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.

• David Bruce Murray and Chuck Peters are filling a much-needed void in sg with their journalism lately but I wonder where this tenacity was when Gerald and Kathy Crabb got a divorce? Which is another way of wondering how reporting this Vegas wedding (which I think is totally newsworthy) doesn’t cross the line in the sand Peters has drawn before between being a journalist and being inappropriately invasive in the private lives of gospel’s public figures. I’m actually asking.
• See how much quicker something becomes a non-story when the details get out quick and fully? Not that I expect anyone will learn from experience but still …
• And speaking of learning curves, after DBM and CP broke the Vegas marriage news, the only thing left for sogospelnews to do was play the part of the scold and shut down the comments thread on the news item when it turned out more than a few people wanted to do more than wish Crabb and her new husband many happy returns … proving once against that no one with any responsibility over there learns from experience, cause you’d think that [potentially hot-button/gossipy topic about which people will have strong feelings and opinions] + [capriciously authoritarian administrative oversight] = [don’t put a comments thread up to begin with]. Yeah you’d think … and of course you’d be wrong.
• Finally, am I the only person who half-way expected the reception to be at the Golden Nugget with the Crabb kids in baby-blue tuxes and pink chiffon opening for Wayne Newton? Blur the Lines, indeed.

Location: Bonne Terre, Mo.
Setting: North County High School auditorium
Occasion: Leadbelt Pentecostal Church event
Average age guesstimate: 42 (!)
Opening acts: Two local church groups: Patterson Family (a mixed trio that had the baldfaced temerity to do a song, “Echo of Tears,” that was exactly the same melody as Gerald Crabb’s “Trail of Tears” … it’s hard to imagine the group wouldn’t have known about the similarities … where did these lyrics and this title come from? Gerald Crabb? Really?); and Fresh Anointing (the church’s praise and worship band, by all appearances and sounds)
Attendance: ca 500ish (the place was snuggly full)
Cost: $17

After forty-five (yes that’s 45) minutes of local acts at an ear-splitting volume (note to sound man: bad music doesn’t get better if you make it louder), the Crabbs came on and delivered one hour and fifteen minutes - almost to the second - of mostly fast-paced, downright, holy rolling music. The first tune of the evening is “Promised Land,” and though the emcee (the church pastor, I gather) jumped the gun on his intro and forced the Crabbs to kick things off sooner than they would have liked, the family takes it in stride - indeed, this is one of the intense pleasures of watching Professionals at work: nothing rattles them, no time-killing humor to awkwadly defuse the group’s inability to get off the blocks without proper footing. They seem incapable of being nonplussed at anything. They perform, in a word, with authority. “Promised Land” is virtually all band in the house mix and the vocals struggle to rise to the top, but it really doesn’t matter, because soon enough we’re well into “I Know My Keeper,” which features Aaron Crabb (the non-harmonica-playing twin), whose voice has noticeably improved since those first days of heady fame for the Crabbs, when both of the twins were mostly all histrionics and weak IAG singing). It’s a little difficult, still, to hear his and the rest of the vocals over the band, which just throbs mercilessly all evening. Indeed, the vocals never really get mixed into the sound as adequately as I, sitting in the back row, would like. But I decide to count this no loss, since by every evidence so far, adequate vocals from this sound guy would probably mean a louder set, and the volume is near even my generous threshold for tolerability as it is.

