Episode 33 - One Wild Life Spirit

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[Music] hi friends before we start this week's show we've got a couple of quick announcements that you really don't want to miss first of all we're launching a series of conferences called the liturgist gathering and they're happening all across the country this year we're going to four cities dallas denver chicago and los angeles tickets go on sale for the dallas event today for 99 so this is less expensive and more accessible than anything we've done in the past it's a day and a half event that features mind-blowing discussions really amazing worship led by michael and lisa gunger and a string trio it's beautiful trust me and more than any of that there's connection with community you're going to meet people like you at the liturgist gathering totally amazing love to see you there you can learn more about it at the liturgist.com slash gathering we're also starting this week the one wild life tour with gunger that's going to be a gunger rock show celebrating their two new albums one wildlife spirit and one wildlife soul and uh we'll add a dash of science mic weirdness to kick off different movements in that music and then finally we'll have a liturgist podcast q a for these one evening events across the southwest and texas and we'd love to see you on the one wildlife tour now if you're wondering which one do i go to do i go to literature's gathering or do i go to one wildlife if you want to go to a concert that's going to have a little bonus content one wildlife tour is what you want if you want a day and a half of deep connection with the people who make the liturgists our friends and people who are liturgist type folk the liturgist gathering is what you want to do if you're like me you're going to both and i'm really excited about both finally we want to announce some big changes about the podcast we've had two seasons so far they've been really successful and we're getting ready to take another break to end the season so we're gonna do three more episodes in season two and then go off the air and start producing season three but we're doing something different this time we're launching a second podcast called the liturgist conversations which should be 30 to 45 minutes of unedited conversation about what we're developing for the show what we're thinking about kind of behind the scenes raw unfiltered conversations uh relating to our what we do on this program now this is only going to be available to our patrons on patreon so if you are one of the 250 or so folks who help make this show possible on patreon congratulations you're getting a second podcast from us if you'd like to hear from us during season breaks or get extra content during the liturgist podcast seasons just go to the liturgist.com slash podcast and click on the patreon icon to sign up to be a patron for as little as one dollar a month you can not only get extra content but help shape the future of this program and where we go with it so i'm looking forward to seeing you on the road and hopefully i'll see you in the liturgist conversations as well when you live in a world where the rich keep getting richer while 780 million people on the planet still don't even have clean water to drink it's easy to get discouraged when you live in a country that has the most powerful military establishment of all time and it looks like the republican nomination for the president of the united states will go to donald trump a man who says we should commit war crimes and kill the families of terrorists that we should use torture that we should ban muslims from the country and any other number of statements it's easy to feel uneasy [Music] when you consider yourself as part of a faith tradition that so often goes so badly off the rails into superstition fear shame ignorance violence it's easy to say screw it all throw it all away yet some of us have seen some things experienced some things that keep us in the fight we see love and somehow that little flicker of light seems to be the most important thing in the cosmos oh welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody today we're going to be talking about ideas like spirit love music and all within the context of our new album the second installment of one wild life thanks for joining us so twitter's a funny place it's one of my favorite places but it's a funny place when you guys started talking about your next one wild life record suddenly we started getting requests for another one wildlife episode which i honestly didn't see coming or even think about but we got to give the people what they want i'm actually a little encouraged by the people on twitter because i'm not the only one kind of freaking out by the quality of this record so maybe let's do this we have this thing it's not a problem it's a thing and that our audience for the allergies podcast keeps growing so there's probably 22 000 people right now listening to this podcast who are new to the show haven't heard the first one wildlife podcast and may be unaware that michael gunger is a musician he and lisa gunger have a musical collective known as gunger [Laughter] so if that's new to you michael does things other than podcasting they've been in the middle of this journey this lunacy of three albums back to back like an album trio called one wild life lunacy is a good word for it it's good and the first release in that was seoul one wildlife soul and now just dropped to season pass holders was one wildlife spirit that'll be coming out on itunes in the march 24th march 24th and pre-order it anytime before then and get a few of the songs immediately or you can sign up for the season pass and get the whole thing right now i'm a season pass holder personally whoa thanks mike well because mike michael sends me these like wav files and they're not in order and they don't have metadata and they don't have cover art and i'm not putting that in my items yeah so i get that i get that yeah like that you know i basically got a season pass to have someone