#38 TO THE BRIDE by Barry McGuire, the 2nd Chapter of Acts, and a band called David (1975)

TO THE BRIDE
by Barry McGuire, the 2nd Chapter of Acts and a band called David
(1975) Myrrh MSX-5548-LP

"...those who are going to instigate the worship going vertically up to Him tonight - Barry McGuire, the 2nd Chapter of Acts, and a band called David."


Those are the first words we hear on To the Bride, uttered by way of introduction by Buck Herring. And they are fitting words, indeed. Because instigating vertical worship is exactly what took place during a concert in those days by these talented musicians. 

Worship was not an overused buzzword in 1975. It was not Sunday morning entertainment. It was not a genre of music created in Nashville for airplay, profit and fame. While most of American Christendom was still singing from hymnals or just beginning to learn Scripture choruses and praise songs, the 2nd Chapter of Acts regularly led their audiences into deeper waters...giving them a taste of anointed, Spirit-inspired worship. 

It's been said that during Barry McGuire's portion of their concerts together, the audience would sing along, clap, laugh and cheer. But when the 2nd Chapter of Acts began to sing the crowd would grow strangely quiet. For a time, this was misinterpreted by the group--Do they even like us? At all? But afterward, concertgoers would approach the group members and explain that they just had never heard anything quite like that before. Some said they had never experienced worship like that before. "One of the reasons people didn't applaud was because we weren't singing songs about Jesus, we were singing to Him," Nelly Ward explained. "When people recognized that, they sensed His Spirit."

Even if the audience couldn't articulate what they had experienced, they left knowing they had been with Jesus. 

As such, it's a wonderful thing that the 2nd Chapter of Acts' recorded catalog includes no fewer than 3--three!--live albums (which was very unusual). There were seven physical records contained in those three releases. While their studio albums were impressive and important, it was through the live albums that we were able to experience the worship and get a sense of the Holy Spirit-infused ministry of these three Jesus followers. 

It was the next best thing to being there. 

To the Bride also helped us fall in love with a man that historian Ken Scott called an "all-around, lovable, thirty-something, hairy Jesus freak." Barry McGuire emerges on To the Bride as a storyteller with an infectious joy and an irrepressible sense of humor. McGuire was in love with the Lord and he wanted the world to know it. He also had some wisdom to share.

Live albums usually don't end up on a list like this. They usually contain a lot of previously recorded material, and they were often recorded to fill out the string of albums an artist "owed" to a record company. The Jesus Music era provided several exceptions to this rule. There were a handful of live albums from the Jesus Movement that served as indispensable audio artifacts from the period. Author Mark Allan Powell described it this way in his Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music:

Records like this may not hold up well to repeated listening (they are not intended to) but they do provide an important link to the artist that makes the studio releases more enjoyable...To the Bride offers an important and appealing historical portrait of what the Jesus Movement was all about. 

To the Bride makes this list based not on sonic excellence or technical wizardry, but primarily due to historical significance.   

Barry McGuire started singing in 1960, at age 25. "Before that, I was a construction worker," he says. "I was a pipe-fitter. I've worked at everything. Before that, I was a commercial fisherman for three years. I quit school at the tenth grade, yeah I just didn't figure I needed to learn all that stuff I was learning, so I didn't pass."

McGuire's backstory and testimony are covered here and here. But we'll hit the highlights again. 

He caught on with the New Christy Minstrels and then became a one-hit wonder as a mainstream solo artist with a monster hit called Eve of Destruction. Instead of building on that success, he devolved into a world of drugs and sex. He ended up performing nude on stage in the musical Hair for a time, and after that, he basically bottomed out. He would later say that his life, during that period, was a "triple-X-rated horror story."

While over at a musician friend's house to smoke dope, Barry noticed a book called Good News for Modern Man. It was a modern translation of the Bible. He took it home and it just sat there on the shelf for months. Then McGuire finally picked it up and began to read. He discovered a Jesus he had never known before. "I wanted to know more about Christ than the born-again, fundamental, religious rules and regulations thing I'd heard so much about," he says. "I found it came down to just compassion. It was about love and compassion. What I discovered in Christ was total forgiveness. We had all been forgiven. I'd never heard that before. Jesus Christ is the life-force within us all. Since '71, it's been a process of sinking deeper and deeper into surrender to that."

