TOKENS PODCAST: S4E19
After moving from Franklin to East Nashville, acclaimed country singer-songwriter Marty Dodson met his new neighbor, Stephanie Knight, and struck up a friendship. The tragic murder of George Floyd, months of racial tension thereafter, and a tear-filled conversation with Ms. Stephanie prompted Marty and Stephanie to write a song together, titled, “Black Mothers,” reminiscent of the Hebrew prophet’s plea for “justice to roll down like waters.” Today, their story, along with a performance of the song they wrote together.
ABOUT TOKENS SHOW & LEE C. CAMP
Tokens began in 2008. Our philosophical and theological variety shows and events hosted throughout the Nashville area imagine a world governed by hospitality, graciousness and joy; life marked by beauty, wonder and truthfulness; and social conditions ordered by justice, mercy and peace-making. We exhibit tokens of such a world in music-making, song-singing, and conversations about things that matter. We have fun, and we make fun: of religion, politics, and marketing. And ourselves. You might think of us as something like musicians without borders; or as poets, philosophers, theologians and humorists transgressing borders.
Lee is an Alabamian by birth, a Tennessean by choice, and has sojourned joyfully in Indiana, Texas, and Nairobi. He likes to think of himself as a radical conservative, or an orthodox liberal; loves teaching college and seminary students at Lipscomb University; delights in flying sailplanes; finds dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sea salt to be one of the finest confections of the human species; and gives great thanks for his lovely wife Laura, his three sons, and an abundance of family and friends, here in Music City and beyond. Besides teaching full-time, he hosts Nashville’s Tokens Show, and has authored three books. Lee has an Undergrad Degree in computer science (Lipscomb University, 1989); M.A. in theology and M.Div. (Abilene Christian University, 1993); M.A. and Ph.D. both in Christian Ethics (University of Notre Dame, 1999).
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TRANSCRIPT
Lee: This is Tokens. I'm Lee C. Camp.
Marty: My wife and I, I lived in Franklin.
There was just nothing to challenge our belief system or, ourselves as people.
Lee: That's Marty Dodson, a long-tenured and well-established Nashville songwriter. He's describing a decision he and his wife made in 2016, to leave the suburbs.
Marty: Everybody around us thought like us was in same economic bracket and, uh, white.
Lee: Marty and his wife moved. They relocated to a house just across the street from someone with a different history than them: Stephanie Knight.
Stephanie: My great-grandmother she bought that house. It was like four families of us living in that two-bedroom house. And she bought that house when I was eight. So we lived there about 50, some odd years now, 57, I believe it is.
Lee: Upon Marty's moving into the neighborhood, he and Stephanie became fast friends.
Then, in 2020, came the Coronavirus lockdown.
And then, came the murder of George Floyd.
Marty: Candy now we're walking our dog Stephanie was sitting on her porch and, you know, we waved and said, how are you doing?
She said, I'm scared for my boys.
Stephanie: You know, I have three sons and, uh, you just want them to come home.
Lee: That sidewalk conversation led to more conversation; and then it led to Marty inviting Stephanie to share in doing what Marty, and Nashville, often do: write a song about things that matter.
And so so they did.
The song, and more on the story behind the song, coming right up.
INTERVIEW
Marty: I'm Marty Dodson. Um, I'm a songwriter. I teach songwriting and I've had 10 number ones, some things with Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, George Strait, Joe Cocker, Billy Currington, all, all kinds of…
Lee: All those little names.
Marty: All those little names all over the spectrum, but I've been really blessed to do something that I love. So I feel really grateful to get to do that. I've been songwriting since I was 11. But professionally I've done it for about 25 years. I was a youth minister for a while and then kind of had an early midlife crisis and, realized that that's not really what I set out to do. And I figured out if I could have done anything I wanted to do, I would have been a songwriter. So I started chasing that a little bit later in life.
I try to really, write things that my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren are going to be able to look back and go, well, he was trying to make the world a better place with, with his music. As I've gone on in my career, I realized what a responsibility it is to have a microphone or to be putting the words in the person's mouth that has the microphone. And, so I feel very responsible with that to, to try and make the world a better place.
Lee: And when you think about what are some of your favorite songs or some of your favorite songs still not yet recorded or most of your favorite songs already been recorded?
Marty: No, it's, it's funny. My first big hit was a song called “While You Loved Me” by Rascal Flatts. And the day I demoed that song, I, I demoed five songs and that was my least favorite of the five. And the other four never got recorded, you know, so I don't think I'm a very good judge of, of what's going to get recorded.
