#86 - SAIL ON SAILOR by Mustard Seed Faith (1975)

SAIL ON SAILOR by Mustard Seed Faith (1975)
Maranatha! Music (MM0018A)

They say you can’t always judge a book by its cover. But what about a record album?

Back in the days of long-play vinyl, album covers mattered. They helped convey the feel of a record. They helped sell the album. And they supplied the consumer with highly sought after artwork, photos and information about the making of the record. In short, album covers made a statement. And the cover of Sail On Sailor by Mustard Seed Faith made a very loud one.

By any measure, the cover of Sail On Sailor is considered a classic. Thanks for that is owed to a man named Rick Griffin, a 60s psychedelic artist and regular contributor to the ‘underground comix’ movement. He created album covers for a large number of well-known secular artists (Jackson Browne and the Grateful Dead among them). After surrendering his life to Christ in 1970, Rick Griffin created much of the album art for Maranatha Music in the 70s and 80s. It was his painting that made the cover of Sail On Sailor so memorable and popular. The cover was immortalized in a coffee table book featuring The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time. Sadly, Rick Griffin died at age 47 following a motorcycle accident. But his God-given artistic abilities are still appreciated today and will never be forgotten.

Pedro Buford, Oden Fong, and Wade Link came together to form Mustard Seed Faith in the early 70s. Lewis McVay joined the group a little later. One reviewer described MSF as a mixture of “folk, jazz, progressive rock, California beach music, and worship music.” They were different, that’s for sure. Two elements that set the band apart were the flute solos played by Pedro Buford and the unique voice of Oden Fong. In fact, Oden’s very presence in the band made them somewhat unique. The Imperials had shattered the race barrier in 1972 by inviting a young black man – Sherman Andrus – to be a part of their group. And now, here was an authentic Jesus Music band with an Asian named Fong and a pianist/flutist named Pedro! Keep in mind, this was happening long before “diversity” was even a thing.

MSF first appeared in vinyl form in 1973 on the Maranatha 3 sampler album with the songs Happy in Jesus and Rest. After that, their tune All I Know turned up on Maranatha 4 in 1974. And in 1976 a song called Sidney the Pirate was featured on Maranatha 5. Many people felt that these individual tracks from the all-important Maranatha sampler albums were actually the band’s finest works. At the very least, they raised expectations for the group’s first full-length project.

Mike MacIntosh, Maranatha Music’s head of ministry at the time, is said to have made one last executive decision before leaving his post at Maranatha to start a new church. That decision was to bless Mustard Seed Faith with a record contract and recording schedule. The album was recorded in a home studio on a 16-track board. I’ve always heard that the vocals were actually recorded in a bathroom (which would make sense…any singer will tell you that the natural reverb found in bathrooms always enhances the vocals).  Like most albums from the Jesus Music era, it was completed on a budget of well below $20,000. Love Song’s Tommy Coomes was tapped as producer, while a young man named Jonathan David Brown was given the opportunity to help mix the album.

Musically, the album is a pretty mellow mix of soft rock with just a touch of country-rock and a handful of gentle ballads. As one reviewer remarked, “Very smooth, very palatable…it’s such a shame these guys didn’t record more music.” The instrumentation is one thing that distinguishes Sail On Sailor from other Jesus Music albums of the time. You will not hear any blistering electric guitar solos on this album. Heck, you’ll hardly ever notice any electric guitars at all (they’re there, they just don’t draw attention to themselves). But you will hear Pedro’s flute, along with strings, organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano, and even a piccolo trumpet.

While other bands of the time period often offered simplistic answers and bumper-sticker slogans, Mustard Seed Faith opened this album with a series of questions. In fact, this atmospheric song is actually called The Question. Oden Fong’s lilting vocals ask…

Who was He?

What is He?

Why was He born?

What is so special about this frail form?

Why did He come?

Who is the Father that calls Him His Son?

Why must He die?

What do you see when you look in His eyes?

And, amazingly, they didn’t feel the need to answer these questions within the span of a 3-minute song. They just sort of left the questions hanging there as if to say, “Hey, stay tuned. You’ll get your answers soon enough.”

