According to Wikipedia, Colorado has an above average proportion of citizens who claim no religion – David Eugene Edwards is not among them.
Born in the city of Eaglewood in 1968, he makes no secret of the fact that he is a committed Christian who literally believes every word of the Bible. He spent many of his formative years accompanying his grandfather, a Nazarene preacher, as he travelled through small towns to spread the word of the gospel.
In touring as leader of Alt.Country band 16 Horsepower, and now of Wovenhand, Edwards is a type of modern-day roving preacher-man delivering his sermons in the form of mostly very bleak songs.
He leaves the listener in no doubt that the wages of sin signify death and the prospect of eternal life in Christ doesn’t seem to provide much in the way of consolation or joy.
Although Edwards is from a completely different background, there is something about him that reminds me of the fiction of Flannery O’Connor . When I first read her work, I was sure that she was satirising religion. After all,her short stories are full of borderline sane characters like the woman declaring that her body is a temple or the man who has tattoo of Jesus on his back. She was in fact a devout catholic and was not writing from a secular perspective. O’Connor recognised the eccentricity of believers but was not criticising their beliefs. At heart, the worship of God was regarded as a noble pursuit even when it leads to eccentric life choices.
Lean, tattooed and intense, Edwards would make a perfect Hazel Motes, the character who establishes the Church of Christ Without Christ in O’Connor’s classic novel Wise Blood,. He looks every inch the unquiet believer in desperate search of salvation. In concert he sings with a full-blooded passion that is obviously no act. Drenched in sweat and unsmiling, he constantly raises his arms imploringly or shakes his head wildly like a man possessed by demons.
Edwards is an unusual figure in popular music. He is by no means unique in preferring biblical language to the vernacular. Nick Cave is one obvious example and plenty of Black Metal bands do the same. (My teenage daughter is currently subjecting me to the dubious pleasures of UK Screamo band Bring Me the Horizon whose latest album has the extended title There Is A Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven Lets Keep It A Secret).
Where Edwards parts ways with these other rock and roll sinners is in a fact that he chooses this language not just for its symbolism and its vivid metaphors of good versus evil ,but as an expression of faith.
At the same time, it is quite telling that he is drawn to the dark gothic music of Joy Division. With 16 Horsepower he covered Twenty Four Hours and Day Of The Lords. At a recent show of Wovenhand I went to, he and the band opened with a storming version of Heart And Soul, a track which contains the despairing lyrics “Existence, well what does it matter; I exist on the best terms I can”.
On Wovenhand’s latest album There is a great version of an early New Order track, Truth. The title of this album – The Threshingfloor – is also significant. The Wovenhand website explains that a threshing floor is a place of blessing but also also a place of judgment. (2 Samuel 24:18: On that day God went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”).
I suspect it is the latter meaning that Edwards is more drawn to. Life for him is a judgement not a blessing.
