(This post originally appeared on my other blog Strawberry Flats, which was dedicated to my love of roots music.)
While driving through the Great Smoky Mountains today, my MP3 player spit out John Hartford’s rendition of “Turn Your Radio On,” from his 1971 stoner-bluegrass landmark, Aereo-Plain. Albert E. Brumley, a legendary composer and son of a sharecropper, wrote the southern gospel tune (he also penned “I’ll Fly Away”). After an eight-mile hike in this glorious part of the country, where massive folds of earth pull you into a never-ending canopy of green, the hymn was far more than just Christian music; it was a kind of prayer to the nature surrounding me. Lines five through eight totally nailed it: “If you want to want to hear the songs of Zion/ Coming from the land of endless spring/ Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)/ Turn your radio on.” The alternate reading then freed my mind to ruminate on additional interpretations, which led to Dr. Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Sure, it’s been a stone-cold cliche
since the 1970s, but that didn’t matter. The connections were too interesting — the idea of tuning in something be it God or nature or that higher perception that’s a part of the LSD experience. It didn’t really matter. It was all the same for that brief moment. It all congealed into one of those WOW moments.
The Christian angle in particular blew my mind. That’s definitely a product of my recent relocation to Appalachia. Out in California, where I used to live, country-hippie culture is far removed from Christianity; it has created a new set of religions and deities. Down here, however, churches are everywhere and Jesus is still no. 1, even for many liberal heads who you would assume harbor serious issues with Christianity — and they probably do in many ways. At the same time, there exists here a deep respect for the music, rituals and spiritual essence of the Christian religion. Hartford and the progressive bluegrass movement he helped spawn in the South in the early ’70s is the perfect example. These guys, deeply influenced by the Grateful Dead and groups like Dillard & Clark, were tuning in, growing beards and smoking weed. But instead of following them West Coast hippies into esoterica and Eastern mysticism, folks like Hartford stuck with the religion of their youth, rediscovering the mysticism embedded in the country gospel music of Brumley, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe, etc.* This is why Aereo-Plain can go from “Turn Your Radio On” to “Holding,” a song about scoring weed, amazingly enough. This is Christian music — no doubt about it. But it has more to do with the Gnostics than Southern Baptists.
Come and listen in to a radio station
Where the mighty host of Heaven sing
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
If you want to want to hear the songs of Zion
Coming from the land of endless spring
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And listen to the music in the air
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And glory to share (glory share)
Turn the lights down low (lights down low)
And listen to the Master’s Radio
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on
Brother, listen in to the gloryland chorus
Listen to the glad hosannahs roll
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Get a little taste of joys awaiting
Get a little Heaven in your soul
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And listen to the music in the air
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And glory to share (glory share)
Turn the lights down low (lights down low)
And listen to the Master’s Radio
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on
Listen to the songs of the fathers and the mothers
And the many friends gone on before
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Some eternal morning we shall meet them
Over on the Hallelujah Shore
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And listen to the music in the air
Turn your radio on (turn your radio on)
And glory to share (glory share)
Turn the lights down low (lights down low)
And listen to the Master’s Radio
Get in touch with God (get in touch with God)
Turn your radio on
Notes:
*You could say Jerry Garcia, on some level, was doing the same thing, but there were key differences. Although he played bluegrass, even helping invent its progressive offshoot, he wasn’t a Southerner weened on Jesus. His brand of spirituality was informed primarily by the Acid Tests. That was his religion. Garcia spoke of the self and human consciousness in a mixture of quasi-scientific terms and mystical speak — proto-new age, basically.
