Great New Denver Worship Artist - John Gooch

The tide continues to turn in modern worship.  Faux-hawks are increasingly being covered with thinking caps.  I met John Gooch a few years ago when he moved to Denver from out of the state.  He’s finishing up a degree at Denver Seminary, and one of the primary goals of his studies is to be the best worship leader he can be.  I praise God that we’re seeing more up-and-coming worship leaders hungering for deep theology and wide biblical reflection.  Would to God that more aspiring worship leaders believe that the best thing for their craft is a deep love for God honed in the woodshed of thoughtful, intentional Bible-training.  Because John is one of these kinds of worship leaders, I value him, even enough to ask him to sub for me at Cherry Creek when I’ve been out of town.

John has just released a stellar EP entitled The Waiting Room.  It’s a clean and clever pop-rock album, some of the songs on which have great congregational potential.  My favorite track is “Home,” a powerful ballad which internalizes and personalizes the story of the Prodigal Son.  You get the sense that John is writing from the perspective and voice of the Prodigal himself and yet sharing something deeply personal about his own story.  There’s a lot in this song for everyone to identify with, as the first verse and chorus illustrate:

I’ve been a liar
And I’ve been a thief
I’ve killed another’s hope
And I’ve stolen their dreams

How could You ever love such a broken man like me?
Still You say, “I love you, son. Come home.”

All my fear, all my shame
On the cross You took my blame
In Your grace I’m not alone
God, you say, “Come home.”

Ahh…the good news just never gets old.

There are a lot of emerging singer-songwriters out there making records.  What makes John stand out?  Well, for one, not every singer-songwriter has a great voice, and even fewer have that natural, knock-you-out vocal sound (I think I fall short of this, myself).  John does; his voice is pro.  Secondly, if The Waiting Room is the beginning of John’s official songwriting journey, then we’re in for a treat as we see him develop in his craft, because these songs are both solid and deep.  John has a clear passion to inhale theology and exhale praise through song.  The Waiting Room typifies this and prophesies of greater depths to come.  Part of my hope and prayer for John is to figure out how to wed the passion and heart of modern worship with the church's rich history of hymnody.  I don't know that we've fully seen the potential of that explosive combination, and I think John's the type of songwriter that will have the chops to do it.

The album was recorded in a fine studio (Epicenter) out here in Boulder, CO, and its mix is fresh and clean.  I love some of the electric guitar choices and colors, especially on “Beautiful Savior” and “You Are.”

Go give The Waiting Room a listen, and pick up a copy while you’re at it!

CCM Artist Challenges Modern Worship to Write Better Songs and Embrace Liturgy

Fernando Ortega has always behaved as one cut from a different swatch of the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) cloth.  His instrumentation has almost always been a bit more folky and “classical.”  His melodies have always been a bit more lyrical.  His albums have always shown an awareness and embracing of the Church’s hymn tradition. 

Click to read more ...

All About Our New Album, Without Our Aid

Without Our Aid is the second full-length release of Zac Hicks + Cherry Creek Worship, out of Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church in Denver, CO.  Their debut album, The Glad Sound, was their first hymns project, released in 2009, and between that time and the present, Zac has contributed to three other compilation projects with Cardiphonia: The Psalms of Ascents (March 2010) , Hymns of Faith: Songs for the Apostles’ Creed(October 2010), and Pentecost Songs (June 2011).

VISION

Without Our Aid is an experiment in songwriting for the sake of building bridges between two current camps in modern church music—the so-called “hymns/rehymn movement” and mainstream modern evangelical worship.  The album’s aim is to combine the energy and vitality of the modern worship sound (made most popular by groups like Passion and Hillsong), with the depth, theology, and historical connectedness of Christian hymnody across time.  From a songwriting perspective, the two do not easily go together: hymns are usually written in through-composed verses, while modern worship songs tend to have three and sometimes even four unique sections (verses, choruses, bridges, and “surprise” refrains or endings).  Though hymn purists might decry the liberties taken in bending and arranging the original hymn-texts, and though modern worship connoisseurs may consider the texts too verbose and archaic, our passion for greater growth and unity convinces us that Without Our Aid is a unique and worthwhile project.

