Lee
This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp. Welcome to season two.
When I was a teenager, my mother insisted that I always talk to adults. This was up there next to the prohibition on premarital sex. Always speak to adults. Learn to talk to them, engage them, pay attention to them. I didn't always like her strong insistence on that when I was a boy, but I did, even then, like the results that often came from it: namely, gifts of relationship across generational divides that were not possible otherwise. And sometimes people open up in remarkable ways, like with today's guest, my friend, Charlie Strobel. Charlie is something like an elder statesman in Nashville. He's a Catholic priest, the founder of Room in the Inn, an organization providing housing and shelter for those who are experiencing homelessness, and he's a friend to many. I was honored that about three times, he said something like...
Charlie
Not too many people know what I've been saying, and you tricked me. [Laughter] No, the beauty of what you are doing for me in this conversation is that you're allowing me to say some things that I haven't said.
Lee
By the end of our time together, we had discussed everything from loneliness to just how Charlie came to forgive the man who murdered his mother. And we laughed a lot, even in the midst of all those sober difficult realities.
Charlie
It's like open heart surgery. [Laughter] I feel like this is an operating table.
Lee
So it turns out that my mother was right. Learning to pay attention and ask questions turns out, like all the virtues, to be its own reward. I am so glad I get to share this conversation with you. It's really beautiful, even in the midst of all the pain that is shared here. Welcome.
Welcome to our interview with the Catholic priest and founder of Room in the Inn, Charles Strobel. About as soon as Charlie had taken his seat and the tape was rolling, he wanted to ask about me, and not the other way around.
Charlie
Lee
I have been, on the whole, good. I have chosen to work really hard since March, and so I've been really busy. And when I would start to feel lonely or isolated, I'djust work some more to get through my feeling isolated, Charlie,
That's what I do. And you know
Lee
They are foreboding words, aren't they?
Charlie
Oh God. Yes. All of us marched through and I did also, but inside of me, there was this urge to run. Run, run before they catch you! But the solitude of loneliness is, I think, the drawing card. It's the steps before you encounter the Burning Bush. And it's not easy to say that that happens. In fact, most of the time, it doesn't happen. But being lonely can lead us to God.
Lee
I went through a period of feeling lots of loneliness in my mid-lifetime, accompanied with a lot of depression for a while. And I think one thing that helped me was just a sort of acceptance that, like you said, loneliness seems to be the plight of all of us at some point in some way. Because I started thinking, you know, no one can fully know me because no one has the time to sit and listen to even one day's full experience, right? And so there's always elements of me, even with those that I'm the closest to, that they're still not necessarily going to know. And so I think I came to that place of thinking, well, the nature of what it means to be human is that there's a certain reality of loneliness in that regard that happens all the time, and then trying to find practices, like we already said, to let go of the self-centeredness that I would have in my loneliness and tend toward trying to cultivate solitude instead.
Charlie
Yeah. Being wrapped up in oneself to the point where we work ourselves into a frenzy to justify that we are good, you know, being wrapped up in that amount of energy--and they call it workaholic and all--is a great distraction from something that we might be afraid to face. I've been in therapy and wanted to get behind the curtain. And I began to realize that I was my own therapist. I started asking and talking about the problems I was having, and the counselor just sat there. And I said, “This is the easiest money you've ever made.” I said, “I'm doing all the talking, and the asking.” He said, “You're right.” But he was there to give me feedback when I asked for it. But going behind the curtain, I realized that somewhere in that experience, and I went to therapy for eight years or so.
Lee
How old were you at that point?
Charlie
Well, it was after my mother died. I was 40, maybe 45 or so. And, I would come in, sit down, and start talking, and in 15 minutes I'd get up and leave, then come back the same way, and I kept doing it and doing it. And each time I kind of addressed some issue in my life, either as a young boy or as a seminarian, as a priest, as somebody trying to do something with the homeless, as a sibling, and I kept attacking these issues, not coming to conclusions as much as it was just a matter of “Golly, I got that out of me, and I got that out of me.” And I began to feel light inside. Not L-I-G-H-T. That too; there was enlightenment for sure. But I was not as heavy emotionally as I was when I started. And not too many people know--I don't know how much this is going over the air--not too many people know what I've been saying, and you tricked me. [Laughter] No, the beauty of what you are doing for me in this conversation is that you're allowing me to say some things that I haven't said. And you can give me your bill at the end. [Laughter]
Lee
I do wonder, I think... for those who... let me just use the language of helping professions. And I think that could be priests, pastors, counselors, teachers, social workers, I don't know. It seems to me that very often, there is a deep loneliness that folks in those professions carry about. And I would think that some people would be surprised that a priest at 45 is going to therapy, but I've had my times of going to years of therapy, you know? And it's that same sort of experience of these things that feel so deeply heavy in me. And when I'm able to process them in a space of vulnerability and trust, it allows the shame or the pain or the weight of those things to be lightened in this beautiful sort of way. I relate to that a lot.
