I come from a town divided. Texarkana, Texas, USA. I barely made it into our fine Republic. The town is positioned, geographically, in the northeastern corner of the state, with half of the city proper hanging over into Texas and the other half juttin’ over into Arkansas. “Texarkana is Twice as Nice!” is what the water tower says. Stateline Avenue splits the municipality right down the middle and if you follow it all the way downtown you’ll run smack into the city post office that sits right atop the bi-state dissection. There’s a sign there to prove it. It’s a scarecrow post type situation with two metal objects hanging out to either side of it, one in the shape of Texas and one in the shape of Arkansas. At the foot of the sign there is a white line painted on the concrete. It’s presumed to be a photographic o p p or tu n ity. You can stand there with one foot on one side of the line and one foot on the other and be in two states at the same time. I’ve stood right there, with my feet on either side of the divide, and you know what? I couldn’t feel a thing. I moved from Texas to Georgia a few years ago. Atlanta, GA, to be exact. When I first got there, I landed in a pretty rough part of town called, Atlanta. That’s a joke you can make if you live in Atlanta. We get to make that joke. You cannot. Until you have a permanent address with a water bill to prove it. The specific part of Atlanta I landed in is called, Cabbagetown. It’s a quaint mill town with shotgun houses all gridded in near proximity to the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill. The company that built the mill originally officed out of the former Atlanta Slave

CROWDER | AMERICAN PRODIGAL | BIO 1 Market House, which it soon outgrew. In the negative automatic thoughts associated with early 1880’s it began construction on a complex this type of individual endeavor with positive of buildings east of dow ntow n on the south side cognitive rebuttals. Such as “This feeling is of the Georgia Railroad line. The owners of uncomfortable, but I can do this.” And, “I’m a the newly constructed mill would drive trucks capable person who can do many things without up into the Appalachian mountains and load the help of others.” And, “You can do it!” I them down with folks looking for work; and tried not to let myself worry about anything these folks, mostly poor Scots-Irish, settled more than just getting my insides, outside. in those gridded shotgun houses that had been At that time, I was thinking a lot about erected just for them. Over the past decade, roots, and home, and place, and belonging. the mill has been converted into a planned Which makes sense, seeing as I had never lived socioeconomically diversified residential space a n y w h e r e o u t s i d e o f t h e L o n e S t a r S t a t e o f T e x a s . that just so happened to be the first thing to The lyrics read like pop colloquial Southern come up on the internet machine when my wife, Gospel and the music sounded like bluegrass Toni, typed in, “Atlanta loft apartments”. And electronic dance music. Growing up in East that’s how our Georgia adventure began and Texas, country and western, and bluegrass, and how we wound up living in Cabbagetown in the southern gospel were just things in the air, Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill. as unavoida ble as sweat tea. A nd too, co m ing of A year or so after arriving in Cabbagetown, age in the 80’s, sp ending sup era bu nda nt a m ou nts I began work on my first album as a solo- of time in front of the television playing artist entitled, Neon Steeple. I am a fragile Atari and Nintendo with all those 8-bit beeps- human and was nervous that this, the working and-blips, well, it’s no wonder that if I were on my first album as a solo-artist, might be gonna try to get the soul of who I was as a a terrible idea. Because, well, this time, person out into the open, it would be all my fault. The act of blame the banjo and displacement is humanity at its most adept. fiddle would be sittin’ right (i.e. Adam, the first man [addressing God], “Um. But. She gave me the fruit!”) In a band, there up next to the 808 kick drum. is the company of compatriots to spread the “Folktronica,” was the proper name for it if blame fairly amongst. I chose to combat the we were to have to name a thing as slippery as

