When a song’s title ties your stomach up in knots …

Invariably, I listen to songs like this with a ready finger on the Stop button. “Old-time” in this context so often means “fire and brimstone”, used to threaten everyone but those for whom Jesus meant it.

What Finley Peter Dunne once said about newspapers is often applied to the clergy these days: they’re supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. This song manages that in a subtle way, as a man who’s seen it all and had most of it uses the truth of his experience to decide that “I’d Rather Be An Old-Time Christian”.

Here are Norman and Nancy Blake to tell the story.

Tart social commentary from Norman Blake, via Uncle Dave Macon, if memory serves. This is old-time done right. Blake’s heavily-rhythmic vocal drives the performance, which is crisp and professional without being slick. This is “Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel”.