Dianne Wilkinson: The Life and Times of a Gospel Songwriter (by Dianne Wilkinson, with Daniel J. Mount) is now available at Springside, here. This means that those who prefer to make purchases by phone or mail now have a way to get the book!

A list of other sources where it is available for digital or physical online purchase is here.

Yesterday, the Kindle version of Dianne Wilkinson: The Life and Times of a Gospel Songwriter hit #10 on the Amazon Kindle Christian Music Book bestseller list. The list is updated multiple times throughout a day; it’s currently at #19.

For more information on the book, and links to other places it’s available, click here.

The NQC Music Awards are scheduled to run from 2:30 to 4:30 this afternoon, in Freedom Hall at the National Quartet Convention. Right after they end, Dianne Wilkinson will be available for a book signing at the Kingdom Heirs booth to autograph copies of her new autobiography, Dianne Wilkinson: The Life and Times of a Gospel Songwriter (written by Dianne Wilkinson with Daniel J. Mount). More information about the book is here.

I am also heading up to Louisville today, to be there for the signing. See you there!

Last month, I announced the upcoming release of Dianne Wilkinson: The Life and Times of a Gospel Songwriter.

It is now available for purchase on Amazon ($19.99 for the 342-page paperback), here.

At next week’s National Quartet Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, the book will be available all week at the Kingdom Heirs’ table. Dianne Wilkinson will also be at their booth for a book signing on Friday afternoon from ~4:30-5:30, directly after the NQC Music Awards and before the evening’s mainstage program commences. (The Kingdom Heirs’ booth is among the easiest to find at NQC; enter the exhibit hall from Freedom Hall, and the booth is on your left.)

UPDATE: The latest information on how to obtain copies of the book is here: http://www.southerngospelblog.com/books

Many of you remember our December 2009 interview with legendary songwriter Dianne Wilkinson. Ever since I conducted that interview, I knew that her story needed to be told in book form.

I suggested the idea in May 2011. She said that songwriting kept her so busy that she might never find the time to write an autobiography. (She writes, on average, more than one song per week, and over two-thirds of those songs get recorded!) I knew enough of her story to know what a loss it would be to Gospel Music if it was lost to history, so I offered to do a series of interviews and turn them into a book.

She agreed, and the result is Dianne Wilkinson: The Life and Times of a Gospel Songwriter. It chronicles her life story and the stories behind over 150 of her best-known songs.

In 1974, Wilkinson—already a church pianist and Sunday School teacher—realized that she was still unsaved. Her salvation prompted a period of serious doctrinal and theological study which provided a foundation for her songwriting career.

She began writing songs when touring with her family group in the 1970s. Her career took off in the 1980s, in parallel with the group with whom she became closely associated, the Cathedral Quartet. Songs she wrote for them include “Boundless Love,” “Homeland,” “Jesus Has Risen,” and lead singer Glen Payne’s signature song, “We Shall See Jesus.”

She has become Southern Gospel’s most recognized non-performing songwriter. Virtually every major Southern Gospel artist has recorded her songs. Around fifty of her songs have been charting singles on the industry-standard Singing News monthly radio charts; seven have reached #1. Her songs have also received multiple Dove Awards® nominations, over a dozen Singing News Fan Awards nominations, and multiple Singing News Fan Awards for Song of the Year.

Dianne Wilkinson: The Life and Times of a Gospel Songwriter will be available for physical purchase from Amazon, and for digital purchase for the Amazon Kindle®, the Barnes and Noble Nook™, the Apple iPad® and iPhone®, the Kobo™ e-reader, and several other formats and venues. A book signing is also planned for the National Quartet Convention.

UPDATE: The latest information on how to obtain copies of the book is here: http://www.southerngospelblog.com/books

Worth Knowing

• The Ball Brothers reached their Kickstarter goal. Congratulations!
• Singing News has a photo of Nick and Jessica (Brown) Trammell with their first child, daughter Tessa.

