"I'm Not On This Earth To Entertain" Divine Punk by Sander Donkers from Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland issue 11, 18 March 2000 Popmusic and religion tolerate each other, but usually this involvement doesn't go far. For Sixteen Horsepower God is not a distraction. Guilt, sin and temptation, that is what their music is all about. And yet the band cannot count on a special on a Christian TV station. It has something to do with the dog and its owner, and how they came to look alike. It only isn't clear who is playing what role. Does David Eugene Edwards resemble his music or is it the other way around? While he's killing time until he will play his banjo on the VPRO radio show, he sits silently, bolt upright, studying the pictures on the wall. His face expresses all the emotions he conjures up with his band Sixteen Horsepower. Serious, straightforward, intense. And also quite frightening. Edwards is driven by a higher power. It hasn't got much to do with rock 'n' roll. Unless it's the great balls of fire of Judgement Day. Popmusic and religion tolerate each other, but usually the involvement doesn't go much further than to include the Lord in the "thank you's" in the CD booklet. When He's sung about, it is joyful. He is invariably beautiful, sweet, or, as Joan Osborne sang, "just a slob like one of us." Not so with Sixteen Horsepower. Their music is swarming with hellfire and burning blackberry bushes. For Edwards God is not some distraction, nor a reason for cheerfulness. Guilt, sin and temptation, that is what his music is all about. The eternal battle between good and evil. Why should you laugh? Is there something to laugh about in the first place? When he sits down at the table he lights a cigarette and drinks a glass of wine. And yes, he does consider that a sin. "I'm not saying that this bottle is Evil itself, but intoxication is. Letting yourself go, for your own pleasure, almost always is at someone else's expense. I'm a complete asshole when I'm drunk, and every gulp is a step in that direction. So I'm in conflict with myself right now." As Sixteen Horsepower's music is predominated by echoes from a distant past, Edwards seems to be an anachronism himself too. His hair parted on one side, clothes that could be twenty, but also a hundred years old, an age-old look in his eyes and a mysterious charisma. He would be a gift from the gods for casting directors looking for the Man in Black, the bearer of bad tidings. But Hollywood can save its troubles. In the world Edwards grew up in, cinema was an absolute taboo. For his grandfather, a preacher from the very strict Nazarene church who did most of Edwards' upbringing, it still is. Just like playing cards, dancing, make-up and pants for women. "In my environment those kinds of silly rules are changing little by little," says Edwards. "I believe that drawing a line is something between you and God, that your conscience will tell you how far you can go. But my grandfather is old-school. He can't tolerate that." Edwards is silent, resigned. For a moment it seems as if his grandfather is sitting at the table, shaking his head. Still; without Hollywood, there would be no Sixteen Horsepower. In the early nineties Edwards build filmsets there, and there he met Jean-Yves Tola who had come over from Paris. Tola was his boss then, now he is his drummer. Besides a predilection for the same music and spiritual affairs, they had in common that they couldn't stand living in the City of Angels. "Everything there is dominated by money, business and fame. Even the man who sells you a carton of milk secretly dreams of a movie-career. That didn't seem a good place to raise my children, and I myself was homesick, longing for peace and quiet, for my Colordo home." Back in the more rural environment of the Denver surroundings everything fell into place. "Los Angeles made me doubt my motives to make music. I had little in common with what I saw around me, because I'm not on this earth to entertain. For quite some time I considered to just take a job and make music with my friends on the front porch, but I found out that God did not want me to do that. I have a gift and that is my calling. Everything I have belongs to God. He died for me. He is my king and I serve Him. Still I often don't feel at ease within the music industry. But sometimes He wants you to do things that you don't consider to be cool yourself." Edwards's vocation does not include singing "Amazing Grace" to a hall full of believers. Sixteen Horsepower can not count on a tv special on a christian station. The band is truly unique, in the sense of the word that they stand alone completely. Their music, once strikingly described as "the missing link between Hank Williams and Joy Division," is the receptacle of all the music that ever impressed Edwards. In his music a loud screaming guitar can get along with an accordion or a hurdy-gurdy. Monotone eighties singing melts effortlessly with thin, desolate Apalachian music sounds. And polkas don't clash with punk rock. Punk rock? "I went through all the usual developments a normal teenager goes through, and so I was into punk-rock and new wave as well. But I never rebelled, the one thing never excluded the other. In the music a lonesome farmer plays for his family, I always heard the same