You Gotta Be Moved By Something...

The following is a list of songs that for some unknown reason I find particularly moving. This isn't necessarily a list of my favorite tunes, just songs that, because of nostalgia, lyrics, or any other reason, surprise me by how much they move something inside me. Most of them fall into the 'guilty pleasures' category. They're in no real order and this is by no means a complete list. Kind of a fun category, so feel free to leave your own in the comments section below.

-Love Bites and Hysteria, Def Leopard

-Hold Me Now, The Thompson Twins

-Raining at Sunset, Chris Thile (that whole Not All Who Wander record is ridiculously good)

-Silent All These Years, Tori Amos

-Take On Me, A-HA

-Clockshop, Billy McLaughlin

-Anything by Arvo Part

-Pacing the Cage, Bruce Cockburn

-The Scientist, Coldplay

-Sally and Jack, Mike Perry and the Longbeds

-Anna Begins, Counting Crows

-Spur Road Speed King, Doug Geeting

-Voices, Dream Theater

-A live version of a Kelly Joe Phelps tune I ripped off YouTube that I call Riverside but wasn't titled

-Kicking, Kevin Moore

-Comes a Time, Mutual Admiration Society

-Almost everything on Patty Griffin's Impossible Dream record

-My Favorite Memory, Merle Haggard

-In The Light of Common Day, Phil Keaggy

-Just Like Paradise, David Lee Roth

-Chris Thile's smokin' 16th note solo in Stranded in Kodiak

-Samson, Regina Spektor

-Life in a Northern Town, The Dream Academy

-Show Don't Tell, Rush

-Paper Airplane, Willy Porter

-When it's Love, Van Halen

-In My Time of Need, Ryan Adams

-Most of the Riverdance soundtrack, Bill Whelan (I know this sounds embarrassing, and I can live without the tap dancing, but Whelan is a genius...seriously)

-Sweet Child O' Mine, Guns n' Roses

-All These Years, Sawyer Brown

-In The Air Tonight, Phil Collins

-Almost any well done Gregorian Chant

-Get You Back, Shawn Lane

-Merry Christmas Mr. Gorbachev, Stephen Bennett

-They Dance Alone, Sting

-Music for a Found Harmonium, Penguin Cafe Orchestra

-I Love, Tom T. Hall

-Little Rain, Never Let Go, Clap Hands, Time and a crap load of other Tom Waits tunes

-Resplendent, Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love

Woodchopper's Ball, '09

I got invited back to The Woodchopper's Ball in Kent, OH again this year. The Ball is a benefit concert for the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless organized each year by my good friend Brian Henke. He assembles the 9 best acoustic guitarists he can get his hands on from across the country and throws them all on stage, three at a time, round-robin style. This year I was honored to share the stage with Kyle Reeder and Tim (and his son Myles) Thompson. The three of us make up the 2008 Winfield International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship winners. The show was once again a huge success.

Since I had to play in Menomonie, WI the previous night my buddy Chuck Wood flew me down there in his plane, a 1970 Piper Arrow II. With exception to a little wind that slowed us up the flight down there was great. We turned a 12+ hour drive into a 4 hour flight.

We crashed at Brian's home in Cleveland, along with Kyle and his wife Bethany, Tim and Myles, Helen Avokian, and Eric Wilson. Kyle is a monster fingerstyle chicken picker and he showed me 'everything he knows'. The weather made it too dangerous for us to fly out Sunday morning like we had planned so Kyle invited me and Brian to join him for the second half of his show at a local music store, a show he did to fill in for the absent Todd Hallawell. We had a lot of fun. Even got to jam on a Christmas tune.

Monday Morning. Time to fly home...or not. Brian took us to the airport in Kent, a good hour away from his house. We loaded our bags into the plane and Chuck went inside to do his preflight stuff. Bad news. We weren't leaving then either.

