#25 SON OF DUST by Randy Matthews (1973)

SON OF DUST by Randy Matthews (1973)
Myrrh - MST 6515

Anyone who wants to can!
Whoa, any woman, any man! Yes you can! I said...
Anyone who wants to can! (Alright!)
You got to take yo' place in th' holy band!

Remember when you first heard those words...sung with a joyous, almost wild abandon by a gravelly-throated troubadour? Remember how it made you feel?

After a slowed-down intro with a group of folks cheering and hand-clapping in the background, Christian artist Randy Matthews comes blasting through the speakers at the :23 mark of Holy Band, sounding very much unlike most Christian artists sounded in 1973. This was real...raw...raucous. This guy had an authentic rock and roll voice...there wasn't a pipe organ within 50 miles of him...and he was genuinely excited about what he was singing. 

What a way to kick off Son of Dust.

The Jordanaires
Randy's Dad, Monty Matthews, is pictured on the far right.

Given his background and upbringing, it was almost pre-ordained that Randy Matthews would combine sharing the Gospel with a love of music, as many in his family already had. There were no fewer than five ordained ministers in his family, and music was swirling around every which way. Randy's father was one of those ministers and was a member of famous gospel groups like the Matthews Brothers Quartet, the Foggy River Boys, and the Jordanaires (the same Jordanaires who went on to back Elvis Presley before The Imperials). Randy had been a Christian from an early age and even sang in a southern gospel quartet as a high school student. That's a far cry from the conversion stories that were taking place out on the West Coast, what with drug-addled hippies coming to Jesus and being baptized in the Pacific Ocean. Here was this Matthews kid in the Midwest - Missouri! - singing in gospel groups with names like The Revelations and The Zionaires. After high school he attended Ozark Bible College in Joplin, Missouri, but did not graduate. Instead, he got involved with a couple of friends in what was a radical idea at the time: singing folk music with Christian lyrics. This led to the founding of a Christian coffee house in Cincinnati (Jesus House), which regularly drew crowds of 250-300 people. And all the while, Matthews had little to no knowledge of what God was doing by His Spirit out in Southern California. He wasn't really aware at the time that he was helping pioneer a new genre of music - Jesus Music.

Jerry Bryant (L), and Randy Matthews

Back in late 2016/early 2017, legendary Jesus Music radio host Jerry Bryant flew down to Randy's home in Sarasota, Florida to interview the somewhat reclusive Jesus Music pioneer. "Well, I never heard any Jesus Music," Matthews told Bryant. "My roots were deep in southern gospel and black spirituals. I became a Christian at a very young age, when I was six years old, and by the time I got to high school I was singing and writing guitar. And it just seemed natural for me to write about what was closest to me, and so I started singing and writing rock songs about Jesus, and that would've been about '68, something like that."

Matthews says he had no knowledge of Larry Norman, Love Song, or the 2nd Chapter of Acts until much later. Instead, Matthews was influenced by another musician from east of the Mississippi River who had also grown up steeped in southern gospel, and who also had a connection to Elvis Presley. His name was Mylon LeFevre.

Mylon LeFevre

"My first 'Jesus Music' record was by Mylon LeFevre," Matthews said. "And I listened to that and I went, Oh my Lord, there's somebody out there already doing what I'm wanting to do. And so it was encouraging to me, the newness of the thing and the daringness of it; of course, all those classics like Gospel Ship was on that record and that was a very favorite song of mine."

Mylon, 1970s

As an aside during his interview with Jerry Bryant, Matthews told a great story about Mr. LeFevre. "I knew Mylon a long time before he became a Christian again," Randy said, "before he rededicated his life to the Lord. Mylon would come over to my house and hang out with me back in Nashville and we'd visit and spend time together. Mylon would call me up every once in a while and say, 'Randy, guess what?' And I'd say, 'What?' And he'd say, 'I just gave my life to the Lord.' And then I'd see him, like, two weeks later and he'd be back to the old Mylon. Well, this went on for about three years, and then finally one time he called my up and he said, 'Randy, guess what?' And I said, 'You just gave your life to the Lord.' And he said, 'I sure did! And this time it's gonna stick.' Well, I played with him two weeks later after that. And you talk about seeing a different man. When he walked off the bus, he was a new man. And I knew from that point on that Mylon had changed. And that's when everything took off for Mylon." 