To the Bride was Barry McGuire's third Jesus Music release, following two critically acclaimed and much-loved albums - 1973's Seeds and Lighten Up from '74. You can read all about those records here and here.

Like many other live albums, To the Bride was not taken from a single performance, but was culled from 4 different California concerts in 1975--at Warnors Theatre in Fresno on July 19; the Oakland Auditorium Theatre on July 26; the Civic Auditorium in Redding on August 2nd and at Burroughs Auditorium in Burbank on August 9th.   

We get a sense from the very start of this live set that it's not going to be a tightly scripted, "professional" show. Instead of launching into the first song, McGuire shifts the focus from himself to the Lord by asking the audience, "Hey, can you imagine how we're gonna applaud when Jesus comes?" 

Annie Herring can be heard in the background saying,"We're gonna fly!" 

"Clap your hands and fly all the way Home," McGuire laughs. "Hallelujah."

McGuire's acoustic guitar kicks off Come to Praise the Lord, which is really a roughed-up, country-rock medley of I Came to Praise the Lord (very similar to a southern gospel praise chorus popularized by the Bill Gaither Trio), the Negro spiritual Since I Laid My Burden Down, and This Little Light of Mine (a children's Sunday School chorus). This was hand-clapping, foot-stomping country rock that encouraged audience participation. Great ending, too.

After the medley, McGuire remarked that he'd been singing those songs since he was "a little bitty dude." 

"Way back before I knew Jesus, I used to sing 'Glory, glory, hallelujah.' I didn't know what hallelujah meant, you know? I used to sing 'This little light of mine,' and I didn't have a little light," McGuire said, drawing laughter from the audience. He tells the crowd that he'd spent 35 years of his life stumbling around in the darkness, not realizing there was a Light he could be established in. McGuire then launches into a funny story involving a buddy of his, complete with verbal sound effects. 

What happens next is typical of the relaxed, unscripted feel of this live 2-record set. McGuire wants the audience to sing along on the next song, so first, he uses valuable space on the album teaching them the chorus to the song. Then he hears a noise coming from off stage. After about 10 seconds of silence, he wonders aloud what's going on. He saves the awkwardness of that moment by making a joke about his guitar solo (McGuire didn't play solos, he strummed)...but my point is that the whole incident would most likely have been scrubbed clean from other live albums. Buck Herring left it in. It's an example of what makes this album feel so real...authentic...endearing.

McGuire has a gruff, gravelly voice that usually fits nicely with his material, and he can strum an acoustic guitar with the best of 'em, but he was never thought of as a great singer or guitarist. He's a folk singer...and a storyteller. He lets the other guys in the band do the heavy musical lifting.

On this album, those "other guys" were known as a band called David. Herb Melton played bass, Jack Kelly was on drums, and Richard Souther played keys, while Paul Offenbacher and Rick Azim played guitars. [Barry McGuire played additional guitar and Annie Herring played additional piano.] 

In his autobiography, My Second Chapter, Matthew Ward talks about the origins of a band called David. 

"Church on the Way was an oasis for 2nd Chapter of Acts," writes Ward, "and we received our grounding from Pastor Jack Hayford. We'd grown so much in the Lord through Jack's teaching, and the church just seemed a part of us. The pool of musicians was so strong there that early on, 2nd Chapter's road band ended up consisting exclusively of players from the church. This marriage of the group and musicians from our local body was a powerful one because we were on the same page spiritually."

Jamie Owens had told the 2nd Chapter about a group of musicians at the church who were actually quite good. "They practice a lot," she said. "But sometimes they don't even play - they just pray." Buck Herring approached the guys and asked them to pray about working with the 2nd Chapter of Acts. They replied that they had already been praying...and they felt that the Lord was saying "yes."

"At our first rehearsals, I was surprised at their level of musicianship," Matthew remembers. "They were much more than weekend warriors, and they were dedicated to becoming the best players possible. I had heard many grade-A studio players, which made me all the more aware of how good our band was. And they were a blast to hang out with, too. We thought these guys deserved a name of their own, so we ended up being known as the 2nd Chapter Acts and a band called David.

