Reverend Freakchild joined KGNU for a lively session filled with stories about his musical journey, from discovering the blues and the Grateful Dead to his admiration for Bob Dylan and the legacy of blues reverends like Gary Davis. He reflected on his neo-hippie days and the spiritual side of the blues, all while sharing live performances with Lisa Marie that brought soulful, healing energy to the airwaves. (Studio Session: 6/6/25)
Joanne Cole: Hey, Reverend Freakchild. How the heck are you? I’m so thrilled to have you back in the studio.
Reverend Freakchild: It’s been 10 years since you were one of the first people to have mercy on me, let’s say. “What is this Reverend Freakchild guy?”
Joanne Cole: I thought it was cool then, and I think it’s cool now.
Reverend Freakchild: Get it, man. I do get it. It’s the blues reverence thing. And then, of course, I’m a white boy from the suburbs who tripped on LSD. But my dad turned me on to the blues, so it just came out that way. What are you gonna do? Anyway, great to be here. It’s a beautiful day in Boulder—one of the rare rainy days.
Joanne Cole: God, I just love it. I just love it. And it beats the hell out of running your life from a fire. Wow. Yeah, I do love me some rain. So, yeah, it is a different persona. How do you describe your style of blues and who you are as a tripper?
Reverend Freakchild: It’s psychedelic folk blues. My mama was a classical pianist, so I got the music in me. You know, it’s like John Lee Hooker—he’s got the music, it’s gotta come out. Mama Taylor, Papa. But my dad—seriously—I grew up in Hawaii, so I thought everybody went to school barefoot and saw the endless ocean from wherever they went on the island. But my dad would blast Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. He was a big fan of the harp players—Sonny Boy Williamson II, Rice Miller. But of course, he also played Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours—that blues-influenced kind of stuff. That seemed a lot more fun than doing those classical piano competitions.
Joanne Cole: So did you play piano as a singer?
Reverend Freakchild: Man, I mean, in the classical world, they really try to make you into the best performer—or you’re just destroyed, you know? Lisa and I went to see Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. It was beautiful.
Joanne Cole: I do, like—my father played classical music all day, and I had a very contentious relationship with my father. Classical music is not my favorite. It kind of just brings out the rage in me. It does, you know? So many people have it as background music, and it’s really relaxing to them. Not the case with me. But I respect it.
Reverend Freakchild: No, it’s weird, because if I don’t go to some performances and symphony… we’re actually gonna go up to Aspen and check out The Planets. I trip out on that stuff.
Joanne Cole: I just saw a guy in New Orleans redoing that on the horn.
Reverend Freakchild: It’s a magical thing. It was the advent of the early last century—like, wow, we’re starting to know a little bit of the universe, at least see it, so we wrote this whole symphony. Now, spoiler alert: there’s this off-stage choir that starts singing as the planets go farther and farther out. You know, it’s a trip out. Am I auditory hallucinating? Does anybody hear those voices? And then they get louder and louder. I was telling Lisa just the other night—we went to the Colorado Symphony—and I said, “If I don’t go see some symphony, if I don’t go to church in the morning and watch football—or at least listen to football—in the afternoon on a Sunday, it’s like something’s going wrong. Am I going to hell?” Anyway, it’s like Muddy Waters bringing it back. He said, “If you wanna know what the blues is, you gotta get to church.” It’s wrapped up with American culture, religion, and spirituality. Geez, I got a Master of Divinity from Naropa. I don’t know if that really counts—Naropa’s a little bit out there.
Joanne Cole: Let’s introduce Lisa to the world of KGNU. Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa Marie: Hello.
Joanne Cole: Hi. Come close to the microphone there. Okay, hello—there we go. Tell us your name and, besides being in a relationship with the great Reverend, what brings you here to Boulder, Colorado, and KGNU tonight? How did you get here?
Lisa Marie: In the Reverend’s Volvo.
Reverend Freakchild: We kidnapped her. That’s the shortest possible version. We were on our way to dinner, but I thought, “Let’s play some tunes.”
Joanne Cole: Are you from Colorado?
Lisa Marie: I am from San Diego, and I’ve been here about 30 years.
Joanne Cole: Boulder proper or Denver?
Lisa Marie: Denver.
Joanne Cole: So across the Broomfield divide. But here you are, and welcome to KGNU. And do you sing every now and again?
Lisa Marie: Oh, I do.
Joanne Cole: She does! All right, very good.
Reverend Freakchild: So maybe we’ll do one with her later.
Joanne Cole: Here’s the Reverend Freakchild, live, baby, live on KGNU, with Joanne as the engineer. Just hold on to your hats here. Let’s see what the dials are doing.
(plays music)
Joanne Cole: What was that one called?
