Downtown Church: Searching for Gospel, Upstairs and Down

We took off our shoes and tiptoed up the stairs, attempting to move silently on the notoriously creaky church steps. We approached the ledge of the balcony and peaked down into a dimly lit sanctuary. From the pulpit below, a slight figure with a soaring voice proclaimed the gospel. Though the enormous room was all but empty, we remained quiet as church-mice. We leaned on the balcony ledge, stared and listened. Our socked feet suddenly seemed appropriate; this is what you do on holy ground.

The sanctuary was that of Nashville's Downtown Presbyterian Church and the figure proclaiming from the podium was singer/songwriter Patty Griffin. Griffin, along with producer Buddy Miller and a litany of Nashville's finest musicians, came to The Downtown Presbyterian Church (DPC) last January to record a new album comprised mostly of gospel standards.

We crouched in the dark and listened. The strangeness of discovering that Patty Griffin, one of the great unmistakable voices of modern American music, was recording upstairs from the office of The Contributor began to sink in. Over the next week, I, along with newspaper director Tasha French, spent every available moment in that sanctuary listening to the songs that would eventually become "Downtown Church," Griffin’s 6th studio album which will be released on January 26th.

We soon left the secrecy of the balcony and came forward, though only a few rows at a time. We confessed our presence and were welcomed to sit and listen. What we heard over the next week was a retelling of the history of American gospel music, from the high and holy hymns of the early American protestants, to the songs of endurance and hope from the African American tradition, Griffin interpreted each song with passion and grace. 

Where the Cumberland Meets the Nile

The first time I visited Downtown Presbyterian, I was sure that the sanctuary was decorated for some elaborate vacation bible school–perhaps something involving the stories of Joseph and Moses? I had heard the church was built in an "Egyptian Revival" style, but I didn't expect the theme to be so undeniable. The room is full of bright turquoise and deep orange with painted Egyptian columns, striped and zig-zagged with thick lines. Leaning palm trees glow from the stained glass windows and a winged sun-disc, the symbol of Amun-Ra looms above the organ. 

The Downtown Presbyterian Church has stood at the same spot for most of Nashville's history. Begun in 1816, only 37 years after the founding of Nashville, the congregation has been home to many prominent Nashvillians including U.S. presidents Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk. After the congregation's first two buildings were destroyed by fire, (a more common fate for structures before the adoption of the electric lightbulb.) the construction of the current building begun. It was 1849 and the Egyptian Revival style was still en-vogue in the wake of Napolean's survey of Egypt at the turn of the century.

The Egyptian style serves the gospel music of Downtown Church well. After all, it is the Israelites in their Egyptian captivity who first sang the blues of the Christian tradition. The scenes of palm trees on The Nile took on a new meaning as Griffin’s voice filled the room with such gospel staples as Wade in the Water,one of many songs in the gospel catalogue that identifies the singer with Israel in exile. They are songs of a people confronted every day with the fact that the world around them is not their home.

A Poor Man’s Song

Mike Farris, who sings backup on the record and who has performed his own brand of Nashville gospel at the DPC in the past, said he was excited to work on an album at the church, "I am fascinated by the sounds of a room,” he told me, “The room becomes an instrument in itself on the record" Just as the architecture reflects the themes in the music, the enormous space of the sanctuary reflects the sounds. The size of the room can be heard on every track of Downtown Church and Miller keeps much of the instrumentation sparse. Songs like Hank Williams' House of Gold and Griffin's original piece Little Fire remain wide open to allow the space of the sanctuary itself to fill in the gaps.

Farris, who arrived in Nashville homeless and spent some years in and out of addiction says he appreciates the work that DPC continues to do downtown. Directly downstairs from the sanctuary, the congregation serves over 500 plates of food every week to homeless people and poor families living near downtown. On the Wednesday the album was recorded, the musicians watched homeless men and women line up around the building for the weekly lunch.

Much of the American gospel tradition comes from the lives of the poor and the marginalized–people waiting for their day to come. The gospel songs of the 30s, 40s and 50s grow out of a hope for a better future in the sweet bye-and-bye and find their strength for the present in that hope.  Griffin's own music has always been able to shine a light on poverty and desperation as well. Her songs like Poor Man's House and Chief take the listener into the lives of people who do not have what they need and have little hope of ever getting it. The songs of Downtown Church find that same kind of honest and earned sadness but root it in a tradition of hopeful joy.  

