The Word Becomes Music with Tim Menzies

I saw and heard The Word become Music Sunday night and it was a little echo of Heaven.

Music and religion are intertwined like dirt and roots or peanut butter and jelly. I thought I had heard most music genres used to praise The Lord - Hymns, gospel, God Rock and the new praise music that is so popular in the contemporary worship services.

But Tim Menzies is spinning something entirely different. He is marrying the actual Word from The Bible and melting it down into songs that are achingly truthful, making you think while tapping your foot for you. He is proselytizing with his pickin’.

I had never heard of Tim Menzies until last week when I got an email from the Reverend Doctor, Craig C. Goff, my former pastor and present friend, who does some Godly guitar pickin’ hizownself. He invited Jan and I over to Murfreesboro on Sunday night to his present post at St. Mark’s Methodist where his Band of Many Names was opening for Menzies. Craig sent me a link to a Billboard article to catch me up.

Craig’s band name of the week, The TrueTones, warmed us up and Goff was his usual enthusiastic self, one part Waylon and another part Marshall Tucker. He sang his song about Jesus being an Outlaw and another his dad had written for The Allman Brothers. Craig’s dad was in attendance and it was great to finally meet him. He is an Old Man who oozes the authenticity of his years and gives you the feeling the stories are all true and he has gathered some workable wisdom from them.

My first thought when Menzies came onstage was he was too young to be reviewed in a site dedicated to Male Age, Wisdom & Folly. I’ve since discovered he’s only about five years from the magic Six-Oh-No. I guess he’s just remarkably well preserved and we’ll welcome him into A Country For Old Men when his time comes as it does for everyone.

My second thought was Tim needed to get some of the band members to sit in because it was just him and his guitar. I didn’t immediately notice the instrument that would make him more than a One Man Band on this night, the tabbed-marked Bible.

Menzies is in a career transition from successful Nashville songwriter and musical road warrior to something brand new – a picker-preacher-poet who delivers The Word to an audience via song. He’s a good enough songwriter to have made a living at it for the last 25+ years in Nashville, where one is more likely to be struck by lightning than get a song cut. A Nashville songwriter is defined by the “He wrotes…”. In Tim’s case, he’s written songs for Shenendoah, Shelby Lynn, Mark Chesnutt and Trisha Yearwood. Probably his best known song is “Mama Knows”, which fits his new gig nicely. He also played in the band “Bandana” in the mid ‘80s and they released 10 singles during that time.

His career transition is complete with a new name – Menzies, which is his actual name. A Nashville kingmaker in the ‘80s thought the public would be confused by a “Z” in his name and so had him go by the professional name “Tim Mensy”. I guess it was a good thing the names Rock Hudson & Tab Hunter were already taken.

The new path God has laid out for Menzies has him combining The Word with his considerable writing and musical talent into a presentation that can only be described as intimate and thought provoking. He doesn’t paraphrase Scripture, he reads from the Good Book as the both preamble and source of a particular song. The Word comes across as an intro as clear and unadorned as if played on a guitar or mandolin.

Menzies gift is music that could easily be played on Country radio if that genre wasn’t so concerned with beaches, four wheelers, big pickups and hooking up. He mixes fatherhood motherhood and childhood and mixes in the Maker’s Hand so it sort of sneaks up on the listener that God is in the mix.

The CD’s title track, “His Way of Loving Me,” is a perfect illustration. It starts with a story of his father taking his keys when he finds a bottle under the front seat, then he later understands the love in the act when a friend is killed by mixing alcohol and automobile. The chorus talks about love can be as hard as nails, or as soft as a mother kissing away a baby’s tears. God comes to him on a gentle breeze in his backyard at dawn with a gift of a bluebird’s song. The peace of that scene is just His way of Loving Me in Tim’s estimation.

That’s good writing in any kind of song, but a lot deeper than most praise songs. Most of those

tell you God is awesome but never tell you why.

Fatherhood is a recurring theme and “How You Make A Man” is another song that ought to be on everybody’s radio.

Turn that TV off and grab a fishing pole

Turn off of the highway down an old dirt road

Let him dig into the earth

And pull a worm out with his hands

That’s how you make a man

Tim takes Fatherhood a step further in point of view when he lines up a talk with God the Father as “One Father to Another”. Tim makes the point from his knees that God understands how powerless a Father can feel when his son is inflicted pain by the world. Tim is looking for any advice or wisdom our Heavenly Father is willing to offer from His own experience.

Tim’s best known chart hit, “Mama Knows”, is on the collection and fits right in. He’s also got a great song about “The Grandpa that I Know” where he discusses how the man in a suit for the first time in life isn’t his Grandpa and goes on to tell who his Grandpa really was. There are also great renditions of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “I Surrender All”, which is the last song in the collection and sums everything else up.

The song I came away with stuck in my mind was “Lies the Devil Told Me”. Probably because I’ve heard some form of the same ones myself as I took wrong turns along my own way. The lines that particularly hit home are ones written for someone just smart enough to outsmart hisownself:

God’s too busy to hear you prayin’

That Bible’s just some words on pages

Fairy tales a smart man doesn’t need

Lies the Devil told me…

Four lines that every born cynic from Hemingway to Hallmark has wrestled with like Jacob matched up with the Angel. One of the goals of A Country for Old Men is to highlight men who make a difference with their lives. Those four lines convinced this listener here is a writer who has a voice that will matter in our world.

Tim Menzies is poised to make a difference with his new career.