Reverend Freakchild: That’s Green and Brown Blues. That’s the first track off the new album, entitled A Bluesman of Sorts. And the rumors of my death have been grossly exaggerated—as there’s an obituary in there. It’s a complicated mythology. But I’ve been studying with Robert Thurman, who’s a friend of the Dalai Lama, started the Tibet House—probably best known for being the father of Uma Thurman.
Reverend Freakchild: He does this thing called Vara Yoga, and he’s a great student of Tibetan Buddhism, which I studied at Naropa University. We do these serious death meditations. When you are born, you’re gonna die. Even Pinetop Perkins, the piano player for Muddy Waters—I love his quote: “Death, that’s a debt we all gotta pay.” You know, you’re talking about Dr. John… it’s just—it’s not a matter of if, man. It’s gonna be when. And then that’s the other thing, like what that woman from Iowa said—“We’re all gonna die.”
Joanne Cole: Joni Ernst. Why is everybody giving her such a hard time, right?
Reverend Freakchild: The weird thing is we don’t even know when. Even if you’re a fan of Dr. King, there’s a mystery there. So those two premises bring up a natural manifestation of this precious human birth. Like, hey man, enjoy it while we’re here. Anyway, that was a big exercise, and we had all these different tracks. We updated some, and that track—Green and Brown Blues—we just never released, and it’s a great version, if I don’t say so myself.
Joanne Cole: Who did Green and Brown Blues?
Reverend Freakchild: That’s mine.
Joanne Cole: That’s very nice.
Reverend Freakchild: Thank you.
Joanne Cole: I see that you have my favorite blues song on here—Jesus Just Left Chicago.
Reverend Freakchild: Oh yeah—the old Billy Gibbons, Reverend Billy Gibbons and ZZ Top. That’s funny that you dig that tune. Maybe we’ll play that. I recorded that live on another radio station—not named—but the big famous one down in New Orleans.
Joanne Cole: WWZ?
Reverend Freakchild: Yeah. And then we added overdubs all around it.
Joanne Cole: We can certainly—
Reverend Freakchild: We added overdubs to it. I played live National Steel and some harmonica on Big D’s Down at the Crossroads show, Wednesday afternoons.
Joanne Cole: Yeah, right. Sure.
Reverend Freakchild: It was a great version. We added bass and guitar to it with this guy Nick who plays with Otis Taylor of Boulder fame. Then we got my friend and partner in crime Chris Parker—he’s really the reason the Reverend Freakchild got to the national, international level. He used to play with Bob Dylan.
Joanne Cole: The level of stardom—infamy!
Reverend Freakchild: Not famous, but—
Joanne Cole: Let me ask: so we talked about your background in classical piano, which so many musicians get their start with. When did you really pick up the guitar and get married to the blues?
Reverend Freakchild: It was like when I was studying with Lama Tempa. He had me chanting all this stuff, and before I knew it, I was chanting refuge to the Buddha and the Dharma. I’m like, “How long have I been doing this for?” Years! My dad was just playing it in the car. When I was a teenager, we moved back east. That kind of messed me up—you had to wear shoes to school, and there was snow. It was outside of New York—really uptight. I’d get stoned with my friends and they’d play Grateful Dead. One day Big Boss Man comes on, and there’s Pigpen jamming. I said, “Oh my God, this is a Jimmy Reed tune.” And they’re like, “Dude, what are you talking about? This is the Grateful Dead.” I was like, “No, this is the Grateful Dead doing Jimmy Reed.”
Reverend Freakchild: They mined the American songbook, and God bless them—they did a really great job. They’re still doing it.
Joanne Cole: I played a Grateful Dead song a couple months ago—the one time only because I had this young friend in here. He really knew his music. I really enjoyed doing radio with him. His name is Maddie Hall. Shout out if you’re listening, Maddie. He’s like, “Jo, you gotta play this.” His parents are Grateful Dead fans.
Reverend Freakchild: That’s what happened with my dad.
Reverend Freakchild: I know. It was just in the air. And now I’m curious what Grateful Dead tune it was, but I can’t remember.
Joanne Cole: What it was, but it was good. Was it blues? No, it was the Grateful Dead blues tune—Blues Without a Doubt.
Reverend Freakchild: Crazy thing—like my mom can tell you specific composers. That was always the thing; it was playing on the radio in Hawaii. I always thought classical music was, like, tripped out because it would never quite come in. I thought, man, it’s really avant-garde. It was just the radio, you know. And she would quiz me: is this Bach, Beethoven, Brahms? What century? I’m like, oh my God, Mom. And then with my dad, he’d be like, “You don’t have to wear your seatbelt, man. Let’s just go drive around.” Wow, this is fun. Before I knew it, it came full circle—I knew all these blues tunes. I got really hip on the neo-hippie thing. It was 20 years ago.
