By Christopher Anderson

 

 

There’s a ruckus down by the river. The rumor ‘round Bluestown? Jonny Lang is dead!

 

The masses gather on the bank trying to comprehend. The music reporters poise themselves with watchful pen, pondering these homicidal claims. How could Jonny be dead? After all, his new album is making quite a stir in retail record sales (opened at No. 35 in Album sales its first week). “Perhaps,” the reporters ponder, “this is just a dead man walking?”

 

The accusers point their steely tongues at the man in white garments who is being pinned as the murderer. “Give usss our boy back,” they hiss. “What happened to little Jonny? He was sssuch a fine young bluesman. We sssaw him go down into this river . . . but then you came out. . . Who are you, man in white, claiming to be Jonny Lang!?”

 

“We want the old Jonny,” they plead. “Just give usss the boy! Come back to usss, Jonny!”

 

This scene is being played out in internet chatrooms everywhere as people banter about Jonny’s new album, Turn Around. Jonny Lang’s dead?

 

Blinded by the Light?

One-star, or five-star? Critics either love this album or hate it - and for reasons as obvious as the controversy that surrounded Mel Gibson’s The Passion. Yes, Jesus is the reason for the accusations of Jonny’s treason. A portion of Jonny's faithful feel he has abandoned them.

 

A friend recently asked me for my favorite new album. “Jonny Lang,” I replied.

 

They asked, “The blues guitarist? Or is there a Christian musician named Jonny Lang?”

 

“Yes,” I replied.

 

Let the whole world know, Jonny Lang has seen the Light.

 

Is Jonny a Traitor?

The blues-boys shout, “Jonny has abandoned the blues! Don’t make this about Jesus! His new music just doesn’t have the rant and roll of his early years.”

 

Yet Jesus is clearly the issue! Jonny has become a live-out-loud testimony for Christ’s redemption. The darkness embodied by traditional blues, which Lang once brought so well to life, has been replaced by the grace and mercy of a loving God, and it has those who are still chained to sin absolutely miffed. 

 

Now, with this newfound hope, Jonny’s music has admittedly lost some of its reckless abandon and moral instability—two features that many found so attractive in the young prodigy.  In return, Lang has produced the perfect Christian album, made so through his tale of wrestling with fame while also coming to grips with his Savior. As a result, Turn Around smacks of a tough-love reality, even to the point of making Christ gritty. Lang takes Jesus into the gutters of our society with great success.

 

He’s Not Doctor Dollar!

Jonny Lang’s burden for the heavy-laden guarantees he will never be accused of the Prosperity Doctrine. Turn Around makes clear that Christ is for the down and out.  This worldview allows him to sing about poverty, prison, and other hard-luck themes that don’t stray far from his original blues message. Basically, the verses are about being down-and-out, and the choruses answer with hope through faith.

 

For example, on the title track, a song about repentance from life’s mistakes, Jonny moans:

 

I knew a man named Charlie. He went and lost his way.
 Now he’s in prison, cold prison, no chance for escape.
They gave him new clothes and a Bible, and the Word he did a-read.
Now the four walls can’t keep him ‘cuz Charlie is free.

 

The choices you make,
Might be mistakes,
But it’s never too late,
To turn around, turn around.

 

“Thankful” contains a surprise duet with Michael McDonald (Doobie Brothers). Together, they sing about stopping each day to give thanks to God for everything even in the midst of hard times.

 

His Testimony?

The album’s crowning track, “Only a Man,” contains what seem to be the intimate details of Jonny’s conversion experience. This tearful bluegrass/gospel ballad examines our limitations as mere humans:

 

I grew up singing songs in church with questions in my mind.
Then turned my back and ran away from God who gave me life.
Then one night His presence fell. I wept and shook and then,
I fell down and cried dear Jesus rescue me again.

I understand I am only a man.

 

The depths of baptism, and its connection to the coming of the Lord, are perfectly explored, “That Great Day,” as Lang sings:

 

We’ll meet at the river, we’ll be delivered of every chain.Down into the water, children, mother, and fathers, in His sweet name.
To drown all our sins, and come up again, forever changed.
Never to return to the people we were before that Great Day.

 

We’ll patiently wait, ‘til we see His face.
And when He appears to wipe all our tears forever away.

Then we’ll be together in Heaven forever on that Great Day.

 

Is Lang a Dead Man Walking?

So maybe the rumble ‘round Bluestown is right. Jonny Lang is a dead man walking . . . if that’s how you describe the Resurrection promised through baptism.

 

You really can’t blame those who don’t recognize the new man who emerged from the murky water in a clean, white garment. After all, it’s all part of the Master’s plan. Persecutions will come, and the critics will not go away—not of Jonny Lang, and certainly not of Christ.

 

And the masses will gather by the riverside. They heard that something strange happened to Jonny Lang. He’s got a new story to tell—something he found at the bottom of that river. . .

 

ninetyandnine.com

 

© 2006, Chris Anderson

 

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Before his conversion in 1999, Chris Anderson served as Program Director and deejay for several Central Illinois radio stations, including the Classic Rock, Modern Rock, Country, and Top 40 formats. During this time BC, he also managed several rock, folk, and death metal bands, while also performing in a heathen rock act called Joyhammer. Chris is also a recent graduate of Urshan Graduate School of Theology. If you tickle him right, he will tell you stories about when Ozzy Osbourne, Danzig, and Bob Zany cussed him out on separate occasions for no particular reason.