On this edition of the Radio Hour, Brian Powers and Nicholas Gunty sweep into the Wild Rose Moon Performing Arts Center with a performance that resounds like sprinkles of holy water applied directly to our eardrums. Although lyrically, this is not a liturgy bound by “Christian” texts, their performances are parsed in the best of the contemplative traditions. Indeed, their harmonies soothe like a sonic balm, recalling the best of monastic choirs – blending voices and spirits that invoke and conjure a pure connection to a bliss-filled sense of the divine.
The show begins with the usual upbeat bluegrass theme, “River Goes Round.” It continues with comical banter with announcer Derek Jensen – remarking on his new “Stealth Class,” then folds into words from Victor Hugo (via Pam Gunterman) during a “Note from Rosie,” and culminates with a story from honeyed-voiced music producer John Bahler. Finally, Frances Luke Accord renders their first song – directly off their new album, “Safe and Sound.” Nick remarks, “We made the record during the pandemic – during quarantine – so survival is a big theme, as well as finding calm and community.” Brian chimes in, “And we’re a pretty quiet band as it is, and we were trying to keep the band even calmer than they usually are.” The song that ensues here is “All the Things.” The song begins acapella by recounting a dream and then unfolds in a catchy melody– all sung in harmonic unison. Here’s a middle verse:
Oh, when those rain clouds
Are rumbling down
You feel your roots all
Flooded in doubt
Oh, if it thunders a bit too loud
I’ll sing for you, my songbird
Find you some solid ground.
The song is short—almost too short, given its lovely effect on the ears–yet near the end, Nick starts a beautiful pure whistle that Brian sings over until Nick springs back into a harmonic blend with a simple da da da child-like ending. The following song, “In My Life,” is a song that Brian explains features the band Darlingside on the album. The song, an act of peacemaking with the existential condition, concludes with these words:
When I die
Take me the long way home
Lay me down in the snow
Where the sparrow might go
Where the hollow oaks fold
Into a cradle in time
To make a nest from bone
Woah, I saw, but I went blind
Now we know what we know
We’ll see it all go
Multi-talented musician and composer Cindy Boener begins the next section of the show with a beautiful original composition on harp, “The Pale Moonlight.” In her introduction to the piece, she explains, “We have a beautiful maple tree in our front yard, and it’s got this big swooping bough, and it’s just gorgeous. And I’m sitting in our front room, and the moon is full. You could see it right above the curve of the bough. And I’m thinking that is just so beautiful, and I wanted to try to capture that feeling.” As the song unfolds, the moonlight enters Cindy’s heart, and as the last harp strings die out, they leave the radio show gasping for air.
In an abrupt shift of tone, the “Shoot the Moon” game show ensues, featuring Dan Breen, managing editor of PANOPLY, Michiana’s only arts magazine, and Bill Firstenberger, Executive Director of Ruthmere Museum in Elkhart, Indiana. During the show, contestants answer biographical questions relating to Nicholas Gunty and Brian Powers, including questions relating to Victor Hugo and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the musical group Bon Iver, the poetry of an Algerian Sufi Sheik, the Hopeful School Children’s Choir, and Cellist, Katie Van Deusen.
In the show’s concluding segment, Frances Luke Accord discusses their upcoming return to Uganda to work again with the Hopeful School Children’s Choir as they did with their first album, Kandote, recorded in 2012. In honor of that, they perform an enigmatic song off that album, “Nowhere to Be Found.”
If I could find the secrets
To how the world began
If I could hold the key of life
In the palm of my hand
If I could take you with me
We’d turn our lives around
Then baby we’d be nowhere to be found.
After the song, they discuss the origins of the name of their band, Frances Luke Accord, and launch into a new song they hope to do with their choir. It begins with a fluttering of strings, which swell and die out as each of these lines is sung:
Raise up the sail.
Untie the rope,
Move out to sea.
Set me free.
I set out to find,
The great zero.
The questions continue as a string of Zen Koans flows through Frances Luke Accord’s lyrics and performances like a murmuring brook—each song a chance to explore the beauty of being while remaining content to revere its mystery. Like a Sufi dervish whirling, Frances Luke Accord’s work evolves and evokes a desire to release the ego from its strivings and tune into something more significant. In this sense, their songs serve a universal desire for the emergence of a greater consciousness – a universal wholeness only one’s heart can imagine.