There are some types of music that just get to you. For me it’s traditional Irish fiddle, folk guitar, and bluegrass. Get a banjo and a fiddle and a slide and I’m hooked. Try to stop me from dancing all night! Pass the bourbon, cheers!
This is joyful music, “front porch music,” as Fr. Justin Bolger called it, music for getting together, sitting out in the yard, children dancing underfoot. And this is usually how it is if you see The Hillbilly Thomists live. Don’t ever tell me Catholics can’t throw a good party. Come out to a jam, grab a drink, jig along, and bring the kids. The sheer delight this group of banjo playing friars has given the world is immeasurable.
Yet true to their band name’s inspiration (“people think I’m a Hillybilly nihilist, whereas I’m a Hillybilly Thomist” — Flannery O’Connor), there’s also some darkness here. There’s a lot of death in traditional music, a lot of yearning for the Promised Land. And like the old Gospel and Spiritual songs of yore there is a hope and longing for freedom beyond the bounds of this life, a longing it can be hard to put into words.
“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
— C.S. Lewis
And yet, like in a great O’Connor story, Grace breaks through. Through music, through song, through the sheer delight of playing these “goofy” (to use Fr. Justin’s words) instruments, making something joyful and free and true — whistling in the dark.
I love Old Time and traditional music. I took up the fiddle years ago when the amazing Ken Kolodner played at the radio station, a live session I engineered. I asked him immediately afterward, filled with such joe de vivre, ‘can you teach me to play the fiddle?’ I started lessons - I played so-so, but I could jig along and I knew some tunes. It was so fun!
I can’t remember the last time I played a tune since the kids came along, but I still delight in bluegrass and folk, and hope to someday return to the fiddle. In the meantime, I’ll keep streaming the Hillbilly Thomists.
The Hillbilly Thomists are a band of friars of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans). After playing music together for several years, they released their debut album (The Hillbilly Thomists) in 2017, which reached #3 on the Billboard bluegrass chart and mostly consisted in bluegrass standards and Americana favorites.
Since then, the friars in the band have been doing what Dominican friars do: contemplating, studying, and preaching. Their most recent album, Marigold, released in July 2024.
I was joined on the podcast by band member, Fr. Justin Bolger O.P. Fr. Justin hails from a family of seven and grew up in Maryland. He studied business at the University of Baltimore and earned a Masters in Philosophical Studies from Mt. St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, MD. He was also a singer/songwriter and recording artist with his sister Margaret. He is now the Associate Chaplain for the Catholic Community at Brown University.
I had such a great time talking to Fr. Justin. He is very gracious, funny, introspective, and clearly has a true love for the music he is playing. I especially loved hearing some of the background behind some of my favorite Thomist tunes and what it’s like for the brothers to all play together. We also discuss the many deep, compelling themes to be found in traditional music and how their band offers the culture a serious, but joyful, contemplation both of the Last Things and the True things. Thanks so much to Fr. Justin for coming on.
Go check out their music, and see them on tour if you can!
Visit: https://www.hillbillythomists.com/
Stream The Hillbilly Thomists on Spotify, iTunes, wherever you download your music.
Upcoming shows: https://www.hillbillythomists.com/tour
If you’d prefer to listen to this podcast elsewhere, just look up ‘Born of Wonder’ on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you stream your podcasts!
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Not A Hillbilly Nihilist; A Hillbilly Thomist