Pop culture IV -- Faith, doubt and newgrass lightning from Nickel Creek

Exvangelicals? Savvy believers? Seekers? Spiritual but not religious? Dig into two key songs and let me know what you think

Music fanatics love to ask unanswerable Top 10 questions. This whole “name your desert island records” game has been going on forever, but when you add social media to the mix things get wild.

Hollywood director Scott Derrickson is totally into the Top 10 thing — music and film — and recently asked X folks to name their top 10 SONGS. I thought: No way. I can’t name my Top 10 Pat Metheny discs, for heaven’s sake. My Top 10 Bruce Cockburn instrumentals? Top 10 Mark Heard songs from that explosion of work from the last year or so of his way-too-short life? Celtic Christmas albums? My brain can’t handle those kinds of choices. I’m a guy with 250+ best-of playlists in his phone.

So, what are my Top 10 concerts, in all genres combined? Producing that list would make my head explode. But I know this — Nickel Creek is in there and the show we saw the the other night (first of two sellouts in Knoxville’s historic Tennessee Theatre) is now in the list. The South Florida show two decades ago stays in my Top 10, too.

Sara Watkins, Sean Watkins and Chris Thile have been together since they where children (check out this early video) and, at this point, their instrumental and vocal work is genuinely telepathic. This is bluegrass fused with Celtic reels, jazz, classical, folk, alt-rock and you name it. If you don’t follow this band, you should.

Why bring his up at Rational Sheep? Well, Christian faith has played an important role in their history and this shows up in the lyrics. What is the shape of their beliefs at this point? Are they Exvangelicals? None of the above believers? On the road to ancient forms of Christian faith?

Consider, for example, one of my favorite Nickel Creek songs — “When in Rome.” Here are the lyrics:

Where can a sick man go
When he can't choke down the medicine, the old doc knows?
A specialist came to town, but he stays at home
Sayin', no one knows, so I don't
Honey, when in Rome

Where can a teacher go?
Wherever she thinks people need the things she knows
Hey, those books you gave us look good on the shelves at home
And they'll burn warm in the fireplace
Teacher, when in Rome

Grab a blanket, sister, we'll make smoke signals
Bring in some new blood, it feels like we're alone
Grab a blanket, brother, so we don't catch, cold
From one another, I wonder if we're stuck in Rome

Where can a dead man go?
A question with an answer only dead men know
But I'm gonna bet they never really feel at home
If they spent a lifetime learning how to live in Rome

What’s going on there? Is this about a loss of faith? The temptations of compromising with “Rome,” as in the dominant mainstream culture of the age? If you swallow the doctrines of “Rome” you will “never really feel at home” in the afterlife?

Maybe Nickel Creek’s Americana songs are too “inside baseball” for some Rational Sheep readers, but they have a wide, loyal audience that, based on what I saw the other night, runs from Baby Boomers to Gen z hipsters (Is that still a word?)

If you want to know more, here is a flashback to a 2005 “On Religion” column — Faith, doubt and Nickel Creek — that includes a byte of my conversation with Thile.

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NASHVILLE — The crowd was dancing as soon as the bluegrass trio Nickel Creek went on stage, with hot-shot mandolinist Chris Thile careening around like a possessed marionette.

The opening number "When in Rome" was an edgy tale about lost souls trapped in a cold world where the doctors can't heal, people burn books for heat and no one answers distress signals. By the time Thile reached the apocalyptic last verse, he was raising questions about life, death and life after death.

"Where can a dead man go? The question with an answer only dead men know," he sang, briefly frozen in a stark white spotlight. "But I'm going to bet they never really feel at home, if they spent a lifetime learning how to live in Rome."

The crowd rocked on. There were tattooed youngsters in the aisles, dancing next to hip home-schooling parents with their children. There were bluegrass purists offering whoops of praise, sitting near some NASCAR fans wearing Birkenstock scandals.

