Click to see a gallery of photos of the Downtown Presbyterian Church, where Patty Griffin recorded the bulk of her latest album.
For one January week in 2009, the Downtown Presbyterian Church pulpit held a Bible, a New York Times and an acclaimed singer-songwriter. Patty Griffin stood up there, singing gospel songs into a microphone.
“At the end of the week, it was hard for me to walk away from that place,” said Griffin, calling from her home in Austin, Texas.
The result of that week is an album called Downtown Church, the bulk of which was recorded live in the sanctuary. The album’s critical reception is shining a light not only on Griffin’s remarkable voice but also on the remarkable, atypical room in which that voice was captured.
Even the album cover art features segments from the sanctuary’s unusual stained glass windows, and the church has been noted in the New York Times, on NPR, in the Boston Globe (where it was called “magnificent”) and in other national and international outlets.
“The acoustics in there are phenomenal, and the interior is over the top: It looks like a stage setting for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments,” said church historian Jim Hoobler, the senior curator for art and architecture at the Tennessee State Museum. “It’s actually pretty bizarre for a worship space.”
Church has colorful history
The bizarre bits are rooted in the Egyptian Revival architectural style, of which Downtown Presbyterian is among the nation’s finest examples: The federal government has designated the building as a national architecture landmark.
Even without the architectural anomalies, the church has quite a history. More than 150 years old, it has been used as a hospital during the Civil War, as housing for displaced citizens during two great Cumberland floods, as a sanctified hotel for World War II soldiers on leave and, of course, a place for thousands of church services.
The history is palpable, and, to some, a bit spooky. Because Griffin’s recording session required her, producer Buddy Miller and her collaborators to leave thousands of dollars worth of instruments and microphones in a hard-to-secure sanctuary, production manager Maple Byrne had to sleep there for seven nights.
“The place is haunted,” Griffin said. “And Maple had to stay every night because of all our gear. I didn’t want him to be by himself, so I got him a little teddy bear.”
Producer Buddy Miller chose the venue, and the musicians began “moving in” on Sunday, Jan. 4, right after church services. They had to be out in time for the next week’s service, requiring a Jan. 10 load-out, which took place while the Titans squandered playoff chances against the Ravens, just on the other side of the Cumberland.
‘Really good stuff happens’
In between all that were myriad challenges for Griffin, who was attempting her first gospel album and her first album made up primarily of other writers’ material. EMI Records’ Peter York suggested the idea of a gospel album after hearing Griffin’s duet with Mavis Staples on a gospel compilation called Oh Happy Day. Griffin was in agreement, so long as friend and collaborator (and veritable roots music encyclopedia) Miller could produce.
“In the Staple Singers’ recordings, you could hear the walls of the church in the records, and I love that,” Griffin said. “I thought we might get a little church, like the ones people rent out for music videos, but Buddy just went for it and we got this great church. We recorded all week, and I’d see people around, coming in and out while we played, but no one bothered us.
“The songs themselves are vocally challenging, and I was singing six hours a day, which was a little hard. And it was chaotic learning the songs. But something inside you goes, ‘It probably is going to be OK,’ and I was constantly happy and thrilled along the way. When you’re flying blind, really good stuff sometimes happens.”
Gathered in a loose and sprawling semi-circle, Miller, guitarist Doug Lancio, drummer Jay Bellerose, bass player Dennis Crouch and keyboard player John Deaderick played with the difficult combination of delicacy and forthrightness required by these songs. Emmylou Harris, Regina McCrary, Jim Lauderdale, Julie Miller, Raul Malo, Shawn Colvin and others added parts as well.
The collaborators ultimately arrived at an album that can stand with Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace, Harris’ Angel Band, and Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming as an effective and moving, spiritually-oriented album from an artist normally known for secular material.
Two of the album’s most emotionally impactful songs are “Little Fire” and “Coming Home To Me,” each from Griffin’s pen, with Harris harmonizing on the former and Julie Miller on the latter. Griffin also sings Hank Williams’ “House of Gold,” the hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King” and some winning, left-field choices suggested by Miller.
“The only thing we arm-wrestled over, and you can’t really arm-wrestle with Buddy, was ‘Move Up,’ which I knew from the Swan Silvertones record, which is really complex and intimidating,” Griffin said. “Buddy really wanted me to do ‘Move Up,’ and he asked about it every day. And every night, I’d go back to the hotel and just fall asleep and not learn it. We got to Friday, and Buddy said, ‘Let’s do “Move Up.” ’ I said, ‘I didn’t learn that one. I’m sorry. Too hard.’ And Buddy said, ‘Well, we’ll just learn it together then.’ So Friday night, I crammed for the big exam, and we got the tape of it on Saturday.”