“4-track Gospel” Is the debut album from Old Reverend Randell. At only four songs, it is technically an EP but it has all the heart of a full blown concept album. Each song has its own story but there is also an over all journey that moves from confusion & pain, to a place of hope & acceptance.

TRACK ONE:

Old Reverend Randell wrote & recorded “Sometimes the Darkness Takes the Lead” in the middle of bouts with chronic pain and anxiety. Sitting in the pews at church he often found the songs sung to be triggering. The songs seemed to make light of pain (if mentioned at all) by quickly jumping ahead to new life, blessings and eternal good times. Randell craved a song that acknowledged the darkness and pain he was experiencing in the here and now without celebrating it. There is something sacred about acknowledging the dark times and sitting with someone in it. Maybe the darkness won’t win in the end but it definitely sometimes takes the lead.

TRACK TWO:

“It Just Ain’t the Lord” is a good old sounding country hymn that turns hymn singin’ upside down. Many church folks sing and preach about a God that has a lot of stuff added on, “God hates that!” or “God needs you to do this, or else!” All this addition can lead to years of spiritual trauma. It makes it hard for us to know what God really sounds like.

This song is a gospel by subtraction. It uses a simple equation to measure if something sounds like God. It is called the Fruit of the Spirit. This fruit is described as “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control…”

Randell was once asked “What do you think is the most important thing for a church to do?” Without hesitation he blurted out “To be kind!” The person was a little taken a back and said “Couldn’t that lead to a bunch of wrong theology?” Randell stuck to his guns and said “Kindness is part of the fruit of the spirit, if it ain’t kind, it just ain’t the Lord.” That’s the gospel by subtraction.

TRACK THREE:

It doesn’t take long to notice that Old Reverend Randell is a fan of solos and instrumentals. “Come Holy Spirit” is a great example of this. The song begins with waves of white noise and an electric guitar solo. Half way though, instead of a chorus we are hummed through a soft instrumental with a soaring synth. The song ends with a huge wall of sound and again no words. “Come Holy Spirit” was written as a prayer, and when you boil it right down, prayer is a conversation. Yes the instrumentals leave room for you to add your own thoughts to this conversation but even more importantly it leaves room to listen.

“Come Holy Spirit” is really the most simple, yet powerful, thing you can pray. When you are at the end of your rope or understanding, it is 100% appropriate to just say “Come Holy Spirit, come…” and then wait and see what happens. In some ways it is funny that Randell has taken on the moniker of “Old Reverend,” because he tries hard not to preach in his songs. Yes he talks from his own experiences but he doesn’t want to beat you over the head with a sermon. Rather he tries to make space for you to be open to your conversation with the Creator.

TRACK FOUR:

The album ends with the title song “4-track Gospel,” an epic story of the singer’s spiritual journey over the last few years. There is no real verse or chorus, yet the ever changing style of the song seems to some how work. Randell describes it as his “Gospel Rhapsody.”

Way back in the 90’s, when young Randell started recording music, he used a 4-track cassette tape player. With this amazing machine you could record your guitar on one track, then rewind and over dub your voice on tack 2. You rewind again to put some drums down on track 3 and then you rewind one last time to play some bass on track 4. Before recoding on computers was the norm, this was how one person could make a finished song all alone at home.

In “4-track Gospel” Randell is imagining that Mathew, Mark, Luke and John (the writers of the four gospels) have used up all the tracks on the tape and there is no room left for him or his story. This represents his own feelings of often not fitting in at church, especially while going though hard times. This feeling is expanded in the lines “my skins stretched thin and I’m all fight or flight” as a reference to Randell’s struggles with anxiety and how that pushed him further to the edges of his own faith.

In the middle of this dark night of the soul, Randell had been leaning into the the spiritual practice of silence and listening. During one of these prayer times he had what could only be described as a mystical experience. In his imagination he kept having Jesus ask him questions that felt like something more than just his own imagination. Wanting to hold onto the experience he decided to write a song about it. At the turning point of this song you can hear Randell confess:

“It’s kind of strange to say, it’s event stranger to sing. I don’t need you to believe it, or even receive it, I just need to tell it, the way that I felt it!”