STYLE & PRODUCTION

The goal of Without Our Aid was to create an album which sounded live in order to capture that more tangible “moment” of corporate worship.  It is not a live album in the true sense, mostly because our current setting does not have the bandwidth to be able to pull off a live recording.  However, the recording was pieced together in the “live” setting of our reverberant, 900-seat, traditional sanctuary, employing ambient mic techniques for all the major instruments.  A backing choir of approximately 20-30 voices sang through the album multiple times; those sessions ended up being powerful times of worship themselves.
Stylistically, Without Our Aid is best characterized as a “modern arena-worship” record—big drums, driving electric guitars, layered synths, crowd noise, and a live “congregational” sound.

Click to read more ...

A Significant Achievement in Bridging the Hymns Movement and Mainstream Modern Worship

Last Friday, the worshiptogether.com blog gave away a beautiful re-tuning of the famous Wesley hymn, “And Can it Be.”  Worshiptogether is the unifying umbrella-brand under which almost all the major heavy-hitters in mainstream modern worship reside.  Besides the fact that this version of “And Can it Be” is very tasteful and inspiring (I’ve heard some that don’t quite hit the mark), there is a bigger story behind this track.  It is a part of an entire album called Love Divine, scheduled for US release through EMI CMG on April 19, 2011, whose subtitle reads: “The Songs of Charles Wesley for Today’s Generation.”

Screeeeeeeeeeeeech!  What?  Folks, this is a big deal.  Let me try to paint the picture for you (keep in mind that these are broad-brush generalizations).  Contemporary worship, birthed in the 70s, matured in the 80s and 90s, and firmly established in the early 2000s, began as an anti-traditional movement.  It emerged out of a youth culture that despised hardened religiosity and sought authentic, meaningful, intimate fellowship and relationship with Jesus.  For this generation, the traditional hymns of the church were a chief illustration of the deadness they were reacting against.  Contemporary worship was lyrically anti-traditional—texts were simple, not complex; forms were repetitive, not through-composed; subject-matter was intimate, not transcendent.  It was musically anti-traditional—classical choirs and organ were out; pop bands were in.

This is not to say that the contemporary worship fully abandoned hymnody.  They kept a few hymns.  But they kept them on their terms.  The evidence of this is found that for every contemporary worship “hymns” album out there, the same twenty or so hymns are being recycled (e.g. “How Great Thou Art,” “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” etc.), with very little awareness that the hundreds of years prior to but especially after the Protestant Reformation yielded a treasure trove of thousands upon thousands of verses of glorious ecclesiastical poetry (see, for example, the comments in my review of the iWorship hymns album).  Some have asked me if I was excited to see Passion produce a hymns album (Hymns Ancient and Modern, 2004), and my response was, “a little.”  It was encouraging, but it was still a rendering of the more popular hymns that betrayed a lack of true engagement of modern worship with the Christian hymn tradition.

But, in less than a month, the modern worship world will be treated to this track-listing, from these fairly well-known mainstream modern worship artists:

01) I Know That My Redeemer Lives – Tim Hughes (of “Here I Am to Worship”)
02) Rejoice The Lord Is King – John Ellis
03) And Can It Be – Jason Roy (of Building 429)
04) Jesus We Look To Thee – Kim Walker-Smith (of Jesus Culture)
05) Jesus Lover Of My Soul – Chris Eaton
06) Come Thou Long Expected Jesus – Brian Johnson
07) Praise The Lord Who Reigns Above – Leigh Nash (of Sixpence None the Richer)
08) Jesus The Name High Over All – Chris Quilala (of Jesus Culture)
09) O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing – Chris McClarney
10) Love Divine – Jenn Johnson (of Bethel Live)
11) Christ The Lord Is Risen Today – Aaron Keyes
12) Christ Whose Glory Fills The Skies – Mark Roach
13) O For A Heart To Praise my God – Brenton Brown (of “Hallelujah (Your Love is Amazing),” and a lot of others)

What is significant about this track-listing is that the songwriters who pulled these artists together (Chris Eaton and John Hartley) have drilled down deep into hymnody.  They did some research.  They were aware.  They acknowledged that the texts written by Charles Wesley over two hundred years ago have lasting value for modern worship today.  This album, from an historical standpoint in church music, is much more significant than Passion’s hymns album. 

I have to believe that the influence of the hymns movement is coming of age.  Something important has taken place.  Modern worship is continuing to turn its head backward as it moves forward.  I do not know how closely the tracks on Love Divine will stick to the original texts of Wesley.  I do not know whether all the arrangements will be as appealing as the one I heard.  But I have high hopes, and I look forward to hearing and reviewing this album, Lord-willing.  I hope there will be more like it.

