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Space for Contemplation

John Lucas Reminds Us That It’s Still aWonderful Life

By Compelling Story

November 9^th, 2021

Google maps had taken us the long way round to get to the Lucas residence just outside of Boone, North Carolina. Rolling along a dirt road up into the trees listening to The Bible Belt Sessions for perhaps the twentieth time, I suspect this route to the artist’s home in the Appalachian hills provided much of the inspiration.

On first listen, this latest release from John Lucas Music feels like a sunny drive, or a dawn-breaking trail run, through the mountains. It’s tempting to believe Lucas has departed from his weighty ways apparent in previous works, when instead he’s created yet another space for contemplation, self reflection, and inquiry.

So. Don’t let its playful, wistful demeanor—Lucas’ occasional whistling along with Luke Skaggs’ banjo, fiddle, and slide guitar—fool you. Even as this album lulls you into its Appalachian dream, these are serious songs about serious questions.

Even as this album lulls you into its Appalachian dream, these are serious songs about serious questions.

What’s different about The Bible Belt Sessions from Lucas’ other projects is that it celebrates a sense of place. As well as the nod to bluegrass tradition, it includes musicians from the High Country: worship pastor Erin Deuel, the very talented Hardin family (Everett Hardin — sound engineer and accomplished cellist who produced the album and wife Caroline who played violin along with their six-year-old daughter Everly) and the previously-mentioned evergreen Luke Skaggs. Most of the heavy lifting in the recording process took place just up the road from Lucas’ home at the rentable Cozy Owl Cabin in Boone. In Lucas’ own words, and the album’s subtitle, they are “songs of affection and conviction, sung from the land I love and call home.”

The Holy Ghost Runs Free in These Hills

For a while we sit outside in the yard where he’s set out a pak n play for son Noah. It still has hints of sand from a quick trip to the coast a few days before. With a Taylor acoustic slung over his shoulder and his baby son strapped to his chest, Lucas balances family life with musical passion.

“The Bible Belt is a region that’s super divided politically, religiously, ideologically. Especially this past year, we’ve seen that,” he says. “And so we’re holding that tension of all that this land encompasses. A lot of dark history took place in this land, and I feel like there’s a lot of injustice that continues to take place. There’s an urban versus rural thing. But there’s also a deep beauty that is intertwined through it all. And there’s a hope that’s intertwined. I wanted to do my best to wrap my arms around all that.”

The land he’s talking about, of course, is the southeastern United States—The Bible Belt—where his Charlotte, North Carolina, upbringing was spent deep in the throes of charismatic evangelical culture. Though he’s grateful for the ways in which those churches shaped his faith in God and his awareness of a world beyond this world, it wasn’t until moving to Boone that he allowed himself space for the bigger questions he had.

“I think we’ve done our best to put God in a box and to say that God loves this and God hates this and that God is for this, and God is against this, and God accepts this, and if you don’t pray this particular prayer, you’re gonna burn forever in hell,” Lucas says. “But I think that God cannot be contained in our best attempts at religion and ways to describe God. He will always run free. Boone was a fresh start for me in a way. It was a safe place that could hold big questions and doubts. I wanted to answer for myself ‘What do I believe about God’ and ‘What do I believe about the world?’ It was a kind of rebirth of my faith.”

Appalachian State University is where he fell in love with Danielle and where they both fell in love with The High Country—and not just for the hikes and vistas and university life. There’s a phrase in Four Chords and the Gospel that embodies the freedom he experienced as bigger questions were able to form in the hills of western North Carolina: “The Holy Ghost runs free in these hills.”

“I feel like the Appalachian mountains are definitely super entwined with all this. Coming up here, I definitely experienced God in a new way. Becoming parents definitely shifted my worldview and a lot of my theology.”

New Life in The High Country

What began as a university career at Appalachian State University and as a journey of inquiry has now become an opportunity for John Lucas to lay down roots in the Boone area.

Boone is where his new family and new life began to form. One of his favorite places in The High Country is the iconic Thunder Hill Overlook, the place along the Blue Ridge Parkway overlooking the Yadkin Valley where he proposed to Danielle.

The couple has moved away from Boone a few times since those early days—once for a brief stint around the world—but they always find their way back to these hills, where they can feel their own spirits run free.

An Appreciation for the Particular Place

During our conversation, Lucas alludes to a second installment of The Bible Belt Sessions and to how his recent reading habits might be influencing some of the songwriting. He’s writing a song directly influenced by completing The Grapes of Wrath and Travels With Charley—two John Steinbeck classics that portray America in a dark and nuanced light with an appreciation for the particular place, people and culture that create a landscape. The songs are still in process, and inspiration comes from many quarters — reading poetry, other artists and just every day life in the mountains.