John Baumann Took Me To Church

My dad passed away 10 years ago next month. It remains one of the most profoundly impactful moments of my life. A true dividing line. I was lost, adrift...I felt alone. Everything went quiet. Not just the house or the texts or the routines, something bigger. It was like the world had turned the volume down, and I was walking around in a world filtered by rain clouds seeking sunlight. Everyone grieves differently, and for me, it felt like I was stuck in a fog I couldn’t explain. As I do with most things, I turned to music and my friends. I made it through. A decade on, I'm still missing pieces of myself but I manage.

One afternoon in spring 2017, I was sent an advance copy of John Baumann's upcoming record. I was driving alone and turned it on. I didn’t even know where I was going, it was one of those aimless drives that you let muscle memory take over and just kind of drift down the road. Somewhere between back roads and tears I didn’t plan to cry, "Old Stone Church" came on.

Baumann had played River Jam a couple times in 2014 and 2015. I loved all of his work. His style, his smarts. But, I wasn't prepared for this. I'd never had a song grip its claws into me quite like this before. I had to pull over.

The opening strains felt like coming home. I didn't feel as alone anymore. It was like Baumann was singing my exact experience. Like he’d written it just for me. How could he know? Well, because he'd lived the same hell I had. The details were different, yet the same.

That song became a place I could go. A place where my dad was still around, maybe not in body, but in spirit. The lines about legacy, about history, about the permanence of certain places and the fleetingness of everything else, they spoke right to the ache I carried.

Every time I played "Old Stone Church", I pictured my dad. One night when Mattson Rainer was kind enough to let me spin some of my favorite songs on KNBT 92.1 in New Braunfels, "Old Stone Church" was like the fourth song out of the box for me that night. It's sad and heavy, but I needed to showcase how much John Baumann and that song meant to me. If just one person heard it and connected with it the same way I had, that was a win.

Music has that power sometimes—to crack something open in you when you thought you were numb for good. That song helped me grieve, but more than that, it helped me remember. It reminded me that love and loss don’t cancel each other out. They walk side by side.

To most people, it might just be a good song. But to me, "Old Stone Church" became a sacred place, a place where I found my dad again, and slowly, found myself. Just like Baumann had in writing it.

Come hear "Old Stone Church" and all the other gems in Baumann's collection at our Galleywinter Listening Room in West, TX on Sun June 22.

There are still tickets available: John Baumann at the Galleywinter Listening Room