John Davis: Jesus Gonna Build Me A Home

This excellent track is off an excellent album that came out almost 15 years ago now. I can distinctly remember the first time I heard it, when I was living in Atlanta and popped it on the computer at work.

Of course I was familiar with Superdrag and their hit "Sucked out," and his angsty scream on the chorus "Who sucked out the feeling?" But this John Davis was a different beast all together. Or rather, angel.

For John found Christ or rededicated his life or whatever the parlance is. And much like Bob Dylan before him, this led to a renaissance period of fantastic music.

The album is beautiful with some echoes of the Beatles and Brian Wilson. But it isn't derivative. I gravitate towards Jesus Gonna Build Me A Home as the standout track not only for the melody, but its simplicity as well. The songs I heard growing up that stuck out were direct in their message and uncomplicated, too. Unlike, say Maimonides and the Kabbalah (the other part of my upbringing) it's much more direct than esoteric.

Davis taps into a certain style. I see it as more of a, for lack of a better term, Presbyterian or Methodist chorus than the Baptist call and response that is my favorite track off of Dylan's Slow train Coming.

It's also fascinating to me that there seems to be a cyclical rise of spiritual awakening. Evangelical Christianity has had its moments in America and the UK. No doubt other religions or belief systems go through the same cycle.

I'm surprised there hasn't been another such spiritual movement this year, with so much polarization paired with a disease killing so many people. Maybe the movement has happened but hasn't manifested itself in art.

It will be a shame if it doesn't. Because "regular people," expressing their faith can sometimes be more interesting, spontaneous and powerful than the laminated lyrics from a song written a few hundred years ago.

If I were to start a church tomorrow, I'd add both these songs to the roster.

Another band that explored this albeit on a slightly more indie level was Fine China who I think were from Arizona. Unlike Superdrag, they were firmly rooted in the 1980's new wave, even singing with a faux Bri-ish accent. Thieir lyrics to the song "We rock harder than you ever knew," are a bit more esoteric than direct.

We are the meek, the mild, the poor of the world, poor of the world
We always wanted to be good friends
Now we're singing melodies of love to the world, love to the world
And speaking peace to all the families
And we rock harder than you ever knew,
Yeah, we rock harder than you ever knew,
Ever knew, yeah
Where is the gentleness and hope of the Lord,
Hope of the Lord, in all those men who compose violence?
Now we all hope that you will sing with us, now, sing with us now.
Because we think that you will like that.

Even the album cover is 80's. A google search revealed the founder and singer and composer of this fine song is still active in the church. Even if it was 20 years ago, the youthful exuberance and rocking beat showed that you could actually make "religious," music that didn't suck. Like most bands I listen to, more ears should hear this track.

And just for good measure, the song that still probably earns John Davis a good chunk of royalties. They were kind of tapping into the same Weezer vain but hey man, that was a 90's thing.