The irony of irony: The Swirling Eddies’ “Outdoor Elvis”

Save us, Outdoor Elvis.

I have a playlist called “Great Songs,” which I listen to on my morning runs. I don’t remember putting the playlist together, but I know it’s mine because, along with mainstream artists—Heart, Led Zeppelin, Bonnie Raitt, Peter Gabriel—there are songs by many of my somewhat lesser-known favorites—T-Bone Burnett, Sam Phillips, Bruce Cockburn, Jane Siberry.

Since I run with the playlist on “shuffle,” I am often surprised by the next song. I’ll be stumbling along, thighs and calves complaining, and the B-52s’ “Love Shack” or Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch” will kick in, providing a tiny boost to my waning morale.

Just last week, a song I’d pretty much forgotten turned up: “Outdoor Elvis,” by The Swirling Eddies, which presents a mash up Elvis and Bigfoot:

Out there where the air is clean
The redwoods high, and the grass is green
People tell me they have seen
A giant footprint

The Swirling Eddies are, as I’ve heard them called, an “alter-ego band,” consisting mostly of members of the Christian Rock band Daniel Amos (later, DA). They took on amusingly named personae—Camarillo Eddy, Spot, Gene Pool, etc.—and cranked out a few albums, the second of which was Outdoor Elvis.

I’m not sure I’d say I’m a fan of the Eddies. I certainly respect them more than I respect most “Christian Rock” bands; even with their tongues firmly in their cheeks, their critiques of  the mainstream, evangelical church are consistently sharp, honest, and insightful. But that isn’t really my world any more, so those critiques simply aren’t as engaging as they used to be.

Nonetheless, I’m fascinated by “Outdoor Elvis” because it highlights how slippery satire can be.

Christian Rock, like all genres, brings with it a series of conventions—that interesting interplay, developed over time, between artists’ intentions and audience expectations. Among those conventions is the idea that Christian songs will usually convey a message. Certainly, that was foremost among the expectations I brought to Christian music, back when I was in that world. And I don’t think I’d have been alone in that.

I suspect those expectations haven’t changed that much, either. Just last year, Michial Farmer, blogger and co-host of The Christian Humanist Podcast, wrote a piece about The Swirling Eddies. He argues—correctly, I think—that Outdoor Elvis is “one of the most brutal critiques ever leveled against evangelical culture”:

…over the course of 65 minutes, it tells us that evangelicals are credulous (“Outdoor Elvis,” “Urban Legends”), that they are anti-intellectual (“Tiny Town”), that they are obsessed with power, money, and celebrity (“Mystery Babylon,” “Attack of the Pulpit Masters,” “All the Way to Heaven”), that they refuse to listen to wise counsel (“Hell Oh,” “Rubber Sky”), that they are hypocrites, and predictable hypocrites at that (“Hide the Beer, the Pastor’s Here,” “Knee Jerk”).

In short, the “message” in many of these songs is a prophetic one, one that emphasizes how far the people of God—and evangelicals most definitely see themselves as the people of God—have strayed. (It’s an interesting irony—almost “meta”—that “Rubber Sky” is itself about ignoring prophetic messages.)

I’m interested in Farmer’s first example, where he says that the song “Outdoor Elvis” “tells us that evangelicals are credulous.” I absolutely agree, but I don’t think we agree in the same way.

The problem starts here: I don’t see why he would assume that the “credulous” characters in “Outdoor Elvis” stand in for evangelicals.

For other songs on the album, it’s clear that that the targets of the critique are, indeed, evangelicals. In “Hide the Beer, the Preacher’s Here,” the song’s characters are all clearly students or faculty at Christian universities.

“Attack of the Pulpit Masters” is written from the perspective of people caught up in a televangelists’ shtick (“Oh, no, we’re swooning / Swoooooooooooning / Woah, Nelly / We’re swooning again”).

But it’s not so clear with “Outdoor Elvis.” Christians really do attend Christian universities, and televangelists really do have (swooning) followers. But Outdoor Elvis is a myth within a fiction—extrapolated, like Bigfoot, from a footprint and some rumored sightings:

In his fishing vest and his silver cape
I’ll bet he’s really looking great
You can pretty much tell that he’s lost weight
From the depth of his footprint
It’s said he croons when the moon’s above
Singing tenderly, “Hunk o’ burnin’ love”
It’s nice to know he’s still got his stuff
Hasn’t lost the accent

The rhetoric surrounding this Outdoor Elvis certainly echoes that of Christianity:

Oh, oh, come again, Outdoor Elvis
Be our friend, save us, Outdoor Elvis
We have sinned, forgive us, Outdoor Elvis

Even so, there’s nothing to suggest that the character in the song is an evangelical Christian who credulously believes that Elvis is Jesus, or a replacement for him—nothing, that is, except the expectations that Farmer brings to the song: that the album has a message, and that the message is largely a critique of evangelical Christianity.

There are plenty songs on the album that don’t fit that interpretation, and Farmer acknowledges this. But he’s created some alternative categories for them: “sheer absurdities,” “moments of real sentiment,” and a couple songs of “self-recrimination.” But “Outdoor Elvis” doesn’t fit any of those categories, either. It’s absurd, for sure, but there are a few things that make it seem much more than “sheer absurdity”: it’s the first track and title track on the album, and the Christian imagery tied to this Outdoor Elvis sure makes it feel like a critique of what Christians might call idolatry.

Thus, I think, Farmer tosses it in with the other critiques of evangelicalism, even though it doesn’t quite fit.

And I think Farmer knows there’s a problem.  He points—again, correctly, I think—to a melancholy undertone in a couple of the song’s lines (“If we don’t have the King, what have we got? / Life don’t make no sense”), but he then suggests that this “has laid bare the vacuity and meaninglessness of modern life.”

These two interpretations—that “Outdoor Elvis” tells us that evangelicals are credulous, and that modern life is vacuous and meaningless—are not necessarily contradictory, but the connection takes some work. One might say that evangelicals credulously accept ridiculous, extra-Christian solutions to the meaninglessness and vacuity of modern life. But I see nothing about the song—other than the expectations that he brings to the song, that the “message” must be a critique of evangelicalism—to make that connection.

Except…

If we take an extra step back, the satire may demonstrate Christian credulity—just not in the way that Farmer expects. As I’ve said, satire can be slippery.

In this case, analogy—the argument that one thing is like another—can go two directions. From within the Christian perspective, treating Outdoor Elvis like Jesus (“we have sinned, forgive us, Outdoor Elvis”) is clearly problematic, a credulous response to the “vacuity and meaninglessness of modern life,” where the appropriate response would be a belief in Jesus.

But from outside the Christian perspective, the analogy might just as easily be turned on its head: asking forgiveness from Jesus might be seen as no less credulous than asking forgiveness from Outdoor Elvis.

There’s not much “Christian Rock” that resonates with me any more. I still think about early Randy Stonehill, or Larry Norman, or Mark Heard, from time to time. But even then, it’s more about nostalgia than anything else.

But “Outdoor Elvis” is different. Its meaning has shifted for me. I used to see it as a light-hearted example of the lengths “non-Christians” might go to in order to avoid “the Truth.” Now, I see it more the way Farmer put it (though probably not the way he meant it): as an (unintentional) example of how credulous evangelicals can be.

Oh… and the time for arguing that evangelicals aren’t credulous has pretty much passed.

[Note: You can hear the song on YouTube or Soundcloud, but be warned: the lead singer’s Camarillo Eddy persona includes a kind of nasally, warbling voice that takes a little getting used to.]