else do the metadata work for me that's funny because i there are out there's albums and songs that we have made that do not exist in our itunes because i don't have yeah all that stuff i was just looking for a song i was upstairs looking for a song and i only have it in dropbox oh i can't handle it it does make me crazy i have i do end up downloading our albums if i need to work on a part or whatever i i actually bought all the liturgies records really i bought a liturgist record once and you reimbursed me yeah that's true that's true i was like no you can't do that he texted me he texted me as soon as i purchased it if you guys wonder if i pay attention i literally read every order email that comes in on the liturgist website literally every single one [Laughter] it's a lot it's a lot but you know whatever it's awesome so spirit what was what was kind of your conceptual shift moving out of soul into spirit just from a meta level then we'll look at tracks when i think of spirit and i'm i'm gonna steal some of this actually rob bell his everything is spiritual to her both one and two has really influenced some of my thought on spirit i love he he kind of just goes through this whole process he has this white board on the stage and shows from big bang nearly 14 billion years of evolution and movement and more and more complexity emerging and all the way into human consciousness whatever that is that's moving things pulling things forward pulling things into being whatever that is that kind of lies at the center of existence i like thinking of that thing that makes the trees grow as the same thing that pulls me towards black lives matter i like that somehow whatever is the essence of things is that there's something of love in it there's something of movement towards justice towards wholeness even though i know entropy exists and even though i know that there's chaos in the world and in the universe i like seeing all that magic is connected somehow i like seeing it all is connected and to me spirit is is quite a beautiful word for all for that movement that essence that ground and so spirit the record was kind of an exploration of that we came from soul which is to me then that's part of the whole idea of all the records you're looking at the same thing you're just looking at reality through these different lenses and so it'd be some sort of introspective how are we feeling about these experiences we're having and then towards the end of seoul it began to bleed into a more outward spirit thinking about things like god thinking about like words like god vapor is how we ended soul with this sort of looking at everything and saying holy infinite and holy and so then spirit begins by looking again outward and at everything and it begins with magic and then by the end we begin to move smaller into body which body will be the third one that really blew my mind like i have listened to the record that like put the record like in this thematic spot for me i'm just reconsidering the whole your meta structure my metastructure for that record like this really that's the thread that ties this whole thing together is that movement but like rob's whiteboard what i like about this project there's like two approaches and i don't even mean this in in a christian cottage industry versus the rest of the world but i mean in art there's kind of two competing methodologies or focuses one in which you use art to persuade someone towards a specific destination and one in which you just sort of try to compel people on their journey by sharing your own or even not your own even one you've imagined and there's definitely a directional pull from spirit there's not a bullseye that it seems like you're trying to make people land which is really it just it reminds me of that that triangle on stage you know the expansion and when we did the one wildlife soul podcast i'm a weird music listener i think because i'm older in that i tend to listen to albums not tracks once i've got a feel for an album i'll find there are some tracks that like i get a little bit of like a a tick with like i just listen to them like as long as i like i'll listen to four or five times in a row but when i when i was like kind of going through because i've been thinking about this since people have been tweeting about it and i don't actually have a single track on spirit that is becoming like that elevated sort of above the others above the like i am mountain on i mountain to me was just like a you know what i mean this one is real tough there's a lot of jam in this record like a lot of energy a lot of fun but it's not shallow it definitely starts with the title track magic or the opening track which makes me feel like maybe it's the most articulate explanation of how i view [Music] life of life and the magic all the atoms tell us a little bit about magic and and the genesis and and where you're going with it well yeah i mean you said just starting off you said it was the whole album is really truly energetic which we were talking about this we had a listening party i think i thought in approaching this whole thing i don't know the idea of spirit like somehow this album would be more like ethereal or you know just real yeah like some broody um floaty like a lot of flow so yeah we thought it would have a different feel and then once we started getting more into it i just thought it was really interesting how we it's been really reflective of kind of where we're at the first album and then this album we weren't in a dark moody broody kind of place so yeah starting with magic kind of right off the bat that was one of the first songs written for this album wasn't it i don't remember i felt like it just really said it kind of set a pace for the entirety of the yeah i think so but to me i mean this whole this whole album has much more energy and even speaks a lot there's more politics involved uh that we speak to in this album yeah well i mean to me it connected to sort of the meta thing you have this direction of deconstruction that i've experienced that many