The weather had been wet and overcast for the past few days. We could have taken off and gotten above it easily enough, and the skies were clear back home, but we needed a fuel stop in between and couldn't find anywhere to get down. The ceilings were down around 200 feet. Descend through the clouds and the runway is right there. Any miscalculation and there's trouble. There was also the icing to worry about.

Brian Henke is one of the kindest people I've ever met and I'm sure he would have turned around to come and get us, but he would have wasted more in gas by the time it was all said and done than a hotel room would have cost us so we had a guy at the airport give us a ride to the hotel.

Downtown was three miles away, according to the signs, so we started walking. Found a little mexican place to get some food and continued on. We ended up in a movie theater watching The Blind Side about Ravens LT Michael Oher. I was at Lambeau Field watching him play the Packers just a week earlier but had no idea who he was so I guess I didn't pay much attention to him.

On the way home Chuck had the idea to stop into Dominoes and order a pizza to be delivered to the hotel and ride back with the delivery guy. It took some light-hearted guilt tripping but we talked him into it. Back at the hotel we watched Evan Almighty and Chuck did some more weather recon.

Tuesday morning. Rainy and fog. Chuck seems determined. We screamed down the runway nearly blind, pulled up and were totally blind. We had to climb through 6,000 feet of clouds, picking up ice along the way, unable to even see the nose of the plane before we got above it. Chuck had done this stuff before, but not me. A quarter-inch of ice is a serious problem for a little plane, and my guts were telling me that we were doing circles. The instruments weren't. I got that kind of scared that burns holes in your guts. Chuck got us above it all with no problems.

The skies up above the clouds are staggeringly beautiful. All of a sudden it's blue and sunny and the clouds go from a dirty wet grey to brilliant, flowing white. Crazy that this stuff has always been up here, but before man started flying no one ever got to see it. The top of the clouds was at 6,000 feet and we cruised at 8,000. 2,000 feet below us the cloud layer looks like it's about 30 feet down. There are hills and mountains, valleys and canyons, and a rainbow of perfect concentric circles below us, traveling with us the whole way. We talked about how all the really beautiful things in the world are the most dangerous - mountains, the ocean, women...and now clouds. The movie at the hotel last night ended with a giant rainbow, a promise from God to look after us. It felt good to have that reminder tracking with us. We were bucking 50 mph headwinds and not moving as fast as we had hoped to so we dropped to 6,000 feet to try to get under it and found the clouds, now casting shadows from the angle of the sun, even more beautiful .

When we left the clouds were still hanging thick over Lansing, IL where we had to stop for fuel and we were counting on them to clear out before we got there. We could see the edge of them on the horizon and were worried that we would have to descend before we reached it and have to deal with more ice. We started our descent 5 miles out and that's exactly where the clouds broke. We even got to play around some friendly giant cumulous clouds on the way down. Once we got on the ground Chuck said, 'ten minutes earlier and the clouds would have been right here.' Afterward I thought of the winds and the rainbow.

Clear but bumpy ride the rest of the way home. This kind of stuff makes me hope this music thing takes for me.

Why I Am Not a Pacifist

Just a quick thought I had while driving home from Eau Claire tonight. The term 'pacifism' is an unhelpful one. If being a pacifist means that I never want to throttle someone, then I am not a pacifist. If it means that I don't think there's anyone in the world who needs killing, then I am not a pacifist. If, however, it means that I recognize that Jesus is Lord and rules over a peaceful kingdom and commands us to be a nonviolent people shaped by the Gospel and devoted to loving our enemies, then I guess I qualify.

But, of course, that's not what it means, at least not practically. Pacifism is almost always presented as a proposition rather than a practice. And subscribing to a proposition like pacifism doesn't make you peaceful any more than a PETA membership makes you a vegetarian.

