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February 27th Pacific Northwest '73—' The Complete Recordings Pacific Northwest '73—' Skeletons from the Closet: Studio Albums All the Years Combine: Retrieved from " https: Grateful Dead live albums live albums Grateful Dead Records live albums. Articles with hAudio microformats. We sang in the church choirs, but also Mom and Dad had a big LP collection. So we grew up, like, on Saturday mornings, having jazz and classical music in the house and listening to symphonic stuff and church music and all that stuff.
So really was — our whole upbringing was saturated in music and theological discussion.
Music and Finding God in Church and Smoky Bars
When you were a teenager? Dad had a sabbatical. I was 14 and we spent a year there in Collegeville, Minnesota.
And did you take in some of that chant, some of that singing of the psalms? What does that do for the world? And it gave me a very, very keen understanding of exactly what it does for the world and for spiritual communities. And then it was just exotic. It was Minnesota, it was cold as hell.
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In fact, my Dad had so many Jewish colleagues, and we had just a real Judeo-Christian upbringing as much as a purely Christian upbringing. Well, it was a little bit different from Emily, I think, in that it was a more conservative upbringing. Many of my relatives were Methodist ministers, and my aunt married an Episcopalian minister, priest.
And so I grew up with religion all around me, and we spent Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, and Friday night youth group. So I spent a lot of time at church, and went to church camp for about five years when I was becoming a teenager. And there was music all around. And I was really into church, actually. But I went on to be a religion major in college, and I thought for one moment that I might actually go to seminary and explore that path. But I was raised in a strongly Christian environment. So I probably relate the most to that culturally.
But music was just more of a tug and I felt like it was just what I was compelled to do. But our traditions really know about the power of music, right? And I remember reading in the book that you wrote with your father — music that goes all the way through your body. You still know those songs today. What was the question? I mean, I think it just goes back to control, especially controlling women. And the truth is that men have been controlling women for a long time, especially when they get organized.
Do you feel that there was a controlling aspect to church music, too? And I have nothing against white people, but for me, always, it was gospel music that like — especially African-American gospel music — that really was the direct conduit to me in the spirit that I felt moved my life and my actions.
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And it involved movement of the body. And the body takes you out of your head and connects you. So once I heard African-American gospel music and was blown away — and the first time I heard it, I was scared. Because a woman had a spiritual, ecstatic experience, although she was crying and jumping up and down, and I was terrified. But that was the body and real life pain experience connected to spirituality, and music brought her to that place.
Your Day, your way
And so those are just some of my musings on that. When I think about the music that I was learning in youth group or spiritual songs, it was interesting because I actually went through a couple of years of being really conservative and going to see Christian rock bands that were not radical left Christian rock bands. It was so powerful and I think that just taught me that music is powerful either way, and that you still have to hang onto yourself in that moment, and know where your spirit is, because it can really influence you. Because it takes you — it does take you out of your context to a certain degree.
But I think I needed to go through it, and I needed to find my own self within all the different things being thrown at me. How do you think about the line now for you between sacred and secular music?
Is there a line in music or in life? You know what I mean? I spoke with them at the Wild Goose Festival. I think that music is a spiritual gift, and then you — artists or writers use it how they see fit. Amy actually helped me with this coming — an evolution of recognizing how sacred what is deemed secular is. I have a deep objection to misogyny in lyrics and in musical posturing.
So I guess I draw the line there. I think with the book that I wrote with my dad, we talk a lot about that, because he cut his teeth on jazz, which is deemed secular, but it really informed his musicality, which then he got the calling to faith. Then he focused on church music and hymnals and things like that.
But in those days, when we were playing in bars, I mean — and my dad and I talked about this a lot — that is a spiritual experience. When you said a minute ago that Amy helped you see — helped you think differently about that relationship — can you say some more about that? Amy opened my — she was more alternative than I was, you know? She liked music that was more alternative, she liked music that was more raw.
I think she had an understanding of real pain than I did. She was just more evolved about all that stuff and just kind of was who she was. And I learned a lot from her about that. I honestly did and I still do. Because we were classically trained, and we listened to a lot of classical music and jazz and stuff like that, I had an early snobbery about So it was Amy who really helped me with that and I appreciate that. Do you think of yourself as religious now? And I think I took what I think are good things from the church, and the gospel, and applied them to my life in a way that has worked for me.
And I like having that. But I get so carried away. Any kind of church. I have this feeling of openness that lets the hate just go off, and I just feel love in the building. So I do consider myself religious. Yeah, I want, like, the queer Easter Bunny as the mascot for that, I think. Do you think about yourself as religious? For me, whatever — and I feel like the language is always limiting.
I think of that in terms of abusive power, like a bureaucracy, all that bad stuff that is happening in the church today. So many avenues that really block you from getting to the source, which is what I want to get to for my own journey. It was kind of thoughtful.
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The sermon was related to the readings and it was all — and there was a season that was based on the Jewish calendar that was recognized as based on the Jewish calendar, which I always appreciated. And so I like — and with my Dad and the people that I grew up with, the theologians — they thoughtfully organized liturgy.
They put thought into constructing it so that people might get the most out of it. So I appreciate that like writing a good paper or something, I guess. So I grew up with that. I like that part of thought and organization and structure in religion. And I was thinking about what you said about language and stuff being such an obstacle, and what Emily said. I was exposed — like my great-uncle was a Methodist minister, and part of his sermon was to do magic tricks.
It was a very different exposure, and I loved that and it actually was good for me to see that. And I think as queer people we also have this built-in translator sometimes. And the same goes for music. Maybe it would be better to be exposed to this incredible intellectual, spiritual sermon that felt so accepting of who I was as a woman and a gay woman at a very early age. And really I was just totally turned on by that.
You can listen again and share this show with the Indigo Girls at onbeing. The two of you started — got to know each other, you started playing music together when you were still in high school. And also, as I read it, still before either of you had come out as lesbian to yourselves, much less to anyone else. And then I think you were two of the first real celebrities to be very open about your sexual orientation. And when I started to prepare to interview you, there are , articles online about you telling the story of how you came out to your parents, right?
I want to ask you how you start to see that trajectory of your lives, and how important that was when you were teenagers, in this big picture of how the world is shifting now, where we are now in Do you think about that? So you mean in the context of queer rights There are so many people against you. I know when we were in high school, it was the suburban South in Georgia.