“HE HEARD MUSICK AND DANCING”—The elder brother was mad. His younger brother had now returned from a life of sin, but he, the elder brother, was not happy. No doubt, he took note of how their father grieved at the younger son’s absence from day to day, while he, the elder brother, continued to work just like he’d always done as a faithful firstborn.

One day the elder brother was coming in from the field—ah, another day of faithful service.  Won’t Father be proud! The elder brother was questionably tired from working on the homestead that day, yet we read in Luke 15:25, “…and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing.” The father must not have shared his reunion plans with the elder son, for he had to question one of the servants to find out what was going on. Now, from the lips of the servant, we hear the reason for the music and dancing: “Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound” (Luke 15:27).

Whichever way you have determined to analyze this beautiful portion of Scripture as to whether or not the younger son was a believer or an unbeliever when he left home, when he returned home there was cause for rejoicing, and that rejoicing included some joyful music. When we read this story we are reminded of that song, “Ring the bells of Heaven!  there is joy today, For a soul returning from the wild;  See!  the Father meets him out upon the way, Welcoming His weary wand’ring child.” It was a happy time in that home that night, and at least part of that happiness was expressed in music.

May the lost and backslidden attendees of our churches be drawn to the Saviour by many a joyful chorus

 
OUR PHILOSOPHY—A BIBLICAL PRECEDENT-THE LIFE OF ASAPH, A “CHURCH” MUSICIAN (3rd in a Series)—In this section, we will study the life of a man in the Old Testament who was used of God to be an integral part of the music in the Tabernacle. His name was Asaph, and he was a contemporary of King David, the psalmist of Israel.

Before we begin our study of Asaph, we must discuss why Old Testament examples can be legitimately used as patterns for present-day practice. We as Christians certainly do not observe the Old Testament rituals and ceremonies as part of our walk with the Lord. For example, when we go to church next Sunday, we will not be taking along a lamb to be offered as a burnt sacrifice. I do believe, however, that by closely examining Old Testament laws, we can discover principles concerning God's attitude toward sin.

God has never changed His mind about sin. So many valuable principles for living can be gleaned from the pages of Scripture. If we were to examine the Old Testament observances carefully, we would find that the underlying principles of the elements of Old Testament worship are an integral part of our worship today.

Continuing with the previous example, we are no longer required to perform animal sacrifices to atone for our sins. We must, however, look to the sacrifice of the perfect, spotless Lamb of God on Calvary for the atonement of our sins. Old Testament laws and ceremonies were pictures and types that pointed to the coming Messiah.

Christians do not meet to worship on the Sabbath Day, which is Saturday. We do, however, come together on the first day of the week, Sunday, the day on which our Lord rose again from the dead. The principle is, one day set apart to rest and to center our attention on the Lord.

The Old Testament worship ceremony included music. It was important enough to God to set aside whole families of the tribe of Levi to be full-time musicians. God's desire was that both instrumental music and vocal music would permeate the lives of His chosen people. The music was to praise the Lord, thank the Lord, worship the Lord, extol His wonderful works, show man's sinfulness, and to praise God for His supreme holiness.

Who was Asaph?  With the view of gleaning principles for church musicians today, we will examine the life of the man called Asaph and his family in detail. What kind of man was Asaph? Who was he, and from where did he come? What position and responsibilities did he fulfill?

Asaph's appointed position was a Levitical priest. This meant that his full-time responsibility was to work in the Tabernacle. Levites were ordained by God to perform all the various functions of the Tabernacle. They had no Promised Land areas in Canaan but were to live off the work of the Tabernacle. Certain portions of the Tabernacle sacrifices were allotted to the Levites to eat. In a literal sense, Levites were chosen by God to be servants of God.

”So he [David] left there before the ark of the covenant of the LORD Asaph and his brethren, to minister before the ark continually, as every day's work required.”—I Chron. 16:37.

“And these are the singers, chief of the fathers of the Levites, who remaining in the chambers were free: for they were employed in that work day and night.”—I Chron. 9:33.

Asaph's function within the immense hierarchy of Tabernacle workers was that of a musician. Basically, he was paid for the music services that he performed. In a later section we will see what all that position entailed.

