By Olivia Turner | Arts & Life Editor
On Tuesday night at Common Grounds, under a full rainbow in the sky and tree branches above dripping with rainwater, Christian artist Luke Bower and his band put on a show for Baylor students. Despite the puddles on the picnic tables, students gathered around the band like a campfire, filling the backyard of the coffee shop.
Before Bower took the stage, Vail, Colorado senior Langley Cerovich opened the show with his own singing and strumming. His songs, which embody a bittersweet, folksy sound, are mainly about hiking back home and his adoration for nature, he said to the crowd.
The first song Cerovich played, “Sun Song,” was specifically about one of his friends who passed away, he said. According to his his TikTok, Cerovich said the song has become a “remembrance for the people I can no longer climb mountains with or wonder at the beauty of the stars.”
“I’m a little nervous,” Cerovich said to the crowd after his first few songs. “You guys are a way bigger crowd than I thought.”
Cerovich also said he writes songs about his faith, one of which was about God chasing after a friend. It even caused him to get a little choked up while singing. The cicadas in the trees around the stage chirped and cried as if to sing along to the music.
“I did not realize writing a song a day ago that you haven’t processed yet would do that,” he said.
Soon after a short intermission, Luke Bower and his band took to the stage and started off with a Mumford & Sons classic: “I Will Wait.”
“My name’s Luke,” he said, introducing himself to the crowd. “I actually went to this school at one point. I’m a dropout though,” he said, to which the crowd chuckled.
Next up was Bower’s song, “Man on Fire” which is also the name of his January debut EP he had been playing for crowds all over Texas while on tour. Bower then spoke a bit about his backstory of uncertainty in his faith and his need to be saved, which transitioned into his song, “Not my Home.”
“For the longest time there’s been this kind of pain I’ve carried with me,” Bower said. “One thing I realize is I wasn’t a Chrisitian then. So this is a song about being homesick for heaven.”
As the band played, the song took on an almost Bob Dylan feel with the addition of maracas and harmonica to the band’s central acoustic sound, which continued into his next song, “Halfway To Your Heart.” Then, Bower spoke a bit more about his journey with faith, belief and doubts, to which he admitted having a lot.
“Maybe you doubters can relate about sitting on the fence,” Bowers said, introducing his next unreleased song, “Sitting on the Fence.” He sang the chorus:
“Cause if I can’t see your hand workin’ / How did I run to your arms / Faith don’t make no sense / Do you still love me when I’m sittin’ on the fence?”
After a keyboard-heavy song from his EP, “Haunted,” and his band’s cover of Noah Kahan’s “Northern Attitude” which got the gathering of students standing and scream-singing, Bower began to talk about sugarcoating in Christianity and explained that his next song was a “callout of the modern church.”
The song stood out from the previous ones with its more jazzy, bluesy and gospel tone. It also provided the chance for each band member to have their moment in the spotlight to show off their skills. With the crowd going crazy, the guitar, keys and drums gave it their all.
“It always gets a little crazy there,” Bower said. “We transcend.”
Nearing the end of the night, Bower played “Soul That Got Away,” a song with a classic country sound that he said was a taunt to the devil, but not at first.
“So I originally wrote this about a girl and then it turned into a song about the devil,” Bower said. “So no shade.”
Post-show, Bower told the story behind the album, and how it was an attempt to honestly tell an audience through song what it’s like to be a Christian.
“It was kind of just based on pain, like a Christian EP that has hurt in it, that it’s not all better just because Jesus is there” Bower said.
The tour with his band will continue to other parts of the U.S. with Nashville as their next stop.