If this album intrigues you, there is a wonderful, lengthy description, with many helpful details, over at emusicwire.com. 



Austin Lovelace, Church Music Legend, Passes into Glory

A few weeks ago, I developed a new friendship with someone I highly respect and admire.  Austin Lovelace has influenced thousands of church musicians to the glory of God and the strengthening of Christ's church cross-denominationally.  When Dr. Lovelace and I spent that afternoon together over coffee, I had no idea how short the time would be.  He was, of course, very old, but he was full of energy.

Dr. Lovelace is certainly a traditionalist when it comes to worship.  He's an accomplished organist, a gifted choir director, and a sensitive and thoughtful composer of musical works, especially of the choral type.  Our own choir has sung many of his compositions.  My colleage, Douglas Macomber (organist and choirmaster), had the privilege of studying under him at Southern Methodist University.  Dr. Lovelace's traditionalism did not stop him from pursuing me for an afternoon conversation.

What I learned from that afternoon was that Dr. Lovelace's deepest passion was hymnody.  Of all the things he loved and devoted himself to in church music, hymnody was his baby.  In fact, The Hymn Society is largely the work of his own heart.  When we got together, Dr. Lovelace was chiefly interested in talking to me about hymns, my love for them, and what I hope the church can do with them.  I told him about the hymns movement among young people all across the United States today--young people seeking to fill some of the gaps left by the contemporary worship movement.  Dr. Lovelace and I, though with differing stylistic tastes, shared the same passion to see the church remember, utilize, and pass on hymns.  Dr. Lovelace even condescended (he wouldn't put it that way, but I would, considering what a great musician he is) to have me play some of our hymn re-sets off The Glad Sound.  He didn't scowl.  In fact, he was bobbing his head a time or two.  I'm sure the synchopations and pop inflections weren't his cup of tea, but he was engaging and encouraging me to continue this pursuit.  He also told me to join the Hymn Society, because, as he articulated, that organization would need fresh voices from folks like myself, even if that meant pushing the envelope stylistically a bit.  I plan on joining and hopefully even submitting an article or two to their periodical, The Hymn.

Perhaps what impressed me most about Dr. Lovelace that afternoon was his generous spirit.  Whenever I meet someone who has a more generous spirit than I, I am usually humbled and motivated to pursue that kind of heart in my own life.  Such was the effect of my afternoon with Dr. Lovelace.  He was a gentleman, and even in what I now know to be his twilight weeks of life this side of heaven, he was interested in mentoring a new generation to sieze his own passions.  A piece of Dr. Lovelace's heart and vision will live on in me because he gave me the time of day.

According to an email circulating through the American Guild of Organists (AGO), Dr. Lovelace was put in hospice care after being diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer in mid-March.  He stepped into the arms of Christ on Sunday, April 25, 2010.  Thank you, Dr. Lovelace, for your tireless service of Christ's church.  May you now enjoy your eternal reward and perpetual Sabbath. 

