If you had to take a vote on \u201cguy most likely to quit his job and become a folk singer\u201d it would have been Bryan. His guitar was always on call for worship services, campouts, or jam sessions in his office. He\u2019s one of those musicians whose skill comes from living and breathing music as much as formal training. Sure enough, in 2003, he began a new phase of his ministry as a professional singer-songwriter.<\/p>\n
His current recording project is called Until All Are Fed<\/em>, and brings together his music and his work as Hunger Action Advocate for the Presbytery of Salem, North Carolina. I got to talk with Bryan in preparation for this review, and he was kind enough to let me listen to advance tracks as the project took shape.<\/p>\n Bryan says this album is \u201cmashup of \u2018We Are the World\u2019 and \u2018O Brother Where Art Thou,\u2019\u201d and I buy his description. The music on this album has a rootsy, Celtic, world-music, spiritual feel. It reminds me of the music of Mumford & Sons, not so much for its subject but for its striving idealism. The folky sound and passionate lyrics about relieving hunger for food and hunger for God make this music unabashedly uncool\u2014as if it\u2019s time to let go of coolness and stand for something.<\/p>\n The project had a fascinating genesis. Realizing that \u201cI couldn\u2019t just complain about the lack of contemporary music that speaks the faith and not do anything about it,\u201d Bryan started raising funds for the album through the Web site Pledgemusic.com. The site lets listeners support independent artists by pledging the price of the album to production costs before the album is released. At the same time, artists can designate a portion of production costs and profits to a charity. Ten percent of production costs and twenty percent of profits from Until All Are Fed <\/em>will go to the Presbyterian Hunger Program.<\/p>\n \u201cThis project just reared its head saying \u2018Do me! Do me!\u2019\u201d Bryan says. \u201cI wondered when I was going to do an album of hymns and sacred songs. Because of the charitable aspect, this seemed to make sense.\u201d Bryan says the response has been moving. \u201cI can\u2019t believe in this economy in 3 months we raised 107% of production costs for a project people didn\u2019t know about.\u201d\u00a0 Some Presbyterians might call the intersection of talent, charity, and technology that went into making this album, \u201cprovidential.\u201d<\/p>\n With the cash in hand, he was able to work with some of the best session musicians in Nashville, including instrumentalists that have recorded and toured with Garth Brooks, the Mandrell Sisters, The Chieftans, John Michael Talbot, and Michael W. Smith. We listeners can thank Bryan and his producer Shawn Conley for putting the infusion of talent to good use. When you put fiddle, piano, bass, tin whistle, and uilleann pipes with Bryan\u2019s deft guitar playing and burly tenor voice, you get a stirring sound. He\u2019s calling the band \u201cJacob\u2019s Join,\u201d which is another name for a potluck supper. It\u2019s fitting, because this is an album where everyone brings something to the table and no one goes away hungry.<\/p>\n The album is structured like a worship service (another simile Bryan uses is \u201cFrampton Comes Alive Comes to Worship\u201d). Just to add a slice of real life, the \u201cgathering song\u201d is \u201cUyai Mose,\u201d which starts from the perspective of a couple rushing in late for worship.\u00a0 The first hymn is \u201cHope of the World,\u201d a Reformation-era rocker with a mid-Century lyrical update by Georgia Harkness (one of the pioneering women of theological education). The stirring four-part vocal arrangement, along with guitar and doleful fiddle, sounds like something out of the old shape-note hymnals Sacred Harp<\/em> or Southern Harmony<\/em>.<\/p>\n The next track, \u201cLord Search My Heart\u201d would be as welcome in a Zydeco bar in Cajun country as it is in the church. This is a nice song of self-examination without lapsing into the usual Presbyterian obsession with group chest-beating. (Seriously, you can\u2019t get Presbyterians together for worship <\/em>without them breaking into some pre-written litany of confession, read in a Calvinist monotone.)\u00a0 Bryan follows with a couple of really lovely solo songs that fit his voice quite well \u2013 both with lyrics that get to the heart of the matter on hunger. \u201cChrist You Walked Among the Grain Fields\u201d is a nice update on the folk hymn tune \u201cBeach Spring,\u201d with lyrics by Presbyterian songstress Carolyn Winfrey Gillette.