Rachel E. Watson

It's no secret I've been going through a hard time lately. I've blogged about anxiety, depression and mood disorder symptoms, and I've taken blogging breaks here and there to replenish my reserves.

What exactly was I doing during those breaks?

Well, as I mentioned in a July 15 post, one of the main things I was doing was listening to music. Not just any music, but specific types that I knew would do my brain good. I named four of them in the July 15 blog post.

Here are three more:

1. Classical music. On my Pandora station, I've been listening to Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergey Rachmaninov and Claude Debussy. In my car, I listen to Johannes Brahms and a mix of Romantic period composers from a CD I got as a graduation gift from a family friend a long time ago.

Here's my favorite Bach piece:



2. Bards. Singer-songwriters or bands with lyrics that grab hold of my brain and shake all the lies out. That's what good songwriters do. I'm thinking of Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, Brandi Carlile, The Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons and Ryan Montbleau.

Here's a Ryan Montbleau song, for those of you who haven't heard his songwriting:



3. Soundtracks. I kid you not, one of the best ways to rise up from a low point is through singing or humming along with Disney soundtracks or other animated film songs. Fantasia is basically all classical music. The Aladdin soundtrack is compulsively singable. And my favorite ... of all time .. is the Anastasia soundtrack, with hits like "Once Upon a December," "Learn to Do It," and "In the Dark of the Night."

Here's the album's first track, "A Rumor in St. Petersburg":



Read more of my blog posts about music here.

I was listening to a Spotify playlist called "Evening Unwind" a few weeks back, and her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Blue Alert" came on. I had never heard her voice, but I was instantly entranced. I was bewitched in a similar way by Rachael Yamagata in 2007, when I stumbled across her cover of Joni Mitchell's "River" on one of my Pandora stations.

It's been my pleasure to track the musical evolution of one of my old college pals, singer-songwriter and piano rock artist Zach Vinson.

Vinson's third solo album, "How We Spend Our Days" officially releases today. And it's good.

I've been absorbing its sounds and letting them rattle around inside my head for a few weeks now.

The six-song album is full of wisdom and poetry about love, life, family and Vinson's Wisconsin roots. The melodies compel me to dance fast and slow, to upbeat, piano-driven "You're the One," to the gentle, acoustic guitar strains of "A Simple Verse," to the contemplative, yet joyful rock 'n' roll of "Home."

I have to admit I wasn't prepared for the heavier electric and bass guitar rock elements on the track 4, "Something About the Way," as Vinson's first two albums leaned more to the pop side of the pop/rock spectrum. But the good news is, Vinson has the musical ability to flow from one set of sounds to another with skill and ease.

My favorite song on the album is "A Simple Verse." It's the essence of marital affection. Words fail. Just listen and appreciate its simple beauty.



"A Simple Verse"

I wanted to write a simple verse,
Something not feeling too rehearsed,
To remind you that in good times and in worse,
I am not leaving.

Cause this year's been different than before.
The row's we've dug run far beneath the floor,
And most days I'm the one who's keeping score
And I am not winning.

Is there a way to know everything?
Each bit of your pain,
Each memory you've seen?
Is there a way two can be one
and the same?

I wanted to write a simple song,
A melody in your head while I'm gone,
To hold to when you just cannot hold on.
I'm gone, but I'm not leaving.

Cause you and I are different than before
And your wrinkled smile lines hint at something more,
Something gleaming, something leaping at the core
Hiding inside you.

Is there is a way to know everything?
Each bit of your pain, each memory you see?
Is there a way two can be one
and the same?

I wanted to write a simple verse,
Something not feeling too rehearsed,
To remind you that in good times and in worse,
I am not leaving.

Zach Vinson's music

If you like the song I shared, you can buy Zach Vinson's third album, "How We Spend Our Days," as well as his two previous albums, "The Streets Will Turn to Streams" and "Cracked Open," at his website. To get updates about Vinson's shows and future album releases. "Like" his Facebook page and follow him on Twitter.

Read more of my blog posts about music here.

