I interviewed Glenn Kaiser following the Glenn Kaiser Band concert on Saturday, May 31. It only took about four months and the help of GKB fan Cort Via to get the interview transcribed. Click here for some pictures of the interviews, and be sure to check out my review of GKB's latest CD, Blacktop.
Happy Anniversary to Glenn & Wendi, who celebrated their 31st on June 1, and thanks to Wendi for the pre-release copy of Blacktop.
The Interview
gk: Bless this time together and thanks for it, Lord. Lead and guide in the questions and the answers. In Jesus' name, amen.
rb: Amen. Thanks for doing another one, Glenn, after seven months.
rb: Cornerstone this year--Wendi said you guys are going to do a couple of songs.
gk: Yeah, Love Comes Down and White Noise. I am not sure in what order, but it will be interesting either way. (laugh)
rb: Are you going to record them for posterity?
gk: Oh, I don't know. Maybe. It's a good chance somebody will record something and it will end up on the web but I can't guarantee it. I don't know what we will see.
rb: I interviewed Phil Keaggy a few months ago when he was here when he was here in Denver in March and we chatted about the old days a little bit. Remember a band called Liberation Suite?
gk: Um hmmm.
rb: Good old boys from Texas, there. The drummer Randy Hill and Howard Lyon who did trombone, they've still got the band going. They just put out a new project.
gk: You know, I heard that and I am spacing on his name. Uh, Barry, is it?
rb: Barry Bynum.
gk: Yes, Barry. We hung out together and as a matter of fact, he was in a blues tour with me in Northern Ireland probably six years ago. And every now and then I get an email and we email back and forth a little bit.
rb: He's back in Texas.
gk: Right, back in Texas. You know he lived as a missionary there in Ireland for quite some time. But yeah, great band...good people.
rb: In fact I'm scheduled to do an interview with Barry here soon. He's supposed to be sending me a new project he did and we are going to do an interview and get it up on the web and try to promote his new stuff a little.
gk: Oh, excellent. Cool!
rb: But anyway, Randy--the drummer--has a magazine called True Believer where he just did (a cover story) on Rick Derringer, so you can see where this is going.
gk: Very cool! It's a small world.
rb: I just wanted to get a little scoop on how it all came together with the Blacktop project with Rick playing on that.
gk: Well, GKB, like anything else, I didn't want to do the same thing again and again and again. I'm always wanting to stretch. It's a challenge for me as a musician. I think it's fun to be able to bring a palette of musical colors to people. Even though it's blues, blues rock, I like to keep people guessing and I like to move around in different directions.
So for the third release, which is Blacktop, we put together a pile of songs. And as we sat down and talked and prayed about it, conceptualizing what the album would be, Tom Cameron, the director of Grrr Records and long-time producer, exec producer, and dear friend of mine, we were kicking around, "How can we make this album special and not just do a repeat of either Winter Sun or Carolina Moon?"
One thing was that Roy had written so many good songs, and I came up with some that I like but nothing compared to his. He had a batch of about 30 or more songs.
rb: He told me he wrote about 50.
gk: It was unreal. We pared it down, finally, to like 20 or something. I wrote maybe eight or ten songs for the project, had a few more in my head that I didn't like well enough to even bother with, and I finally got to the point where I said, "Man, it just doesn't matter, of course, so one thing that's gonna change is that there's going to be a little bit more Roy's influence." He's coming around to the blues side more than he has in the past. I loved his songs so much. They were like kinda trying to say, "Wait a minute," and I'm like, "No, this one and this one of mine, they need to go and this one and this one of Roy's need to be there"--that kind of thing.
And the more we talked and prayed I thought well, okay, that's a change, because it is a little different feel and flavor and then Tom said, "What do you think about maybe asking a couple of folks to jam?"
I said, "Man, let's do it!"
He said, "You know, Rick Derringer has come to the Lord recently."
I'm like, "I heard about this."
And he said, "I was on the phone with him and he'd like to talk with you."