Asaph was called a "seer" or prophet (2 Chronicles 29:30). The closest New Testament equivalent of an Old Testament prophet would be a preacher. This would make Asaph a spiritual leader, a man of God. In the days before Christ, God used prophets to teach men about Himself. Prophets were not born into their positions because of their family heritage (such as the priests being born into the tribe of Levi), but were rather people who answered the personal call of God on their lives. Their holy testimony and close walk with God allowed them to know the heart of God in an intimate way. Many Old Testament prophets or seers were given some divine vision to allow them to foretell future events. Close examination reveals that much of the message of the prophets was the same as the message of today's Bible preachers: “Look to the Lord for the salvation of your souls.” Old Testament saints were saved by looking forward to the cross, as pictured by the sacrifices; whereas, in the New Testament age, looking back on the finished work of Calvary saves people.  The point is that Asaph, as well as other Old Testament musicians, was among the spiritual leaders of his day. He was not an entertainer, nor was he a worldly, carnal businessman trying to use the children of Israel to line his own pockets. He was a holy, sanctified, spiritual leader, with a strong knowledge of Scripture, who communicated God's truths and his love for the Lord in his musical worship.

Asaph filled many roles as a musician, all of which I believe are applicable today. It seems quite obvious that Asaph was no back-porch crooner, but a knowledgeable, godly, proficient performer and educator.  He was a:

• Performer who sang. “So the singers, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, were appointed to sound with cymbals of brass.”—I Chron. 15:19.
• Player of instruments (1 Chron. 15:19, 16:5, 25:1.
• Professor who instructed others in a Levitical school (1 Chron. 25:6,7).
• Prophet or Preacher who used music as a tool to present his message (1 Chron. 25:2).
• Psalm composer who authored twelve psalms (songs).  Asaph wrote at least 12 of the Psalms: 50, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83. He was a songwriter and composer (2 Chron. 29:30). Where is the music of today’s true Bible believer? The liberals have developed entire industries around "anything-goes" "Christian" music. Much of this music seeps into Bible-believing churches for lack of a better alternative. Where are the godly poets and musicians of today, the Fanny Crosbys, the Ira Sankeys, the Charles Alexanders, soul-winning musicians who write Scriptural songs that are excellent, meaningful and beautiful? We need musicians who will dedicate themselves to writing, performing, recording, and distributing the "new song."
• Publisher who collected and distributed King David’s music. “Then on that day David delivered first this psalm to thank the LORD into the hand of Asaph and his brethren.”—I Chron. 16:7.  Asaph's name means "gatherer." The king gave his songs to Asaph to preserve, learn, perform and teach to others.  Asaph was able to take the work of others, King David in this case, and distribute it so that others could benefit and profit by it.
• Paternal leader and instructor who trained his children.  The phrase “sons of Asaph” or “children of Asaph” used in reference to Old Testament musicians appears 10 times.

There are many lessons to be learned from the life of this prolific Old Testament example. May the Lord help us to become truly Biblical in our musical worship.


20 QUESTIONS (GIVE OR TAKE A FEW)…AN INTERVIEW WITH GORDON GREER—

STEVE: How was the conference you just attended?

GORDON: You mean the thing I was at in Minnesota?

STEVE: Yes sir.

GORDON: It wasn’t a conference actually. I sang at one church while I was up there, but the basic part of the trip was to visit my voice teacher, the lady that I studied with in Indiana in the early seventies.

STEVE: Who is that?

GORDON: Elizabeth Mannion. We’ve known each other now for over thirty years, and she’s a good friend of my wife and me. I try to get to see her once or twice a year. A lot of people laugh and say, “Why do you keep going to a voice teacher at your age?”

STEVE: Why is that?

GORDON: First of all because I think everybody ought to have a teacher. I don’t think anybody has “arrived.” I think it’s very hard to govern yourself as to when you’re singing well or to make corrections on your own. Basically, you need another set of ears to help.

It’s hard. I go up there to her. It’s not easy because she knows I left opera, and that’s what I trained for, and that’s not comfortable for her. She doesn’t understand why I’m not pursuing what I did successfully internationally, singing for so many years. I try to tell her about how the Lord led me out of that. Once we get past that, we get down to talking about good, solid, technically singing well.

