Prophets announce producers for new album In a press release today, Ed Hill’s Prophets Quartet announced that their upcoming debut project will be produced by Johnny Minick, Aaron Minick, and Michael Sykes. This project will be Sykes’ first effort after his recent Dove Award win for producing the Gaither Vocal Band Give it Away CD. A...

Will Southern Gospel survive after Bill Gaither retires? Hopefully Bill Gaither will be with us for many more years. But unless Jesus returns first, the day will eventually come when Gaither either retires from road life or passes away. Will Southern Gospel survive after he retires? Right now, the success of the Homecoming series introduces people to Southern...

Mercy’s Mark Quartet Last night, I saw Mercy’s Mark Quartet live in Shelby, Ohio. About 150 people were in attendance. From what I had read of previous Mercy’s Mark concerts (and from hearing their albums), I wasn’t too sure how sure their progressive songs would go over with this mostly older audience, most of...

Website Statistics Averyfineline and Musicscribe both posted their recent website statistics. It had been a while since I checked mine, but reading theirs gave me the curiosity to check mine. In April (to date), this blog was visited 24,157 unique times, with 31,397 page views. That’s an average of 895 visits per day,...

You Raise Me Up (Roy Webb) Those of you who have read my posts here and on Southern Gospel message boards for a while know that I am a fan of the all-live piano solo in a concert setting. Piano solos with soundtracks are nice, but there is very little that can top a master pianist doing all the fills and runs with just ten...

2007 Singing News Fan Award Nominees: Round 2, My Picks Here my picks in the second round of the Singing News Fan Awards: Group – Ernie Haase & Signature Sound. I really, really, really wanted to vote for the Perrys, too. I like both groups equally. Male Singer – Ernie Haase. My first-round pick, Mark Trammell, didn’t even make Top...

Gaither Vocal Band, Lewis Family take home Dove Awards At last night’s Dove Awards, the Gaither Vocal Band took home both Southern Gospel Album of the Year and Southern Gospel Recorded Song of the Year for their album Give it Away and its title track, respectively. Another Southern Gospel group, the Lewis Family, also took home two Dove Awards, winning...

Brian Free & Assurance to appear at Dove Awards I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this. If not, then I guess everyone somehow missed until now that Brian Free & Assurance is scheduled to perform in this evening’s Dove Awards ceremony. The Crabb Family, which has of late seen some CCM success, is also performing, and that’s...

GMA President John Styll on SG John Styll, Jesus Music pioneer and now President of the Gospel Music Association, has this to say about Southern Gospel music: John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, defines gospel music, not as genre, but as a huge umbrella that today covers every conceivable musical style. He said,...

Picking a Pianist Nominee My sisters also have a subscription to Singing News and decide between themselves who they will vote for in the Fan Awards. They had a difficult time deciding who to vote for for Pianist. They decided first that they would vote for someone who was alive. They narrowed it down to Kim Collingsworth and Matthew...