‘You Can’t Pray to Me and Keep Your Guns’

photo by Erin Brochu

Under the steel arch of Hell Gate between Astoria, Queens, and Manhattan, musician Grace Leckey searches her heart. It feels like an altar / At the base of the bridge,” Leckey sings in The Ballad of Hell Gate,” an 8-minute folk-rock song from her new sophomore album Hell Gate. I still pray by that lamppost / And leave unfinished songs like offerings.” 

Hell Gate is a tribute to both Astoria and to Leckeys Irish Catholic ancestry, she said in an interview with Sojourners. The 10 tracks on the album, with their tender harmonies, Americana roots, and Celtic-inspired sound are all about her prayer life. Even the one thats a breakup song,” she said, referring to She Forgets.” “Its still about the bigness of it, the wreckage and the searching for something, hoping that someone hears what youre saying.”

Leckey, 26, grew up singing hymns in a Catholic folk choir at her home parish of Our Lady Queen of Peace in Arlington, Va. On Hell Gate, she marries that legacy with the influence of Brandi Carlile, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, and Bruce Springsteens Seeger Sessions. There’s also lots of rich fiddle playing, thanks to Leckeys friend and collaborator, Jessie Bittner. I was returning back to some of the music that I sang and played at church,” Leckey said.

Leckey, who studied audio engineering at Indiana University, now works at recording studios, teaches music, and performs. While visiting friends in Queens a few years ago, she said that she felt such peace wash over” her that she decided to move there. She later learned that her great-grandparents lived in Astoria and went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a church next door to the school where Leckey teaches throughout the week.

It was the most meant-to-be kind of thing, where you feel people from the other side of the veil calling you here, saying, This place needs you,’” she said.

Moved by the confluence of ancestors, faith traditions, and new beginnings as a young artist, Leckey wanted to write a place-specific album about her love for Astoria and her years of spiritual seeking.” 

Grief is one of the major themes of the album. The song Healer” is about a friend who died of suicide and how young creative people can be so susceptible to depression in particular,” Leckey said. Why do people lose that battle? What happens next?”

 Healer,” she explained, is meant to be sung in community. The chorus is simple, repetitive, and meditative: Make me a healer, and a channel of your peace / O my God, make me a healer.” 

Whenever I say, Make me an instrument of your peace, then I find God puts these ridiculous challenges in front of me,” Leckey said. Like, OK, ready? Here you go.’”

The themes of grief sometimes bubble over into righteous rage. In 2018, after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Fla., Leckey began working on the song Cant Pray to Me.” In the bluesy, boisterous track, Leckey sings from the perspective of Mother Mary. I am the mother of all children / I am the lady keeping watch,” she sings, imagining how Mary might react to gun violence in the U.S. today. You cant pray to me and keep your guns.”

The fiddle adds feisty harmony to the lyrics. Leckey wanted the song to challenge the commonly held praises of Mary as gentle woman, quiet light.” She played a show recently to celebrate the release of Cant Pray to Me,” and she made a joke on stage saying, send this to your Catholic family members who directly or indirectly send their money to the NRA,” Leckey said. I hope that it causes good trouble.” She also hopes the song reaches organizers at Moms Demand Action.

Women in Leckeys family also show up on the album. Dolly Regina,” which is about Leckey’s grandmother, features a chanting sound reminiscent of “Salve Regina,” a traditional Catholic hymn sung to Mary after night prayer. “Guide us through the night to the dawn / Tell us how we can reach you when you’re gone,” Leckey sings, the mandolin and guitar bright and bell-like.

Leckey's lyrics are soaked in Catholic tradition. When writing songs on Hell Gate, Leckey asked herself: What if I just full-send it with the Catholic terminology and imagery and tradition, and just do my own thing with it? I think of it as a reclamation and a repurposing.” 

While Leckey wrote Hell Gate from her perspective as a queer person, its not explicitly a gay Christian record,” she said though she loves artists like Semler who are making music in that vein.

Instead, Hell Gate is not about being queer in the church it just is queerness in the church,” she said. There are so many ways to be Catholic. And being a queer person is inherently creative. God delights in our creativity.”

The song Racecar Driver” holds this spirit of creativity, imagining all the people Leckey may have become: I know Ive been a sister in a convent / The call to prayer grows in me like a rose,” she sings.

Leckey explained that she’s not trying to “call people back to church” with these songs; she just hopes “that people who have roots in the Catholic faith and are now in their adulthood will find comfort in some of this.” She’d be happy for her songs to be used for “community healing and prayer.”

Hell Gate ends with the song Rise,” an expansive folk-rock instrumental with velvety fiddle and deep acoustic guitar, repeating that single word. I think Catholics are comfortable with just saying the same thing over and over again, and letting it take on new life,” she said. Its like praying the rosary. Sometimes thats what songwriting is too.”

With Rise,” Leckey wanted to evoke the benediction at the end of mass the going-forth blessing with a call to go and love your neighbor as yourself,” she said. To go and do the thing youre being asked to do.” 

Grace Leckey invites people to reach out to her via this link.

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