When people try to generalize about Colorado music, they often talk about sound: say, the gothic Americana of 16 Horsepower and Slim Cessna; the piano-driven pop of the Fray and Meese; or the inside-out electronica of Pictureplane and Hollagramz.
But one common thread among many Colorado artists (though not all of the aforementioned) is not a particular wavelength but a set of beliefs.
Specifically, Christianity.
It might come as a surprise in the notoriously iniquitous world of rock and pop music, but Denver’s music scene is filled with current (and former) Christian believers.
Some are devoted followers who put Jesus at the center of everything they do. Others are churchgoers who keep their beliefs separate from their art. And at least one is a former born-again Christian turned ardent atheist.
Faith and its antithesis
“I don’t want to blame all of my problems on religion,” says Patrick McGuire, frontman for Denver’s Flashbulb Fires and the enigma behind Jeremy Flood. “But I have a grudge and a beef, and I think it’s justified.”
Growing up with a Catholic father and a “very Mormon” mother, McGuire became a born-again Christian as a teenager and held onto his faith well into his 20s. Then the doctrine and beliefs lost their luster, and he was left feeling that he’d been lied to. That feeling is at the core of many of McGuire’s songs.
“It’s a big part of who I am, and I’m not ashamed of that,” he says. “It doesn’t mean I want to alienate or belittle people who believe.”
Tim Bruns of Denver pop outfit Churchill is still very committed to his Christian faith, and it’s every bit as central to his music as McGuire’s atheism is to his.
“A lot of the reason we play music is because of our beliefs,” says Bruns, who met bandmate mandolinist Mike Morter at Baptist Bible College in Pennsylvania. “We don’t want anything to do with Christian music as an industry, but we want to build relationships with people — not necessarily to preach to them, but to show them love and let them know there’s hope.”
For breakout singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff, hope was what brought him and his family into the church — and into music — and it’s also what led him out.
“We were going to church three days a week and playing music in my teenage years,” Rateliff recalls. His family was the worship band for the church he attended in rural Hermann, Mo., and it was through church music that he would come to know his longtime musical partner and bandmate, Joseph Pope III.
“We were hanging out, doing a lot of sinful things,” remembers Pope of his early years. “We were stuck in this tiny town without a lot of hope. . . . We started going to church on our own, outside of Hermann, and playing in the worship band there. Some of our first shows were in that church.”
It wasn’t all wholesome family fun. “I would smoke weed on the way,” Pope says with a laugh, “but spiritually, I was waking up.”
Missionary kid
Nathan McGarvey, the titular frontman of Nathan & Stephen (later Hearts of Palm) who will be leaving Denver for Nashville soon, also woke up musically in the church.
“I was a missionary kid,” he recounts. “I grew up in my very young years in the Philippines, and my dad was a pastor before that.” His father was called back to the U.S. to work for a national church organization in Colorado Springs. “That’s a big reason we clicked so well with the Tills.”
McGarvey is referring to the musical Till family that includes Stephen (Nathan & Stephen, A Mouthful of Thunder, Black Black Ocean), Jonathan (Nathan & Stephen, Porlolo) and Matthew (Nathan & Stephen, Houses).
McGarvey’s first band — a Christian ska outfit formed when he was just a high- school freshman — included Stephen Till and a few other boys from their church youth group. Houses frontman Andy Hamilton and drummer Stephen Brooks also were honing their musical chops in Colorado Springs at the time.
“We played a lot of churches,” he recalls, “but that’s mostly because in the Springs, those were the only places to play.”
Like many of his peers, McGarvey had a period of time when he stopped identifying as Christian. In recent years, however, he has reconnected with his faith.
“Music and Christianity are both parts of who I am,” he says. “There’s no separating them. Anybody’s worldview will affect what they do musically.”
Joy and ecstasy
Seeing Nathan & Stephen perform live today, you can still feel the spiritual energy of the church, though there’s very little about the band’s music that is explicitly Christian. Fans and critics have described the band’s shows as “ecstatic,” “joyful” and “religious.”
For Leanor Till — Nathan & Stephen’s sax player, former member of Five Iron Frenzy and wife of Stephen Till — that joy and ecstasy is the reason she plays music.
“When people ask what my spiritual gift is and when I feel closest to God,” she says, “it’s when I’m on stage.”
Though Leanor didn’t grow up playing music in church, music and church played a vital role in her life. Her father bought her first pawnshop sax for her when she was 9, and Leanor has fond memories of altering the words of Bad Religion songs to fit her worldview.
Today — whether playing with her husband, with her new band, Earnest and Eager, or rocking the streets guerrilla-style in Boba Fett and the Americans — Till approaches performing as a way to channel a higher power.
“When I play, I’m asking God to show up,” she says. “There’s a place where I allow myself to go spiritually and emotionally, and I believe he shows up, and I believe people who aren’t believers experience it.”
Till isn’t interested in converting or convincing anyone. “It could be an opportunity for conversation, but it’s not my job to connect the dots,” she says. But, “People recognize that something is different, bigger — that something was experienced.”
Though Christianity no longer resonates with Rateliff, he, too, says he is driven by that feeling of bringing something larger than himself into the room when he performs. He wants to leave room for whatever that something is.
“There’s still that surrendering aspect to it in my life,” he says, “and the purpose for it is a sort of worship, but now it’s just because I enjoy that feeling.”
In the end, it might not matter that Leanor Till is a Christian or that Nathaniel Rateliff isn’t or that Patrick McGuire is a seething atheist. It’s the feeling — whether you call it ecstasy or worship or giving yourself over — that really counts — that music lovers have when the lights go down and the notes begin to fill the room.
“We’re not there to preach,” says Till. “We’re there to perform.”
Eryc Eyl is a veteran music journalist, critic and Colorado native who has been neck-deep in local music for many years.