New Album - A Father + Son Collaboration

 

 

 

Let my heart be a river 

in the hands of the maker

And my soul be a quiver 

on the banks of the river

Let me flow like a fountain 

through the heart of the mountain

Let me flow like a river 

in the hands of the lord

 

Hello Friends,  

A long recovery from illness has kept me relatively quiet in the music world for some years now.

But there’s a stirring in my soul and a rumblin’ in the veins that run between my heart and my hands and my voice.

An obvious comeback might be to record Romantica versions of songs like “Hurricane” and “Rescue Me” and other musical treasures mined from the fertile pit of suffering and despair (and not to worry, those will come in good time). But there is something more profound that I need to do first.

 

Who and where would I be 

without the life 

that has loved before me

carving the path of possibility

singing neath the wings of destiny

 

My father is in his 71st circle around the sun.

When I was 7 years old, he taught me to play the guitar and write songs from my heart.

I have always continued in that tradition.

As a young man, I cut my teeth (and maybe a few other things) in the family band. 

We traveled the world together singing, side by side, my fathers songs, and most of what I know about singing, playing, harmonizing and storytelling, I learned from doing alongside my father.  

A sort of forced apprenticeship, that I don’t regret.

His songs are still in my bones. 

And the memories of that harmony will linger to eternity.

 

When I was 27 I wrote about my father in the song The National Side….

“Daddy was a preacher in a ship-building town / Momma cooked the meals and wore a crown / because of it, Oh lord because of it”

Well before Daddy was a preacher, he was a young doctor in Northern Ireland, with a professional career in psychiatry and a dream of living a quiet bachelor life in a little white-washed cottage in the foothills of the Mountains of Mourne. 

But as fate, or faith, would have it, he surrendered his life to the mystery, and the young bachelor doctor married my Irish hockey playing mother (who also happened to be his High School History teacher!) and by the time I was born, number 3 of what would be 7, he had given up the security of his career in medicine to shepherd a young church community (formerly a Presbyterian youth group) who had been excommunicated from their own mother church for, of all things, being too viscerally passionate about God.

It was the roaring 70’s and the spirit of God was moving like wildfire through the hearts of young people across the globe too vigorously and unpredictably for the institution to contain.  

I remember Dad once preached a sermon to Bono and his band in our strange little community where catholics and protestants would sing side by side - on both sides - of a fractured Belfast. And the rattle and hum was making its way into many hearts. 

So he never went back to biological medicine, but has always continued his healing work in the spiritual tradition. He and my mother both, have devoted their lives, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, to this wave and way of the spirit.

When I was thirteen, they moved our family of nine from Northern Ireland to the United States of America and they had no ‘real’ job waiting for them in the Promised Land. 

I remember cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors with my reverend doctor Dad in the wee hours of the morning, in the big block department stores, just to make ends meet.

He later started a church service in an Irish Pub, where our family band would mix Irish drinking songs with Irish Hymns and tell stories about the Celtic saints and how passionately they followed the Wild Goose (their symbol for the Spirit of God). Bloody Mary’s and Fish n Chips were communion. And to be honest, it did feel like a bit of a wild goose chase at times… but beautiful community and rich and wonderful friendships were born out of it. 

Over the years, my mother and father would open our family home to people they knew that needed some stability, often downcast or outcast. And seek to nurture them back to peace and belonging in the context of family.

The passion of their lives has always been seeking to communicate more deeply, the love of the maker, into the awareness of every human heart that they have connection with.

They’ve never been perfect in this of course. But their desire has always been clear.

One of Dad’s more beautiful songs, still never released on a recording, says it well…

 

the whole of creation

cries with one voice

your maker loves you 

rejoice, oh man rejoice

 

As kids, we weren’t always in alignment with how they’ve lived their lives.

I remember writing this Rilke poem in a birthday card I gave my father as a young man.

 

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

And walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

Because of a church that stands somewhere in the east

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

Dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

So that his children have to go far out into the world

Toward that same church, which he forgot.

 

There’s always a give and take.

As children, I think his spirit quest was something we both hated and admired about him.

Hated, I suppose, because we wanted more attention, and admired, because of the unusual conviction and passion we saw him live with.

In the end, the conviction, passion, provision, integrity and intention we witnessed surpassed the sacrifice. And on the scales of eternity, they have surely blessed more than they have burdened.

 

10 years ago, I began working on a project to honor my fathers legacy. 

Singing, playing and producing his best songs. 

Some of the most beautiful have never been recorded.

My plans were interrupted by illness, and perhaps providence, God only knows.

But I’ve been listening to these early recordings and weeping as they move through me. 

And I’ve been having, what you might call, a Mary Oliver moment.

 

One day you finally knew

What you had to do, and began

 

So I’m beginning now, to sing, play and produce this BEST OF album, of sorts. I’ve curated 10 songs. Among them are ballads that will break your heart, hymns that will ground your soul, and anthems that will give wings to your spirit.

I want this to be the pinnacle of my life’s work (so far). The best and most beautiful album that I’ve made. I know that’s setting the bar high. But where else is there to set it.

 

Dad, you have loved me well. And I want to love you with this.

I want to make this Album as a THANK YOU, for all that you have blessed, enriched, equipped, and graced my life with.

~

Through years spent in the wilderness, the little flame on my back burner never lost its flicker. 

And that flame is growing bigger now in my heart. 

My prayer to you all is… would you help me fan this flame into a beautiful and mysterious fire.

Thank you,

Ben