No, I'm not about to tell you a silly joke. I stole today's blog title from the opening anecdote of the Memorial Weekend sermon at my church, Ada Bible. It was called "Your God Response."

Listen to the sermon here.

Here's a recap: Guest speaker Marcus Bieschke shared about the musicality and beauty of Psalm 19, one of my favorite Psalms ever. According to C.S. Lewis, it's "the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world."

Bieschke is lead teaching pastor at the Crystal Lake campus of Willow Creek Church in Illinois. He is a music lover, just like me, and asked us in the sermon's opening minutes to turn to our neighbor and tell him or her our favorite song. I dislike that game because I have too many favorites, so it was awesome when he admitted he himself has about 83 favorite songs and can't narrow it down.



For his talk at Ada, Bieschke selected three of the Top 500 Songs of All Time, as compiled by Rolling Stone Magazine in 2011. And he held those songs, full of pain, despair and hopelessness, up to the light of Psalm 19, written by King David thousands of years ago.

Here are the songs he chose to compare against Psalm 19. I'm embedding videos in case you haven't listened to the songs before.

No. 3 from the Rolling Stone list: "Imagine," by John Lennon:



Bieschke said he imagines King David sitting down with each songwriter, one by one, and having a conversation about the merits and philosophies behind each work of musical genius.

To Lennon, he imagines King David would have said something like, "This is beautiful. Your longing for a world free of pain and united by peace is a truly worthy aspiration. But let's start with a new premise. God is not the cause of our pain. Sin is. Eliminating Him from the equation won't fix our world. God sees the pain that we humans caused, and it breaks His heart. In fact, he promises that in heaven, he will wipe away our tears, and there will be no more sorrow and pain." (Isaiah 25:8, Revelation 21:4)

I love that. It reminds me of the deep heartbreak I felt when I attended the funeral of a dearly loved mentor three summers ago, and a colleague of his sang "Imagine." It frustrated me to hear that message at a funeral. The lyrics are wistful and beautiful, but they offer no hope to grieving hearts.

No. 9 from the list: "Smells Like Teen Spirit," by Kurt Cobain:

Amos Lee

I recently came across "The Music Is You: A Tribute to John Denver," a lovely collection of cover songs by various blues, country, folk, pop, rock and soul musicians.

Amos Lee's cover of "Some Days Are Diamonds" is one of my favorite numbers on the album. The song was written and recorded in 1976 by country singer Dick Feller. But it didn't hit the Billboard charts until John Denver recorded and released it as a single in May 1981.

In his 2013 cover, Lee enfolds Feller's pensive lyrics with his soulful, bluesy voice and gentle acoustic guitar picking. He plays with the tempo and melody, transforming the song from the rollicking version Denver recorded to a more contemplative, emotionally poignant tune.

There are plenty of things to like about Feller's original piano, guitar and strings version, and about Denver's bouncy cover, but Lee's rendition stirs my guts. 

See what I mean below:



"Some Days Are Diamonds"

The Avett Brothers' 2007 album, "Emotionalism," was made for people who experience anxiety.

Well, I haven't asked the band for comment, but I'm pretty sure I can read their minds in this case. ;)

Here's why I care: I also struggle with anxiety, in addition to my battle with depression that I discussed Sunday. I just received an anxiety disorder diagnosis this morning, and the doctor put me on short-term and long-term medications for it. I also plan to explore it more at my next therapy session.

This isn't really a surprise. I have always known I tend to be a worrier. I feel anxious in crowds. My skin breaks out in hives when I have to speak in front of a large group — I'm so thankful for turtleneck shirts! — and I sometimes have panic attacks when I feel overwhelmed.

Like this morning, for instance. I contacted my therapist and a good friend who also experiences anxiety, and they both recommended I see my doctor and get a prescription.

If you can relate to any of the above, and if you also happen to like folksy/bluegrass/rock music, I strongly recommend you listen to The Avett Brothers' "Emotionalism" album.

Maybe don't listen to it right in the middle of a panic attack. For that situation, I recommend hymns. Or total silence. But once you are feeling stabilized, listened to "Emotionalism."