Charlie
I've found that my therapist helped me to know that I also contributed to the answers. He helped me to expose all of the problems, all of the pathos, all of the beauty which I didn't appreciate. Well, oftentimes, we fail to see the goodness in our own lives. And we need someone to tell us. And I think, in so many ways, when somebody goes into therapy or treatment, they're looking to be told and to be reminded that they are good.
Lee
When you think back about childhood experience, what are the things that you look back on, as a young boy in Germantown, that are those elements of beauty that you remember at this point in your life? And what are elements of challenge or struggles that you had to process as a boy that you've also carried with you that have given you certain characteristics about the way you've made your way through life?
Charlie
Well, the first thought I had, as you were asking the question, was my daddy. I wish I had brought a poem that he wrote about his wife, my mother. But he was handicapped. He had, as a two year old, fell. He was at the top of a makeshift seesaw, and the little kid at the bottom got off the board, and he landed on concrete. He was two years old, and without anybody knowing what to do, they hung him in suspension in the doorway for years, hoping that the weight of his body would straighten out his spine. But it didn't, and he was unable to walk until he was eight, and he had a broken back and, he became a hunchback. His name, his nickname was Mutt. He wasn't able to work a steady job as he grew older, but eventually became an employee of the fire department and was a dispatcher. Everybody in the fire department loved him, and so when he died suddenly at 47, they went to the fire chief and said, “Would you give his wife the job of clerk?” And so that was in 1948, and sure enough, the chief gave her the job. She became the first female in the Nashville fire department. But I always wanted to know him better. And some of the sadness I carry is the sadness for not knowing the father. I think there's not so much sadness about wanting to know him, but more a yearning. And I think he becomes a parable that reminds me of God the father, both the positive aspect of being his son, and the yearning to see him and to know him even better. I know different parts of him that I would say would be called fun and games. I used to pretend to cut his hair and put a sheet around him, and go around his head and cut his hair while he read the morning paper. Well, he was smart enough to know he wanted to read the paper and this little boy is keeping me from it. Why don't we play barbershop? And I get to read the paper and you get to cut my hair, and it worked. But I also remember him coming home on a night shift at 11 o'clock at night, or coming in and getting up to go to work at the seven o'clock shift. And in their house, there's the black skillet with bacon and eggs and biscuits and the smell of all of that as a little boy, jumping up and going to jump in his lap. I also went with him when the pastor at the church had to go make a sick call, go into the hospital or just to the nursing home. And the pastor could not drive, and so my dad drove him to all these different places of care. And I was in the backseat bouncing around and just feeling really close. And so I think that's a relationship that is still incomplete. And so there's both the positive part of it being the expression and the parable of God as father, and then there's the negative side of it.
Lee
Thank you for sharing that. Those are beautiful stories.
Charlie
Well, you describe the stories as beautiful, and that to me is a gift: that what you sense is beauty and love. That's a good reminder to me of what I have experienced in life.
Lee
So, four siblings there in Germantown, and I remember you telling me stories about going down to... I think what you called it was the jungle.