She’s one of the greatest teachers in the world. I stay in her home. She has a big home in St. Paul. There were three other singers staying there at the same time, coming in from out of town. Some of them are on their way to making auditions. Some of them are between professional engagements. Then she has a large number of students from the area up there and also has some of the voice teachers in the area who come study with her.

I did that work, and then I was working on a project for her. We have for the last 2 or 3 years been going through boxes and boxes of memorabilia and programs and reviews and clippings and all kinds of stuff to put everything in her life in chronological order. She’s thinking about writing a book. So I’ve been doing the grunt work—down in the dust, going through boxes. Seriously, when you sit over it and breathe it, you start sneezing—it’s that old.

STEVE: Was this the all-nighter you were talking about?

GORDON: Oh, there were several of them that were late into the night. The closer I got to my return flight, the more I thought, “I’m never going to get done.” And I didn’t finish. I’m going to have to make another trip. But the basic part of the journey was to take voice lessons, get at this project and return and get after it again here.

STEVE: You made reference to your testimony. Could you share that with us?

GORDON: As far as salvation?

STEVE: Yes, and then how the Lord led you into a music ministry.

GORDON: My circumstances are actually the same for my wife, Jean. She’s the head of the voice faculty at Bob Jones. Both of us were raised as Methodists. Neither one of us really grew up in a strong church, although I think the church that I was in in Illinois had a preacher who was a little more evangelistic. I believe I was saved as a teenager, although knowing now how we talk about trying to lead somebody to the Lord, I wish that somebody would have taken me aside and dealt with me one-on-one. I didn’t have that. I believe that I put my faith in the Lord as a teenager, but I don’t have the date of my salvation time.

When my wife and I got married and went to Germany, we went over there to sing professionally in opera. We were there for ten years. While we were there, the church we attended was the only church that had a service in English in our area. We didn’t know anything about the mission churches. So we were going to an Anglican church. With some of the people with whom we worshiped on Sunday morning, we had a Bible study on Sunday night in the home of an American businessman. His wife was really neo evangelical. I don’t think she knew that, and I didn’t know what “neo evangelical” was at the time. But we heard some good gospel preaching on tapes from Moody Founders’ Week and things like that. Well, that was the first real preaching on salvation or real anything approaching expository preaching that we had ever heard.

I really think what was happening was, the Lord was preparing the way for us for what was going to happen. I came to Bob Jones in 1984 to sing the title role in an opera, was hired through my New York manager. I was introduced to Fundamentalism at that time. I think prior to that it may not have made the impression on me that the Lord had planned. God had prepared my heart to realize, “These people are serious about walking with the Lord.” I did dedicate my life to the Lord on the campus at the close of the Bible conference. The final of the three performances of the opera was on Saturday, and the Bible conference started on Sunday. I was supposed to go to New York to sing two auditions. It ended up that the two guys I was supposed to sing for in New York came to the campus to hear me in person in the performance. (Faust was the opera in which I was singing the title role.) That was really of the Lord’s leading too because then I didn’t have to go to New York and I stayed for two days of the Bible conference until my return flight to Germany.

To make a long story short, at the end of the Tuesday night service of that week, Dr. Bob III preached a sermon about dedicating your life to the Lord, and he used the text about Mary breaking the alabaster box of costly ointment and pouring it over the Lord. The invitation was, Can you give the Lord the costliest thing in your life?

I had never been in a service with a public invitation in my life. I raised my hand. I didn’t go forward. I didn’t feel led to go forward. I had made the decision in my heart.

Then I went back to Germany. I think my wife had made a similar decision in our own home.

I think that’s how the Lord started redirecting our lives. We had both sung professionally, and I was starting to do a lot of international singing. My career was where everybody would want his career to be—going well and getting better. We had two kids. When I came to Bob Jones, I had also been introduced for the first time to Christian education. I hadn’t known about Christian day schools. My wife, Jean, and I didn’t know anything about that. So, we had two kids, and we thought, “Well, I was starting to sing more in America anyway. Why not just come back to the States?” Then I started praying to the Lord. Did God have something else for me to do? So I started backing out of opera and stopped chasing after my professional management about what they had done for me lately, and started asking the Lord to open doors of ministry.

