Banjos, Bluegrass, & Resona: The Hillbilly Thomists in Flannery O’Connor Country

Banjos, Bluegrass, & Resona: The Hillbilly Thomists in Flannery O’Connor Country

By Marge Hynes, Writer

I may have been several hundred miles away in Florida, but thanks to a steady stream of photos, videos, and updates from Macon, I was able to follow along as a group of Dominican friars, with banjos in tow, helped celebrate the launch of a Catholic literary and cultural magazine. 

On August 4, Paloma & Fig officially launched Resona, our new heirloom-quality quarterly, at the historic Robins Financial Capitol Theatre in downtown Macon. Joining the celebration were The Hillbilly Thomists, a band of Dominican friars making their way through Georgia on their Strange Land tour.

Following along from afar through Resona, A Resounding Yes!, and Paloma & Fig, I watched the evening unfold: Resona in people’s hands, the friars onstage, bluegrass filling the theater, and a community gathered around something we’d spent a long time praying over before it ever became a tangible thing out in the world.

As it turns out, there was a lot more connecting this particular band, this particular magazine, and this particular corner of Georgia than a concert date on a tour schedule . . .

St. Dominic, Meet Bluegrass!

The Hillbilly Thomists are Dominican friars, members of the Order of Preachers, founded by St. Dominic more than 800 years ago. The band grew out of their shared life at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., where they began playing bluegrass, folk, and gospel music together.

After years of playing informally, the friars released their first album in 2017, which climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s bluegrass chart. They’ve since released several more albums and taken their music on the road, alongside their lives as Dominican priests and brothers. Prayer, study, community, and preaching remain at the center of their vocation; music gives that vocation another expression.

It’s a fitting reminder that Catholic creativity has never been limited to one form. It can take shape in music, literature, art, architecture, or, in this case, good, hearty bluegrass and a new magazine.

Pope Francis wrote about this “way of beauty” (the via pulchritudinis) in Evangelii Gaudium, describing authentic beauty as a path toward an encounter with Christ and a means of “touching the human heart.”

We’ve encountered that Dominican charism through Paloma & Fig before, too. On A Resounding Yes!, Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, OP, and Fr. Joseph Anthony Kress, OP, have joined us for conversations about faith, vocation, and what it means to say yes to God.

In Macon, that same charism took a different form. This time, with strings attached.

A Hillbilly Thomist Walks Into Georgia . . .

The Hillbilly Thomists get their name from Flannery O’Connor, who wrote in a 1955 letter that readers of Wise Blood thought she was a “hillbilly nihilist,” while she hoped to give the impression that she was a “hillbilly Thomist.”

And here they were in O’Connor country.

Before arriving in Macon, the friars visited Andalusia, O’Connor’s family farm in Milledgeville, where she spent the final years of her life and wrote some of the stories that made her one of the most significant Catholic literary voices of the twentieth century. Then they came to Macon to celebrate the launch of a Catholic literary magazine. You couldn’t have planned the connection much better.

If you’ve read much O’Connor, you know that “strange” isn’t foreign territory.

Her stories aren’t tidy, and her characters certainly aren’t either. They’re stubborn and broken and funny and horrifying. O’Connor had a knack for interrupting the status quo. She didn’t have to strip away the strangeness of the world around her to reveal God within it.

The connections continued the morning after the Resona celebration, when members of The Hillbilly Thomists concelebrated Mass at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Macon.

St. Joseph has its own place in O’Connor’s story. Fr. James Hart “Hootie” McCown, S.J., O’Connor’s friend, spiritual adviser, and confessor, was serving as assistant pastor there when he met her in 1956. His interest in literature led him to seek her out at Andalusia, beginning a friendship that continued through correspondence and spiritual counsel until O’Connor’s death in 1964.

The parish still holds little pieces of that history, including a copy of A Good Man Is Hard to Find inscribed by O’Connor “For St. Joseph’s Library.” Our founder, Christina Sabo, also uncovered an archival newspaper clipping documenting O’Connor’s appearance before the Macon Parish National Council of Catholic Women at St. Joseph’s Hall.