Charlie
Oh yeah. Now picture me: I'm 12 years old, and my best friend is Jack Link. He's also 12. And so we run the neighborhood. And we came to see a group of--right now they would be called street alcoholics--but at the time they were called bums and whine-os. And they all gathered in a clump of bushes and weeds called the jungle, and it was right where the bicentennial mall sits. At first, the two of us decided we would hassle them by getting our bikes and taking some firecrackers or cherry bombs and drive through there when they're asleep in the early evening and throw the firecrackers into the fire. And of course that blew up everything, and we did that pretending we were American fighters bombing cities in the war. Well, it stirred them, and they couldn't do anything. They were so intoxicated, they couldn't chase us or holler at us. They really kind of just took it. And even at 12 you can develop a conscience. And I just remember the two of us, after we had done this several times, looking at each other and saying, “This isn't fun anymore.” So we stopped doing it. Now, the next thing then is to try to get inside the camp and become part of the camp. So we weasled our way in, and they took us in, and we sat around the campfire, and they told us stories, and they treated us like we were a little brother or a son and kind of adopted us. We became part of the club, as we called it. And that bonded us to them, to the point where I never have forgotten them, and whenever I was starting to do some of the outreach to the homeless--once I got ordained and was at Holy Name--we started the Guest House with the police department, which became and is an alternative to public intoxication arrests at the jail. So, the judge has approached me about doing something to reduce the jail population since being publicly intoxicated was a misdemeanor, and it was just clogging up the court. So, we started the Guest House, and it's operational for the police to bring people in rather than arresting them, and treating them as a social medical problem rather than a criminal problem. And looking back, I can see that my bringing them in is a kind of extension of their bringing us into their campfire. So I feel like I'm very repaying them for the kindness they showed me, because they tried to teach us how to live, how to be kind. Clayton was the ringleader of the band of brothers. And his only crime was to be intoxicated. And there was one police officer who was extremely mean, and we all said that he was the one we need to stay away from, because he would arrest us, or hassle us, or scare us. Back then, they had what they called a paddy wagon. And I remember him picking on Clayton, and he was drunk on the sidewalk, and so he picked him up and threw him in the back of this paddy wagon. It was all metal inside. I can remember his head hitting the metal and kind of knocking him out. And, I wasn't able to do anything to help him, except I said to the police officer, “He didn't do anything.” And he said, “You want me to throw you in there too,” and I ran away. I thought that didn't do much to help him.
Lee
And you were still how old at that point?
Charlie
Oh, probably 14. I was born in 1943. So by the time you get to 1950, there's the whole problem with integration. And our neighborhood was a mixed neighborhood, which we were happy we had a house in. Basically it was a neighborhood where the poor helped the poor and worked for the poor, worked for each other. They were horse-drawn wagons that men drove around the neighborhood. Horse-drawn! Nobody can imagine that, but that's the reality of that 1950 to 1960. They sold coal for the coal furnace in grates that everybody had. Lumps of coal. They sold ice for an ice box. No refrigerators; ice boxes. And then there was a fellow who came down to the alley with his horse-drawn wagon, and he had a couple of 55-barrel drums that were full of food-garbage, and fed it to his hogs. He was called the Slop Man. We would just take the garbage to him and he'd pour it in this 55-barrel drum, which was soupy looking, and half the flies in Nashville would have been there [Laughter]. But it was a different world, and it was full of the same things that we're fighting with now: war, prejudice, hatred, all the kinds of social justice issues. They were there. I really couldn't articulate them, but I knew that there was something wrong whenever you saw a white water fountain and a colored water fountain. You didn't know why, but you made some critical judgments about it. I remember the Knickerbocker theater was at Capitol Boulevard and Church Street, but they had a balcony called a white balcony and a colored balcony. And I can remember thinking, why is there a colored balcony? I wonder what it looks like. So I slipped up past the usher. I went to the white balcony and knew what that was like, and then I ran up and slipped up to the colored balcony, and it looked just like the white balcony. Well, in a simple way, a boy can make judgments. They're smart enough to develop conscience. And that's why this movement that is throughout our land is such a powerful expression of justice, because young people--who've been told whatever they've been told about what is the real world and what the real world is like--they have enough sense to say, “I don't believe in that real world.” And I think that's our hope for our future: that we've got a generation that has seen enough, that they're going to put their mask on and they're going to walk to the Capitol or the courthouse and claim the right to do that without punishment or without jail time. They're willing to do it, just as we were willing to do it in the 1960s when I was in school at Catholic university in Washington DC. I was up there from 1965 to 1970.
Lee
And was that your seminary years?
Charlie
Yeah, my seminary years. If you would ask me, “What five years would you like to be in Washington, DC in the last hundred years,” I would say, “From 1965 to 1970.” And I was lucky enough to be a part of that experience: resurrection city, poor people's campaign, the march on Washington, all of those experiences we were a part of. And in saying that, I'm not saying we were pure--our motivation wasn't a hundred percent committed to social justice and the reform of America--we also wanted to meet some girls [Laughter]. You could sign up to become a marshall, so you're a marshall, and you were looking out for the protesters, making sure they were okay. Especially the pretty ones [Laughter]. But I'd say 80% of us were committed to social justice [Laugher]. The other 20% fail.