The banjo and fiddle-infused Let Go is the only tune on this record that pays homage to the country sound that so many Maranatha bands were known for in the early 70s. It’s as if the guys were saying, “Okay, we can do the country thing when we want to; it’s just not who we are.” The song uses the predicaments of a fallen hiker, an accident-prone jungle explorer, and a guy who stumbles into a tar pit while running through a park (I’m not kidding) to drive home the point that sometimes we just need to “let it go” and allow the Lord to rescue us. I can see where this one would’ve been a concert favorite.

Pedro Buford

The soft rock Can’t Work Your Way to Heaven presents the Gospel in no uncertain terms. The song begins by acknowledging the anti-war fervor of the day as well as a general fascination with ecology and astrology on the part of many young people at the time:

Well, you try so hard to understand the reasons for the wars

And you search the earth for answers and look unto the stars

The song then becomes unapologetically evangelistic and gives solid answers to the questions asked in the album’s lead-off song:

You can’t work your way to Heaven, no

You can’t get there by deeds

The only way to God’s Kingdom

Is to simply just believe

That God did send Christ Jesus

To show us all the way

So let Him come inside you

And be with you today

Let Him, let Him

Let Him come into your heart today

God did send Christ Jesus to die for all your sins

And only three days later God raised Him up again

He lives, He lives

Let Him live inside your heart today

Musically, the song features an organ solo and a “very 70s” ending.

Once I Had a Dream owes a tip of the hat to the psychedelic folk-rock of the late 60′s. Fitting instrumental accompaniment was provided by electric piano and some really sweet strings.

Dried Up Well completes Side One. It’s reminiscent of a traditional folk song in the vein of Peter, Paul and Mary. Pedro Buford’s acoustic piano is given a chance to shine on this cut. Lyrically, the song again presents Jesus as “the Door…the answer you’re looking for…and so much more.”

Before moving on the Side Two, let’s take a closer look at some of the album’s players. It was quite a stellar class. Bob Cull and David Diggs contributed orchestration arrangements. Love Song alumni Jay Truax and Fred Field helped out on bass and mandolin respectively; Field also played his violin on a song or two. Bryan Shaw and Darrel Gardner brought their trumpets to the party, while Mr. Al Perkins himself played the banjo on Let Go. Bill Sprouse, Jr. played some additional keyboards on the project.

Lewis McVay

The highlight of the album is the title track, which opens Side Two. Fong handled most of the lead vocals on the album, but this song was written and sung by Lewis McVay. McVay reportedly wrote the song as an answer to a 1973 song by the same title by the Beach Boys. Lyrically, the Beach Boys tune was a negative, depressing, miserable little number, and McVay wanted to flip that script. He succeeded beautifully.

Sail on sailor

‘Till you find what it is you’re looking for

Trim your sails and turn your ship around

To the Lord

The song has been called “a wonderful, triumphant song of faith with a memorable message and melody.” Stylistically, it is reminiscent of The Eagles and Beach Boys. Buford’s flute and a synthesized bass line contribute to the easy, country-rock feel of the song.

Oden Fong

Next up was The Lighter Side of Darkness. The “sailing” imagery continues on this track, with lyrics that speak of sails “catching the wind from the shore,” and sailing on “the sea of love” with Jesus as the Captain. For anyone who is familiar with Oden Fong’s dramatic conversion story, the song also seems autobiographical in spots. According to his own account, Oden grew up in the Hollywood Hills, running with the rich and famous (his father was a television and motion picture actor). But, as is so often the case, fame and fortune left him feeling empty and he turned to drugs to fill the void. Oden was befriended by Dr. Timothy Leary (yeah, that guy) and was “adopted” into Leary’s Brotherhood of Eternal Love (which was actually anything but). Fong found himself smuggling drugs into Mexico and helping to manufacture all sort of psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs that were being shipped around the world. Disillusioned when this, too, proved to be meaningless and empty, Oden went out into the desert and overdosed on LSD. He then had a terrifying out-of-body experience, followed by a supernatural encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. Not long after that experience, he met some folks from Calvary Chapel, and the rest is history. [You can hear this account in greater detail on YouTube. Just search for ‘Oden Fong Testimony.’] Knowing the backstory gives new insight into the lyrics of The Lighter Side of Darkness. Oden sings…

