Intriguing, Sound Rich, Unconventional
"The Lord God Bird" is new innovative radio from Long Haul Productions. It's a story about the putative rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker near Brinkley, Arkansas, told in the voices of Brinkley collected by Dan Collison and Elizabeth Meister. But more, it's scored, lyricized really, with a haunting original song – almost a hymn -- by Sufjan Stevens.
"The Lord God Bird" works at the nexus of news and art, an amalgam which personifies the core values of public radio listeners. The ivory-billed woodpecker affords the peg for this piece about "a place where you can call a wrong number and talk for five minutes", but in truth that's just the excuse for a human look at what "news" means to people, like us, making their way on the planet. Straight journalism has failed so often in this essential storytelling, and Collison, Meister, and Stevens succeed so heartfully, one can hope other producers will be emboldened and other gatekeepers admonished.
The one significant drawback of "The Lord God Bird" is an ill-crafted introduction which steers the listener way off target. The intro implies a profile or feature about the songwriter, that Collison & Meister are "curious about how [Stevens] writes songs". Why not just be straightforward? This is an oral history feature with a specially-commissioned soundtrack. That would make the set-up clear and precise and honor the content, which itself is a new sort of perfection that might begin to refresh public radio.
Geo Beach
July 26, 2005
Cheryl-Anne Millsap
