Glen Pearson's apple didn't just fall far from the family tree. It fell far and then it rolled and rolled and rolled. Born to two Evangelical baptists in the suburbs of Virignia, Glen Pearson was by all appearances destined for a life of good faith and good works. And in the beginning that was true enough. When raised so thoroughly within the confines of a particular community, a kid doesn't have a chance to know what he is missing. He was happy enough to go through the motions with his family for the first couple years of his life but by the time he was in middle school, he was increasingly aware he was not vibrating on the same frequency as them.

It wasn't a crisis of faith, per say, it was simply the slow dawning awareness that he'd never had the same sort of faith as them to begin with. He was born without whatever made them believers. So, quietly he began to search for little reliefs, and secular respites. Which became easier to find once his parents loosened their iron grip on his music taste, and so long as he could find "spiritual meaning" in whatever was blaring from his headphones then he could have it. At 18 he enrolled in a nearby community college for lack of anything better to do.

School had always bored Glen, and that did not change when he arrived at his new campus. The only thing that did change was he was no longer under his parents rule and that was a big change. It didn't take all that long for Glen's true colors, that of adventurer and experimenter, to show. Once he situated himself firmly and happily on the path to hell, it only took two years before he dropped out and broke ties with his family, deciding on a whim - and maybe because he loved grunge - to move to Seattle.

If there was one thing Glen had always had in spades it was conviction. His early years in Seattle saw him toiling through album after album of singer songwriter material, and playing sparsely attending gigs while working odd jobs during the day. For most of these years, he drifted in and out of a long running depression, that was both at times abated and exacerbated by consistent drug use and heavy drinking. In 2008, he reached out the band Holy Fool, a local group who was gaining some considerable attention, offering to be their new drummer. They took him up on that.

What came with that was his first taste of real success, though he'd be the first to say he had no real part in their music besides being the guy keeping beat during lives shows. But still. it was a good experience. After two years with them, and the continued lack of success in his solo career, Glen had an epiphany while doing ayahuasca and realized the direction he wanted to head in his musical career was one that embraced the humor he clung to in his life, his freewheeling spirit.

He left the band and moved to Los Angeles and began writing and performing as The Reverend, which he felt to be a truer expression of the crazy, fucked up, sarcastic asshole self. It turned out, a lot of other people responded to his music as well and he managed to find the audience he had been lacking for the past 10 or so years. Between his first and second album, he met and married a woman he thought was the love of his life, but the whirlwind romance - despite being the basis for his second album - ended in separation.

Now, Glen has moved into a new home, and embarked on the endless touring required to promote his new album. He remains as much a mess and a bundle of contradictions and unseemly habits as he ever was. Love neither changed or save him, and the heartbreak hasn't done much for him either. But at least he's finally making the noise he wants to make.