Dressed all in black – dark skinny jeans, plain tennis shoes – complete with the black laces, Cory Chisel certainly looks the part of an aspiring musician. The only exception is his too-short gray and black-striped long sleeved tee. His long, dark, greasy sideburns poke out from beneath his signature 1940s gangster-style fedora hat, and he sports an awkward unshaven look in between five o’clock shadow and full on mountain-man beard.

Chisel is anything but the stereotypical fame junkie looking for his fifteen minutes. He is a grounded Midwestern dude who just happens to be making a living playing music–and is on the edge of making it big in the industry. Chisel’s signature sandpaper voice makes him sound decades older than his mere 27 years.

Slipping in the back of the venue prior to Chisel’s album release show in September, I meet Chisel’s wife, Erin, who looks like an attractive Adams Family member, with long dark hair and a brilliant smile. She points me to the stage where Chisel and his band are doing a soundcheck. The band practices for a few minutes and then I corner Chisel.

After he grabs a plastic cup of red wine, we sit down in an orchestra classroom, among cellos and a baby grand piano. Chisel opens up to me about the gospel influence, the music industry and the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Sex, Drugs, Rock n’ Roll … and Gospel?

Chisel, the son of a Baptist minister, infuses his music with the gospel influence. But don’t think that he’s looking for God in his songs.

“It’s been salvation music even though it’s not the way probably most people in popular culture would mean it,” Chisel says. “I think using what you know is always a good thing. And if I wasn’t the son of a minister, I wouldn’t be so hung up on it. If I had lived in Birmingham and my dad was a factory worker that would probably be the medium.”

Cory describes a turbulent relationship with religion and coming to terms with it in his own way.

“Gospel music, for a long time, made me feel like an outsider. Because I never had that moment where I felt that God hated me and I needed him …” Chisel says. “I never bought that. And so if you don’t buy that, you’re on the outside of their club.”

Chris Coplan, a news writer for the online music magazine Consequence of Sound says he wouldn’t describe Chisel as a gospel-influenced musician because the religious connotations might turn mainstream music fans away. Rather, he says, Chisel inherited a knack for showmanship from his father.

“It’s there, and I think it’s just strong enough where it won’t throw people off,” Coplan says. “He definitely uses it and knows from, I guess, watching his father and being in that background. He knows how to kind of draw people to him.”

Later, as I watch the sound check for the opening acts, Chisel is running around helping his band move pianos and watching the time – “Hey you guys we have 15 minutes left until the doors open. We got-sta do this thing!” – I am struck by the irony of the venue. The Lawrence Memorial Chapel was playing host for a hometown artist, who, by his own account, manipulates the scripture to fit his music.

“I use the gospel for my own means. My version of the gospel is a very perverse usage of it,” Chisel says. “It was something that was both a really beautiful thing and a really destructive thing in my life. And in order to play on those themes, in order for me to reconcile the things I didn’t like about religious music, I was forced to make it sort of mean my own things.”

Chisel’s first album from a major label, Death Won’t Send a Letter, was released on Sept. 29, 2009.

The lyrics for the album’s first track, “Born Again,” are far from scripture, with lines like, “Because mama didn’t raise me to be no Christian,” and later, “Raise another glass for the unforgiven.”

The music video features Chisel’s Bob Dylanesque voice over images of bathtub baptisms, crosses and Chisel and his backing vocalist and keyboard player, Adriel Harris, strolling through a graveyard.

“I think everybody is trying to be re-born. I don’t think anybody is going through life being like, ‘I want to stay the same person.’ So it’s kind of a tongue-and-cheek thing to say,” Chisel says. “We all just live and we die and we’re doing the best that we can.”

Chisel reclaims the phrase in the song and belts out the refrain:

We all lose ourselves in the end

And we all just want to get high, won’t you help me friend?

And if you ever see that sun come shining in

Well you’re born again

You’re born again.

The chapel, complete with a 20-foot organ and ornate stained glass windows depicting moments in Jesus’ life, is a hilarious backdrop for hipster musicians in flannel and skinny jeans practicing the “devil’s music” – gospel-tinged, gritty, bluesy folk and rock music.