Great story, but let's get back to the early 70s. Here's Randy Matthews, following in his father's footsteps - sort of - by using music to tell people about Jesus in a way that's new and fresh. He was receiving pushback from religious gatekeepers of the day...but he was also seeing the Lord moving in the lives of the people he was singing to. "Well, I knew the potential of it because I'd seen the effects of what was happening," Matthews said on Jerry Bryant's Full Circle show. “So, despite all the flak we were receiving for it, I knew the potential of it and that kept me encouraged. And I was just a boy anyway, so I didn't have anything to lose so I just decided one day this is what the Lord wants me to do and I'm gonna go do it full time and we hit the road. And as I started traveling, I started meeting other artists and that was very much encouraging, too, because I thought I was the only guy doing it.”

Arthur Blessitt

When Matthews made Cincinnati his home base, he met a man named Arthur Blessitt. Blessitt taught him a lot about street ministry and evangelism. "Until I got out there among the reality of the world, and dealing with the world, I didn't know what the reality of Christianity was," said Matthews, candidly. "I knew that I loved Jesus and I knew that He was the way and my life was centered around that. But past that, I was just a boy. I was only 20 years old. But I just kept playing." 

By 1971 Randy Matthews had come to the attention of Word Records. And the rest is history.

"I got picked up by Word Records, which at that time was the largest gospel record label in the country, but they had not done any contemporary gospel," Randy said in his interview with Jerry Bryant. "So I was the first contemporary act to record for Word." 

Randy's debut album on Word Records was 1971's Wish We'd All Been Ready, where he is described in the liner notes as "a new breed of young singers and songwriters." The back cover says, "Randy has joined gospel to a rock beat" to form "a new sound." The truth is that the album was actually quite tame. But it probably raised a few eyebrows in '71. 

The late Billy Ray Hearn

"I was very lucky," Matthews said. "Billy Ray Hearn was an excellent, excellent man, an excellent producer and just a great Christian guy. Billy caught the vision for what I was doing and produced my first album. The material we recorded on the first album was songs that I had written when I was 15 and 16 years old; they didn't want me to record my current stuff because it was too radical."  

Larry Norman

Given the album's title track, Jerry Bryant wanted to know how Matthews ended up recording the famous song by the man who would later be dubbed the Father of Christian Rock. "Well, long before I knew Larry, or even knew of Larry, Billy Ray Hearn played me that song," Matthews explained. "And I said, 'Boy, I've got to record that song. That speaks to our times.' It was right down the middle of what I was doing. I hope I did it justice. Larry had done such an excellent job on it, of course being the writer of the song, he would, you know? But I was happy to record it. I was a little embarrassed that I recorded his tune. I didn't know it was his tune at the time. But he didn't mind." 

What happened next altered the Christian rock soundscape for many years into the future. 

When it was time for a second album, Matthews had let his hair grow out a bit, and his music was now considered "too extreme" by the suits at Word in Waco, Texas. So the story is told that Matthews himself suggested to the folks at Word that they create a subsidiary label that could release some of this new Jesus Music that was being made, without upsetting the company's traditional audience. 

And that's how Myrrh Records came to be. 

"They started Myrrh Records for me because they thought my music was a little too radical for the Word label," said Randy. Myrrh became a vitally important organ for dispensing and popularizing Gospel rock and roll in the early 70s and beyond. It eventually grew into a behemoth that was home to everything from pop and rock to black gospel and adult contemporary. Myrrh was a label home at various times for Amy Grant, Billy Preston, Petra, Michael & Stormie Omartian, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Steve Taylor, The Choir, Phil Keaggy, Randy Stonehill, and so many more. But first, Myrrh gave early Jesus Music a home by releasing records by Barry McGuire, Honeytree, the Pat Terry Group, Malcolm & Alwyn, and the 2nd Chapter of Acts. And it came into existence due to the forward-thinking Randy Matthews. 

Barry McGuire (L) with Randy Matthews

All I Am Is What You See, Matthews' sophomore album, is described by author Barry Alphonso of Billboard as “a grittier-sounding album, toning down the production and allowing the electric guitars more prominence.”

The stage was set for Son of Dust.

Brian Quincy Newcomb

Today Brian Quincy Newcomb is a United Church of Christ pastor. He's also known these days for being a proponent of liberal social and political causes and "progressive" Christianity. But for many years he was a leading writer, publisher, editor, critic, etc., in the Christian rock arena.  

Newcomb was a teenage pastor's kid in Western New York state back in the early 70s. He loved music and was a big Beatles fan. He had also given his heart to Jesus, but felt like he just didn't fit in at church. 