It seems almost every song on the record extends honesty and compassion toward folks who struggle with anxiety.

One song rises to the top: "Paranoia in B♭ Major." With a humorous, swinging tempo and witty lyrics, it perfectly captures my own experience with anxiety: The stress dreams, the worry about what other people are thinking of me, the sometimes debilitating tunnel vision that threatens to beat me up.

(Don't worry, anxious readers! It hasn't beat me to this day. :)

I keep tellin' myself that it'll be fine
You can't make everybody happy all of the time
I found myself in a place that I never been
A place that I thought that I would never be
There's people looking back at me

I keep having this dream; I'm at a party
There's people throwing drinks and screaming telling me that I don't belong
Lately life's been the same I find this comfortable place
With all my friends then my friends start telling me that I've always been wrong
And I'm so tired of being wrong

There was a time I could move there was a time I could breathe
The crowded spaces filled with angry faces
It didn't once cross my mind
With paranoia on my heels; Will you love me still
when we awake and you find that the sanity has gone from my eyes?

I got secrets from you, you got secrets from me
Because you're so worried about what I'm gonna think,
Baby I'm worried, too
But if love is a game, girl, then you're gonna win
I'll spend the rest of my life bringing victory in
If you want me to

I discovered a delightful singer-songwriter prodigy on Spotify the other day. You might have heard his ad that plays on stations similar to his. If not, I'd like to share him with you.

His name is Jacob Whitesides; he's a young Tennessean. He's got a voice like John Legend meets Jack Johnson meets a less-annoying version of John Mayer.

When I called him a prodigy above, I was serious.

Whitesides taught himself how to sing and play guitar at the age of 13 — quite early in the context of modern lifespans. Prodigies in Mozart's day blossomed at 4 and lived to be 40, if they were lucky. (Mozart wasn't lucky.)

The Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids.

The Evangelical Choral Society is a severely underrated musical gemster in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and you, the public, can turn that around. You'll love this choir. It's filled with heart and technical skill. As they belt out the classics, the group will twist up your music-loving guts and knock your (probably) Argyle socks off.

On Saturday, my dear husband, precious sister and I were blessed to attend the group's semi-annual public performance. This spring's concert was held at the Cathedral of St. Andrew — the Grand Rapids Catholic Diocese headquarters.

Besides being an obscenely lovely building that's about to celebrate its 140th birthday, the cathedral, as noted by music director and diocese organist Nick Palmer, who welcomed the audience on Saturday, is perfectly acoustically designed to radically majestify the beauty of choral music. That's a paraphrase.

The church often hosts community concerts, not just sacred music but also opera and whatknot, which I think is a wonderful outreach. Brava, St. Andrew's! You brothers and sisters got it. And when you got it, flaunt it.

Randall Wm. Burghart addresses the audience between songs.

Saturday's concert, led by the group's esteemed conductor and music director, Randall Wm. "Randy" Burghart, featured three works in German, one in Latin and three in English, and two outstanding sopranos: Kristen Burghart (Randy's awesome classically trained singer-chef-cool person-wife, whose voice you local folks might recognize from Opera GR performances), and Mary Lehr Dean, whom I hadn't seen perform with the group before, but found to be an impressive talent whose high notes could probably break glass. But not the glass at St. Andrew's, because it was recently reinforced.

Here is Dean singing lead soprano on the song, "God So Loved the World," by Bob Chilcott:



Wow. Chills. (Bee tee dubs, I don't admit this very often, but I cried during Dean's performance. Coddle me, mommet. Oy vey.)

The program was about evenly split between classic and modern works: Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn and Georg Schumann, balanced with Chilcott, David Cherwien and a spiritual by the late Moses Hogan.

For me, the wild card was the Latin, Holy-Thursday masterwork by Marc Antonio Ingegnieri, "Ecce Vidimus Eum," a sixteenth-century liturgical piece I hadn't heard before. I loved it. Here it is:



I'm glad Burghart invited his longtime musical collaborator Bethany Schutter, an alto singer and Hudsonville High School voice instructor, to conduct one of the songs, the spiritual by Moses Hogan, "Deep River."