So I talked with him for a bit and we kind of got to know each other a little through the phone and the more we thought and prayed about it, I thought we ought to have him come up and play on one of these tunes and there's a song that's a little bit more of a Southern rock vibe feel. I said, "Man, he's gonna kill it." So he did--he came up and smoked it. It was so fun. I had written a song that was crying for a B3 and Ed, our drummer and even Roy, our bass player, can play keys, but we've got some great B3 players and Chris Cameron--Hambone is his name--studio guy in Chicago.
rb: Didn't he play on Spontaneous Combustion?
gk: He played on Spontaneous Combustion and a number of other projects I have done. And I'm like, "Oh, man, Bone will just cook on the B3 on this tune," so we had him come play on this song. Which obviously changes the three-piece format some. But I really liked it and I think when you get a chance to hear it you will really like that tune.
rb: On my way home tonight!
gk: And then there's Dave Beegle, who has been a friend actually for quite awhile now. We actually met Dave years ago at Cornerstone Festival when he came with Fourth Estate. It is kind of funny (because) Fourth Estate is a three piece band. Just such a humble man and such a great guitarist--we did some touring together last time in Colorado, up into Wyoming, and over into Nebraska. So I said, "Tom, I think we ought to get Dave Beegle on a tune as well." One of the other tunes was just crying for Dave to come and rip-up and he did.
rb: Did he come down to Chicago?
gk: Yeah, we flew Rick up from Florida and Dave in from Colorado. Both played and both did fabulous jobs. So there's some good surprises. If you like what I've been doing, if you like GKB as a band, as a concept, if you liked Winter Sun and Carolina Moon, I think this is probably the strongest of the three projects. Part of it is because we've had these three incredible players so it gives it a little more spice but there's still continuity and a lot of jamming, free form stuff and I love Roy's writing. I just think he's written some of the best stuff.
rb: Did you write the majority of the lyrics and Roy did the majority of the music?
gk: Yes. Exactly. And I've got some tunes on there, too that I like. It's easy to write lyrics to Roy's stuff. I hear his stuff and bang I'm there. It's like, back that up and start typing.
rb: What about the live GKB project that you mention on your website, maybe in the next year?
gk: Well, the talk is always what are you going to do next, and every now and then Tom and I sit down and strategize, I'm always praying, we are--all the guys Ed, Roy, Tom, and I, and of course, Wendi. We pray that God would lead: "Direct us, guide us, inspire us. What do you want done, when, how," and we are really at God's mercy to come up with stuff. And we don't just crank albums out. If we have something to say, well good. There are some interesting things going on which I really can't talk about, I don't want them publicized yet, but there are some interesting possibilities for some distribution, just funny things, interesting little things. Possibilities. We'll see as things are solidified I will put an update on the Glenn Kaiser.com site. GRRR records will announce things as they are settled. There are some neat opportunities, a lot of requests for tours. Right now there is a plan on a longer, like about a ten-day, tour in Brazil in October. I think I am going to be in Switzerland in August, not with GKB, I don't think, it will just be myself doing acoustic blues and jamming with some other blues players over there and do some teaching in a Christian artist's school in Switzerland.
rb: My daughter just got back. For spring break she went to L'Abri. She graduated yesterday, but as a 17-year-old on her spring break she saved up her money...
gk: Wow! How cool is that!
rb: She said, "I want to go somewhere fun for spring break, and I said, "Okay." I'm thinking Glenwood Springs, two hours away, whatever, and she said, "I want to go to Switzerland."
gk: We have, when Blacktop's out which will probably be another two or three weeks, a lot of festivals and biker's rallies. We will be at the Soulfest in New Hampshire a bunch of stuff all the way down through North Carolina. So a lot of touring and yeah, down the road probably sometime in 2004 we will probably end up recording three or four live shows and take the best cuts.
rb: If I could put in my vote I would like to see a double album, if you are going to the trouble to do a live one.
gk: Thank you. Well, we'll see what happens.
rb: Like the 20th anniversary one when you did the double (album), you can't get enough on there to suit me!
gk: I am looking forward to it. I love live stuff, cause I like mistakes. I like the clicks, all the amp noise, all that stuff. I've always loved the fire of live performances as a listener, that honesty that integrity, that real deal stuff.
rb: 20 Years Live is still a great one so don't restrict it to 70 minutes, go for two CDs.
gk: Well, you pray because Tom's got to figure out how to make things work financially and logistically and all that.
rb: I'll pray for that one!
gk: (Laugh) Thanks.
rb: Last time when we talked back in October we went into depth on some issues like accountability and prayer...
gk: Yep. Huge.
rb: ...and a lot of important things. What has the Lord be laying on your heart in the last seven months, anything that you have felt burdened about or the Lord has been teaching you? Or something you'd like to add?
