The Music of Heaven and Tennessee: An Interview With the Hillbilly Thomists

Being an admirer of Flannery O’Connor, the original “hillbilly Thomist,” when I heard a few years ago that a group of Dominican friars had assembled a folk band named after her self-deprecating quip, I had to check it out at once. Predisposed as I was to like them, I was not prepared for the transformation in my music-listening habits that my encounter with this little band would initiate. Outside of liturgical music, about which I’m decidedly traditional, my musical tastes have long been eclectic but almost uniformly secular. It was a great surprise to me, then, to find myself not only listening to the Hillbilly Thomists’ debut album of religious folk on repeat, but also craving more of it, eventually digging up as much of similar music as I could find on Spotify. One thing led to another, and now I’m hooked on American and Irish roots music, whether it’s the scratchy recordings of the Carter family, the apocalyptic ballads of an older Johnny Cash, or the infectious jigs of the best single-album band I’ve ever heard: the Stillwater Hobos. Still, I keep going back to the Hillbilly Thomists. 

Like many others, I was delighted last year when, amid our pandemic-related struggles, I learned I had the pleasure of a sophomore Thomists album to look forward to. Though I was excited, I was also a bit apprehensive. Could they really produce a worthy follow-up to such a strong debut? As I should have known—these are Dominicans we’re talking about, after all—they outstripped my expectations again. Living for the Other Side consists mostly of original songs (the first album had been almost entirely covers) but each of them sounds as if it were some long-beloved classic. Somehow they pull that off even as their lyrics speak directly to the present moment, featuring lines like “death’s in the world and it’s gone viral” that are at once timely and timeless on multiple levels. This music is profoundly, authentically Christian, woven out of the raucous joy and sorrowful beauty at the heart of the Gospel. When I listen to it, I can’t help but wonder how it isn’t this, but rather that awkward stepsister of synthetic secular pop, that won for itself the title of “Christian music.” 

It has been months since Living for the Other Side was released, but I still find myself playing it regularly. I remember how a few days after first listening to the album, I remarked to my wife that I felt refreshed, as if I had just been on retreat. To my surprise, she had been thinking the same. How, I wondered, can these songs have such an effect on us? Once that question entered my head, the idea of reaching out for an interview wasn’t long in coming. In the end, perhaps even they don’t know how God has created a spiritual oasis out of their banjos and voices. But as track five might put it, I do know their album makes me “want to go to Heaven, [and] to Tennessee.” 

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DAPPLED THINGS: The first thing that struck me about Living for the Other Side was just how fun, how delightful, your music is. Was it as enjoyable to make this album as it is to listen to it? 

FR. PETER GAUTSCH, OP: It sure was. By its nature Dominican life is fraternal and joyful, and it’s a delight to have been able to capture some of that fraternal joy in our recording.

FR. JONAH TELLER, OP: We recorded the album at the Alberthaus, a retreat house our Province has in the Catskills. The house is tucked away in the mountains, has a simple but beautiful chapel, and a large main room that proved perfect for recording. We were up there for about two weeks working on the album. Of course it was a real joy for all the band to reunite (our regular assignments have us scattered all around the Midwest and Northeast US, plus Rome), and playing music together is hard to beat, but what I think really gave the album its firm and happy roots (can roots be happy?) was the fact that we could continue living the full schedule of religious life: celebrating Mass and chanting the Divine Office together, preaching to each other, sharing meals. All of those elements of regular religious observance had to be at the heart of what we were doing.

FR. JOSEPH HAGAN, OP: Certainly, there are times of slogging through countless takes. But the whole experience was like a retreat, being away from the stress of our usual work and city living. Plus, there was a sense of fraternal reunion. I hadn’t seen some brothers for almost a year, and there was joy in being together again.

DAPPLED THINGS: Unlike your first, this album is mostly composed of original songs, and while your lyrics certainly have a timeless quality, it surprised me how timely they were too. Let me quote a few of them: “Lord, come to my help / The waters have reached high / They’re up to my neck.” Or how about “People on the left, people on the right / They don’t need beer to get into a fight”? There’s also “You can give your vote to the president / Pay your taxes every time / Or live your life as a dissident / You will still walk down the line.”  And, of course, there’s the line “Death’s in the world and it’s gone viral,” which in the present context has to be taken quite literally. Even one of the covers you included, “Hard Times,” seems specifically chosen to fit a period that has at times felt almost apocalyptic. To what extent was this album shaped by current events?

