#18 NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND? by Randy Matthews (1975)

NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND? by Randy Matthews
(1975 | Myrrh MSZ 6546 )

In the mid-70s, my pastor-father and pastor's-wife-mother said that they had heard from God. The Lord told them to sell all of our stuff, such as it was (the house we lived in was owned by the church, so we wouldn't be able to profit from selling that) and then hit the road in an RV, sharing the Good News of Jesus with churches across the land. We did "regular" revivals where my brothers and I would sing (we had formed a band, didn't every family have a band?), and Dad would preach. We also did specialized children's ministry, with games, contests, puppets, music, the whole thing. Ministered at summer church camps all summer long, every year, and traveled from church to church the rest of the time. Full-time. For seven years. Living in RVs...even a former Greyhound bus that had been converted into a "motor coach." We saw 35 states, Canada and Mexico that way. It was a weird way to grow up, but looking back, I would not trade it for anything. 

Why is he telling us this stuff? I came here to read about Randy Matthews. Hold on, hold on. I'm getting there.

It was during those traveling days in that former Greyhound bus that we acquired an 8-track tape of an album called Now Do You Understand? by a guy named Randy Matthews. We had heard one song by Matthews on a sampler album - It Ain't Easy on a Myrrh collection called Love, Peace, Joy. So this was our first real Matthews album - our introduction to the creative force and communicative genius that was Randy Matthews. And what an introduction it was. I remember spending hours...upon hours...upon hours listening to that 8-track in our darkened bedroom on that bus. Our bedroom with carpeted, leopard-print walls. 

Our bedroom that had no windows, so that when the door was closed, it was really dark. And I would listen through a pair of Koss stereo headphones. I literally cannot think of a better way to have experienced Now Do You Understand? Because with the headphones, and in that darkened room, I could visualize what I was hearing. I was drawn in. I was powerfully impacted. Now Do You Understand? was more than a concert; it was an experience. An experience that left a profound effect on the listener.

What have others said?

Long, scraggly hair and beard, John Lennon-like spectacles and a silver jumpsuit-cladded Matthews grabs just a guitar and microphone and makes his way through seventy minutes of song, story, humor and ministry. There sometimes appears to be as much talking as singing, but it works so incredibly well with Matthews. He is a master storyteller, whether in song or not. His rough-edged Joe Cocker-like voice is pure gold on this project. The intimacy and genuineness of the performance simply pulls the listener in to what is being said and sung.
-David Lowman, blogger, host & producer of Legacy: CCM's Greatest Albums podcast

Now Do You Understand?...remains an essential souvenir of the Jesus movement - such that one could hardly understand the historical phenomenon of that revival without it. It is a live album, a two-record set that preserves an apparently unedited concert featuring just Matthews' voice and guitar. The absence of a band...allows for absolute candor and intimacy. Much of the sixty-eight minutes is taken up with conversation, as Matthews tells funny stories (life on the road, his false start as a quartet singer, a childhood crush), talks to God, and wonders aloud whether Jesus ever ate a pastrami-on-rye sandwich. These musings of an unabashed hippie Christian (pictured on the cover with long, scraggly hair, John Lennon spectacles, and - for some reason - wearing a silver "space cowboy" suit) are ultimately more precious than the songs. One of the best live gospel albums ever made, [this album] provide[s] an accurate aural representation of what a Jesus Music concert was like.
- Mark Allan Powell, author, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music

And then there's Brian Quincy Newcomb, an author and music critic who wrote for CCM Magazine and for his own publication, the highly regarded Harvest Rock Syndicate. Brian, or BQN as he is sometimes known, has spent some time working on a book about Matthews and was kind enough to share some of that material with me for this blog post.

By the way, Newcomb was there. BQN was down front. 

No, seriously. He was in attendance as a Houghton College student on the night this concert was recorded.

BQN (Brian Quincy Newcomb)

"Matthews is my hero," Newcomb told CCM back in 2001. And that's because it was a Randy Matthews coffee house concert in Wellsville, New York in the early 70s that actually gave Newcomb hope that he could enjoy authentic rock and roll and also live a Christian life. His conservative upbringing and denominational experiences up to that point had a crippling and confusing effect on him; Randy turned much of that around over the span of one evening. "To say that that night changed everything for me would be an understatement," Brian said. He bought a copy of Matthews' Son of Dust that night, took it home and devoured it. 