He's Coming Back, a song on the second coming of Jesus penned by McGuire and Tony Salerno, is up next, and it's one of the better songs on the set. Barry McGuire sings it like his hair is on fire. His passion and intensity build throughout the song. He draws another laugh from the crowd when it's over by saying, "Hey, I never did like sad songs."

After a really funny bit on the blues, McGuire delivers a "rap" (as it was known in those days) on the joy of the Lord ("Our joy comes from the Creator of the universe; the Father of Lights sets us up inside.")  Then he delivers the classic Happy Road - one of three songs on To the Bride that were previously recorded on Lighten Up. Another toe-tapper, Happy Road features Richard Souther on acoustic piano. McGuire reveals in the verse that he was 39 years old when To the Bride was recorded.

Barry McGuire (L) with Randy Matthews

Back in 1978, Keystone magazine's Don Gillespie had a chance to interview McGuire and he asked about the difficulties of coping with life on the road. "It's living out of a suitcase all the time," McGuire answered. "People think of the glamorous life of traveling around the world, but it's just a lot of hard work. All the things that we were created to do, we just don't get to do. Things like live in one place, have a garden and get to know your neighbors."

While still on the topic of touring, Gillespie asked McGuire about the business side of concert promotion. "When you stop to think about how much it costs to put on a concert, a secular concert would go on and people would pay anything from $7.50 to $15.00 apiece for tickets, so you get a thousand people at $15.00 a ticket, that's fifteen thousand dollars," Barry said. "A secular artist, just anybody, they make ten thousand dollars a night, and a Christian artist makes two, three or five or eight hundred dollars, maybe a thousand dollars a night. And people say, 'Boy, I'd like to make a thousand dollars for two hours' work.' But it's not two hours' work, it's your whole life; it takes weeks and months and years to be able to stand for two hours in front of somebody to communicate what God has given you. So it's not two hours of work, it's a lifetime of work that you're receiving a thousand dollars for, or five hundred, or two hundred, or ten or thirty or however much the Lord gives you through that particular ministry. And then people don't stop to think about the transportation expenses to fly around from one place to another, and the whole organization expenses of promotion, the venue, the renting of the building, supplying security officers, and paying the union musicians that you have to have, even if they don't play."

"You can only please one person, that's Jesus," Barry continued, "and anybody less than Him, I don't take too seriously, when they start complaining. I'll listen, but if I've checked out my directions, and I feel that the Lord is leading me in a certain direction, and then someone comes along and says they don't think that I'm doing what the Lord wants me to do, I'll listen to what they have to say, and then I'll go back and recheck my leading. Then if I feel that I'm where God wants me to be, He's the only one I want to please."

After Happy Road, McGuire introduces the 2nd Chapter of Acts. The siblings - Annie, Nelly, and Matthew - served as McGuire's backup vocalists during his turns at the mic. But they also shared their own set of music during each concert. Of course, McGuire poked fun at the Herrings and Wards -- calling the bald Buck Herring a "big dude with a wide part" and referring to the sibling trio as "three thin people...not to be confused with the microphone stands." All in good fun, of course. Barry's sense of humor serves him well in a live setting. He then proceeds to tell the story of how he first became aware of the 2nd Chapter of Acts and the incredible gift God had blessed them with.

"[Barry McGuire] came over one night," Matthew Ward told Mike Rimmer in a 2007 interview with Crossrhythms.com. "He got wind of my brother-in-law [Buck Herring] doing some producing and found out he was a Christian. So Barry looked him up. He had names of three people in LA. Buck was one of them. So he came to visit Buck and in that meeting we met Barry, and Buck said to us, 'Hey why don't you sing some songs for Barry?' I mean, you get to see Barry's eyes sort of glaze over. He's like, 'How many times have I heard this? Oh, the family's gonna start singing.' But we started singing and he was very impressed with what he heard."

I'll say. When the young sibling trio finished singing for Barry in their home that night, tears were streaming down his face. "When Annie sat down and started to play, and the three of them started to sing, I just felt the Spirit of God just fill the whole house, and fill me," McGuire says on To the Bride. "And I started to receive healing. I started to receive promise and reinforcement in their songs." 