iworship hymns...c'mon, let's think differently about how to "redo" hymns

Check out the album. If you've been checking me out, you know me by now.  You know that I'm an odd lover of traditional hymns and modern worship.  So I usually pick up anything that says "hymns" on it and looks remotely modern, to see what kind of work is going on in that field.  I therefore picked up "iworship hymns" from Integrity music.  They've been putting out this iworship series for a while now, and they're latest issue is an album dedicated to hymns.  It is a compilation of previously-recorded, previously-released tracks from great Integrity artists like Paul Baloche, Gateway Worship, Hillsong, New Life, etc. The album is a good one.  It's a great listen and has great production.  The texts of the songs are wonderful, and the worship leaders are all great, authentic people, passionate about God's glory.  But I'm discouraged about what's going on in modern worship with regards to "resetting" hymns, and this is a prime example.* I'll begin my analysis with a vignette of a typical conversation I often have with people when I tell them about what I'm trying to accomplish with The Glad Sound. I'm sure my friends at Indelible Grace, Red Mountain Church, and Sojourn Community Church have had similar dialogues. Person:  So what's your project about? Zac:  We're taking the texts of old hymns and setting them to new music...new melodies, chord structures, and instrumentation. Person:  Oh, I LOVE that!  I love it when we sing "updated" hymns in our church. Zac:  Tell me about that a bit more. Person:  You know, when they take an old hymn and "jazz it up" by adding drums or guitars or something.  They just make those outdated hymns contemporary. Zac:  Oh, cool.  (sigh...)  [the conversation continues as I try to explain how what we're doing is different, and hopefully better] I don't know how many times I have had this conversation.  People don't understand that when we're "resetting" hymns, we are not keeping the music, at all.  We are not "updating" or "jazzing up" the melodies and chord structures.  It's as though we're taking a written poem and setting music to it for the first time.  The old tune and the new tune have nothing to do with each other, except that they can be affixed to the same text. I'm not completely against this type of re-hymn setting.  I think in some cases it works and sounds great (for some reason, I've felt that songs in 3/4 and 6/8 work better for this).  But more often than not, it sounds forced, canned, and a bit artificial.  There's a good reason for this.  The music was composed in a different style and genre (often block chord writing) that doesn't easily and naturally import to modern styles (melodies with fewer chord changes between).  Often, I feel that the original composers are rolling over in their graves when their music is bent out of shape.  (Again, I'm not totally against it...I plan on at least attempting to jam the plainsong chant melody of "Of the Father's Love Begotten" into a modern groove on our next album...traditionalites, don't shoot me, please). These types of conversations, and these types of "updated hymns" albums like "iworship hymns," betray a myopia quite pervasive in mainstream evangelical music: the only way to do hymns in modern worship settings is to take the original melodies and affix a new instrumentation, syncopation, and beat to them.  Friends, THERE IS ANOTHER WAY!  And this other way is something that's been going on for centuries (see my previous post on this for more detail).  For centuries, musicians have sought to re-clothe an old hymn in the current musical vernacular.  Almost any time you look in a hymnal and see a text written in one year and the music written much later, that's usually the case. Why is it that we only think we have one option here?  Why is it that new modern worship "hymns" projects deliver to us the same thing again and again?  Please don't take me as complaining about these projects.  I'm more observing and lamenting the fact that there aren't more who are "updating" hymns in ways which feel more natural to everyone.  In conversations where I'm talking to a lover of old hymns who actually gets what I'm doing, they're appreciative, not only that I'm giving modern worshipers a taste of old hymns, but that I'm not tampering with the musical integrity of the tunes previously used for these hymns. I just know that there is so much more to be done in re-setting hymns, but every time I pick up a new "hymns" album, it's just the same old concept, recycled.  There are SO many hymns to be brought back to the church, and there are SO many great songwriters out there!  Step up!  You can have so much more freedom with these hymns than you might realize! Peace, love, dove. *One mild exception to my discussion on the iworship hymns album is "When I Survey," by Kathryn Scott, re-set to the tune to "O Danny Boy."  It's actually a beautiful setting and brings out some different nuances of the text that I'm interested in exploring.

Click to read more ...

old hymns, new music...NOT a new thing

Every innovative endeavor is bound to receive some backlash... And I've certainly had my share of less than enthusiastic comments about my re-setting of old hymn texts to new music.  Tonight is an evening where I feel like proffering a response. Sometimes I encounter old hymn lovers who give off the air (or say explicitly) that they don't appreciate old hymns being tinkered with, tampered with, even desecrated.  Perhaps some are aware (but I find that many are not) that such a practice of setting old texts to new melodies for modern ears and new generations of Christian assemblies has seen many iterations over church history.  Even more ironic is that some of the beloved hymns that I and my hymns movement cohorts are accused of desecrating are already once-over desecrated texts.  Perhaps, then, for the person unfamiliar with the history of hymnody, I'll crack open the door of just how historic re-hymning truly is by offering a brief sketch of one man, Lowell Mason (1792-1872). Mason was a Massachusettes-born Georgia boy, banker turned church musician.  After the explosive heyday of Watts and Wesley (when they shifted in the eyes of the church from being the contemporary movers and shakers to being the more staid, "traditional" hymns...funny how that works), notwithstanding some notable hymns and hymnwriters in between, church song was growing stale.  The old hymns felt tired, and worshipers wanted more fresh hymns for a new era in evangelicalism.  The flurry of the first Great Awakening had come and gone, and the revival dust was settling.  Mason observed American congregations, saddened by the lifelessness in the singing.  He commented:

