Mark Bishop and Forget the Sea
January 5, 2017 5 Comments
One of the projects that really caught my attention during my extended hiatus was this project with Mark Bishop and his kids/in-laws. I may go back and do a more formal review of this album sometime, but I was extremely impressed with it. Mark brought a truly new and fresh sound to SG with this effort. I remarked to a friend that it was “hipster gospel”, a sound that you would expect to hear at a small coffeehouse somewhere.
However, things just have never seemed to take off with the group. A quick glance at the website shows one date scheduled in August. It looked with product bundles and their website in general that they were really trying to make a splash.
This saddens me. Maybe other things have unavoidably gotten in the way, but I was excited to see something truly new and unique in SG. Either way, it’s a sad comment on our industry that innovation so rarely seems to be encouraged and pushed to the top. I hope that they haven’t given up and will keep trying. I for one appreciate the creativity and willingness to try something new.
About Wes Burke
Burke's Brainwork 
Instead of trying to reinvent SG, why not do what has worked for over 75 years?
SOUTHERN TRADITION http://www.gospelgigs.com
Because I love SG and want to see it grow and flourish. The more people it reaches, the more people are hearing the gospel of Christ. The Statesmen weren’t content to “do what worked”, they along with others pushed the envelope and ushered in what 99% of SG fans consider the Golden Era of SG music. The Statesmen and Blackwood Brothers made inroads into the secular music world. (Nabisco show, Arthur Godfrey) I’d love to see SG artists begin to have that exposure and influence again, but it won’t happen if we don’t grow artistically.
Thanks for making my point! I can count on one hand the number of Statesmen/Blackwood Bros. type groups and have fingers left. Those who are don’t have problems with crowds and product sales. Sadly, there are almost none in the top 50 group listings with major booking agencies.
I thought that they kept a good balance between that new/hipster sound and still a core progressive southern gospel(ish) sound. I think visually that many audiences would not have been drawn to them, but they do have a good sound.
If I remember rightly from reports I read of the 2015 NQC, The set they did was not overly well received and their were reports of their segment not included in the replay of the webcast, which I found very odd. I can’t verify that, because I didn’t purchase it that particular year.
Steve, your comment about the blend and balance of the new and classic sound is spot on, and exactly why I enjoyed the project so much and had high hopes for it.