But yeah, I've written 10, almost, I think I've demoed 10,000 plus songs and I've had 130 recorded. So the percentage is not good. I don't even like to think about what that percentage is.
Lee: It's a great picture though, to think about cause I think what, Emily Dickinson, I think she wrote something like 10,000 poems, but only maybe had like seven published in her lifetime.
Sorry. That was something like a preacher count. But the point remains the same: She actually wrote close to 1,800 poems, and only had 10 known poems published in her lifetime.
And so. The hard work of doing good art and the patience that's required, to be reminded of the reality. So doing the hard work.
Marty: Yeah. I think, I think the 9,000 that didn't get recorded got me to the 135 that did perhaps.
Stephanie: I’m Stephanie Knight, live in east Nashville been living there for some 50 some odd years. I Graduated high school, Stratford high school. Go Spartans. Uh, I have three sons, James, Janero, and Ezekiel. I love my biblical names as you can tell. My mother's still alive and my dad is a minister or pastor known all over, Dr. Amos Jones Jr.
Lee: I think you said the house you live in now you were raised in?
Stephanie: Yes. We moved to my great-grandmother. She bought that house. It was like four families of us living in that two-bedroom house. And she bought that house when I was eight. So we lived there about 50, some odd years now, 57, I believe it is. And she's gone on to glory, of course. So I've lived away from the home, but I, I'm there now. And like I stated earlier, I've been blessed to have the home that I didn't pay for. You know, and I tried to do really well by it. I do.
The church that I attend, that I'm a member of, it's in the North Nashville area, and that's where I grew up too. You know, I was in my mother's womb and that's where I've been all all these…
Lee: All these years.
Stephanie: All my life.
Lee: What are some of your earliest memories from church, as a child?
Stephanie: Oh, my gosh, we had some awesome things going on at our church. We would have our study lessons. And then after the study lessons, we used to have little quartets, where the kids would have a group. And we all would have makeup names of our groups, and we would sing and perform. So, you know, it was awesome. But TV gospel time, that was amazing. We had an imagination. We had the choir stand and we'd put this big white sheet over, uh, like a TV and cut it out like a TV screen. And we had a Christmas tree wheel, color wheel. We would all perform the different choirs and soloists and things like this. And we would make up, take on names like Mahalia Jackson, you know. I might be Mahalia and so forth, and the song. So those were awesome memories.
We had to depend on Christ. We had to believe in, know, that he was going to make a way in our circumstances, because we. I had no idea I was poor, because we always had what we needed. So church or, going to the edifice to worship was essential. It was something that we did because we had to give honor to whom all blessings flow.
Marty: My wife and I lived in Franklin.
Lee: Back to song-writer Marty Dodson:
Marty: There's a couple of reasons we moved. One was every time we went out to eat, we found ourselves in East Nashville because there's so many great little local restaurants, but the other reason was we felt like the area we lived in was just very homogenous. There was just no, uh, nothing to challenge our belief system or ourselves as people, you know. It was just kind of everybody around us thought like us was in same economic bracket and, uh, white, you know. And we wanted to be in an environment where, uh, we would be challenged a little bit more to, to grow as people. And so that led us to move to East Nashville. And when, when we moved, I believe we were, we were minorities on the street, you know, when we moved in.
Lee: Stephanie, do you remember Marty moving in across the street?
Stephanie: I don't remember the exact day. I just remember that before they moved in, they were examining the house, to determine if they wanted to buy the house and what have you. And I'm just a people person, I guess you could say. And I'm a person that I enjoy knowing who is around me, because like I said, I grew up up there from eight years old. I've been in every house. I've seen all kinds of changes and gentrifications and dah, dah, dah, dah. So when I started to see that things were about to just explode here, I said, well.
We've got to live together. I don't meet strangers. So when I saw these, so Marty and Candy, I didn't know them, but I went straight over there. Hi. My name is Ms. Stephanie, are you going to move in, you know? And they was saying, they thinking about it, et cetera. Well, I've been right here on this corner for 50 some years, and I'm not going anywhere until they rolled me out on the gurney. So, you know, it's just, you know, we got to live together and I, and Martin was the most, soft-spoken person. I said, what'd you say, baby? He's such a humble spirit. And I loved it. And I said, thank you, Lord, for good neighbors. And it's been that way ever since we don't impose on one another or anything like that, but we're there for one another, if we need to be.
