01.01.07 UMC.org STEPHEN SIMMONS Drink Ring Jesus Locke Creek Records (UMC.org)—If Johnny Cash were alive, it isn’t hard to imagine him recording selections from Stephen Simmons’ Drink Ring Jesus, an album that takes a rebel approach to declaring the Gospel. The singer’s bedraggled twang, reminiscent of Steve Earle’s but lazier, doesn’t come close to Cash’s commanding vocal presence, but his voice as a songwriter is worthy of attention. The link to Cash’s work here is primarily to the Man in Black’s latter-day records, both in Simmons’ simple acoustic guitar accompaniment and his knack for lyrics that address religion in a secular context (much like Cash’s version of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” did). In fact, it’s highly unfortunate that a voice like Cash’s is unavailable, because Simmons’ lo-fi versions of his own melodically spare work are unlikely to connect with more than a modest audience. The songs surely won’t connect with most traditional Christian listeners, despite they fact that they say plenty about God—and God’s competition—in the 21st century. Simmons’ unique, even courageous, presentation is one that speaks of, as well as to, the dry and weary wanderers who are dulled by their workaday lives and either put off or intimidated by the cultivated spit-shine of organized religion—the notion that you have to get yourself together before God will take notice. Simmons’ most effective weapon is his ongoing awareness of God’s presence, coupled with a refusal to distance himself from the sin- and doubt-prone stragglers about (and along with) whom he sings. The title track explores a man’s tabloid-style fascination with the Christ-faced imprint left by his beverage glass, and the resulting conviction that God, however abstract, becomes visible—and therefore increasingly real—to everyday Joes. Elsewhere, that glass, “filled with lust,” belongs to a man who slips “on a quart of sloth” and who “tried a shot of envy—now I think all things should belong to me.” Though Simmons closes the disc with the certainty that his misguided characters are not beyond Jesus’ grasp, he first walks the wiggly line of faith in the face of confusion and self-reliance. “Been having problems with my soul/ Four way stops and don’t know which way to go,” he confesses between searching conversations with a God he nonetheless trusts is listening: “Jesus, you sent for all of us in peasants’ clothes/ With the skill of a carpenter for our fixer-upper souls/ And Lord, I don’t know just where eternity goes/ Seems like just yesterday I was washing clean this same soul.” “Next Stop Redemption” not only redeems the album’s untraditional version of Christian doctrine, but revives the well-worn salvation-as-train conceit with symbolism-packed lines like “This train is trying to find its way home/ Picking up people like a lost and found/ Hitting every depot that’s long been abandoned.” Perhaps most interesting, though, is the way Simmons employs Satan’s perspective in certain songs. Whenever Simmons uses profanity or addresses religious hypocrisy and the like, he does it through the voice of the Accuser, who pitifully whines that his only conquests are “These poster child souls who think they’re above the fold/ You know the ones with their high profiles/ But they got no timber in their souls.” If lines like these are provocative, others are surprisingly affirming, even as they roll off the Prince of Darkness’ forked tongue. While bemoaning his thankless task of capturing souls, Satan confesses in an unguarded moment that “Hell ain’t a kingdom, it’s a hole,” and turns in the record’s most devastating testimony about how far God’s mercy extends to the Great Unwashed: “You guys always seem to get all the good ones/ The poor and needy downtrodden masses/ Sometimes the whole deck’s stacked against ‘em/ But still I can’t break ‘em, their hearts are the truest of the pack.” If Satan himself can speak truth in these decidedly outside-the-Christian-box lyrics, so can Stephen Simmons, whose tilting glass—though it threatens to make a sloppy mess of mainstream Christian thought—ultimately overflows with spiritual refreshment for the truly thirsty on Drink Ring Jesus. This review was developed by UMC.org, the official online ministry of the United Methodist Church.   – Steve Morley