averyfineline

I wish I had thought of it first, but more than that, I’m mostly just grateful for having discovered this line from Madeleine L’Engle on faith and art, from her book Walking on Water:
If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.
Henceforth, this shall be my reply to all joyful noisers […]

Daniel Mount’s interview with some of gospel music’s leading men has generated an interesting, if somewhat misdirected, conversation about piracy and digitally provisioned music content (but honestly, though … a “serious problem” in sg? Really, Daniel?). David Bruce Murray takes the time to delve a bit more deeply into the vagaries of fair use and […]

Speaking (I suspect) for untold legions of colleagues, Joel Lindsey writes about the songwriter’s most valuable renewable resource: hope (and a little luck):
… we’re songwriters — we’re used to rejection — we can take it. And maybe, just maybe, the miracle will land on our shoulders this time. So, we are all scrambling, typing and […]

On my junket to Asheville for the bloggers conference, I came away with a few cds, including Calvin Hunt’s latest Vine Records project (hear clips here). Were I reviewing it, it’s ALI rating would only clock in at around 25-20%. And by far my favorite song was written (shocking news tonight) by a southern gospel […]

Daniel Britt argues in a recent musicscribe post that even though the quality of production and general professionalism of albums usually goes up when handled by a record label, there’s a slightly greater chance that custom recorded albums (aka table projects) will produce “variety and possibly a surprise-success.”

I’m oversimplifying his argument for […]

Songwriter Sue C. Smith laments the frustrations of unintentional quasi-identity theft in comments threads (ftr the blog she’s talking about is avfl, where she occasionally comments here as just “Sue”). Ah the curse of the common name.

First, via Martin Roth, a thoughtful and provocative essay on the mediocrity in, and demise of, Christian arts.
Part of me has a great deal of sympathy for what’s being said here - which is, more or less, that much of Christian arts culture has bankrupted itself on phony displays of piety and the celebration […]

As I write, the Singing News website appears to be overwhelmed with traffic given the announcement of Roger Bennett’s death (sogospelnews has an announcement here). I didn’t know him, only exchanged a few brief emails with him a couple of times, and have nothing by way of eulogy that won’t seem to be trying too […]

Ever since we started talking about the Dove awards and SOTY nominations, I’ve been wondering: what would it take, in terms of votes and money, to secure a SOTY nomination if you wanted to go about it in a strategic, organized fashion?

In order to answer the question, or at least hypothesize about its feasibility, […]

Songwriter Joel Lindsey reflects on great mothers, gospel music, and irises in March. Read the whole thing. It is, among many other things, a powerful reminder of the difference between being a Writer and just writing.

Daniel Mount argues that the Inspirations are so popular because their songs are so good. There is a bit of question-begging going on here. Mount seems to assume the songs are good to begin with and then uses that predetermined conclusion to answer his own question, which could have more accurately been phrased something like […]

Even though the blogger “debate” was over before it ever started, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a contingent in southern gospel – led, most vocally these days, by the Unthanks of sogospelnews.com — who won’t try to make the question of the media’s role in gospel music about how much more Christianly they are than […]

Via sgblognews, I see that John Scheideman has a (for the most part) thoroughly reasonable post about the bloggers summit. He wasn’t invited and doesn’t really care – admirable honesty. His post brings up an interesting point that Scheideman doesn’t really pursue but which is imbedded in his argument: what is the role of bloggers […]

I have, as reader DD puts it, evidently created a monster: see for yourself.

Prologue: I brought back some kind of North Carolina head cold from the bloggers conference that has funkified me the last few days. Thus the lag in putting together some reflections on the meeting.
By now you’ve may had a chance to read other summaries of what went on at the Crossroads headquarters in Arden, […]

David Bruce Murray pops the cork on a little get together of sg bloggers this weekend. I really don’t know what to expect (kickboxing? Kum Ba Yah around a campfire? Thumb wrestling? Earl Grey and biscuits served on lace doilies?) so I don’t really have much to add. Other than that getting there and back […]

A southern gospel artist up for a down-roster Dove nomination sent along this note:

I have enjoyed the back and forth banter on the Dove situation. We were nominated for XXXX and did not even know until someone called and told us. We put no effort into the nomination but found out our label […]

With apologies to the Carpetbagger report (whose mini-report idea I’m shamelessly ripping off), a roundup of stuff that doesn’t rise to a stand-alone post but seems worth mentioning anyway.

*From reader DC: “Watching Tony Peace today and he played a ridiculous song called “I lost my wife at Walmart.” Is this Southern Gospel? […]

Allow me the point of personal privilege to note an AVFL first: my father posted this wonderful comment in the unChristlike thread. As regular readers know, I try to keep the focus here on ideas and issues and themes rather than on me personally, and by and large I think this approach works. But one […]

I really wish there was a way to view details about a songs on my iPod. What I’m looking for here is for each song file to be associated with basic liner note information about it: who wrote it, year published, publisher. Obviously I’d be giving up some memory for this kind of info that […]