“White knuckled”, the most successful Contemporary Christian Music singer of all time Amy Grant, with over 30 Million units moved, is expressing her faith a different way: “When you know someone from a distance, it looks like they have their lives more together than they are but I am here to tell you how I live my life, white knuckled.” Amy then lead her hard rocking but Adult Oriented and old fashioned band into Michael W. Smith’s Christmas song “Emmanuel”. The song is sub-Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff, but her band gets hold of it and milks the keyboard sound for all its worth.
Soon after “Emmanuel”, Amy comes out for the encore and somebody requests five songs. “Five songs, we haven’t prepared five songs but OK, we’ll do it.” The show ended five songs later, 135 minutes after it began. Enough time all in all to consider the singer.
Christian Contemporary is plagued by bad song writing and it inflicts Amy but some degree or the other. Not only can CCM not compare with Hymns and Carols, it can’t compare with Gospel. The average CCM is Tim McGraw’s execrable “Touchdown Jesus” and Thomas Rhett’s “Beer With Jesus” -the Personal Jesus as All American Messiah but she isn’;t that type of woman: when you get past the songs of praise, it is more a deepening of a mood. The first two songs showed what can happen when it doesn’t happen. A hard rocking “You’re Not Alone” -getting the worst over early, was a loud and lousy rocker . “Take A Little Time” is better but her very early (1979) hit “Father’s Eyes” (her first husband Gary Chapman wrote it), she blows the opening with an “You’d think I’d know this by now”, is so lachrymose it made me squirm. I sincerely considered leaving but
1. I had a great siteline
2. Amy looks fabulous.
3. I knew enough of her material that I expected it to get better.
And with a tart once over at the audience she offered an “This is my first standing room only show… I stand throughout the concert so I figure you can put up with it”. This sweet and sour isn’t an act, Amy is not specifically nice. I mean, she’s nice enough, but she isn’t Hail Mary and we are the worlding me. Rather, she tells stories of love and faith and when she gets the right song, they come together in thrilling waves of pure pop and high spirits, the girl power doo wop Billy Joel full blown singalong “Every Heartbeat” made me very happy and her best ballad, the set closer “Say Once More”, played alone, is the Amy Grant of your dreams.
But the set slows down in the middle and her chattiness, her need to explain what she is expressing, can slow things down. An off hand comment, “Buy everything you can from the concessionaire, a couple of hits in the 1970s doesn’t last forever” is woefully inaccurate. Married to our greatest living country singer Vince Gill and with a huge following (though not in New York), she isn’t poor.
The set itself is a form of self-portrait. Amy’s father was a doctor and she was born in a middle class environment never wanting for anything but, introducing “1974”, she explained how, in pursuit of a young man, she went to a prayer meet on the dodgy side of town and saw these low income children come together and instantaneously went from having religion to having a relationship with God.
By the time Amy reached her early 20s she was the biggest star in CCM and by the time she was 25 she was releasing Unguarded and becoming a mainstream pop star, she closed the set proper with “Love Of A Different Kind” off that album. She doesn’t pepper her stories with her songs, she peppers her songs with her stories and she is smart enough not to take the songs in chronological. Her set was like when you write a novel and you see it in your minds eye going in order but you sit and write it out of order, dependent on wherever you are in the mood to stop and think.
But did it sound good? Amy has a nice voice but not a great voice, Vince has a great voice. Experience has given her an edge, it is in her vooice and it is there in her refusal to pick up in the shouts of “We love you”… she steams past, she doesn’t wanna play the game right now. It doesn’t feel like Christian Contemporary, the music scene has evolved so far by now that it sounds like a hard rocking pop band and a touring band at that. Amy is a road warrior and an elder statesman and her best songs, whether the breakthrough “Baby, Baby” or “Third World Woman”. A new song, “Free” has the anthem chorus of a U2, or Bruce for that matter. She mentions that she has the kids sing the chorus on the recent How Mercy Looks From Here. Amy’s father, who suffers from dementia, even manages to sing the bass part. I’m not crazy about the new album but she has definitely reached the place where CCM and personal pop are one of the same thing in her music.
For the encore, Amy really white knuckled it: five songs, out of sequence from her usual set, and it was as strong if not stronger than the concert proper. It felt like a set within a set, off the cuff, with the terrific “What Is The Chance Of That” highlighted by a harp solo by Kim Keyes.
Amy Grant isn’t for everyone but she is for enough, she is a real woman and a good woman and she presents herself with sense, dignity and a self in her. She reminded me a little of Loretta Lynn, they are both appear to be what they are. Amy doesn’t lecture, she takes her Christianity as a part of a self portrait and sings songs about this person and invites you to see if you feel this way. When you watch the great Gospel singers, a Mahalia Jackson or Aretha Franklin, or an AL Green, they are songs of exultation and also preaching, but Amy presents her faith like “Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There” . It is like when she found her relationship with God, the images softened and she walked through the glass to a different, more tender and gentle world.
On stage, you are a little changed yourself. I am sure that is why when, early in her career only the same six fans showed up, the same six fans did keep turning up. I am not a fan, I mentioned some names above and trust me, she isn’t them, but Amy is for her fans and for her fans she takes them to a gentler, kinder place, occasionally on Friday night, I joined them.
Grade: B
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