O’Connor’s writing, the friars’ music, and Resona are very different creative expressions, but each begins with something easily overlooked: receptivity.

Making Room

I can read an article while answering a text, listen to a podcast while making tomorrow’s to-do list, or open Instagram to look at one thing and, fifteen minutes later, realize I have absolutely no idea what I’ve been looking at.

We’re very good at consuming. Receiving is another matter entirely.

To really, truly receive something requires enough stillness to let it reach us, and that distinction feels especially relevant to Resona, which is rooted in Mary’s Fiat, her yes at the Annunciation:

May it be done to me according to your word.
—Luke 1:38

Mary’s Fiat begins with receptivity: she listens before she answers; she receives before she offers herself in return. Before What can I make? comes What have I been given? Before What can I say? comes Am I listening?

That same posture is part of what helped shape Resona: a print-forward publication centered on attentive listening, courageous assent, beauty as evangelization, and the holiness hidden within ordinary life.

In a culture always moving on to the next thing, lingering is countercultural.

The Resona launch coincided with the opening of The Inner Room at 424, Paloma & Fig’s new storefront, gathering space, and creative studio in downtown Macon.

The name comes from Christ’s words in Matthew 6:6 to “go to your inner room” and pray.

One makes room for attention on the printed page. The other creates that space physically: a place for gathering, conversation, creativity, and the work happening at Paloma & Fig. The Inner Room will also become the recording home of A Resounding Yes!, bringing another part of that work under the same roof.

A magazine asking us to linger. A room asking us to make space. Music born from a religious life centered on prayer, study, community, and preaching. Different expressions, but perhaps the same invitation underneath them: pay attention.

Which brings me back to the title of the album that brought The Hillbilly Thomists to Macon in the first place: Strange Land.

What Do We Do in a Strange Land?

There are plenty of things about living as a Catholic in the secular world that feel “strange.”

Choosing contemplation when everything competes for our attention. Making something slowly when speed is rewarded. Believing beauty matters even when it can’t be reduced to clicks, conversions, algorithms, or productivity.

Christianity does not promise a life of “neatness.” The more interesting question might be what we do while we’re here.

What has God put in your hands?

O’Connor had a pen and a remarkably strange cast of characters. The Hillbilly Thomists have their Dominican vocation, along with banjos, guitars, fiddles, and mandolins. Mary received an invitation and gave her Fiat.

Our answers won’t all look like those.

Maybe what you’ve been given is a talent for writing, music, or design. Maybe it’s a classroom, a business, a family, a parish, a conversation, or the ability to notice something another person might miss.

In this strange land, I believe we should pay attention to what God has already placed in our hands, receive it well, and find our own way to offer it back.

Please help me to get down under things and find where You are.
—Flannery O’Connor 

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Keep Exploring

Meet The Hillbilly Thomists, listen to their music, and follow the Strange Land tour.
Explore The Hillbilly Thomists

Discover more about Flannery O’Connor, Andalusia, and the Georgia landscape behind one of Catholic literature’s most distinctive voices.
Explore Flannery O’Connor

Discover Resona and step inside The Inner Room at 424, the newest expressions of Paloma & Fig’s mission to make room for beauty, faith, and meaningful connection.
Discover Resona + The Inner Room

Join the conversations on faith, vocation, culture, and the many ways we learn to give God our “yes.”
Listen to A Resounding Yes!

Explore Paloma & Fig and the mission behind the stories, spaces, conversations, and creative work bringing all of these threads together.
Discover Paloma & Fig

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With over eight years of experience and a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing, Marge Hynes is a dynamic writer whose portfolio spans SEO-driven copywriting, journalism, and marketing—a versatile skill set that allows her to craft compelling content for Paloma & Fig’s projects.

Marge’s Catholic faith serves as the cornerstone of her work. She approaches storytelling with thoughtfulness and a deep appreciation for the Lord’s own creative power. Her love of the written word shines through in every project, helping clients articulate their message with clarity, heart, and purpose.

When she’s not writing, Marge can be found leading praise and worship, diving into theological books, or exploring the great outdoors with her loyal dog, Augustine (Auggie for short).