Enter Randy Matthews.

Newcomb caught wind of a Matthews gig at a coffeehouse in Wellsville, New York on a winter night. "To say that that night changed everything for me would be an understatement," Newcomb wrote.

BQN (as he is sometimes known) has said that he was hungry for a glimpse of Christian expression that felt relevant and "had the potential to rock." Randy Matthews strode on stage with long hair, a beard and a guitar, and immediately made a positive impression on Brian. And Matthews had the voice and the songs to back up the look. Newcomb bought a copy of Son of Dust at that coffeehouse and took it home with him. "Randy Matthews was the first time I'd heard an artist mingle the gospel message of God's love in Jesus in music that felt relevant, meaningful and hip," he wrote. 

Let's drop the needle on Son of Dust.

It's always a good sign when your album begins with a bonafide classic. Author Mark Allan Powell calls Holy Band a signature tune for Matthews. "Holy Band is a roaring concert opener," Powell writes in his Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, "that uses the metaphor of being in a band as a descriptive image for becoming part of the people of God." 

BQN said that Matthews was in his "best soulful rock voice" on this track, which had "great rock and roll energy." There's such an unbridled joy that is conveyed when he sings Anyone who wants to can | Take your place in the holy band. "This song...combined two very important concepts," Newcomb wrote. "The anyone was an affirmation of the John 3:16 promise that whosoever believed would be welcomed, and the radical idea that a band - presumably a rock and roll band - could please God, could be holy."

Newcomb continues: "This is something my young heart wanted to believe, that there was room for a hippie wannabe/Jesus freak in God's community of Christ's love."

I'm writing this post in Spring of 2021. As I listened to Holy Band again for the first time in a long time, I couldn't help thinking about the long, hot BLM/ANTIFA summer of 2020 as Randy sang these words:

It's time we stopped it
I mean, what have we gained by our conflicts in the street
I hear the music
Whoa, don't it sound so sweet
Grab your sister and brother
Come on, laugh with each other

Lloyd Green gets bonus points for creative use of peddle steel in a rowdy rock song.

One other note on this tune - when I was a teenager, I had the idea of forming a Christian rock group when I got older and naming it Holy Band. I drew up a logo and everything. Sadly, it never happened. That idea died in my imagination right there in my 7th grade social studies class in Phenix City, Alabama. Still think it would've been a excellent name for a band.

Son of Dust actually begins with a trio of amazing songs. Next up was The Bad Has Made It Better, a song that reminds us that Randy Matthews was not a typical Jesus makes me happy, He'll make you happy, too type songwriter (as were so many of the California hippie musicians who had dramatic conversions and were still in a full-blown honeymoon period with the Lord). Matthews, while still a young man, had a darker and more mature perspective after a few years on the road, being rejected by church folk and singing wherever he could draw a crowd.

I been east
I been west
Lay my head on a curb with my feet in the street for to rest
One meal a day
Don't keep the pain away
I mean the hurt that you hurt deep inside from the food you ain't ate but once a day

I been north
You know that I been south
And the sun on my face made the burn on my lips dry my mouth
I been alone
I mean on my own
So I talk to the wind for the wind has a voice of its own

Ooo, well the bad has made it better
Because of You, well, I kept it all together
Through it all, well, I walked with my head held up high
In Your love
I did it in Your love

Great song in which Randy resists the temptation to glorify "life on the road" and instead offers thanks to the Lord for being his motivation and for helping him to keep it all together despite hardship. 

This song is dressed up here with a little more instrumentation and production than was necessary. I think it might be better experienced on the 1975 double-live album Now Do You Understand?. The stark, stripped down presentation on the live album just seems to match up better with the lyrics here. But the version here is still a highlight of Son of Dust.

In the three hole is It Ain't Easy, another great track that refuses to oversimplify the Christian faith or get overly schmaltzy about our walk with God. Remember when people praised artists like Mark Heard and Steve Taylor for their honesty? Son, Randy Matthews was honest way before honest was cool.

While some of the new converts in Orange County were writing that Jesus would simply take away all your problems, Randy Matthews was writing stuff like this:

I want to go to Heaven but I'm scared to die
I've been living here all my life
Some say I'm right, some say I'm wrong
But four long years I've sung Your song

Livin' ain't easy in a narrow way
You ask so much of me each day
I hope I'm not complainin' or askin' much
But stay close to me, the way is rough

One day I'm up, the next I'm down
It's good to know You're around
To hear my laughter, share the pain
In the sunshine, in the rain

And oh...oh...oh, it's not easy
Whoa...no...whoa, it's not easy

This song served as my introduction to Son of Dust when it was included on the highly influential Love Peace Joy Myrrh compilation album in '74. Sandwiched right in between Honeytree's I Don't Have to Worry and Love Song's Think About What Jesus Said was Randy Matthews saying, Hold up, y'all...it's not easy.