The first year back we lived in my hometown, Moline, Illinois. Again, through the Lord’s leading I had gone up to Northland Baptist Bible College to sing a recital. On the way back I had read that Dr. Bob, Jr., and Dr. Bob III were going to be at Bethel Baptist Church in Schaumburg, pastored by Dr. Frank Bumpus. So I went through there after dropping off my pianist. (That’s how naïve I was. I didn’t know you didn’t pick up somebody else’s wife and drive six or seven hours in a car and go and give a recital somewhere and no one would say anything about it. That’s what we did. I didn’t know.)

So we drove from all the way up there in Dunbar, Wisconsin. It was a terrible, blinding snowstorm. We got her back and got to the church in Schaumburg just as the evening service was about to start. Somebody saw me and must have recognized me. I had met a couple of people from the church when I had sung with the lyric opera of Chicago the year before.

To make a long story short, Dr. Bob recognized me, and I think it might have been Dr. Bumpus. Anyway, they sent the music guy, Fred Coleman, who is now on the music faculty of Bob Jones. He came down off the platform and asked me if I wanted to sing. Here I had sung the whole performance the night before. It’s hard to sing the day after having done a full voice recital—plus after driving six to eight hours in a snowstorm with heat blowing in your face.

Anyway, I went out and got something.

After the service they were dedicating the new gymnasium. I was introduced to a couple of other people and happened to ask the guy who was principal of the school at the time if they were looking for a voice teacher. I was actually talking about my wife. Again, to make a long story short, within a week they had my wife and me to drive back over from Moline, and they hired Jean. She started teaching on their Christian school faculty. So we moved to Schaumburg.

We were in Germany from 1975 to 1985. In 1985 we moved back to Illinois. I was still singing a lot professionally. Then in the summer of 1986 is when we moved to Schaumburg, and Jean started teaching there. We were there at Bethel Baptist Church for three years. Actually, during that time is when the Lord really started to solidify a call on my life into the music ministry. Frank Bumpus was really instrumental in the Lord’s hands in encouraging me. He also put me on the staff part-time the last year I was there, and I started learning about local New Testament church work. It was kind of like on-the-job training. I was basically a “grunt”—did whatever they needed help with. My skills weren’t in teaching the Bible or anything like that, but I wanted to serve the Lord.

As I continued my meetings, I started praying that the Lord would send invitations for meetings. I used to just sing, and then it hit me about the sad state of affairs we were in—about how little it seemed that people knew about what the Bible said about music at all.

I can’t remember where it was the first time that somebody said, “Would you want to teach Sunday school?” I thought, “Oh!” I was just falling all over myself. That’s when I really got serious about trying to find out what I could about what the Word of God says about music.

It really has developed that way. I’ve had people on both sides of the story. I still have people telling me, “You talk too much. You should just sing. That’s all. Just sing good music, and everybody will learn by example what good music is.” Well, if that’s true, why are we in the sad state of affairs we’re in?

STEVE: So what would you say you do for a living right now?

GORDON: What I’m doing right now for a living is trusting the Lord for meetings. I don’t know how long that’s going to continue. I take a pretty adamant stand against some things that I think even other people in Fundamentalism are not in agreement with me on.

STEVE: I want to hear some of that. Before that, in your travels, do you do any voice lessons?

GORDON: Yes, that’s really what I would like to be doing more of, even on a local level. That would really help us financially to supplement our income. But it’s hard to do that when you’re on the road—to establish a studio of singers—even high school kids. That’s one of the things I just talked about with my teacher and her family up in Minnesota. I think there are at the high school level kids who are interested and need help. You need to find kids who are really interested in learning how to sing well. I think there are such kids, but I think, even on the college level, a lot of times their attention is just as divided. I used to think that the college kids were a lot more serious about it than high school kids, but I’m not even sure of that. It just depends on the individual student. If he really realizes the gift that the Lord has given him, I think kids like that are dead-serious about what they’re doing.