Lee
I have a good friend who once told me that he didn't believe that anyone ever had completely pure motives in anything. And I've kind of accepted that as a sort of good acceptance, you know? We don't fall prey to delusions of our self-righteousness if we accept that.
Charlie
Yeah. Being honest, you know you did it for a lot of different reasons. Yeah. But the four days that you did it…
Lee
You showed up.
You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life. We're most grateful to have you joining us. We'd love to hear from you. You may contact us a info@tokensshow.com. And remember, you can find our links, photos, books, and related videos from our extensive YouTube channel all at tokensshow.com/podcast. This is our interview with Charlie Strobel, founder of Nashville's Room in the Inn. Part two in just a moment: Charlie shares about the human encounter with God, more about his father, and about the murder of his mother.
You're listening to Tokens and our interview with Charlie Strobel, founder of Nashville's Room in the Inn. We pick back up where I've asked Charlie, who has been known to level his critiques at the Roman Catholic hierarchy, to talk about some of the beauties and nourishment he's received from his tradition.
Charlie
I have to say that the Eucharist is the place where we encounter the living God. When there are early Christians, first there are Jews. The first Christians are Jews. And after they have had their Sabbath on a Friday night that closes on the Saturday, on the first day of the week, those who were Jewish also heard and believed in this man named Jesus. And so on the first day of the week after the Sabbath, they began to gather for the breaking of bread, and in the breaking of bread, they encountered the Lord. And that story is fundamental. That's the story of God's bringing together people around the notion of community. Do this and remember. So you have this breaking of bread in the earliest days of Christian life. And they began to do three things: to gather the folk, to tell the story, and to break the bread. And those are the three elements that we claim as Eucharistic elements. When they are present, then the Lord is present in their midst. And so people gathered to come together to begin to form themselves as a community. Now they may have other communities, but this is a special community in the life and spirit of Jesus. So they gather together, and then they tell the story. And the story is one of loving care, and concern, and healing, and hope, and joy, and forgiveness. All of those themes and others are told in the story before they decide that they're going to live that way. And so over the years, this ritual, as simple as it was--gather the folk, tell the story, break the bread--takes on all kinds of... it's like icing on the cake. It takes on incense, then holy water, and vestments, and all kinds of ritual.
Lee
Yeah. Us low church people either condemn that stuff, or we have an envy of all that stuff. I'm kind of on the envy side.
Charlie
Yeah. If there's a choice, I think that'd be to take it, to accept it, and to love it. Because it's supposed to connect us. So for me, that's the place where I think the greatest nourishment is found and experienced. And it starts with the word “we.” It's not “I the Christian. It's “we the people of God” who come together to share and celebrate the richness of God's love that's overflowing. Where can I go from your presence and from your spirit? Where can I flee? Before a word is ever on my lips, oh Lord, you know the whole of it. So if I go to the highest heavens, you're there. If I sink into the depths of the netherworld, you are there. For you truly have knitted me in my mother's womb. With all my ways you are familiar. That life is something that can't be manufactured. You can't commercialize it. That kind of experience of the inner life. Before a word is ever on your lips, oh Lord, you know the whole of it. Amazing. It's just amazing.
Lee
I want to go back to something you said early on, kind of where we started. You wish that we could hear a poem your father had written for your mother. Do you remember any lines there, or what he said about your mother?
Charlie
I do. He starts by saying something like, “I have no Mayflower ancestry; still I'm made of sturdy stuff. And I love you. Is that enough?” And he was crippled and my mother took about seven or eight years to decide to marry him. I said, “Mom, why did you wait so long?” She said, “I wish I hadn't. I'd love to have a dozen children.” And I said, “Well, what would keep you from doing it? I mean, y'all were dating.” “No, no, no, we weren't dating.” And I said, “So he was your chauffeur.” “Well, I guess he was.” “Well, that's a date.” “No, that wasn't a date. Don't go talking that way.” So I said, “Well, what kept you from marrying him?” She said, “I loved him to death, but I heard some of the relatives say, ‘Well, I wonder what the children will look like.'” And I said, “What the children would look like?” She said, “Yes. He had a curvature of the spine, and we didn't know if the children would inherit it.” I said, “That's archaic. You should have talked to a doctor.” “Well, I didn't know what to do, but I worried and worried that I couldn't marry him because I didn't want to bring in children that were not right. Isn't that amazing? But that's 1935.
