Awesome Discovery - Check this guy out!!!

The boys were at the Whalen’s on Friday night so we went down to Ginger’s Tavern to hear Laura Merriman and the Lonesome Travelers with the Moonshine Ramblers. They were good. Laura didn't have her normal band and I think that hurt her performance. The Moonshine Ramblers were pretty funny and were quite talented but the big experience of the night for me was a guy who opened for them who hadn't even been on the bill. His name is Matt Epp and if Johnny Cash, Jack Johnson, Neil Young, Dustin Kensrue, Bob Dylan and all things "a man and his guitar" turn your crank you ought to check him out.

Aside from the music itself what is so cool about him? He's more or less a one man show. He isn't a Christian artist but I'd be willing to bet you my left nipple that this amazing artist knows Jesus and there he is standing a in a bar full of people looking to get drunk and laid singing his stuff - beautiful, respectable, convicting. His latest album (available on itunes) was recorded in 5 hours in an empty old theatre in winnipeg during a blizzard and is mostly just him his guitar, and the occasional piano or harmonica.

He has some brilliant lines like "the Church is the bride of Christ but the Devils been inside her" and "captivated never captive". I'm not sure if this is what he was getting at but that line captures for me beautifully the whole tension of to follower of Jesus being at the same time free and a slave. We are no longer captive to sin and self yet at the same time we are inescapably captivated by Jesus.

Check him out already.