STEVE: Don’t you think that there are many, many kids out there who have the talent, have the gift, and are not pursuing it for whatever reason, and then you can come in and perhaps help them with that?

GORDON: Yes, I think there are some who have the gift. I think some kids are grateful. Most singers I know, even those who certainly would not profess to be believers, know that the gift is not due to anything they did. I don’t know how many really great voices there are, but there are certainly a number who ought to be doing more vocally than they are. They really ought to be studying with someone, but they’re not because no one has ever encouraged them to do that.

I think in our circles of Fundamentalism—when people would ask me why I would continue taking voice lessons—they find that totally curious that someone who sang professionally would still think he needs help. It’s like, “Well, I already know how to dribble the basketball.” Well, you could learn how to do it better or to do it at an excellent level on a more regular basis, be more consistent about it. When we’re talking about doing that, then the difference between us and others is, we’re doing everything to the glory of God, and they may be doing it for self-aggrandizement or hoping their careers take off. We’re talking about trying to train people so that our music in Fundamentalism would be better than it is.

STEVE: Okay, “our music in fundamentalism”—what’s wrong with it?

GORDON: I think the biggest problem with it is that it’s mediocre. I don’t think it’s excellent. I think there’s very little excellent music. I mean, of the stuff that’s being written today, we’ve turned music in Fundamentalism into being no different than anything else today: it’s an industry; it’s a business. I don’t say that in a derogatory way about what you’re doing as far as selling product is concerned. That’s not what I mean. I think there are people writing music, and people expect them to keep writing it, and it’s not very good. I just don’t know what the answer to that is because you can’t get a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

STEVE: Do you write?

GORDON: No.

STEVE: You don’t write any music?

GORDON: No. Actually, my degree is in English, and I came to Indiana University to start studying music. I was almost 26 years old when I started studying voice. I had had no intention of going into music. I hadn’t known that I had a gift from the Lord. I was really, for lack of another word, “discovered” up in a community chorus in Anchorage, Alaska, where I was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. I was stationed up there. I made an audition for an opera conductor, a woman who was on the faculty at Indiana University. She came up there to conduct our choir and another performance, and I auditioned for her. She got me to Indiana University in 1971. That’s where I met my wife, and that’s where I met Mrs. Mannion, my teacher. So it all goes back to that. I actually never finished a degree because before I finished a degree, I was offered a contract in Europe to start singing professionally. Both my wife and I got those contracts. We left school in 1975. My wife had finished her master’s. I just took off. I said, “I’m going to start singing.”

STEVE: You just went over there and sang for ten years?

GORDON: Yes, we were employed with opera houses and started doing concert work. So did my wife. Along with opera, we started singing oratorios and other things.

STEVE: Your wife, Jean, has an opera album, correct?

GORDON: Yes, she has a classical music CD that we put together. Actually, I’d like to do something like that for mine too. It’s a matter of getting copyright permission. Jean has one. We really put that together to help us raise money for our future sacred recordings. We’d like to do one like “Soldiers of the Cross” that we have.

I don’t want to say all the music is poor that’s being written. But we have very few people who are writing great-quality music. But we have a lot of people who are churning out music. They’re churning out octavos and solos and books and choir octavos and solo material. I just don’t think it’s as excellent as it ought to be.

STEVE: I think you have a good point there.

GORDON: We have people like Joan Pinkston and Dwight Gustafson. Those people are two of the most gifted people in Fundamentalism. They’re both on the faculty at Bob Jones. But we have a lot of people—and I’d just as soon not get into naming names—who I don’t think are writing very well.

There’s a quote from Bach (and I don’t have it before me) that says something to the effect of “God has privileged me with a door of opportunity to do that which interests me most—the betterment of church music.” Well, that was back in the 1600s, and I’m sure that what Bach meant by that is different from what I may think about it today.

Bach was a great musician. He didn’t write anything trite. We have a lot of trite music today. The bad thing is, it’s popular.