of our listeners have experienced at least have you experienced some of it mike obviously has where the magic of the world tends to disappear when you start learning about rationalism and the scientific method and you see oh rain doesn't fall because gods send down droplets of water rather than because of you pacified them in some way but because the way the water cycle works and the way molecules bond to one another you know and for a weird reason that takes away the yeah the magic of it because you know how it works it's not it's beautiful isn't there some of the atheists have a hashtag now that oh destroy magical thinking yeah yeah really and magical thinking yeah yeah whoa i didn't know that and i want to be clear for my atheist homies for most atheists that's not a statement against wonder what they would certainly see on the universe yes but it definitely is antithetical to what they call magical thinking yeah which is pretty rational yes but then perhaps this this song is kind of enjoying the the weird language i mean it starts out with angels and dragons and magic and why is this guy blue because of the magic so it sounds pretty rational but actually to me it's if you expand magical thinking to the infinite it's a different thing it's not saying oh only these certain things are magic rainfalling is god's settings like if everything is magic that's kind of awesome why because how is it still even when you get down to molecules you know evaporating from the ocean and going up and collecting into clouds and then gravity pulls down these droplets of water how is that not insane magic yeah yeah it's totally insane the other sort of meta narrative about one wild life is the whole series is how do you see how do you see things how do you see reality and you can see it in a reductionistic way or you can see it in an ever expanding way and that's we find that more yeah and another one that even even in that song yeah that song is filled with so much of i feel like what we talked about in the previous album it's just to me it's very clearly like this yeah this continuation of what you see and one line that we also threw in there that i feel like we both have really grappled with a lot is love everyone everything even at the end once we were done with it i called michael i was like we can't say that he goes what do you mean you said that that's part of the thing you put in there and it's something we're continuously struggling with which we've written other songs based on you know people have heard us talk about you know these retreats that we've gone on so i went on the silent retreat in sacramento and every day we begin our day with prayer movements this lady leads you in the prayer movements and everything she says has a specific intent to do like i guess i feel like when i first started them it was kind of frilly and like just some kind of weird thing that we were doing and then you slowly realized now all of this has a specific purpose at the end of each movement of each section we would say and i'm thankful for everything and everyone so i'm thankful for everything and everyone i had a really hard time with that because when i went on this retreat was right after shooting at one of the schools in colorado and i sat there going no i'm not thank how can this is absurd this is an absurd way of thinking i'm not thankful for everything and everyone and you're wrong you're wrong about this people should not live this way and i remember having this whole kind of speech for this this woman and she just sat there and looked at me and said well and therein lies the meditation and that was her answer for me and so we've been grappling with this this idea for a while as well that got thrown into to the end of of magic but loving everything and everyone what does that mean what does that look like in your life if you capitalize the ease i have an easier time with it yeah of course you don't love that the shootings happen or that people have disease or poverty or whatever i mean you don't specifically love those things in relation but and you want to fight for good and for justice in the world but there's also a part of sight that seeing the whole and how all of it together with its positive and negative charges is still somehow this one beautiful reality the everything that everyone is part of even with the thing even how it's becoming and messy and violent and there's still something about the everything that you can come [Music] this is a real shallow question compared to where we just were so yet i am mountain and it was there's just a really existential record which i like that's my jam there was a bit of a celebration but there was still a darkness to iron mountain and then you have soul which started to incorporate a little bit more wonder and then when you get to spirit there starts to be almost an infection of joy into the record yeah like just like celebration just joy without going shallow or vapid i can't help but then sonically the textures you're using some of the the sounds and the rhythms and the tempos almost hearkens to the best parts of music in the 80s like in an ability to be fun but without being empty pop calories and was that intentional at all or is that just my age talking nothing that that was very intentional especially especially anthem like i was just favorite songs so with anthem as you were saying that i was thinking anthem because um i i feel like i have these moments that are like incredibly cheesy movie moments in my life those are the best moments walking down the street and i just want to pump my fists in the air like yeah yeah life is great i feel awesome you know but i really feel that way like i see something that's inspiring or truly inspired by seeing a mom taking care of her kid again this sounds so cheesy but seeing people give truly sacrificial love to each other that's so cheesy so jesus oh my gosh i sell over you yeah but i'm really i'm specifically like thinking of the day that that was inspired and walking down the street seeing these things happen and it's