Cowriter, Bob Huffʼs edgy Telecaster was pounding the studio somewhere around 105 decibels, when all of a sudden he tuned down his low E string a whole step while never missing a beat… I felt a Spirit-shift inside the room… the hair immediately stood up on my arms… a couple of us looked at each other behind the console and knew he had just discovered the dark side sound on “Father of Lies”…the music needed to take on Satanʼs evil character in juxtaposition to the hopeful, victorious vocal lines…
I now realize…
that afternoon was a turning point on the album…
we were no longer laying down guitar tracks…
We were laying down characters and layering a musical story… after an hour or two flew by in what seemed like 5 minutes… while Huffʼs guitar sound continued painting the chaos and evil ramblings on “…Lies”… the strangest thing happened… in fact, if 3 of us hadnʼt witnessed the same thing together, I would never have believed it…
I glanced out one of the studio windows that overlook my vineyard… as a neighborʼs pickup flew down my gravel driveway past the studio… I shouted to the guys, “weʼve got fire!”… as I looked down over the vineyard, the entire field below the vineyard was in flames… all 3 of us stopped recording and ran a couple of hundred yards across the property to an overlook.
I couldnʼt believe my eyes… my property was ablaze with orange flames heading directly towards my vines and house… in ten years of farming this property, Iʼd never witnessed anything this immediate. I started hearing more sirens getting closer and closer…
As I reached to pick-up a 100ʼ garden hose I realized how helpless I really was, yet eerily a strange sense of calm overcame me. All of a sudden the swift wind that had been pushing the flames and heat right towards our faces, quickly shifted 180 degrees slowing the rapid fireline to a crawl… within seconds I dropped the worthless garden hose as I heard a low flying airplane drop in and attack the dancing flames…
…dropping its load of Foscheck perfectly below my vineyard, saving the day… we cheered as he dropped his magical line of protection across my property. Within minutes, a farmer neighbor broke through the fence line with a bulldozer etching a second fireline.
The vineyard and our house were spared as quickly as the nightmare had attacked… we looked on as some faithful firefighters put out the oak tree and remaining hotspots. We stood there in shock, as the smell of smoke and soot surrounded us. I will never forget that day… as we finally returned to the studio to finish laying down a couple more guitar tracks to the song, I knew we had just witnessed and captured something unusual, deep and special.
The music to “Father of Lies” had been created that day and his flames of anger had reared against me, to no avail. Despite his evil symptoms of power, I felt surrounded and covered by Godʼs grace. That more than amazing grace remained all around me the entire year it took to complete this end-time project.
Here is a sample of “Father of Lies”…