A good friend of mine said, “The problem that’s going on in Fundamentalism is that the whole quality or direction of our music is being steered by what sells.” I hate to tell you, Brother Steve, but that is where you are. I don’t know how you encourage people to love great music. I think there’s something to that when people tell me, “Just go out and sing. Don’t talk.” Maybe some people recognize great music, substance-wise, if you sing it or play it for them.

STEVE: Some do; most do not.

GORDON: I agree. I don’t think most of them do. But I think the other thing that happened for me was, I had other pastors who were saying, “Listen, I need somebody to help me here. I’m teaching about music.” My own burden has been: We call ourselves Bible separatists. Why don’t we apply the doctrine of Bible separation to music? This is where the rubber is hitting the road for me today. I’ll guarantee it, we have disagreements in Fundamentalism. I personally don’t think we ought to be using the music of neo evangelicals. I don’t think we ought to be selling it. I don’t think we ought to be recording it. I don’t think we ought to be paying them to write music for us. You look at the labels of Fundamentalism, some of the people who are producing music today. Those labels are full of names of people—all a person has to do is go on the Internet, and it’s not hard to track it down—whose membership is in some Southern Baptist church or some big, neo-evangelical outfit. It’s like “It doesn’t matter. This has never been an issue.” I really think that that’s something that fundamentalism needs to come to grips with: when are we going to start applying the doctrine of separation in our own backyard as musicians, instead of saying, “It’s just preachers who should be worried about what platform they go on when they preach, but we don’t have to apply it to ourselves as musicians”? I think that’s talking out of both sides of the mouth.

STEVE: When you go and give your seminars in churches, I take it you bring this out.

GORDON: Yes, recently I’ve started doing it a little more. For the most part up until about three years ago, our meetings were mostly just one service. My wife and I or I alone would come in. I had mailed my music ahead. The pianist and I would rehearse. Then I would sing and give hymn illustrations between the songs. The pastors would say, “Go ahead and do some teaching in between the numbers.” So I would do that. Of course, that’s not good for you vocally. You’d always sing better if you would just sing and never talk. But no one was being edified as far as what the Bible has to say about music. So I thought, “Maybe I need to say something about it.”

My training has not been with choirs, but I really think a choir is just made up of a bunch of individual voices. So if you can teach everybody in the choir something about good singing, hopefully it will improve the sound of your choir. So I have approached it that way. That may not be what all the guys who do choral institutes do, but that’s what I’m comfortable doing.

STEVE: So you do some conducting too?

GORDON: After standing in front of conductors all my life, I know the patterns. I don’t try to be flowery with it at all. I have worked at a church choir here in town for about a year. I had never done that before.

STEVE: Does your wife sing with you?

GORDON: Yes, we sing a lot. During the summer we travel full-time. Now it’s shorter because our oldest daughter is in high school, and she’s going to summer school. For about the last ten or twelve years, we have had a full summer itinerary.

STEVE: Do the children sing with you too?

GORDON: Our youngest daughter is the one who has participated more. We have three kids, and two of them are grown. Our youngest daughter, Rochelle, plays the flute, and she sings one or two numbers with us. She’s doing really well on the flute. She’s less excited about singing. We’re going to be encouraging her to get more excited about singing. She’s finishing up ninth grade.

STEVE: Who is it that you love to listen to?

GORDON: Of classical singers?

STEVE: Any ones you want to name?

GORDON: I’ve always admired Placido Domingo. I’ve met him. He and I alternated on the same role in one opera that I did. He sang it one night; I sang it on the next night. There are a lot of great names of singers. There’s a Swedish tenor that a lot of people wouldn’t even know. His name is Jussi Bjorling. I listen to a lot of classical music, and the reason I do it, first of all, the music is great music. I do think there’s a lot to be said for that verse, Hosea 13:6: “According to their pasture, so were they filled.” I think there’s a lot to that. I try to keep listening to great music so that I don’t fall into “slob culture,” which is what the late Dr. O. Talmage Spence called what we’re in now. (He was of Foundation Bible College. He’s with the Lord now.)

