On Religion: Phil Keaggy Still Trying To Combine Faith With Serious Rock
(ANALYSIS) On the day he became a Christian in 1970, guitarist Phil Keaggy returned home seeking the perfect song to help him wrestle with the changes in his life.
With his rock trio Glass Harp, he was already a rising star in mainstream music, touring across America and recording a Carnegie Hall live album. He was also in a "tender place" after losing his mother a week earlier. Flipping through his records, he found Eric Clapton's soaring “Presence of the Lord” from the "Blind Faith" album.
“I have finally found a place to live / Just like I never could before,” sang Keaggy, performing this week at the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. "I know I don't have much to give, but soon I'll open any door. Everybody knows the secret. Everybody knows the score. I have finally found a place to live, in the presence of the Lord.”
This was a symbolic choice, since "I bought that album because I loved Cream," said Keaggy, referring to the blues-rock trio that made Clapton a superstar. "There was so much yearning in that song: for God, for a sense of peace. I found it comforting, and I listened to it over and over, at least a dozen times.”
But trying to combine Christian faith with serious rock music created a dilemma when Keaggy entered what record-industry pros have long called CCM — Contemporary Christian Music. Most of his over 55 albums were first sold in Christian bookstores instead of mainstream music chains. In recent decades, he recorded his influential acoustic-guitar albums, such as "Beyond Nature" in 1991, on his own in a home studio.
“CCM never really understood me,” said Keaggy, the day after his concert drew fans from 35 different states to the Cove auditorium. “I'm not sure that CCM understands what I'm trying to do today. It doesn't matter anymore.”
With his digital home studio and links to musicians nationwide, Keaggy has made a variety of solo and collaborative instrumental, as well as vocal, recordings with colleagues, blending pop, rock, jazz, ambient electronics and what CCM leaders call "worship" music. But his latest project represents another attempt to mix Christian content with mainstream rock.
The quartet behind the album “Deep Water” features Keaggy and singer-keyboardist Neal Morse, best known as part of the Transatlantic band that features stars from "progressive" music, a fusion of hard rock, jazz and even classical influences performed by Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd and many current bands. The new Cosmic Cathedral band's drummer is Chester Thompson, best known for his work with the jazz fusion band Weather Report and years of touring with Genesis and Phil Collins. Nashville studio star Byron House is on bass.
The difference between an ongoing band and a studio recording project is "how much you get to play together. ... I know we want to play together,” said Morse, reached by telephone. "The question is whether we can find the right venues that will work for us and let us find an audience that can support this music. ... As always, the question is what God will do with this.”
The album was released by Inside Out Music, a progressive rock and metal label within Sony Music. Nevertheless, Morse's lyrics are unapologetically Christian — with references to Jesus, biblical themes, eternity and struggles between good and evil.
In the 38-minute “Deep Water Suite,” a key passage includes: “When I was young the prodigal son / Went out to play his own recital / I joined the tribe of the cut and the dried / The child in me was dead on arrival / The last may be the first / But I'm living inside the curse / Still the voices sing inside my mind / Singing / Launch out / Into the deep water.”
While many may call this "progressive Christian rock," said Keaggy, "I don't want to do that because I don't know what that would be. ... But if people are worried about what Morse is singing, they just need to get over it. If people can sing about dark stuff and vaguely spiritual stuff, then Neal should be able to sing about Jesus and faith. ... It's at the heart of our lives.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.