presidential campaign upside down and Pope Francis
emerged as a breath of fresh
air for the Church, the message
and themes of the songs largely
sound as if they were written as
a response to these developments. As someone who has
toured across the world, Mike’s
songs have not only struck a
chord with people but show that
people everywhere are facing
the same problems.
“What I see is that people are
starting to look within and realize
that these material things are not
as important as we used to make
them out to be,” said June. “I
think people are turning inward
and saying to themselves, ‘I need
to be a better person and we
need to be better people. This
world is too big not to share.’”
“When I started writing the
songs on Poor Man’s Bible two
or three years ago, I was going
through my own personal spiriNewJerseyStage.com
tual inventory,” he continued.
“Then when I started singing
these songs out loud, I thought
nobody is going to give a crap
about them because I was singing about myself. But the more
people you talk to, the more
you get a sense that you’re on
the same page. I was surprised
when I started doing these
songs in the South. I thought I’d
get run out of town, but people
were like, ‘I feel the same way.’
And I got a lot of the same responses over in Europe. It was
surprising.”
Ironically, while June has scathing lyrics about religion in songs
like the new record’s title track,
the emergence of Pope Francis has helped to renew June’s
faith in the Catholic Church. He
was raised a Catholic, but says
he’s been almost anti-Catholic
since turning 17. He sees Pope
Francis as less of a revolutionary
figure as one that simply speaks
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