Not church, but gospel

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Like your Virgin Mary with a bloody mary? Then it’s time to get churched with the Rev. Joe Burbach and his Gospel Brunch Band. Sunday services began this month at the High Noon Saloon and will run once a month all spring and summer. It’s a concept keyboard player Burbach — who is not an actual reverend — has been contemplating for years.

“We’re not going to be real churchy about it,” he says just before sound check for the inaugural show. “But gospel is the theme and the style.” And, of course, it’s on Sunday.

And there is food. As the band tunes up a crew from Gypsy Soul Food Truck from Lake Geneva sets up in a corner of the hall. Breakfast and brunch items include choices for both vegans and carnivores.

Burbach — whose nickname is “Burbie” — grew up Catholic and didn’t get turned on to church music until he discovered John Medeski’s 2001 album The Word. He was hooked. He says hosting a gospel show was also an excuse to put together a killer band made up of people he’s loved playing with and others whom he’s always wanted to play with. All the members play regularly with their own groups and Burbach believes each player will draw his/her own portion of the audience.

Lap steel player Dan Walkner’s home band is Wrenclaw. Like Burbach, Walkner had zero religious music in his childhood. His mother was Catholic and his father was a Jehovah’s Witness. “Holidays were like a holy war at my house,” he says. But when he plays his lap steel, you can hear the burning influence of contemporary players who came up through the church, people like Robert Randolph.

Lead vocalist Teresa Hardy is on loan from the People Brothers Band. She comes to the music the old fashioned way, through her family. “Some of these are gospel songs I’ve known all my life,” she says, after a rapturous sound check duet with Walkner on “Wade in the Water.”

“We’re not trying to teach religion,” says Hardy, adding that her spiritual sensibility came from her mother who told her when it comes to religion, “no one’s right and everyone’s right.” She says “music is the love.”

The band’s musical choices are esoteric. In addition to traditional numbers like “I Saw the Light,” Burbach has put together two one-hour sets that will also include songs recorded by The Rolling Stones, The North Mississippi Allstars, and the Tedeschi Trucks Band.

Expect some deep cuts, too. Burbach, who will play organ for the Sunday shows, says he’ll duet with Hardy on “Gone at Last,” a song Paul Simon wrote and recorded with Phoebe Snow. The band had only one rehearsal prior to the debut, but you would have never known it, which is further evidence of the ace musicians with whom Burbach has surrounded himself, including members of Natty Nation, Armchair Boogie and Better Yeti. On stage the spirit is driven by musical kinship as well as personal friendships.

“Music is a religion in itself. It can make you laugh, cry and everything in between,” says Burbach. “If you leave a show with a little bit of joy and you go out into the world and you spread some of that joy, I mean that’s religion right there I think.”

Hardy is excited to see what these songs will do for brunch-goers. “You never know what people are going through,” she says. “So maybe we can make them feel a little bit better…if only for a little while.” 

“The father of black gospel music” : Thomas A. Dorsey, a former jazz pianist, who in the 1930s became the music director at the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago. His composition, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” is considered a foundation of the genre.

“Nearly 30”: Number of bands members of the High Noon Gospel Brunch Band play in.

“Working on a Building”: The one gospel song Joe Burbach says people should hear if they only hear one gospel song.

Artists who have performed it: The Carter Family, B.B. King, Bill Monroe, Elvis Presley, John Fogerty.

Next Burbie’s Gospel Brunch: May 5 (which is also Burbach’s birthday).

A dictionary definition of “gospel”: Something regarded as true and implicitly believed.