But then again, when the Crabb Family is/was good, they are/were really good. In fact, I’d say that the Crabb Family in its heyday was responsible for one of my most memorable gospel music experiences ever:

Looking around me at the hair buns and make-up-less faces, the long skirts, the almost-missionary zeal in the eyes of the younger guys (not the typical sullenness and punkish bravado of most young, rural males these days), I realize that this is a perfect storm of an sg moment: here’s the one segment of evangelical Christianity - Pentecostalism - that’s growing, excited and enthusiastic about the future of the Christian enterprise, in contrast to the stagnant attendance in most denominations and the political toxicity contaminating so much of the rest of evangelicalism today. And these Christians are here for the most exciting gospel act around right now. I have a tingly moment of my own in which I gloat a little to myself (no chuckling though … that little girl is still hawk-eyeing me, unsure if I may be trusted even yet), because I feel like this auditorium, this evening is confirmation of my hypothesis a few weeks back about the direction of sg’s newest generation of fans. I said they tend to be Pentecostal (as opposed to previous generations of stalwart sg fans who were largely Baptists), and here was a room full of hundreds of Pentecostals, many of them teens, twentysomethings and young couples with kids trying to raise the roof when they weren’t out buying Crabb product all night long (it didn’t hurt the Crabbs were selling any three cd/dvd combination you want for $30). So under these wildfire conditions, “Dontcha Wanna Go” just set the place ablaze straight through to the end of the evening, two songs later. By that time, my ears are aching, literally, but I don’t much care and neither does anyone around me as far as I can tell (and this includes people my grandparents’ age as well as my little girl chaperone). I sneak out before the press of bodies at the doors becomes too much. As I leave, I see the Crabb caravan idling contentedly off in one corner of the lot (facing the highway, not coincidentally) … waiting patiently to carry these gospel itinerants to the next stand, the next night, to the next musical bonfire. Dontcha wanna go .. go .. yes I wanna go .. go .. go …

The full thing’s here.

Usually I’d say this kind of wistful hope about recapturing some grandeur fixed in the amber of memory sounds like so much wasteful go0d-old-daysism, but the fact of the matter is the Crabbs in all their many perpetually reuniting variations have been making music that is often not bad and not infrequently some of the most invigorating stuff out there (see here, for instance). The same reason the Crabb Family couldn’t stay together is the same reason they can’t manage to ever really break things off, which is another way of saying that good gospel music, like pretty much any other kind, requires a certain amount of dysfunction. I’m still ready to go … go …

Anyway, I’ve been so deeply and abidingly impressed with Ellis’s subtly and gracefulness at the keyboard that I think I kinda made that silly fanboy mistake of not remembering that artists don’t always make professional decisions that I like as much as their music.  In any event, good luck, Justin.

I’ll explore some of the related and larger issues that came up during this discussion in separate posts to come. On the substance of the change itself, my general reaction is: meh. Let’s see what happens.

 The Bowlings seem to have a professional vision problem, shading into an identity crisis, that they either compensate for or distract themselves from (hard to tell which) by constantly changing the peripherals: the group name, the third voice, the material, the name. The self-induced upheavals tend to throw them off balance artistically, which I suspect is what accounts for the way Mike Bowling can take the top of your head off one night and the next seem out of shape and no where near his pitches, or what can sometimes seem like the mildly plastic quality to Kelly Bowling’s on-stage persona.

In their defense, they’re part of a handful of country gospel acts with no real stylistic home, but that defense only goes so (and not very) far. And too, when they’ve settled down long enough to, you know, focus on making music and stuff, they’ve shown themselves capable of quality work. “Your Cries Have Awoken the Master” being the most recent example, or Mike Bowling channeling (as opposed to aping) Kenny Hinson – the former inadvertently devolving in the latter at times. Yet the vocal balance and mix of the Bowlings and that other guy were no small part of what made their music work most recently.

The optics of bringing Penhollow on board are powerful in the nostalgic, filio-pietistic world of southern gospel, and a lot of folks will love what the Bowling Family does no matter its quality because it’s now full of extended family members.

