Eaglesmith preaches another gospel

Put Fred Eaglesmith's new album on at background-noise level, and it probably registers as a gospel record. "Tinderbox" (A Major Label Records), the Canadian singer/songwriter's 16th album, sounds like the sort of spiritual music you'd get from combining Tom Waits and Ry Cooder, raw and earthy. It sounds like the dusky end of a difficult day, one that can only be redeemed by faith.

Turn up the volume and scan the lyric sheet, however, and a somewhat different picture emerges -- one in which faith is neither simple nor comforting. None of the album's chain-gang denizens, moonshine guzzlers and struggling farmers find peace in much of anything, least of all religion.

"That God you got is a fancy God, and he's not the one I know/He don't live in parking lots outside of monster homes," Eaglesmith rasps in "Fancy God."

If Eaglesmith has a jaundiced view of evangelical faith and what it's used for, he has his reasons. The man is a Buddhist, after all.

"Well, I'm a follower of Buddhism rather than a Buddhist, because the goal of a Buddhist is not to be one," Eaglesmith says, calling from his tour bus as it rolls down the highway in Pennsylvania. "I was raised with gospel in a real heavy-duty Protestant church, so I understand that and I get that.

"But this record, to me, is nongospel even though it sounds like gospel. It's almost anti-gospel, in a way, secular gospel. There are civilians on this record."

From its maker's perspective, "Tinderbox" is a record that involved less thinking than feeling. It's the most instinctive, off-the-cuff record Eaglesmith has ever made. Instead of laboring over songs, he would write and record each one in as little as an hour and then bring his band in later to add finishing touches to the arrangements -- atmospheric keyboard washes, doomy-sounding guitars, banjo, junkyard percussion, ghostly echoes of background vocals.

"Doing it like this, you have to trust the moment and its inspiration as opposed to going back and editing," he says. "I just didn't want to do a record that was 'planned.' Most records nowadays are so planned, you hear the planning more than the music. There's a concept in Buddhism called 'Flash Zen,' where you do something instinctively and trust that. I paint that way all the time, but I'd never thought to try recording like that before."

The key song turned out to be the title track, which describes a preacher in full cry with "salvation ... raining down" during a sermon. But not everybody is feeling it, as the chorus notes: "Somebody's crying in the very back row."

"What that song is about isn't the preacher, although so many preachers seem to think everything is all about them, or even religion," Eaglesmith says. "It's about that person on the back row, and how confused everyone is. The religion of confusion is the biggest in the world and we are all part of it. Even people who say they're not in it, they are because they can't help it -- and they're the most confused of all.

"That song was a real epiphany for me and it hasn't stopped," he adds. "It's been an ongoing thought process involving a million discussions that are not about popular music, which is uplifting in itself. It's cool because the whole record raises the discussion. People come up to me after the shows crying, but I'm not what they're talking about. Which is so great."

Good as it is, "Tinderbox" is unlikely to break Eaglesmith out beyond his cult following, which is fine by him. He has his rabid "Fredhead" fans -- and even a gold record on his wall, thanks to Toby Keith. Keith covered Eaglesmith's "White Rose" on his 2007 album "Big Dog Daddy," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album charts.

"That's so how my career has gone," Eaglesmith says with a laugh. "Here I try to be an intelligent human, stay on the path, be the guy who doesn't sell out. And he's the most unapologetically commercial guy in country music, with the Ford sponsorship and everything. But for all the talk from Nashville about how people love me, Toby Keith put his money where his mouth is. I've had so many people put my songs 'on hold,' which is this little token thing they do in Nashville: 'We have enough integrity to identify this as a good song, but it's sure as hell not going on the record.'

"But Toby Keith did, and he's been good to me," he concludes. "Life's just like that, isn't it?"