gk: Yes, as a matter of fact I was thinking about this today. I have really been praying, Gayle Erwin wrote a really cool book in the 80s, I think, called The Jesus Style. He is online at Servant Quarters. I had skimmed though it years back--good stuff. But I took the time to go slowly through it and Wendi and I have really been enjoying that as a part of our devotions each day. Gayle raises some interesting stuff. I had been thinking about this even a couple of months prior to picking that up in North Carolina recently on a tour at a Calvary Chapel down there. One of the things he raises right at the beginning of the book--he was at a Jesus march way back when during the Jesus Movement days. Somebody had a banner in the march and it said "Christianity no, Jesus yes." He didn't really comment a lot on it. He said it just really hit him. And another point he made, and he is right, he said, "I have never known in anyone's statement of faith or mission statement or seminary or Bible school for professors to be hired and recruited on the basis of loving God and loving others. It's always based on knowledge, truth, information." He said now "Doctrine and truth is excellent and we need it. What am I doing now but passing it along," but what he was writing in his book The Jesus Style is so basic but it is so profound. He just said, "We have got to focus on the real Jesus of the New Testament, not the Jesus we have heard about."
Something I have been thinking about recently, I really understand the do's and the don'ts from the Scriptures. I understand the letters of the New Testament pretty well inside and out and I constantly read the Gospels. I don't preach from the Gospels as much as I probably should, particularly quoting the stories of Jesus and the stories that He told. But the thing that I have really been thinking about recently and it is so simple, but it is so profound, is really I think I know a lot about God the Father and for 31 or 32 years I have been studying Jesus and the Father but what people might not know I probably studied the Holy Spirit more than the Father or the Son. I really understand the Holy Spirit, I think, and I think I have a real handle on all the Scriptures that speak about Him and who He is and what He does--God the Spirit--but when it comes to actually teaching and preaching I have really been convicted recently to focus more in on Jesus Himself, personally. Now it's not that I can't do that already or that I don't know what those Scriptures say or that I don't read them or teach or preach them--I do--but I tend so much to be a "feet on the ground" meat and potatoes, let's live the life, let's walk it, you know, Jesus Christ is Lord. And to unpack, for example, everything that is in 1 Corinthians 13, love is and love isn't. I have been saying this for a number of years now but I haven't really taken the time to really go deeply into this sort of teaching or preaching. 1 Corinthians 13 is a revelation of who Jesus is and who He isn't. Galatians chapter 5, the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and what I would call the fruit of the flesh, the old nature, the bad attitudes, the capability to sin that is still in us even as Christians. You know, there's a listing there of the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace and so on, nine fruits. They are fruits of the Holy Spirit but they are an exact replication or an illumination of the character and the personality of Jesus Himself. So, that's what I been thinking more and more about. Teaching and preaching and focusing, particularly when I speak, more and more on the person of Jesus Christ.
Gayle did a great job way back when and that book has been reprinted many times. I highly recommend Jesus Style. I mean it's an old book, it's been around. A lot of people know this book and love it and use it as a course book for discipleship and cell groups and small groups and all that, but a lot of people don't know it exists and I am going to start drumming the table top and encourage more people to pick this book up and to think about what he says because particularly the issue of focus on the character and nature of Jesus Christ, that answers--and I mean it is an indictment to the church--it's an indictment to the way a lot of us talk, the way a lot of us think, the way a lot of us make choices, the way a lot of us live, the way we look at material things, the way we interact with each other in the churches, the way we treat unbelievers. I mean, when you take a good hard look or you know, from where I grew up in central Wisconsin among those old German immigrants, you know: "You get a good snoot full of Jesus and I tell you what." It's like you really get a good hard look at who He is, it becomes apparent where we've got it wrong and where we need to change.
rb: We've got the ultimate example in the Incarnation. What more could you ask for?
gk: I just think that it is something that the Holy Spirit has been prompting me to do more of, and of course He said that when He comes He is going to remind you to, "do more of what I told you." But it is not just what He has told us but it is who He is. And we need to be more like Him and we really need to be more like Him in our relationships. And that is huge in terms of what Gayle Erwin writes in The Jesus Style. It is very profound and very convicting.
