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We've got a photograph in our family room of Carolyn Arends mugging (for the camera) and hugging (my sons, then about 8 and 10). She is beaming in the photo, the kind of warm smile that says, "Yeah, I'm happy, and I'm not ashamed to show it." People have called Arends a Pollyanna because of her sunny outlook—and music. Ah, but here comes a not-so-sunny side with an album of darker songs and harder times, a self-produced CD Arends has fittingly titled Pollyanna's Attic. Sure, she's done dark songs before, but never a whole album. And there's still a thread of divine hope running through these new tunes. But this Attic is clearly littered with old trunks containing varying degrees of pain, doubt, and cynicism—but never despair. There is always hope. Join us for this meandering conversation with the award-winning folk singer, who discusses her "grumpy songs," her winter of discontent, and her new-found willingness to occasionally rub some people the wrong way—as long as she's speaking the truth.

You're known for your sunny music. So, where'd you get the idea for making a disc of what you're calling "grumpy songs"?

Carolyn Arends: I got the idea on January 1st of this year. I was thinking about a bunch of songs that had never really fit with any of my other records. I'm not really a Pollyanna, but I have been called one because there is kind of a relentless hopefulness to my work. But every once in a while I would write a song that would go, not to a hopeless place, but a little bit darker place, but it just wouldn't feel like it fit with the other material on my records. Eventually I had this group of songs that were the ones that got away. I thought, I should just put them all on the same record.

I told a friend I wanted to call it Pollyanna's Attic, and she said, "That's perfect because what you put in the attic is stuff you don't want to deal with but can't throw away." And I thought, Oh there's some truth to that. But I'm getting feedback that it's not as dark as I think it is. I don't do dark very well.

Your liner notes say these songs are about "the kind of hope that shows up more in the cracks and fissures in our lives than in our pinnacle moments." Any personal examples?

Arends: The song "Not Alone" stems from a true story. A few years ago, a good friend of mine had a niece murdered by her mom—his sister-in-law—on the first day of school when she should have gone to kindergarten. It was an unimaginable kind of tragedy.

For about three weeks after the murder, anything anybody said to me about it made me mad. There just wasn't anything you could say that seemed acceptable. I remember trying to wrestle it through and thinking, You can talk about the theology of "Everything that's meant for harm, God can ultimately use for good." But right now all you can say in a situation like that is that you're not alone, and we have a God who knows what it's like to lose a child. So when I sing that song, it's a gut-level-when-everything-else-is-stripped-away kind of hope, that there is nothing that we can go through—even the most unimaginable, horrible thing—alone.

Sounds like you were upset when you wrote that song. Can you write a good song when you're ticked off, or do you have to be in a good frame of mind?

Arends: There are a lot of artists—and this may be more in the mainstream—who intentionally sabotage their lives so that they'll have good material. There are artists who say they can't write when they're happy. That has not been the case for me. Dispositionally, I'm pretty sunny, pretty glass-half-full. And I really do believe that the first and most beautiful thing our faith gives us is hope in all circumstances.

But it's good, as an artist and as a human, to write from a bunch of different places. With this record, there are two things I really want to challenge myself on. One is to be authentic, and not pretend that things are great when they're not, and not only write about the bright side. But the other side of that, I think there's a bias in popular music and in our culture that "cynical is deep," or that only shallow people are happy, and that if you're really a thoughtful person, you're going to be gloomy.

You will dare to be happy, right?

Arends: That's right, which is of course why I'm Pollyanna. But I want to avoid both extremes and just try to be honest.

Any other songs written from your own difficult experience?

Arends: "Land of the Living" was born in a recent time when it felt like winter in my life, one of those protracted seasons of feeling dead and cold and dark. A couple of women in our Bible study group have clinical depression. We've watched them go through times when their world gets really dark and cold and small, and it is so hard for them to feel God's presence.

One of them said she clings to Psalm 27:13—knowing that the psalmist, the man after God's own heart, admits there was a time when he couldn't see God's hand. That admission is healing to my friend, knowing she's not the only one. And then comes the promise that you'll see his hand again, right here in the land of the living.

