Singer/bassist Adam Nigh with TOO BAD EUGENE talks about faith and tradition.

Too Bad Eugene

Your first album was, 'At Any Rate', was on Rock City Recording. Why only one album with them?

Adam: When it became apparent that Rock City and Too Bad Eugene couldn't really do anything for each other, we knew Tooth & Nail would be the best place to go.

A major lyrical theme on 'Moonlighting' is people's differing theologies.

Adam: Yes, "Premodern Donna" reflects on how ultra conservative fundamentalist Christians have affected my thinking about God while "Charismata" reflects on how Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians have affected me.

You seem to want to promote faith in God rather than faith in organisations.

Adam: Organisations have cornered the market on Christ. When I look at the tradition of faith I grew up in and am still a part of, a lot of the time all I can see is a people that have so rigidly defined their criteria for inclusion that almost nobody but white American Republican Protestant fundamentalists can get into Heaven. At those times I wonder whether any of us will get in. Jesus is Jesus and no one has the position to define him but him. God is bigger than philosophy, denomination and theology.

You seem pretty zealous about getting people thinking properly about God.

Adam: I see a lot of bondage in the way believers, myself included, think about God. There is much anti-intellectualism in the Church and I want to use my music to fight it.