"At some point," Brian recalls, "that next year, the folks who promoted concerts on campus contacted some of my musical friends to see if we thought it was a good idea to bring Randy Matthews to our school. We were told he wanted to record a concert in our chapel auditorium for a double live album. Somehow, and I'm not sure why, but I ended up having a long phone conversation with Matthews' manager, Wes Yoder, before that concert. On the day of the concert, my friends and I had planted ourselves down front, cheering on Matthews as he recorded the live concert that would become Now Do You Understand?"

As for the album itself, BQN has said, "As artful as it was groundbreaking, these songs, poetry and stories shaped my early faith in profound ways."

Randy's dad, Monty, is on the far right

As for Randy Matthews' musical upbringing, his Christian conversion and his designation as a true pioneer of Jesus Rock, we've covered all of that in previous posts. You can check them out here and here. We won't go over all of that again, except to say that Randy came from a privileged musical pedigree and was a very different animal, if you will, from those "unwashed hippies" who came to Jesus out of a life of sex, drugs, and eastern religions out in California. Matthews almost did it in reverse. He went from clean-cut to scraggly. He went from hangin' out with the Jordanaires and being a student at a Christian seminary to playing on street corners and wondering where he was going to get his next meal. 

Larry Norman is billed as the Founding Father of Christian Rock, and for good reason; but for many young Christians who grew up east of the Mississippi, Randy Matthews holds that distinction.

I suppose I should mention the fact that live albums rarely make lists like this one. First, they often capture a sub-standard musical performance compared to studio albums. Even with overdubs, a one-off performance usually can't compare with a project that is built piece-by-piece and labored over in a state-of-the-art recording studio for weeks or even months. Secondly, live albums were often recorded as a way to fulfill an artist's obligation to the record company; oftentimes less love and care was devoted to those projects. But an artist like Randy Matthews makes those arguments irrelevant. What made him so special was not musicianship. He won't be mentioned in a discussion of the greatest-ever guitar players. While his singing style and the sound of his voice was a crucial part of his success, he's not usually mentioned as a great vocalist. So capturing a flawless musical performance is not really what Myrrh set out to do with NDYU. In fact, a flawless and jaw-dropping musical performance would probably have hurt this album. And that's because what makes this 2-record set so memorable is Matthew's vulnerability, authenticity and his ability as a communicator. 

Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill were blessed with those abilities as well. As was Keith Green and Barry McGuire. These were men who could walk onto a stage in the 70s, in a dark auditorium, armed only with a guitar (or piano), and have an audience enthralled for ninety minutes or more. No fancy light show, no fog, no video screens, no stage set. 

Larry Norman

Norman did it with mystery and, let's face it, a certain degree of weirdness. He made you feel uncomfortable...and you loved it. I saw him live three times, and I was always on the edge of my seat, wondering what made him tick and what he would say next. He made a string of brilliant albums from 1969 through the end of the 1970s, and Bootleg contained glimpses of what I'm talking about...but Larry never made a full live album that landed like NDYU.

Barry McGuire

Barry McGuire was amazing on To The Bride. Although he did benefit from the backing of A Band Called David, at times it was just Barry, the guitar, and those wonderful stories. After Cosmic Cowboy and Bullfrogs and Butterflies, he tried his hand at another live album, this time without a guest artist. Lightning did not strike twice.

Keith Green

Keith Green dialed back the humor but turned up the passion and the zeal. I saw him once - in Seattle, Washington in the fall of 1980. I will never forget it. But he never gave us a proper live album.

Randy Stonehill

Randy Stonehill is the one that I would say compares most favorably to Randy Matthews. They both show up armed only with an acoustic guitar. They both have the ability to have an audience laughing one minute and crying the next. And they both delivered a powerful representation of the gospel message without anything approaching a heavy-handed preachiness. However...I have seen Sir Stonehill live many times, and it's my opinion that his powers were not fully harnessed nor properly demonstrated on that (half) live album that he released back in 1990. And that was the only proper live recording we ever got from him.

Matthews was the real deal. And he gave us Now Do You Understand? as proof. "He was a compelling live performer," says Brian Quincy Newcomb. "His songs were great, but the stories he told to introduce them made them all the better. He would hit the stage with that acoustic guitar strapped to his chest, long reddish-blond hair, full beard, and a big smile on his face. He would tell jokes, quote poetry that he'd written, and tell stories of his life as a traveling troubadour for the Lord. He was funny, literate, culturally aware and connected, and he knew how to play to an audience."

