ANN ARBOR, Mich. (RNS) — Top surgery, puberty, religion — these topics are all fair game at a Spencer LaJoye concert.“I didn’t grow up learning that I should trust anything that my body was telling me,” said LaJoye, 30, to an audience lounging in lawn chairs in an Ann Arbor backyard on June 7. “I grew up learning to trust the Lord.”
LaJoye, strumming a large acoustic guitar and wearing their dad’s oversized flannel shirt, interspersed ballads with anecdotes about their Christian upbringing and queer identity. By the end of the set, audience members were visibly moved.
“I didn’t expect to love this,” said Lara Zielin, who told Religion News Service she is a “recovering evangelical Christian.” “It felt like storytelling and poetry and truth all wrapped up in the most unexpectedly beautiful music.”
“Holy shit,” was another audience member’s response.
Spencer LaJoye plays a backyard set in Ann Arbor, Mich., on June 7, 2023. RNS photo by Kathryn Post
LaJoye’s pre-teen days of leading a worship cover band called “Jesus Rocks” have given way to a deeply personal folk/pop fusion style with an emotional gut punch. Their piercing lyrics, which dabble in religious imagery, are as textured as the intricate sounds LaJoye layers on their loop pedal. LaJoye has won folk songwriting competitions, opened Christian conferences and had viral hits adapted into commissioned choir pieces. And though they no longer identify as Christian, LaJoye is routinely invited to perform in churches, perhaps because their music dares to posit questions some church folks are hesitant to speak aloud.
Raised in Hastings, Michigan, LaJoye was baptized as an infant by both a Presbyterian minister and a Catholic priest — a “Presba-catholic,” they joke. In middle school, evangelicals welcomed LaJoye to their lunch table and, later, to 7 a.m. Bible studies at the local McDonald’s.
LaJoye entered Calvin College, a school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, as a violin major in 2011. They slid easily into the role of chapel worship leader, but LaJoye was distressed when worship began to evoke dissonance rather than reassurance.
“I wasn’t even out to myself yet in early college,” LaJoye told RNS. “I didn’t know why things were incongruent in my heart and my mind and why I felt like I was different from everybody else who was worshipping.”
LaJoye described sneaking into the art …
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LaJoye, strumming a large acoustic guitar and wearing their dad’s oversized flannel shirt, interspersed ballads with anecdotes about their Christian upbringing and queer identity. By the end of the set, audience members were visibly moved.
“I didn’t expect to love this,” said Lara Zielin, who told Religion News Service she is a “recovering evangelical Christian.” “It felt like storytelling and poetry and truth all wrapped up in the most unexpectedly beautiful music.”
“Holy shit,” was another audience member’s response.
Spencer LaJoye plays a backyard set in Ann Arbor, Mich., on June 7, 2023. RNS photo by Kathryn Post
LaJoye’s pre-teen days of leading a worship cover band called “Jesus Rocks” have given way to a deeply personal folk/pop fusion style with an emotional gut punch. Their piercing lyrics, which dabble in religious imagery, are as textured as the intricate sounds LaJoye layers on their loop pedal. LaJoye has won folk songwriting competitions, opened Christian conferences and had viral hits adapted into commissioned choir pieces. And though they no longer identify as Christian, LaJoye is routinely invited to perform in churches, perhaps because their music dares to posit questions some church folks are hesitant to speak aloud.
Raised in Hastings, Michigan, LaJoye was baptized as an infant by both a Presbyterian minister and a Catholic priest — a “Presba-catholic,” they joke. In middle school, evangelicals welcomed LaJoye to their lunch table and, later, to 7 a.m. Bible studies at the local McDonald’s.
LaJoye entered Calvin College, a school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, as a violin major in 2011. They slid easily into the role of chapel worship leader, but LaJoye was distressed when worship began to evoke dissonance rather than reassurance.
“I wasn’t even out to myself yet in early college,” LaJoye told RNS. “I didn’t know why things were incongruent in my heart and my mind and why I felt like I was different from everybody else who was worshipping.”
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