FR. PETER GAUTSCH, OP: When you sing about timeless realities like redemption, divine grace in the midst of a fallen world, and man’s desperate need and dogged desire for God, there are always going to be deep resonances with the events of any age. At the same time, we’re certainly trying to illuminate reasons to hope in God in this present age. It wasn’t for no reason Augustine called on God as “Beauty ever ancient, ever new.”

DAPPLED THINGS: To bring the previous two questions into one, I can’t help but notice the contrast between the sense of joy that exudes from the music and the way your lyrics return repeatedly to challenging themes like death, conflict, loss, and the futility of human undertakings. How can you have so much fun talking about such things?

FR. PETER GAUTSCH, OP: The virtue of hope: “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.”

FR. TIMOTHY DANAHER, OP: Bluegrass in this country has always tied heavy religious themes to, we could say, mountain music. It just comes with being a Christian genre. These things were spoken of at church every Sunday, so they were sung about just as often. In that way they’re also similar to the blues. 

FR. JOSEPH HAGAN, OP: The virtue of hope: “This slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”

FR. JONAH TELLER, OP: We are suffering here, sure, but suffering under a weight of eternal glory.

DAPPLED THINGS: Speaking of “Weight of Eternal Glory,” that’s probably my favorite song in the album. I could listen to it on repeat almost indefinitely. Could you tell us a bit about your process when composing and arranging the songs? Who writes the lyrics and music, how do you decide who the vocalist will be, and so on? How did the album come together?

FR. JUSTIN BOLGER, OP: I’ve written songs for a while. I think I started when I was in high school. They come in different ways. Sometimes I get a lyric idea first, sometimes a melody, sometimes both at once. It’s hard to predict. Some of them take a few years to write, like “Lead Me By the Hand,” and some take one sitting, like “Jericho Blues.”

Before the recording sessions, we recorded simple demos of the songs, usually just on a phone or something like that. Then at the official session, to arrange the songs we would jam on them as a group, sometimes passing around instruments, and learn the song. It’s at this time we would try to best determine not only the arrangement but how to record a given song. Some songs, like “Heaven or Tennessee,” we recorded all at once. That is, all the friars were playing something or singing during the recording at the same time and that’s what you hear on the album. On other songs we would record a few instruments and vocals first and then overdub other instruments and vocals later in the session.

A great part about recording this music is that you want it to sound a bit scrappy. It’s roots music—or at least inspired by roots music. So it should have a rustic feel. That plays to our advantage because we didn’t have to be too precious about the recordings and we’re kind of scrappy players! For determining vocalists, we thought about whose voice might be fitting for a given song and went with it. For example, I wrote “Lead Me By the Hand,” but I thought Fr. Timothy would sound great on it (he does!) because he has a low, rich voice. And the melody gets pretty low at times, so it called for a voice that really worked well in that register. 

FR. THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, OP: We brought songs to the session and played them together, and in the process we came up with arrangements and decided together who might sing them. Fr. Justin and I both wrote some of the songs. I think my own are slightly strange ideas that come to mind, usually with a main lyrical idea and some associated images. They are perhaps an excuse to play music together as much as anything else.

DAPPLED THINGS: How did a group of Dominican friars end up starting a folk music band? I know a couple of you were previously involved with the Irish-American folk band The Stillwater Hobos before entering the religious life, but were there other friars who also had a folk background?

FR. AUSTIN LITKE, OP: There were two phases really. Early in my time in formation, Fr. Thomas Joseph and I found ourselves independently interested in Bluegrass music, and so we tried to play some classic songs together, mostly for friends. After I had left formation, a group of brothers came to the House of Studies who had much more wide-ranging interests that included Irish session music and Americana Roots traditions. They decided to put an album together a few years ago and invited me and Fr. Thomas Joseph to collaborate, and so the band includes both of those phases. 

FR. THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, OP: I joined the band in order to have an interesting hobby, and playing the banjo and now the resonator guitar is a source of rest and is continually interesting to me.

FR. JUSTIN BOLGER, OP: My dad plays and writes folk (among other styles) so I guess it’s in my blood. I really got into the alt-country scene of the ’90s and early ’00s with bands like Wilco, Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks, and Whiskeytown. Those bands influenced my writing and sensibilities. And I played in a number of bands including one with my sister (Judd and Maggie). We were signed to a record label, toured, and recorded a number of albums. The friars in the band all have some kind of background in music though. I think we share a love for American roots music of all kinds so we’re open to songs going in different directions. You can hear that on this album. There’s bluegrass, Gospel, folk, blues, even an old-time sounding rock song with boogie-woogie style piano.  

