Behind their pun-a-minute repartee there's a serious intent for London's WESLEY BROTHERS. Tony Cummings spoke to the praising pub crawlers.

Wesley Brothers

For most people the pub and the praise meeting are miles apart. Seemingly, if you're a frequenter of one you wouldn't be seen dead in the other. This dichotomy between the secular and sacred is being challenged by two musos who rejoice in the silly monikers of Elvis and Lesley Wesley. On a Saturday night you're likely to find the Wesley Brothers playing an artfully crafted blend of 60s cover versions and self-penned Christian songs to enthusiastic crowds of beer toting punters in one of a dozen London pubs. On a Sunday you'll find them leading worship in their churches. In fact singer/guitarist Lesley Wesley, better known as Graham Ord, is the composer of "The Lord Is Gracious And Compassionate", one of the most widely sung choruses in our songbooks. So how did Graham and bassist/singer Dave 'Elvis Wesley' Moore end up playing pubs?

"The foundation of the band is our friendship and the love of the Lord, everything else flows from that," explains Graham. "We're a very good covers band and we have a regular circuit among the pubs of North London." So how did the band come to take the revolutionary step of mixing in praise songs with cover versions? Explains Dave Moore, "We were initially doing a lot of covers, and sticking our own stuff in, but to be perfectly frank there wasn't a lot of fruit. People weren't being saved although there was a lifestyle ministry in that people got to know us as people. Then one day we decided to just go for it and start doing Vineyard songs in pubs. People were singing along, 'More Love, More Power', and we thought, 'Bless the suckers, they're blessing themselves'. It's quite interesting, the first time we did that, after the gig when we were packing up the place was very quiet. We just felt, really, that we were intruding on somebody else's territory. So at the end of the gig, instead of mucking about, we just prayed. Then Graham says to me, 'You know the word you just had about that, well, someone's just smashed all your windows in on your car.' That had never happened before; it was because we were doing worship. Since then, things often happen when we're doing worship in pubs."

Dave Moore was born in Calcutta, India, came to Britain when he was one and a half and while still wet behind the ears found himself playing bass for UK gigs with Californian jazz-rock pioneers Liberation Suite. Then Dave became a member of Three Point Turn, a London rock gospel team who won a Greenbelt Search For A Star competition, recorded a single for Word (their prize) produced by Dave Markee but never quite got the break their gutsy guitar-rock deserved.

Graham Ord has knocked around a bit musically as well. Born in Colchester, he learned guitar when he was 15, and after settling in Wales got heavily involved in the punk scene. By 1979 he was living in St Albans and playing in a band called Prussian Blue who made some noise playing gigs like the Rock Garden. Remembers Graham, "I met a girl and she told me about the Lord and that was when I got first interested in Christianity. I never had any background of Christianity at all. I spent six weeks trying to find out if it was true, doing a lot of soul searching. At that time I was writing a lot of songs that were really sick, like drowning on your birthday and stuff like that. I realised that I wasn't really sick as a person inside but there were influences that were coming from outside which were a bit weird. I thought about the Lord, and eventually I got on my knees in my bedroom and asked the Lord to come into my life. At that point I realised that was why I was born, to use the music that God gave me to communicate something about Him, His love and all that sort of stuff. I gave up music for a while because before it had been like an idol, really. Then one day, about a year later, the pastor says to me, 'Are you hiding your light under a bushel?' I thought, 'What the flippin' heck is a bushel?' I'd never heard of a bushel before. So I thought he'd discovered my sexual sin. But he said, 'I hear you used to play, in a band.' I said, 'Yeah', and he said, 'Well don't you think it should be good to play your guitar in church?' So I started playing in my punk style. I'd turn it up really loud and get really offended when everyone misunderstood what we were doing. Over the years, I started working in schools, part time, whenever I could, speaking to kids about the Lord. Then I met Dave at Greenbelt one year..."

As the Wesley Brothers, Dave and Graham began to play pubs and clubs. Their mixture of cover versions and worship songs have had quite a dramatic effect. Comments Graham, "We've had glasses thrown at us and fights break out on us, all sorts of things happen. I think it's because there's things that are unseen that are challenged when you lift the name of the Lord up."

