During my first post about the new album, I mentioned my early work as an artist in a neighborhood KISS cover band.  I wanted to leave no doubt whatsoever regarding my history with rock music and the shaping that genre has done in me.

That’s me on the right.

It was 1979. I was 5.

I was barely in kindergarten…

… but I was in the KISS Army.

Last month, I did a short interview with Soul-Audio about the new album.  Here is an excerpt from my conversation with content editor Andrew Greenhalgh:

“Soul-Audio: Earlier, in reference to Waits’ “Georgia Lee,”  you talked about the subject matter of openly and honestly questioning God, i.e, “Why wasn’t God watching, listening, whatever.”  And said that, “I live there a lot of the time. I have a suspicion that many of us do.” Now, I totally concur with that. We do live in that state of questioning, even though we don’t always own up to it. And truthfully, a lot of Christian music doesn’t openly address these questions; rather, they seem to offer up simple platitudes as opposed to tackling the issues head on. Is it important for you to address these kind of questions? And why do you feel as though the industry, the CCM one, anyway, is more reluctant to do so?

Justin: I find a great sense of normality in songs like Georgia Lee; songs that reflect a disconnect between man and God. My experience of faith has been that it is a difficult road to travel on and ‘choosing to believe’ at times is a sacrifice of pride and intellect that I am unwilling to make. To trust God in the face of deep tragedy is most often not as simple or easy as waiting for the tension of minor chords to resolve into major chords which reinforce the soaring, full-throated declaration that “I will praise You in this storm.” While I think that declaration is beautiful and necessary in its place, so is the song that says “My boat sank and I lost everything I cared about.. where the hell were you?”

I would further add that there is something at least equally redemptive in giving legitimacy to these expressions of frustration and doubt. After all, before Job said to God “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand” he.. well… spoke of things he did not understand. It is BECAUSE of his courage to confront God on what he saw as unjust action that he came to really KNOW what he had previously taken for granted.

It’s important for me to voice these things on a few levels. For myself to make my own soul known to me; art serves this purpose in my life.. I am able to read myself more clearly in the things I write, especially as time passes after a recording. I also believe it’s important to create space for the many of us who live here to have a sense of normalcy in our doubts.

As you mention, there is plenty of space provided for those more ‘certain’ about their faith; I am hoping to provide some room for the rest of us.

As regards the reluctance of the CCM to do or not do anything in particular, I can only guess; not knowing very many people working in its ranks anymore. I know that it is that it’s much harder to sell a story that makes people uncomfortable; a complicated or unresolved story. The CCM industry is just that: an industry. It’s not a church and we often expect of them the same principles we do of our local congregation. The job of an industry is to sell things. A Christian industry sells Christianity. A Christianity shrouded in mystery is a hard sell. Certainty? Well, that we can do.”

Read the whole interview here

(You can read Part 1 here.)

“In the beginning,..”  there was no stuff.  There was darkness and void… it totally sucked.

God knew it sucked and so He went about making it not suck.  He did this in a very interesting way.

So, while there was no stuff, God made light by which to see the stuff God would eventually make.

And when God had made the light, “God saw that the light was good.”

The light was “good”…

um…

…good for what?  There’s no stuff. Stuff had not been made yet.  The purpose of light is to make stuff see-able.. So that we would know what we were buying… and eventually returning or replacing (which is another story).  That’s the point of light, is it not?

But before light was good FOR something,.. God called it “good”?

God then went about saying the same thing about just about all the stuff He was making… Even before we were there to use it…

The seas were “good.”  The vegetation was “good.” and on and on.

All the stuff was good simply because He saw it that way… simply because He had made it.  Creation was (and is) of value to God because it is His,.. not because of it’s usefulness.  So that the innate value of all things would rest in its relationship to the Creator. Not it’s usefulness to other parts of Creation nor it’s nearly arbitrary value in the Marketplace…

All Creation has value,
All Creation is good, because He is… and it is His.

I think we have this understanding of value almost entirely upside down, backwards and inside out (much like I do when trying to fold a fitted sheet… it’s a travesty.)  The dominant value system is so driven by and distorted by utility and profit that we struggle to find value in the the poor, the developmentally disabled, the unborn, the elderly, the Raiders… the least of these.

This is where I believe art is central and necessary for the human heart: In art, the value-relationship between Creator and Creation is expressed more clearly than just about anywhere else.  A piece is not worth what it sells for.  Be it 99c to $1.29 for a digital track or $30 to $5M for a painting, the monetary scale hardly tells us anything about a work’s ultimate/inate value.  What makes a song or a sculpture worth something or “good” generally has little if anything to do with the money it generates.

I believe we must come to this understanding in relationship to one another.  I also believe that embracing this value system as it is expressed in and through art is a key to that understanding.

This is part of why, in a time when the ‘value’ of art is seemingly in constant flux and negotiation…

-“Tweet about it and get it for free!”

-“Tell your friends about it and get it for a deal plus a second copy!”

-“Get your parents to think about tweeting about it to their friends and they’ll get a free copy of it, plus a shirt that reads ‘My parents thought about tweeting about Justin McRoberts’ new album and all I got was this lousy shirt’.”

