New Spins On Golden Oldies

Posted on 29. Jul, 2015 by Tim Bushong in News

I just finished the final mixes on a solo CD by Wende Roberts, entitled “Reflections”, which will also be used as a performance CD for her to sing in various venues. It’s one of those “Tim is the band” projects, where I am in the position of arranger, musician, and chief bottle-washer. Of the 10 songs, 4 are more- or less older hymns, and the other 6 are more modern, pop-style tunes. For the 6 current songs I tried to achieve tones and production similar to the originals, like “Overcomer”, by Mandisa, and “He Knows My Name”, by Francesca Battistelli. Not a slavish devotion to the original, but really close. The toughest was “Heaven”, by Michael English, a huge, old-school black gospel-tinged whale of a tune.

The 4 older songs I was happy to arrange myself. I did kind of a standard version of “Be Thou My Vision” (check out this short sample), with flutes, acoustic guitars, and orchestra—it is simply amazing what one can do with MIDI these days! The real surprise for me was the version of the Gaither song “Because He Lives”. Now, if you know much about my background, you would be aware of my thorough saturation in white-bread 60′s and 70′s gospel music, as my folks were involved a singing group called “The Jubileers”.

Ready to hit the road!

Those experiences were my initiation into setting up sound systems, traveling, and early stage performances. The Jubileers performed well-known gospel standards of that time, including many of the Bill Gaither Trio songs—and they got to be the opening act for the Gaithers on a few occasions, too—once at the old Billy Sunday Tabernacle in Winona Lake. Now, I could probably play “Because He Lives” in my sleep, having heard it so many times, but I went on YouTube to be sure, and came across this version—skip ahead to 3:45, and you will pretty much get the whole vibe of the time. Wow—not enough “o’s” in “smooth” to describe the inoffensive pabulum-rich approach to the arts that was standard fare for us poor church kids back then!

So for our version, I wanted to maintain the chords and melody of the original, but also to definitely lose the schmaltzy vibe. I came up with a little melody for the guitar that would serve as the ‘glue’, and I used the standard U2/Bo-Diddley rhythmic stereo delay pattern for the song. What would modern worship music sound like if there had been no U2? One has to wonder…

So, best of success to Wende and her 1st venture into recording.