This is a favorite piece for me and my fellow pianist sister, Marissa, ever since we learned to play an arrangement of it years and years ago on keys. We were delighted to hear it performed a capella. The keyboard is no match for the agonizing so-good-it-hurts bazinga of a spiritual.



The closing performance was an 11-minute, beautiful, nuanced and expertly honed rendition of Felix Mendelssohn's "Hear My Prayer," the evening's only piece with organ accompaniment, as performed by St. Andrew's Nick Palmer. His pipe organ rocks the friggin' casbah.

"Hear My Prayer" was soprano Kristen Burghart's chance to shine, and she stepped up and delivered the goods, as she invariably does.

My sister and I were particularly tickled by her expressive countenance during her solo sections. Besides her overall pleasant demeanor, it seemed from where we were sitting that she mostly kept her eyes fixed on her husband's face, not his conducting gestures or her songbook or the crowd. The eye contact, or what appeared to us was eye contact, is a sweet habit of theirs I've noticed at other ECS concerts. I imagine it communicates their years of musical togetherness and mutual affection. (Or is that my mushy heart showing?)

Watch to see if you can catch her not-so-covert glances in this stunning video of the finale, "Hear My Prayer."

Regarding the caliber of the show as a whole, I foresee the cathedral taking up a collection for roof repairs, because the music raised the rafters off their hinges and slammed them back down again. Mylanta!



Like what you heard?

The Evangelical Choral Society, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, performs free concerts twice yearly: once in the spring and again in the fall. The fall 2015 concert will be held the Sunday before Thanksgiving at First (Park) Congregational Church, 10 E. Park Place NE in downtown Grand Rapids.

As an added bonus, at that concert, ECS will be performing with a full orchestra. (Squee!) To learn more, visit www.ecs-gr.org, or "Like" their Facebook page.

Note: I am, as you might have noticed from my inexcusably familiar remarks, acquainted with the Burgharts, owing to our mutual Cornerstone University ties. I was not, however, in any way paid or goaded into writing this review. So when you donate your moolah on the ECS website, and please do, you need not fret that the money will be mismanaged on dubious propaganda campaigns that involve hiring this cornball reviewer. I can't however, promise not to review their music again. Because they are my kryptonite. Peace out, homies.

If you read this blog long enough, you'll find out I love folk music, singer-songwriters, and bands that cross traditional genre boundaries.

What especially grabs my attention is bands whose song lyrics tell a captivating story or spark my imagination in some way.

Here's this week's example: a song from a Chicago-based indie folk rock band The Diving Bell. (Full disclosure: The band's founder is my husband's cousin, Steve Hendershot.)

Hendershot and his band collaborated on the video below with the writer whose book inspired the song and the band's name: James P. Delgado, author of "Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine: Iron, Guns and Pearls."

The song is called "Pacific Pearl Co. 1869," and it's about the first successful deep-diving submersible, built in 1864 by Julius H. Kroehl. He intended it to be used in the Civil War, but it was completed too late, and so was repurposed as a pearl diving ship for use off the Pacific coast of Panama.

I hope you enjoy the song — the harmonies, the writing, the strings, and the lead vocals — as much as I did. I hope you enjoy the story, too.



Here's a live performance of the same song that was recorded for submission to NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts contest:



The lyrics are below.

Rhiannon Giddens

I was browsing through my viewing history on Amazon yesterday and discovered a new artist under the suggested purchases section.

Her name is Rhiannon Giddens, and she is an African-American, cross-genre, multi-instrumentalist musician and singer who just produced a debut solo album in February called "Tomorrow Is My Turn," after the Nina Simone song of the same title.

Her voice is ... wow. I don't think I know of anyone else recording music today with a sound quite like hers. She's got a throwback style that somehow feels fresh and new.

I'm glad T Bone Burnett agreed and helped produce her album, which is full of deftly arranged cover songs. Take a listen below to the final track on her record, which is her original song, "Angel City."

It's a gentle, memoir-like ballad that pulls on my heartstrings.

