Prodigal Son In Lights

By Jewly Hight

The throaty melismata that sways and surges through the opening a cappella strains of Salvation in Lights could be mistaken for that of a formidable female African American gospel vocalist. But the voice belongs to Mike Farris—prodigal son of a sort—getting his second chance at living in the South, sobriety and making music.

Farris spent his previous Nashville tenure (he now lives in Manchester, Tenn.) contributing raw-throated vocals to Southern boogie rockers the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies—best known for the meaty, rough-edged blues riffing of “Shakin’ the Blues” and “Boogie King.” When the group drew the attention of Atlantic Records with their weekend gigs at the now defunct Elliston Place blues dive the Grapevine Café (now Aladdin’s Hookah Lounge), Farris hadn’t been singing long at all. Still, his voice was potent even then, foreshadowing what it would be like once he was able to fully stretch out.

“It’s not [the Cheetah Wheelies’] fault that I had just realized that I could sing,” he says. “Instead of cutting my teeth around town for the next five or six years to learn how to sing, I ended up having to do it on albums for everybody to see and witness and criticize. I didn’t realize that until a few years ago. I felt like I’m just now learning how to sing after all these years. I look back on those albums and I feel like I was still trying to find my way.”

Trying to find his way is a bit of an understatement: Farris’ decade-and-a-half of drug and alcohol addiction—throughout his Cheetah Wheelies tenure and subsequent stints with Peaceful Knievel and Double Trouble—had a way of thwarting his musical endeavors. “I’ve done stuff around town that’s just downright appalling,” he says. “The mayor bought a stage and had it downtown, one of these portable stages that folds out from the back of a truck. He’d just bought that thing and we rolled into town—I tore it all to pieces, put holes in it. Webb Wilder was all pissed at me because he was playing after us.”

But there’s no pride apparent in Farris’ retelling of the “stupid stuff” he’s done. “Now the music is adequate. It fulfills me without having to do any of that crap. Up until this project, I had probably played a total of maybe—maybe—three shows in my entire career—out of thousands of shows I’ve done—sober.”

Farris has always sung about his spiritual impulses (the Cheetah Wheelies’ “Standing in the Sun” is a good example), but Salvation in Lights signals an altogether new season for him. The follow-up to his independent solo debut Goodnight Sun—and the first album that he’s done since leaving New York and getting clean—is comprised of African American spirituals, gospel and soul rendered with the ferventness and lucidity of someone freed from the demons of chemical dependency and reveling in finally being at home.

“I think I probably would have died up there [in New York],” says Farris. “I felt these ominous things happening. I felt like the end was near.”

“I couldn’t create the kind of stuff that I want to create up there,” he adds. “Down here people understand me. We’ve walked the same dirt roads. I mean, everybody understands the language I speak down here, as far as the musicians. It’s like they understand what I’m going for. I think more of it is just the feel of this region. I don’t think I could create this music anywhere outside of the South.”

For Farris—who didn’t attend church growing up, but had a religious conversion experience pre-Cheetah Wheelies while living alone in his car—recording for a Christian label (INO) was another first. “I had this feeling—maybe it was just out of fear—I don’t know,” he says. “I felt like because I was weak before and I wasn’t a strong enough person to withstand all the drugs and alcohol and all that stuff that was going on in the rock world, ‘Maybe the place for me is in the church, and maybe my thing in the church is to help encourage other people like me.’ I’m not a steady-going church guy. I’m rough around the edges. I just thought that that’s what the church is all about.”

Even so, boom-chicka-boom upright bass (courtesy of former Johnny Cash sideman Dave Roe) and the lazy, blaring joy of Dixieland horns aren’t typical contemporary Christian fare so much as a heady amalgam of R&B, New Orleans jazz and roots rock. “You know if you listen to Christian [music], man, it’s the furthest thing away from me as you can get,” Farris says.

“I was kind of drawing from the approach that Ry Cooder had on the Buena Vista Social Club stuff as far as the sounds. And then a lot of the old Preservation Hall [Jazz Band] albums. That was a huge part of my concept, and after that it was real rough. I wanted to know what each musician had in mind and what they would bring to the table. I’ve never been the kind of person to cut them out before they even get there.”

A lone eruptive guitar solo during “I’ll Take You There” is a subtle reminder of Farris’ own musical background. “I was in a rock band for so long it’s like, now I just don’t miss a whole lot of guitar playing,” he says. “This album has very few guitar parts on it. It’s all pretty much acoustic instruments, you know, horns and standup bass. I like that. I like the fact that everybody in the band is doing very little to make a whole lot.”

Farris’ feverish rasp is flanked by just the type of supple voices he so admires. (“I’d like it to be a good mix between Fats Waller, Al Green, Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin. That’d be perfect for me.”) Ann McCrary—a gospel singer and daughter of the Fairfield Four’s Rev. Sam McCrary—is among them. It just so happened that she’d previously lent her voice to Buddy Miller’s Universal United House of Prayer. “I cold-called [Miller] when we were ready to record to use his singers,” says Farris. “I didn’t know anybody to call, so I was like, ‘Man, I’m just going to cold-call that cat.’ ”

Salvation in Lights captures Farris in a largely celebratory mood. Even a song like Thomas A. Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”—written after the death of Dorsey’s wife and infant son—has a triumphant, driving feel, inspired by Paul Pena’s buoyant shuffle “Gonna Move.”

“I tried and tried and tried to record that song and it just wouldn’t work,” says Farris. “The last recording session we had, I finally came up with this arrangement and it worked. I really didn’t know what I was wanting to articulate, but it became clear to me that the song was originally written by a person who was in mourning. And it served its purpose with him, but for me, I didn’t—subconsciously, I guess—want that to be a song that was mournful. I wanted it to be a celebration.”

And for good reason. “There was a period—up until a year ago I guess—where I was really scared of the thought of going out on the road and playing a bar,” Farris says. “I’ve reached a point now where I don’t worry about that anymore, because I’m not tempted anymore. I don’t have any desire to have a drink or do some cocaine or something like that. There are people that I know who’ve been sober for 20-something years and they still struggle with it. At some point in the day they think about doing an eight ball of cocaine. Man, my life is unbelievably good. I couldn’t imagine throwing all of this away for that.”