“Go where we may into the place of worship…when the singing commences…the congregation are either on the one hand gazing at the select performers to admire the music, or on the other expressing their dissatisfaction by general symptoms of restlessness.”*

Mason was dissatisfied with lifelessness and decided to do something about it.  He did so, not by shirking the traditions but by re-expressing them in modern ways.  He began affixing new tunes, melodies, and chord structures to glorious old hymn texts...a musical garb he believed modern listeners in his day would appreciate and resonate with.  Check out the impressive list that the nethymnal offers of over 80 new tunes Mason composed here.  Let me point out a few hymns that Mason re-hymned: Joy to the World! A Watts hymn written in 1719...the original tune of which was certainly not what we sing today!  Mason took the music of G. F. Handel and arranged it for congregational singing...a tune that is now immortally tied to this text. There is a Fountain Filled with Blood. William Cowper's 1772 hymn saw new light when Mason re-energized it and hymns of the same meter for modern ears.  Interestingly, the tune that we often sing with it today (not Mason's tune) is a 19th century camp song (ah, those silly youth and their wild music!). When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. This beloved 1707 Watts hymn was not sung to the tune we know and love, until Mason came along and wrote "Hamburg" in 1824, blessing the church in perpetuity. The list could go on. In the light of this, it's quite ironic when hard and fast hymn-lovers criticize folks like myself who attempt to clothe old hymns in new music.  Were it not for the members of the "hymns movement" of old, like Lowell Mason, they would not have some of their most beloved hymns!  Indelible Grace, Red Mountain Church, Sojourn Community Church, Sovereign Grace...they're not doing anything new.  They're recycling a repeated practice in church music history--giving back historic hymns to the modern church by re-setting them with new tunes and instrumentation. Though some traditional hymn lovers criticize this practice, at the end of the day we join hands with the same burden.  It's a burden to see to it that great hymns don't lose their place in the changing church.  Some hymn lovers believe that the only way to relieve this burden is to dig one's heels in and keep singing them the way they've always been sung.  Re-tuning them is a transgression too far across the line.  I humbly disagree, because, though I share their burden not only for the texts but the music, I find that the loss of music is by far and away the lesser of two evils (and sometimes the loss of music is not an evil at all, but a great good...as some of those horrid tunes need to be put in the grave! :)).  I've waded long enough in the stream of modern worship to know that "sing em our way or the highway" will only polarize, divide, and push away.  For now, modern worship, for better or worse, is tied to a certain set of musical priorities and parameters, and the music is not ancillary to the worship expression but part of the DNA of what draws worshipers to that style (which, as history tells, will change, too). So all we're doing in the hymns movement is attempting to be 21st century Masons.  We believe in the power of these old texts.  Therefore, with our musical ability, we'll attempt to smuggle them in modern music, so that perhaps some might give them a hearing and be pleasantly surprised when a poetic profundity socks them in the gut, drawing them deeper into knowledge, insight, wisdom, and the worship of God. And if this little post can't convince some of my criticizers that what I'm doing is worthwhile, at least perhaps it can take some of the blinders off, curing historical myopia. *Thomas Hastings, Biblical Repertory, July 1829, pp. 414, 415

Click to read more ...

isaac watts: pioneer of "contemporary worship"

Isaac Watts (1674-1748): English pastor, author, teacher, and one of the greatest hymn-writers of all time.  Many do not know that Watts was a polarizing figure in his day because of the startling changes he was introducing to Protestant worship.  After the Reformation through to Watts’ time, congregations almost exclusively sang Psalmody—hymns whose texts were exactly or closely derived from those of the biblical Psalms.  Young Watts found these “traditional” services dry and spiritually devoid, and one day (so the legend goes) he returned from worship complaining about the poor quality of the hymns.  His father responded, probably wanting just to keep him quiet, “Give us something better, young man.”  Watts’ whole life, as it turns out, seems to be a response to that initial challenge by his father.  The Church experienced a rebirth as the “contemporary” hymns of Watts and others who followed flooded parishes with theologically rich, highly emotive, powerfully engaging songs of worship.  Through Watts and others, the Holy Spirit breathed fresh life into the worship of Christ’s church, not taking away from the glorious heritage of biblical Psalmody, but adding to it a rich dimension of “hymns and spiritual songs.”  It is ironic, then, that traditional worship is often pegged as boring, dry, or even lifeless, when it is heir to some of the most exciting revolutions in church music history!

Click to read more ...