Yelling, screaming, and theatrics will always be a part of religion. Religion, like any other sector, always needs its loudmouths and grotesqueries because it is a sure-fire way to get new followers, if it means one new follower at a time or five hundred new followers at a time. But the soul of religion—its honest-to-God soul—lies in the calm and the peaceful, the understated. The realest and purest beauty of religion resides in those who have little to say or write; the ones whose thoughts and art speaks for itself and forgoes the task of needing a self-appointed consultant to speak on its behalf. But this post is not about religion—at least, not about things that deal with gods and lessons and morality. This post is about how there is a religion to everything, and how “I Am a Pilgrim” by The Byrds best illustrates this notion.
David Foster Wallace once said that there is no such thing as atheism; everyone worships something. Whether or not music can be worshiped as a single thing that is separate from money is debatable, but there is definitely a religion aspect associated with it in every possible sense (i.e.–appreciation, deification, sainthood, emulation, hagiography, etc.). Like religion, music needs its loudmouths and grotesqueries to get people to its tabernacle, as these things help drive sales and image and marketing. Rock and hip hop needs its middle fingers and “fuck tha police”s and misogyny and destroyed hotel rooms and mythical groupie stories. Country music needs its awkward and politically incorrect social evangelism and its alcoholism and racist undertones. Pop music needs its objectification and sexualized teenagers and vapid commentary. I am not saying that these needs are inherently good, or should always be viewed as acceptable. I am saying that they are all required, in some way, to get the message out there—to ensure that the gospel of music reaches ears on a larger scale. And just like religion, the grotesqueries of music (the misogyny, the racism, the sexualization of youth) allow us to properly adjust and criticize its context in a right/wrong kind of way. Luther Campbell may have made a lot of money, but he will almost always be seen as a clown in any meaningful context. This is the give and take inherent in freedom of speech (and religion). Which leaves us with a lens to focus on the rest of the music landscape—the places inhabited by people who do not rely on spectacle and controversy. (Please do not misinterpret the previous sentence to mean that I am going to transition to the notions of purity and morals and Doing Things The Right Way, or that I am suggesting that the loudmouths never have a point and that the quieter artists should be praised by default based on some delusion that a publicly docile demeanor equals integrity. All artists, just like the rest of us, are flawed in some way. There’s no need for the sepia toned or Precious Moments treatments.)
Within this landscape you will find Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the album by The Byrds that was released in 1968, and on this album you will find “I Am a Pilgrim”—a cover of a traditional song whose lyrics are firmly rooted in a religious purview (as if the title doesn’t already give that away). This song begins with a fiddle played by guest musician John Hartford that introduces itself right off the bat, perhaps a little too loudly for those who don’t like fiddles so much, but it moves at a slow pace and it is accented nicely by the mellow gait of the other string instruments: a bass, a banjo, and an acoustic guitar. Even when Hartford speeds up the fiddle it never comes across as jagged or shrill, or anything suggestive of a hoe-down or cartoon-ish drunken dancing involving people wearing overalls.
The music of “I Am a Pilgrim” is a terrific mixture of modernity and antiquity, of trying to polish something old so as to make it new again; it is the product of Gram Parson’s desire to plumb through the earthy catalog of American country music and update it in a newer studio with better equipment. It’s four kids flying in to Nashville from Los Angeles and leaving having produced something that had never really been done by a rock band (even though they would later be heckled by the crowd at the Ryman Auditorium). This is a song that can act as a bridge back to history, to Roy Acuff and Jimmie Rodgers and Ernest Tubbs and the other pioneers of American country music if you have never given much thought to any of them.
The music is one thing, the vocals are quite another.
Chris Hillman’s vocals on this song are some of the best in any rock or country song I have ever heard. The volume of his voice is perfectly calibrated. His voice is mellow and light but backed up with intangibles that somehow make it sound authoritative. The yellers, screamers, and theatrically-minded singers wear their hearts on their sleeve; the rest attempt to create a direct auditory portal to their soul. Hillman’s voice on this track sounds like a combination of the kind of soft crooning and solemn, eyes-closed-while-singing seriousness that almost every white male singer has tried to emulate since The Beatles released “Yesterday.” His voice paints a picture of recording takes in a darkened studio with a couple candles burning—something requiring an ambiance befitting a religious experience such as this, even if it never happened that way at all.
So with all due respect to “Eight Miles High,” “Ballad of Easy Rider,” “Turn! Turn! Turn (to Everything There is a Season)” and “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “I Am a Pilgrim” is the greatest song that The Byrds ever produced. It is a song that can transcend what it means to love a piece of music, and in the process it advances the idea that music can be a religious experience. To be sure, whenever someone loves a piece of art—really really loves it—it can be described as something on par with religious experience. But to hear Chris Hillman sing “I am a pilgrim/And a stranger/Traveling through this wearisome land/I’ve got a home in that yonder good Lord/And it’s not/Not made by hand” it can become a figurative and/or literal manifestation of musical religion.
Amen.
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