But the former Crabb Family, from which this new group is now more or less entirely drawn, required six voices to create the sound of a good trio or mixed quartet at any given moment in live concert, and it’s unclear to me that the non-Jason members of the former group are individually as talented as their collective family sound suggested. For better or worse, the new Bowling Family is about test that hypothesis. So … I guess we should stay tuned.

I remember this moment vividly from NQC 2005. In my live blogging, I called it a “high point” and then wrote: 

Listening to this song, I realized that this is exactly what people must have felt like when the Goodmans and the Hinsons and Hemphills were in their heyday. In other words, this is something that won’t last, and we shortshrift it at everyone’s peril.

How much of a prophet you think this makes me probably depends on your feelings about Crabb Family music and their pseudo-dissolution in the intervening years since I wrote that. No matter, I think the song wears well after these handful of years. With distance and time, the Crabbs sound a lot flatter a lot more of the time during the performance than I would have recalled from unaided memory (Mike Bowling is badly out of shape here vocally, and Terah Crabb Penhollow and esp Kelly Bowling have a lot of trouble placing big pitches). But that hardly matters. There is live music and then there live music and this is palpably alive.

Partly it’s the performers, to be sure, but revisiting the performance on youtube, I’m struck by how strong a piece of music the song is. If “I’ve Got a Feeling” is a lyrically weak and melodically flaccid song that the Hinsons bring to real life by the power of their vocal ability and musical charisma, “I Could Still Go Free” is a great composition that elevates the singers who attempt it to the song’s level. It’s lyrically strong, melodically captivating, and rhythmically enthralling.

Take the chorus – a study in carefully calibrated religious musical experience. Notice how the beginning of the chorus rides the four of the chord for four hard bars – two longer than we expect in conventional country-gospel arrangements. This creates the illusion of a modulation and so amps up the intensity. We’re reading for a big ride. Only, the song pulls back, and by the fifth bar we’re back to the tonic of the original key. That energy built up by the faux-modulation doesn’t dissipate, though. Rather, it gets plowed back under into the rest chorus. It’s an abnormally long refrain (24-bars, instead of the more typical 18), so the extended middle portion has time to settle down into a meditative solo passage that lasts just long enough to make you think we’re going to get lost in the high weeds and then blamo! The ensembles soars back into that final three-phrase arc: “but then a man on the cross / He put me in his will / And said that I could still go free!” I just love the way the second of those three phrases keeps the emotional line taut by riding the one of the chord an extra bar, and so for just a few more beats denies us that reassuring dip down to the V7 that signals familiar, glorious gospel resolution. It’s gobsmackingly good. 

The other thing that’s striking is how the band (esp the guitars) generates so much of the aliveness that makes the musical experience far, far greater than the sum of the vocalists, who technically struggle, but who nevertheless seem to find in and through the song that special live place where some singers on certain nights in the right moment go, accessing an expressive capacity whose effect transcends the technicalities of the pitch-pipe. And so, too, do we go with them, set free.

Update: Reader  j-mo modestly proposes that I’m miscounting the time signature here:

The song is in 6/8 time, not 3/4. That means the chorus doesn’t ride the four of the cord for four bars, but rather two, which is actually pretty normal.

As I told j-mo, I have no reason to dispute this; I’ve always only ever been a music-theory hack. But I’m going to leave the original reading of the song as is, not because j-mo might not be right but b/c my underlying point - that the song  exploits sg audience’s attraction to suspended resolutions (whether harmonic or emotional) - remains the same whether the tune is written in an elongated 3/4 or a standard 6/8.

First, I’m not sure why anyone would sign with a label that has a website as badly out of date of Spring Hill’s (the latest “newsflash”? Crossway ends the year with a bang … in 2004! And then there’s the roster of artists, many of which haven’t been with Spring Hill for a long time). Ok, maybe it shouldn’t keep people from signing with a label, but honestly. Do bonafide businesses still think the internet can be treated like an afterthought?