Lee
What was your relationship like with your mother?
Charlie
Oh, like every boy's relationship with their mother. I don't want to do it! Get up and do it. You're piled in the bed all day long, get up! Wonderful. When I first started going to counseling for depression, people that I know thought that it might have been because of her death, and it wasn't really. I went first, I think, to deal with my father. And I knew I would talk about her situation, but I dealt with that with the community first, and I think that helped me not to make her death the most compelling issue for me to face. I know I already faced it a year or two before she was actually killed. And nobody really knows this, but well, it was my niece's birthday, and my sister had ice cream and cake ready for us to come by. And I was in the rectory at Holy Name and just finished celebrating the Eucharist on a Wednesday night, and I went inside and the phone was ringing. And my sister Veronica said, “Charles, have you seen mama?” And I said, “No. Why?” She said, “Well, we've looked all day for her and we can't find her. She's missing. And she would never miss this ice cream and cake. We don't know where she is.” So I immediately had this sense of fright and panic. And so I went, jumped in the car, and drove over to her house, and I started driving around. The house was not broken into. We had a key, and we got in, and nothing was out of place. So I started this journey of riding around the city, going to places like the cemetery where she might've gone. It was in July, and the temperature was 90 degrees. So I was thinking she probably had a heart attack on the side of the road. So I kept going around and around and around. And funnily, I called back to Veronica's house to Tom and Veronica, “Has anybody seen her.” And they said, “Well, she's here. Come on.” And so I got in the car and went to the house, and there she was. And of course I was just overjoyed to see her. And, her answer was that a girlfriend had reservations for a plane to take her grandchildren who were visiting back to California, and she got mama, who was named Mary Katherine. She said, “Mary Katherine, take me.” Wherever Helen wanted to go, mama would take her. And she said, “Well, I've gotta call Veronica and tell her I'll be late.” And she said, “We'll call from the airport when we get there.” But when they got there, they didn't do it. And so she was with Helen all that time, and Helen brought her home, and that was the end of it. Well, what nobody knows, or a lot of people don't know, is that when I was walking or driving around finding every reason to believe that she had run into some bad trouble, I began to think about her dying, thinking her death will be a violent death. And I started to imagine what would then be our response. We'd have to say something to explain or to express our feelings. So I'd worked through an entire funeral. I said father Dan would be the one to preach the funeral. I had her buried. Dead and buried. And so I was overjoyed when I saw her. So that passes, and several years later on December the 9th, I'm finishing saying mass at Holy Name at about 5:30. I go into the rectory. The phone rings. It's Veronica, and she says, “Charles, have you seen mama?” I said, “No.” She said, “Well, we can't find her anywhere.” And at that time, I sensed that this was the real deal, that she was being the victim of some violent death. So I went and did the whole thing. We called people together to try to find her. Officer Bill Hamlin, my brother and I, and Tom drove around and around downtown Nashville, and I found her car parked across the street from the Greyhound bus station in the union mission parking lot. And I could tell it was her car, and the police came, and they opened the trunk and found her there. And that took the whole family's attention. I mean, it totally took over what our lives were to be. And I had a kind of dress rehearsal, and I knew exactly what I was going to say and who would be participating in the service and all the surrounding ritual.