I’ve said from the pulpit, and I’ve used that phrase from Spurgeon when he talked in the 1800s about the “downgrade controversy,” I believe we’re in a musical downgrade. They were talking about the state of things theologically. And we’re in one in music now to the point where the music that is preferred, instead of its being great hymns and anthems and great songs with deep Bible teaching, now we have people who are in love with camp songs and children’s choruses. That’s where we are in Fundamentalism. I travel around. I see what’s in the music racks—illegally photocopied choruses. I don’t know what the answer is to get us back. I think all we can do is just continue to be the remnant movement we always have been. We should keep trying to lift the people toward the holiness of God and keep applying the doctrine of separation in our own field of music. We should get more serious about it than we have been and stop saying, “Well, we’ve always done it this way.” It could be we’ve always been wrong. It’s above time that we looked at this as musicians and did not just say, “Well, the pastors are the ones who should have to worry about Bible separation.” I think it’s time for us in our own generation to stand up.

STEVE: So you are a preacher too?

GORDON: No, I certainly wouldn’t call myself that. One guy told me, “You’re kind of an exhorter.” I wouldn’t call myself a preacher, although I’ve been accused of preaching. I certainly don’t discount the power of preaching, but I hold those men in great esteem. I try to divide the Word rightly about music, but I try not to get involved in the pulpit on other issues. But this thing about music is such that you can lose plenty of friends just talking about it. The things we’ve talked about here, this thing of not using neo evangelicals, this is the thing that’s coming to the forefront now. I don’t think it’s very popular because too many people have been using the music of neo evangelicals, and no one has held their feet to the fire.

STEVE: What is the next sacred music album you’re going to put out?

GORDON: I don’t have any idea. I don’t know if there will be another one. This last one cost us over $30,000. We put a lot of money in this last one.

STEVE: Where do you record?

GORDON: We did the actual recording of all of the ones we’ve done at Bob Jones. Then I did some additional mixing. There’s a difference of opinion about the sound. A lot of the stuff that’s being produced nowadays is just mixed really “hot.” It’s just loud for the sake of being loud. There are no dynamics. We try to put a variety of dynamics in our arrangements. A part of it is because of our background: great music has highs and lows. Well, people are making recordings today for “Can I hear it in my truck? So, I don’t want to have to reach down and hit the volume button and turn it up.” Well, fine, if you want all your music at the same decibel level. That’s really what we’re getting a lot of. I’ve contacted a couple of radio stations and asked them about their sound compression that they do. There are different radio stations that have engineers that have different ideas about how much you can compress the sound. It stops the high end, like loud things, from being so loud that it distorts. What ends up happening is that it really alters the actual sound that you make. I’ve heard things that we’ve done off our new recording. A guy who worked on the recording with us said, “That didn’t even sound like you and Jean.” I said, “I know.”

But they have to do what they have to do. It’s not going to be the same sound as the person who buys our CD. He puts it in his nice equipment in the living room. That’s different from listening to it on a boom box or in his car driving down the Interstate with an 18-wheeler on either side of him.

We’re listening to music today completely differently from how we used to listen to it.

STEVE: Mr. Greer, we’re going to have to wrap this up. I appreciate your taking the time to do this interview.

GORDON: Thanks, Steve. I appreciate your considering having me. Keep me apprised of what’s going on there.

STEVE: We’ll have to do it again sometime. Are you going to be in Tennessee anytime soon?

GORDON: Not that I know of, although I’m always looking to enlarge our coasts. We were in one church in Franklin a couple of summers ago. God bless you, brother. Thanks a lot.

STEVE: Thank you, sir.

{Those interested in the music of Gordon Greer can click on these links for more information.}
http://www.asaphmusic.com/description.asp?Item=GJG-GMCD-01
http://www.asaphmusic.com/description.asp?Item=GJG-GMCD-02

IN THE CD PLAYER…An interesting sound is produced when the likes of Robert Hale and Dean Wilder blend their voices in sacred song.  At Asaph we offer five recently produced albums by this duet who traveled far and wide for some twenty years performing scared music concerts to the delight of the hearers.  The five albums are: “Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs”, “Festival of Hymns”, “Celebration of Praise”, “Praise God…and Sing!” and “Robert Hale & Dean Wilder Sing Christmas”
 http://www.asaphmusic.com/description.asp?Item=FRV-790-060-7900 .