Same thing with the Gospel. It's no proposition either. A bunch of people agreeing that Jesus died and was raised doesn't change anything. Just gives us one more group of obnoxious folks shooting off their mouths to everyone who isn't like them that we get to write off. If, however, those people are committed to really living under the lordship of Christ, if we really do love our neighbors and our enemies, putting our own lives aside in the name of Christ for the redemption of the world (and by 'world' I mean social orders, suffering, injustice, etc. - not just individual souls), then there's hope. But if we subscribe to the myth of redemptive violence instead of the Gospel, then we're not Christian - at least not in that area - and that part of our thinking hasn't been shaped by the Gospel. Big part. We've missed something very close to the heart of the Gospel as well. Big something.

If we really do follow Christ in his sufferings - if we would rather be victims, loving our enemies more than ourselves, our rights, and our property - that doesn't make us pacifists. It just makes us Christian.

Peace on Earth.

Volume One Feature

A giant THANK YOU! to the folks at Volume One Magazine for featuring me in their latest issue. Click here to see it.

An Open Letter To Leinenkugel's Brewery

Dear Leinenkugel's Beer,
My name is Greg Gilbertson and I've been a loyal Leinie's drinker since before I was supposed to be. Growing up in Chippewa Falls, I've enjoyed nearly every beer you've brewed (with exception to your Original. Don't know why, but I still have trouble with that one. Sometimes if it's ice cold and I drink it fast...). You've been there for me time after time - relaxing me after a hard day of work, cooling me off during hot Wisconsin summer days, making me irresistible to our lady-folk - and for that I've spent my adult life in grateful and delicious appreciation.

I've rushed out to buy every new seasonal beer, tolerating the more experimental flavors. I understand Berry Weiss. I don't hold Apple Spice against you - it seemed like a good idea. Your Big Butt was hands-down the best beer I had ever tasted until you rereleased the 1888 Bock last year. That stuff blew my mind!

But here's the deal: I've been drinking a lot of New Glarus beers lately. It started with a Spotted Cow here and there at places that didn't have Honey Weiss on tap. Then it was on to Fat Squirrel. I really enjoyed these beers. I figured it might actually be a good thing. After all, they're a small Wisconsin micro-brewery too. And it's not like I stopped drinking Leinie's all together.

But then I bought a six-pack of New Glarus Black Wheat. It's at least as good as your 1888. I'll have to wait for you to come out with it again before I can say conclusively that it's a better tasting beer....and therein lies the problem. Black Wheat is brewed YEAR ROUND! Now, I'll buy up piles of 1888 when it comes back around, but - and I'm sorry about this - I just won't be drinking much Honey Weiss and Creamy Dark during the off-season (although I'm downing a Honey as I write this - and I'm enjoying it - but it's just because the wife brought home a sixer. Again, I would have gone with the Black Wheat).

What I'm trying to say is that I've become a New Glarus guy. It's now my primary blend. Don't get me wrong, they have some problem beers too. Their Organic Revolution, beyond having the worst name of any beer in the world, is just awful. Tastes like Schlitz. And to be honest, they have lots of brews I've yet to try. But in just three beers - THREE BEERS - evenly dividing the taste-color continuum (those being the lighter Spotted Cow, the mid range Fat Squirrel, and the used tractor oil-esque Black Wheat), I've been turned.

Now, understand that I don't think less of you than I ever have. I just think more highly of New Glarus these days. You're still the reason I'm proud to be from Chippewa. I still brag about you because YOU STILL BREW FANTASTIC BEER (!) - and I'll still throw down with anyone who says otherwise. But they're my go to beer now. You've become my supplementary beer. In other words, "I still want to be friends". Things are just a little different now, that's all.

Your friend,
Greg Gilbertson

Update:
Since writing this I had a bottle of New Glarus Crack'd Wheat. Holy Crap! Fantastic. I also learned that Black Wheat is in fact a seasonal beer. Sigh...