Randy Matthews absolutely nailed it on NDYU, making it part of a handful of essential live albums from the Jesus Music era to be included on lists like this. Like I said earlier, live records usually don't make it onto these blogs. But I don't think the CCM of the 1970s could be properly understood without records like How the West Was One..."Live" at Carnegie Hall...Imperials Live (1973)...Feel the Love...Live in London...To the Bride...and, of course, Now Do You Understand?

SIDE ONE

"Ain't that a beautiful voice?"

The concert kicks off with the classic, rhythmic Holy Band, the audience enthusiastically clapping along. Brian Quincy Newcomb regards Holy Band as an important song and a great way to kick off NDYU. "The song," he writes, "besides having a great rock and roll energy, combines two very important concepts: the 'anyone' was an affirmation of the John 3:16 promise that 'whosoever' believed would be welcomed, and the radical idea that that band - presumable a rock and roll band - could please God, could be holy. That is something my young heart wanted to believe, that there was room for a hippie wannabe/Jesus freak in God's community." 

Matthews gives the audience a biographical sketch, laden with humor. He talks about the tension that existed in the early 70s between young people and the established Church, especially around music. But instead of being angry or defiant, Matthews gives a hilarious account, complete with a demonstration of his unsuccessful attempts to fit in with southern gospel music. The moral of the story? "Only you and God can work out who you're supposed to be in the body. Don't try to be something that you're not..."

Randy reveals that at the time of this recording he had only been traveling the country with his "Gospel rock and roll" for four years. After talking about his 1963 Triumph, living on the streets, and surviving on dill pickles, he treats us to a performance of The Bad Has Made It Better that is just perfect in its tone and execution. Through it all, well, I walked with my head held up high. In Your love, I did it in Your love. 

After the brooding, minor-keyed Guiding Light, a song that doesn't appear on any other Matthews albums, he takes an abrupt left turn into the "Jesus, was there a delicatessen in Jerusalem?" dialogue, an early indication that this wasn't just a standard concert. 

"On the day of the concert, my friends and I had planted ourselves down front, cheering on Matthews," Brian Quincy Newcomb recalls. Well, that paid off in a shoutout from the bearded troubadour himself. "Why is it the weird ones always sit in the front?" Matthews asked. It's always nice to get a mention from the stage on a live album, right? That little interaction came during the set-up for Sunny Day, a song with lighter lyrical content originally recorded on 1972's All I Am is What You See. 

SIDE TWO

"Important things are God. And peace. And love. And you."

Side two of NDYU, at first listen, seems to begin with Randy delivering some random thoughts about the difference between childhood and manhood. Important Things turned out to be a pretty profound, spoken word poetry piece, over guitar, on what truly matters in life. 

What follows is a memorable and fairly lengthy stand-up comedy routine on puppy love and childhood crushes. You know, the bit about Madeline Roper, age gap romance, Big Chief tablet paper, love notes, Crayola crayons, rejection, and, um, self harm. Matthews' comic timing is impeccable; he could easily have been a stand-up comic had he chosen to go that route. But just when he has the audience LOL-ing, he turns a sharp corner and delivers a very serious point to a wacky story. That guitar comes in underneath, and Randy warns the audience that getting hurt could cause them to build walls of protection to keep the pain away. The problem with that is that those walls will also keep love at bay. "I had to hire a Carpenter to come in and tear down my walls," he says, borrowing a line from the opening song from his Eyes to the Sky album. "Don't be afraid to love. God wants you to love." He then segues seamlessly into Darling I'll Be There, a tune that promises faithfulness and devotion to a lover. This one appears only on NDYU. 

Were You There? is a somber, spoken-word piece followed closely by Wounded Warrior, a song that appears on Eyes to the Sky. Pretty much without exception, Randy's songs fare better here on NDYU than they do on the studio albums. For my money, the official versions suffer from being over-produced and lack the emotion and immediacy of the live versions. 

By the way, Side Two of NDYU contains only 5 minutes and 10 seconds of actual songs. That's not a complaint, just an observation.

SIDE THREE

"You gotta get it up there in your sinus cavities and make it twang..."

