Judee Sill and the Trees Community (a very old post))

I've alluded to my deep love for Judee Sill, who was a folk singer/songwriter in the 1970s. She was the first artist signed to Asylum Records, which was the first record label David Geffen ran. Her music and voice are gorgeous, and her songs are so sweetly, mundanely rooted in faith. Her life was tumultuous -- jail, drugs, and ultimately death by overdose -- but her records, especially "Heart Food," are just some of the most divine things I've ever heard. Her 2 albums were reissued as one last year by Rhino. I'd suggest picking them up to anyone who is interested in complex, beautiful pop music that wrestles with issues of Christian faith. (In a big way -- almost all of her songs are unabashedly about God or Jesus, though not always by name.) Most things written about her treat the Christian-ness of her songs as an afterthought, but to me it seems front and center.

*****

Now Thom Jurek, a critic for All Music Guide, has just recommended another reissue that has piqued my interest like no other. - The Christ Tree by the Trees Community. (Listen to some tracks on myspace.) They were an intentional Christian community in NYC in the 70s. The music is bizarre and otherworldly (which all Christian music should be?) and beautiful. I think I need to get it. I am not into "freak-folk" or the stuff that drug-taking crate-diggers love (I only kind of liked the Karen Dalton record, for example), but I have been really intrigued by this idea of a magical time and place where people of faith were making blatantly Christian pop records without anything remotely resembling the soul-crushing machinery of the "CCM" industry. This time may have been the mid-1970s, although one is encouraged by the thought that this sort of thing can happen and has happened and will happen again (see the Sounds Familyre and Sounds Are Active record labels for a modern example).