"Angel City," by Rhiannon Giddens

When I came to Angel City, I was on the run
Blinded by my own pity, I was nearly done
Stock heartbroken, bitter and poor, burdened down by sin
I fought hard to find the door, didn't know how to get in

[Chorus]
Time and time at hand, you helped me over the sand
Gently rising to be, you walked a mile with me
And I saw the sea

I am found where I was lost, I am closer to free
Heart unbound, whatever the cost, all rivers fall to the sea

[Chorus] x2


If slow and gentle ballads aren't your thing, the good news is, this album has a lot of variety of tempos and styles. I'd almost say "something for everyone," but I'll concede not everyone is going to love her voice like I do.

Earlier this year, one of my favorite folk rock bands, The Lone Bellow, released their second album, "Then Came the Morning." It's a beautiful showcase of the band's abilities, which already were so strongly evident in their self-titled first album.

I love this band for many reasons: visceral emotion (they really put their hearts into their performances); their beautiful three-part vocals; use of upright bass, violin and piano; and the way I find these bits and pieces of scriptural themes in their songwriting. I don't know whether the latter is intentional or if I'm just seeing it because I'm looking. Either way, I love it.

Here's an example from their current album. In Psalm 30, there's this beautiful verse, "Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning." That's a verse I think of often on nights when I'm feeling at my worst — I hold onto the knowledge that the morning brings a rested mind and a fresh perspective.

I don't know the story behind the title song, "Then Came the Morning," but it sounds like a break-up song, whether of a marriage or longtime relationship, I don't know. But the line that's repeated is one of relief, of light and water rushing in to wash away heartbreak.

"Then Came The Morning," by The Lone Bellow

Then came the morning
It was bright, like a light that you kept from your smile
Then came the morning
Like a flood from the storm that you kept from my heart

Take the dog with you when you leave
Wash my hands of all this broken heave
Never forget what you thought you’d never be
If you ever let me
Break the spell and try and
Leave it when we couldn’t find it

Then came the morning
It was bright, like a light that you kept from your smile
Then came the morning
Like a flood from the storm that you kept from my heart

Take my words, breathe them out like smoke
Burn every single letter that I wrote
Let the pages turn to ash, I don’t want them back
Everything you always said to me
Starts to sound like broken glass on streets
Spreaded out all over places where I sleep

Now you finally left me
Done with all your lying
Joy comes in the morning
You won’t see me crying

Then came the morning
It was bright, like the light that you kept from your smile
Then came the morning
Like a flood from the storm that you kept from my heart

Then came the morning
It was lost when you left when you took what I felt
Then came the morning
Then came the morning
Then came the morning
Then came the morning

Then the storm breaks the cold
Not towards the line I thought you stole
Start to feel what I felt way before
You broke down my front door
Popped my heart up off the wooden floor
Now I don’t need your smile anymore

Then came the morning
It was bright, like a light that you kept from your smile
Then came the morning
Like a flood from the storm that you kept from my heart

Then came the morning
Then came the morning
Then came the morning
Then came the morning
Then came the morning
If you liked that, you might also like a song with scriptural threads from their first album, "Teach Me to Know." It echoes a line from Psalm 39:4, which says "Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is."

"Teach Me To Know," by The Lone Bellow

First born
Carried promise of the old one
You're the same but somehow different
Bared the burdens of the line

It breaks in
And you never see it coming
Seems like every other morning
Like a secret you can't tell

And you get carried away
Carried away (carried away, carried away)
Carried away (carried away, carried away)

Out there
Thousand years into the future
Almost nothing of it seems sure
Things so rarely stay the same

Right here
In these burning simple seconds
Living out all your best guesses
Someone's calling out your name

And you get carried away
Carried away (carried away, carried away)
Carried away (carried away, carried away)
Carried away (carried away, carried away)
Carried away (carried away, carried away)

Teach me to know my number of days
Hold out my heart from getting carried
[x3]

Carried away (carried away, carried away)
Carried away (carried away, carried away)
Carried away (carried away, carried away)
Carried away (carried away, carried away)

Buy the music