You can email me directly with your disapproval) is my way of showing people of our faith that spiritual music is more than what is just found in our hymnbook. Right now, I feel like Mormon Guitar (yes, I’m keeping the name Mormon for now. It allows us to communicate with each other and with God on a different level. Music is found in all churches and religions for a reason. It sounds the same across the world and across the universe. It speaks to your soul because it is the language of the soul. If you’ve ever been to one of my devotionals/firesides, you’ve heard my spiel on how I believe music is one of the clearest pieces of evidence we have of a spiritual language. It’s pretty emotional for me, in a manly emotional sort of way. Honestly, that’s how I feel when playing this song. I remember afterwards a guy coming up to me and saying that when we first started, it stopped him dead in his tracks and he got emotional.
We ended up playing this at the California Bluegrass Association’s Fathers Day Festival in 2006. I was first introduced to Emmylou Harris’ version of this song. I first covered this song with my bluegrass band Teton Divide back at Ricks College/BYU-Idaho. Wayfaring Stranger is an old folk/gospel song that dates back to the same time as “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief.” Around the early 19th century. Pretty much anytime Mormons hear the word “Wayfaring” they immediately think of that other hymn. I know what you’re thinking… “I thought it was called A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief’?”