angst, aggression and restlessness as in Joy Division." But, as can be heard clearly on the beautiful new cd Secret South, the backbone of Edwards' music is formed by the many years he spent in his grandfather's church. "That's where I learned to play the organ and the guitar, and that's where I sang the same songs year in, year out. The atmosphere was sober, the interior too - no crosses, no lights or paintings - and I loved it there. The music was serious, devoted, it had nothing to do with what you know from black gospel churches, but to me it brought about a similar excitement. We took the joy that music brings very seriously, knowing that you can't experience true joy if you don't know the opposite, suffering. And that is still the way I feel about it." His religious foundations were shaken quite severely. His parents joined a Baptist church, taking young David Eugene with them, and his grandfather was not pleased. Shortly afterwards his father's rebellious nature played up. "He became a biker, and became addicted to alcohol and drugs. I was very young, but I do remember it was very hard on my mother. When he returned home, he had leukemia. At home I have cassettes on which he thanks God for that disease, because it had brought him back to his faith. Otherwise," he said, "he would have ended up in prison, or dead." That his father did die did not shake Edwards's faith. "Naturally he prayed to stay alive, but he also had confidence that what God had in mind for him would be good. Whatever He wanted was fine." He weighs and disposes, that's what Edwards wants to say, and He does so in mysterious ways. "Many people reason: how can you believe in God when there's so much war and hunger? But I say exactly the opposite: not believing in Him, that is what hell is about. Than the Devil has his way. Isn't it evident that the world doesn't have a conscience? And the world, that's us. We have been given a mind and brains, and look what we do with them. That's why I put so much emphasis on the inner struggle in my songs, and that's why I sing about guilt often. Faith brings me peace, but also a sense of duty and responsibility." "Listen closely to me now my darlin' girl, there's one who's out to have you an jus' his breath will burn your curls." The Devil is real for Edwards, and he knows how to portray him in his songs unnervingly well. Although Sixteen Horsepower's music regularly invites headbanging, he himself invariably sits motionless on stage, almost a ghost-like appearance. "I experience music in my head," he says, "my body doesn't have much to do with it." His lyrics often are indictments against human weakness, and against his own shortcomings in particular. They are full of threats ("Don't you dare boy - think my Lord hath done forgotten") and ominous Bible quotes. It would all be rather unconfortable, if it wasn't for the the sound of the band, a sound that is so fascinating. Sometimes, very rarely, he allows a small beam of light into one of his songs. Like in "Black Bush" in which he paraphrases Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walking": "These knees are made for kneeling, and that's just what they'll do." "That is, ummm, humor," he says contemplatively, adding quickly: "But not necessarily meant to be funny." And the fact that Sixteen Horsepower tour in a black van nicknamed "The Plague Ship" should under no account be taken as a know-it-all referrence to the middle ages. "It is more or less a fact. It's a small van, all eight of us have to travel in. If one is sick, we all become sick. When the last one has recovered it starts all over again." Contrary to what you would expect after hearing his music, Edwards comes across as very friendly and especially gentle. He means what he says about his calling, and he accepts that it leads him to dirty clubs where all sorts of things take place that he doesn't approve of. "During the first years I often was under the impression the audience only saw us as a bunch of freaks. People specifically go to concerts in order to escape rules, and then there's this man telling you what is right and what is wrong. Well, even now that they know what we stand for, people still come to see us play. The places we play are usually not frequented by many Christians, so maybe the other people have a stronger sense of affinity with what I sing then I thought at first." As yet Sixteen Horsepower are successful in Europe mainly, resulting in lots of traveling and homesickness. "We like each other's company, that's not it, but I do miss my family within a day. And our wives aren't very pleased about this as well. So then you get these not so successful phonecalls. They are upset, because you're not there. That figures." If the Lord hadn't assigned him such a hard task, Edwards would have undoubtedly been a caring family man. In his music the desire for that simple, "clear" life resounds. Just like the life of his grandfather, whom he referred to in the song "My Narrow Mind": "Wish I was a Bible thumpin' fool, yeah from the old school, a mind as narrow as the road I walk." He who keeps a big distance from secular life, is obviously not confrontated as much with the temptations that Edwards has to face and withstand on a daily basis. Well, it should be clear by now: whatever He wants, it is always the right thing.