Eric Earley (Blitzen Trapper) + Sacred Psychedelia on the Jukebox (w David Bunker)
Blitzen Trapper has been making some of the most interesting and compelling experimental folk/rock/alt-country/progressive music since The Flying Burrito Brothers, and their frontman, main songwriter, producer, and musician, Eric Early joins us on the podcast to talk about the whole story. From his own roots as a musically adventurous kid to the band’s most recent album, Holy Smokes Future Jokes, to “cosmic humility” and his work with homeless veterans in the Portland area, Earley is a fount of mystical, meaningful, art.
We also crank up the Jukebox for a deep dive into the seemingly unlikely world of “sacred psychedelia,” and check in with poet, teacher, and music industry veteran, David Bunker for some much-appreciated perspective. It’s a wild trip, but the thread between Hendrix, “Jesus Psych,” and contemporary artists like Blitzen Trapper, Natalie Bergman, Daniel Amos, and Sufjan Stevens is strong.
Brace yourself for a long, winding, and beautifully weird and spiritual musical experience. (Full music list and links available on the SHOW NOTES page for this episode: TrueTunes.com/Blitzen
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Bruce Brown’s Secret Mix of Sacred Psych
IF YOU LOVED THIS EPISODE don’t miss:
Audiofeed Festival Lineup Announcement and Interview
Terry Scott Taylor’s Beautiful Mystery
Natalie Bergman’s Jesus Music for a New Generation
Myron Butler and the Legacy of Andrae Crouch!
Andy Zipf Solo Acoustic Performance on True Tunes @45RPM
45RPM: Phil Madeira and Love Songs
Bruce Cockburn: Kicking at the Darkness for Fifty Years (and counting!)
From The Vault: Michael Been of The Call
Buddy Miller (Learning To Listen With Big Ears)
Marc Byrd (Hammock, God of Wonders, etc)
Phil Madeira on Expanding Horizons
Kevin Max Considers Boundaries
See the full list of previous episodes HERE
MUSIC LIST
Blitzen Trapper:
Furr; Thirsty Man; Destroyer of the Void; Don’t Let Me Run; Masonic Temple Microdose #1; Across the River; Black River Killer; Stranger In a Strange Land; Bardo’s Light (Ouija, Ouija); Holy Smokes, Future Jokes (Demo); Hazy Morning (Demo); Magical Thinking; Earth (Fever Called Love); Sons & Unwed Mothers (Demo); Baptismal; Dead Billie Jean
Daniel Amos – The Shape of Air
Liz Vice – Empty Me Out
The Followers – Wounded Healer
The Exkursions – It’s Been Set Down
The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows
The Byrds – Eight Miles High
Grateful Dead – Truckin’
Music Tellers (Keaggy, Gerber, Hayden, Jones) – Wend
THE JUKEBOX:
Daniel Amos – Better
Mind Garage – Processional-Kyrie-Gloria
Resurrection Band – Golden Road
Agape – Voyaging Pilgrim
The Trees Community – The Parable of the Mustard Seed; Raga
Glass Harp – Song of Hope
Water Into Wine Band – Harvest Time
Bakery – Trust In the Lord
Sonrise – In the Garden
Bee Gees – Every Christian Lion-Hearted Man Will Show You
The Electric Prunes – Closing Hymn
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Purple Haze
The Moody Blues – Question
Los Cirros – Hay Muchos Como Yo
Maranatha – Deeper Than the Mighty Rolling Sea
Cloud – Watered Garden
Wilson McKinley – Almighty God
The Dixie Power and Light Company – Help Me
Natalie Bergman – You’ve Got a Friend In Jesus
Gungor – Lion of Rock
Larry Norman – U.F.O.
Easter eggs:
Dragnet 1967 – The Acid Party
Glass Harp – Let’s Live Together
Our amazing theme, “Full Circle (Exclusive Instrumental mix),” courtesy of Phil Keaggy & Rex Paul
Jesus People Music V. 1 (The End Is At Hand)
The Passage from C.S. Lewis’ “The Weight Of Glory”
“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