Anyway, I gotta say the deal was a little surprising. First I really had hoped that Crabb would sign with Canaan for reasons I’ve alluded to elsewhere. But my own sugarplum visions aside, Spring Hill is a hard outfit to figure out. As far as I know, it’s still owned by Gaither, Mark Lowry, and a couple of others (though correct me if I’m wrong here). But it hasn’t exactly shown signs of great life lately. In fact, I had always thought that when Gaither’s son-in-law Barry Jennings took things over a while back, it was to basically clean the place up (a work in progress I guess, since obviously no one has gotten around to that “update website” item on the to-do list) and then move back to the Gaither mothership.

But maybe Gaither has other plans. Why, I can’t imagine. He has the Gaither Music label to play with. Then again, Jennings is a super smart guy by all accounts and he’s obviously not just parachuting in for a quick clean up, so maybe there’s something else going on here.

All that said, there are plenty of reasons the deal makes sense, especially if you’re Jason Crabb. With Spring Hill he gets connections to the Gaither Music distribution network. And we should probably start looking for him on the fall Homecoming tour as well.

For Gaither and Co., Crabb brings with him an abiding popularity among a country/holiness demographic that Gaither could want to make inroads into. How Crabb’s Pentecostalism would play on the Homecoming stage is an open question, as I imagine it won’t be easy to control or contain the guy when he gets on a holy roll. But then again, Lynda Randall, a long time Homecoming Friend who came from a pretty heavy holiness background, exemplifies how an artist’s performance style can be Gaitherized into the mass-market Homecoming aesthetic. So who knows.

Look, reunions can be great, especially in a genre like southern gospel, which runs on high-octane nostalgia. The Cathedrals reunion, of course, is the gold standard here. And the Gaither Homecoming phenomenon is really just one big reunion by another name (in fact, it’s arguably true that the penchant for reunioning in sg is really a result of the popularity of the Homecoming videos).

But the point and appeal of most reunions (the rules don’t really apply to the Gaithers, since they sort of broke and remade many of today’s gospel music bidness rules) is that it reunites people who haven’t been together for … well, a lot more time than has elapsed since the Crabbs retired (they just released a cd this month a few months ago, for goodness sake!). So let’s call this what it really is, shall we: high-profile promotion for the Crabbs last project and a way to plug the various seeds and weeds that have sprouted from the rubble of the original Crabb Family.

This is how I was hearing it anyway. I think the Crabbs’ own arrangement and their singing style is still t00 firmly imprinted on the songs they popularized for anyone to be able to say if an arrangement like the one I was hearing for “He Came Looking for Me” would work, or just sound foolish. But with time and distance from the original Crabb Family, the Crabb songbook – or at least the handful of blowout hits from it – will become less and less associated solely with the Crabb Family’s recordings of those songs and start being treated as “classics” or representative samples of the best that was written and sung from this era of southern gospel.

And when that happens, inevitably the songs will start being picked up and rearranged. Think of the difference between, say, the Goodmans version of “Give Up” and the Gaither Vocal Band’s re-vision of that song in the mid-nineties. I’m not sure my retro arrangement of “He Came Looking for Me” would hold up that well, but I’ll be curious to see the way the Crabb catalog is absorbed into southern gospel’s collective (re)imagination over time.

To suggest this is to entirely misunderstand the pecking order in gospel music. Plaques for hit songs are not evidence of how much writers are valued in sg but the stale crumbs tossed in the direction of lyricists and composers. A No. 1 plaque is, quite literally, the least that one could do.

Don’t believe me? Count how many writers make their lively solely off southern gospel music. Not singer/songwriters, not performers who also write on the side, but people who make their lively solely on writing songs for southern gospel. Finished counting? It shouldn’t take long because the answer is ZERO, thanks in part to declining sales but mostly because southern gospel artists and labels have a tendency to treat paying royalties like giving at a love offering –everybody says they put in their fair share but somehow the take always comes up short.

Unpaid royalties are part of a larger culture of neglecting writers. Thus at the SN Fan Awards, songwriters are neither listed nor announced for the Song Of The Year nominations. And judging by the Songwriter of the Year awards, fans don’t seem to know any writers exist outside those associated with a famous group.