"It's a sing-along thing, and I want you to sing-along thing with me," Randy says, leading into a 10-minute audience-participation version of Country Faith. Appearing first on All I Am is What You See, Country Faith is a harmless, fun, simple song with lots of strumming; it's also biographical, talking about Randy's Christian, middle-class American upbringing. Randy grew up long before the days of feminism, gender confusion, cutting, no-fault divorce, the new atheists, gay pride, faith deconstruction, (anti) social media, and blue-haired, tattooed girls with enough metal in their faces to set off alarms in airports. So he sings of good old, country faith... every Sunday we'd go to church, Mama'd bounce me on her knee... I remember Mama's chicken and dumplins, made with tender lovin' care, I remember how we'd bow our heads, Daddy'd lead us in a prayer... The studio version contains a verse that doesn't appear here on NDYU. It talks about how Matthews was baptized by his grandfather, who'd been a preacher since age 19. The last verse recounts the importance of faith not just to his own family, but to the wider community: Sometimes in the evening, the neighbors would come and sing / The children would laugh, old ladies would cry / We'd praise the name of the King. The "woke" among us might say that Matthews was exalting and romanticizing a fictitious version of America that never existed. I know better. Because he's describing the childhood that I, too, enjoyed. I'm not pretending that America was perfect in the 50s and 60s. There was a lot of racial strife in those days that we had not yet reckoned with. But man, looking back, it sure seems like the kind of devotion to faith and family that Matthews describes in Country Faith would be a cure for the many things that ail us here in 2020s. Country Faith was basically a mid-70s update on the old chorus that said, Give me that old time religion, it's good enough for me.  Matthews had the audience singing, clapping, even stomping exuberantly; he also had them howling with laughter when he imitated "city dudes" and mocked the guys in the crowd for wanting to appear too cool because of "the chick" sitting next to them. 

Christmas (White House Shuffle) was another poetry reading. Who does that anymore? Looking back, it seems like reciting poems to an audience was a neglected performance art by most Jesus Music artists (insert sarcastic face emoji here). It may have been underutilized by most musicians, but Matthews sure was effective at it. 

Side three of NDYU ends the same way Son of Dust ended - with a mesmerizing song called Pharaoh's Hand. Pharaoh's Hand was dark...honest...disturbing. It was as haunting as it was beautiful. It was also a wake-up call...

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


Three tracks. Fourteen and a half minutes. That was it for Side Three.

SIDE FOUR

"Did Your boy have big hands? Is that why they nailed Him to a tree?"

"I know it's called the Second Coming by a lot of people. A lot of people like to call that day the Rapture. I like to call it Evacuation Day." And with that, Matthews launches into a joyous, forward-looking view of the End Times. Evacuation Day is fun and upbeat. Every Jesus Music artist sang about Jesus coming back. This song was Randy's contribution to that genre.

From here on in, things take a serious turn. As Randy brings this ship in for a landing, you can tell that by this time he is holding the audience in the palm of his hand, so to speak. The Communicator has 'em right where he wants 'em.

Hands begins as a dialogue with God that brought tears to my eyes as I listened again in preparation for this blog post. Then it turns into a rather pointed mini-sermon, directed at the audience and, by extension, at all of us. "Jesus doesn't have any hands and feet now except for the hands and feet of His people." Randy laments the busyness of the religious...that we spend so much time in Sunday school and Bible study and prayer meeting and fellowship group, staying separated and sanctified, but are unwilling to get our hands dirty ministering to the unlovable, the unsaved, the hurting. Well, we don't even spend that much time in church anymore. At least most of us don't. Randy quits preachin' and goes to meddlin' when he asks the audience when's the last time they stopped their big, fancy, "$7,000 car" (it was 1975) to invite a "wino" over for food and a place to sleep. The room got so stone cold silent, you could've heard the old, proverbial pin drop. He asks the crowd when's the last time they sat up all night with someone who was high on drugs or struggling with "an emotional problem" (what the kids today would call a "mental health" issue). "When you love through Jesus, you have to love the unlovable just like you love the lovable," he said. "I think you have to get your hands dirty."

The Hands rap is a perfect lead-in to Oh My.

You know, this concert was recorded at Houghton College in New York state, and much has been made of the fact that the college administrators did not want the school listed in the album credits. Of course, they've come under heavy criticism for that; usually, when people learn of that little fact, they write Houghton off as a bunch of narrow-minded religious bigots. And it is a bad look, to be sure. But if you could place yourself in a time machine and travel back to 1975, you'd be reminded of just how new and controversial "Gospel rock and roll" was. And then, in addition to the cultural seismic shift necessary just to accommodate the music, you also had Randy Matthews challenging the audience in a very pointed way...accusing them of being too religious and not wanting a drunk to throw up on the carpet of their car. Then, in the song Oh My, he sings...