DAPPLED THINGS: Your music is thoroughly and explicitly Christian, and yet I never get that “cringy” feeling from listening to it that I get from Christian pop music. Why do you think folk music can speak about God so authentically, without falling into that sense of awkwardness that seems inevitable in modern times when anyone raises the topic of religion outside the walls of a church?

FR. TIMOTHY DANAHER, OP: This is how history helps. Instead of trying to sound contemporary or imitate other present genres like pop or rock, Christian songs in the bluegrass mold strike most hearers as something vaguely familiar, vaguely American, as if they should at least give it a first listen. So, the style of music itself is the first hook. Only then do you start listening closer to the lyrics. 

DAPPLED THINGS: Besides playing folk music, I expect that as Dominicans all the band members have a good deal of training and practice with liturgical music. To what extent does liturgical music and practice inform your forays into folk?

FR. TIMOTHY DANAHER, OP: We don’t blend both intentionally, but perhaps indirectly, our familiarity with liturgical music has helped develop our harmonies. None of us are professionals at the instrument level, but harmonies have been a main staple of our music since the start. Choral music, much more than chant, seems to have some influence on our arrangements. We seldom sing a song without harmonies.

FR. PETER GAUTSCH, OP: The folk music we play is certainly not liturgical music, and that’s as it should be. But given our rich liturgical life as friars, we’ve all spent a lot of time singing together, which at the very least informs some of our harmonies. We’ve also included a couple arrangements of old hymns on our two albums, “What Wondrous Love Is This” on the first album and “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” on this new one. Our recordings of these hymns are quite different both from each other and from how they’d sound in church, but we think their beautiful texts can also be profitably prayed in our folk versions. Good liturgical music is designed to lift the mind and heart to God in communal worship, but there’s no reason folk music can’t do that in its own way in other settings.

DAPPLED THINGS: I listened to Living for the Other Side almost non-stop for a couple of days after its release, and I’m pleased to say that after that, I felt refreshed and encouraged, very much as if I had just been to a retreat. Has anyone else ever told you that? What role do you think non-liturgical music can play in the spiritual life?

FR. AUSTIN LITKE, OP: That’s a good question. It’s only in very recent history that Christians only engaged sacred music in church. There’s a long tradition, mostly in Protestant circles, of people singing hymns in the home within the context of family. Before TV and the Internet, it was part of people’s evening entertainment. The Hillbilly Thomists are in some way our own participation in that tradition in that it grew up out of the experience of friars getting together in free moments to play music together as recreation. 

FR. JOSEPH HAGAN, OP: I have heard from several friends and family members that they play it on repeat. Good non-liturgical music refreshes the soul, and it can bring us back to our cultural roots and eternal truths. And it’s all the better when played live, being a moment for communion with each other.

FR. JONAH TELLER, OP: When you get down to it, what doesn’t play a role in the spiritual life? Our souls aren’t compartmentalized things. One particular way that this sort of music can affect your soul, I think, is the way snatches of lyrics can get stuck in your head. Our hope is that, if you’re walking around humming our songs or have our lyrics bouncing around your head, that’ll keep your thoughts that much closer to God so that acts of prayer are never far away and don’t feel all that alien.

DAPPLED THINGS: I saw a recent video of the friars jamming with bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs. How did that come about? What other folk musicians, past or present, do you love? Which are your biggest influences?

FR. JONAH TELLER, OP: Getting to meet Ricky was such an unforeseen delight. That was the work of Fr. John Devaney, OP, another friar in our province. Fr. John had been a DJ before entering the Order, and his musical connections are extensive to the point of beggaring belief (a couple of years ago he got Robert Plant, Emmylou Harris, and Joan Baez to visit the friars at the priory of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan; I am not making this up). Ricky was playing a show in DC, and Fr. John reached out to invite him to come over to the Dominican House of Studies for lunch and some music.

It goes without saying that Ricky is a monumental figure for country and bluegrass music. He is also a man of devout faith and a profoundly kind soul. Before he left the House of Studies, he prayed a long, beautiful prayer for all of us in the band. It’s a great memory to be sure.

As for musical influences, that’s a long and eclectic list! It’s hard for anyone to escape the influence of people like Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Earl Scruggs, and Doc Watson. Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings are particular favorites of the band. Bob Dylan also influences some of the album for sure. This list could go on.

DAPPLED THINGS: Thank you again for your music and for sharing your thoughts. One last question: as the pandemic winds down, will there be any opportunities to see the Hillbilly Thomists live?

FR. PETER GAUTSCH, OP: Here’s hoping!