Worth Reading

• Chris Allman’s songwriting blog is at a new domain, http://hooklinesandsingers.com/.
• Legacy Five calls fans who support their ministry with prayer “Ropeholders.” This morning, I happened across some interesting historical context regarding the origin of the term. William Carey was a pioneering figure in the modern missions movement. Andrew Fuller, a Particular Baptist pastor who was the General Secretary of the society (Baptist Missionary Society) that supported Carey twenty-one years, coined the term “ropeholder.” Fuller said, “Our undertaking in India really appeared to me, on its commencement, to be somewhat like a few men who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mine which had never been explored. We had no one to guide us. And while we were thus deliberating, Carey, as it were, said, ‘Well, I will go down, if you will hold the rope.’ But before he went down, he, as it seemed to me, took an oath from each of us, at the mouth of the pit, to this effect, that while we lived, we should never let go the rope.” (Quite from this Fuller audio-biography; hat-tip to Friday Night Revival.)

Worth Watching

Here’s a rare video of Southern Gospel songwriter Dianne Wilkinson on the piano:

Worth Discussing

It’s open thread Saturday—you decide!

3:1 Reviews offer three highlights of an album and one area that could have been improved.

1. Jordan Wilburn: Everyone knew Jonathan Wilburn was one of the best singers in Southern Gospel. What we didn’t know was that Jordan Wilburn was also a vocalist of that caliber. This duo has been turning heads so quickly that they may as well take a chiropractor on the road.

2. “A Cross Became my Saving Grace”: An unusual chord progression builds this mellow testimony song into an immediately memorable track. Jordan Wilburn’s high lead vocal brings the song, written by Dianne Wilkinson and Joseph Habedank, to life.

3. “Jesus Will”: This Dianne Wilkinson / Jerry Salley is the sort of accessible and immediately singable song that will have you tapping your foot and humming along by the second or third play.

+1 or :1? Diversity: This album is all over the place stylistically. They try country, they try bluegrass, they try bluesy Southern Gospel, they try progressive Southern Gospel, and probably a few other things, too. And they pull each off each with equal aplomb. Is it too diverse for Southern Gospel, or is it exactly where Southern Gospel needs to go?

Worth Knowing

• Gold City: I don’t discuss upcoming charts unless someone else has made them public, but Gold City tweeted yesterday evening that Peter James & John is going to #1 on the Singing News radio charts. This is incredibly welcome news for the group; they haven’t had a #1 in well over a decade; their last one, “He Said” in 2000, was also written by Dianne Wilkinson. This is also their tenth #1 hit.
• Ryan Seaton Quartet: On February 17th, the Ryan Seaton Quartet will appear at a concert in Evansville, Indiana. A poster on baritone Andrew Goldman’s Facebook page indicates that they’ll announce their official name there. Pianist Roy Webb will appear at the concert, but he’s being billed as a special guest, not a member. It’s not known if he will be announced as a new member there.
• Karen Peck & New River: Joyful Noise, a musical starring Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah, and others, opened yesterday. It includes this performance from Karen Peck Gooch.

Worth Watching

Here’s a first look at the Booth Brothers singing the Gaither song “Tell Me,” from an upcoming project:

Also worth watching: This gem from the mid-1980s Cathedrals, “Into His Presence,” is all too forgotten today:

Worth Discussing

It’s open thread Saturday—you decide!

When the Kingsmen released Grace Says this summer, the closing track, “Loving Shepherd, Gracious God,” immediately stood out. When I reviewed the project, here, it was a no-brainer to name the song as one of the three biggest highlights and as a radio single pick. I even interviewed the song’s author, Dianne Wilkinson, about the song.

You can now stream the entire song on Grooveshark, for free, here, and hear it for yourself. (And yes, though it had an errant youthful stage where it flouted the law, Grooveshark does now pay songwriter and SoundExchange royalties.)

Now I am often a particular fan of mellow songs; from “I See a Crimson Stream” to “Oh, the Thought that Jesus Loves Me” to “That’s the Place I’m Longing to Go,” these songs are often the ones I play time and again. So perhaps, I thought, I am biased toward the style.

However, other reviewers have agreed. In fact, this consensus has been surprisingly widespread, enough that I concluded it deserved a slow-news-day post of its own.

Musicscribe: [EDIT, 3/16/13: Broken link removed.]

Ordinarily, I gravitate toward faster songs, but the highlight of Grace Says for me is “Loving Shepherd, Gracious God.” … Hearing “Loving Shepherd, Gracious God” sparked my interest to the point that I’d want to seek this CD out and buy it.

