Mission Temple Fireworks Stand

This one comes from Paul Thorn's 2002 album of the same name, and the story behind it is pure Mississippi roadside gospel. Paul has told crowds that when he was three years old his daddy, a Church of God preacher, would stand him up on the altar before the sermon and say, "Paul Wayne, sing a song before I preach tonight, boy." He cut his teeth on "I'll Fly Away" and "I Saw the Light" all over the state, and his favorite nights were the tent revivals. Years later, driving the back roads, he noticed the tents looked exactly the same whether somebody was saving souls or selling bottle rockets, and he started asking himself which one he was looking at. Out of that he wrote a song about a preacher who walks away from a big church where the milk and money flowed, sets up beside the highway, and sells cherry bombs for Jesus while the cars pass on by. He pays the rent on New Year's and the Fourth of July, and he still wants to tell folks about the Lord. In the liner notes Paul called Mission Temple Fireworks Stand not a literal place, but a very tangible one where his own spiritual perspective lives. He and his longtime writing partner Billy Maddox put the words down, and the chorus stacks Holy Ghost against Big Bang Theory, Pentecostal against fire and brimstone, like two tents sharing the same poles. Sawyer Brown later cut the song with Robert Randolph on their 2005 album of the same name, which tells you the picture traveled. The man who wrote it grew up between a pulpit and a left hook. Paul Thorn was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the family moved to Tupelo, Mississippi, when he was an infant, right in the shadow of Elvis. His father, Wayne, was a Pentecostal preacher, and Paul spent his childhood singing and shaking a tambourine on the sawdust trail, picking up rhythm-and-blues gospel in the Black churches and country gospel in the white ones. The other teacher in the house was his uncle Merle, a real-life pimp who showed up in flashy clothes, taught a twelve-year-old things a twelve-year-old had no business knowing, and also taught him how to box. Paul took that into the ring in the eighties, won the Mid-South Middleweight Championship in Memphis, and on April 14, 1988, went six rounds with Roberto Durán on national television in Atlantic City before the doctor stopped it on cuts. He walked away with his brains still intact, worked a furniture factory in Tupelo, made 169 skydives, and kept a notebook in his back pocket. At a singer-songwriter night in a local pizza shop called Vanelli's in 1997, a BMI man named Roger Sovine heard him and passed the name along. Within about a month Miles Copeland's people had him in Nashville, and his first big stage was opening for Sting. The debut record, Hammer & Nail, came out on A&M that same year, and he has been telling those sacred-and-scruffy stories ever since, on his own label, with the band that still rolls with him. You can find Paul and the records over at his official site, paulthorn.com. He keeps a verified page on Facebook, posts pictures and road notes on Instagram as paulthornmusic, and writes as @pimpspreachers on X, which fits a man who grew up with one of each. Fans who want to talk shows, set lists, and the deeper cuts gather in The Paul Thorn Band Group on Facebook, a crew that treats him like the Mississippi boy who never quite left the tent.