Then when I found myself in my own little winter of discontent, I started trying to hold onto that verse for my own life, and that song came out.

You cover a Mark Heard song on this album, and your liner notes say you like his music because it's "honest and abrasive and prophetic and brilliant." Not many artists aim for "abrasive" and "prophetic." Mark Heard probably did, and so did your old friend Rich Mullins. What about you? Do you say, "I'm going to intentionally tick people off with this song"?

Arends: (Laughing) I wish that could be said of me, but it's not so! I'm drawn to artists that have what I call "that prophetic edge," where they're just going to speak the truth, and if it hacks some people off, so be it—and they probably kind of enjoy it if it does. Mark Heard was like that; Rich Mullins was absolutely like that. And Steve Bell is a little bit like that. I like their courage—that sort of "truth is more important than being a people pleaser" edge. I don't think I have it, though. I worry about being misunderstood. I worry about hurting somebody's feelings.

When I first started out, I had stage fright. A performance consultant told me, "Artists think people come to a concert to see a great show, but people aren't coming to be impressed. They're coming to feel loved and to make a connection." And then he said, "The enemy of love is self-consciousness." Which for me, as a shy person, was this huge revelation. Until then, my aspiration was to be a songwriter for other people. But that was a turning point for me in terms of singing my own songs. And my job, from the first concert I did from that point on, has been to love my audience.

Now at this stage in my career, I'm probably more willing than ever to be misunderstood in the hopes of telling the truth and loving people well.

So, are you willing to make people mad, just because?

Arends: No, it would not please me to tick someone off just to do it. Those guys we talked about were kind of contrarian in nature, and I'm really not. But I am at that point where if I have written something because I believed it to be honest, and if I believe it would be loving my audience well to sing it, if there's a chance it might tick a few people off, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to sing it." And that's a newer place for me.

Sounds like you're comfortable with it too.

Arends: Yes. Brian McLaren wrote "An Open Letter to Worship Songwriters," which I use in my songwriting classes—especially with young writers who are hungry to offer something new in their worship. McLaren calls for songs of lament, and that we acknowledge how much of the Psalms is lament, and how important it is to express this part of the story of who we are. So I think we're going to see more projects that are willing to go places that CCM historically hasn't been willing to go.

Are you nervous about how fans might receive this album, sort of a "What happened to our happy Carolyn" type of thing?

Arends: Yeah, I'm nervous—excited, but nervous. I think for some people, it'll be their favorite thing I've done, and for some, it'll be the one they don't really listen to. I think it'll be a little bit of a polarizing record, because it goes more strongly in one direction. But I think that's also usually a sign of good work—that it provokes a reaction one way or another. I wish I could go to everyone's house and explain, "Now here's what I mean by this, and here I'm using irony, and don't take it the wrong way." But you have to trust your audience, and trust the process.

The opening track, "Just Pretending," includes the line, "models and movie stars are just pretending." That could easily say, "models and CCM stars are just pretending." How are you trying not to be a pretender in your public life as a Christian artist?

Arends: Step one was doing this record. And I'll probably be willing to be more revealing from the stage. There's always that balance, though. You can't walk up to people you don't know and tell them every nitty gritty detail of your life. But there is a level of authenticity I really want in everything that I do, but authenticity that doesn't forsake graciousness or politeness—even if you aren't in a very good mood. But an authenticity that also calls a spade a spade, and doesn't pretend that you're things that you're not.

So all I can say is that I'm working on it. People don't really want to see some airbrushed artist on stage. Those real moments of connection happen when you are the most authentic and vulnerable. I think you can always strive for more transparency, especially spiritually and being real about the doubts and the struggles—and to give it to God and say, "He's God and I'm not."

The more concerts I do, the more aware I am of how many people in the audience who are finding it a real struggle to believe on that particular night. They don't need to hear from me that it's easy, you know? I think they need to know that that's a normal part of being a disciple of Jesus Christ—that there are times when it's really, really hard, and that doesn't mean you've lost your faith, and it doesn't mean you're a bad believer. It just means that you're a human seeking to know a God who is something other than what we are.

For more about Carolyn Arends, visit our site's artist page. Read the review of her latest album Pollyanna's Attic by clicking here.

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