drum set in first, an amplifier laid horizontally between music stands, someone’s feet resting on a guitar case. The van had to be loaded in exactly the same way each time for all of the equipment and band members to fit. A few inches made all of the difference.

With its built-in cement blocks and heavy-duty suspension designed for a load four times heavier, the van bumped and rattled as the crew made its way through dirt roads and interstates from Michigan, to Ohio, to Illinois.

After arriving at a small dive bar near Flint, the crew went about unloading and re-adjusting their instruments, which had jostled out of tune from the trip. 

Brady’s band, Kross-Eyed Mary, had signed its first record deal and embarked on an ambitious four-month Midwest tour with over 100 shows. The band would play wimpy bar crowds on Monday and Tuesday, then hit the road again, move a town or two over, and settle in for weekend gigs.

The band name was intended to be a direct dig at Catholicism. “We hated all religion, but especially the Catholic faith,” Brady said. The hypocrisy that he saw within his own Protestant congregation he believed to be even worse in Catholic circles. “You could live like the devil all week then be absolved. Go get drunk, get high, beat your wife, have an affair, then be absolved. It turned my stomach.”

Brady and his bandmates viewed all religions as man-made artifices designed to control. Despite the vitriolic hatred for organized religion, most of the bands’ lyrics took their inspiration from biblical passages, particularly the book of Revelation.

One early song called The Seal was taken directly out of its passages. The song was about death and destruction, with an anticipatory bent. “The way the lyrics were, it was like please bring Armageddon. I’m hoping for it. I’m so sick of mankind because they’re idiots,” Brady said. “Especially these religious ones, and they’re going to burn in hell because they are all liars and cheaters.”

With the smell of cheap whiskey in the air, the band sang through a fog of cigarette smoke. The drumbeat pounded, the electric guitar surged, and the wooden floors rattled. “The door was slammed in his face/ Blasphemy from the mouth of a child,” Brady sang.

The blasphemers in question were Christians in organized religion, doing one thing and saying another.

An Exhaust in the Basement

In his childhood kitchen, Brady rewinds a cassette tape as the late afternoon light trickles in through the kitchen window. His mother and father sit quietly across from him with folded hands and resting smiles.

Kross-Eyed Mary’s opening track bursts through the small speaker at full throttle, filling the clean, suburban kitchen.

His parents listen without interrupting, his mother occasionally giving a loving, “you know better” look across the counter.

“They always loved me, and even when they disagreed with my actions, they never acted like they were disappointed in me,” Brady said. “When I was a baby, they dedicated me to Christ, so it was always like, ‘No need to worry too much,’ even though they were concerned about where I was headed.” 

The years continued on in a haze of bar shows, alcohol and increasingly, hard drugs.  Amid the tours and the albums, Brady claimed a wife and then a son.

As the band aged and responsibilities increased, the rock star lifestyle without rock star pay became unsustainable. Kross-Eyed Mary dissolved, trading leather guitar straps and midnight roadshows for cubicles and paid time off.

Reluctant to leave that life completely behind, Brady treaded water between passion and responsibility. He took a job at a car dealership and made up for the lost time with streams of weekend shows and gigs.

When he walked down the aisle, Brady left behind him the arsenal of narcotics he had come to rely on: cocaine, heroin, acid and whatever pills he could come across. But complete sobriety evaded him.

Brady recalls his digital clock blinked to 7 a.m. The canned, incessant beeping blared from the plastic box. Leaving his wife in bed, he ventured down to the basement. Before coffee, or breakfast, or a trip to the restroom, he opened up a vent and lit a joint.

With the baby sleeping upstairs, he had installed an exhaust in the basement so the smoke would waft directly outside. 

A new rhythm revolving around weekend concerts and near-constant marijuana usage came to define Brady’s life. An unexpected collision with reality threw him offbeat. His wife and partner of 10 years confessed to having an affair and said she wanted a divorce. The world froze for Brady.

“My first thought was, ‘I could O.D. [overdose]. I could make my heart physically explode. I could go out in a blaze of glory,” Brady said. “My second thought was, ‘I could do something I’ve never tried before,’ and that was get sober and talk to God.”

Somewhat unconsciously, Brady found himself back in his parents’ living room.