But on the whole the publicans who book them are happy enough to support this most unusual cover band. Says Graham, "Because the music's good people accept it. And we've had one landlord who's said to us, 'When you come in the pub we sell loads of soft drinks and we hardly sell any beer!' The management like it because they sell more orange juice when Christians are there, and that's more profitable!"

Now, after endless requests from their growing legion of supporters, the Wesley Brothers have recorded a tape. Says Dave, "We'd been talking about it for a long time and just never got around to it. So we got an old, second-hand, reel-to-reel eight-track, stuck it up in a room, borrowed some microphones and just recorded it." The 5-song tape 'Unblocked' spectacularly overcomes the technical limitations to reveal an engaging line in 60's/70's sounding pop-rock.

Graham Ord talks about a couple of the songs on 'Unblocked'. "One of them is called "Through The Bottom Of A Glass". It's written through the experience of watching people in a pub - you know, when two people are having an argument and want to conceal the fact they're having an argument. Sometimes when you look at people's faces you see the emptiness that's there, the futility, and one of the lines in the song is '...there must be something more, just sitting on the same old bar-room floor'; and it's just a song that's questioning, really. It hasn't really got an answer as such, but it's just to bring people to a focus. That's what a lot of our songs are like. They haven't all got answers, but often they're songs which hopefully make people think a little bit about things. Another of the songs is called' "Can't Do Anything But Love You". When I first got saved I wrote a tract, and I used to go out on the streets with a friend of mine and give this tract out to people. They thought we were selling drugs because it was so unusual to see this couple of freaks -I was a punk at the time - coming up with this tract. I'd say, 'D you want one of these, mate', and he would sort of say, 'Phew' and think it was drugs. So we started giving them round, we used to pray for people at bus stops, all sorts of things. I gave one chap this tract, and he said, 'I don't want to know'. So I said, 'Well, Jesus loves you' and he said, 'Well I don't give two monkeys. So what?' That really shocked me, because I thought everyone must be interested in Jesus as it was such a real thing to me. So I got home and wrote this song "Can't Do Anything But Love You" by sitting at the piano and saying, 'Lord, how do you feel when people just completely reject you?' The thought came to me, 'Well, I know all of that. I know that people turn their back on everything I've done for them. But just like a bird doesn't need to try to fly, so I can't do anything but love you. That's the way it is. My love is unconditional and I don't make up the love I have for people - I just feel love for people. That's the way I am.'"

One of the lead vocals on 'Unblocked' is taken by Dave Moore on his composition "Nothing Better To Do". Dave explains, "It's about ethnic cleansing in Hemel Hempstead. Really the theme for the song came about from an incident when my wife and my daughter were walking down the high street. It was a beautiful day, my daughter in her pram. Then these chaps from the National Front started hurling abuse at them. My daughter's my sort of colour - Caramac. So when they got home - I don't write very often but that song came in about three seconds. I was so angry, that I had to do something about it. The last thing the Gospel seems to touch - the money in our pockets and our racial attitudes.

Graham Ord has worked for several years for the Crusaders as an evangelist while Dave runs his own company specialising in supplying sound reinforcement equipment to churches and Christian organisations. As far as the Wesleys go, they're keen that their occasional sax and keyboardsman Adam 'Humphrey Wesley' Dickinson becomes a permanent fixture in the group. They're also keen to get a full time committed drummer ("we seem to be like Spinal Tap, our drummers seem to combust").

This summer the Wesleys will be working in Eastern Europe. Graham elucidates, "I've worked a lot in Eastern Europe in the past. I used to smuggle Bibles, and me and Dave are going to Czechoslovakia this summer to do some gigs in Moravia. One thing that I've learnt is that Christians out there aren't afraid of the pain as well as the joy. When they worship; like if you hear a Romanian choir they very rarely sing songs that are all happy-clappy. Their music is very mournful; minor keys type songs, because they're singing about things that are touching their hearts. Really, the Wesley Brothers are of the same opinion. Worship isn't just about jumping about. It is about expressing everything, every facet of human experience."

Dave expands on the last thought. "People often sing the ends of Psalms where David's doing the screaming lead break and 50 praise the Lords. But often at the beginning of the Psalms he's going. 'Yurrgh, what am I doing here?'. Then he realises who God is, and he realises the situation from God's perspective. We need to have integrity in our worship, and sometimes say to the Lord, 'I'm feeling really down, and this is my life.'"
Graham concludes with a simple one liner. "It's very, very important to be honest in worship."