today’s audio is the bobby bare classic “dropkick me jesus”. a hit for the country music icon in 1976, it was written by nashville songwriter paul craft. his claim that it is the “world’s only christian football waltz” is a claim likely never to be refuted. why would anyone need another christian football waltz when these two and a half minutes are devoted punny perfection.
on brand for the fax of life, let’s go deeper down this rabbit hole for a moment. when i was googling this song, i found a blog post from a guy in australia who plays amateur weekend football with his friends. he was taken by the song too. he googled paul craft, where found his website, and the following quote from the songwriter himself:
“When I wrote “Dropkick Me Jesus” I figured everybody knew about songs like “I’m Using My Bible For A Roadmap” and “We Need A Lot More Jesus (And A Lot Less Rock And Roll)” and would appreciate what I had accomplished with my song. Well, my mother didn’t, for one. She just KNEW there was something wrong with a song that had “kick” and “Jesus” that close together in the title. And she wasn’t alone. But Elvis Costello and Bill Clinton understand it and like it.”
the first time i encountered this song, i was doing “research”, which is usually just means googling things. i was preparing for the 2011 sports-themed episode of cabin fever, my long-running streaming variety show. going strong since 2009!
at first i loved it ironically - a song about jesus! using football as a metaphor! then i loved it campily - a kind of artificial costume that actually did capture something very real. now, more than a decade after i first sang it, i love it because … i’m into football, and i’m into jesus.
i’ll wait for you to pick your jaw up off the floor about the jesus part.
while you’re doing that, let me talk about the football part. if you’ve even halfway been listening to me for the last 25 years, you will know that i love sports. that cabin fever episode is just one of many examples where i have been explicit about this love. i have written articles for paste and the advocate about my love of baseball. i wrote a whole blog series for new york public radio on the intersection between sports and music. i hosted an episode of “soundcheck” on WNYC that was about sports-themed theater. by the way, that episode featured my pal director Thomas Kail, another creative type who loves sports. if you don’t know him, you will probably know the next project he directed after our interview, a little skit called HAMILTON.
and this is just my public facing self. my friends also know how much i love sports. it’s clear from the moment you walk in my house where a huge portrait of megan rapinoe hangs in my living room. right as the pandemic was kicking off, i got super into… cricket! as the pandemic waned, i got into… formula 1! you can blame netflix for both of those delightful detours.
she blesses us all
i mostly grew up a baseball fan, but as a small fry in the orbit of the 1990s washington football teams, i also loved football by osmosis. this love has carried into adulthood. and ever since the redsox traded mookie betts and dustin pedroia retired, football has been my primary sports-watching love.
i set aside my sundays to watch games. all my friends know this. my therapist also takes it as a given.
“have a good time watching the games,” she says as i leave her office on friday afternoons.
i try to watch all the football docs and docu-series i can find. i have a subscription to the NFL network. i listen to many football podcasts. i delight in rivalries and history. i have a lot of favorite teams. uniforms matter to me, and i follow a specific twitter account that keeps track of the changes in what teams wear. i think one of the best places to be in the world is an airport bar watching the big game, any big game, with total strangers.
sometimes when i mention something to do with football, people are surprised. if they are ostensibly friends, i immediately doubt our friendship. how could you not know this about me? do you not see me? am i letting down my side of the friendship bargain by not being my true self with you at all times? it gets dark for me fast.
other times, i think people’s surprise is based in a kind of stereo-typed or reductionist idea of who would like football. i cant blame you. you’re not wrong to have assumed i wouldn’t be into such a mainstream, capitalist, violent, racist sport. a sport with dubious ties to the military-industrial complex. a sport that conflates fandom with a certain kind of MAGA patriotism. i will be the first to say all of these things are true about football. sometimes my love for football even bewilders me.
Touchdown Jesus, Notre Dame IN
but football, like all sports, is also the best movie you’ve ever watched where no one has seen the ending yet. it is a masterclass in working within the constraints of a long list of rules, which i think is the definition of creativity. football is chess and a marathon and a wrestling match all rolled up into one.
as far as the actual corporation that is the NFL, i hold my nose. i do not endorse them. they are a necessary evil. and i avidly support the many activists who love the game, but are also pushing back about labor relations and safety.
hey yall! popping in here late to say thanks for all the positive feedback about renaming the pod. it seems like “the fax of life” is hit. also thanks to those of you that let me know i got one very important fact of life wrong: alan thicke was the dad on “growing pains”, not “family ties” as i said in the episode. how could i have gotten that so wrong!! i promise to do better with my facts in the future.
i also want to let you know that i have a random gig february 16th in lincoln massachusetts. the decordova museum had an artist dropout at the last minute and i am glad to fill in. it’s like a random sighting of a yeti in the wild. erin plays a live show! blink and it’s gone. i know this is irrelevant to many of you listening in other parts of the world, but i offer it here just to say that you never know when it might work out for me to perform. ask and ye shall receive. especially if the money is garunteed.
thanks as always for your continued support. subscribe if you like, tell a friend, etc etc. i am forever grateful.
now let’s talk about jesus!
i get it. jesus is a complex thing. like football, jesus often gets turned into a shibboleth for a set political values i don’t support. jesus can often be a weapon of hate and fear and punishment. humans have done a lot to confuse and complicate and erase the nuance of this cultural symbol.
i grew up with a catholic jesus in my life. lots of blood and thorns etc. i was skeptical, even blasphemous. very young, i was shown monty python’s life of brian. and i thought, yes, that’s what i think about jesus. an ironic joke. a parody. how funny.