.. I really wanted to do an album that was simply worth doing. It is not the most marketable thing I could have done at this point and though I hope folks enjoy it and support me when I release it, I honestly would have done the project were there no prospect at all for sales.

Now, don’t get me wrong; i’m not ‘against’ free music downloads and new forms of consumer media exchange.  In fact, I (heart) Noisetrade.. I
really do.. But Noistrade is not an end in and of itself.  Those behind the experiment are people who value art and are counting on medium of Noisetrade to help create a culture in which art is a good worthy of our social and financial support.

Art communicates value in a way that very little, if anything, in all this world communicates value.  My songs are not worth what listeners buy them for.  Their value simply cannot be measured in that way.  This album will not have been “worth it” if it sells well; it is worth it because the songs are good; and the songs are good because there is something of God in/about/through them…

…just as there is in all art… just as there is in you and me.

The first musical purchase I ever made was a the Police’s “ Synchronicity.”  I bought it on tape.  This wasn’t so much because I had incredibly discerning taste as a 9-year-old (in fact, my second musical purchase was “Chipmunk Punk” and I loved it with equal fervor).. it was that I lived in a neighborhood with a few older boys who did have excellent taste in music.  Because of these neighbors and their musical taste, I grew up on a steady diet of The Rolling Stones, Journey, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, Run DMC and a whole grip of others including the aforementioned Police.

Of course, they didn’t only pass the music along to me; they taught me to listen to it.  Not as background, or something to listen to while heading somewhere else.. It was the destination.  I would get in my friend’s car and drive.. headed nowhere in particular..  just so we could listen to music on his stereo.  Sure, we were normal boys; we painted our faces and pretended we were spies or Green Berets sneaking through our own back yards. But we also donned black and white make-up, tore up some sleeveless shirts and put on a lip-synced concert of Kiss’ “Dynasty” for the our parents and their friends.  I assume they were proud.. between the safety flares we had stuck into the ground and the make-up running into my eyes, I don’t recall seeing their faces.  It was in experiences such as this that I learned to love music.

And that was just the beginning.

I remember being at the Warfield in San Francisco in 1987, bummed that we showed up so early to see The Cult.  I had never heard of the other band and braced myself for the excruciating boredom often associated with sitting through an opening act.  45 minutes later, I picked my jaw up from the floor and asked the mohawk next to me who that amazing band was.  “Dude” he said, placing his huge tattooed hand on my shoulder, which smelled like clove cigarettes and mouthwash, “they’re called ‘Guns n Roses.’  They’re from L.A.  They’re aaaaawwwsome.” And they were.

I remember seeing REM at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum, playing songs from the album GREEN and being transfixed along with about 19,000 others when it got quiet enough in the basketball arena for Michael Stipe to sing “You Are the Everything” without the band… through a bullhorn.  We slept in the parking lot of the Coliseum and went to see U2 on the Joshua Tree tour the very next night.  The Bodeans opened the show followed by the Pretenders.  I held hands with 60,000 strangers and sang “How long to sing this song?” for a solid 10 minutes after the stadium lights came on to tell us that it was time to go home.

More recently, I remember watching Tom Waits sing “Day After Tomorrow” at the tail end of the Daily Show and hitting ‘mute’ as the song faded so that the commercials Comedy Central runs wouldn’t ruin the vibe… I wanted to sit in that moment for a while.  There was something special about it.. more than special.. was it sacred?

Well.. I suppose that is something I am comfortable saying about my new album and the song choices I made…

I believe there is as much of God in the songs of Glen Phillips as there is in the songs of Phillips, Craig and Dean; as much of the Kingdom revealed in the songs of Tom Waits as in the songs of Chris Tomlin.  It is my opinion that to believe otherwise is to believe in a god too small to truly be God.

In a book entitled “For The Life of The World,” Alexander Schemann (a household name for obvious reasons) writes..

“The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all… And even the religion of this world cannot heal or redeem it for it has accepted the reduction of God to an area called ‘sacred’ as opposed to the world as ‘profane.’  It has accepted the all embracing secularism which attempts to steal the world away from God.”

The moments I’ve had with the artists whose music makes up this new project have been sacred… undoubtedly.  It is key to note that these sacred moments have, for the most part, taken place outside of the boundaries of the christian marketplace and the ‘area’ generally reserved for the the activity of God.  These artists and their songs have been central to the necessary undoing of the expectations and limitations I habitually place on God; expectations of how, where and through whom God is revealed.  I recognize God in their art and I believe it is a duty, as an artist and a christian, to point Him out where He is and celebrate Him there.

Here is the track listing:

1. Georgia Lee (Tom Waits)
2. You Can’t Always Get What You Want (The Rolling Stones)
3. Save Me (Aimee Mann)
4. Fly From Heaven (Toad The Wet Sprocket)
5. Wildflowers (Tom Petty)
6. Head Like A Hole (Nine Inch Nails)
7. No One Is To Blame (Howard Jones)
8. Stripped (Depeche Mode)
9. Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (The Smiths)
10. Freedom 90 (George Michael)

You can PRE-ORDER the album here.