One afternoon I went over to see a buddy of mine that worked in the guitar shop in San Francisco. His friend Brian was giving a guitar lesson to a student. I overheard part of the conversation because Brian was upset about why this kid hadn't been practicing his guitar since the last lesson.

It turned out that this boy worked in the seminary and was telling Brian that the parish Priest (Father John) had been starting to drink very heavily and the kid was doing his best to cover for him. Unfortunately the parishioners were starting to notice, which caused some embarrassing situations... For example, during mass he had forgotten that he already did the wine ritual and started to do it again (or perhaps he didn't forget...). One afternoon doing a funeral, the boy had to retrieve one of the Bibles. Since he had so much to carry he picked up the smallest one first and to his surprise found it was hollowed out with a flask inside. During the eulogy his words were so mumbled that when one of the mourners brought this to his attention, the boy covered for the priest and told him that portion of the eulogy was in Latin.

Afterwards Brian and I went for a drink and the lyrics just flowed like wine! "Oh Father John you know you gotta put that bottle down..."

The original version of the song was only recorded in my living room on a tabletop cassette recorder and remained that way for over 30 years. It was just Brian's voice accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar, and that was it. When RevMo had the idea of making The Best of Blasphemy an old friend of mine, and a multi-instrumentalist genius, (David Rosen, AKA Brother D.) took this song and made it into an arrangement that neither Brian nor I ever envisioned. Not only did he come up with the entire arrangement, but he played all the instruments and sang this song! After receiving the many tracks he recorded, I added a touch of gospel (not much) and mixed the song in my studio. I had recorded with David in the past and he always came up with multiple parts for many different clients. This is another jewel of working with a great musician!