like kind of like the coca-cola commercial you know we're like you look to the right and this is going right and you look to the left and this basketball is like bouncing and beating you're like all right things are great and it feels so great when you know when you have been through something you just feel like there's no way life can feel good again and then you feel this it's it's like full it's so full it's not cheesy it's like it's just this very full rich feeling so with anthem i feel like we complement each other because i can have these kind of anthemic ideas of like a chorus or or a word or whatever that left on my own would be an incredibly cheesy song but then michael can come in and add this i mean to me like that whole riff that he's doing changes it then kind of a weird dark bridge [Music] yes and even vice versa sometimes like but if he's writing something like that and no but if it was just that it would be kind of a bummer yeah it was just one or the other totally totally they needed that to kind of bring it to this pretty place and i think that's how we can complement each other if one person kind of gets too far on this one thing the other one's like nah it needs it needs this edginess it needs this other rhythm or this other salt and pepper it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better health that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists so michael sends me the record and i've been traveling more lately than i ever have in my life i'm never home so i'm trying to listen on airplanes which means i'm trying to convince even though i told dropbox to like save all the wav files locally it was like you know what i think i'll just try to download them over the uh gogo wireless which i don't know if you've ever tried to download a wav file on an airplane but it's not a good time it's not it's pretty frustrating so it'll play like four seconds and then just stop so i'm sitting on this airplane and when i'm real tired on airplanes i watch movies and my favorite movies are what i would call sentimental existential films like they have both of those themes and i don't remember what movie it was but i watched real fragile existential film and then i decided i probably needed to get some work done i switched over to look at microsoft word on my ipad and like the movie kept playing in the background so i like went back and paused the movie again and then i went back to word and then the movie started playing again like in the credits so i could hear the music but then i stopped working because this this i heard this song so it's just this beautiful song and it was just as like fragile and sentimental and existential as the film i just saw and i was like i have to like remember when i land to google this band because i think it's like my new favorite band because it was just it was just beautiful and it wasn't until the chorus came in i was like wondering oh that was lisa that's their new record dropbox finally downloaded that song and just decided to play it for me and remember but then i felt like really good because that was like the most objectively i've ever listened to your music i was like this is definitely my new favorite band that's really nice that's like it feels like you're saying that because we're sitting here but i know you're not i don't know it's like so nice that's that was really but then i was like i was like well i'm really glad that happened because it would be a good bone to throw michael since i haven't mentioned his record for three weeks and then the best part was like yeah what song was that i was like i'm not sure which song it was oh my god [Music] so i guess i'm just saying i really like the song wonder thank you so then there's whale and then there's [Applause] whale our daughter makes fun of whale why should she make fun of oil i don't make fun of us too strong she laughs well she laughs she loves i am the whale it does something to my brain the chorus yeah i get a little lost yeah i don't know if you guys were going for that but it's like yeah that's time my brain has a little trouble tracking yeah that's the whole thing i mean the song's about undualizing the world you know taking it away from these simple dualities and throwing you into the sea of mystery and then by the end yeah we actually i told the mix engineer like can you make it sound like we fall into an ocean after this like it's building all the gluten [Music] like that high end disappears and you're like you're in the ocean and then you kind of your head pops up you can hear the drum kind of get a little high-end come back but that's the whole idea yeah like get out of this simple dualistic thinking and jump into the ocean well like a lifetime of being a bass player it means every song i listen to i try to find the rhythm as if i'm playing it while i'm listening even though i'm not i'm not even air basing it's just a thing when you give that rhythm like like i can't even it's just gone like yeah when's the beginning when's the end what's happened is this still like western musical structure because you told me it had sort of a almost a wild goose nod to it really dig that yeah we kept imagining ourselves dancing around the wild goose fire it's a festival we did last year the legislation gunger did and there's a bunch of weird hippie folks you personally you probably listen to it a lot of dancing drum circles beard hymns and uh when we were writing that song we're like this would be a good wild goose song as would uh let bad religion die oh yeah they'd be into that which is definitely thematically darker but still hopeful yeah [Music] and walk into the [Music] if all the outsiders are wrong if your questions don't feel if your doubt is called a sin and you're not to search within let it go open your eyes [Music] if your car gives you a gun [Music] god let religion sing yeah i don't see that song is dark actually well it starts pretty dark with the bomb strapped to his chest and all that walking into the crowd yeah i know and essentially i didn't i didn't write that one