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Sandi Patty’s farewell

Legendary gospel diva says goodbye with new album

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Sandi Patty, gay news, Washington Blade
Sandi Patty, gay news, Washington Blade

Gospel diva Sandi Patty says new album ‘Forever Grateful’ and its current tour are her swan songs. (Photo by Angela Talley; courtesy Stylos Records)

It’s a pretty easy case to make that Sandi Patty is the finest contemporary gospel singer of her generation.

Only one other female singer outsold her — Amy Grant, but she was more singer/songwriter-oriented and couldn’t hold a candle to Patty vocally. The only artistic rivals she ever remotely had — Karla Worley and Cynthia Clawson — are pretty much forgotten footnotes. She easily outsang all the men too and often outsold them. So far-reaching was her ’80s heyday that even a kids’ album she released in 1989 spent a whopping 24 weeks as the top-selling gospel album in the country.

With Patty currently on her final tour (no D.C.-area dates announced as yet) and her farewell album “Forever Grateful” just out, it’s the beginning of the end of an era. The singer, a 59-year-old five-time Grammy winner and Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame inductee, is going out with a bang and while this is certainly preferable to so many contemporary gospel acts who seem to just fall off the face of the earth, it’s a bittersweet season.

The good news is that after years of mediocre covers-heavy albums like “Everlasting” (2013) and “Songs for the Journey” (2008), with “Grateful” she finally tackles mostly new material. It pales compared to her classic ‘80s work on albums like “Morning Like This” (1986) and “Make His Praise Glorious” (1988), but it’s easily her finest such effort since 2003’s “Take Hold of Christ.” Long-time producer Greg Nelson is back and with writing credits on four tracks, it’s Patty’s most self-penned effort ever.

It’s also Patty’s most stylistically diverse effort in years. “Anthem of Praise” is a sturdy church number by Patty, Michael W. Smith and David Hamilton that features a soaring melody and the kind of worshipful lyrics Patty has long been known for.

“Alleluia (Glory, Honor, Majesty)” is a classically flavored worship aria. “All I Got to Do” is black gospel and the family effort “Farther Along” is a Southern Gospel standard Patty has known all her life. She performed it years ago on her “Le Voyage” tour, but had never recorded it til now.

Three simple acoustic ballads — “In the In Between,” “Song of the Redeemed” and the title cut — are just so-so. They’re lovingly sung and suit Patty’s low register fairly well. Despite their sincerity, though, none are especially memorable. The title track is the strongest of the three. A simple prayer, it becomes something of a sonic bookend to the title cut of her first major label effort “Sandi’s Song” 37 years ago.

“It was not the symphonies or sold-out stages/I always found you in the quiet spaces/this is my song for you/this is the one thing I can bring/you’ve taken all that’s broken, every bruise/and handed me a song to sing.”

Another three cuts are remakes of earlier material. An impressive lineup of fellow singers such as Kristin Chenoweth, Natalie Grant, Nicole C. Mullen, her old touring singers First Call and Russ Taff join her “We Are the World”-style on the old warhorse “Love in Any Language.” The arrangement is faithful — it’s the vocal colors that give it punch. It’s the material of a thousand church choir renditions and holds up well.

“Praise Medley” features Patty classics like “Let There Be Praise” and “Hosanna” in a medley she’s been using in practically every concert she’s given in the last 15 years. With such heavy live use, it feels a bit worn into the ground but the Jay Rouse arrangement featuring a delightful new orchestration by Phillip Keveren is still an efficient way to cover a lot of classic ground quickly.

Patty’s husband Don Peslis and several of their highly talented adult children join her on the Steven Curtis Chapman-penned “Love Will Be Our Home,” a song that hasn’t been sung live since her 1989 tour. Perhaps it was too much of a reminder of strained times to sing it for a long time — Patty was married to someone else when she originally recorded it. But enough time has passed that we’re able to take it again at face value and the harmonies are rich and varied here.

There are a few disappointments. Overall, the whole affair feels just a bit slight, especially for a farewell album. Ten all-new songs with the remakes used as bonus cuts would have given the album a more robust overall feel. A new duet with long-time partner Larnelle Harris is a noticeable absence, especially since their last collaboration (“Then Came the Morning” from his 2013 album) didn’t light the world on fire the same way their classic ‘80s material did. One more barn-burner for the ages would have been nice. And where are all the classic cuts like “Via Dolorosa” and “More Than Wonderful” she’s recorded with fans on cruises over the last couple years?

