SouthernGospelBlog.com

In the News:

• Hissong is releasing a project with Christian Davis singing bass; though he’s not being billed as a full member of the group, he is expected to do at least one concert per month with them. (Hat tip, Adam.)
• Ernie Haase has postponed the Cathedrals Tribute taping from June to an indefinite future date.
• The Talley Trio launched a new website design. It looks great, definitely a step up from their last one (though the black and white version of their current album’s cover photos seems a little odd to me).

Upcoming Reviews:

• 2/6/09: Sunday Morning Ivories (Kim Collingsworth)
• 2/13/09: Bill Gaither’s 12 All-Time Favorite Homecoming Hymns (Cracker Barrel)
• 2/20/09: DVD: Why? (Aaron Wilburn)

Housekeeping announcement:

I’m in the process of a server migration right now. Right now, I’m transferring domains; I’ll transfer hosting some time tonight or next week. The site may be down for a few hours at points. If you think of it, I’d appreciate prayers that everything goes smoothly!

Reader Jamie emailed me with a link to several videos from last night’s debut of (most of) the new Gaither Vocal Band:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jgilliam77

Ever the one with the sense of history, Bill Gaither had the new GVB come on stage with the song that kicked the Homecoming phenemonon off:

Ernie Haase has posted a clip of the new Gaither Vocal Band on his blog, here: http://ehssq.blogspot.com/2009/01/video-clips-of-new-gaither-vocal-band.html. The clip apparently includes clips from both their sound check and the concert itself.

Mark Lowry had previous commitments for the group’s first weekend out, but with just these four, to say the sound is promising is somewhat of an understatement.

Rating: 4.5 (of 5)

Average Song Rating: 4.45 (of 5)

Song List: Holy Ghost Wind; Blame It On Love; Jesus Saves; Pathway Built For Two; Ten Thousand Years; Ready To Leave; On My Journey Home; Mama Was Praying For Me; He’s Worthy; It Is Well With My Soul; Jerusalem..

Available from: Artist.

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Live projects typically fall into one of two categories. Either the artist sings all their hits (or all the songs off their current project, if they come out with a video per year), or they debut all or mostly all new songs. It’s a little hard to pin down which category North America Live falls into.

The project has several new songs (”Blame it on Love,” “Pathway Built for Two.”) It also has a number of songs new to the Hoppers (”Ready to Leave,” “Ten Thousand Years,” “It is Well.”)

But the project also includes a number of the Hopper’s long-time favorites—”Jesus Saves,” “On My Journey Home,” and, as a closer, “Jerusalem.” So it’s not exactly a project of new songs or a project of classics.

Though it might be hard to categorize, it’s an excellent project. The mixture of soundtracks and (evidently) a live band works well. Unlike most live projects, which are recorded entirely in one night, the Hoppers recorded a half-dozen different concerts in the United States and Canada in July and August and selected the takes that came out the best.

If the Hoppers had managed to find eleven new songs this strong, the project would have definitely been five-star quality. As it is, though, it comes pretty close.

Several years ago, if you had books or CDs you didn’t want and were looking for other titles, it made sense to sell the old ones and buy the new ones. But enough people are selling online to bring prices down enough that book / CD swapping now makes more financial sense. On a swapping site, someone requests a title from you. You send it and get credit to request something you wanted from someone else

Crunch the numbers. $3 is an average price for many titles on Amazon. They’ll give you another $4 in shipping credit but take $3 away in their commission. So you end up with $4, and use $2.50 of it to mail the title. So you’re $1.50 of the way towards purchasing something else at the same price – where you’d pay $7 ($3 + $4 s/h). So you would have to sell several items to have enough to purchase another at the same price.

Under the swapping model, someone requests a book from you. You mail it to them and have a credit to request a book or CD, which someone will pay for the postage to mail to you. Sites might have fees, like 50 cents per transaction, to help keep the site running, but it tends to be minimal.

I’m a part of a trio of sites, PaperBackSwap.com (which does accept hardcovers!), SwapaCD.com, and SwapaDVD.com. One nice feature of the three sites is that you can move credits around – if, as in my case, you’re downsizing books and looking for CDs, you can transfer credits.

SwapaCD has several dozen Southern Gospel CDs posted—better than the average Wal-Mart or Christian bookstore, but not all that great. I was thinking about it, and it occurred to me that if I spread the word a little, and some of us got together and posted CDs we didn’t want, we could really get something going, far more efficiently than if we were selling them back and forth.

If you’re looking for titles not currently on the site, you can add them to a “wishlist” and either automatically request them or be notified when someone posts them.

Here are my public profiles (except for SwapaDVD, where I don’t have anything posted):

http://southerngospelfan.swapacd.com/profile/

http://southerngospelfan.paperbackswap.com/profile/

If you join and post titles, post a link to your profile below. And if you join, they ask who sent you—my username on all three sites is southerngospelfan.

Jeff Snyder, who previously sang the third part with Mike & Kelly Bowling, has joined the Greenes. (This means Paul Lancaster has left the Greenes.) If the Bowlings have selected a replacement, his name hasn’t yet been announced.

Never assume the worst in a situation. Always assume the best, and you’ll usually be right.

Triumphant Quartet has posted 1-minute samples of their new CD on their myspace page, http://www.myspace.com/triumphantqt. (Hat tip, Dinana!)

My guess from these clips is that “The Day of the Lord” will be my favorite track off the new project. “One Drop of Blood” also sounds strong.

“Amazed at the Change” is the same song that Liberty Quartet used as the title track of their most recent project, released last year. The song was penned by Rodney Griffin. The arrangements aren’t much different.

The black choir on “Jesus Built This Church on Love” sounds interesting.

The photo posted with last week’s press release announcing the new Gaither Vocal Band lineup was such a bad Photoshop that even tenor Wes Hampton referred to it as “hideous.”

Anyhow, Hampton has posted a much better picture of the new lineup:

Matt Felts announced here that he will be leaving Cross 4 Crowns. He stated: “I want to thank Cross 4 Crowns for the opurtunity to work with them. I pray God blesses them in the direction they are headed. I look forward to the doors God will open in my ministry.”

After coming out with an impressive major-label debut project (reviewed here), this is the group’s third tenor in about a year’s time. If they can find another tenor at the level of the last two—and manage to keep him for a few years—they have a solid chance to move into one of the top tiers of Southern Gospel groups.