Friday Night Revival:

If there were a Ray Dean Reese signature (and there has been), this may be the new one.  This song has been a hot topic on other blogs, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.  Taken from Psalm 23, this seems fit for Reese at this time in his life, not just because of his bout with cancer, but because of it’s wisdom, because of its signficance, because of its emptiness, because of its overflowing ability to point us to a loving Shepherd who “sympathizes with us in our weakness”.  A high priest, a king, a suffering servant, a Shepherd for “normal” folk.  It’s smooth and refreshing.

Brian Crout: [EDIT, 3/16/13: Broken link removed.]

The other of the strongest songs is “Loving Shepherd, Gracious God,” a beautiful Dianne Wilkinson mid-tempo number featuring Ray Dean Reese.

Nate S.:

This new song written by Dianne Wilkinson … may be the most lyrically profound on the entire album. It is a beautiful song led by Ray Reese on the verses, and Hutson on the chorus. It is a excellent way to close out an all around fantastic album, Dianne has done it again this time taking a passage out of the bible (the 23rd psalm, and writing a lyrical masterpiece). I have to say that this song has to be my favorite (lyrically) on the entire album.

Wes Burke:

Reviews of the newest Kingsmen album, Grace Says (including the one upcoming on this site), have all pointed to “Loving Shepherd, Gracious God” as a highlight due to Ray Reese’s touching vocal solo on the second verse.  As good as it is on disc, it’s even better live.

Several other reviewers praised the song, but focused their comments more on the performance than the song itself.

All told, this is a rather remarkable testament that a song doesn’t have to be big or fast to touch lives.

3:1 Reviews offer three highlights of an album and one area that could have been improved.

1. “My Child is Coming Home”: This is a great song and a great performance. A few years have done wonders for Nick Trammell’s voice; his increased vocal richness and maturity call to mind a mid-1980s Mark Trammell (his father). He’s well on his way to being Jimmy Blackwood to his father’s James Blackwood. But even more impressive than the vocal delivery is the song, which Nick co-wrote with his father: If he’d written this when he was with the Perrys, this song would have been nominated for “Song of the Year.” It’s the best song the Browns have recorded to date.

2. “Worth of It All”: This song about the events leading up to and following the Crucifixion fuses a Classical-influenced track with a soaring 6/8 melody that bursts with the energy of a Keith & Kristyn Getty Celtic song. Michaela Brown delivers the chorus with vocal runs reminiscent of yodeling. The song, co-written by Nick and Jessica Trammell, joins “My Child is Coming Home” as stronger than any previous song the Browns have recorded.

3. Nick Trammell as a songwriter: Before I saw songwriter credits, I listened through the project and noted the six strongest songs: “Now and Forevermore” (written by Michaela Brown and Nick Trammell), “Good Enough” (Nick Trammell), “My Child is Coming Home” (Nick & Mark Trammell); “Silent for Me” (Michaela Brown, Dianne Wilkinson); “Worth of It All” (Nick & Jessica Trammell); “Still My Child” (Nick Trammell). With one exception, each of these songs have a common thread: Nick Trammell as a co-writer. His writing is taking the Browns to the next level.

:1. One thing I would change: Length. If the set list had been whittled down to the ten strongest songs (there are fourteen), this would have been a five-star recording. But even as it is, this is not just the Browns’ strongest project yet—it’s one of the ten strongest Southern Gospel CDs of 2011. If you enjoy great songs and family harmonies, add this album to your must-buy list.

Traditional or Progressive

Middle-of-the-road, more so than their last one.

Radio Single Picks

“My Child is Coming Home,” “Worth of it All,” “Still My Child.”

Album Rating: 4.5 Stars

Credits

Producer: Tim James, The Browns. • Group members: Nick Trammell, Jessica Brown Trammell, Shelly Brown, Adam Brown, Michaela Brown, Andrew Brown. • Review copy provided.  • Song list: Now and Forevermore; Good Enough; Nothing is Impossible; My Child is Coming Home; Everywhere I Go; Beautiful Day; Silent For Me; Joyful Medley (instrumental); When Grace Became Amazing; Rained Out; God of a Second Chance; Worth of it All; Put Your Hand in the Hand; Still My Child.