Anyway, before I know, it’s on to “Greater is He” and the set really begins … the throbbing instrumentals are perfect for this 100-yard-dash of a song, and the place is on its feet, thoroughly enthralled. “Travelin’ On” gives way to “The Cross,” and my only response is a big, unstoppable smile. There are moments in gospel music when a live performance distills things to their essence, burns away the superfluous and filters the ancillary, secondary stuff out - leaving nothing but a kind of intense sensation that defies effective description in words and exists at a more ethereal level of feelings sharpened by spiritual intensity. The sg jargon for this is glory bumps, but I prefer to imagine that this is what redemption would feel like if it were just poured all over a person. “The Cross” is the occasion of just such a moment tonight. Jason Crabb carefully tends to this important few minutes, effortlessly interleaving a bit of “The Old Rugged Cross” into the reprise of “The Cross.” The emotional pitch of this interlude sets up “He Came Lookin’ For Me,” and the song’s up-tempo gate creates an absolutely irresistible enthusiasm that spreads through the whole place, giving expression to what I imagine is the room-wide urge to run somewhere. It’s easy to forget, in these kinds of rollicking segments of the set - what with all the hands waving and the crowd shouting and the sound just slamming you in the face relentlessly - that this spiritually carnivalesque atmosphere requires skillful cultivation, mostly the work of Jason Crabb tonight. He stands at the far right of the stage, often practically in the shadows (not the place you’d expect the leader, in every sense of the term, to be), so that when he steps into the foot lights - as he does on “The Cross” and “He Came Lookin’” - it has the effect of a conductor stepping up to command an orchestra, or (more accurately) a young patriarch emerging like Joshua from the shadow of Abraham to lead a tribe (Abraham, that’d be Gerald Crabb if you’re keeping score at home, may not be here in person tonight, but he is everywhere in the set by virtue of his songwriting and his progeny, and the tribal image is reinforced by the stage itself, which just seems tribally full of Crabb Family members, Crabb Family musicians, Crabb Family stuff … one in fact imagines the Crabbs wandering across the wilderness in that caravan of garish buses reporting back to headquarters on the prospects of the land as it appears from the sg stage). Jason Crabb’s command, as a singer and no less as a showman, is complete. He crafts a unified musical experience that picks you up and carries you along in its irrepressible sweep.

Which is why I don’t really mind so much the duds like “Sacrifice of Praise,” a song way too reminiscent of the tonal staleness and lyrical redundancy that marked Fresh Anointing in the far-too-generous opening portions of the show. This is the kind of tune that unfortunately reminds us what it was like early on with the Crabbs … too much screaming and carrying on, not enough substance and too little organization. Perhaps the sound guy felt this too, felt he needed to do something, because though I didn’t think it was possible, the set gets louder on this tune, if not better. Thankfully, a harmonica solo is next. I say thankfully not because I like the harmonica. In fact, if I had three or even two wishes, one of them would be to banish the harmonica from the face of the earth and the whole of eternity. But Adam Crabb’s time to shine does lessen the chances of inner ear damage I was fearing during the few final seconds of “Sacrifice.” The solo is a cheesy rendition of … wait for it … “Amazing Grace,” backed up by keyboardist Justin Ellis on a stringy synthesizer - “string cheese,” I chuckle to myself, and the little girl next to me whips her head around and gives me the most withering look of condemnation I have seen in a while. No more chuckling from me. Anyway, the Crabbs shift gears at this point. Everyone, guitarists included, take a seat on stools for a truncated “Please Forgive Me,” and it gives me time to puzzle again over the vocals in the house mix. I just don’t hear five voices, even when all five kids appear to be singing. Hmmmm. I also note to myself that this is the part where the Crabbs really have to begin to work. This thoroughly Pentecostal crowd has been with the family even before they took the stage … the Crabbs coulda sung serial numbers off the cars in the parking lot - and there were a lot of them, because a high school basketball game was underway at the adjacent gymnasium - and this audience would have had a spell in the spirit all the same. But now that things are slowed down, there’s less emotionalism and flamboyance, less chance of those contagious waves of worship that have been rolling through the auditorium thus far. But nobody misses a beat, on or off stage. And pretty soon we’re back up and going again. “Soldier on his Knees” segues to “Through the Fire,” at which we the emotional center of the evening arrives.

Aaron Crabb has tried his hand at some extemporaneous sermonizing a bit earlier, and it goes off pretty well with this crowd (for my part, though, Aaron’s preaching is bit too much like Jim Hammil’s old set pieces that began with a variation on “when the storms of life rage round about you and you’re tossed on the sea of despair …”). But it’s Jason that really lights into a stemwinder of a sermon in the middle of “Through the Fire” … it has the high shine of regular practice to it, and it’s impossible not to sense how at ease and at home Crabb is among this particular type of audience. 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 to 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 …