77: DTN Podcast | Jim Alstott Ep. 77 | God Told Me to Make This Record | Drew McManus of Satsang

Drew McManus learned the word that would become his band's name on a mountain pass in Nepal. It means sitting in the company of truth. He's built ten years and six records on it.The new one is called Elohim, and he didn't pick the title. He was told to.We talk about the revelatory experience that preceded it and the illness that followed, about a father who was a preacher and told a skateboarding punk rock kid he had a minister's heart, and about the question Drew asked for years growing up poor in a house he doesn't pretend was safe: why did all of this happen to me? The answer, when it arrived, had changed shape. Perhaps none of it happened to him. Perhaps it happened for him.We also get into why he won't play two of his early songs anymore, what the music industry looks like from the inside when you've refused to play along, the one sentence a Buddhist said to him at a merch table that became a mantra, and a hidden Nipsey Hussle track that he heard on the Pacific Coast Highway beside a friend who'd been in federal prison three hundred days earlier.Elohim is out now. Twenty seven minutes, built to be played start to finish. Satsang plays Garcia's Chicago on November 4th.Every song Drew named, in the order he named them, 21 tracks from Jackson Browne to Nipsey Hussle. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2lrJeDuNf7H8TIAMjd3lXYElohim: https://satsang.ffm.to/elohimSatsang: https://satsangmovement.comInstagram: @satsangChicago: Garcia's Chicago, 4 November 2026Drew McManus is the founder and frontman of Satsang. He named the band after a word he learned on a mountain pass in Nepal in 2013, meaning to sit in the company of truth. Six records later he remains independent and owns all of his music. His new album, Elohim, released 4 September 2026, and the Elohim Tour runs through the autumn. Press photo credit: Drew Korf.CHAPTERS00:00 Intro02:36 The word on a mountain pass in Nepal13:18 How Elohim was made backward28:27 Brian's voicemail as the album intro31:03 A preacher father, and the phrase said most in the Bible36:30 Being told to make a record called Elohim40:25 Malachi, and the name he knew before his son was born49:57 The music round: the songs that made him59:04 Why Bob Marley's lyrics are scripture1:01:17 The hidden Nipsey Hussle track, and the drive down the coast1:08:56 Garcia's Chicago, November 4th