Lee: So you raised the issue of gentrification. How have you experienced, or how do you process or think about the realities of gentrification?
Stephanie: It is what it is, you know. Nothing stays the same. When I my moved, when our family moved in, it was mainly white. That's when I was eight years old, it was, but it was fading in, we were fading into to the neighborhood. Bam. All of a sudden that everything around is so it's often been a change here. I've seen every change there could be in that neighborhood. Like I said, I've been in every house that hasn't been torn down. I've been in it and I babysat in it, et cetera, et cetera. So when this came about, you know, I was, now I was afraid because like I said, my great-grandmother purchased that house with little to nothing as a maid, as a housekeeper in white folks' homes, you know? So I didn't want that to be taken from us. Because again, four families of people lived in that house at one time and you would wonder, where did everybody sleep? You know, well, God makes away, you know. Everybody was comfortable, but my point is that I just didn't want that to be taken because there's a history there. There are memories. And I can remember my great grandmother, the first time she asked me to fix her a cup for coffee. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. So all of that, with that being said, you know, the gentrification, it looks good. It is good. Change comes and you got to roll with the punches. But the most important thing about it for me is that we have to live together.
Marty: When we moved in, too, one of our concerns was we'd never lived in an area where we were minorities and we were concerned that the neighbors would resent us being there. And so Stephanie coming over taking that initiative was a huge factor in us going, okay. We got Stephanie, she's got our back. If, you know, if we do this and, you know, there, we have experienced a little bit of resentment from some other people here and there or, coldness maybe, but, um, Stephanie's just been a solid rock of somebody we could go to.
We had someone throw a rock through our window one Christmas. And, um, and…
Stephanie: I didn't know nothing about that.
Marty: Yeah. And you know, so there there's some things we've experienced like that, but it was just such a comfort to have somebody that had been there for that long, that would come over and take the initiative to welcome us. And we found out later that we took, the house that used to be there, her son mowed their grass. So we took his job away mowing the grass and some things like that, you know, but it's just been a real blessing to have her there.
Lee: What are other things that you've learned or seen, discovered in this process?
Marty: You know, I think like Stephanie was saying, I think, a real desire to try to, um, understand each other and each other, each other's experiences better, responsibility to have compassion.
Lee: Early 2020, March 2020, COVID begins, pandemic hurls into the U.S. Lockdowns. And then May 25 of 2020 George Floyd is murdered. And you see each other on the street shortly thereafter?
Marty: Yeah, we, the way I remember it, we, Candy and I were walking our dog. Stephanie was sitting on her porch and, you know, we waved and said, how are you doing? She said, I'm scared for my boys. And, uh, she came out and we, we socially distanced and, uh, just talked in the street for 45 minutes and we all cried.
Stephanie: That was a period where, you know, I have three sons and, uh, you just want them to come home.
At this time, you know, you have killing each other and then you have some portions of law killing us. And you just want your child to come home. And you, you know, I I've tried to instill in my children to do unto others, you know, to treat people the way you want to be treated. But sometimes that doesn't always work out regardless, you know, you can still do unto others and you still come out on this short end.
So this is the life that we're living, you know, and Marty and I was just talking and he was asking me questions, and I was just trying to give him the most honest answers I could. Knowing that this was hard, you know, to see someone murdered like this, knowing that it could be any one of my sons at any given time, you know, that was scary. And it's really frightening. And, I could feel his genuine concern and his curiosity because he said I've never had to experience. That, that opened, that made me feel so, I'm going golly.
He said he's never had to experience anything like that with his children. And that's awesome that you have it, but it's unfortunate that any of us should have to experience it.
Knowing me, I, cause I get to crying, cause I'm expressing all of the things that Marty is at, trying to express. It, and it gets emotional for me. And he asked me various questions about raising black boys, you know what it's like to do that and what my struggles were, you know. What kind of struggles do you experience in that? And again, just knowing that you want them to come home.
Before all of this occurred and I'm in the house just piddling around and straightening the house. And this was like four years ago, okay? And I said, Lord, I wish Marty would write me a song.
Marty: I didn't know that.
Stephanie: Yeah, I did, never having any inkling that I just planted a seed. And I just went on by my business, never thinking nothing else about it.
