Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue
Jason Gray
©2009 Centricity Music Publishing~

As I grow older (hit the big 40 this year) I’m finding that I want more from the music I listen to. I want more texture. I want more layers. I want more depth. And I want these in both the instrumentation and in the lyrics. In no way am I a musician and I can’t tell you the difference between a harmony and a melody but I can tell you when I hear music that is creative and honest. That’s what I’ve found in Jason Gray’s music.

His album title, “Everything Sad is Coming Untrue” comes from J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and a conversation between Sam and Gandalf:

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land;”

Jason writes of this in the album liner notes:

The beauty of those words rang so many bells inside of me: the idea not that everything sad is untrue (which would be a cruel invalidation of our present sorrows) – nor that everything will come untrue someday (which reduces the hope of redemption to mere wishful thinking) – but that somehow, even right now in the face of the saddest that we see, the seeds of its undoing are sown. In fact, they were sown the day the body of Jesus, like a seed himself, was laid in the ground. What took root on Easter is the undoing of the curse, and it is flowering all around us if we have eyes to see it.

This is the kind of man I want to listen to. This is the kind of music my heart needs to hear on days that I feel broken and in need of redemption. I want to hear from a man who has sat with his suffering and found hope—not through sugar-coating nor denying it—but in the redemption of it.. Jason’s lyrics speak of fear, guilt, and honesty—the kind of honesty that only a man with good friends can know. Jason is the kind of man I would like to be friends with because I know he would be a safe place for me to plant my story and not fear it wilting.

I knew this the first time I listened to this album, but it came through with more conviction as I listened to an interview he did with Dave Trout of the Under the Radar podcast. In the course of that conversation Jason discusses his speech impediment—stuttering—and how through it he has seen more of Jesus. Much of the power of the interview came through for me when I realized they could have easily avoided the topic of stuttering and simply edited the interview to remove any stumbles on Jason’s part. But that wouldn’t have been true…nor beautiful in its redemption.

The idea that one day “everything sad will come untrue” may mean that one day Jason no longer stutters—or not. Either way, his “disability” in this life will be shown for what it is: honest. In a world of plastic parts, image-consultants and photoshopped images we desperately need that. “Thank You” Jason.

~Travis Stewart

Listen to “Help Me, Thank You” from Jason’s album, “Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue”:

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Help Me, Thank You
The two best prayers I know
Either one is always apropos
Like my oldest friends
They know just what to say
Some days my cup of blessing fills
Other days I trip and when it spills
I’m not guessing either wayI know just what to pray

Help me, help me
Thank you, thank you
Whether you’re riding high or feeling low
These are the two best prayers I know”
Help me” and “thank you”

The more life I live I find
The two prayers intertwine
Like my fingers do
When I bow my head to pray
Blessings can be so confusing
Winning when I think I’m losing
The wounds of yesterday
Might be my saving grace today

Chorus

With eyes wide open at the wonder of it all
Or with broken wings when I’m spinning in free fall
“Hallelujah!” “Deliver me!”
They’re rising up inside of me
Rolling off my tongue,
Before I thought to bid them come

Listen to Dave Trout’s Interview with Jason on the Under the Radar Podcast (duration 52:03):

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Visit Jason’s website at www.JasonGrayMusic.com.