2008 Woodie Awards
Tribute to a Univ. songwriter
Issue date: 12/4/07 Section: Opinions
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Clues: He worked with Peter Buck of R.E.M., Bill Mallonee of the Vigilantes of Love and T-Bone Burnett of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack fame. His songs have been covered by everyone from Nickel Creek and Olivia Newton-John to Phil Keaggy and Pierce Pettis.
Give up? His name's Mark Heard. Not many Athenians know about him. Let's change that.
Heard was born in Macon and graduated from the University with a bachelor's degree in television. As a student, he produced a documentary on fellow Georgia musician Pat Terry that later aired on Georgia Public Television.
Heard emerged from his college years fascinated with philosophy and aware of a larger world than the one he grew up in. He was steeped in the "Christ-haunted" culture of the South. He sought to combine his talent for music with his search for truth, and for God. But Heard is no conventional "Christian songwriter." Allergic to pretense, he refused to toe the line of contemporary Christian music, the manufacturer of songs that my father-in-law acidly refers to as "7-11 tunes: seven words repeated 11 times."
Lacking the support of a major label (Christian or secular), Heard home-brewed his own recordings in a remodeled ice cream truck. As Athens' Bill Mallonee told me, "Mark was doing indie rock before it existed." A "profane saint," Heard characterized his music as "a cry to God about how much I hate the bad things and how much I love the good things."
And what a prophet's cry. All you songwriters out there, admit it: even your best lyrics are mediocre doggerel without the music. Not so with the poetic lines of Heard's resplendent "Strong Hand of Love" excerpted below:
Young dreamers explode like popped balloons / Some kind of emotional rodeo / Learning too slow and acting too soon / Time marches away like a lost platoon / We gracefully age as we feel the weight of loving too late / And leaving too soon / We can laugh and we can cry / And never see the strong hand of love / Hidden in the shadows / We can dance and we can sigh / And never see the strong hand of love / Hidden in the shadows.
In another brilliant song, "Nod Over Coffee," Heard exchanges the narration of "Strong Hand" for a powerfully raw conversation-without-words with his wife:
If I weren't so alone and afraid / They might pay me what I am worth / But it would not be enough / You deserve better / So we nod over coffee and say goodbye / Do whatever has to be done again today / Get in the traffic and time will fly / Look at the sun and pray for rain / Ain't that the curse of the second hand / Ain't that the way of the hour and the day ...
Sadly, Mark Heard left us way too soon. Fifteen years ago, he suffered a heart attack while performing at the Cornerstone Festival in Illinois, dying six weeks later at the age of 41. But Heard's music lives on, and like a prophet's cry, it grows louder with the years. His friends around the world cover his songs; Web sites go up (www.markheard.net/); CDs are released; and in 2003 Middlebury College professor Matthew Dickerson published the excellent book "Hammers & Nails: The Life and Music of Mark Heard."
In a better world, Mark Heard would still be here, challenging our assumptions and kicking the tires of a faith he never lost. There'd be a whole chain of Nod Over Coffee shops in Athens providing a home for his kind of artistry. But that's not the world we've got. Listen to Mark Heard's music to learn how to deal with the surprisingly strong hand we're dealt.
- John Knox is an associate research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering and an instructor/adviser in the Department of Geography.
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