CROWDER | AMERICAN PRODIGAL | BIO 2 music. It was front porch hand and foot music Texas accent, that on the global spectrum of with ones and zeros. And there I was, in a new accents, falls into the infraredneck frequency locale called Cabbagetown, trying to find my range. What is beautiful about Atlanta, and roots. And you know what? Turns out, that far different from everywhere else I’ve lived, is that most of the time I’m outnumbered. street I landed on, the one with the So, there I am, a pastie, white, bearded, mill, yeah, it’s where country music infraredneck, hillbilly-talking dude trying was born. For real. True story! As to say something about roots and home and I said, I didn’t know it at the time, but belonging while sinking roots and finding a remember all those mill workers that were new home and true belonging in this hyper- fetched down from the Appalachians? Well, globalized and diversified city of Atlanta, they brought their music with them, banjos and GA. It didn’t take me long to consider the fiddles in tow. Cabbagetown was country before following: the banjo is an African instrument; countr y was countr y. Look it up on the internet the fiddle is an African instrument. machine. Nashville could’ve been Atlanta. On the other side of the tracks, the ones Funny thing about roots, they take in I mentioned earlier that the Fulton Bag and whatever the soil provides. I don’t know if Cotton Mill sits on, is the Old Fourth Ward. I would have seen it any other way, but when That’s where freedom was born. If you have not I looked up, after a couple of years in the established permanent residency in Atlanta, as ATL, I realized that my first solo album was in, you still cannot produce a water bill to incredibly, what do you call it? “White.” prove it, you may not know that the Old Fourth Which is understandable. Seeing as I am, like, Ward is the birthplace of reverend Martin “white.” I mean, I’m extremely, “white.” Like, Luther King, Jr. and is home of the Ebenezer literally, my skin is that pastie, British- Baptist Church where Dr. King was baptized and English-W hite (BE W) t hat bu rsts i nto fl a m es when where he and his father and his grandfather exposed to direct sunlight. Add to that the were pastors. Yeah, that’s right across the whole Texarkana, Texas thing and the overall tracks from Cabbagetown. vibe, I guess you’d call it, that I’m sending Mrs. Panell told me the parable of the out, is like, hillbilly-homeless with an East Prodigal Son in Sunday school. I was still of

CROWDER | AMERICAN PRODIGAL | BIO 3 the age where they brought us cookies and Kool-aid and we still played games like Mother May I and we still made neat freaking stuff out of popsicle sticks and glue. But as I grew up, the Prodigal story never really evolved or developed much more nuance than how I first heard it in Sunday school. Seemed like a prodigal was someone who left home and acted out in rebellious ways until thoroughly depleting any and all means of acting out in rebellious ways, at which point the prodigal returns home to a welcoming, ever loving father who is running toward him with open arms, party in tow. Which is pretty darn beautiful. But I think the real story, the one worthy of an italicized title designating the start of a new allegorical tale as told by the Son of God in the middle of a gospel, The Parable of the Prodigal Son, is way more indicting than just calling out a rebel. Turns out the word “prodigal” is an adjective meaning “lavish”. At the very beginning of the story, which may be the most puissant, the father bestows his inheritance on both of his sons. Both are lavished upon by the father. As an American, currently living in Atlanta, GA, USA, I know what it means to be lavished upon. To find our place on this planet, here in such a land of blessing, what shall we do with what has been placed upon us?

If ever there were a place divided…

The current social and political atmosphere, even on a prefatory level, can give rise to a ruinous reduction in your sense of well being. Watching the news, or reading editorials, or op-editorials, or listening to the people at the table next to yours at Denny’s, brings on a sadness no amount of bacon can service. I’ve tried. But I think that we are all a lot more the same than we are different. We’re all just dirt and water and the breath of God. It’s just a painted line. Or, some railroad tracks. Either way, it’s a thing someone put there without asking. Maybe, what I’m supposed to be doing, having been lavished upon, is pointing out that a person can stand right there in the divide, brave and free, and not feel a thing. I know what it means to have the divide spanned on my behalf. Grace works on us all just the same. Love works on us all just the same. Freedom works on us all just the same. There’s only one defi nitive line and that’s the one between death and life. These songs are about that divide spanned on our behalf and I pray they are subversive and healing in their insistence of that reality.

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