Watch the whole thing, but don't skip the conclusion, which begins at 16:37

 Question 1: (Fill in the blank) And the plus (+) sign means _______________________.

"Revenant Psalms" is now streaming

The streamers are opening up as I write. Looks like Pandora and Amazon are up first. Meanwhile, you can now audition the full tracks for free on HearNow. CDs are not yet in the offing, though I will likely do a short run of 500 or so at some point.

A bit of background: Thinking I was done with this pent-up musical outburst of slapdash records that has coincided with the most recent plague year, i.e., when Enter the Arbiter was completed near the start of Lent 2021, I soon afterwards heard our church musicians offer a rendering of "The King of Love My Shepherd Is" (Psalm 23 set to the tune St. Columba) sometime in mid-March. I thought: Gosh, that is such a lovely, classic tune, I really should work out how to play it, which I soon did and sent a little instrumental video (using only the camera's thoroughly useless built-in condenser mic; what was I thinking?) to a few folks for an Easter morning greeting (all this just to identify the timeframe). St. Columba, though, required me to put down my pick and use all my digits. With that, this record started to take shape, with all of the tunes and settings done entirely pick-less and with no need for long nails. (Good thing, too.) My nephew (by marriage) tells me "the kids today"—I think he likes to say "the kids today" because it makes him sound older—would call it "slappy." Even more than St. Columba, Psalm 39, with a thoroughly groovy/wurly e-piano solo in the closing section, is especially "slappy," more salsa/flamenco than "Just Passing Through" or "Just VII. So (Take Up the Slack)" (both tracks from the instrumental Just, which was released at the end of December). I think of the pick-less approach on this album as an organic combination of light brushing and flicking, occasional snatching, some pluckish tickling as needed, and yes, frequent rhythmic muting or slapping, but without the elegance of the popular "fingerstyle" that is quite beyond me. If Just was a foray into a more pizzicato style of flat-picking, this will be the slappy album. 

The texts are all psalms identified in Year D as underrepresented or untouched by the Revised Common Lectionary. I call them "Revenant Psalms" because, though they have been around for the better part of 3000 years, they are neglected when it comes to the regular reading and preaching rotation of the church, and are thus due for a "comeback." Since many are lament psalms, which function therapeutically to move the praying suppliant from complaint to catharsis to praise, and with so many people, and indeed entire nations and cultures, so in need of healing and therapy (I mean it kindly, but I do mean it), one could well argue their comeback is long overdue.

Several of the texts are metrical paraphrases that I have enlisted, and in some cases adapted, from The Psalter Hymnal (1929), the content of which so far has not made its way onto Hymnary.com.

Four tunes are ancient/traditional, namely, Health from the Cup, St. Columba, Brother James' Air, and Salley Gardens, some of which I have modified, e.g., for vocal range (apologies to Brother James), etc. Eight others, however, are my own, so I took the liberty of giving these guitar-based settings their own names: Neo Sheminith (a nod to the superscription to Psalm 6), Happy is the Nation, The Measure of My Days (both focal verses from Psalms 33 and 39, respectively), Leave a Blessing (it just seemed to fit the spirit of the opening of Psalm 41), Hachilah (again a reference, perhaps a bit obscure, to the superscription), Variation on St. Columba (just what it says), In the Cave (yet another epigrammatic reference to the literary context behind the psalm), and finally, Erhameka [Heb: "I love you"], the simple, hooky progression that drives the epic-length folk-rap of Psalm 18. 

Particularly satisfying and quick to take shape (composed just before dinner, recorded just after) was the Variation on St. Columba, which is rhythmically derivative from and lands on the same resolution as the original, but the chord inversions turn the pastoral tune into a lullaby of sorts—perhaps for a traumatized child suffering from nightmares—which totally reframes this difficult imprecatory psalm. It's as if to say, "Shhh. Be not afraid. The baddies won't get you. God will see to that."

Everything was recorded at home, except for two tracks (Psalms 6 and 18) and a few retakes (on Psalms 39 and 129), that were done in the North Woods of WI, sandwiched between a normally sleepy, but suddenly and surprisingly busy grass airstrip and a lake with not a few skiers and jet skiers working out the kinks. Charlemagne the Cavalier — the handsome cover model on last September's Persevere — was present for most tracks in both locales and snored contently through several of them, which was fine.

I think my favorite track is probably Psalm 41, for which I decided — at the risk of repeating myself, again, and yet again — to compose something that simply made use of, and rearranged, a lot of my favorite chords. I probably should have repeated the last phrase (instrumentally) at the end, since it is so nice and fun to play.  

Another favorite is Psalm 142. The tune, In the Cave, starts with the same fingering configuration used in the sketchy instrumental, "New Thing," on Persevere.

Particularly timely is Timothy R. Matthews' paraphrase of Psalm 82, which I set to a very up-tempo version of Salley Gardens, modifying a couple of lines, especially in v. 2: "feckless titans," "suppress," and "sinister devils" are my word choices, which seem both to honor the spirit of the psalm and speak to the corruption of those today with too much influence and none of it good.

The cover design is mine, or at least the illuminated guitar and dove are my digital creation, superimposed on a scan of the 500-year-old wrapper on Jodocus Windsheim's Confessions of a Repentant Christian (1520), which serves as the background. 

As for the flagrant overuse of reverb throughout, I know, I know, it is an amateurish giveaway. But if there was ever an album that cried out for such a lonely, empty, large-hall sound, would it not be a volume of mostly lament psalms that fell victim to cancel culture decades before it was ever a "thing" and now arise anew to voice the deepest, long-repressed memories of God? Repressed or no, these psalms are still "Word of God" and the Word of God has a way of making a comeback. Just ask Jesus, the Revenant Lord, who has yet another comeback planned, at the close of the age.

The Sign of Jonah

Good grief. How can someone write this news article and not once mention Jonah?Are we really that biblically illiterate? Anyway, I'm glad the dude is OK.

Revenant Psalms