Auctioning off one of his SN plaques under an easily identifiable ebayonym before the Farewell Thee Crabbs tour is even over was a PR blunder, to say nothing of tacky. But Gerald Crabb seems amply justified in capitalizing off the pitiful tokens with which the industry acknowledges songwriters and their artistic contribution to gospel music.

Now, about my cut for helping run up the price of that plaque on ebay …

Why would Gerald put a # 1 plaque on Ebay ?

First, because I live in America and in America after you have reached the age of twenty one you have rights. One of those rights is putting items on Ebay if you are the owner.

Second, hopefully this following story will shed a little light on the matter…

Several years ago I was given a beautiful picture from Howard & Vestal Goodman which had been signed by both of them. After their death, I was looking on Ebay and ran across the necktie that Howard had worn in the picture they had given me. I bought the tie, still have it, and wouldn’t take anything for it. Which was better, for Ricky to throw the tie in a box in storage or allow someone to own it that would treasure it? I’m sure Ricky has a lot of Happy Goodman memorabilia that he would never part with, but how special was it that he would share with the fans and friends that loved the Goodman’s dearly?

I have so many things, such as these plaques, that have been in a box for over three years. Why not give someone an opportunity to own and cherish such a special item?
The “Through The Fire”, “Please Forgive Me”, & “The Cross” plaques can be seen in museums. Believe me I have a lot of Crabb Family treasures that will remain in my care until death.

That’s the way I see it. That’s the way it is. Anyone who wants to make something more from this is sadly mistaken. As far as the funds generated from this, it will probably be given away. I find great joy in giving.

May God Bless You All,
Gerald Crabb

P.S. It would be very interesting if people would use their real name on these post .
That would be a real HOOT !

Update: Another songwriter (Joel Lindsey) weighs in:

Many times, when a song goes #1, the writer receives multiple plaques…one from the Singing News, one from the artist, one from the record company, even from the publisher sometimes. Someone who has had as many #1 songs as Gerald can’t possibly find a place for them all.

My publisher gives out beautiful framed awards with the cd cover mounted with a metal plaque inscribed with the writer’s names, etc.. These are much more beautiful (and look more impressive hanging on the wall) than the SN plaques. Therefore, the SN plaques sit in a box in the back of my closet. If I thought I could sell them on ebay, I probably would.

*The Ripley, MS, connection is the tip off that this is probably Crabb.

Just read your post on the concert review. Whatever syndrome or disease you’ve got on live sg shows, I’ve got it myself. Maybe there’s a support group out there for us, because I’m not enthralled with most of the music I hear anymore. It seems unoriginal, poorly executed, and technically pathetic most of the time.

I think part of it is Crabb Syndrome. I’ve had three chances to see them in the last four months, and taken every one. The first was an exception when I saw them at SDC during the picnic. The second and third were - believe it or not - free love-offering gigs at area churches. One was small. They headlined a Thursday night revival service for a crowd of 500 in a building suited for 300 (give or take on the numbers). The second was quite large, estimated at 1500-ish. In both instances, though, the majority of the crowd was 55+. I’ve managed to win bets at both events that at least 10% of the audience wouldn’t stick around for more than four songs. Crabbs come out firing on all cylinders with “Friend of God” and “I Go to the Rock,” which is good because they get the crowd standing so the “traditionalists” (for lack of a better word; its all preference, I know–mine just happens to be louder, newer, and fresher than others) can exit without causing too much of a stir.

From there it’s onto various mid-tempo and power-ballad tunes before another stand-and-clap-make-me-wanna-mosh song that empties the place of all but the die-hard Crabb fans and people like myself that don’t mind a little bit of everything. It’s amazing, really, because after this happens, the most amazing hour and a half (give or take) of music, worship, reflection, and friendship take place between performers and audience. While Jason even said from the stage that the farewell tour is for the fans (and they’ve proven it—at every concert, including SDC, they’ve taken as many requests as people can shout out and they can fit in), I really think the CF is doing this for themselves. I honestly feel like I’ve been privileged to sit in on a house jam session with the most amazing band that Christian music may ever see, and every time Jason says, “I feel something in my spirit,” I sit up to try to glean any bit of wisdom I can from people who have seen and done more than others their ages.

