101.1fm brown student and community radio

Xandi Pi

Bluegrass, Friars, and the District of Columbia

An Interview with the Band Members and the Happenings of the Show by Adam Drake B’29published on October 9th, 2025

The Hillbilly Thomists perform at the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, 09/27/25.

Last Saturday, Sept. 27, thousands flocked to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. for the annual Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage. At the event, led by members of the Catholic Order of Preachers (Dominican Order), pilgrims participated in rosary talks, confessions, Mass, and a performance by the Hillbilly Thomists, a bluegrass group made up entirely of Dominican friars. The group has been on the rise since the release of their debut album, The Hillbilly Thomists, in 2017, performing and writing while also fulfilling the responsibilities of the Catholic priesthood. Their most recent album, Marigold, was released last year.

Fr. White (pictured left) and Fr. Bolger (pictured right) in D.C., after their interview.

Before the show started, I met with two of the founding members, Fr. Justin Bolger, O.P. and Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. B ‘93, to speak about their experiences in the group and their inspirations. Fr. Bolger currently serves as Brown’s Associate Chaplain of the University for the Catholic Community, and Fr. White is a 1993 graduate of Brown and serves as the Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome. I began by asking them to discuss their choice of bluegrass as the driving genre of their music. Fr. White responded with a commentary on how the choices of bluegrass, country, and Americana styles for their music “[have] authenticity” with “human subjects of … joy and sorrow.” He continued by speaking of how “there’s a brain puzzle side … a beauty side … and there’s a … heartbreak poetry authenticity side.” For Fr. White, the choice of genre reflects a blend of necessitated technical skill with personal emotion, allowing the friars to stimulate their minds while also expressing themselves and their faith. When asked the same question, Fr. Bolger spoke of the desire of the group “to be earthy.”

This sense of connection to human emotions and human understanding of life and faith permeates throughout the works of the group, particularly through songs like “I’m a Dog,” written by Fr. Bolger. I asked Fr. Bolger about his mindset while writing this song, which comes from their debut album. Fr. Bolger: “[I] saw an image … that someone had made of the dog with the torch running around the world … spreading this fire … and then I was like, oh, I’m a dog.” The song also acts in a subversive way, flipping the common association of the term “dog,” shifting it instead to, as Fr. Bolger put it, speak of himself as a “dog for the Lord.” The dog image of the song also stems from a story of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order, whose mother is said to have dreamed, while pregnant with him, of a dog running around and spreading the fire of the Gospel. Fr. White joined the song discussion by adding that the song is “totally in keeping with [their] classical symbolism.”

At one point, the discussion focused on the musical inspirations of the two friars and the other members of the group. Fr. Bolger threw out some names: “the Beatles, the Stones … Randy Newman, Neil Young … Wilco, Son Volt, the Jayhawks, Whiskeytown, and then … my dad always wrote music, so that was kind of an inspiration. It was just always around.” Fr. White then gave some of his influences: “Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson … Hank Williams, and I love Johnny Cash … Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings … I’m also a big Bob Dylan fan, and there’s some Bob Dylan homage in our music.” These influences are reflected in the style and lyrical form of the songs of the Hillbilly Thomists, which present a twist on the classic American bluegrass song, placing their lyrics in line with Catholic theology and the Dominican tradition.

I also asked them if they have any plans for new music in the future. Fr. Bolger talked about how they had “finished a Christmas album that hopefully could be out by this Christmas … and then … recorded like 16 or 17 new songs [this summer].” The Hillbilly Thomists plan to use those new songs from this past summer for another new album, on top of the Christmas album, with a planned release in Spring 2026. Speaking of the album creation process, Fr. Bolger detailed how they “hired a friend of ours … [who] engineered it, so it’s got a higher fidelity to it and … we’re really excited about it, some great new songs.”

I then ended the interview by requesting some comments from the friars for any musically-oriented people at Brown. Fr. Bolger: “If they see the weird guy walking around in the white robe, come say hi … he’s a songwriter, he’d love to talk about music, writing, arranging, jam, whatever it might be.”

The Hillbilly Thomists perform at the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, 09/27/25.

The show itself was powerful. The group played some of their bigger hits, like “Bourbon, Bluegrass, And the Bible,” some songs from their most recent album, and others, which got the crowd dancing along. There were some pilgrim fans among the crowd for the show, which was held in-between the main campus of The Catholic University of America and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, but also some who appeared to be college students from CUA or just from the surrounding area. The energy of the performance lifted as the sun set and the crowd pushed further forward, spinning and singing with the friars on stage. The experience was a powerful and fun ending to a day that was spiritually engaging. Before and after the show, the Hillbilly Thomists were selling merchandise, like vinyl, CDs, and apparel.

The Hillbilly Thomists perform at the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, 09/27/25.

You can find out more about the Hillbilly Thomists on their website (https://www.hillbillythomists.com/) and find their music on any major streaming service.

Adam Drake B’29 has recently been jamming to “Hyperballad” by Björk.
Contact the writer: adam_drake@brown.edu

home. ❶ schedule ❷ meet the station ❸ history ❹ blog