You’ve included Christian signifiers in your lyrics for Gaslight Anthem. So the only thing I could say is I have faith that there is a God and that’s it. I know nothing, but I have faith - the belief in something you cannot prove. And my whole thing is that I don’t understand. It’s tricky, because so many words have been put in so many mouths throughout the years about religion that I come with a natural hesitance to even being misunderstood. And if we’re going to say that he made everything, then you got to believe he probably believes in molecules, too.Īnd dinosaurs, right. I base everything I can think of on what I would find in the teachings of Jesus, like, loving your neighbor and loving God.
How do you maintain your faith in today’s world, as a person of intellect and science? When you’re going over there and shooting everybody and saying, “You’ve got to believe what I believe or I’m gonna kill you,” that’s not the way. But I’ve always had a very broad scope on my faith where I sort of say, “I’m trying to figure out what my place in the whole world is and how I reconcile my own thoughts” and it never really felt like I got to a place where I could tell someone else how they should do it.īut missionaries, when I was really little, “I’d be like, ‘Mom, you mean people go into the jungle and they try to hand out Bibles? Why do they do that? There’s TVs here!”… That’s fine as long as you’re not doing it in a way that’s, as we’ve seen in history, taking away people’s rights. Like the weekend missionaries at the grocery store where you’re shopping for food and they’re like, “Where are you going tonight if you die?” And you’re like, “I’m just trying to get to the parking lot.” That’s uncomfortable and maybe you should just leave me alone. I’ve never been big into the salesman aspect of religion at all. I’d always keep podcasts or something, and I would listen to various ones. And that’s what I did on the road as well. When I’m home, I would go to church on Sunday, but during this, I’ve been doing it online. Night Divine is made up of songs you heard in church. I don’t know how anybody else feels about it, but it’s not been easy to process. People dying, losing their families - not moments where you would seem particularly grateful to God, you know? And the last couple of years, like, it’s a heady time. I was going through them and some of the stories I would read about where they came from and who wrote them, most were born out of grotesque tragedy. Yeah, I think that’s what they’re designed to do. You wrote on social media that you hope these songs bring listeners “peace or comfort.” Are they particularly suited for these times?
tour in January, about Night Divine, touring in the pandemic, and how he maintains centuries-old beliefs in the 21st century. We talked to Fallon, who will kick off a U.S. “At the end of the day, if I find out there was never a guy named Jesus, who never did anything and does not exist, I didn’t really lose anything.” And if that makes me weak, that’s cool,” Fallon says. A lot of people would say that seems naive. “When I was a kid, my mom showed me that there was somebody looking out for us when we couldn’t or when things got too big. To say that’s surprising in a genre that isn’t traditional country music or contemporary Christian music (CCM) is an understatement. At the end of the night, some kid was like, ‘We’re just happy that you showed up and you tried.’ I kept that in the back of my head and was like, well, if you can’t do them justice, do them the best you can.”įallon, who has been open about his struggles with severe anxiety and depression - “It’s not your average everyday supermarket depression,” he says - is equally as forthcoming about his faith. “I remember this story about Joe Strummer where he couldn’t sing and he was really embarrassed. “I love Mariah Carey’s version, but I’m not going to be able to do that,” he says. Intentional or not, it’s a perfect representation of human frailty and mortal limitations.
On “O Holy Night,” a notoriously difficult song to perform, he goes all in with strained notes and a cracking voice. His version of the late-1800s hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” is hushed and reverent, while his take on “Virgin Mary Had One Son” blends elements of both Odetta’s performance and Joan Baez’s. In the hymns of Night Divine, Fallon’s Christian roots are even more overt. In “The ’59 Sound,” one of the band’s signatures, Fallon nods to the “Everlasting Arms” of Deuteronomy in “I Believe Jesus Brought Us Together,” with his group the Horrible Crowes, he calls out Jesus by name and in “Vincent,” off last year’s solo LP Local Honey, he writes of baptisms and the forgiveness of sin. With Gaslight Anthem, he sang about the mysteries of life (and cars and girls) with more than a few religious allusions tossed in. Fallon has carved out a career by trying to make sense of the world.