rb: I do some web apologetics and interacting; I have a good friend who is not a believer and has a pretty popular site and he likes to stir things up and we interact on there. He just did one about gays and Christians; you weren't allowed to post unless you either were a Christian or gay--everyone else, stay out and just read. And what amazed me--and I think about what you are saying would impact that--is people missing the point, where you've got people saying things like, "Well, I am Protestant. My Baptist friend who is also my lesbian lover is Baptist and I am Protestant." And someone else said, "How do you distinguish the two? Baptists are Protestants." And she goes, "No, my lover's background is that you have to be saved or you go to hell, but as a Protestant I don't think that you have to be saved." I just thought, "How confused can people get?"
gk: Yeah, oh yeah. Real confused!
rb: And what was the Reformation if not an issue over salvation and justification from the Catholic Church? Again there is that thing if you get back to Christ and what He clearly taught and what he lived it would clarify some of these issues and you wouldn't have to have labels and it would be obvious that you can't live that lifestyle.
gk: The question is, was Jesus gay? How did He interact with people sexually? Or did He? Can we get from the Gospels that He flirted with anybody? We don't have everything. We don't know everything.
rb: The world couldn't hold the pages...
gk: That's exactly right. So the historical record has a beginning and an ending.
rb: And what we got was there for a purpose.
gk: And what we got is a revelation and the real Jesus. I think there is less debate and I think there would be less debate among honest thinking people so I'm looking at that. I'll tell you the other thing I have been thinking about, which of course everybody and their uncle is writing about, and is what I am going to hit on this year at Cornerstone Festival in the leadership forum that I do, and it's on the emerging church. And I'm a part of the Evangelical Covenant Denomination. I will be fully ordained by the way...
rb: Do I gotta call you Reverend? (grin)
gk: Don't bother! The bottom line is that church is different than we sometimes think it should be. What does Jesus' church look like? So, I've got a lot of friends in the house church movement and high church and all different streams and don't misunderstand--I am happy with all of them but those are just the forms. That is like, what garage do you park your car in. There are all sorts of garages.
rb: Speaking of theology, I have been going to the last couple of...I don't know if you have heard of the Evangelical Theological Society, but it is a little academic get together. A lot of the top professors in the major seminaries get together. It started when a friend of mine was coming to the one in Colorado so it was an hour away, but I enjoyed that. Then I went to one in Toronto, the big thing going on there now--I don't know if you have run into the whole open theism thing--is the big struggle.
gk: Yes, heard of it, haven't really gotten into the thick of the discussion, but yeah.
rb: It's one of those things where a friend of mine, when I first mentioned it, said, "Yeah, you know it is just a bunch of academics in their ivory tower and how does that affect me in the pew? That is a waste of time." I said, "Well, you have to look at these issues--give it a couple of years it trickles down." And it is starting to.
gk: You're exactly right.
rb: I ran into a couple of churches in Denver that are heavily impacted by it and they are basically...the whole thrust of it is that God doesn't know the future and they try to use it to explain away evil but I would say that it is going to be a major problem and struggle because a lot of people find it very appealing that they create the future with God and they want to diminish God's sovereignty. It is that whole Lordship thing--they don't want God to be in control.
gk: It is interesting because I am Arminian in my theology but I am huge in the sovereignty of God. And I don't think He has any limit in foreknowledge and I don't think He limited Himself to have foreknowledge in what I study throughout the whole of the Bible on prophecy and fulfillment of prophecy. As an Arminian, okay, I still can't countenance the concept that somehow we change literally history and that God doesn't have ultimate sovereignty and that is ultimately what it gets down to.
rb: In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.
gk: Either He is sovereign or He isn't...I could be about a two-and-a-half pointer (Calvinist). Me of all people, and from the position that I take, and I have spent 32 years going through it, I read Calvin more than Steve Camp reads Wesley, I can tell you that (laugh). Steve is a buddy.
rb: I'm going to be seeing him in December.
gk: Tell him, "hey" from me. He is a good man. But I am just telling you as an Arminian, as staunch as I am in my positions and as much time as I have studied...
rb: That is the big struggle on the Arminian side, is where does the sovereignty of God fit in. You know from the Calvinist side it is, where does man fit in? You know it is always going to be a tension.
gk: Well, and it is ultimately an unanswerable tension.
rb: At least until we get to the other side.
gk: Exactly. Now we know in part, at the present time we have in part, I know in part, we know in part, in 1 Corinthians 13 we find two verses upon which a doctrine can be built. Where out of the mouth of two or three witnesses partial revelation, partial knowledge, partial understanding, now at the present time. Then face to face, now through a glass darkly. We all like to preach and teach like then is now. And it ain't (laugh).
