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Every time I hear Harry Chapin's beautiful song Mr. Tanner, I have a hard time keeping my eyes dry. In it, Martin Tanner is a baritone with an otherworldly voice. His passion for singing dies when critics cruelly pan his professional debut, crushing his spirit.
In August, my eyes filled with tears of a different kind—of joy—when I first heard The Hillbilly Thomists play live. This sensational bluegrass band, which took its name from Southern Gothic fiction writer Flannery O'Connor's charming description of her own creative worldview, is made up entirely of friars of the Order of Preachers.
For 50 weeks a year, the clergy humbly live out their priestly vocation as, for example, university chaplains, parish vicars and best-selling theology authors. For the remaining two weeks, when harmony reigns, they go on tour. In many ways, they are similar to the fictional Mr. Tanner.
WHAT GRATEFUL DEAD SONG AND A DOG NAMED AFTER ONE OF THEIR SONGS TAUGHT ME HOW TO LIVE MY FAITH
Like dry cleaning, music is a side job for these lyrical but dutiful Dominicans. They found themselves on the path to the priesthood because, also like Mr. Tanner, each “sang from his heart and sang from his soul, he didn’t know how well he sang, it just made him feel complete.” They sang and sing because deep in their bones and as tuning brother Cat Stevens gleefully put it, they can’t contain it. On their life’s journey of faith, bluegrass is simply the soundtrack.
The Hillbilly Thomists. This summer, when their fourth album, “Marigold,” debuted at No. 2 on Billboard's bluegrass albums chart.
The Hillbilly Thomists differ from Tanner in one very important way. From the beginning, critics have praised their music. According to the modest account of Father Simon Teller, OP, chaplain and director of campus ministry at Providence College, they released their first album in 2017 to evangelize, yes, but also to pay for their health insurance.
Imagine the band's surprise when the maiden voyage of that self-titled album reached No. 3 on Billboard's bluegrass album chart. When Billboard phoned Father Teller with the news and asked for a group photo, he curtly told his bandmates, “We'd better get a camera.” It happened again this summer, when their fourth album, “Marigold,” debuted at No. 2.
Their folk music is both complex and enchanting, with lyrics rich with poetry and Holy Scripture, but it is their live performances that embody the joy. The Hillbilly Tomists’ love of God, of each other, and of music is unmistakable, an apt metaphor for the real presence they so reverently worship. By turning American music into a sacred sound, they play on human hearts, with the light of happiness doubled by wonder, to borrow G.K. Chesterton’s definition of gratitude. They are, in a very good word, enchanting.
But why is that? It's too funny to attribute their astonishing success to Providence, which after all isn't on stage with the band and keeps them in rhythm when they perform. What is it about their music that exudes such appealing happiness doubled by wonder? I think it's something desperately simple, a critical choice they've made in their lives, but equally desperately rare in the world, since so few people make the same decision without reservation.
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The choice is to put first things first, and God comes first. Gifted musicians, all, the Hillbilly Tomists rejected the “music or ministry” dilemma—rightly so—as a false choice. Instead, they chose to serve God as Dominican priests, first and always. In doing so, they found themselves as brother musicians and became the band they could never have hoped to be if they had put music first.
The British writer C.S. Lewis explained this phenomenon succinctly. In a letter to Dom Bede Griffiths in 1951, Lewis wrote: “If we put first things first, we shall get second things; if we put second things first, we shall lose both first and second.” Later, in his masterpiece Mere Christianity, he made the same point with greater universality: “Aim for heaven and you get earth; aim for earth and you get neither.”
It’s easy to say, but hard to practice. I struggle with it daily. Even in the good times, as in prayer, it’s too often an exercise in craftily demanding that my will be done rather than humbly accepting that yours be done. That’s the very definition of putting secondary things first, of aiming for the earthly. It took a merry band of bluegrass-loving friars to remind me, melodically but methodically, of the folly of my ways and the wisdom of theirs.
I think that's why Hillbilly Thomists radiate triumphant joy when they play. They've followed the advice of Matthew 6:33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” They produce the fruits promised to those who put the most important things first. And if they can do it, I can too.
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I end where I began, thinking of poor Mr. Tanner, the dejected singer of Harry Chapin's imagination. It is special when life imitates art, sublime when life imitates good art, and transcendent when life improves on good art.
To listen to The Hillbilly Thomists is to see the path the broken Mr. Tanner might have taken. Their glorious music makes not only the priestly band members themselves feel whole, but also everyone who hears it. Like the saintly rockers, all we have to do is put first things first.
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