averyfineline » Lesters

Somewhere in Illinois, a shout goes up

Avery — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 10:07:04 +0000

The Lesters are in Illinois this weekend and one of avfl’s roving interns sent me this text message earlier tonight:

I am listening to the Lesters sing right now in Paris, Ill. — they have NEVER sounded better!!! IMHO. Ginger’s daughter is pretty freaking awesome!!!!

Big Changes with the Lesters

Avery — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:38:55 +0000

This could really be something: From Chuck Peters’ ShowPrep:

Ginger Pitchers [Brian Lester’s sister] and her daughter Jenny Revelle are returning to the Lesters. They will be replacing Liz McMillan and Trecia Cisneros. Pitchers and Revelle will be joining Brian and Jonathan Lester in their family ministry, at least until the end of the year.

I hate to see Cisneros go. Her voice is among the best (and most underrated) on the road today. But Pitchers is the kind of ace-in-hole (expert arranger, player, vocalist) that can make the difference between good and better or best and I still remember the year her daughter knocked the top of my head off with a walk-on solo with the Ls back in the late 1990s at NQC. Let’s hope they live up to just half of these expectations and there might well be something to pause and ponder over. Now if they can just sign with a real label …

“Surely I Will”

Avery — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 06:33:12 +0000

One of the best things the SN does that no one - including me, until now - gives them enough credit for is putting together the Just Call It Southern compilation discs for magazine subscribers. I purposely wait to renew my subscription at NQC every year just to get the cds. Yeah, the songs are often the second or third cuts from albums and more than a few stinkers slip in, but the discs are worth the $20 for the history lesson they offer. Fer instuhnce. On disc 2 of the volume released this year, there’s a Lesters track, “Surely I Will.” It’s like finding a $100 bill in the sea of peanut shells, hotdog wrappers and empty drink cups kicking around your feet at a baseball game. When I talk about IAG singers who need to learn how to render a melody line well, this is the kind of singing I wish we could hear instead. The soprano’s voice is so clear and confident, with a lot of wonderful little colorations and inflections shaded into certain words and phrases (listen to how she progressively adds texture and force to that word “If” at the end of each verse and chorus … she pushes the tone just a bit further to the back of her throat, supporting with just a touch more breath each time until it becomes a kind of declaration of spiritual intent by the end of the song). It’s a wonderful example of creating an effect with subtle augmentations simple flourishs rather than showy ornaments and baroque improvisations and all manner of overdone melisma. And too, the song is classic southern gospel, an artifact, alas, from a sparser, less-is-more age of arranging and accompaniment. There are, I think, no more than four instruments here at any given time, and most of the instrumental burden is carried by a bass and piano (the keyboard and guitar fills are a masterclass in accompaniment by themselves). So here’s where you come in. Who’s the soprano? What album’s she singing on? And who wrote the song?

39th and Castleman

Avery — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 20:53:28 +0000

A friend of mine just bought a house in a part of St. Louis that, in order to get to, I have to drive past the Lester Family Music Store. It’s an old storefront, kept up well and classically, with a wonderful antique sign that looks retro (”Lesters Music” it says, simply), until you realize it’s probably original, or at least dates well before the craze for old-looking new things. The store is a handful of blocks away from the established Baptist church the family attends. After the most recent personnel changes with the group, I ended up reading the bios on the newest members, among them Brian Lester’s son, Jonathan, who splits time traveling and attending college, not at one of the big sprawling campuses out in the suburbs, but at the only public university in the city limits (it straddles the space between midtown and downtown St. Louis). For anyone who doesn’t live in or isn’t familiar with St. Louis, this may all seem hopelessly provincial and uninteresting. But I’m struck (and, I confess, oddly touched) by how steadfast the Lesters have remained int their commitment to a decidedly urban way of life despite what doubtless has been the enticements of communities and ways of living more like those from which most of their fans doubtless come - more rural, less urbane, more homogenous, insular. This steadfastness is all the more endearing because despite the fact that the Lesters have been and are a cultural fixture on the southside of St. Louis, they are as artists and gospel entertainers far better known, more recognized and in demand outside the city. Only a wispy handful of this year’s dates for the Ls are in the city or its suburbs, nary a public one in the city itself. This is too bad - for everyone involved, since the city would do well to more fully appreciate and celebrate the treasure it has in the Lester Family. I don’t, however, mean to suggest the Lesters need or want any pity. It’s to the Lesters’ immense credit that they have for decades and generations held down the corner of 39th and Castleman (just today someone told me of a friend who has lately been taking guitar lessons from the Ls) in an old and somewhat transitory neighbor that has and continues to evolve in the unpredictable, serendipitous and not always completely comfortable ways that living urban landscapes do molt and change. Gospel music rightly celebrates and esteems the Lesters as one of the legendary families of southern gospel. The other, less well-known facet to the family is the way it has kept an unspoken but obviously vital covenant with a community the average sg fan and performer likely would have abandoned years ago. Fort this commitment, I - as one with an affection for the city of St. Louis and southern gospel - am deeply grateful.