And then here comes Marty asking me about the situation with George Floyd, and all of this Black Lives Matter thing and so forth. And, we're talking out in the yard, in the street and the next thing I know, Marty calls me. He said, you know, write some things down, if you would. And after doing that, then he said, I want you listen to something. And he sang this song and it was so beautiful and his voice was so tranquil. I'm going, oh my God. That is touching my spirit.
Lee: You're listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, and the good life. We’re most grateful to have you joining us.
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This is our interview with Stephanie Knight and Marty Dodson. Coming up, we'll hear more from Marty and Stephanie about the hard conversations and practicing of compassion which led to their song "Black Mothers."
Part two in just a moment.
HALFWAY POINT
Lee: Welcome back to Tokens and our interview with Stephanie Knight and Marty Dodson.
So, raised a white boy in Alabama in small town, we certainly were very aware of racial dynamics. Our town was pretty much, at least my high school, half black half white, and relatively recently integrated, early seventies was integrated. I ended up being a high school student in the eighties. And so, you think as a, as a white boy, middle-class white boy, that you at least understand some things about racial dynamics, raised in a context like that. And then I guess in seminary, I started reading a lot of Martin Luther king Jr. And learning a lot more about civil rights movement being, moved by the power of King and Reverend Lawson, and so many others in their commitments to nonviolence, grounded in their understanding of Christian discipleship.
And so being fascinated with that, learning a lot about that. I think, a number is, I don't know, sometime in the last decade, I was at a conference, Catalina Island off the coast of California. And I was having dinner one night with a black pastor in one of the largest churches in Houston, highly respected man. And somehow we got started talking about what his experience was like raising his sons. And he told me, he said, you know, my boys are in their twenties. But they don't hardly ever leave the house without me telling them, if you get stopped by the police, be respectful. Don't sass, and this is how you got to behave. And, I think, that was one of those moments where I realized how little I understood about racial dynamics, because here here's this man he's having to do this, you know, every time his kids go out. And I was completely oblivious to that reality.
Stephanie: Absolutely. What the pastor said, you know, having to make that mention of make sure that if you do this, if something happens, you keep yourself in order you do what you're supposed to do. Do what's asked of you, you know.
Uh, I've really not had any bad experiences as far as police and things like that. To tell the truth about it, they've been pretty good. But the idea of the fear of what could happen and what has happened in other persons families, you know, that I knew of. You know, I just constantly have to remind them, you know, keep your attitude in check, even though, you know, you're right about something and you being accused of something or whatever. If, should that happen, just be obedient, remember to do what's right.
I just tried to make sure that I had them to understand come home, you know? Do what you're supposed to do, keep your hands where you can be seen, et cetera. And it's unfortunate that we have to experience that, it really is. That this is something that an African-American has to go through day after, day after day, only because of the color of your skin.
Marty: I think the story you told me about one of your boys going to get a cold drink one night too, I think.
Stephanie: Absolutely. This was just not long ago where my baby boy had gone across, there’s this neighbor that has a vending machine. And they have sodas and things that they sell out of it. And so he had gone to get a soda. And this was at dark. So, when he came back from the soda machine, he went back to the deck and was sitting on the deck, talking to his female friend. Someone called police and I was asleep and that motherly instinct woke me up. Nothing, no sound or anything, but just something woke me. I called him and I said, what are you, what are you doing? And he said, talking to the police. I said, talking to the police, I hung the phone up, and got up out of bed and went out and there is this robust officer standing on my deck and I'm going, what's the matter? Well, he says he got a call saying that someone was prowling in the back here. I said, well, this is my son, and he lives here. And I do respect and understand why someone could have easily mistook him. But on the other end, this could have turned out way worse than it actually was, you know, because this youngest son. He's a humble person, but he has a temper. He can, you know, we all got all of that, but my point is that I still have to work, talk to him about, hey, you don't buck up against authority. You know, you respect authority, no matter what, you still respect authority.
And he was, you know, well mama, I didn’t do nothing wrong. I was in my own yard and everything, and he come up here, the police come up in the yard. But son, it was a mistake that anybody could've made and they were really looking out for us, but it just could have been escalated into something that could have been way more severe, you know. But again, I'm just grateful that I've never had to be called as say, your son is, you know. I've, I've been blessed, but it's so many unfortunate ones.
Marty: You know, when my son would go out, I would say, you know, if you have trouble call the police. And Stephanie's talking to her boys about, be cautious around the police, you know? And, and I think too, one of the things that really struck me from that conversation was when I saw the George Floyd incident, I was appalled and horrified as a human to see that happen.