While Patty delivers convincingly on the aforementioned low-key ballads, why so much of that? Though she’s almost always stayed in the pop vein stylistically, Patty’s voice is capable of operatic thunder and it’s held up well. Though the bell-like effortlessness of her early years has matured, the range and oomph are all still there (they were on fabulous display last November at her D.C. concert, the closing night of her “Everlasting Tour”). Why waste time on quiet, tender little ballads like “Song of the Redeemed” when you could be raising the roof? It’s a head scratcher that has plagued many of Patty’s choices and was especially chronic in the ‘90s.

It will never happen, especially now, but I would have loved to have heard Patty do something truly classical like the fabulous “Divine Redeemer” album soprano Christine Brewer just released with organist Paul Jacobs (who’ll be at the Kennedy Center March 16, by the way). Patty only ever flirted with the classics on occasional Christmas-type efforts but she could have pulled off these works by Bach, Handel, Puccini and Gounod magnificently and it’s a shame she never really sunk her teeth into the classical canon.

On some level, I get it. That was just never her thing (she famously lampooned classical-style singing on her live 1983 album). A 2011 richly orchestrated album of Broadway standards — not particularly my thing — was one of her strongest efforts of recent years. But when you have a voice that could blow all the Celine Dions, Lady Gagas, Barbra Streisands and even (in her prime) Julie Andrewses of the world out of the water without breaking a sweat, one sort of yearns to have had heard her take on more substantive material at least once — sort of like when Katharine Hepburn played Shakespeare in the ‘50s. The few times she dabbled in it — Handel passages on her ’83 Christmas album and “The New Young Messiah” or her a cappella rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer” at her D.C. show last November — left me salivating for more.

Ultimately, though, the album is something for which to be “Grateful.”

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Music & Concerts

Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule

Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1

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Writer Gregg Shapiro with Jill Sobule in 2000. (Photo courtesy Shapiro)

I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of music consumer who purchased music on impulse. When I stumbled across “Things Here Are Different,” Jill Sobule’s 1990 MCA Records debut album on vinyl in a favorite Chicago record store, I bought it without knowing anything about her. This was at a time when we didn’t have our phones in our pockets to search for information about the artist on the internet. The LP stayed in my collection until, as vinyl was falling out of fashion, I replaced it with a CD a few years later.

Early in my career as an entertainment journalist, I received a promo copy of Jill’s eponymous 1995 Atlantic Records album. That year, Atlantic Records was one of the labels at the forefront of signing and heavily promoting queer artists, including Melissa Ferrick and Extra Fancy, and its roster included the self-titled album by Jill. It was a smart move, as the single “I Kissed A Girl” became a hit on radio and its accompanying video (featuring Fabio!) was in heavy rotation on MTV (when they still played videos).

Unfortunately for Jill, she was a victim of record label missteps. When 1997’s wonderful “Happy Town” failed to repeat the success, Atlantic dumped her. That was Atlantic’s loss, because her next album, the superb “Pink Pearl” contained “Heroes” and “Mexican Wrestler,” two of her most beloved songs. Sadly, Beyond Music, the label that released that album ceased to exist after just a few years. To her credit, the savvy Jill had also started independently releasing music (2004’s “The Folk Years”). That was a smart move because her next major-label release, the brilliant “Underdog Victorious” on Artemis Records, met a similar fate when that label folded.

With her 2009 album “California Years,” Jill launched her own indie label, Pinko Records, on which she would release two more outstanding full-length discs, 2014’s “Dottie’s Charms” (on which she collaborated with some of her favorite writers, including David Hadju, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Jonathan Lethem), and 2018’s stunning “Nostalgia Kills.” Jill’s cover of the late Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” on “Nostalgia Kills” was particularly poignant as she had toured with him as an opening act.

Jill was a road warrior, constantly on tour, and her live shows were something to behold. My first interview with Jill took place at the Double Door in Chicago in early August of 1995, when she was the opening act for legendary punk band X. She had thrown her back out the previous day and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. To be comfortable, she was lying down on a fabulous-‘50s sofa. “I feel like I’m at my shrink’s,” she said to me, “Do you want me to talk about my mother?”