as i’ve grown older and developed more of a spiritual practice and outlook on life, i’ve come to respect how other people can hold jesus as a representative of the same. besides the demons who use jesus as an excuse for hate and violence, there are plenty of people for whom jesus means a kind and service-oriented way of life, a way to build community among seemingly disparate people, a way to help and support the least of us.
things really began to change for me a few years ago when i worked with an artist who had a deeply personal and loving relationship with jesus. to say i was surprised to learn this is an understatement. i had never imagined that someone could be a politically radical creative type and also hold jesus in their heart. thankfully, they weren’t shaken by my surprise. they were comfortable in their love of jesus and were happy to explain just what jesus offered them.
for them, jesus was a friend, a comfort who was always reaching a helping and loving hand out to them. it really was that simple. it wasn’t about heaven or hell. it wasn’t about abortion or politics. for them jesus was simply a loving, constant companion who wanted the best for them. it was about a friendship.
by the way, i think friendship is way underrated in our society. can i get an amen if you agree??
this encounter with my artist friend, opened a door for me. i didn’t have to be scared of someone who loved jesus. they loved jesus, but were not an evangelical freak. i knew this person, knew their commitment to justice through art, knew their skill as a creator. i became jesus-curious.
a few years later, i was in a tiny art-house theater in raleigh NC. on a day off from tour, another friend and i had decided to go see the newly-edited and released aretha franklin concert film, amazing grace.
the movie documents the live recording of aretha’s seminal gospel album of the same name. that album is one of my all-time favorites. it fits right into my spiritual outlook and way of life, a musical expression of what i recognize daily: there is a power greater than me, and that power is wholly loving. it’s not more complicated for me than that.
so i’m watching the film, watching aretha work. and she is working!! sweating as she pounds the piano, works the mic, and pushes herself deeper into the music. her talent is other-worldly. it has the aura of a gift, to you and to her. you feel she is channeling a greater power. it is awesome and inspiring to behold.
then something shifts. she stands still behind a lecturn to sing the song “what a friend we have in jesus”. she stays right there for the whole song, grounded and settled, and sings her ass off. when she and the choir linger on the word “everything”, repeating it until it becomes holy, i get goosebumps. what was cosmic, becomes earthly. palpable flesh and blood. aretha not just conjures but is truly in the presence of a friend. and that friend is everything. jesus is so very real to her. as real as my friend sitting next to me at the movie. as real as the musicians accompanying aretha as she plays.
i remember being so moved by this and thinking, “i want to know that person. if he’s such a good friend to aretha. maybe i should meet him.”
like i said, in the spiritual realm, i keep things very uncomplicated. i keep the sentences short. i keep the focus on positivity. i keep the lens small and don’t think beyond the day as i live it. i am thankfully unbothered by any past traumas that have to do with god, jesus, or spiritual communities. i have other traumas, but they aren’t these. god, jesus, spirituality can be simple gifts that bring me peace, focus, and joy.
while i expect my friends to know i love sports, i know i can’t expect people to know that i love god, what i choose to call this power greater than me, and that i am curious about this friend named jesus. it’s too big a leap from who people probably think i am, plus it’s so personal. sports is often a place where people come together. religion (different from spirituality) is often a place where people divide. i get this.
and yet, if you were listening, you might have caught this strain in my writing
every day, give me the strength of a thousand beams
every day, carry me and lift me and hold me
here i am, humble on my knees
come back to life, come back to everything
you were right about everything
god is perfectly clear
we are perfectly out
i have some newer neighbors that i enjoy a lot. we have dogs and music and our shared small town in common. they are also atheists. i can’t blame them for assuming i would be too. but their mouths literally fell open when somehow, after about a year of friendship, it came up that i love god. that i believe in god. i worried for a moment that it might be the end of our friendship.
but i underestimated my own comfort in what i believe. i am finding, i can’t be shaken from what is true for me. and i underestimated their curiousity about my beliefs, and i about theirs.
i suppose that’s what i want to get at by even singing “dropkick me jesus”. yes, i love the song ironically. it’s so wierd! and yes i love it campily. it takes its own absurdity seriously and in that is deeply true. and i actually do love football and jesus. all of these things can be true and still coexist in one undeniably ridiculous song. “dropkick me jesus” is both a joke and a hymn. girl, you can have it all.
in the end, it’s all a good reminder to stay curious about people, rather than judgmental. to ask questions rather than assume. i think that’s what friends are for.
x erin
ps - your carl content!
itsa log on a log!
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!
i mentioned i listen to a lot of football pods. brothers travis (kansas city tight end) and jason (philly center) kelce have a great one. total goofball bros, but smarter than you’d expect.
i love the bengals! THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE!! MIC’D UP!!
i just recently met the awesome podcast creator, sam dingman, and i’m in love with his podcast about oriole fandom, cal ripken, and yes… kevin costner.
keeping with our sports theme, a wonderful biography of native american sports legend jim thorpe.
a list of facts? CLICK!
“The Banshees of Inisherin” really moved me. wow. it’s becket-esque. and says some true/terrible things about what it’s like to be an artist. and a friend. if you’re a deep nerd like me, you’ll appreciate that you can read the screenplay online.
i read, or rather listened, to prince harry’s book. i am not ashamed of this. it’s really good.
UPCOMING SHOWS
Feb 16 - Lincoln MA
deCordova Museum
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now - Feb 19 - San Jose CA
Miss You Like Hell at City Lights
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Oct 14 - Nov 11 - Seattle WA
Miss You Like Hell at Strawberry Theatre
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If you have further questions or concerns about COVID protocols, please contact the venues directly.
Reminder, Erin does not appear in productions of Miss You Like Hell
football and jesus