Back to the Hymnals

His mother and father sat next to each other in matching La-Z-Boy chairs, gazing absently at the muted television. Sandwiched between them, Brady stared and said nothing. With the first word came tears. Confessing the pattern of his life and the failure of his marriage, Brady asked for help to do something different.

Holding each of his parents by the hand, Brady recited the sinners’ prayer-- a familiar relic from childhood infused with new meaning. 

When the moment faded and the practical aftershocks set in, Brady stared off and announced he had to go apartment hunting. His father stopped him and asked him to move back home instead. The house was large, the property was even larger, and the aging couple could use the help.

That Sunday, Brady re-entered his childhood church for the first time in over a decade. Greeted by his childhood Sunday school teacher, who immediately asked him where his guitar was, he made his rounds through the largely unchanged crowd. His attention, however, had instantly fallen on a young woman with cascading brown hair down to her hips— a new worship singer.

“I couldn’t stop looking at her. And I remember thinking, ‘man, you’re a Christian now, just knock it off,’” Brady said.

A year after Brady returned home, his mother had a heart attack.

The whole community was rattled. Both of Brady’s parents were staples in the worship band and famous for their contagious joy and yearly barbecues. With one in the hospital and the other juggling the logistics, the loss was deep.

A phone call came one morning from some of the church band members, asking Brady to help fill the place of his parents and take some pressure off of his dad. 

At practice, he took the stage and obligingly played the same four chords on repeat as the band sang “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Graze.”

A few weeks later, while Brady was 45 miles away hunting, his father was rushed to the hospital. While sitting in the waiting room, he suffered a succession of mini-strokes of increasing intensity. By the time Brady arrived, his father could no longer speak or move the left side of his body. 

Sweet Home Up in Heaven

Brady and Kimberly, the long-haired woman who had captivated him on his first day back, married and spent seven years caring for his father. Taking over as worship pastor, Brady began introducing worship songs with drumbeats and more than four guitar chords. However, the congregation started dwindling and the spiritual life of the community faded. 

Kimberly told her husband that God wanted them to move, but every visible door seemed to be closed. Brady called a series of churches with the same script, introducing himself and his background and asking if they needed a guitar player. 

After weeks of searching, Brady hit his knees on a Sunday night and prayed. He needed direction, “If I just have to go to a church, and sit in a pew, and not play, that’s what I’ll do,” he prayed.

The next Monday, he received a call from an old friend. “I have this friend Brian McKay, BMan, and he’s got this biker church,” the voice said, “I know you ride a Harley, and he needs a worship leader.”

Brady and his wife made their way out to Victory Biker Church.

The mission behind Victory was one that resonated— reaching out to the fringes with a new take on religion focused on authenticity instead of facades of perfection. BMan and Crow (McKay and Brady’s road names) traveled to motorcycle clubs and biker rallies. They’d take the stage, Brady on vocals and electric guitar, McKay manning the bass, and rock out to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Alice in Chains and Three Days Grace.

They began to garner a reputation in the biker and metal-rock communities. Club managers would approach them after gigs to pay band fees, usually upward of $500, but the two would always refuse.

“We’d say, no man. We’re your brothers, and we love you, and we just want to come out because you needed a band,” McKay said. “It quickly got out that these guys will come out and rock the house and they don’t even want anything.”

When managers would insist on paying, McKay and Brady would turn around and make an equal donation to the club. 

On Sunday mornings, they sing many of the same rock n’ roll songs but with edited lyrics. BMan’s son, who is “lead screamer” in a metal-core band, often leads Sunday worship. For Brady, both the edited and unedited versions of Lynryd Skynryd’s songs come out as worship. 

“I’ve always understood the power of David in the Bible because music is such a powerful thing. It can take you to a bad place or a good place, and it’s taken me to both,” Brady said. “But it can also bring people together. These old songs that we all know, man, they can be used to show people something they might not know. That God loves them, and we love them, and Christians aren’t always stuffy.”

Liza Vandenboom is a student at The King’s College, an intern at Religion Unplugged, and a religion columnist for the Empire State Tribune. She is also a finalist for the 2020 Religion News Association Russell Chandler award in student reporting.