That sense of humor, which permeated and enriched her music, was one of many reasons to love Jill. I was privileged to interview her for seven of her albums. Everything you would want to know about her was right there in her honest lyrics, in which she balanced her distinctive brand of humor with serious subject matter. Drawing on her life experiences in songs such as “Bitter,” “Underachiever,” “One of These Days,” “Freshman,” “Jetpack,” “Nothing To Prove,” “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” “Island of Lost Things,” “Where Do I Begin,” “Almost Great,” and “Big Shoes,” made her songs as personal as they were universal, elicited genuine affection and concern from her devoted fans.

While she was a consummate songwriter, Jill also felt equally comfortable covering songs made famous by others, including “Just A Little Lovin’” (on the 2000 Dusty Springfield tribute album “Forever Dusty”) and “Stoned Soul Picnic” (from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute album “Time and Love”). Jill also didn’t shy away from political subject matter in her music with “Resistance Song,” “Soldiers of Christ,” “Attic,” “Heroes,” “Under the Disco Ball,” and the incredible “America Back” as prime examples.

Here’s something else worth mentioning about Jill. She was known for collaboration skills. As a songwriter, she maintained a multi-year creative partnership with Robin Eaton (“I Kissed A Girl” and many others), as well as Richard Barone, the gay frontman of the renowned band The Bongos. Jill’s history with Barone includes performing together at a queer Octoberfest event in Chicago in 1996. Writer and comedian Julie Sweeney, of “SNL” and “Work in Progress” fame was another Chicago collaborator with Sobule (Sweeney lives in a Chicago suburb), where they frequently performed their delightful “The Jill and Julia Show.” John Doe, of the aforementioned band X, also collaborated with Jill in the studio (“Tomorrow Is Breaking” from “Nostalgia Kills”), as well as in live performances.

On a very personal note, in 2019, when I was in the process of arranging a reading at the fabulous NYC gay bookstore Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, I reached out to Jill and asked her if she would like to be on the bill with me. We alternated performing; I would read a couple of poems, and Jill would sing a couple of songs. She even set one of my poems to music, on the spot.

Jill had an abundance of talent, and when she turned her attention to musical theater, it paid off in a big way. Her stage musical “F*ck 7th Grade,” a theatrical piece that seemed like the next logical step in her career, had its premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The unique staging (an outdoor drive-in stage at which audience members watched from their cars) was truly inspired. “F*ck 7th Grade” went on to become a New York Times Critic’s pick, as well as earning a Drama Desk nomination.

In honor of the 30th anniversary of Jill’s eponymous 1995 album, reissue label Rhino Records is re-releasing it on red vinyl. Jill and I had been emailing each other to arrange a time for an interview. We even had a date on the books for the third week of May.

When she died in a house fire in Minnesota on May 1 at age 66, Jill received mentions on network and cable news shows. She was showered with attention from major news outlets, including obits in the New York Times and Rolling Stone (but not Pitchfork, who couldn’t be bothered to review her music when she was alive). Is it wrong to think that if she’d gotten this much attention when she was alive she could have been as big as Taylor Swift? I don’t think so.

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Music & Concerts

Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’

Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.

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Singer Tom Goss is back. (Photo by Dusti Cunningham)

Singer Tom Goss will bring his “Bear Friends Furever Tour” to D.C. on Sunday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing Co. 

Among the songs he will perform will be “Bear Soup,” the fourth installment in his beloved bear song anthology series. Following fan favorites like “Bears,” “Round in All the Right Places,” and “Nerdy Bear,” this high-energy, bass-thumping banger celebrates body positivity, joyful indulgence, and the vibrant spirit of the bear subculture.

For more details, visit Tom Goss’s website.

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Music & Concerts

Kylie brings ‘Tension’ tour to D.C.

Performance on Tuesday at Capital One Arena

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Kylie Minogue visits D.C. on Tuesday.

Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue brings her acclaimed “Tension” world tour to D.C. next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.

The show features songs spanning her long career, from 1987 debut single, “The Loco-Motion,” to “Padam, Padam” from her album, “Tension.”

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