Going Upstairs

Nashville native Regina McCrary, who lends her voice to several songs on Downtown Church, has been singing gospel music all of her life. Her father, "The Singing Preacher" Rev. Samuel McCrary was a member of The Fairfield Four, a group that helped shape the gospel sound in the 30s and 40s. Regina's own career took off in the late 70's when she was asked by the then newly born-again Bob Dylan to sing backup. She now records with her sisters and always jumps at the chance to work with Buddy Miller.

For McCrary, recording in the sanctuary of Downtown Presbyterian was a unexpected culmination of a long relationship with the building.  "For 22 years I've been coming to that church," Regina told me, "but that was the first time I'd been upstairs." Since 1987, McCrary has been attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings at DPC, but she had never once set foot in the sanctuary. McCrary says that what she learned in those meetings changed her life. "They teach you how to not give up. Life moves on, The dog's still barkin' and the cat's still meowin' and life's still going on." McCrary feels that singing on this album is like an opportunity to say thank you to a place that has meant so much to her in recovery.

McCrary especially enjoyed singing the songs she grew up with. Performing Wade in the Water with Patty took her back to the church of her childhood, "You know, as a little girl, every Sunday when someone was getting baptized they would sing that song. You're asking the spirit to meet you in the water"

Griffin's version of Wade in the Water opens the song up wide. Bassist Dennis Crouch and drummer Jay Bellerose click, tap and thump their way through the slow-walk down into the lake while the tight harmonies of McCrary and Farris’ echo, stretch and bend each word of the chorus. Griffin’s voice rises above it all and invokes a forceful faith that knows that the waters will stir. 

Finding Gospel at the Foundation

Griffin’s own relationship with gospel music is not so straightforward as that of some of her accompanists. She describes herself as a “lapsed Catholic at best” who has always fostered an interest in faith and spirituality.

It’s the music itself that draws her in. “I still feel like black gospel music, what’s come out of the United States from slavery, is really the foundation for almost everything that I love,” Patty says in a recent press release. “I’m talkin’ Beatles and everything. That, to me, is just basic. The foundation.”

This gives Downtown Church a different kind of edge than most “gospel” music that comes out of Nashville. Griffin brings in an understanding of what happens downstairs–addiction, homelessness, poverty, doubt fear and loss–and she doesn’t check all that understanding at the sanctuary door. She allows her own vision and experiences to remain at the root of these gospel songs.

When she and Buddy Miller sing Never Grow Old it is a song of hope for eternal life, but you can’t help but hear a song about fear of aging and loss that underlie and necessitate that hope. When she sings You Can’t Hide (Death’s Got a Warrant) it isn’t just a believer’s note of turn-or-burn, it becomes a song about the mortality of the singer who cannot escape death with or without faith.

Move Up , on the other hand shakes loose of the losses in life and turns every sadness into the hope of heaven. The slip-sliding guitar and jumping click of the drums pull you out of your seat and invite you to bounce away your sorrows, if only for a moment.

No song captures the hugeness of the recording space and the hopeful humility of the voice at the center of the record like Griffin's own "Coming Home to Me." She begins the song alone with a piano, yelling out to a faraway friend. She is joined midway by nearly whispered harmonies from Julie Miller and by the end of the song the two are wailing like soul mates who have finally found each other again. This is the kind of gospel that Griffin knows best. The greatest hope is in not being alone. 

The song furthest outside the confines of gospel, still finds a comfortable place on the record. Big Momma Thornton’s I Smell a Rat certainly comes from the same tradition as much of the record, it’s message is a little less high and holy, It’s bold and brassy protagonist is refusing to put up with her cheating, drinking lover any longer. The song serves the album by taking off the weight and expectation of being strictly gospel.

Conversely, the album ends with the only song found on both Downtown Church and in Downtown Presbyterian’s hymnals. All Creatures of Our God and King which is attributed to St. Francis is perhaps the furthest “upstairs” this album goes. The song is a hopeful telling of the earth itself pointing to something greater and higher than itself. In St. Francis’ vision, God is praised by waters, mountains, animals and all things together. As Griffin’s voice rises above John Deaderick’s lush, tender piano the moment slows down and the vision feels complete.

Downtown Church finds Griffin’s powerful voice at it’s best. She finds a way to confidently present the songs of a tradition that has fed into everything she’s ever done. The amazing cast of vocalists, which outside of those I’ve mentioned include Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin and Raul Malo, and Ann McCrary give the record a feel of real community–not unlike what you’d hope to find in any Downtown Church.