Matthew Ward writes, "Long story short, we ended up doing a record with him and 2nd Chapter did all the background vocals on his first album."

That album was Seeds and that led to the 2nd Chapter of Acts going on the road with McGuire as his backup vocalists. "Later we would tour with Barry," Matthew Ward recalled in his 2006 autobiography, "giving us an instant audience and making us more widely known sooner than if we had been on our own. We owe Barry a great debt. He forever changed the way we saw ourselves and the way we would do what we felt the Lord was calling us to do." 

"We were just three insecure, frightened kids," Matthew Ward told Keystone magazine, "and God decided to use us anyway."

  

The 2nd Chapter of Acts presents nine songs on To the Bride (ten if you count He Alone is Worthy as a separate song). Of those nine songs, only three had been previously recorded, and they were all classics - Love Peace Joy, Prince Song and Easter Song. So the good news is that we were treated to six 2nd Chapter tracks on To the Bride that you just can't hear anywhere else.

They run the gamut from the southern gospel-tinged Which Way's the Light to the prayerful I Wonder...from a testimony song called Am I Seeing You to the rockin' rhythm of Denomination Blues.     

One thing that makes To the Bride really special is the transparency and honesty presented not just in the songs themselves, but especially in the verbal song introductions.

Annie Herring confesses personal weakness as she introduces I Wonder...

I wonder where the wind goes
I wonder why the stars glow
I wonder when I'm with You
I just see so far, then You're gone
But still in my heart

Where do You go?
I want to know
And feel Your love, oh
I just want to see more of You
And less of me

A very young Matthew reveals that he had struggled with an incorrect picture of God as he sets up Am I Seeing You...

Am I seeing you change before my very eyes?
Or am I dreaming and has love gotten into my eyes?
Love's got a hold on me today
Love's got a hold

Am I feeling Your heart instead of mine?
Or are we one now and our hearts beat at the same time?

Love comes around the corner for everyone sometime
And love calls out your name all the time

Am I seeing You?

And Annie talks candidly about an unsaved friend in the intensely personal and passionate Jimmy's Song.

On some live albums, the spoken word tracks seem clunky or unnecessary...but not here. "This double LP live set faithfully captures the concert feel, but most importantly personalizes the artist by preserving the dialog between the tunes," writes historian Ken Scott. Author Mark Allan Powell agrees that "the real treat is the dialogue between the songs," describing the artists' words as "moving" and their rapport with the audience "palpable."

Annie's rap on Snow White is very memorable and something that, I'm sure, many young (and not so young) girls could relate to - i.e., the desire to be a Disney princess and marry "Prince Charming" in real life. She talks about how an older sister pulled her aside and burst that bubble for her, telling her that it's just the stuff of fairy tales and can't happen in real life "because you don't have royal blood." What Annie said next brought tears to my eyes as I listened to it again for the first time in a long time:

"But an incredible thing did happen to me when I was twenty-three years old. My Prince did come. The Prince of Peace came. And He took away all my sins, and He gave me royal blood. And He is coming for me. And He is gonna come on a white horse, with King of Kings and Lord of Lords written on His thigh. And He's coming for us, His bride. This is really our song tonight. It's not just us singing it, but it's our song...to our Prince of Peace."

The classic Prince Song follows and basically flows into a time of worship. In fact, Prince Song, He Alone is Worthy and Easter Song form a powerful worship block (even though we didn't necessarily call it worship at the time). 

It's fun to listen to Matthew perform his magic on Easter Song. It's easy to hear him freelance vocally in a way that's even more ambitious than the official version on With Footnotes. By the way, this was the second recorded version of Easter Song by the 2nd Chater of Acts. They would go on to record it three more times (on How the West Was One in '77, 1983's Together Live and the First Love reunion in 1998), and Matthew Ward would record yet another version in 2011.

The 2nd Chapter wraps their portion of To the Bride with a song about a central theme of the Jesus Movement - the second coming of Jesus. He Is Coming had that unique, classical rock sound that the group had popularized on their first two studio recordings. This song would've fit nicely on side two of With Footnotes.

Before bringing on the 2nd Chapter of Acts, Barry McGuire had promised that he would be back "and we'll all sing and clap and stomp and laugh some more." He made good on his promise.

