Right, it’s a metaphor. I believe, but once you get older, you think of it dif- ferent – like you eventually find out there’s no Santa Claus, which nearly killed me. I found that out really early – I think I was 30 – and it broke my heart. (Laughs at his own joke.) Life’s full of disappointments, ya know?


Speaking of gospel, the last time I saw you, you presented me with this album of your mom and dad - a gospel album. I want you to tell our listeners about that. It’s good old fashioned gospel, and it’s just fun listen to – kind of like listening to old-timey music. My mom and dad have been singing together almost all their lives. They got married when she was 15 and he was 17 and they had this duet thing they do. He plays mandolin and she plays guitar and accordion. They’ve sang together in their ministry all through the years. For the first time in their life, we recorded them. We didn’t put any bells and whistles on it, we didn’t bring in any studio musicians, or anything like that. We just set up some microphones and pushed record and just let it be what it is. And I’m glad we did it. They won’t be here forever, but now their music will be here forever. The sounds of their voices and the sound of their music can be listened to forever. If people like old school gospel music, it’s a great listen.


It is! And people can get it from paulthorn.com, right? Yeah you can get it at my web site. I’m very proud of that record. You should be. I recommend it too, es- pecially to a lot of my friends around the South here, because most of the people I know grew up in the churches and we’d have them “singin’s” – ya know we’d go to a singin,’ and that’d be the kind of stuff that people would play. So, it’s close to my heart, too. It


really is. Right. I’ll be honest with you. The type of gospel music that’s popular right now is called “contemporary” and I have to say I can’t listen to it. I don’t like it at all, to be completely honest. It makes me cringe, it’s so slick. It’s almost like it’s a showcase. Some- times I get the impression they’re not really singing to glorify the Lord it’s like they’re singing to show how good they are. I don’t feel the spirit when it’s like that.


I understand it. Like I say, I grew up


in a Southern Baptist church, but we would have these singin’s and they’d have them on the fifth Sunday. There were people who couldn’t sing their way out of a paper bag but they would stand up there and wail it from their heart and that meant a lot to me. Heck, I used to sing at ‘em myself. But once in a while you get somebody like – some of the best pickers came out of that scene – better than I ever seen in my life. Guitar, banjo, all that stuff. It’s a whole different experience. One of my good friends I met when we were play- ing gospel duets and also honky tonks on weekends. Greg Yeary is his name, one of the best all-around guitar play- ers I know of. That’s the thing I really liked about the church I grew up in. Back then, if you wanted to get up and sing, they would let you. If you couldn’t sing at all they would still let you. But nowadays, you have to, like, audition. There’s some good things in the Bible. It says “make a joyful noise.” It doesn’t say it had to be a pleasant noise. It’s like my mom and dad’s CD. It’s not perfection. You can hear some things that might have needed to be tweaked her and there but that’s not the point of it. The point of it is listening to a man and a woman who spent their entire lives together and the unity of the sound and the old school songs that are so well written and say so


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