When you live along the Front Range of the Rockies, if you’re planning on doing anything in the summer, you better plan on doing it in the morning. Later in the day chances of having the heavens turn themselves inside out with the usual accompanying electrical display are about nine in ten. So it was with some trepidation that we planned an early evening house concert on the back-yard lawn with indie artist Nathan Clark George.
Nathan has been making his living as musician for the last five years and truly takes the concept of “touring” to new heights, living with his wife Patsy and six kids in a (good-sized) RV while they are on a permanent road trip. Hard work, word-of-mouth and most of all great music have garnered him glowing reviews and two “Acoustic Artist Of The Year” awards from Indieheaven. I first became aware of his music when he visited our church, but I was only able to catch part of one song in between on-call pager interruptions. That snippet was fine and made me think I 
really need to check out this guy’s music. Unfortunately that thought got lost in busyness and it wasn’t until months later that a review of his music popped up on my e-desk. I promised myself once more that I would explore George’s music. Yet again, no follow through, but since he and his family are spending the summer nearby in Westcliffe, Colorado, he performed once more during our worship service. Patsy and their kids were sitting right in front of us, so during the greeting time I went right up and said, “Welcome. Do you do house concerts?” A short time later, last night’s gig was set.
Well, it was an unusually perfect evening for Colorado and we made the most of it. About 45 friends had a “bring-your-own-basket” picnic on our back lawn and music started a short time later. Nathan’s forte is putting Scripture to music and he delighted us by opening with folkie renditions of Psalms 111 and 24. His smooth, deep, voice blended nicely with impressive finger-style virtuosity. The guitar looked like it had been around a block or two but had a sweet, rich tone especially in its bass range. Most of the evening he performed his own music, although “The Devil Ain’t Lazy”, by Fred Rose was an audience participation favorite. He mocked himself a bit for writing a “cheesy love song” titled “You Make Me Smile”, but I thought it was pretty non-cheesy, especially when the songs opened with him laughing (or maybe just smiling), when his wife misses the clutch and hits the brake. I’d say that man writes pretty brave lyrics.
It was hard to narrow down, but my favorite was a rendition of Psalm 2 whose tune was supposed to have CCM radio potential. The tune was quickly accessible and the guitar accompaniment quickly drew you in, but Nathan, correctly surmised that lyrics such as, “Why do the nations rage?” and “You shall break them with a rod of iron.”, is probably not what Top 10 Christian radio is looking for. Of course the song is not recorded yet, but he said maybe I could a bootleg of it.
I don’t know about you, but I can pop out lyrics to forty-year-old rock ‘n roll songs that I haven’t listened to in ten. Music is a powerful key to memorization. Muslims certainly know this and use singing and chanting to help their young madrasa students to memorize the Koran. To have good tunes that accompany Scripture is such a breath of fresh air and is certainly a way of getting better stuff in your head than, “Lola, L-O-L-A, Lola, la la la la Lola”.
Check out Nathan Clark George at http://www.myspace.com/nathanclarkgeorge . I’d recommend starting with “Pull Up A Chair” - not even one song on there you’d regret buying.
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