Barry delivers a rollicking version of Anyone But Jesus, one of the highlights of To the Bride. In it, McGuire promises not to sing about anyone but Jesus. Now, if that were to be taken literally, well...he went back on that vow a long time ago when he "retired" from contemporary Christian music and went on the secular folk music circuit with a show called Trippin' the 60's. But we probably shouldn't take it literally...because the song also says he's not going to talk or even think about anyone but Jesus. I don't think we could hold anybody to that. It's a song that was typical of the Jesus People mindset in the early 70s. They were 100% sold out and wanted the whole, wide world to know. 

After a really funny rap about taking the Lord's name in vain, Barry "phones in" a somewhat lackluster song called Sing the Melody. The clavinet solo is basically the only memorable thing about that particular track.

Just before Chosen Generation, McGuire describes the body of Christ as "shock absorbers," absorbing shock waves of destruction running through society. He says that with Jesus within, when we are crucified with Him, we can open up to the shock waves that come our way and allow Him to absorb them through us. "We, the body of Christ, man, can absorb the insanity with Jesus within us," said McGuire, "allowing Him to do it. Shock absorbers. Amen. That's what we are."

That sets up the loudest rocker on the 2-record set. Chosen Generation is I Peter 2:9 set to music. Barry McGuire sings it with conviction.   

You are a chosen generation
A royal priesthood
A holy nation

I have chosen you and appointed you
Given you My name
My Spirit has anointed you
You'll never be the same
Day by day I'm changing you
And when you're purified
I'm coming back to take you as My bride

Richard Souther turns in a great organ solo on this one.

Up next is perhaps the highlight of the entire 2-record set for me. And it's just Barry and his guitar. I first heard Jesus People on a double-LP Myrrh compilation titled Jubilation, Too! and absolutely fell in love with it. It's about the rapture (again, an important theme of the Jesus Movement), it's funny (the audience responds appropriately in all the right places) and it just seems tailor-made for McGuire's earnest, folk style.

Have you had Jesus people knockin' on your door?
Sayin' things you never heard before?
Well don'tcha get uptight
Things'll be all right
'Cause it won't be long
They'll be gone

Sayin' things you just don't wanna hear
Keep singin' songs keep ringin' in your ear
Well don't be gettin' mad
Don't be feelin' bad
'Cause it won't be long
We'll be gone

Why, it's been comin' for a long, long time
It gets a little closer every day
When it finally happens, gonna blow their mind
When all us Jesus people fly away

Well, I guess the rest is up to you
Won'tcha tell me now
Whatcha gonna do?
Well, you can come along
You can sing this song
Cause it won't be long, amen?
Won't be long
It won't be long
An' we'll be gone

After a thoughtful ballad title I Walked a Mile, McGuire gives the most memorable rap on the album - the dolphin story. Great story...and I will say this - McGuire is a human sound effects machine. It's amazing the stuff he can come up with. He's funny, he draws the audience in, and he drives the point home like few others could. The dolphin story sets up a beautiful ballad titled Callin' Me Home (first heard on Lighten Up). Souther's piano work shines here, and McGuire again sings with conviction and sincerity.

To the Bride wraps with a song called Doesn't That Bible Say. Which is a great question, by the way. I wish a whole lot more people were a whole lot more concerned today with what the Word of God actually says. But I digress.

Doesn't That Bible Say is a typical McGuire sing-along type song with ole Barry strummin' for all he's worth.

There's no "invitation" or "sinner's prayer" on this album...but Barry does share a priceless aside before launching back into a reprise of the final song:

I was talkin' to a guy one time and this guy says to me, "Aw man, you Christians, man, you've all been brainwashed." I said, "Hey, brother, that's right, man." I said, "But let me tell you, so have you." I said, "But the only difference between all us Christians and you is that we've all chosen Who we want to wash our brains." [applause] Hey, mine were dirty, old, sick brains, anyway, you know? They needed a scrub.

Back into Doesn't That Bible Say, and then To the Bride ends as the applause fades.

Author and historian Mark Allan Powell said that "To the Bride was probably the best live album ever made by a Christian artist," with its only competition for that title being Live at Carnegie Hall by Andrae Crouch & the Disciples. I think that's overstating things, but it does give you a sense of just how meaningful this 2-record set was.