at all that was all michael and so the first time he had showed it to me i liked the verses i didn't i thought the ver i thought the chorus was like too overt and then oh yeah you didn't think the chorus was too overt at first yeah and and now it's one of my favorite it's yeah i think it just speaks so much um truth in a very pope it's a very poetic yet plain way mm-hmm and at first i it even with the chorus i was like oh i kind of like it kind of offended me the course kind of offended me at first what do you mean that bad religion i mean if for whatever reason it felt like my religion isn't that weird and then and then i was like oh well yeah of course like anything that's bad and the religion does need to not need to die but i think when you first hear it it's shocking i've never i've never heard a chorus like that i think it's a chorus that really causes people will cause people to pause has caused people to pause and think what what is good or bad and what yeah they're believing at first it seems like you're saying all religion but you're not i'm saying okay so especially in the in the context of the record and i wonder how much of in the context of the record is what also shifted your opinion of the song because if you just go the fl it's been kind of fluffy up to this point of the record you know yeah comparatively comparatively to some of our some of our records yeah by fluffy i mean just joyful happy and that's this is the five cynical me like you can't be happy too long um but i mean no but saying i mean the world everything is magic everything see with wonders like at some point you gotta say okay there's people that walk around with rose-colored glasses and then they institutionalize it and it becomes religion and that it's magical thinking but it gets then it can turn really easily from this you know it can turn into superstition and into something that's easily exploitable by authoritarian structures and then magical thinking does become very harmful because you can play on people's fear and play on people's ignorance about how things work or whatever so to me you had to kind of address in the context and it's starting to move towards justice so here's to me a kind of a turning point in the record of okay so we're seeing all the beauty all the wonder but there's also a lot of bad stuff that happens so let's look at that and some of this goes around in the name of wonder and in the name of magic let's look at that and let that die and see still the beauty within that death that's why the chorus is so happy it's just major chords bad religion we want the video to have like rainbows and stars cartoon birds [Laughter] yeah because it's like in the in the wonder of all this if you could just take away some of the the bs of bad religion and let yeah and of course this is the liturgist podcast it's a christian thing we believe that religion can be practiced in a way that's not bad caring for widows and orphans is a beautiful way to practice religion yeah to me it just needed this part of the record needed to start having a little bit of teeth still and and and view of the whole of reality which and there's a danger in this song in that people will respond to it the way i did when i first heard it this was the first thing i heard off this record that was even close to finished and you're working out some of the lyrics and yeah and so i remember listening to it and when you got to the chorus i'm sitting at my desk and i literally like took my hands and lifted an air like yeah let bad religion die and i was just oh this song needs to be done the song needs to be done and then after i listen to it the second time i was like man go get them michael like go get them ah and then i started thinking i was like oh no like there's also a call in this song to be self-aware because it's not like i have found the perfect expression of faith there is not like i found a way to be free of oppressing from others to be a consistent relief for others that's interesting that yours was i felt like our experience was exactly opposite you started at yourself yeah yeah yeah i'm a manufactured narcissist so part of that is my fault i built myself an ego like i didn't have one i realized i didn't have enough self-worth to operate in the world so i built an ego and then like sometimes like i feed it too much and i have to remember that it's just a thing i made up in reaction to the way i used to be it's really funny part of me once part of me wants to learn how to do that like oh i need you just program your brain i wish all of you could just hang out with mike for one afternoon so bizarre it's i enjoy it so much the things just the casual conversational things that yesterday i don't know at least i tweeted this yesterday but he gets in the car and he bumps his knee on the dash like he gets in clumsy bumps his knee and this is after he's had a little bit of a run of you know maladies uh from clumsiness or whatever and he just goes i am not a viable organization not a viable organism well i it was awesome last night we'll just talk about our days last night we played mafia we had all these people over we're playing mafia and mike is finally in the mafia and he's so stressed out about lying he gets nauseous and is like almost vomit my heart rate went up to 108 bpm almost dying you almost died just sitting there just sweating and i'm like everybody mike is mafia because i engineered my body language to convey uncertainty he got them to kill me somehow i got him to take out and then i kept lisa in the game so she would look like my family knew like we knew what was going on because and i knew you knew but that doesn't mean i can't play you but it still made me want to die i was lisa was getting upset because she thought the team had gone crazy because they were because i was manipulating them and i just wanted to throw down my ace and walk out of the room game's over it was fun no even in all the stress it was like it was like to me it was a good time i know i'm sorry i i feel very badly that you almost vomited but it's a