We believed in the power of forgiveness, the miracle of forgiveness. And we said, we extend our arms in that embrace. And that wasn't something that I had just thought of. It was something that I had thought of for the longest time, even back in the days when I was in the seminary. In one moral theology class, we discussed all of the major issues: racism, hunger, poverty, homelessness, euthanasia, abortion, and capital punishment was one of those. And we divided the class up into two sides, and one side argued for capital punishment, and the other one argued against it. So inevitably, we argued against it. Inevitably, the question was raised, “Well, what would you do if it happened to a member of your own family?” I said to myself, “If I'm against it now, in the objectivity of this classroom, I would hope that I would be against it, even if it happened to a member of my own family.” Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that that would be a choice I would have to make. But on December 9th of 1985, we had to face that choice as a family. We expressed our opposition and had to go through the court to make sure that it wasn't going to be changed that they would not seek the death penalty. They intended to. The district attorney came to report that this is what's going to happen. He'll be brought to trial when he's found. And I said, “Well, we are on the opposite side of that. We don't want you to seek the death penalty.” And they said, “Okay,” and kept going. And I realize they didn't listen. And I said, “Excuse me, I don't think you heard what I said. I said we don't want to pursue the death penalty.” And they said, “Okay. We heard that.” Now what that caused was some confusion, because I heard it from the public defenders' side that they didn't want us to be sitting in the courtroom with the killer on his side, and so they didn't seek the death penalty. He got three consecutive life sentences, but he was not put to death, and he died of natural causes. I did have an interesting reaction when I heard the news that he died. I wasn't angry and I wasn't in my heart saying, “There. Finally justice is done.” Probably the closest I could come to identifying how I reacted was sadness, because he had ruined so much of our life, and in his own family, too. So I was sad to hear it. Then I also came to understand the miracle of forgiveness, which is how we phrased it. My brother-in-law Tom, about six months after she died, said, “Charles, how are you feeling?” And I said, “I'm alright. I'm trying to deal with it like you are.” He said, “But you know, there's something about it that gives me peace.” And I began to talk with him about that. I said that the reason it's a miracle, I'd come to believe, is for three reasons. First, forgiveness creates a peaceful heart. While you're trying to get revenge, you have this person who lives inside of you. And that is not something that you can deal with without forgiveness. Forgiveness cleanses you and your heart. He no longer lives in you. Secondly, it's a miracle in that it gives you freedom that you no longer are stuck in the moment of death, and the debate of all the stuff surrounding that death. But it's hard, and it's the hardest thing the four of us ever had to do. But to do that, to forgive, allows you the freedom to get on with your life, as hard as it is. And then the third miracle is that it restores a sense of justice, because we believe God is the author of life and death. It's in the hands of God whether or not a person lives or dies. And the person who killed our mother is somebody who has claimed the power to kill that's reserved to God alone. And so forgiving that person in my mind is, in a sense, a way to restore this order of justice. Anyway, now how did we get to that? [Laughter]
Lee
Your dad talking about how he didn't have Mayflower stock, but loved her; would that be enough.
Charlie
Yeah. And I think the other word in there is “plain.” I'm so plain. And have no Mayflower ancestry, but I'm made of sturdy stuff, and I love you; is that enough?
Lee
Well, Nashville has been blessed by you and your sturdy stuff of loving and showing up. And I think back to conversations we've had over the years, and I carry around with me bits of wisdom from you, and I've always felt loved in your presence. I love you. I'm thankful for you.
Charlie
Thank you Lee. That means so much. Thank you very much.
Lee
We've been talking to Charles Strobel, a beloved Nashvillian, founder of Room in the Inn, recognized as Tennessean of the year several times by lots of folks, but more than that, a friend to many of us that we're thankful for. Thanks for your time today.
Charlie
Thank you. Wow. [Laughter] Did the heart continue to beat? It's like open heart surgery. I feel like this is an operating table. [Laughter] We've gotta go out and have a meal, and you tell me your story.
Lee
You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, and the good life. First episode in season two. And so delighted to get to be back with you. Thank you so much for joining us. Please remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and please remember to refer to a fellow podcast listener. Just go to the link of where you got this episode, send it in an email or on social media, and share with folks whom you think might like it. Or go over to Apple podcasts and give us a nice review and rate us five stars. Feedback? Email us text, attach a voice memo, and send to the address podcast@tokensshow.com.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that make this podcast possible: executive producer and manager Christie Bragg, Bragg Management, co-producer Jacob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios, associate producers Ashley Bayne and Leslie Eiler Thompson, our engineer Cariad Harmon, production assistant Cara Fox, sound beds by Zach and Maggie White, and our live event production team at Stonebrook Media led by Phil Barnett. The song on this episode is an old American folk song entitled “My Home,” performed live by the most outstanding Horeb Mountain Boys, taped at the Ryman auditorium, and led by our music director Jeff Taylor with Chris Brown, Buddy Greene, Aubrey Haynie, Ryan House, David Davidson, David Angel, Chris Wilkinson, and Pete Huttlinger, may he rest in peace.
Thanks for listening and peace be unto thee.
The Tokens Podcast is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.