The Chapel Crows are a talented group of seminarian musicians. Senior Seminarians Ethan Rice, Jacob Smith and Jack Graves sat down this week to tell the Cor Chronicle about their band.
The band began informally about three years ago when a small group of seminarians would play music out by the bonfire behind Holy Trinity Seminary (HTS) on Friday and Saturday night.
Over the years, it’s grown organically, and with inspiration from the Hillbilly Thomists, the band of Texans now leans into the bluegrass sound.
Several of the guys have previous experience in music, and the band allows them a space to integrate their past experience with their new lives at HTS.
Graves, who enjoyed playing music during his time at Benedictine College, said “I was afraid when I came to seminary that I would lose that, but it was the complete opposite.” The music also lends itself to community formation.
Rice said that when playing together with his fellow band members, “we’re sharing that deep interiorness of ourselves with each other in a very creative way. In some sense that resembles God, and it’s very beautiful.”
On naming the band, Rice said, “when we were trying to get an official group together to play for our family visit days, we needed a name. One of us suggested ‘Chapel Crows’ and it was kind of a joke at first, but then it just stuck. It’s got a real meaning behind it, particular to us.” Smith said “and it keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously.”
The name originated from real-life chapel crows at HTS, on the large stained glass dome during morning Masses. The birds would stomp and peck at the glass. Inside the church the sounds echo during the silent moments of the liturgy.
Rice said “It doesn’t sound like birds. It sounds like somebody is up there stomping. One of our priests at the Seminary is gonna fly a drone up there one morning to see what’s going on.”
They have recently announced their new album “Poor Man” as a way to share their music with those who support HTS and the wider community to bring them the joy of bluegrass music.
The name comes from the idea of Christ as a poor man. “Christ really enters into our suffering and becomes the poor man on our account” said Rice. Their music can be found on Spotify, YouTube and other music platforms.
When discussing the work for the album, Graves said “Recording an album is this technical adventure, we recorded this three times over in order to get it to sound how we wanted to. It had its hair-pulling-out moments, but that’s kind of what makes it fun.”
Rice said that while writing new songs the Chapel Crows “tried our best to make the lyrics and themes and stuff on the album to be theologically right. Which was a fun part of writing.”
Rice said “a lot of the album is geared towards priestly formation and conforming ourselves to Christ, who is the poor man. If there’s one beatitude that you really think of that the album is trying to live within, it’s poverty of spirit.”
Smith said “Our whole culture and our whole lives should be Catholic. I would say all forms of art have their end in God. So if bluegrass exists, its end is God.”
If you are looking for something that’s a bit country, a little Texan and a whole lot of praising God through song, then find the Chapel Crows and listen to their not-so-birdlike call.