It Ain't Easy makes a big impact during just 2 and a half minutes. The production, thankfully, is scaled back here, relying heavily on acoustic guitar and some special drum parts.

Randy does his best Mick Jagger on Mighty Fine, a song that could totally have been a Rolling Stones tune if they had, well, you know, known Jesus. 

A romantic love song titled Brown Eyed Woman closes out side one of Son of Dust. There's some fancy banjo pickin' by Robert Thompson to add interest to this track. Now, just because it's a love song, don't think Randy's gonna wuss out on us. No, this is a strong rock track that holds its own. Not the most impressive lyric on the record, but a very interesting chord progression and song structure.

Now, if you were a Randy Matthews fan in 1973 and owned his first two albums, I think one glance at the Son of Dust cover art was probably enough to let you know that this was a real rock and roll record. Randy shows up on the cover of this bad boy looking for all the world like an authentic rocker. Art direction was supplied and photos taken by Bill Grine (Janny's husband). 

Son of Dust was produced by Billy Ray Hearn and arranged by Bergen White. It was recorded at Woodland Studios in Nashville. The engineers were Tommy Semmes, Rick Horton and Rex Collier. David McKinley and John Brandon were credited as "recordists."

Randy Matthews, Reggie Young, John Cristopher, Billy Sanford and Charlie McCoy played the guitars; Bobby Wood and David Briggs played keyboards; Tommy Cogbill and John Williams played bass;  Kenneth Buttrey and Jerry Carrigan were the drummers; percussion was supplied by Jerry Carrigan and Farrell Morris; the aforementioned Robert Thompson was on banjo, while Bill Puett blew the saxophone and Lloyd Green played the steel guitar. The Moog synthesizer was listed separately from keyboards in the credits and was played by Rick Powell. Of course, Randy Matthews sang on the record and he was backed by Rick Powell, Billy Ray Hearn (!) and Bergen White. 

Side two of Son of Dust kicks off with Here I Am, a funky, soulful number that has Randy saying Here I am | I'm not much | But I'm the best I got... 

Next up was a song called On the Road. Now, this song is more about "the road" in a general, figurative sense, that we are all traveling on our way Home. But Matthews did seem to reference "life on the road" quite a bit in his songs and during his live concerts. Maybe that was because performing and traveling had basically been a way of life for his family for a long time. Of course, due to his chosen style of music and his appearance, Randy probably had a tougher go of it than his Dad.

"I could walk into a church that was open enough to book me to do a show," said Randy, "and the preacher would meet me at the door and say, 'I'm sorry, we changed our mind and we're not going to do this.' Just from my appearance. From my hair and all. Not giving me a chance to sing or anything. It was just a new form of presenting the good, old story, you know? But it takes a while, especially for us Christians, to accept and embrace something like that, anything new that comes along that might threaten our belief status and all."

Matthews tried to keep it all in perspective. As he told Jerry Bryant, "We all are wounded by the things that come along, as Christians, but what we have to remember is that Christians are just like us - they're just forgiven. They're gonna make mistakes and they're gonna let us down. And we're gonna let other people down."

For my money, On the Road was the only misstep on Son of Dust. Randy wrote it, but stylistically it just didn't seem to be in his wheelhouse...and his vocal seems a little uninspired. This song should've been pitched to Dave Boyer instead.

Son of Dust began with a strong trio of songs and it ends with an equally strong trio of tunes.

Up next was a fun little tune (2:23!) about the events described by Jesus in Matthew 24 and by Paul in I Thessalonians 4. Matthews calls it Evacuation Day.

When the ship comes in
Gonna be a celebration
From the smallest town
To the largest nation
Gonna leave that day
Said we made a reservation
Ain't no turnin' back
There ain't no cancellation
No, sir

I'm gonna fly, fly, fly
Get on that ship and fly
With a ticket marked 'one way'
Evacuation day

If Holy Band was one of two signature songs for the early chapter of Matthews' career, Didn't He was certainly the other. It's an absolute classic on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus that people still feel that they need to hear every Easter, if not more often. 