rb: Coming out of a more Arminian background, through study (over) years I just felt...
gk: Some people say everybody does (laugh).
rb: But what I like is the classic example is Whitfield and Wesley. You know Wesley (was) the ultimate Armenian and Whitfield (was) the ultimate Calvinist and yet they were buddies. Wesley preached at Whitfield's funeral.
gk: Have you ever read their letters?
rb: Yes, I read some of them.
gk: I will be going "what?" then I will go "what?" and then I will go, "Yeah, wow, you scored," and then I will say, "Wow, you scored." It is like ping-pong.
rb: They agreed to disagree and it didn't affect their relationship.
gk: Sure. Brilliant.
rb: To me you see problems on both sides and you lose track of the last part of 1 Peter 3:15--they forget the gentleness and the grace. You have got to contend for the faith but you have got to do it with the right attitude.
gk: Amen. Again if we can be humble enough. I don't mean that we shouldn't have the discussions or debates. I don't mean that we shouldn't go to the well and get into the Greek. Parse the Greek and the Hebrew; you know, bring out the records and the text and the parchments, do it all. But ultimately there is going to be a limit and you are going to finally come down to that razor's edge and you are going to have to go, that's as far as I can see the train going right now and the possibilities are...but I can't speak to possibilities in the same tone or with the same passion as I can to absolutes that seem quite, jot upon jot, line upon line, here you've all of this historical record and proof, you know, verse upon verse in context from one end to the other of the scripture. The problem with some of these debates is you have got to have enough humility to be real honest with you and enough sense, I mean knowledge doesn't equal wisdom. And there are an awful lot of very knowledgeable men and women out there getting into this issues who don't have a whole lot of wisdom. Do you know the bottom line is, and this is where Gayle Erwin hit it so hard, do I love God more or less after this? Do I love my neighbor as myself more or less after this? Tozer said it this way. "How does this doctrine affect my love for God and my neighbor?"
rb: That's the bottom line.
gk: And I mean boys and girls, we are all against the wall on that stuff. I mean we are all convicted of sin.
rb: Where it hits the blacktop. To make a cheap full circle to drop back to the original part of the interview. Right.
gk: Well, that's it.
rb: That is where the rubber meets the road.
gk: That's it. That's exactly right. Blacktop is a song about a guy who is obviously having domestic trouble and leaves and decides to get in a truck and drive and literally has a confrontation with God on the road. He is trying to escape and he runs right into God and he literally turns around and calls out to the Lord and, remembering a book I thought I had learned and the line goes, "sometimes wisdom follows getting burned." You know sometimes we have to just come to the end of ourselves like the prodigal son. Sometimes we have to hit the wall before we realize how foolish we are. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.
rb: Sometimes it takes misery to connect my heart and brain.
gk: Yes, yes, that's right. So somewhere along the line if your theology is not a practical theology, that's where it gets to be bean counting in the ivory tower.
rb: Well and having been in those ivory tower circles I have seen some of that on both sides.
gk: Oh sure.
rb: Because when their whole life is tied up in that.
gk: You are right about trickle down. No question about it.
rb: That's why it is important to me to go and see what is going on. Because I know it is going to impact folks.
gk: Well, we had it out with some folks a number of years ago (and I won't get into it) and actually printed something in Cornerstone Magazine and the president of a seminary called up and literally screamed at our editor. I mean what kind of a little boy in the flesh are you? You know what it was about. It was a bad public rap. Little Mickey Mouse Cornerstone Magazine you know, influencing who? And you're worried about that? And we were taking one of the theologians to task who had been doing some, what I would call, mystic doodling and publishing it and the president just called up and screamed and literally said he was going to call up the president of our denomination to blast him for not somehow coming down on us for publishing this bad review of the book in Cornerstone Magazine. I mean it was like, it was laughable. Boy, when did we become a big fish? When did this happen? It was kind of like "we are the Jesus People doing this..." but the truth of the matter is this was exactly the issue of the foreknowledge of God and it was just goofy.
rb: Well, it's not going away.
gk: No, it is not going away.
rb: It's going to be an issue for awhile.
gk: Sure. Absolutely.
rb: Well, Glenn we could talk soccer, we could talk a lot of things, but it's getting late. You've been most gracious.
gk: Bless you. Thanks!
:: Randy Brandt ::
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