But I never one time thought about my son. It didn't connect to being afraid that that would happen to my son. There was no thought at all about that. And so when we had this conversation I thought, well, that that's the disconnect I need to understand, because it could be my son. It's less likely to be my son, unfortunately, in the world we live in.
But. I need to understand what it feels like to worry that that would be my son.
One thing Stephanie said was, we've just cried these tears too long. And, you know, most of the stuff in the song of things she said to me, I just put them in order and made them rhyme and put them to music.
But that idea to me is the central thing of it, is just, how long are black mothers going to have to cry these tears and have the fear of, you know? I would fear that my son might get in an auto accident and not come home when he would go out, but I would never recall fearing that someone would kill him, you know, or, beat him up. I mean, it wasn't that, wasn't my experience of that was a real possibility in, in my life, you know? So, that to me was a central idea of the song. Just asking the question of how long are these tears going to have to fall before something changes.
Stephanie: What he said, how long, how long. That sounds like what Israel? How long Lord? The words that he had written, they were really real because when you listen to the lyrics of the song, I say, gosh, he just wrote down every black mothers, but even mothers period that have had to experience this. Not, we won't just put it in a category, but, of black mothers, it could be any mother that has experienced the child being murdered, in some horrific way. That's hard. That's a hard thing. But for black mothers, quote, unquote, I guess you could say, it was just so real to hear those words saying, you know, when my boy walks out the door, I'm not sure if he's going to come back, that's like reality for African-American mothers.
And the mother has to endure that type of burden constantly. So you got to know yourself a higher power that's going to enable you to go through that, to deal with that, on a daily basis.
Lee: With the, uh, you’re in the middle of COVID. How'd you end up writing the song together?
Marty: Uh, I asked Stephanie to email me stories. So she would email me stories and thoughts about it. And then I would just, I began to put it together and put it to music and I'd send her little snippets of, you know, what do you think about this? And we'd email back and forth and or holler across the street. And then she wound up singing it in her phone. Cause we, didn't want to put anybody at risk to go to a studio or anything. So, I taught her how to sing it into her phone and she, I, sent it to an engineer. So it was all, all recorded and done remotely.
Lee: So the, what we hear in the recording, what was recorded on the phone? Wow. Huh.
Stephanie: Isn't that amazing?
I'm going, gosh. This is really unique. I was, I was blown away myself. You know, I was amazed with God. I'm going, you had this in the works all along. These persons, Marty and Candy, I believe that with all my heart, that they were purposed to live across the street from me. And I think that their purpose is to help bring us all together, because all my neighbors, they know Ms. Stephanie, you can believe that. I may not know their names, but I know their faces and their animals, their dogs. But we're neighbors. We're neighbors now, you know, and we're cordial neighbors. We’re friendly with each other, you know? We've gotten to be, a, a small family, I would say, because we don't have any hostilities. There's, there's no discomfort about, you know, this kind of race. It's just friendly to me. That's just me. I just believe that God doesn't make mistakes and I don't want to get on a religious kick, but he knows his business and he is trying to bring his people together.
Lee: Amen.
We've been talking to Ms. Stephanie Knight on her new song, “Black Mothers,” written with her neighbor, Nashville songwriter, Mr. Marty Dodson. Thank you so much, Stephanie. Thank you Marty.
Stephanie: Thank you for having me.
Marty: Thanks for having us.
Lee: You've been listening to Tokens: public theology, human flourishing, the good life.
If you would like to hear another story like this one, then check out our recent episode with Ruby Amanfu, Matt Maher, and Leigh Nash in which they discuss the vulnerability and honesty which led to their song entitled "Good Trouble".
Remember you can subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
Got feedback? We'd love to hear from you. Email us text or attach a voice memo, and send to the address podcast@tokensshow.com.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this podcast possible. Executive producer and manager, Christie Bragg of Bragg Management. Co-producer Jacob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios. Associate producers Ashley Bayne, Tom Anderson, and Brad Perry. Engineer Cariad Harmon. Music beds by Zach and Maggie White and Blue Dot Sessions. And the live performance of "Hold Onto God's Unchanging Hand" taped on one of our live shows by our friends The Settles Connection, along with The Most Outstanding Horeb Mountain Boys. And since it's such a great song, I think we'll just let this one run to the end...
Thanks for listening, and peace be unto thee.
The Tokens podcast is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.