<\/p>\n \u201cLord, you shared God\u2019s Kingdom bounty,<\/em><\/p>\n Yet you know our pain and need.<\/em><\/p>\n Some are poor in lands of plenty, <\/em><\/p>\n Often hurt by others\u2019 greed. <\/em><\/p>\n Some possessed by their possessions,<\/em><\/p>\n Look for more to buy and keep, <\/em><\/p>\n Others long for simpler blessings: <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Let my hungry children eat.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>\u201cChrist, Be Our Light\u201d is in a more contemporary style, but shares the social justice theme. The 6\/8 meter has a nice rolling feel with the guitar and tin whistle. A later track, \u201cBread for the World\u201d starts with this simple solo style, then ends in a \u201cWe are the World\u201d style clapping chorus through the magic of multi-tracking.<\/p>\n Tracks six and seven are the Bryan McFarland-composed songs on the album.\u00a0 The title track, \u201cUntil All Are Fed\u201d is simultaneously a song of protest and hope. \u201cHow can we stand by and fail to be aghast, how long \u2018til we do what\u2019s right? How could we stand by and choose a lesser fast, how long \u2018til we see the light?\u201d The answer: \u201cWe serve until all are fed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSinging for OUR Supper,\u201d takes a more rhythmic approach, with some upbeat percussion and a bit of Byrds\u2019-style jangly guitar. Lyrics like \u201cWe are hungry and misled, undernourished and overfed\u201d speak to the conditions of both spiritual and physical hunger. And increasingly, as the gap between rich and poor grows wider: \u201cWe all need daily bread, for more and more it\u2019s daily dread; It\u2019s hard to live and harder to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBendice Se\u00f1or Nuestro Pan\/Come Share the Lord\u201d benefits (as do several of the tracks) from Bryan\u2019s collaboration with a North Carolina local, Sally Ann Morris. Morris is a church music director in Winston-Salem, but is also an internationally recognized hymnodist, with compositions in the popular Catholic Gather<\/em> series and the UCC\u2019s New Century Hymnal<\/em>. The collaboration led to an arrangement of a Spanish-language blessing composed by John Bell and the communion song classic \u201cCome Share the Lord.\u201d After this recording, it will be hard to imagine these two songs separately.<\/p>\n More John Bell and Morris, and more Spanish, round out the worship experience. Bell\u2019s music makes an appearance in the form of a rousing sing-along of \u201cThe Summons,\u201d the instrumentation bringing out its Celtic glory. \u201cPescador de Hombres (Fisher of Men)\u201d is a treat with Leslie Rodriguez singing in Spanish and English to Bryan\u2019s guitar accompaniment. It closes with a benediction from Bryan. \u201cGo in Peace, Go in Love,\u201d a Sally Ann Morris composition, with text by Mary Louise Bringle, ends the set as a kind of postlude, with a rocking back-beat and SNL-style saxophone.<\/p>\n The problems of global and domestic hunger are complex. The short of it is, we waste enough food in the United States alone to completely eradicate hunger around the world, and this is just one developed country.\u00a0\u00a0 Bryan hopes the album will be just the beginning of the musical work on hunger. He wants to work with churches and organizations across the country to perform this album live as a hunger action. \u201cThe key words are \u2018activity, action, engagement,\u2019\u201d Bryan says. \u201cHunger is a downer of a topic, but hunger action is energetic, is hopeful, is making a day to day difference in the lives of people who wonder where the next meal is going to come from.\u201d<\/p>\n For more information on hunger, check out the Presbyterian Hunger Project on Facebook<\/a> and Bread for the World<\/a>. <\/a>Your giving won\u2019t be misspent by either of these organizations. But the easiest and most enjoyable action you could take against hunger this year is to order Bryan\u2019s recording, as either an MP3 download or CD. You can learn more about the project and order the album here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If there\u2019s an article about music on Pop Theology, you know Richard Lindsay has written it.\u00a0 Check out his review of an interesting project by singer\/songwriter Bryan McFarland, a musician who is singing to combat hunger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":1779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/357\/2010\/11\/Bryan-McFarland-stage-shot.jpg\")
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