really good story he's a weird dude it's true i treat my brain as software so he manufactured an ego okay next next [Music] this thing [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] without a doubt to this heart and earth with love till we find our peace lay our egos down [Music] [Music] [Music] so that's a number one jam that's just a number one jam oh my god yeah i love that i understand we love that song i love it what's funny about that song that is garden from the liturgists i know [Music] it's the same session it's literally the same session evolved [Music] [Music] how weird is that so you just kept playing it and then just like the vibe changed i wanted to put it i wanted to do a ganger version of garden on the record and then just kind of we found some little musical things we just kind of kept following the music and then eventually just transformed into something else well and a lot of it had to do with like the wasn't it when john came in to do a bass part the bass player came in and put down the space part that influenced it a lot well yeah but that had responded to how i changed the pre-chorus yeah from garden just little small turns here and there just over here the whole thing but even garden i think i mean to me that song in itself has changed more than any song we've ever written because garden from the liturgist was a different song before that so it's like it's an ever-evolving thing yeah we just keep trying to put garden on gengar records and some reason just keeps finding other ways too exist and now you did it but it's not at the same pre-chorus i suppose close so you can take it as a nod to guardians or just as uh i just i don't know if if we were using greek terms i feel like the love and love is all is a different love than the love and garden like well there's a little bit of eros actually happening there yeah just a little bit of like just sensual maybe just right on the edge of dirty just just a good jam that one was fun i think that one was one of the funnest i love doing the bgvs on that one and that's one like kind of confuses me because i'm a pretty white guy so like i can usually equate a jam with more drum strikes it's like the songs are the most they're just like you know i mean just like the drummer is just like oh animal but that was like way less drum strikes but then it's somehow like more groove you know what i mean oh yeah yeah yeah we've been i've been way into the less drum strikes whatever whatever subdivision isn't there you feel it more somehow somehow i don't know i feel like that's some insight that like seems radically new to white culture that is just not new at all it's just not new at all well it depends to me it's because like in whale i i'm a lot of times like yeah let it let it breathe give it some space but then in whale we're playing with the drummer and he brought out these splash symbols which splash symbols don't normally have a great connotation musically to me but made them into hi-hats and then was playing 30-second notes on splash symbols and i was like yes it just was the right thing somehow so it just depends on the moment this is like don't don't come here yeah so this is the palette palette of sounds no there's something about it that you're talking about like the animal drums like just kind of all over the place yeah a lot of times feels like yeah some songs can get there um for some reason that i don't know why it's not sparse it still feels sparse because he's not still just keep playing playing playing i'm talking about like when a drummer is like hitting all the toms all the symbols yeah i know and the snare yeah all the time that's what i was like that song is great i'm excited yeah just like really easy to manipulate with drums do you love do you love modern worship music no that's that it's not manic enough i'm talking about like okay like fang just like both kick drums like hit on the top and the bottom of the pedal he's from florida folks oh man i wish that wasn't such an effective lampoon but that really you really got me there okay that was oh man i was talking to a guy who used to tour and uh he said he's like florida man you live in the weirdest state to tour and i was like why he's like well you know people come after the show and be like hey man you know you guys you guys are like my third favorite band it's like what an oddly specific thing that happens over and over in florida be like hey man you know you're like you're like my fourth favorite christian metal band like just they know they have multiple charts in their brain of where you fit they're the people that will put that it'll tell us you're really good for christian music compliment given the sunshine state okay so love is all kind of a slow jam then hurricanes kind of a slow it's not a jam there's a lot of space there yeah yeah for a while and i know you looked a lot with uh track ordering for this one was hurricane always sort of in that space of kind of yeah josh our manager really wanted he was hoping that we could find a way to get hurricane closer to the top of the record because it sounds more radio friendly or more you know but to me thematically it kind of you kind of had to come through like sort of the wonder and then you start kind of looking at but there are problems in the world but if we could get through some of the bad religion get through some of that and kiss the knight kind of um embraces doubt in a hopeful way to me yeah and says that without doubt we can't progress as a society we can't you know without somebody doubting that slavery was a legitimate way of supporting an economy they would still exist somebody didn't doubt the commonly held assumptions about anything that that we've moved from so doubt is key to us moving forward doubt is key to healthy faith even so kind of the night the dark cloud of unknowing the the mystery coming to peace with that and then at some point we get back into you you're feeling this darkness you're trying to you're feeling the doubt you're looking for hope in it and hurricane i think kind of