TO START WITH...
After decades of mining the roots of American music, it was inevitable that I would someday dig into the fertile soil of my own gospel-singing childhood. My explorations led to a musical place filled with imagery from a distant America. Here there were chariots of fire and epic battles, lonesome trains whistles, long journeys, heavy burdens and big rivers, as well as strong men and beautiful women. Here the enemy was doubtlessly in league with the Devil and the paths all led to Gloryland. Surprisingly, the theme that emerges is not really salvation, but rather the quest for freedom. These songs sing of crossing those rivers, flying away, and slipping the chains of this mortal plane. Beneath the surface, these songs carry the word of hope. Hallelujah !

THE SONGS...
I was raised in a gospel-singing family, and my first exposure to "blue notes" came in the Baptist church. At the age of fourteen, I aquired my first guitar. That same year, a music teacher introduced me to choral arrangements of Negro Spirituals. I never recovered...

1 - The relaxed feeling of what is often referred to as Southern Gospel is represented by the chesnust, I Am a Pilgrim, featuring the Nott Brothers Quartet singing the lazy background vocals. These folks are confident of their destination, and anyone can sense that they will get there by and by.

2 - The Gospel Train is leaving the station, and it's Bound for Glory. Reminiscent of the classic Appalachian duos like the Louvin or Delmore Brothers on one hand, and black songsters like Leadbelly on the other, it straddles the rails with the able assistance of Jab Wilson, who keeps the bellows pumping and the boiler stoked. All aboard !

3 - The made-for-Hollywood tale of Samson & Delilah has all the elements of a blockbuster movie. Samson is a confident muscleman with long flowing hair. Delilah is a wily beauty with a secret. The Philistines are waging battle with Samson's people, and the unlikely hero in this epic is a five-year-old-boy. The legendary Reverend Gary Davis played this song for me at the Denver Folklore Center in 1969, and the experience changed the course of my life. It feels good to finally have the opportunity to record it.

4 - Wings of an Angel came to me on an airplaine while flying over the Atlantic Ocean, returning home from a tour of France. It speaks of the potential we all carry within ourselves, and it fits right in with the traditional pieces on this recording. I don't write many songs like this, so I am pleased to be able to make an original contribution. After all, my mama raised me to be a preacher...

5 - The unsettling feeling of One Kind Favor is achieved through a combination of funereal electric lapsteel playing and slightly morbid lyrical content. The singer almost seems to be petitioning from beyond the grave. This is not the kind of favor one would ask of just anybody. Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded the original version in the 1920's.

6 - Carry the Word was written by my friend Cory McDaniels. When I was a young musician, Cory provided me with a role model for cool, and I wanted to be just like him. As things turned out, I'm not sure I could have survived his path, and this song is a story of a return from some very dark places. Many people are grateful to have Cory back, and I'm particularly glad that he brought this exquisite song with him.

7 - America's greatest cultural asset just may be the river of song that connects her varied emigrant population, and River Jordan has its feet planted on both banks. My version takes a bow to the great Georgia 12-string guitarist Blind Willie McTell, but you can be sure that this song, or at least its cousins, was heard in the churches of Tennessee, the Carolinas and the Virginias.

8 - The evocative Gospel Plow carries us to the front porch of a cabin deep in a Kentucky holler. This frailing style of banjo playing has always awakened feelings in me that I don't fully understand. Rand Everett, who engineered this album, says that this song transports him to the back seat of the family car in the 50's. He's looking at the stars through the window while his dad is driving through the night, smoking a Chesterfield cigarette and listening to WSM broadcast the Grand Ol' Opry from Nashville, Tennessee. That works for me. Keep your hand on that wheel, and hold on.

9 - I've Been Delivered takes us to a rural southern clapboard church for a sanctified meeting. The service starts with an a capella shout accompanied only by the clapping of the faithful. It doesn't take long for the congregation to start rollin' with the National steel guitar, harmonica and, finally, the electric lapsteel guitar, which brings to mind the incredible music of the recently discovered lapsteel players of the Keith and Jewel Dominion Pentecostal Churches of South Florida. Written by Obed Kline, who lives in the middle of the Mississippi Delta, the song is proof that the primitive Gospel tradition is very much alive in the cottonfields of today.

10 - The most well-known lyrics in the pantheon of American Gospel Music would have to be Amazing Grace. For that reason, I have decided to let the listener provide the words if they so desire. This classic melody proved to be the perfect vehicle for my current instrumental passion, the acoustic lapsteel guitar, which sounds astonishingly like a cello in the third verse. Can I get a witness ?

11 - The charming naivete of Beulah Land is inspired by the innocent music of Mississipi John Hurt, with a couple of Doc Watson licks thrown in for good measure. I will always remember singing this song at Sunday School in the basement of the Calvary Baptist Church when I was about ten years old. Fact is, that's where I learned to sing. I'd like to dedicate this one to my grandmother, Beulah, from whom the place surely takes its name, and who has indeed gone to that other shore. Amen.