Joanne Cole: One of your monikers was like neo—not neo-soul—but neo-hippie. Is that what it was?
Reverend Freakchild: Yeah. And it’s because I did it. It was like that whole thing—you know, it’s in the song: It was 20 years ago today. Like, 1987 was a huge year for me—tripping on acid, seeing the Grateful Dead, getting into the Beatles, and being like, wow.
Joanne Cole: ’77?
Reverend Freakchild: No, it’s 20 years from—you know, Summer of Love was like ’88, ’87, all those trippy years.
Joanne Cole: ’67 was the Summer of Love, right?
Reverend Freakchild: That’s right.
Joanne Cole: All right, let me get back to Lisa Marie. So Lisa, have you been singing professionally? Have you been a musician all along?
Lisa Marie: I played in an orchestra.
Joanne Cole: Did you? What did you play?
Lisa Marie: Violin.
Joanne Cole: Oh, how lovely.
Lisa Marie: Sang in the quartet in high school, and the choir. And then that’s when it ended—until Fordham came into my life. And so I’ve done background on several of—let’s call him Fordham, shall we?
Reverend Freakchild: That’s the Sunday name. That’s the name my mama gave me.
Lisa Marie: Reverend Freakchild came into my life—when the Reverend showed me the way. I’ve done background on a couple of his songs.
Joanne Cole: Let’s do a song. What do you want to do?
Reverend Freakchild: Well, you’re gonna have to help us out on the chorus. I Shall Be Released. This is a beautiful tune—maybe a little healing vibe for the Boulder community.
(plays music)
Joanne Cole: That is the Reverend Freakchild and Lisa Marie, right here live on KGNU.
Reverend Freakchild: Very nice.
Joanne Cole: Thank you for that. That was soulful. Who knew? Bob Dylan.
Reverend Freakchild: Oh my gosh.
Joanne Cole: I know lots of people knew about Bob Dylan.
Reverend Freakchild: Yeah. I’ve seen the new movie like three times.
Joanne Cole: I just saw it too. It’s amazing.
Reverend Freakchild: I grew up with a friend—we were doing this whole hippie, neo-hippie thing—and his dad was a real beatnik. He’d say, “You don’t understand how imperative it was and how huge and revolutionary that Dylan went electric.” And I was like, “Yeah, whatever, dude. Pass me the joint.” (Going on 19 years sober.) But when you see that movie, you realize Dylan was this genius who could give voice to that generation, and he decided to go his own way. Woody Guthrie in that movie—it’s so great—he’s like, “Take it, kid. Take the harmonica. Get on your motorcycle. Take it one step further.” And if you get a chance, go through Tulsa—there’s the Woody Guthrie Museum. It’s amazing. I became like a Bob Dylan jukebox. We did It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) on the vinyl I brought in today with Chris Parker, who played with Dylan. And we got Jake Collins, who used to play with the Allman Brothers.
Joanne Cole: The Allmans?
Reverend Freakchild: Yeah, the Allman Brothers. We were joking one night, and this girl was like, “What is that band? The Nut Brothers?” We were like, “What? It’s Allman.” “Oh, like Almond Joys.” Exactly.
Joanne Cole: Let’s play that one.
Reverend Freakchild: Actually, I wrote a tune called A Day Late and a Dollar Short on the new album. Some people say it’s a ripoff, but it’s really an ode to Dead Presidents—in that tradition. It’s about going to Vegas, crapping out, and waking up in your truck.
Joanne Cole: Do you want to play another, or shall we interlude with a little Dead Presidents?
Reverend Freakchild: My favorite tune on the new album is That’s the Day. Let’s do that.
(plays music)
Joanne Cole: All right, the Reverend Freakchild right here on KGNU.
Reverend Freakchild: Thanks for having me. This is where the Reverend Freakchild jumps off—from an old Reverend Gary Davis tune. If you know about the blues, you know—you gotta get to church. There are plenty of blues reverends: Son House, Skip James, Nehemiah James, Rude Lacey, modern folks like Reverend Horton Heat, Big Reverend Peyton. That’s kind of like rockabilly reverends.
Joanne Cole: And the Reverend Billy C. Wirtz.
Reverend Freakchild: Oh my God, piano player—if you haven’t checked him out, he’s a trip. Here’s a Reverend Gary Davis tune.
(plays music)
Joanne Cole: That’s church, baby! Right here on KGNU. That’s the Reverend Freakchild, joined by the lovely, talented Lisa Marie. Thank you so much for coming.
Reverend Freakchild: Thank you for having me.