was written lisa came with we were we were both in a place kind of dark huh well per the paris thing it just happened so paris it just happened and we were traveling back we were in london when that happened i was telling our friends like that was the first time in my life that i was scared to travel like actually actually terrified of it realizing that we'd been hanging out with some people in london because we did the belong event and one of our friends was explaining to me how she had as a young girl she remembered crouching down in the street when a bomb went off and i just don't know what that's like that is just beyond me and now she when we were when we were with him at dinner she had to leave the table because her daughter her daughter was afraid that someone was coming in their apartment she heard some noises and like this is just a daily thing she has to talk to her children about and they're afraid to go on the bus because the bombs on the bus and i don't know what that kind of life is like like i just can't imagine her as a mother how she deals with those things is very different for me it's just their how they how they have to live because she was like do not be scared of this go look out the window i mean crash that look out just be brave and face this if that was me i probably would have baby i'm coming right home i'm just you know kind of like that that's not a daily thing for me so um i'm like overly protective and um for her she has to teach her children how to be more brave than i do and i just remember coming back from that feeling pretty devastated for the world for our friends who have to teach their children about how to what to do in a bomb situation who to save and who who not to save right if they're having those conversations of save yourself and run out or whatever that's just trying to stop and help somebody don't try to stop and help someone because then you will die how do you talk to your kid about that so we'd come home i was really just so sad god had gone through those conversations also was reading between the world and me which are all good things to face good conversations to have for me i think i was kind of diving in too much like there's my brain just can't take that much i just i dwell on it all the time and imagine the stories imagine totally feeling like for many people you're sitting here you get cut like i it hurts my body so i'm just totally feeling all this another friend of mine said you know you need to also read about all the good things happening in the world it's it's this is so important for you because this is it's one it's one thing to understand and read about it and you also need to have the positive reinforcement could because there are really wonderful things happening as well and when she told me that i kind of i don't know i thought it was a little frivolous but then she actually challenged me she goes well why don't you fast i haven't asked like no one's asked me to fast anything in years so i did and then i started reading about all these really amazing projects and what people are actively doing and then some friends of mine are doing this thing called we welcome refugees and it felt like i felt like this resurgence of love and and seeing the love love is love is greater than hate and then our daughter did this thing at school they went and they were holding up these flowers so the flowers are stronger than the hate because the flower even if the flower gets picked it grows again it was so moving it was so seeing all seeing people put their hands to these acts of love and acts of kindness because i was really starting to freak out and believe that the hate is more powerful that song was totally born out of a resurgence of love the whole record does that i'm i'm a person who's drawn to trying to understand the kind of things that affect our culture and our world and people but that also means i can binge on trying to understand the problem and get into some really dark places and i've tried to become more intentional with the media i consume to create some balance so like my my wife you want to get the hopelessness you want to get a hopelessness right so my wife like she's drawn very much towards inspirational media and i don't mean like christian cottage industry i mean work that inspires you things that are happy comedies my wife has kind of a melancholy disposition and that's a reaction i have a pretty sanguine disposition so i tend to in my media look a little bit for the darkness but the this this particular record responds to that very real darkness without trying to erase it or ignore it but embodies a light and a hope in the face of that darkness so it never it never tries to take a coat of paint and just cover up it's it's never a sheen it's never fake but nor is it defeated and i thought the hurricane especially illustrated that to go biblical on your ass [Laughter] the spirit hovering within the chaos over the waters i mean that to me is the the whole idea all the way through jesus's teaching of the kingdom of god of yeast in a loaf of bread or like salt like a little thing within the thing that needs metamorphosis within the thing that needs to become more full more true more beautiful and it comes from within and it's a it's a movement from within the reality it's not a imperial force from the outside the whole story of jesus incarnation the word made flesh that's the whole kind of christian thrust which i think is beautiful the whole idea of spirit being this emerging love from within the chaos and it's not ignoring the chaos and it's not ignoring the creative work of the spirit is not just to hover there and stay there as it is is some stationary thing but it's a movement within the darkness of the waters is we are alive kind of a a rebellious proclamation of that towards the chaos yeah sort of and it's it's and it's an invitation hurricane is you're in this battle sort of you know you've been you're letting love rise up and it's there's a fight to all of this but then at the end it's like we're getting towards the end