The Nickel Creek crew — guitarist Sean Watkins and his sister Sara on fiddle, along with Thile — are hard to label and so are their fans. One reason for that is the band's Grammy Award-winning fusion of bluegrass roots with rock attitude. Nickel Creek often veers from Bill Monroe traditionalism to MTV Nirvana without blinking, with stops in John Coltrane and Beach Boy territory along the way.

But there was another reason the crowd in War Memorial Auditorium was unusually diverse. Nickel Creek offers a unique mix of old faith and modern doubts.

The trio has been together 16 years, beginning as children in devout Christian homes in San Diego. Early on, they recorded a gospel-bluegrass album called "Here to There" before heading into the mainstream with the help of superstar Alison Krauss.

It's crucial that bluegrass is one form of music in which artists are allowed to sing about Sunday morning as well as Saturday night. Thus, the members of Nickel Creek have been candid about their beliefs, while staying light years away from the prison called "Contemporary Christian Music."

Faith isn't an artistic curse if it stays honest, said Sean Watkins, who has written most of the trio's songs that wrestle with religious issues. It's interesting that old hymns are often more candid and searching than today's gospel pop songs.

"I'm so sick of sugar-coated songs from the Christian perspective," he said, in his online journal. "One of the most comforting and inspiring lines to me is from the last chorus of 'Come Thou Fount' where it says, 'Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.' Not many un-watered-down songs make it through the filter of the Christian music industry mafia these days."

But honesty is a two-edged sword.

That's why Thile — at the ripe old age of 24 — was standing in a harsh spotlight singing songs about death, despair and divorce. One of his new songs is called "Doubting Thomas" and includes these poignant lines: "Can I be used to help others find truth, when I'm scared I'll find proof that it's a lie? ... I'm a doubting Thomas. I'll take your promise, though I know nothing's safe. Oh me of little faith."

Thile said he hopes to live his life as if death is not the end, struggling to "keep one foot in this world while sticking one foot out of it, just to get ready." At the same time, it's hard to avoid the kind of burned-out, shopping-mall confusion that leads so many young people to feel alone and disconnected, even while they crave relationships that will last.

Thus, this Nickel Creek concert closed with the trio sharing one microphone, gently singing this lullaby: "Why should the fire die? My mom and dad kept theirs alive."

"We are tempted to distance ourselves from the things that are truly powerful and beautiful in life," said Thile. "Faith is certainly one of those things. Faith is huge, and so are friendships and our family relationships. ...

"Anything that is truly worthwhile is both powerful and dangerous at the same time. Anything that is truly beautiful and lovely can also turn twisted and ugly. But we can't hide from all of that. That's what is real."

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I’ll end with the lyrics from “Doubting Thomas” — showing the context for that haunting line, “Oh me of little faith.” Does anyone else hear echoes of a famous passage in the Gospel of Mark?

What will be left when I've drawn my last breath
Besides the folks I've met and the folks who've known me
Will I discover a soul-saving love
Or just the dirt above and below me

I'm a doubting Thomas
I took a promise
But I do not feel safe
Oh me of little faith

Sometimes I pray for a slap in the face
Then I beg to be spared cause I'm a coward
If there's a master of death
I bet he's holding his breath
As I show the blind and tell the deaf about his power

I'm a doubting Thomas
I can't keep my promises
Cause I don't know what's safe
Oh me of little faith

Can I be used to help others find truth
When I'm scared I'll find proof that it's a lie
Can I be led down a trail dropping bread crumbs
That prove I'm not ready to die

Please give me time to decipher the signs
Please forgive me for time that I've wasted

I'm a doubting Thomas
I'll take your promise
Though I know nothin's safe
Oh me of little faith

Thoughts?

If you have a chance, don’t miss a chance to see Nickel Creek in concert. I hope to see a DVD out of this tour backing the recent CD “Celebrants.”

You will need to do some advance work to get ready for the show, but don’t ask me to provide a list of the Top 10 Nickel Creek songs. I couldn’t handle that assignment. No way.