Call it progressive, call it rock, call it whatever you want—again, it’s a matter of preference. To me, it’s the most talented, most genuine “whatever you want” that I’ve ever seen.

And when I compare it to staged dance moves, waving hankies, canned accompaniment tracks, scripted easy laughs, and matching suits, I can’t help but turn up my nose. Yeah, the music’s young and hard, and even at 26 I should probably grow up. But, as you’ve noted, the whole group is so far above the bar that has been set in southern gospel that I really think I need to study them to mature.

By now my thoughts on the CF are well enough documented there’s no need for me to elaborate (see here for the short version, if you’re new in town), other than to say that artists who engender as much strong feeling as the Crabbs are onto something. As I always say, love me or hate me … just don’t ignore me.

Also, after looking at the photos of the McGruder/Crabb joint appearance, I wrote to a friend of mine who was there and asked what that was all about. She replied:

The McGruders/Crabb debacle was not only endless, but quite a spectacle as The Crabbs “pay tribute” to The McG’s, which was really (and quite obviously) just a chance for them to get up and perform again (notice I said perform, not sing - ugh, it was loud and their uber-pentecostalism reminded me of my childhood and gave me the willies.) It went on for-freakin’-ever. I would have left had I not been trapped in my seat by a bunch of folks who were buying into every ounce of Crabbthusiasm that was bouncing off the stage.

Just last night I caught the Best of Lynda Randall on some local inspo channel around 330 in the morning and the camera panned past Jason Crabb and Kathy and Gerald in a recording from the early to mid 90s. They all looked as if they existed then in another world from now. Jason so young and duded up in his Sunday best, Kathy Crabb almost unrecognizable from the person in the pictures you see these days … and with Gerald. The then-now difference measured how much their success cost and remitted. And I wondered as I watched them what they were thinking at the time, if they begrudged having to go pay homage to BG or if they were itching for the day when they’d get their own Best Of collection or did they just find the whole thing pedestrian and unimaginative, grateful as they doubtless were for BG’s support. Certainly what has followed in the past decade or so made clear the Crabbs had decidedly other ideas about how to stage a set and work a crowd and reimagine gospel music. And at their best, they could galvanize a room into a single pulsating ache of holy harmony.

And then it’s all over, which is really sad, since this is the time for most of the performing CF when their career as a group ought to just be solidifying itself (compare CF to the Goodmans, who didn’t collapse under their own weight for several decades). What to make of it all? The details will trickle out as they always do once resentments settle in and loyalties reticulate through the CF world and make their way into the public sphere. Until then, we’re left to speculate mostly. Still an educated guess might reasonably surmise that – given the timing and context of it all – the CF imploded over the direction of the group and its future, that Blurring The Lines lit the fuse on a set of maybe distinct but inevitably related tensions and that the tour’s actual flop brought about the final implosion. Maybe somebody in the group or the family became just old and wise and courageous enough to act (or get someone else to act) on the realization that the performing CF was anchoring a fairly substantial artistic and corporate enterprise that they – the performing members of CF – were perhaps in many ways themselves estranged from.

I’ll leave it to others to tally up the human price here. The real bidness question here is, I think, what are they going to do (besides Jason)? Jason may well and easily put out a solo record or two and then start preaching like his father (it’s difficult to imagine a long-term record deal or purely solo-music career going much of anywhere for him since he’ll be hardpressed to pull off IAM screaming for a whole record/concert [see also Phelps, David]). But what about the others? Honestly. What will the twins do? And Kelly and Tarah? Are they all going to do solo deals? The press release gives that impression. Yikes. And then there’s Kathy Crabb and her label/management company? Will it go on headlessly?

Update: Chuck Peters hears the same thing.

Later update: Yup, it’s official. Press release announces farewell … A year from tonight.