Invisible Man - Church Burglars: Riding Out West to Meet God or Die Trying
By: Karissa A. Kelly
Nominated for Song of The Year at the 2025 Wavy Awards, Invisible Man is a touchingly personal account of picking up what you can carry and traversing the desert with only the song in your heart. Time is your only friend. You hold a Bible in your hand, and one bullet in your gun. There is no going back.
I first heard Invisible Man on a stormy evening, balancing a cup of tea between my knees. It was the first time the tale had ever fallen upon ears that didn’t belong to the songwriter and frontman of the Church Burglars, Michael Foltz. Maybe it was the percussion of raindrops hitting the windowpane, the surreal atmosphere that rain conjures, or the romanticism of just a man and his guitar. Whatever the case, I was nearly moved to tears.
Since then, over the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve closely followed the Church Burglars on their quest to create their second album, Dreamland, documenting the band’s growth through the process with intent to produce a feature documentary from the countless hours of footage I’ve amassed. More on this, at a later date. Though, in review of this collection I was gutted to find that it was almost stricken from the record.
Any and every time this song has been played, I have dropped whatever I am doing to listen; memorizing each strum, marking every little tweak and change in my mind’s catalog. To be in the room with Foltz, bass-virtuoso Bobby Weiss and percussive prodigy Chris Dee; when Invisible Man was recorded was to watch masters at work– to witness a deep and ancient spell be cast. To hear each new sequence placed into the grand film of the music felt like my own vision of it had manifested, that every guitar lick and primal beating of the drums was dictated by the Divine. And it was. Invisible Man, as I can foresee it, is to the Church Burglars what The Chain was for Fleetwood Mac– a sound-defining showcase of incredible craftsmanship, an immediately identifiable sonic signature of the artists’ collective soul (of course, minus the drugs and murderous hostility.) It was an even greater pleasure to be trusted with the direction and execution of the music video. Though a certainly lighthearted and silly rendition for the song, it still brought out a playful edge for the band; especially for the stoic new lead guitarist, Connor Hart; and an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. Certainly, over these two-and-a-half years, the band have become great friends– like brothers to me.