of the record we're moving towards body and we're moving towards all of this is embodied words becoming flesh right it's becoming all these ideas these grand ideas about magic and love and politics and all that is coming down to you and i and how we treat each other and come here come with me and sit around a fire have a drink grab a tambourine come to this table have some bread and wine it's be getting physical it's getting come on let's hang out and let's see the magic as it relates to you and i here together [Music] is [Music] is seriously [Music] [Music] hi i was surprised body and blood was on this record not the next one yeah yeah but that was it's a body source yeah yeah but vapor is sort of a spirit song to be the last song of soul it was that was intentional the whole circle the image of the circle the colors bleed into each other and we're intentionally bleeding these records into each other yeah so it sets it up for the next the end of body is going to be soul again i was about to say i hope then you're going to have that sorry that's just a little mind blowing that's like building a record med architecture i've i've received a few tweets some people think that that girl singing is my voice i wish it was but oh she's she's the real deal that was a first take like i flew to austin because we heard this girl sing in our bus one time she was a friend of our of john arndt who's played piano with us about through the years and she stopped on the tour bus and she sang us this little like indian classical thing like oh that just puts you in a vibe immediately i show so i deserve before i go to the end of the story i fly to austin get her i show up at her house set up a tiny little portable studio thing push record she does that that you hear at the beginning of the record first first take and i'm like um i guess i can fly home now but i just i was like just give me some extra stuff we just i have extra stuff first i'll probably put it on some liturgies or something for delicious yes but it was just done i was just done immediately but yeah her voice there's just something and actually so what i was going to say funny enough is i had other music that you that i've kind of put under her voice at first and it was actually mixed the mix the final mix had this other kind of harmonium and some of the other textures you hear come in and then at mastering which you don't normally make this kind of change at mastering but i would i was like can we there's a acapella stem from the mix engineer i was like let's just put the voice at the beginning just for a while it's just kind of haunting it's haunting and it's so humid like yeah as we were listening to it there was something about it that was so beautiful and rich but it almost i don't know how to say this it's not it wasn't bad i don't say this in a negative way but it was almost like you're in a movie and it's like a almost like stock sound uh you know like you would hear walking into any movie or whatever that's like made well it somehow took away from this raw beauty of her voice and you just listen to it just dry and plain and ugh it's so it's very moving i wish we could have her come on tour with it just to use her for those parts you doing a vinyl of this one yeah the people the few companies that make vinyls right now are so backed up because everybody makes one so it just takes forever i'm starting to feel the pull of vinyl but i don't want to do it just because it's getting so popular just like the worst hipster part of my just we're just an ultra hipster mike just by like being anti-hipster see i don't feel that way towards records at all because i grew up on records so like i it wasn't like oh now the knowledge it's cool and i'm gonna i was like i can't get to a song that i want this is not portable what's with these pops and scratches and they were cassettes and the only thing i thought about was cassettes was just this low dynamic range really high noise floor terrible media so like i must say cd was the best music format humanities ever laser desk laserdisc yeah yeah absolutely my sister told me that cds were never gonna take off and then i really loved the super audio cd uh which was a sony multi-track format really high sample rate 5.1 sound really really gorgeous and i was like this is where music is going and instead it was the shitty mp3 that took over the world yeah it was like what if we take the quality we've got now just make less quality convenience so the record is one wildlife spirit you can learn more about it on gungermusic.com up until release you can grab it as a half season pass which will not only get you spirit but also get your early access to body or you can grab it anywhere music is sold on march 24th yep or listen to or streamed or wherever but we would just love for you to be a pass holder if you'd like to be we would just love it there's nobody that takes a cut in the middle if you're a pass holder and that's very nice and we do like little free other stuff for our pass holders we're trying to make it real special for our pass holders we had this listening party here in la that hanging out with people and chatting and having a question and answer and i've enjoyed my pass holder perks yeah yeah it's been a good scene the special shoulder rubs free shoulder rubs we'll give you a back rub foot rub i learned that i learned he he pointed at the part of his thigh that is the no friend zone anymore yeah that's there's a limit to how far up you can go on my inner thigh it's pretty high it is pretty high it's pretty high but past that point it's just very limited limited access [Laughter] so don't forget about the liturgist gathering coming up we'd love to see you in dallas also if you'd like to connect with us more we'd love to see you at the liturgists.com podcast you can leave a comment to tell us what you think about this episode we'd love to see you on twitter at the liturgists on facebook slash the liturgists and uh as always it's been a pleasure i'm science mike thanks for listening everybody [Music] is [Music] you