Rockers defy Christian label during pier show
By CHRISTINA YOON Special to the Daily Press
SM PIER It has been said that one should never discuss religion or politics in polite company. Then again, Santa Monica has never been a community known for its courteous restraint.
Tonight starting at 7 p.m., the pier will replicate the raucous, exuberant Christian revivals traditional in the deep South. While headliners Mike Farris and Michelle Shocked are both outspoken about their own Christian beliefs, they are also quick to clarify that tonight’s Twilight Dance Series concert is not designed to alienate those who don’t share the same faith. Instead, the evening’s sermon will be about the transcendent power of rock ‘n’ roll.
“I don’t want to preach to people. I just want to paint beautiful pictures and make people feel,” Farris said.
He credits both his Christian faith and his love of music for saving him from years of substance abuse and addiction. As the founder of the band the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies, Farris had a Top 10 rock radio hit and toured with bands including Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow and the Allman Brothers Band. He soon found that his sudden access to the good life brought back his old demons.
“Before long you start feeding into all the hype that’s surrounding you,” he said. “It wasn’t long before I was back into dope and this wonderful gift that God had given me was slipping away.”
Farris turned away from the promised land of rock stardom and decided to focus on the Southern gospel-tinged country-rock that he is now known for with his latest album, “Salvation and Light.”
“With ‘Salvation and Light,’ I came full circle and got sober and realized that the music that moves me more than all other music is this old, ancient music born out of slavery and poverty,”Farris said.“And it happens to come to a point in the road with my spiritual beliefs. How convenient.”
Renè Engel, who co-produces the Twilight Dance Series concerts with Katharine King, the founder of the pier concert series, saw Farris at an Americana music conference in Nashville last year. Engel was determined to introduce the West Coast to Farris’s specialty of Americana, a musical genre based in American roots music and built in various forms through the years by musicians like Lucinda Williams and Lyle Lovett.
“Mike is currently the most happening thing in the world of Americana music,” Engel said.“And as part of the aspiration and philosophy of the pier concerts, Katharine has always presented significant West Coast debuts.”
For tonight’s concert, Engel paired Farris with Michelle Shocked, an L.A.-based performer who headlined a pier concert in 2001. Like Farris, Shocked will appear with a full band including a horn section and a gospel choir. Shocked wears both her religious and political convictions on her sleeve, if not on-stage. Even her stage name was created as a form of protest after she was arrested in San Francisco in 1984 while she was demonstrating at the Democratic National Convention. Engel said that Shocked will be selling her CDs at the pier and plans to donate the proceeds to a project working on the AIDS crisis in Africa organized through her church.
“She is one of the most restless creative spirits you’ll ever encounter,” Engel said of Shocked, who he has known since the late 1980s.“But probably one of the most consistent things about her has been her political activism.”
To many conservative Christians, Shocked’s anti-war views and social consciousness may seem at odds with her devout religious beliefs. But Shocked said that there’s no conflict when comes to her music.
“Talking to me, you’d get the impression that I’ll be up there talking fire and brimstone,” she said. “Talking to me and what I perform on stage are two different things.”
Shocked is currently in the process of recording her new album,“Soul of My Soul,” and said that she has moved away from the world of gospel musically. Nevertheless, she will revive songs from “ToHeavenURide,” a live gospel album recorded at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2003, and introduce new songs from the upcoming album.
“I’ll be giving them a gospel-esque show,” she said.
As for Farris, he hopes to replicate the energy that he helps create at his favorite bluegrass club in Nashville, Station Inn. Every Sunday night, a band featuring stand-up bass, horns and a piano play there for free in a relaxed, rocking version of Sunday services.
“It’s for the wayward people from every walk of life,” he said. “They can have a beer, eat some popcorn and leave excited, delighted and loved.”
It is this nonjudgmental spirituality that Farris thinks will be translated to the audience during the concert.
“Christian, atheist, Buddhist, Confucian, whatever. They can’t say it’s not good music,” he said.“My mission is to reacquaint this music, which is the root of all popular music as we know it, to the American people because it’s been lost.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 31, 2008. Read the original PDF.