In all, Barry McGuire and the 2nd Chapter of Acts toured together intermittently for a span of about three years. Annie, Nelly, and Matthew have credited McGuire with teaching them how to just be themselves and better communicate with their audiences. "He taught us so much," said Annie Herring. "He's the best communicator I've ever known."

Barry McGuire would continue to actively record Christian albums for the next 14 years, during which time he would release two songs that he would become known for in CCM circles: Cosmic Cowboy and Bullfrogs and Butterflies. In the 1990s he would team up with another CCM veteran, Terry Talbot, to release a couple of CDs. But the secular folk music revue known as Trippin' the Sixties became his primary gig for quite a while. He has survived some health scares and celebrated his 80th birthday in 2015. Barry gave an interview in 2013 to a website called nodepression.com (the self-proclaimed "journal of roots music"). The interviewer would write that "Although he has been closely identified with evangelical Christianity, during our interview McGuire spoke more like a mystic desert father than a modern born-again Christian. He spoke of Jesus as the doorway he entered who allowed him to live freely and fully in the present moment. He also points to Ekart Tolle's The Power of Now and a little book called The Four Agreements along with references to the Old and New Testament of the Bible, as influences on his life today." 

Barry's marriage to his wife Mari has been an unqualified success. Theirs is a love story.  November 24, 1973. "On that day we said, 'I do.' And we really did," Barry wrote on his Facebook page not long ago. "There were many who said it wouldn't last. And for many of them, it didn't. But we still have pillow fights when we make our bed each morning. God was, is and always will be good." 

McGuire has always been a bit of a loose cannon in interviews over the years. I could give you plenty of examples, but there's several on the internet. You can look them up for yourself. The guy's a talker. Sometimes it seems that he just starts talking and talks himself into corner...and he ends up making weird statements or controversial pronouncements on race, religion, music, politics, etc., that may not have been carefully thought out beforehand. It sort of goes back to what I said earlier...don't always take him literally. When the ole gruff, hairy, lovable Jesus freak is on his soapbox and holding forth on a particular topic, just listen with your heart, not necessarily with your head. 

Barry, Mari and Matthew Ward on a "Christian Classics" Alaskan cruise a few years back

The 2nd Chapter of Acts was already an established group of Jesus Music pioneers when To the Bride was released. After that, they simply solidified their place as one of the most unique, most loved and most anointed CCM groups in existence. They marched to the beat of their own drum...well, let me rephrase that: they listened to the Holy Spirit and endeavored at every turn to follow the leading of the Lord in decisions great and small. They bucked the system, as it were, by turning down magazine covers, avoiding outdoor music festivals, and refusing to sell tickets to their concerts. 

"We didn't care for hype," Matthew Ward wrote in his autobiography. "We had no desire to set ourselves up as celebrities." 

But they recorded sixteen albums and performed about 2,000 concerts in America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Western Europe, ministering the love of Jesus to audiences large and small. In 1988 they suddenly pulled the plug on the group...because God told them to. 

In 1997, two filmmakers came up with a great idea. Dan Collins (husband of Jamie Owens-Collins) and Steve Greisen (husband of Nelly Greisen of the 2nd Chapter of Acts) facilitated, produced and edited a live DVD and double audio CD called First Love: A Historic Gathering of Jesus Music Pioneers. The concert film and documentary was recorded over three days in a cabin in southern California. It was basically a Gaither Homecoming-style video for Jesus people. It featured interview clips and live performances by Love Song, Terry Clark, Randy Stonehill, Darrell Mansfield, Randy Matthews, Honeytree, Paul Clark, Andrae Crouch and others. It rekindles great memories, connects a lot of dots, and brings back so many warm feelings. If you don't own a copy, buy it today. You'll thank me later. But one really cool thing about the First Love DVD is that it brought Barry McGuire and the 2nd Chapter of Acts together again. I received First Love on VHS as a Christmas gift back when it first came out. And I couldn't keep from smiling as Barry sang Happy Road again, with Annie, Nelly and Matthew smiling, clapping and singing along with him. For a few minutes there, it was 1975 all over again.