I talked with junkies, Lord
And I ate with whores
I put Your stickers on barroom doors

Oh my
Oh my, my
If hell is any hotter, then I don't want to die

Maybe it was all a little too much in 1975? Maybe they just feared blowback from alumni and parents. I don't know. With the benefit of 48 years of hindsight, I can understand it. I don't agree with it...but I understand them being squeamish. I'd be willing to bet that Hands and Oh My played heavily into the decision.

Matthews flows right into In the Morning, a song that goes to some dark places, shining a light on an often seedy underbelly of society, but offering hope...

It's your choice
You're either up or down
Lift your voice
Make a hallelujah sound

Now Do You Understand? concludes with a spoken word piece called The Picnic and the classic song Didn't He. I'm struggling with whether I should even say much about how this record ends...because I feel like all I could do is cheapen it. I'll just say that a clearer, more effective presentation of the Gospel has seldom, if ever, been captured on tape. From the maple tree metaphor to the sound effects of the hammer falling into Jesus' flesh...it's just highly moving. CCM historian David Lowman called Didn't He "mesmerizing and painful." "This is one of those songs," said Lowman, "where artist and message collide to create something that will always be remembered. Simply stunning."

Didn't He belongs on any short list of iconic songs from the Jesus Music era. It was later covered as a wonderful show of respect by Geoff Moore. It was also featured on First Love, a Gaither Homecoming-style DVD set featuring first wave Jesus Music veterans, recorded and released in the late 90s. The fact that Randy Matthews was included on that project, even though his ministry most often took place far from Southern California, was another show of respect for what he accomplished and the place he occupies as one of the most powerful communicators of the Jesus Movement.

The unplugging incident of 1974 has already been well documented on this blog (click here). That unfortunate event and the rumors it spawned led to Randy Matthews having a somewhat uneven career as a recording artist in Christian music. He released some fine albums (the self-titled effort in 1980 and 1981's Plugged In come to mind), but they were too few and far between. 

Bob Bennett has been known to complain (gently) that the industry moved away from him when he no longer fit the image of what was 'new' and 'current.' The same was true for Randy Matthews, I think. He acknowledges that he "fell out of fellowship" for a while somewhere in there, and that didn't help. Matthews was given an opening slot on a national White Heart tour in the 1990s. I saw that tour when it stopped in Greenville, SC. 

Even though most of the people in the audience at that arena didn't know who Randy was...I did. And it did my heart so much good to see him standing up there on that stage.

Randy eventually settled in Florida and took a regular gig performing frequently as Redbeard the Pirate for a couple of resorts. Some people have seen the photos of Matthews dressed as a pirate and they scratch their head and wonder about the direction his career has taken. Hey, I get it. If anybody gets it, it would be me. Let me explain.

I mentioned earlier that my family traveled in full-time ministry for seven years in the late 70s/early 80s. What I didn't mention is that we had a highly effective, energetic, specialized children's ministry with a circus theme. We were communicating with kids 5 nights a week. We used puppets, music, games, stories...you know, presented the Gospel on their level, in a way that was exciting for them. The fact that I dressed as a ringmaster and my family members wore clown suits every night? That was just part of the gig for us. Well, ole Redbeard down there in Florida...he's a communicator. He's communicating with families and children, on their level, sharing songs and stories that, I'm sure, knowing him, thrill and delight. I get it.

My mind flashes back to 1979. Our family arrived on a Saturday at the First Assembly of God church in Dothan, Alabama. We were going to start our "Circus Fun with Jesus" program, beginning on Sunday night. But the pastor's son excitedly announced to us that the church had a concert taking place on that Saturday evening with - you guessed it - Randy Matthews. We were thrilled to see Randy perform that night, still at the height of his powers, if you will. 

At some point during the concert, Randy asked if anyone had a request. My then-10 year old younger brother raised his hand and asked, "Can you please do Holy Band?" Imagine Matthews' surprise, receiving that request from a 10-year old kid. 

Randy's reply was classic: "What, have you got a museum in your house or something?" And then he invited my brother Drue to come up on stage and help him sing the song.

The concert that night was great. We laughed, we cried, we enjoyed the music. The Communicator did his thing. He communicated that night.

I don't know if I'll ever make it down to Florida again, but if I do, I hope to drop in on Redbeard the Pirate and let him know that I love him, I respect him, and I'm thankful for the influence that he had on my life.