I want to pass along some words from ESPN's Bill Simmons regarding our good friend Mr. Favre in response to an email he received. It goes as follows:

Q: I am 19 years old. I have been a fan of Favre and the Packers since the third grade. I grew up thinking Favre could do no wrong. As a mature 17-year-old, I cried the day he retired from the Packers. I was tolerant of the Jets experiment -- even have the jersey to prove it. But what am I supposed to do now? Tonight I watched my childhood hero stomp all over the team and the fans he represented for 16 years. I found myself cursing him for the very same reasons I used to love him. The phony TD celebrations, the smug smiles, the way he hams it up with his new teammates and his new fans. I don't know how to handle it. I started this e-mail thinking I had something to say about all of this, but I just feel lost. I don't know what to think anymore ... I'm just lost.
--Drew, Bloomington, Ind.

BS: And that's the part of Monday's game that got lost. Every Packers fan felt like how a dutiful wife would feel if she stuck with her husband through thick and thin, watched him become a success, then got dumped for a younger trophy wife who also happened to be her archnemesis. Favre failed in the same way Roger Clemens failed when he signed with the Blue Jays in 1997 -- his problems with management affected his feelings toward his old franchise, and he did a piss-poor job of letting his old fan base know that he still cared about it. I have written about this before, but I turned on Clemens during his Toronto news conference when he simply refused to acknowledge Boston fans beyond a few generic words. It hurt. I took it personally and decided he was an opportunistic, disloyal, dishonest scumbag from that moment on. And as it turned out, he was.

In Favre's case, his lack of empathy for Packers fans has been really alarming. I know he plays with his heart on his sleeve. I know he's a "kid out there" and "having a ball out there" and all the crap. And maybe he's not a brain surgeon, but he's smart enough to understand what he meant to Packers fans and the state of Wisconsin, which means he had to understand how it went over after he (A) signed with an NFC North team two months ago; (B) dialed up the finger-pointing and fist-pumping during Monday's Pack-Vikes game so egregiously that even his biggest fan from Green Bay couldn't defend him; and (C) gave that self-satisfied postgame interview in which he never said anything like, "I just wanted to say hi to everyone back in Wisconsin and tell them that this was as strange for me as it probably was for you, but I want you to know that it was just one game -- a game that I wanted to win because I'm a competitor and I love my teammates, but still, none of this changes the fact that I love you guys and I always will." That's it. That's all he had to say to Michele Tafoya after the game.

He didn't say it.

And believe me, I've been there as a fan. It's unforgivable. Especially when you're under 30 and don't realize that many of your "heroes" are people who don't deserve that level of worship, or any worship, for that matter. They just play sports well. They don't care about you. They care about themselves and that's it. If this realization hits you at the wrong time in your life, it can be hard. (I know it was hard for me. I took the Clemens thing personally, as witnessed by the fact that I once wrote a column wondering if he was the Antichrist.) So if the Packers fans want to play along, so to speak, then they can't cheer Favre on Nov. 1. He set the stakes. He made it clear that he's moved on with his new team and cut all ties to the old one. That means you need to go to Lambeau and boo the living hell out of him. Make him miserable. Rattle him. Flummox him. Do everything you can to get the better of him for three hours. This man does not belong to you anymore, and maybe, he never did.

That sums up my feelings almost exactly. And what it lacks is made up by this emailer:

Q: I figured that after Favre was finally retired, I would be able to forgive him and just put the "Viking Episode" aside. But, after Monday night, I can speak for probably about 80 percent of Packers fans when I say: "(Expletive), I hope it was worth it, because you're dead to me now. You broke my (bleeping) heart."
-- Tim S., Milwaukee

I'm a 32 year old guy who like most 32 year old guys want you to think he's a tough guy. That said, this Favre crap hurts. It doesn't hurt in the cry myself to sleep while clutching and smelling an old #4 jersey way. It hurts in the "I've supported you for over half of my life. I've paid a lot of hard-to-come-by money just to watch you play. I've forgiven you for more interceptions than any other football fan has ever had to. I wanted you to win another Super Bowl to see YOU go out on top. There's a real sense in which I cared about you, as much as a guy can care about someone he's never met. You were my childhood hero. I prayed for you when your dad died, when Deanna got cancer, when you were addicted to pain killers, and I cried when you retired. AND NOW YOU'RE PISSING ON ME" way.