"Didn't He was written on the road," Randy told Jerry Bryant, "back when I was traveling in a little Triumph TR3. We traveled all over the country in that thing. If it was snowing or raining or whatever, we traveled with the top down because we couldn't fit the guitars in any other way! So it was written driving to California, and I was just thinking about the intensity of what Christ had gone through for us and I wanted to make that as vivid as possible just through a song. And the Lord really took that song and used it in an amazing way. He still uses it today. I can't play anymore because of my hands - I've got arthritis in my hands - but I hear all the time about different people using the song, and that's a real blessing to me."

According to CCM historian Mark Allan Powell, Matthews previewed Didn't He at the iconic Explo '72 festival in Dallas, Texas, the summer before Son of Dust was released. Said Powell: "...It became one of the defining moments of the festival, a moment that would later be broadcast on national TV and then captured on a widely distributed soundtrack album of music from the festival." 

Today, David Lee is a mortgage lender based in Oklahoma. But roughly five decades ago, he was in that sea of faces at Explo '72. "There was total silence," David remembers, "and then all of a sudden Randy hits his guitar as if the hammer was hitting the nail in Jesus' hand. I was about fifteen rows back on the field. I seriously cried hearing that. It's on the Explo '72 album and it sounds good...but sitting there live, with eighty thousand people...hearing that sudden noise was absolutely riveting." 

Didn't He is one of five songs on Son of Dust that I just think are more effective on the live album Now Do You Understand? due to the intimacy and immediacy of a live concert by Matthews. Now, this certainly would not be true of most artists and especially bands, but Randy Matthews was born to stand on a stage all by himself and hold that audience in the palm of his hand. So, in my humble opinion, Holy Band, The Bad Has Made It Better, Evacuation Day, Didn't He and Pharaoh's Hand are all better experienced on the double-live recording (which, something tells me, will be coming up a little later in our countdown). That is not to say this version of Didn't He is not great, emotionally powerful and awe-inspiring (because it is all of those things). 

This is the first version most people heard and I'm sure they were impacted greatly by it. But I think the feedback-type sound effects at the beginning of the song are nowhere near as effective as Randy just doing his thing with the heel of his hand. But either way...this is the song Randy Matthews was put on this earth to write and record:

And the hammer fell
On the wooden nail
Through His flesh, into the tree
And they laughed at Him
As He cried for them
There He hung
The faultless One

Now, didn't He live, oh, didn't He?
And didn't He give, now, didn't He?
Didn't He die for you and me?

Spilled His precious blood
Sacrifice of love
We didn't take His life from Him
He gave it willingly
Complete the prophecy
What's black is white
What's wrong is right

Bugler, blow your horn
Now the curtain's torn
And the battle's done
I know the victory's come
Drummer, you drum your drum
He broke death's chains
The Lamb is slain

Now didn't He live, now, didn't He?
And didn't He give, now, didn't He?
But didn't He die for you and me?

Now, doesn't He live, my brother, doesn't He?
And doesn't He give, sweet sister, doesn't He?
But didn't He die for you and me?

But didn't He die
For you
And for me?

Matthews turned in an anointed vocal performance on this song. Didn't He was later resurrected for a new generation when it was covered by Geoff Moore & the Distance. Matthews also performed and recorded a new version of this classic song for the First Love gathering of classic Jesus Music artists in the late 1990s.

Matthews ends Son of Dust by reminding us that he was a great songwriter who did not flinch when it came time to take on subjects that some might deem dark or negative. Randy Matthews wrote songs that celebrated Jesus, yes...he wrote songs that looked forward to Heaven, yes...but he also held up a mirror to life around him as it was lived out by real people on the ground. Sometimes it wasn't pretty, but it was almost always powerful.  

Oh, smell the filth here
Oh, hear the cries
A baby's dying
It's got flies in its eyes
Oh, hear the gunfire
Oh, see him run
Killing men for a loaf of bread
With a stolen gun

With no beginning
There is no end
Without a center, friend
No circle ascends
Oh, we're decaying
From deep inside
We lost the roots of the family tree
And there's no place to hide

Some of you live in fantasies
Others live in dreams
Some of you live in lies
You say, I see no disease
But what is happening
Has long been foretold
Close the door
Lock the latch
Let the story unfold

Been too long underneath this Pharaoh's hand
Been too long underneath this Pharaoh's hand
And it's time we made our stand

"I figured if you're not true to yourself, you're not going to be true to anybody else, you're not really going to have a true communication with them," Matthews said in that Full Circle radio interview. "I didn't go into this to become a 'star' or anything like that. Because if you wanted to become a star, singing rock and roll for Jesus was not the way to do it. So my desire was for people to see that if I could be a Christian, and if I could have a relationship with Jesus, they could, too. And so I tried to always be transparent in my music and on stage and in my life."

