CHARLIE PEACOCK releases his first album for three years featuring a stripped-down rock sound and lyrics that speak deeply of death and grace. Charlie spoke to Jan Willem Vink.

In an interview with the American magazine True Tunes News Charlie made some additional comments. "I miss Vince a lot. And I go through times when I'm just so angry with him for the foolishness of his choice. All I can say is that he was a very young Christian and there are things that you learn when you walk with Christ over time that help to buffer your foolishness. And I don't think he had that benefit. I mean... I was pleased that people were concerned enough to give it attention. There were several things that I read that were erroneous in terms of facts. But I suppose the greatest indictment of our community is that many, many people felt that because Vinnie always smiled on stage and always had a certain demeanour that was the fruit of the Spirit in his life.

"What people didn't understand is that Vinnie has been an entertainer since the time he was a kid, and when he stepped on that stage his sole purpose was to entertain. He would never have gone up with anything less than a big smile, you know? Because he felt a responsibility to the audience. And many nights I did not show that, because I have less of an orientation like that. He had more of an entertainment orientation than an artistic orientation. I'm not making a judgment on either one, saying one is better than the other; I'm just saying that we've got to be willing to go deeper with people and we've got to stop calling Christianity a smile."

'Everything That's On My Mind' deals in great extent with the death of Charlie's father. His description of their relation is honest, showing both Charlie's love for him, yet also the tension that existed between them. "To say that I was happy about my father's death would be ridiculous, I was not," says Charlie. "I'm deeply saddened by it, I'm deeply disappointed. I loved that man so much and I still love him. I miss him greatly and at the same time I had a tremendous amount of tension in my life as a result of my relationship with him. And for the 12 years that I knew him that he was a Christian and I was a Christian, those years were spent in really a lot of healing and really both of us growing as Christians and being able to forgive and that was delightful and I wish that was still continuing, because there was a lot more I wished to say to him. There's a lot of other ways that I want to profess my love for him. I have to wait 'til heaven for that.

"The glory of it all is that when I do see my father again in eternity, all the things that were so difficult and painful in this life will have passed away, and all I will see is how incredibly beautiful he is in Christ, and all he will see of me is how incredibly beautiful I am in Christ. And I think that is a tremendous hope, that I know we share in common."

Before becoming a Christian, Charlie battled with substance abuse. In his song, "Aim A Little Higher", Charlie sings about his relationship with his father during this time. "I had gone back to my parents' home and they tried to get me some help for some substance abuse problems that I had and I started using again while I was there at their house. They told me I had to leave and my father came in the room that I was staying in and he laid a Bible on the bed and said, 'Son, this is your only hope, this is the only hope you will ever know.' And well, it made me angry. I had no knowledge of who God really was and what the person of Christ had done in my father's life. So I had no respect for it but I sure remembered it later. He was right. He was right about the message of the gospel and the Bible is the only message of hope there is in this world."
Charlie's father was a musician too. Charlie: "My father told me early on that I would never make it as a musician, it was too difficult and I needed to be a school teacher, do something else. I just despised him for that and most of my adult life was proving to him that he was wrong. That's just no way to live."

Charlie says the tension existed both before and after his conversion. "Pre-conversion I probably despised his interest, or lack of interest in who I was, and post conversion maybe I had so much tension because maybe he was too interested in who I was becoming and that he was living vicariously through me, and I was achieving things that he perhaps had hoped for himself at different points."

CCM magazine reports an event during the last time Charlie's dad visited him. "We had a great talk in the garage one day. I had told him that I had dealt with a lot of things that were tensions between us and had forgiven him, and he paid me the highest compliment. It probably meant more to me than anything he had every said to me. He said, 'You know what I really admire in you son? You know what you believe and why you believe it. I don't know if I know that.' When he said that, I felt set free. Because that was the area where I wasn't living for my dad's approval - I was living as a disciple of Christ. In that moment he became my weaker brother. I can only have compassion for him, only have love for him. I know that's the legacy I have to pass on to my son - to not just be a Christian in name, but to be one who knows what they believe and why they believe it and essentially don't stop short of the truth.

"The umbrella over this project is the hunger for a deep relationship with Christ," says Charlie. "It all seems to distil down to a recognition that I so easily settle for things that inevitably amount to nothing when I could be walking with my creator. I constantly find myself seeking after diversions, distractions, comfort and pleasure, rather than seeking the heart of God. With that recognition comes the cry, 'No, I don't want this! This is not the life I want; I want something deeper.'"

I confront Charlie with a line from his song "William And Maggie" and ask him whether it's autobiographical. The song goes, "It always amazed me how someone could come to the edge of the world/Drop a stone down the side/And turn and return to the very same life." "I think it's certainly autobiographical," agrees Charlie. "It is convicting to me as well, that I would be fully inclined to have a relationship with the creator of the universe, yet often not be changed by it. I know that is something of my own will, and resting in sovereign place with God, where I would seek to control all the details of my life and sort of be my own god. I profess that there is only one true God, and it's certainly not me! But it's a paradox in many ways that we could live like that. How that we could be having a peek into the vastness of God's creation through his son Jesus Christ and just turn around and simply come back to our day to day lives without having any difference at all."

The song "Monkeys At The Zoo" further explores this territory, making bold statements about Charlie's own dissatisfaction with his spiritual life. "It was really written after attending a wonderful conference with several teachers that I admire down in Florida. James Packer was there and R C Sproul and other men that I really admire as theologians. I remember that I was so excited about it, just thinking this was so life changing. I came home and it was like a lot of experiences I have, where you have like a mountain top experience and then you have to come and live real life (laughs). I just thought, 'Will this sink in deeper than just the surface, and will this really impact my life for the cause of Christ in this world? Will I be changed by it? Or will I just continue to create a kind of cocoon existence for myself in this beautiful Christian life here in Nashville or will I always retain, and hopefully I will, just a little bit of disgust at my ability to be a, not a kingdom builder, in terms of doing what God wants me to do, but be an empire builder, which is storing up to myself and creating my own little kingdom?

"Epiphany, the gospel is alive in me!" exclaims Charlie in "Climb A Tree". Is that a bold statement of growth? "Yes, I think so. It has to do a lot with the confidence, not in what I have done, but what Christ has done. And to really grab a hold of that confidence is to the astonishment: 'Hey (laughing) the gospel is alive in me. God's word is true and sure.'"