I’m on the lighter side of darkness

I’m sailing on a ship

From the shores of dark destruction

To the Lord of righteousness

I’m on the lighter side of lightning

Yes, the light that blinds my eyes

From the wickedness that held me

Before watching the sunrise

But my Lord and God

He now intercedes

For all the things

I refused to believe

There are angels all around

There are angels all around

Word has it that The Lighter Side of Darkness was originally going to be the title of the album. But when Calvary Chapel pastor Chuck Smith got wind of that, he cautioned the boys against using the word “darkness” as part of the album title. They already had Rick Griffin’s painting ready to go as the album art, so they just switched the title to Sail On Sailor and, of course, the Griffin masterpiece worked beautifully with that song as well.

Knowing Oden Fong’s testimony also helps the listener gain a greater appreciation for the album’s next track, Sweet Jesus Morning. Lines like these are rich with meaning:

…the Light has chased the darkness away

…and the Lord has turned the night into day

So my eyes can see, eyes can see the way

It’s considered a real Jesus Music classic and was a favorite of youth groups and Christian camps. Once again, Buford’s work on the flute is exquisite.

The somewhat jazzy More Than Sunlight features Daniel Gardner on trumpet. 

The album closes with Back Home. By 1975 the Jesus Movement had begun to wane and there were even those who had fallen away from the radical faith they had once professed. Thus, the need for a song like Back Home. Love Song had already recorded Welcome Back, but this song was different in its tone. It was specifically directed to those who had once experienced a close walk with the Lord but had walked away. The song said that it’s time “to get back home.”

Then the voices of your past will cry out to you

But turn your back on them and come on through

And many times you’ve turned your back on God

Who loved you first, yes He did

The orchestration and vocal harmonies heard about two-thirds of the way through this classic tune will remind you of Daniel Amos from the albums Shotgun Angel and Horrendous Disc. There would be other songs with this theme in the future – Sweet Comfort Band’s You Lead Me to Believe and Michael W. Smith’s I Miss the Way come to mind – but none have been more sincerely expressed.

And that concludes this highly respected full-length offering from Mustard Seed Faith. From Oden Fong’s smooth vocals to Pedro Buford's “dirty flute” solos to Lewis McVay’s classic title track…Sail On Sailor was a winner, all the way around.

MSF was on the road quite a bit in the mid-70s. Pedro Buford remembers the time they played for 10,000 people at the Anaheim Convention Center. “It was one of our most memorable performances,” he said. “We got to play with a full orchestra.”

The recording career of the band was actually quite short-lived. This is blamed mostly on burnout due to a heavy tour schedule. After the band dissolved, Fong and McVay released critically-acclaimed solo albums. Then the group reunited in the early 80s to record a custom album titled Limited Edition.

Today, Oden Fong is the pastor at Poiema Christian Fellowship in Costa Mesa, California. Pedro Buford lives in Oregon and his Facebook page simply says that he’s been "working for a Jewish carpenter since 1967." Looking back, Lewis McVay recalls the special time that we now refer to as the Jesus Movement. “It was like God Himself throwing a net into the ocean and just scooping up a whole bunch of fish at once,” McVay said on a television show in 1997. “It felt like something that He was doing, so completely and totally, that you were just caught up in the whole thing. The part about it that always comes back to my memory is just the excitement over the fact that God was doing this. It was a move of God. And it was like fresh air. A lot of kids in the 70s had a real taste of who God is. And it changed their lives.”

A recent reunion. L-R, McVay, Buford & Fong

Fun facts:

• Alex MacDougall and Erick Nelson are listed in the album’s credits for having provided “handclaps.”

• When asked which album he would take to a deserted island if he could only have one, Pedro Buford answered, “The Book of Kells by Iona. I have always regarded them as one of the finest examples of artistic integrity and spiritual purity,” said Pedro. “I simply love their music. It has been a great comfort to me through some of the darkest landscapes of my life.” 


Ed. Note: Pedro Buford went home to be the Lord in October 2014.