If there's one good thing about all this, it's that it dispels the myth that sports is a business. It's not a business for the millions of fans who pay the bills and salaries, and it's never been a business for Favre. That's why we loved him for so long. This is personal for him, and it is for me too.

I love the Packers. The reason I loved Favre for so long it because he was the quarterback for the Packers. As a Packers fan I hate the Vikings. Brett is now the quarterback for the Vikings. The End.

I was at Lambeau when he broke the interception record...and I forgave him. I was there when he threw the game ending pic against the Giants and kept us out of the Super Bowl...and I forgave him. I'll be there when he shows up in purple next week...and...this time things will be different.

...Where Credit is Due.

On the inside of Limited Vocab is written this:

'There are places where words go to die. Where our rhetoric stares shamefully into the face of suffering. In a world of promises and propositions, words alone do little to relieve suffering or bring peace. Yet there is hope, and hope is good.

These songs come from a vision of hope, sometimes dressed up as a frozen lake in the Northwoods, or as a bride on her wedding day. It's what speaks to the world at our funeral, and keeps us awake as we drive home. This unspoken language, this limited vocabulary, this voice of Revelation, speaks of another world, another kingdom. It is the language of redemption, born of hope. And hope lives where words die.'

Perhaps my closest friend in the world, Greg Richards, helped me wright that and he never got credit for it. I forgot to thank him on the CD. Greg and I have had an ongoing conversation since 2003 that has shaped me as much as anything else in my life and for that I'm grateful.

Greg is also the least musical person I've ever met (though certainly not the least artistic). That said, there is absolutely no way that record could have happened without him.

Thanks, bro.

Peace.

Happy Shark Week Everyone!!!

My Grandpa and WWII

My paternal grandfather, Howard Gilbertson, was in the infantry and spent all of WWII fighting in the Pacific. He married my Grandmother one year after he got back and remained married to her for 54 years before he died in 2001. During that time all he ever told her about the war was what he ate and how he slept. My grandpa was able to live a completely functional life, raising two sons and a daughter, but the war permanently messed him up. When I was in high school and was learning about 'Number Two' (as he called it) I asked him to tell me a little bit about the war, but he said he wasn't ready to talk about it. The demons he met in the jungle never stopped haunting him. To my knowledge he never talked to anyone about his experience.

Not too long ago I found some photos I can only assume he took of the war. Some of them are obviously standard yearbook-type pics taken of his comrades at the base in Hawaii. Some are from the jungle. But they stand as the only record he left behind of the most traumatic and influential experience of his life. I put them into a quick slide show. The music is 'Burry Me Far From My Uniform' by my friend Joe Pug. I just embeded the video from YouTube and for some reason the right side got cut off. Here's the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxcIGiYH820

Here's to peace...

Saw this tat in Madison the other day.

So Long, Mr. Jackson

Michael Jackson died today. That makes me very sad. In a weird way, he was always an example to me of how to be an artist. I know he was a bit of a fruitcake, but I was always amazed at how sheepish he was in interviews and, conversely, how much attitude and grit he had in his performances. It was like Michael the Artist was the REAL Michael Jackson. It almost seemed as though the only way he knew how to relate to people-to be human-was on stage. There's a demented logic to it all given the way he grew up, but it's kind of encouraging in contrast to where a lot of pop music is today. Michael the Artist, maybe his only authentic persona, is who he gave us. He never tried to flaunt his demons, but we insisted he expose them to us. And maybe we should have from time to time, but we likely also gave them to him. Go easy on the guy in how you remember him. All he ever intentionally gave to us was really, really good. Then we raped him. Again and again. Then we crucified him. Now how about we forgive him?

R.I.P.

Northern Spirit Radio Interview

Hi all. I have a new interview up with Northern Spirit Radio.

Please take a minute to listen and leave a comment here on the blog. Thanks a lot.

Pax Christi