The Good Old Days & Keeping The Faith
We begin a new series every Monday in this space. I’m going to go back to explore my early influences in Contemporary Christian Music. This would cover the period from around 1976 to 1986. Those were the years that were most interesting to me, similar to the counterpart in secular music, the Singer/Songwriter era. Among my favorites were Second Chapter of Acts, Andrae Crouch, Phil Keaggy, Keith Green, Larry Norman and Michael Omartian.
As a result of the release of my Praise and Worship album, Let Praise Arise, I was invited by Melody Green to attend a Christian Artist Retreat at Last Days Ministries in Lindale, TX. There were two retreats I attended, the first one in 1985 and another in 1986. The first one was very intimate and an experience I’ll never forget. A week together with what I considered to be all my “heroes” of the faith. A lot of fun stuff, and a lot of great teaching from Winkie Pratney and John Dawson. We took group pictures each time, all wearing an official shirt that said, “Garden Valley Artist Retreat”. Garden Valley, TX is actually the official location of all the activity, it was basically a 4 way stop sign and a bunch of Jesus Freaks! But the mailing address was Lindale, TX and that became known at the time as the hub of what’s happening now in Contemporary Christian Music (hereafter referred to as CCM).
Rather than run through a list of all the names and who’s who, I thought I would do a weekly segment, featuring two or three artists at a time. I pick out songs each one recorded that impacted me in a strong way. Today’s featured artists will be Don Francisco and Chuck Girard. The photo on the left is the group shot, and the inset zooms in on the featured Artist. I include myself in the picture, because I was young and still had hair.
This first video is from Don Francisco, who had an absolutely monster hit song (although we didn’t call it that at the time, because all the focus was on giving God the absolute glory and realizing we were just a small part of the big picture). And that was really the deal. It was a movement built around a lifestyle of commitment to adhering to the teachings of Jesus Christ. We were all "googly eyes" about Jesus, not star struck with with performers, as talented as they were. It was such a fabulous time in life, I’ll always treasure the days!
I first met Don when he came to give a concert at the small church where I led worship, long before he was popular in the CCM charts. He performed a new song he had just written, He’s Alive. It was just him and his acoustic guitar, no backing tracks, even. I still get chills just remembering the sledgehammer effect of experiencing the story the song presents, from the perspective of Peter, a disciple of Jesus.
This next video is from Chuck Girard, who was a member of a band called Love Song. This will probably get me in trouble, but I thought the Love Song album was just “ok”. It was Chuck’s solo album that really grabbed my attention. He was clearly in another league and it seemed to me he boldly stepped out of the confinements of his previous band and launched into the kind of artist he was meant to be. One of his songs, Sometimes Alleluia, became a staple selection as I led worship in many places. The song here is called Rock and Roll Preacher, and it was on high rotation in my personal listening compilations. (The original mix tape, literally on cassette!)
Although I completely removed myself from listening to secular music, particularly rock and roll, during the days I was involved in CCM, I gradually realized the lack of depth in addressing the real issues of everyday life and what it meant to face real problems and work through them. In other words, lessons in life that led to maturity. I love many portions of this song from Billy Joel, Keeping The Faith. I’ve included the portions below as the lines that most fueled growth in my soul:
If it seems like I've been lost in let's remember
If you think I'm feeling older and missing my younger days
Oh, then you should have known me much better
'Cause my past is something that never got in my way
Oh, no
Still I would not be here now if I never had the hunger
And I'm not ashamed to say the wild boys were my friends
Oh, 'cause I never felt the desire
To let music set me on fire
And then I was saved, yeah
That's why I'm keeping the faith
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Keeping the faith
(And the part that is most relevant, a coming of age to me, one of the greatest lyrics ever):
You can get just so much from a good thing
You can linger too long in your dreams
Say goodbye to the oldies but goodies
'Cause the good ole days weren't always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems