Faith-based music reflects artist’s faith-based life

Gary Clausing lives what he sings

By Maryangela Layman Román, Catholic Herald Staff

CEDARBURG — Music had taken a backseat in Gary Clausing’s life by the early 2000s. Career, a growing family and a new home were now the priorities for this 1989 UW-Oshkosh music major who had performed with the wedding band, Rumor, for years.

Yet Clausing, 43, couldn’t ignore the words and lyrics that kept surfacing in his head. From time to time in his basement office, he’d go to his keyboard or pick up his guitar and let the music flow.

The songs took shape in much the same way as the music he wrote:
“I’ll let go and let Your hand guide me along the way
And have patience and trust in Your plan
You have said on the wheel that I am just the potter’s clay
And I’ll take shape from the skill of the Sculptor’s hands.”

The music began a journey for Clausing that not only took him into a recording studio with a Grammy-winning artist, but a journey that led him to the Catholic faith.

“In spring 2004, when this journey started, songs started coming to me, and I had no intention of sitting down and writing any music at all, but these melodies and lyrics started coming to me so strongly that I couldn’t ignore them, so I would dust off my keyboard and guitars and let them kind of develop, let them evolve, let them flow through me,” he said.

Clausing wanted to share his work so later that year, with about six songs completed, he contacted local producer, Grammy award winner and five-time Grammy nominee Joe Puerta, a former bass player with Bruce Hornsby and the Range and a founding member of the rock group, Ambrosia.

Puerta agreed to help Clausing record the music, but let him know it would come at a price.

After much discussion, Clausing and his wife, Maria, made the financial commitment.

But months after they started working in the recording studio, the bottom fell out of Clausing’s life. After some 13 years in sales in the printing industry, Clausing lost his job due to industry downsizing. Work in the recording studio stopped immediately.

Clausing described the next 18 months as “a kind of limbo — without income, living on savings.” Maria, who had been a stay-at-home mom to the couple’s two children, Jenna, 9, and Evan, 6, returned to work fulltime in early December for Oak Creek-based Crown Prince. Clausing struck out on his own in the printing business as an independent representative.

Once financial stability returned to the household, Clausing went back to recording. While unemployed, he had continued to write. Now, with 14 songs, the cost of the project had more than doubled.

“It came to two and a half times the amount we had budgeted and after living off savings as we had, and then this incredible expense, it really was a leap of faith in the truest sense of the word. But I was so compelled, and Maria and I agreed, that because it was so strong, that we needed to go forward with it. We had no idea where it would lead us, but we had every faith in God that the door was going to be open,” he said.

Clausing, who was baptized and raised a Lutheran, describes his music as music for the soul, but noted he’s not marketing it as strictly contemporary Christian.

A mixture of rock, pop, reggae, and country, he hopes it appeals to a wide variety of listeners. It’s not, however, “praise and worship music that preaches to the choir,” he said. Rather, the message is subtle with lyrics like,  

“Walking down the street with a smile ten feet wide
Passing people who seem so bitter inside
My peace evolves from knowing there’s a plan for me
If they’d open up their hearts, they’d find the same they’d see.”

“It definitely is faith-based music. It kind of touches people who may be on the fringes of their faith. I think there’s a lot of people in our generation who may have been brought up in a strong faith family, but after they got out of school, it became less of a priority and they may feel intimidated by the thought of coming back or put off if the message is too strong,” said Clausing.

Prior to the CD titled, “Closer to the Ground,” Clausing said he fit the description of someone on the fringes of faith. He and Maria had been married 13 years ago in her hometown Catholic Church, Our Lady of Peace in Marshfield in the La Crosse Diocese, and once they moved to Grafton and later Cedarburg, they attended Mass fairly regularly at St. Joseph Parish, Grafton.

“We were pretty much people who snuck into the back of church for Mass and that was it. We were never involved in church until about the time I lost my job,” said Clausing. Impressed by the music at St. Joseph and director of liturgy Randy Hilgers, he joined the choir, started cantoring and providing prelude music at Masses, and more recently was part of a 9-11 ecumenical prayer service and a fellowship concert.

As he became more involved, Clausing realized he wanted to learn more about the Catholic faith. In 2005 he came into full communion with the Catholic Church.

“During my faith journey in the fall of 2005, I wanted to be involved in the church, but I felt kind of like an outsider and wanted to learn more about the church. It was kind of a longing. I sort of felt compelled (to join),” he said, adding Maria was surprised, but pleased. “It wasn’t something people said I needed to do, but it was something that felt right.”

“Closer to the Ground,” was released June 26 of this year, a date Clausing chose in tribute to his mother, Mary Lou Clausing, on the 15th anniversary of her death. Ironically, years before she died, Mary Lou encouraged her son “to write something with words to it.” He had recorded an instrumental CD in the early 1990s that included nature sounds.

The words on the current CD are touching people, he said, based on feedback from St. Joseph, where he’s primarily marketed the music.

“My mom bought me a CD produced by a guy who sings at the church she attends in Grafton, Wis.... I love the mix of genres from country to rock, Gary’s soothing voice and, of course, the message. There was something for everyone. For people struggling with their faith. For people with little faith. For people with strong faith...,” wrote Anna Derocher Voelker, 30, on her blog, “The Journaling Journalist.”

In an e-mail to your Catholic Herald, Voelker, a graduate of St. Francis Borgia School in Cedarburg, added, “I would be willing to bet that every person who hears Gary’s CD is touched in some way. There truly is something on that album for everyone. He sings about the power of faith — even when we have little — and what God can do in our lives.”

Voelker said she’s encouraged to see Catholics doing the same thing with Christian music that their evangelical counterparts have done for years.

“There is something about experiencing God through music,” she said.

One of the songs on the CD, “Sculptor’s Hands,” was selected a fifth place winner in the Christian/Gospel/Religious category of the 2007 Songwriters of Wisconsin International annual competition.

Thrilled by the award, Clausing said he’s happy the music is touching people’s lives.

“‘Wonder’ is a term that attempts to describe the indescribably awe that I feel when I share my gifts at church. It is if I am merely a spectator as the Spirit moves through me and touches so many that are present. The songs I have written are not mine; they come from the Holy Spirit, as I alone am certainly incapable of evoking such an emotion,” said Clausing, quoted in an interview in his parish bulletin.

This article first appeared in the November 22 edition of the Catholic Herald. Visit this page to subscribe to the Catholic Herald.