2 Songs: 'Judas' & 'Holy Fungus!'

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Wood ear mushrooms definitely look like ears

While I was writing my last essay on here about Christianity’s ties to mushrooms, I stumbled across a fable about Judas Iscariot, the boyfriend disciple who betrays Jesus to the Romans by kissing him on the mouth (!!!) and sets off the chain of events that leads to his crucifixion. Legend has it that wood ear mushrooms grew on the elder tree where Judas, wracked with guilt for betraying his boyfriend holy master and prophet, hung himself. The wood ear supposedly absorbed some of Judas’s soul and now carries a piece of him throughout history via its mycorrhizal network — hence its other common name, “Judas ear.”

All week after I hit publish, I kept thinking about that story. Like so so many folksingers and country music fans, murder ballads have fascinated me for a long time. They’re so often about straight men murdering their wives or girlfriends or woman neighbors who refuse to go out with them. A murder ballad about Judas and his mushroom witness began growing in my brain.

Then, when I sat down to write it, a second song came out that’s more sad gay boyfriend song than it is a classic country tune. These are the 2 wolves inside me: lonesome gay, and Catholic bratgrass.

Some intern at The Bluegrass Situation really popped off on this one