HM | The Hard Music Magazine

I remember sitting down with the legendary singer for Soundgarden — Chris Cornell. The first question I popped him as we sat in chairs in the quiet patio of Austin’s Four Seasons Hotel, after a public access film crew were packing up to leave was about Austin, Texas. I wanted to hear his memories and thoughts of this fine city. At first he talked about the climate, the foliage and then the attitude of the community and the laid-back atmosphere of it. Then he shared a story about Soundgarden’s first trip to Austin. It was their first stop in the South and, being a racially-mixed band out on its first tour in this region, they had doubts about how they would be treated. Some guy with a beer truck was making deliveries at the gas station they pulled into and he started a conversation. When he found out they were visiting for the first time, he took out a case of beer and loaded it into their van. “Welcome to Austin!”

Nevermind what your opinion is about alcoholic beverages, this act of kindness was surreal and left a huge impression on he and his bandmates (so much so that he remembered the details some 20 years later). What was cool for me was at the packed-out outdoors show at Stubb’s BBQ, he began his first between-song chat with a recollection about “an interview that I did today, where I was asked about Austin…”

Yeah, this is my ego getting stroked, but that was kinda neat.

Today I flipped open the new online edition of another Christian music magazine and one of the artist brought up a quote from a conversation that I’d had with this band just a day or two before. Over a lunch I shared my opinion that Christian rock’s greatest gift to the body of Christ was a pastoral gift, not evangelism. This artist seems to agree. Neither time was I credited (and all my false humility goes out the door with this public blog, haha), but it was kind of a boost of encouragement to know that both times I was able to engage in meaningful conversation with an artist and actually have them impacted so much by it that they’d bring it up publically.

This isn’t a huge deal or anything. It’s a tiny detail, but it’s encouraging to me.

This same artist turned to me during the walking-out-of-the-BBQ restaurant and said, “You’re like a band pastor!” It might’ve been meant as a small compliment in passing, but it struck me as, ‘Wow! I wonder if God has that sort of thing in mind for me in the future…?’

hmmm… Something to think about.