Brian Quincy Newcomb calls Son of Dust one of Matthews' "strongest collections of songs, recorded at the height of the Jesus Movement," adding that Randy Matthews was always flirting with the radical idea that God intended for us to experience this life fully and well, that we know love and joy as well as challenge and hardship." 

Billboard's Barry Alfonso wrote, "Son of Dust...was probably his most interesting work, full of energy and bite. Matthews dressed up his tunes with acoustic piano, banjo and peddle steel. Son of Dust was an archetypal Jesus Music album, capturing the unkempt zeal of a hippie street revival."  

"Son of Dust is the album that would ensure Matthews a place in the Jesus Music Hall of Fame (if such a thing were to exist)," wrote Mark Allan Powell. "He seems to have gone into the studio armed with the best songs of his career and somehow to have overcome all the industry restrictions that would have prevented him from playing them the way they were meant to be played. The sound is still folk rock, but it's down-and-dirty, blues-inflected folk rock. Matthews sings in a gruff and gritty voice that Jesus Music says makes the first two albums 'sound like easy listening' by comparison. There is not a bad cut on the album."

So the next decade or so was very interesting for Randy. In 1974, there was the infamous unplugging episode (you can real all about that HERE). In '75 his record company actually released two of his albums back-to-back - Now Do You Understand? and Eyes to the Sky. Then he put a little trio together with a couple of Jesus Music veterans, Mike Johnson and Danny Taylor. They made an album that was actually quite good (you can read all about it HERE). And after that, Randy admittedly "fell out of fellowship" for a while. It was during this period that he recorded a second live album in Australia...but he really kind of disappeared for a hot minute (as the kids would say). He resurfaced with his batteries charged and released two really fine rock albums in '80 and '81 (Randy Matthews and Plugged In)...but then fell off the radar again. He came back six years later with Streets of Mercy, and then said goodbye to the fickle CCM scene (a scene that owed its very existence, partly, to his presence on the planet) with what he says is his personal favorite of all his albums. 1990's The Edge of Flight is a sonically excellent album that was produced by Billy Smiley of White Heart. 

Randy Matthews on tour with White Heart in Greenville, SC

In fact, Matthews was given the opening slot on a national White Heart tour to help promote that album. I caught that tour in Greenville, SC and was proud and happy to see Mr. Matthews up there on the big stage again. And then he took the logical next career step...and became a pirate.

What?!

"I'd been out of the loop for so long," Randy said. "I just felt like I didn't have anything more to say, out on the road doing Christian shows, I didn't have anything more to write, my time had come and gone. And so, we've all got to make a living. And I thought wouldn't it be a great thing if a family came down to Florida where I'm living down here, and they thought they met a real pirate - someone who could entertain them and develop real relationships with these families that come down - and so, that's what I do. I dress as a pirate and I tell pirate stories and sing pirate songs and I've been doing it for twenty years now at two of the most successful resorts down here in Florida. And it's very, very rewarding. I've always loved children, little children. And so it's a family show that I do, and I've got all these little kids whose eyes are big as saucers, you know, coming to the show. So it's very rewarding. It's not like what I was doing, but the Lord's got me doing something else now. I've got a strong family and good friends, so things couldn't be much better."

Working under the stage name Red Beard, Matthews released an album of pirate songs and tall tales entitled Red Beard, Pirate King. 

In 2015, F-O-R (friend-of-Randy) Bim Ingersoll spearheaded the project of re-releasing and re-mastering Son of Dust on compact disc for the first time ever. This marked the first time that any of Matthews' 70s output was available on CD. Jerry Bryant asked Randy about his response to that event. "Well, I was totally blown away," he said. "I couldn't believe that anybody would remember it. We put the CD out and we got great response back to it. And you know, listening to it, it still holds up today." 

"It's really wonderful what happened back then," Matthews said. "And when I went on Facebook, I started getting all these messages from people, telling me how much I'd touched them over the years and how much my music had meant, and it's just been a really good experience for me. It's been very, very encouraging. Because I didn't think anybody would remember at all. I mean, that's forty years ago that I started doing this! That's a long time."

Oh, we remember, Randy. In fact, we'll never forget.